Algren at Sea Read Free

morocco-bound sheaf of 399 pages of single-spaced figures. Adding them up to see if they came out right was interesting work. I had never done addition before. It was one more first time.
    â€œGet up off the floor,” she reproached me.
    â€œBut what does it mean, dear?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s your bill as of the fiscal year ending today at 1200 hours. Four researchers, five shysters, Morris Ernst and an alley-fink have been working night and day in your interest, compiling your account.”
    â€œWhy, I thought Doubledge Deadsinch & O’Lovingly took my case on contingency,” I protested.
    â€œWhere is your compassion?” Rapietta reproached me, “Are Doubledge Deadsinch and Pyrhana to be pauperized by a legal technicality? Is a layman to impoverish men of good family? Is that their reward for giving of themselves selflessly in your interest?”
    â€œWhen did Pyrhana join us?” I inquired.
    â€œWhen O’Lovingly retired,” she informed me, and turned her back to me. I felt awful.
    â€œI didn’t mean to hurt you, Rapietta,” I tried to explain, approaching her. But she kept her back to me. It was a swivel chair.
    â€œI’m putting it up to you,” was all she would say.
    She was putting it up to me.
    â€œNot to mention a C.P.A.,” she reminded me over her shoulder. I heard the catch in my counselor’s voice. When I put my hands on her shoulders they were quaking.
    â€œYou are a brave girl,” I told her; “you haven’t mentioned yourself.”

    Rapietta captured my hand and clasped it between her own. When she turned her eyes to mine they were shining.
    â€œI am yours on contingency,” the self-sacrificing girl confessed. And, taking me by the hand, led me into her inner office, opened a drawer, and from it withdrew a document which she handed me.
    It was a one-way passage on the SS Meyer Davis, departing from Pier 86, Tuesday, at 1600 hours.
    â€œWhat does it all mean?” I wanted to know.
    Rapietta’s face grew stem. “It means that our opponents have discovered that you marched in a demonstration protesting the bombing of Ethiopia in 1936, or somewhere along in there, and you have to get out of the country before you are subpoenaed. If this evidence comes to light they will be able to establish that if you had a mind you’d be dangerous! Our defense will go sky-high.”
    â€œBut I have never been at sea before,” I protested.
    â€œYou’ve been at sea for some time,” Rapietta told me.
    I wondered what she meant by that.
    â€œCan I afford an ocean voyage?” was my next poser.
    â€œCandidly, you can’t afford a trip to the drugstore for an airmail stamp,” she told me candidly.
    â€œI already made that trip.” I revealed that my memory, at any rate, was still functioning. “Now I’d like to go somewhere else. But I’d like to return someday.”
    â€œWe can’t chance that,” she informed me. “You’ll have to stay abroad until things blow over.”
    â€œHow will I know when they have blown?”
    â€œYou will receive a message par avion —that means ‘Welcome to Paris,’ dear boy.”
    And wasting no time in useless indignation, she drew a document from her desk she had already prepared, in order to avoid losing even more time in useless indignation.
    â€œI have completed arrangements for you with my trustworthy cousin, Trustworthy Ex-Naval-Eye Roger Blueblade of Blueblade, Suckingwise, Scalpel & Tourniquet, Trustworthy Publishers, whom I deeply admire, as he comes from the venal branch of our family.”
    â€œI admire Venal Roger Blueblade, Ex-Naval Eye, too, Rapietta!” I assured her with an eager cry.

    â€œYou preposterous nut” —Rapietta was suddenly put out with me—“you don’t even know the sneaky little usurer and you’re admiring him—for what?”
    â€œKeep your