Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/119

Rh "All right Mr. Broker I'll buy em all at five cents each."

"No you cant say that You say ninety six and a half or something like that."

"I'll give you five million for them," cried Maisie waving the blotter of the writing desk.

"But you fool, they're only worth one million," shouted Jimmy.

Maisie stood still in her tracks. "Jimmy what did you say then?" Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. "I said, you fool."

"Haven't you ever been to Sunday school? Don't you know that God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you'll be in danger of hellfire?"

Jimmy didn't dare raise his eyes.

"Well I'm not going to play any more," said Maisie drawing herself up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother's door. They'd ask him why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.

"Well are you married yet?" was the first thing Congo asked when Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.

"Where are you in from this time?"

"Bizerta and Trondjeb I'm an able seaman."

"That's a rotten job, going to sea I've saved two hundred dollars. I'm working at Delmonico's."

They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo