The Magic Christian

By the same author

FLASH AND FILIGREE

THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN

TERRY SOUTHERN

RANDOM HOUSE NEW YORK

Second Printing

© Copyright, 1959, 1960, by Terry Southern
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in New York by Random House, Inc., and
simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House of Canada, Limited.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-7681
Manufactured in the United States of America
by H. Wolff Book Mfg. Co., Inc.

TO HENRY AND DIG

Little man whip a big man every time if the little man’s in the right and keeps a’comin’.

Motto of The Texas Rangers

Although this book was basically shaped by certain events, and by values otherwise manifest, over the past few years, it is not, in any strict sense, a historical novel—and, more particularly, the characters within it are not to be identified with any actual persons, either living or dead.

The Magic Christian

I

When not tending New York holdings, Guy Grand was generally, as he expressed it, “on the go.” He took cross-country trips by train: New York to Miami, Miami to Seattle—that sort of thing—always on a slow train, one that made frequent stops. Accommodation on these trains is limited, and though he did engage the best, Grand often had to be satisfied with a small compartment fitted with scarcely more than the essentials of comfort. But he accepted this cheerfully; and so today, on a summer afternoon at precisely 2:05, it was with buoyant step (considering his girth—for, at fifty-three now, he was rather stout) that he climbed aboard the first Pullman of the Portland Plougher, found his compartment, and began the pleasant routine of settling in for the long slow journey to New York. As was his habit, he immediately rang the porter to bring round a large bottle of Campari and a bottle of finely iced water; then he sat down at his desk to write business letters.

It was known that for any personal service Grand was inclined to tip generously, and because of this there were usually three or four porters loitering in the corridor nearby. They kept a sharp eye on the compartment door, in case Grand should signal some need or other; and, as the train pulled out of the station, they could hear him moving about inside, humming to himself, and shuffling papers to and fro on his desk. Before the train made its first stop, however, they would have to scurry, for Grand’s orders were that the porters should not be seen when he came out of his compartment; and he did come out, at every stop.

At the first of these stops, which was not long in occurring, Grand went quickly to the adjoining day coach and took a seat by the window. There he was able to lean out and observe the activity on the platform; he attracted little attention himself, resembling as he did, with his pleasant red face, any honest farmer.

From the train window one could see over and beyond the station the rest of the small New England town—motionless now in the summer afternoon, like a toy mausoleum—while all that seemed to live within the town was being skillfully whipped underground and funneled up again in swift urgency onto the station platform, where small square cartons were unloaded from a central car.

But amidst the confusion and haste on the platform there was one recognizable figure; this was the man who sold hotdogs from a box he carried strapped to his neck.

“They’re red hot!” he cried repeatedly, walking up and down parallel to the train and only a foot from it—while Grand, after a minute of general observation, focused all his attention on this person; and then, at exactly one minute before departure, he began his case with the hotdog-man.

“Red hot!” he shouted; and when the man reached the window, Grand eyed him shrewdly for a second, squinting, as though perhaps appraising his character, before asking, tight-lipped:

“How much?”

“Twenty cents,” the hotdog-man said hurriedly—for the train was about to pull out—“... mustard and relish, they’re red hot!”

“Done!” said Grand with a sober nod, and as the train actually began to move forward and the hotdog-man to walk rapidly in keeping abreast of the window, Guy Grand leaned out and handed him a five-hundred-dollar bill.

“Break this?” he asked tersely.

The hotdog-man, in trying to utilize all their remaining time, passed the hotdog to Grand and reached into his change pocket before having looked carefully at the bill—so that by the time he made out its denomination, he was running almost full tilt, grimacing oddly and shaking his head, trying to return the bill with one hand and recover the hotdog with the other. During their final second together, with the hotdog-man’s last overwhelming effort to reach his outstretched hand, Grand reached into his own coat pocket and took out a colorful plastic animal mask—today it was that of pig—which he quickly donned before beginning to gorge the hotdog through the mouth of the mask, at the same time reaching out frantically for the bill, yet managing somehow to keep it just beyond his fingers’ grasp, and continuing with this while the distance between them lengthened, hopelessly, until at last the hotdog-man stood exhausted on the end of the platform, still holding the five hundred, and staring after the vanishing train.

When Grand finally drew himself back from the window and doffed his pig mask, it was to face a middle-aged woman across the aisle who was twisted halfway around in her seat, observing Grand with a curiosity so intense that the instant of their eyes actually meeting did not seem to register with her. Then she coughed and glanced away—but irresistibly back again, as Guy Grand rose, all smiles, to leave the day coach, giving the woman a wink of affectionate conspiracy as he did.

“Just having a laugh with that hot-frank vender,” he explained. “... no real harm done, surely.”

He returned to his compartment then, where he sat at the desk sipping his Campari—a drink the color of raspberries, but bitter as gall—and speculating about the possible reactions of the hotdog-man.

Outside the compartment, even at the far end of the corridor, the idle porters could often hear his odd chortle as he stirred about inside.

By the time the train reached New York, Guy Grand had gone through this little performance four or five times, curious fellow.

II

Out of the gray granite morass of Wall Street rises one building like a heron of fire, soaring up in blue-white astonishment—Number 18 Wall—a rocket of glass and blinding copper. It is the Grand Investment Building, perhaps the most contemporary business structure in our country, known in circles of high finance simply as Grand’s.

Offices of Grand’s are occupied by companies which deal in mutual funds—giant and fantastic corporations whose policies define the shape of nations.

August Guy Grand himself was a billionaire. He had 180 millions cash deposit in New York banks, and this ready capital was of course but a part of his gross holdings.

In the beginning, Grand’s associates, wealthy men themselves, saw nothing extraordinary about him; a reticent man of simple tastes, they thought, a man who had inherited most of his money and had preserved it through large safe investments in steel, rubber, and oil. What his associates managed to see in Grand was usually a reflection of their own dullness: a club member, a dinner guest, a possibility, a threat—a man whose holdings represented a prospect and a danger. But this was to do injustice to Grand’s private life, because his private life was atypical. For one thing, he was the last of the big spenders; and for another, he had a very unusual attitude towards people—he spent about ten million a year in, as he expressed it himself, “making it hot for them.”

** ***

At fifty-three, Grand had a thick trunk and a large balding bullet-head; his face was quite pink, so that in certain half-lights he looked like a fat radish-man—though not displeasingly so, for he always sported well-cut clothes and, near the throat, a diamond the size of a nickel ... a diamond now that caught the late afternoon sun in a soft spangle of burning color when Guy stepped through the soundless doors of Grand’s and into the blue haze of the almost empty street, past the huge doorman appearing larger than life in gigantic livery, he who touched his cap with quick but easy reverence.

“Cab, Mr. Grand?”

“Thank you no, Jason,” said Guy, “I have the car today.” And with a pleasant smile for the man, he turned adroitly on his heel, north towards Worth Street.

Guy Grand’s gait was brisk indeed—small sharp steps, rising on the toes. It was the gait of a man who appears to be snapping his fingers as he walks.

Half a block on he reached the car, though he seemed to have a momentary difficulty in recognizing it; beneath the windshield wiper lay a big parking ticket, which Grand slowly withdrew, regarding it curiously.

“Looks like you’ve got a ticket, bub!” said a voice somewhere behind him.

Out of the corner of his eye Grand perceived the man, in a dark summer suit, leaning idly against the side of the building nearest the car. There was something terse and smug in the tone of his remark, a sort of nasal piousness.

“Yes, so it seems,” mused Grand, without looking up, continuing to study the ticket in his hand. “How much will you eat it for?” he asked then, raising a piercing smile at the man.

“How’s that, mister?” demanded the latter with a nasty frown, pushing himself forward a bit from the building.

Grand cleared his throat and slowly took out his wallet—a long slender wallet of such fine leather it would have been limp as silk, had it not been so chock-full of thousands.

“I asked what would you take to eat it? You know....” Wide-eyed, he made a great chewing motion with his mouth, holding the ticket up near it.

The man, glaring, took a tentative step forward.

“Say, I don’t get you, mister!”

“Well,” drawled Grand, chuckling down at his fat wallet, browsing about in it, “simple enough really....” And he took out a few thousand. “I have this ticket, as you know, and I was just wondering if you would care to eat it, for, say”—a quick glance to ascertain—“six thousand dollars?”

“What do you mean, ‘eat it’?” demanded the dark-suited man in a kind of a snarl. “Say, what’re you anyway, bub, a wise-guy?”

“‘Wise-guy’ or ‘grand guy’—call me anything you like ... as long as you don’t call me ‘late-for-chow!’ Eh? Ho-ho.” Grand rounded it off with a jolly chortle, but was quick to add, unsmiling, “How ’bout it, pal—got a taste for the easy green?”

The man, who now appeared to be openly angry, took another step forward.

“Listen, mister ...” he began in a threatening tone, half clenching his fists.

“I think I should warn you,” said Grand quietly, raising one hand to his breast, “that I am armed.”

“Huh?” The man seemed momentarily dumfounded, staring down in dull rage at the six bills in Grand’s hand; then he partially recovered, and cocking his head to one side, regarded Grand narrowly, in an attempt at shrewd skepticism, still heavily flavored with indignation.

“Just who do you think you are, Mister! Just what is your game?”

“Grand’s the name, easy-green’s the game,” said Guy with a twinkle. “Play along?” He brusquely flicked the corners of the six crisp bills, and they crackled with a brittle, compelling sound.

“Listen ...” muttered the man, tight-lipped, flexing his fingers and exhaling several times in angry exasperation, “... are you trying ... are you trying to tell ME that you’ll give six thousand dollars ... to ... to EAT that”—he pointed stiffly at the ticket in Guy’s hand—“to eat that TICKET?!?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Grand; he glanced at his watch. “It’s what you might call a ‘limited offer’—expiring in, let’s say, one minute.”

“Listen, mister,” said the man between clenched teeth, “if this is a gag, so help me....” He shook his head to show how serious he was.

“No threats,” Guy cautioned, “or I’ll shoot you in the temple—well, what say? Forty-eight seconds remaining.”

“Let’s see that goddamn money!” exclaimed the man, quite beside himself now, grabbing at the bills.

Grand allowed him to examine them as he continued to regard his watch. “Thirty-nine seconds remaining,” he announced solemnly. “Shall I start the big count down?”

Without waiting for the latter’s reply, he stepped back and, cupping his hands like a megaphone, began dramatically intoning, “Twenty-eight ... twenty-seven ... twenty-six ...” while the man made several wildly gesticulated and incoherent remarks before seizing the ticket, ripping off a quarter of it with his teeth and beginning to chew, eyes blazing.

“Stout fellow!” cried Grand warmly, breaking off the count down to step forward and give the chap a hearty clap on the shoulder and hand him the six thousand.

“You needn’t actually eat the ticket,” he explained. “I was just curious to see if you had your price.” He gave a wink and a tolerant chuckle. “Most of us have, I suppose. Eh? Ho-ho.”

And with a grand wave of his hand, he stepped inside his car and sped away, leaving the man in the dark summer suit standing on the sidewalk staring after him, fairly agog.

III

Grand drove leisurely up the East River Drive—to a large and fine old house in the Sixties, where he lived with his two elderly aunts, Agnes and Esther Edwards.

He found them in the drawing room when he arrived.

“There you are, Guy!” said Agnes Edwards with tart affection, who at eighty-six was a year senior to Esther and held the initiative in most things between them.

“Guy, Guy, Guy,” exclaimed Esther happily in her turn, with a really beautiful pink smile for him—but she insisted then upon raising her teacup, so that all to be seen now was her brow, softly clouded, as ever, in maternal concern for the boy. Both women were terribly, chronically, troubled that Guy, at fifty-three, was unmarried—though perhaps each, in her way, would have fought against it.

Guy beamed at them from the doorway, then crossed to kiss both before going to his big sofa-chair by the window where he always sat.

“We’re just having tea, darling—do!” insisted his Aunt Agnes with brittle passion, flourishing her little silver service bell in a smart tinkle and presenting her half-upturned face for his kiss—as though to receive it perfunctorily, but with eyelids closed and tremoring, one noticed, and a second very thin hand which, as in reflex, started to rise towards their faces, wavering up, clenched white as the lace at her wrists.

“Guy, Guy, Guy,” cried Esther again, sharpening her own gaiety as she set her cup down—quickly enough, but with a care that gave her away.

“You will take tea, won’t you, my Guy!” said Agnes, and she conveyed it in a glance to the maid who’d appeared.

“Love some,” said Guy Grand, giving his aunts such a smile of fanatic brightness that they both squirmed a bit. He was in good spirits now after his trip—but soon enough, as the women could well attest, he would fall away from them, lapse into mystery behind his great gray Financial Times and Wall Street Journal for hours on end: distrait, they thought; never speaking, certainly; answering, yes—but most often in an odd and distant tone that told them nothing, nothing.

** ***

“Guy ...” Agnes Edwards began, turning her cup in her hand and forcing one of the warm playful frowns used by the extremely rich to show the degree of seriousness felt.

“Yes, Aunt Agnes,” said Guy unnecessarily, even brightly, actually coming forward a bit on his chair, not turning his own cup, but fingering it, politely nervous.

“Guy ... you know Clemence’s young man. Well, I think they want to get married! and ... oh I don’t know, I was just wondering if we couldn’t help. Naturally, I haven’t said a thing to her about it—I wouldn’t dare, of course ... but then what’s your feeling on it, Guy? Surely there’s something we can do, don’t you agree?”

Guy Grand could have no notion what she was talking about, except that it was undoubtedly a question of money; but he spoke darkly enough to suggest that he was weighing his words with care.

“Why I should think so, yes.”

Agnes Edwards beamed and raised her cup in a gesture both coy and smug, then the two women glanced at each other, smiling prettily, almost lifting their brows—whatever it was, it was a certain gain all around.

** ***

Grand’s own idea of what he was doing—“making it hot for people”—had formed crudely, literally, and almost as an afterthought, when, early one summer morning in 1938, just about the time the Spanish Civil War was ending, he flew out to Chicago and, within an hour of arrival, purchased a property on one of the busiest corners of the Loop. He had the modern two-story structure torn down and the debris cleared off that day—that very morning, in fact—by a demolition crew of fifty men and machines; and then he directed the six carpenters, who had been on stand-by since early morning, when they had thrown up a plank barrier at the sidewalk, to construct the wooden forms for a concrete vat of the following proportions: fifteen feet square, five feet deep. This construction was done in an hour and a half, and it seemed that the work, except for pouring the concrete, was ended; in fact the carpenters had put on their street clothes and were ready to leave when, after a moment of reflection, Grand assembled them with a smart order to take down this present structure, and to rebuild it, but on a two-foot elevation—giving clearance beneath, as he explained to the foreman, to allow for the installation of a heating apparatus there.

“That’ll make it hot for them,” he said—but he wasn’t speaking to the foreman then, nor apparently to anyone else.

It was mid-afternoon, and collecting from the flux of the swollen summer street were the spectators, who hung in bunches at the sturdy barrier, gatherings in constant change, impressed in turn by the way the great man from the East snapped his commands, expensively dressed as he was, shirt turned back at the cuff.

And when the work was going ahead correctly, Grand might give the crowd a moment of surveillance from where he stood in the center of the lot, finally addressing them, hands cupped to his mouth as if he had to shout—though, actually, they were only a few yards away.

“Tomorrow ...” he would say, “... back ... tomorrow! Now ... getting ... it ... ready!”

When an occasional wiseacre could get his attention and attempt some joke as to what was going on there beyond the barrier, Grand Guy Grand would smile wearily and shake a scolding finger at him.

“Now ... getting ... it ... ready,” he would shout slowly, or something else equally irrelevant to the wiseacre’s jibe; but no one took offense, either because of not understanding or else because of the dignity and bearing of the man, and the big diamond he wore at his throat.

Another contractor, three workers, a truck of sand and gravel, and six sacks of quick-drying cement arrived at the working site at two o’clock, but were forced to wait until the new forms were complete. Then a sheet of metal was lowered into place and the concrete was poured into the forms. Under Grand’s spirited command, it was all so speedily done that well before dusk the work was ended, including the installation of a great gas burner there, star-shaped with a thousand dark jets, like a giant upturned squid stretched beneath the structure. It was apparent now that when the board forms were removed, the whole would resemble a kind of white stone bath, set on four short columns, with a heating apparatus beneath, and small ramps leading up the vat on each of its sides.

Before dinner Guy Grand completed arrangements begun earlier in the day with the Chicago stockyards: these provided for the delivery of three hundred cubic feet of manure, a hundred gallons of urine, and fifty gallons of blood, to an address in the suburbs. Grand met them there and had the whole stinking mess transferred to a covered dump truck he had purchased that morning. These arrangements cost Grand a pretty penny, because the stockyards do not ordinarily conserve or sell urine, so that it had to be specially collected.

After securing the truck’s cover, Grand climbed into the cab, drove back towards the stockyards and parked the truck there, where the stench of it would be less noticeable.

Then he took a taxi into town, to the near North Side and had a quiet dinner at the Drake.

At nine o’clock, while it was still light, he returned to the working site, where he was met by some of the crew, and saw to the removal of the board forms and the barrier. He inspected the vat, and the burner below—which he tested and found in good working order. Then he dismissed the crew and went back to his hotel.

He sat at his desk writing business letters until his thin gold wrist-clock sounded three A.M. Exactly then he put away his writing things, freshened himself up, and, just before leaving the room, paused near the door and collected a big leather brief case, a gas mask, a wooden paddle, a bucket of black paint, and an old, stiff paintbrush. He went downstairs and took a cab out to the place where he had parked the dump truck. Leaving the cab, he got into the truck and drove back to the working site. There he backed the truck carefully up one of the ramps and then emptied all that muck into the vat. The stench was nearly overpowering, and Grand, as soon as he had parked the truck and gotten out of it, was quick to don the gas mask he had brought.

Stepping up one of the ramps, he squatted on the parapet of the vat and opened the brief case, out of which he began taking, a handful at a time, and dropping into the vat, ten thousand one-hundred-dollar bills, slowly stirring them in with his wooden paddle.

And he was in this attitude, squatting at the edge of the vat, gas mask covering his face, stirring with his paddle and dumping bills into the muck, the work only half begun, when a passing police patrol car pulled up to investigate the activity and, above all, the stench. But before the officers could properly take account, Grand had closed the brief case, doffed his mask, given them five thousand dollars each, and demanded to be taken at once to their precinct captain. After a few hushed words between them, and a shrugging of shoulders, they agreed.

At the station, Grand spoke privately with the captain, showing him several business cards and explaining that it was all a harmless promotion stunt for a new product.

“Naturally my firm is eager to coöperate with the authorities,” he said, and handed the captain twenty-five thousand.

And so it was finally agreed that Grand might return to the site and proceed, as long as whatever he was doing did not involve criminal violence within the precinct. Moreover, while the captain could make no definite promise about it, he was attentive enough to Grand’s proposal of an additional fifty thousand on the following noon if the police would be kept away from the site for a few hours that morning.

“Think it over,” said Grand pleasantly. “Better sleep on it, eh?”

Back at the site, Grand Guy donned his mask again, and dumped the remaining contents of the brief case into the vat. Then he stepped down, opened the can of paint, gave it good stirring, and finally, using his left hand so that what resulted looked childish or illiterate, he scrawled across the vat FREE $ HERE in big black letters on the sides facing the street.

He climbed up for a final check on the work. Of the bills in the muck, the corners, edges, and denomination figures of about five hundred were visible. After a moment he stepped down and, half crouching beneath the vat, took off his mask and saw to his burners. He did a short terse count down and turned the valve full open; then he removed the handle so that it could not easily be interfered with. As he touched off the match, the thousand flames sprang up, all blue light, and broke back doubling on the metal plate, and on the wet concrete—a color of sand in summer moonlight: one of those chosen instants, lost to childhood, damp places in reflection, surface of cement under the earth, the beautifully cool buried places ... the stench became unbearable; he stood and quickly donned his mask, turned away from the site and walked across the street where he paused at the corner and surveyed the whole. Already in the pale eastern light, the moronic scrawl, FREE $ HERE, loomed with convincing force, while below the thousand flames beat up, blue-white and strangely urgent for this hour of morning on a downtown corner of Chicago.

“Say ...” mused Grand, half-aloud, “that’ll make it hot for them all right!” And he leaped into the big dump truck and drove like the wind back to his hotel. At dawn he caught the plane for New York.

The commotion that occurred a few hours later on that busy corner of the Loop in downtown Chicago was the first and, in a sense perhaps, the most deliberately literal of such projects eventually to be linked with the name of “Grand Guy” Guy Grand, provoking the wrath of the public press against him, and finally earning him the label, “Eccentric” and again towards the end, “Crackpot.”

IV

“Is Clemence a person?” asked Guy, taking a bit of sweet biscuit now, popping it into his mouth.

Aunt Esther raised her hand to conceal a shaming twitter, and Aunt Agnes feigned impatience.

“Guy, great silly!” said Agnes. “Really!” Though after a moment she softened, to continue:

“Clemence is the new maid! She’s a Catholic girl, Guy—and a very nice one, if I may say so. She’s marrying this Jewish boy, Sol—how they’ll manage I’m sure I don’t know—I talked to them both, I told them that we were Protestants, had always been Protestants, and always would be Protestants—but that I didn’t mind! Not in the least! ‘Freedom of worship and creed!’ I said. It’s always been a principle of my religion. Not so insistent and pushy as some I could name! I didn’t tell them that, of course, but there you are. Well, she wants a honeymoon in Italy, and a visit to the Pope, which I think is terribly sweet—and he wants to go to his place in the East, wherever it is; Israel, isn’t it? Oh, I don’t say it badly. They’re very nice, Guy—both of them as gentle and polite as you please, and ... well, they’ve enough money for one of the trips, you see, but not for both. I wish we could help them, Guy. I think it would be nice if they could go to both of their places, don’t you agree? You remember how much I enjoyed Calvin’s chair in Geneva! Of course it isn’t the same, but it would be sweet. What’s your feeling on it, Guy?”

“But Guy has always been eager to help in such matters,” Esther broke in warmly.

“Thank you, Aunt Esther,” said Guy with soft humility, “I do like to think that the record speaks for itself.”

** ***

Guy Grand had owned a newspaper for a while—one of Boston’s popular dailies, with a circulation of 900,000. When Grand assumed control, there was, at first, no change in the paper’s format, nor in its apparently high journalistic standards, as Grand stayed on in New York on the periphery of the paper’s operations, where he would remain, he said, until he “could get the feel of things.”

During the second month, however, French words began to crop up unaccountably in news of local interest:

Boston, Mar. 27 (AP)—Howard Jones, vingt-huit ans, convicted on three counts of larceny here, was sentenced this morning to 20–26 months in Folsom State Prison, Judge Grath of 17th Circuit Court of Appeals announced aujourd’hui.

Working then through a succession of editors, proofreaders, and linotype operators, Grand gradually put forward the policy of misspelling the names of cities, islands, and proper nouns in general—or else having them appear in a foreign language:

YANKS HIT PARIGI
MOP-UP AT TERWEEWEE

During the war, when geographic names were given daily prominence in the headlines, these distortions served to antagonize the reader and to obscure the facts.

The circulation of the paper fell off sharply, and after three months it was down to something less than one-twentieth of what it had been when Grand took over. At this point a major policy change was announced. Henceforth the newspaper would not carry comics, editorials, feature stories, reviews, or advertising, and would present only the factual news in a straightforward manner. It was called The Facts, and Grand spent the ransom of a dozen queens in getting at the facts of the news, or at least a great many of them, which he had printed then in simple sentences. The issues of the first two days or so enjoyed a fair sale, but the contents on the whole appeared to be so incredible or so irrelevant that by the end of the week demand was lower than at any previous phase of the paper’s existence. During the third week, the paper had no sale at all to speak of, and was simply given away; or, refused by the distributors, it was left in stacks on the street corners each morning, about two million copies a day. In the beginning people were amused by the sight of so many newspapers lying around unread; but when it continued, they became annoyed. Something funny was going on—Communist? Atheist? Homosexual? Catholic? Monopoly? Corruption? Protestant? Insane? Negro? Jewish? Puerto Rican? POETRY? The city was filthy. It was easy for people to talk about The Facts in terms of litter and debris. Speeches were made, letters written, yet the issue was vague. The editor of The Facts received insulting letters by the bagful. Grand sat tight for a week, then he gave the paper over exclusively to printing these letters; and its name was changed again—Opinions.

These printed letters reflected such angry divergence of thought and belief that what resulted was sharp dissension throughout the city. Group antagonism ran high. The paper was widely read and there were incidents of violence. Movements began.

** ***

At about two P.M. on June 7th, crowds started to gather in Lexington Square near the center of the city. The Jewish, Atheist, Negro, Labor, Homosexual, and Intellectual groups were on one side—the Protestant and American Legion on the other. The balance of power, or so it seemed, lay with the doughty Catholic group.

It was fair and windless that day in Boston, and while the groups and the groups-within-groups bickered and jockeyed in the center of Lexington Square, Guy Grand brought off a tour de force. Hovering just overhead, in a radio-equipped helicopter, he directed the maneuver of a six-plane squadron of skywriters, much higher, in spelling out the mile-long smoke-letter words: F**K YOU ... and this was immediately followed by a veritable host of outlandish epithets, formulated as insults on the level of group Gestalt: Protestants are assholes ... Jews are full of crap ... Catholics are shitty ... and so on, ad nauseum actually.

It set the crowd below hopping mad. Grand Guy Grand dropped to about a hundred feet, where he canted the plane towards them and opened the door to peer out and observe. The crowd, associating the low-flying helicopter with the outrageous skywriting going on above, started shouting obscenities and shaking their fists.

“You rotten Mick!”

“You dirty Yid!”

“You black bastard!”

That was how the fighting began.

During the Lexington Square Riots, Grand set his plane down to twenty-five feet, where he cruised around, leaning out the door, expressionless, shouting in loud, slow intonation:

“WHAT’S ... UP? WHAT’S ... UP?”

** ***

By four o’clock the square was in shambles and all Boston on the brink of eruption. The National Guard had to be brought into the city and martial law obtained. It was thirty-six hours before order was fully restored.

The press made capital of the affair. Investigations were demanded. Guy Grand had paid off some big men in order to carry forward the project, but this was more than they had bargained for. Back in New York it cost him two million to keep clear.

V

“Yes, I see,” said Guy, clearing his throat, looking with concern at the piece of sweet biscuit in his hand, “... certainly. Why don’t you ... well, you know, find out how much they need, make out a check, and....”

Aunt Esther covertly twittered again, her eyes bright above the very white hand that hid her mouth, and Agnes turned her own face sharply away in mock exasperation with the boy.

“Not give them the money, Guy!” Agnes exclaimed. “They wouldn’t hear of it, of course—the young man, Sol, especially. Surely you know how proud those people are ... a defensive-mechanism, I suppose; but there you are, even so! No—what I had in mind was to tell them of a stock to buy, you see.”

“Right,” said Guy crisply, “then they would take one of the trips later, that the idea? But, hold on—if they spend all their money on the one trip, how can they buy into the stock in question?”

“Guy!” said his aunt in a voice of ice and pain.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” said Grand with perfect candor.

Aunt Esther took refuge behind her kerchief, into her ceaseless giggling.

“I mean make it go up and down!” cried Agnes crossly. “Or rather down first, then up.”

She regarded him narrowly for a moment, her thinness stretching upwards like an angry swan, suspecting perhaps that he was being deliberately obtuse.

“A perfect babe in the woods!” she said. “How you manage to hold your own at conference table I’m sure I couldn’t imagine!”

“Sorry,” said Grand, unsmiling, following through with the youthful gesture of slightly ducking his head for a sip of tea.

Of course it was all largely an act between them.

“Name one good stock in which you hold ten thousand shares,” said Agnes sharply.

“One good stock ...” repeated Guy Grand, his great brow clouding.

“... that begins with an ‘A’,” said Aunt Esther.

“That begins with an ‘A’?” said Grand, almost incredulous, yet as willing as a good-natured child at play.

“Esther!” cried Agnes.

“Well, do you mean exactly ten thousand, or at least ten thousand?” asked Guy.

“At least ten thousand,” said Agnes. “And it needn’t,” she added, with a straight look to her sister, “begin with an ‘A’!”

“Hmm. Well, how about ‘Abercrombie and Adams’?” said Grand tentatively, “there’s a fairly sound—”

“Good,” said Aunt Agnes. “Now then, what if you sold all your shares of that? What would happen to the price of it?”

“Take a nasty drop,” said Grand, with a scowl at the thought of it. “Might cause a run.”

“There you are then!” cried Agnes. “And Clemence’s young man buys—when the price is down, he buys, you see—then the next day, you buy back what you sold! I should think it would go up again when you buy back what you sold, wouldn’t it?”

“Might and might not,” said Grand, somewhat coldly.

“Well,” said Agnes, with a terrible hauteur, “you can just keep buying until it does!” Then she continued, in softer tones, to show her ultimate reasonableness: “Surely you can, Guy. And then, you see, when it’s up again, Clemence and her young man will sell.”

“Yes,” said Grand with a certain quiet dignity, “but you know, it might not look good, that sort of thing, with the Federal Securities Commission.”

Agnes’s lips were so closely compressed now that they resembled a turtle’s mouth.

“Might not look,” she repeated, making it hollow, her eyes widening as though she had lifted a desert rock and seen what was beneath it. “Well,” she said with unnerving softness, taking a sip of tea to brace herself and even turning to draw on her sister with a look of dark significance, “... if all you’re concerned with is appearance—then perhaps you aren’t the person I thought you were, after all.” And she poured herself another cup.

Grand was stricken with a mild fit of coughing. “Yes,” he was able to say at last, “... yes, I see your point, of course. Does bear some thinking through though, I must say.”

His aunt, momentarily aghast, had just started to speak again, when the maid stepped inside the door to announce the arrival of Miss Ginger Horton—an extremely fat lady, who entered the room then, wearing an immense trapeze sunsuit and carrying her Pekinese.

“Guy!” she cried, extending her hand, as he, rising, came forward. “How too good to see you!

“Say hello to Guy, my Bitsy!” she shrieked gaily to the dog, pointing him at Guy and the others. “Say hello to everybody! There’s Agnes and Esther, see them, Bitsy?”

The dog yapped crossly instead, and ran at the nose.

“Is Bitsy-witsy sicky?” cooed Miss Horton, pouting now as she allowed Guy to slowly escort her towards a chair near the others, he maneuvering her across the room like a gigantic river scow. “Hmm? Is my Bitsy sicky-wicky?”

“Nothing too serious, I hope,” said Grand with a solicitous frown.

“Just nerves I expect,” said Miss Horton, haughty now, and fairly snapping. “The weather is just so ... really abominable, and then all the nasty little people about.... Now here’s your Agnes and Esther, Bitsy.”

“How very nice to see you, my dear,” said the two elderly women, each laying thin fingers on her enormous hand. “What an adorable little sunsuit! It was kind of you to bring your Bitsy—wasn’t it, Guy?”

“It was extremely kind,” said Guy, beaming as he retreated to his own great chair near the window.

** ***

It was, as a matter of fact, Guy Grand who, working through his attorneys, had bought controlling interest in the three largest kennel clubs on the eastern seaboard last season; and in this way he had gained virtual dominance over, and responsibility for, the Dog Show that year at Madison Square Garden. His number-one gérant, or front man, for this operation was a Señor Hernandez Gonzales, a huge Mexican, who had long been known in dog-fancier circles as a breeder of blue-ribbon Chihuahuas. With Grand’s backing however, and over a quick six months, Gonzales became the celebrated owner of one of the finest kennels in the world, known now not simply for Chihuahuas, but for Pekinese, Pomeranians and many rare and strange breeds of the Orient.

It was evident that this season’s show at the Garden was to be a gala one—a wealth of new honors had been posted, the prize-money packets substantially fattened, and competition was keener than ever. Bright young men and wealthy dowagers from all over were bringing forward their best and favorite pedigrees. Gonzales himself had promised a prize specimen of a fine old breed. A national picture magazine devoted its cover to the affair and a lengthy editorial in praise of this great American benignity, this love of animals—“... in bright and telling contrast,” the editorial said, “to certain naïve barbarities, e.g., the Spanish bullfight.”

Thus, when the day arrived, all was as it should be. The Garden was festively decked, the spectators in holiday reverence, the lights burning, the big cameras booming, and the participants dressed as for a Papal audience—though slightly ambivalent, between not wishing to get mussed or hairy, and yet wanting to pamper and coo over their animals.

Except for the notable absence of Señor Gonzales, things went smoothly, until the final competition began, that between “Best of Breed” for the coveted “Best in Show.” And at this point, Gonzales did appear; he joined the throng of owners and beasts who mingled in the center of the Garden, where it was soon apparent his boast had not been idle—at the end of the big man’s leash was an extraordinary dog; he was jet-black and almost the size of a full-grown Dane, with the most striking coat and carriage yet seen at the Garden show that season. The head was dressed somewhat in the manner of a circus-cut poodle, though much exaggerated, so that half the face of the animal was truly obscured.

Gonzales joined the crowd with a jaunty smile and flourish not inappropriate to one of his eminence. He hadn’t been there a moment though before he and the dog were spotted by Mrs. Winthrop-Garde and her angry little spitz.

She came forward, herself not too unlike her charge, waddling aggressively, and she was immediately followed by several other women of similar stamp, along with Pekineses, Pomeranians, and ill-tempered miniature chows.

Gonzales bowed with winning old-world grace and caressed the ladies’ hands.

“What a perfect love he is!” shrieked Mrs. Winthrop-Garde of the animal on Gonzales’s leash, and turning to her own, “Isn’t he, my darling? Hmm? Hmm? Isn’t he, my precious sweet? And whatever is his name?” she cried to Gonzales when her own animal failed to respond, but yapped crossly instead.

“He is called ... Claw,” said Gonzales with a certain soft drama which may have escaped Mrs. Winthrop-Garde, for she rushed on, heedless as ever.

“Claude! It’s too delicious—the perfect darling! Say hello to Claude, Angelica! Say hello to Claude, my fur-flower!”

And as she pulled the angry little spitz forward, while it snapped and snorted and ran at the nose, an extraordinary thing happened—for what this Grand and Gonzales had somehow contrived, and for reasons never fathomed by the press, was to introduce in disguise to the Garden show that season not a dog at all, but some kind of terrible black panther or dyed jaguar—hungry he was too, and cross as a pickle—so that before the day was out, he had not only brought chaos into the formal proceedings, but had actually destroyed about half the “Best of Breed.”

During the first hour or so, Gonzales, because of his respected position in that circle, was above reproach, and all of the incidents were considered as being accidental, though, of course, extremely unfortunate.

“Too much spirit,” he kept explaining, frowning and shaking his head; and, as he and the beast stalked slowly about in the midst of the group, he would chide the monster-cat:

“Overtired from the trip, I suppose. Isn’t that it, boy? Hmm? Hmm?”

So now occasionally above the yapping and whining, the crowd would hear a strange swish! and swat! as Gonzales and the fantastic beast moved on, flushing them one by one.

Finally one woman, new to the circle, who did not know how important Gonzales was, came back with an automatic pistol and tried to shoot the big cat. But she was so beside herself with righteous fury that she missed and was swiftly arrested.

Gonzales, though, apparently no fool himself, was quick to take this as a cue that his work was done, and he gradually retired, so that “Best in Show” was settled at last, between those not already eliminated.

Grand later penned a series of scathing articles about the affair: “Scandal of the Dog Show!” “Can This Happen Here?” “Is It Someone’s Idea of a Joke?” etc., etc.

The bereft owners were wealthy and influential people, more than eager to go along with the demand for an inquiry. As quickly as witnesses were uncovered, however, they were bought off by Grand or his representatives, so that nothing really ever came of it in the end—though, granted, it did cost him a good bit to keep his own name clear.

VI

“And how was your trip, Guy?” asked Ginger Horton, sniffing a bit, just to be on the safe side it seemed.

Guy shrugged.

“Oh, same old six-and-seven, Ginger,” he said.

“I beg your pardon,” interjected his Aunt Agnes smartly.

Esther beamed, truly in league at last with her long-dead favorite sister’s only son.

“It means not too good, Agnes,” she said emphatically. “It’s an expression used in dice-playing: You ‘come out’—isn’t that right, Guy?—on ‘six,’ your point, then you throw, in this case, a ‘seven,’ which means: no good, you lose.” She looked to her Guy. “That’s it, isn’t it, dear?”

“Oh, it’s a gambling expression,” said Agnes Edwards with a certain amused complacency, though she must have raised her cup rather too hurriedly, for Esther was content merely to beam at Guy.

“Then your trip wasn’t ... too good, is that it?” asked Ginger Horton seriously, setting her own cup down squarely, pressing the napkin briefly to her lips.

Esther started to answer, but in the end looked to Guy instead.

“Oh, it’s just a manner of speaking,” said Guy Grand easily. “What really gives the expression bite, of course, is that six is generally an easy point to make, you see, and, well ... but then the fact is really, that the ... uh, the national economy, so to speak, isn’t in the best of shape just now. Not a buyer’s market at all really. A bit bearish as a matter of fact.” He gave a chuckle, looking at the Pekinese.

Ginger Horton seized the opportunity to bring the dog into it.

“Well, it’s all over our head, isn’t it, Bitsy? Hmm? Isn’t it over your Bitsy-witsy head? Hmmm?”

“Bearish ...” Esther began to explain.

“I think we all know what that means, Esther,” said Agnes shortly, raising one hand to her throat, her old eyes glittering no less than the great diamonds she clutched there.

** ***

Evidently Grand liked playing the donkey-man. In any case, he had bought himself a large motion-picture house in Philadelphia. The house had been losing money badly for six months, so it was natural that the manager and his staff, who knew nothing of Grand’s background, should be apprehensive over the probable shake-up.

The manager was a shrewd and capable man of many years’ experience in cinema management, a man whose position represented for him the fruit of a life’s work. He decided that his best move, under the circumstances, would be to go to Grand and cheerfully recommend salary cuts for all.

During their first conference, however, it was Grand, in his right as new owner, who held the initiative throughout.

By way of preliminary, and while the manager sat alertly on the edge of a big leather chair, Grand paced the floor of the comfortable office, his hands clasped at his back, and a slight frown on his face. Finally he stopped in the center of the room and addressed the manager:

“The Chinese have an expression, Mr. ... Mister Manager. I believe it occurs in the book of the I Ching: “Put your house in order,” they say, “that is the first step.””

This brought a flush to the manager’s face and caused him to shift in his chair.

“My dad,” said Grand then, and with severe reverence, “pushed out here in ... 1920. There were few frontiers open for him at that time. There are fewer still ... open-for-us-today!”

He faced the manager and would have let him speak; in fact, by looking straight into his face, he invited him to do so, but the man could only nod in sage agreement.

“If there is one unexplored territory,” Grand continued, waxing expansive now, “one virgin wood alive today in this man’s land of ours—it is cinema management! My dad—“Dad Grand”—was a championship golfer. That may be why ... now this is only a guess ... but that may be why he always favored the maxim: ‘If you want them to play your course—don’t put rocks on the green!’”

Grand paused for a minute, staring down at the manager’s sparkling shoes as he allowed his great brow to furrow and his lips to purse, frantically pensive. Then he shot a question:

“Do you know the story of the Majestic Theatre in Kansas City?”

The manager, a man with thirty years’ experience in the field, who knew the story of every theatre in the country, did not know this one.

“In August, 1939, the management of the K.C. Majestic changed hands, and policy. Weston seats were installed—four inches wider than standard—and ‘a.p.’s,’ admission prices, were cut in half ... and two people were to occupy each seat. The new manager, Jason Frank, who died of a brain hemorrhage later the same year, had advanced Wyler Publicity nine hundred dollars for the catch-phrase, ‘Half the Price, and a Chance for Vice,’ which received a wide private circulation.”

Grand broke off his narrative to give the manager a searching look before continuing:

“... but it didn’t work, sir! It did not work ... and I’ll tell you why: it was a crackpot scheme. A crackpot scheme, and rocks on the green! It cost Frank his licence, his health, and in this case perhaps his very life.”

Grand paused for effect and crossed to the desk where he took up a sheaf of onionskin papers and threshed them about before the manager. Each sheet was black with figures.

“According to my figures,” he said tersely, “this house will fold in nine months’ time unless there is, at minimum, an eight percent climb in ‘p.a.’s’—paid admissions.” Here he frowned darkly, let it pass, forced a smile, and then flapped his arms a time or two, as he resumed speaking, in a much lighter tone now:

“Of course there are a number of ... of possibilities for us here ... I have certain plans ... oh granted they’re tentative, under wrap, irons in the fire, if you like—but I can tell you this: I am retaining you and your staff. We are not ploughing the green under. Do you follow? Right. Now I have arranged for this increase in your salaries: ten percent. I won’t say it is a substantial increase; I say simply: ten percent ... which means, of course, that all ... all these figures”—he waved the sheaf of papers in a gesture of hopelessness and then dropped them into the wastebasket—“will have to be revised! More time lost before we know where we stand! Yet that can’t be helped. It is a move—and I say it is a move ... in the right direction!”

He spoke to the manager for an hour, thinking aloud, getting the feel of things, keeping his hand in, and so on. Then he dismissed him for three months’ paid vacation.

Grand’s theatre was one of the city’s largest and had first-run rights on the most publicized films. In the manager’s absence, things proceeded normally for a while; until one night when the house was packed for the opening of the smart new musical, Main Street, U.S.A.

First there was an annoying half-hour delay while extra camp-stool seats were sold and set up in the aisles; then, when the house lights finally dimmed into blackness, and the audience settled back to enjoy the musical, Grand gave them something they weren’t expecting: a cheap foreign film.

The moment the film began, people started leaving. In the darkness, however, with seats two-abreast choking the aisles, most of them were forced back. So the film rolled on; and while the minutes gathered into quarter-hours, and each quarter-hour cut cripplingly deep into the evening, Grand, locked in the projection room high above, stumbled from wall to wall, choking with laughter.

After forty-five minutes, the film was taken off and it was announced over the public-address system, and at a volume strength never before used anywhere, that a mistake had been made, that this was not the new musical.

Shouts of “And how!” came from the crowd, and “I’ll say it’s not!” and “You’re telling me! God!”

Then after another delay for rewinding, the cheap foreign film was put on again, upside down.

By ten thirty the house was seething towards angry panic, and Grand gave the order to refund the money of everyone who wished to pass by the box office. At eleven o’clock there was a line outside the theatre two blocks long.

From his office above, Grand kept delaying the cashier’s work by phoning every few minutes to ask: “How’s it going?” or “What’s up?”

The next day there was a notice on the central bulletin board:

“Rocks on the green! All hands alert!”

It also announced another fat pay-hike.

Into certain films such as Mrs. Miniver, Grand made eccentric inserts.

In one scene in Mrs. Miniver, Walter Pidgeon was sitting at evening in his fire-lit study and writing in his journal. He had just that afternoon made the acquaintance of Mrs. Miniver and was no doubt thinking about her now as he paused reflectively and looked towards the open fire. In the original version of this film, he took a small penknife from the desk drawer and meditatively sharpened the pencil he had been writing with. During this scene the camera remained on his face, which was filled with quiet reflection and modest hopefulness, so that the intended emphasis of the scene was quite clear: his genteel and wistfully ambitious thoughts about Mrs. Miniver.

The insert Grand made into this film, was, like those he made into others, professionally done, and as such, was technically indiscernable. It was introduced just at the moment where Pidgeon opened the knife, and it was a three-second close shot of the fire-glint blade.

This simple insert misplaced the emphasis of the scene; the fire-glint blade seemed to portend dire evil, and occurring as it did early in the story, simply “spoiled” the film.

Grand would hang around the lobby after the show to overhear the remarks of those leaving, and often he would join in himself:

“What was that part about the knife?” he would demand querulously, stalking up and down the lobby, striking his fist into his open hand, “... he had that knife ... I thought he was going to try and kill her! Christ, I don’t get it!”

In some cases, Grand’s theatre had to have two copies of the film on hand, because his alterations were so flagrant that he did not deem it wise to project the altered copy twice in succession. This was the case with a popular film called The Best Years of Our Lives. This film was mainly concerned, in its attempt at an odd kind of realism, with a young veteran of war, who was an amputee and had metal hooks instead of hands. It was a story told quite seriously and one which depended for much of its drama upon a straight-faced identification with the amputee’s situation and attitude. Grand’s insert occurred in the middle of the film’s big scene. This original scene was a seven-second pan of the two principal characters, the amputee and his pretty home-town fiancée while they were sitting on the family porch swing one summer evening. The hero was courting her, in his quiet way—and this consisted of a brave smile, more or less in apology, it would seem, for having the metal hooks instead of hands—while the young girl’s eyes shone with tolerance and understanding ... a scene which was interrupted by Grand’s insert: a cut to below the girl’s waist where the hooks were seen to hover for an instant and then disappear, grappling urgently beneath her skirt. The duration of this cut was less than one-half second, but was unmistakably seen by anyone not on the brink of sleep.

It brought some of the audience bolt upright. Others the scene affected in a sort of double-take way, reacting to it as they did only minutes later. The rest, that is to say about one-third of the audience, failed to notice it at all; and the film rolled on. No one could believe his eyes; those who were positive they had seen something funny in the realism there, sat through the film again to make certain—though, of course, the altered version was never run twice in succession—but all who had seen were so obsessed by what they had seen, or what they imagined they had seen, that they could no longer follow the story line, though it was, from that point on, quite as it was intended, without incongruity or surprise.

Grand had a good deal of trouble about his alterations of certain films and was eventually sued by several of the big studios. You can bet it cost him a pretty to keep clear in the end.

VII

“My Lord Russell books came today,” said Ginger Horton, suddenly dropping her voice to a stage whisper, because the dog in her lap seemed to have gone asleep.

“Pardon,” said Grand, almost shouting.

Mrs. Horton, dramatically wide-eyed now, raised a finger to her lips.

“I think Bitsy’s asleep,” she cooed, then stole a glance at the dog. “Isn’t it too sweet!” she said, lifting her face to the others, beaming angelically.

“Oh, it is too sweet!” agreed Agnes and Esther, craning forward to see, like ancient things stretching across the sand. “Guy,” hissed Agnes, “do come and see!”

“Best not,” said Guy sagely, “might wake it.”

“Guy’s right,” said Ginger Horton, compressing her lips tersely and cautioning the two ladies back. “Oh, how cross my Bitsy’d be. You are sweet, Guy,” she added, with a piercing smile for him—but before he could acknowledge it with one of his own, she let a look of great care return to her face.

“I was saying that my Lord Russell books came today.”

“Lord Russell?” Guy inquired genially.

“Laird K. Russell,” murmured Esther in pure wonder as some dear forgotten name loomed up to marvel her softly from the far far away.

“Bertrand Russell!” exclaimed Agnes sharply, “the philosopher! Good heavens, Esther!”

“Not Bertrand Russell,” cried Ginger Horton, “Lord Russell of Liverpool. The atrocity books!”

“Good Heavens,” said Agnes.

“Well, do you know what we did?” Ginger Horton demanded. “Bitsy and I sat right down and pretended that this ... this ... Thorndike had been captured and brought to justice and all those atrocities had been done to him! To him and to a lot of other nasty little people we could think of!”

“Gracious,” exclaimed Agnes.

“Not Bill Thorndike surely?” said Grand, coming forward on his chair with a show of concern.

“Oh, it’s just absolutely maddening!” said Ginger Horton. “I don’t even want to ... to talk about it. Not in front of Bitsy, anyway.”

“The dog?” said Grand. “It’s asleep, isn’t it?”

“Bitsy knows, of course,” said Miss Horton darkly, ignoring this, “and only too well!”

“Ginger,” said Agnes, “can you really be so sure of that?”

“Oh, in simply a thousand-thousand ways,” said Ginger Horton.

“Do you remember that young Mr. Laird K. Russell?” asked Esther of Agnes in the pause that followed. “He came to our Westport summer ball for little Nancy.”

“Great Heavens, Esther, that was over sixty years ago! Surely you don’t mean it!”

Esther nodded, her eyes dim with distant marvel, a pale smile on her lips.

“Esther, really!”

Ginger Horton sniffed, at no pains to hide her annoyance with this change of focus, while Agnes tried to recover the thread.

“Do have more tea, Ginger—and please tell us wherever did you get that darling little sunsuit? How perfectly clever it is!”

“You are sweet, Agnes,” said Ginger, brightening, yet seeming to imply a moment of reproach for Esther and Guy before turning her attention to the great pink tent of a sunsuit she was wearing.

“Yes, I think it’s fun, don’t you? Of course Charles did it for me.”

“Simply too adorable!” said Agnes. “Isn’t it, Guy?”

“It’s extremely attractive,” said Guy in most richly masculine and persuasive tones, and the ladies beamed all around.

** ***

One of Guy Grand’s sayings at conference was this:

“Show me the man who’s above picking up bits and pieces—and I’ll show you: a fool!”

Just so, Grand himself kept his finger in more than one peripheral pie. In 1950 he bought out Vanity Cosmetics, a large and thriving Fifth Avenue concern. He surprised staffers at Vanity by bringing in his own research chemists, from allied fields. But these staff executives, all old-timers themselves, were only waiting for reassurance, and it wasn’t long in coming when Grand spoke of fresh blood, new horizons, and thinking big.

“You’ve got to look ahead in this man’s game,” he emphasized at first conference, “or by jumbo you’re up crap creek without a paddle!”

Granted he spoke harshly, but in his tone was tough jaunty conviction and brutal know-how.

“He’s all right,” said one Vanity staffer after the session. “He speaks his mind, and devil take the hindmost!”

“Joe, he’s my kinda guy,” another was quick to agree. “... I mean what the hell, we’re all out for money—am I right, Joe?”

These regulars though, were more or less cut off from lab contact now, as Grand told them he wanted to “go it alone for a bit.”

“Just want to see how the land lies,” he said.

He worked tirelessly with his new chemists, himself clad in a great white smock, bustling about the lab, seeing to this test and that result.

“Back in harness!” he liked to say at conference (for it was his habit to go there wearing his smock), and it made the others feel a bit inadequate—spic and span as they were in their smart tweeds and clergy gray—while the new chief sat stained and pungent from the lab.

“You civies have a soft touch here,” Grand would tweak them—though of course they were only too eager now to go to the lab themselves.

“You know I wouldn’t mind a crack at the lab,” one of the senior exec’s would say with serious mien if he could get Grand aside.