The Dark Star Part 17

"Funny, ain't it? But there's no telling what will catch the tired business man, is there, Ben?"

"Well, what does catch him?" demanded Stull angrily. "What's the answer?"

"I guess she's the answer, Ben."

"Ah, leave the kid alone----"

"I'm going to have the car sent up here. I'm going to take her out. Go on to Saratoga if you want to. I'll meet you there----"

"When?"

"When I'm ready," replied Brandes evenly. But he smiled.

Stull looked at him, and his white face, soured by dyspepsia, became sullen with wrath. At such times, too, his grammar suffered from indigestion.

"Say, Eddie," he began, "can't no one learn you nothin' at all? How many times would you have been better off if you'd listened to me?

Every time you throw me you hand yourself one. Now that you got a little money again and a little backing, don't do anything like _that_----"

"Like what?"

"Like chasin' dames! Don't act foolish like you done in Chicago last summer! You wouldn't listen to me then, would you? And that Denver business, too! Say, look at all the foolish things you done against all I could say to save you--like backing that cowboy plug against Battling Jensen!--Like taking that big hunk o' beef, Walstein, to San Antonio, where Kid O'Rourke put him out in the first! And everybody's laughing at you yet! Ah----" he exclaimed angrily, "somebody tell me why I don't quit you, you big dill pickle! I wish someone would tell me why I stand for you, because I don't know.... And look what you're doing now; you got some money of your own and plenty of syndicate money to put on the races and a big comis.h.!.+ You got a good theayter in town with Morris Stein to back you and everything--and look what you're doing!" he ended bitterly.

Brandes tightened his dental grip on his cigar and squinted at him good-humouredly.

"Say, Ben," he said, "would you believe it if I told you I'm stuck on her?"

"Ah, you'd fall for anything. I never seen a skirt you wouldn't chase."

"I don't mean that kind."

"What kind, then?"

"This is on the level, Ben."

"What! Ah, go on! _You_ on the level?"

"All the same, I am."

"You can't be on the level! You don't know how."

"Why?"

"You got a wife, and you know d.a.m.n well you have."

"Yes, and she's getting her divorce."

Stull regarded him with habitual and sullen distrust.

"She hasn't got it yet."

"She'll get it. Don't worry."

"I thought you was for fighting it."

"I was going to fight it; but----" His slow, narrow, greenish eyes stole toward the house across the road.

"Just like that," he said, after a slight pause; "that's the way the little girl hit me. I'm on the level, Ben. First skirt I ever saw that I wanted to find waiting dinner for me when I come home. Get me?"

"I don't know whether I do or not."

"Get this, then; she isn't all over paint; she's got freckles, thank G.o.d, and she smells sweet as a daisy field. Ah, what the h.e.l.l----" he burst out between his parted teeth "--when every woman in New York smells like a chorus girl! Don't I get it all day? The whole city stinks like a star's dressing room. And I married one! And I'm through. I want to get my breath and I'm getting it."

Stull's white features betrayed merely the morbid suffering of indigestion; he said nothing and sucked his cigar.

"I'm through," repeated Brandes. "I want a home and a wife--the kind that even a fly cop won't pinch on sight--the kind of little thing that's over there in that old shack. Whatever I am, I don't want a wife like me--nor kids, either."

Stull remained sullenly unresponsive.

"Call her a hick if you like. All right, I want that kind."

No comment from Stull, who was looking at the wrecked car.

"Understand, Ben?"

"I tell you I don't know whether I do or not!"

"Well, what don't you understand?"

"Nothin'.... Well, then, your falling for a kid like that, first crack out o' the box. I'm honest; I don't understand it."

"She hit me that way--so help me G.o.d!"

"And you're on the level?"

"Absolutely, Ben."

"What about the old guy and the mother? Take 'em to live with you?"

"If she wants 'em."

Stull stared at him in uneasy astonishment:

"All right, Eddie. Only don't act foolish till Minna pa.s.ses you up.

And get out of here or you will. If you're on the level, as you say you are, you've got to mark time for a good long while yet----"

"Why?"

"You don't have to ask me that, do you?"