“Jack, you give us a wonderful time. I wish I could seem to do something in return. Is there something I can do? I don’t see really why I was invited out here.”
Without ceasing to caress the wrist of the dark and green-eyed beauty who was his date for the night, Pilbeam said, “You were invited to keep one Algy Timberlane company – not that he deserves any such good fortune. And you have sat in on several of his lectures. Isn’t that enough? Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to over-consume.”
“I am enjoying myself. I’d just like to know if there is anything I can do.”
Pilbeam winked at his green-eyed friend. “You’d better ask Algy that, honey baby.”
“I’m terribly persistent, Jack. I do want an answer.”
“Go and ask Bill Dyson – it’s really his pigeon. I’m just the DOUCH playboy – Warm Douche, they call me. And I may have to be off on my travels again, come Wednesday.”
“Oh, cherry pie, but you said -” the green-eyed girl protested. Pilbeam laid a cautionary finger on her lustrous lips.
“Shhh, my sweetie – your Uncle Sam must come before your Uncle Jack. But tonight, believe me, Uncle Jack comes first – metaphorically speaking, you understand.”
The lights dimmed, there was a drum roll followed by an amplified hiccup. As silence fell, Dusty Dykes floated in on an enormous dollar note and climbed down on to the floor. He was an almost menacingly ordinary little man, wearing a creased lounge suit. He spoke in a flat, husky voice.
“You’ll see I’ve abandoned my old gimmick of not having a gimmick. It’s not the first time this country’s economy has taken me for a ride. Good evening, ladies and gentiles, and I really mean that – it may be your last. In New York, where I come from – and you know state tax is so high there I needed a parachute to get away – they are very fond of World End parties. You rub two moralities together: the result’s a bust. You rub two busts together: the result is always a titter. The night Senator Mulgravy went, it was a twitter.” At this, there was a round of applause. “Oh, some of you have heard of senators? Friends told me when I arrived –
friends are the people who stand you one drink and one afternoon – they told me Washington D.C. was politically uneducated. Well, they didn’t put it like that, they just said nobody went to photograph the African bronzes in the White House any more. I said, remember, it isn’t the men of the state that counts, it’s the state of the men. At least they’re no poorer than a shareholder in the contraceptive industry.”
“I can’t hear what he’s saying – or else I can’t understand it,” Martha whispered.
“It doesn’t sound particularly funny to me either,” Timberlane whispered.
With his arm round his girl friend’s shoulder, Pilbeam said, “It’s not meant to be funny. It’s meant to be slouch – as they call it.” Nevertheless, he was grinning broadly, as were many other customers. Noticing this, Dusty Dykes, shook a cautionary finger. It was his only gesture. “Smiling won’t help it,” he said. “I know you’re all sitting there naked under your clothes, but you can’t embarrass me – I go to church and hear the sermon every Sunday. We are a wicked and promiscuous nation, and it gives me as much pleasure as the parson to say so. I’ve no objection to morality, except that it’s obsolete.
“Life gets worse every day. In the High Court in California, they’ve stopped sentencing their criminals to death – they sentence them to life instead. Like the man said, there’s no innocence any more, just undetected crime. In the State of Illinois alone, there were enough sex murders last month to make you all realize how vicarious your position is.
“The future outlook for the race is black, and that’s not just a pigment of my imagination. There were two sex criminals talking over business in Chicago the other day. Butch said, ‘Say, Sammy, which do you like best, murdering a woman or thinking about murdering a woman?’ ‘Shucks, I don’t know, Butch, which do you prefer?’ ‘Thinking about murdering a woman, every time!’ ‘Why’s that, then? ‘That way you get a more romantic type of woman.’ “