10-Story Detective, September 1941 — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

7 S I SAY, I was surprised to see Chris Jaeger in my room. We hadn’t been talking for a couple of weeks, ever since he made a play for Ethel. Ethel is Mr. Crimmons’ daugh- ter, and she helped out at the bank whenever the books had to be brought up to date for the examiner. How can I tell you about Ethel? She’s small, almost boyish, a straw- berry blonde with a heart-shaped face and eyes so blue it hurt me to look at them. Outside of that, Ethel is just an average girl, no smarter or dumber than the rest. But I love her. I guess I’ve loved her ever since the first time she smiled at me and my knees went weak. There are prettier girls in town than Ethel, and Chris Jaeger could have any one of them, And yet he picked on Ethel simply because he knew the way I felt about her. He turned on his considerable charm as you’d turn on a fire hose. It just poured out of him. It would have turned the head of a stronger girl than Ethel. She was no exception and in a short time she cut down my dates to one a week. I put my fists on my hips and said: “What do you want, Chris?” “Now, Ed,” he told me in a patron- izing voice, ‘that’s no way to greet a friend.” “Some friend! First you swipe my girl, and then you sit and smirk at me all day.” He let a hurt expression cross his face. He could put on a swell act, Chris could. “Why,” he said, sounding amazed, “I didn’t think you really cared for Ethel. I’m sorry, Ed. If you want me to I'll step out of the picture.” “Yeah, and break her heart.” Chris didn’t say anything. He just frowned and took out a deck of pills and lighted one. The smoke curled up around his face and he _ squinted through it at me. I guess I know Chris as well as anybody in town and I could see there was something on his mind. 10-STORY DETECTIVE— I didn’t tell him that. I just waited for him to talk. After a while he said: “You know, Ed, I’m thinking of leaving town. There isn’t much chance for a fellow here in Midvale. I’d like to go to Chi- cago, or maybe New. York.” Something twisted inside of me with a sharp pang. “You gonna take Ethel ?” He blew two rings of smoke and waited till they flattened out against the ceiling. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly, and then let his gaze drift to mine. “In a way that depends on you, Ed.” “What do you mean?” He leaned forward and his expres- sion changed, grew earnest. “Look, Ed, how much do you make?” “At the bank?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows. “You know that.” “Yes,”’ he pointed out. “Twenty-five dollars a week, the same as myself.” “What about it?” “It isn’t much, is it, Ed? You can’t get rich on it. That’s all you’ll be mak- ing in another ten years. Mr. Crim- mons doesn’t believe in raises. And there aren’t any pensions at the bank. When you get to be fifty or sixty years old, you'll find yourself without a job and no income.” i “There’s social security,” I said. “The government will take care of me.” Chris snorted. “You know what you'll get? A paltry couple of dollars a month, scarcely enough to keep a roof over your head.” He was trying to get at something, so I let him. “You’re right about that, Chris, but what can a guy do? The cards are stacked against him.” HRIS stubbed out his cigarette and heaved to his feet, moving around the room and swiveling his eyes so as to keep them on me. “That’s just it, Ed. You’ve got to do a little shuffling in this life. You’ve got to stack the cards yourself. You’ve got to give yourself a break.” “You’re trying to say something, Conn (Cc NOOK ©