Walking south towards the entrance, she gazed up at the ornate stone and terra cotta details of the façade. And up and up. She had thought she was accustomed to New York’s “skyscrapers,” but now she felt quite dizzy. The building seemed to sway, then to lean over her, threatening.
Quickly she returned her gaze to mundane street level, only to see a man step hurriedly backwards out of sight around the far corner of the building—a man who looked remarkably like young Lambert.
An illusion, of course, like the toppling building. She must have squished the blood vessels in the back of her neck, as revoltingly described by her friend Madge, a VAD nurse in the hospital where Daisy had volunteered in theoffice during the War. (Naturally anatomy had not been considered a suitable subject for the young ladies at Daisy’s school.)
She blinked, and shook her head to clear it. As she stepped into the lobby, no further illusions met her eyes, just a brass-buttoned doorman.
He recognized her from the previous day’s visit. “The English lady, Mrs. Fletcher, right?” he greeted her with a smile. “For Thorwald,Abroad? Eighteenth floor, ma’am. You go ahead up. I’ll phone through and tell Mr. Thorwald you’re on your way so’s he can meet you at the elevator.”
“Thank you. You must have heard how I got lost yesterday trying to find his office.”
“Lots of folks do, you betcha. It’s the shape of the building, confuses people, see. Elevators to your right, ma’am.”
Whether at the doorman’s behest or off his own bat, Thorwald was waiting for Daisy when the elevator reached the eighteenth floor. He was a pear-shaped gentleman, with a Vandyke beard above which his clean-shaven upper lip looked oddly naked. So did his pale blue eyes when he took off his gold-rimmed pince-nez and gestured with it or rubbed his eyes, as he did frequently.
He led the way through an outer room to his tiny office, crammed with heaps of manuscripts and galley proofs. Dumping a pile of copies ofAbroadfrom a chair to the floor, he invited Daisy to sit down and carefully inserted himself behind his desk.
“I trust your accommodations are proving satisfactory, Mrs. Fletcher?” he said.
Rotund and orotund, Daisy thought, assuring him, “Eminently so.” As usual when talking to Mr. Thorwald, shefound herself succumbing to his polysyllabicism, like an exotic disease. Fortunately it did not infect her articles, or no one would have read them.
“I’ve made the acquaintance of a number of uncommonly intriguing people,” she went on. She told him about Miss Genevieve Cabot, and the various hotel guests Miss Genevieve had introduced to her the previous evening. “Incidentally,” she said, “are you able to elucidate the curious connection my mind persists in forming between the name Cabot and fish?”
“Ah yes.” Mr. Thorwald tittered. “I believe the piscatorial association must be in reference to
good old Boston,
‘The home of the bean and the cod,
‘Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,
‘And the Cabots talk only to God.’
A feeble versification at best, but since it was, I understand, pronounced as a toast after, one must presume, considerable pre-Volstead jollification, not utterly without merit.”
Volstead had something to do with Prohibition, Daisy thought. “I must have heard the rhyme somewhere,” she said. “Mention was made of Boston, I recollect. Ought I to see Boston for the second article?”
“While I hesitate to declare Boston unworthy of a visit, such a peregrination is unnecessary, my dear Mrs. Fletcher. There is so much to be admired in this magnificent nation that you cannot conceivably encompass its entirety. Your sojourns in Connecticut, New York, and Washington will suffice. It is not universality I desire but freshness of vision. And now, as our own visionary Benjamin Franklin observed,‘Remember that Time is Money.’ Permit me to peruse the fruits of your exertions.”
While he read the completed article and the beginnings of the next, Daisy gazed out through the narrow window. What she saw was not the treetops of Madison Square, far below, not the visible sliver of the great city and the East River, but the greater continent beyond. South to the Caribbean and Mexico, north to Canada, three thousand miles to the Pacific Ocean—she sighed, envying the shipboard friends who had plans to see as much as was humanly possible.
“Excellent.” Mr. Thorwald approved Daisy’s work. He made a few suggestions about the rest of the unfinished article; then they discussed her ideas for articles to be written when she returned to England. “And now, dear lady,” he said, taking out his watch, “it is long past noon, I perceive. Will you permit me to take you to lunch at the Algonquin?”
As well as being curious to see the Algonquin, Daisy was more than ready for lunch, having missed elevenses. Everyone else appeared to have preceded them. The publisher’s offices were all but deserted as they passed through.
As they approached the elevators, Daisy immediately recognized the man waiting there, if waiting was the right word. She knew him as much by his actions as his looks—Otis Carmody had opened one of the gates and was peering impatiently down the elevator shaft.
Presumably he had long since worked out how to tell by the esoteric movements of cables which elevator was on its way. Though the Flatiron’s lifts were twenty years younger than the Hotel Chelsea’s, the machinery proceeded with almost as much creaking, groaning, clanking, and rattling.
Daisy assumed the loud report was just part of the general cacophony until it was followed by an unmistakably human sound, a yelp of pain. A firecracker? She had heard plenty last night. Perhaps an office boy had unwisely kept one in his pocket.
But not ten paces ahead, Carmody teetered on the brink for a moment, then toppled over.
3
“Jumping jiminy!” cried Mr. Thorwald.
“He didn’t jump,” Daisy said grimly. A pace ahead of the editor, she saw a man dart across the passage beyond the elevators, heading for the stairs. “Stop!” she shouted.
