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Updated: April 30, 2025
Your kind take a lot of punishment before they see the light. But you're a good prospect a damned good prospect. You're a good deal like a young fellow I met last fall when I was working over in the shipyards in Oakland. He " "Shipyards?" interrupted Fred. "Not Hilmer's shipyards, by any chance?" Storch leaned forward, drawing his shaggy eyebrows together. "Why?" "I know Hilmer, that's all."
It was the same voice that had broken in upon another tense situation months before with: "What nice corn pudding this is, Mrs. Starratt...Would you mind telling me how you made it?" Had they been moving in a circle since that fatal evening, Fred had found himself wondering...or had he merely been dreaming? The scene which followed had been unforgetable the chauffeur and Hilmer lifting Mrs.
She had an impulse to rise and sweep haughtily out of the room. What right had this man to tell her what she could or could not do? The impudence of him! But she didn't want to appear absurd. She leaned back and looked at him through her half-closed eyelids as she said, with a slight drawl: "Would my presence in the office be a bid for your support, Mr. Hilmer?"
He felt himself grow suddenly cold as he stood and watched her recoil momentarily from his two-edged glance. "No!" he retorted. She continued to back away from him. He followed her retreat. "I don't think you quite get me, Helen," he heard himself say, with icy sharpness. "I wanted to see Hilmer myself! I had a business proposition to put up to him. I want co-operation not questionable charity!"
A silence fell upon the room. Fred could feel every eye turned his way. He rose with a curious fluttering movement of escape. "There's one man in this room who has earned the honor of getting Hilmer, if any man has," Storch said, finally, in an extraordinarily cool and biting voice. "Losing a wife isn't of any great moment ... but to be laughed at that's another matter." The silence continued.
A great compassion seemed suddenly to flood him for a moment he forgot his own plight. "I don't remember the number of the house ... she's with friends. You'll find the name in the telephone book... Hilmer Fourteenth Avenue. Ask for Mrs. Starratt." "Axel Hilmer ... the man who " "He's a shipbuilder. Do you know him?" She smiled wanly. "Yes ... I know lots of people."
Hilmer been plotting this together?" Storch's eyes widened in surprise. "You're getting keener every moment... Well, you've asked a fair question. I planted that maid in the house soon after I knew the story." "After the fever set me to prattling?" "Precisely." Fred Starratt stood motionless for a moment, but presently he began to laugh. Storch looked annoyed, then rather puzzled.
With signed notes and that agreement he could have been nasty... It's strange he didn't wait a day or two and then claim half of the Hilmer commissions... I wonder why he was in such a rush?" Fred shrugged. Helen's shrewdness annoyed him. That evening just as Helen and he were getting ready to leave, a messenger from the Broker's Exchange handed him a note.
"There may be two ... providing your wife comes back with him... Mrs. Hilmer sent for her." "Mrs. Hilmer!" Storch smiled his usual broad smile, exhibiting his green teeth. "She developed a whim to attend the launching... Naturally she wished her dearest friend with her." Fred Starratt sat down. He was trembling inwardly, but he knew instinctively that he must appear nonchalant and calm.
Hilmer, condemned to feed to the end upon the bitter fruits of hatred ... for his wife, drifting to a pallid fate made up of petty adjustments and compromises. Yes ... he found himself pitying Helen Starratt most of all. Because he had a feeling that she would go on to the end cloaking her primitive impulses in a curious covering of self-deception. She would never understand ... never!
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