Eyes in the Fishbowl Read Free Page B

comes.”
    “Sure you will,” I said. “If you don’t find some girl to spend it on first.”
    “Not a chance. I’ve reformed.” He grinned at me coaxingly. “I’ll shop, and we’ll make Phil and Dunc do the dirty work.”
    I weakened. I was tired and hungry, and Phil really was a good cook. So I handed over a couple of dollars and went in my room to rest and wait for dinner. I kicked off my shoes and flopped down on the bed. My room is way at the back of our floor. It’s little and dark, but I keep it sort of neat and peaceful looking, and no one ever goes in there but me. I’d been saving money for over a year to buy a Danish modern desk like one I saw at Alcott-Simpson’s, but I still needed about thirty dollars. It was an executive type desk, big and solid looking, and long enough to fill up all one end of my room. I’d spent a lot of time lying there picturing how great it would look, right at the end of my bed—big and smooth and shiny; and I couldn’t help thinking that it might already be there if I didn’t have to feed so many scrounging renters.
    But thinking of Alcott-Simpson’s reminded me of Rogers and the girl, and I went over that whole thing again. But no matter how I looked at it, it just didn’t make much sense. About the only explanation I could come up with was that the girl had unlocked the storeroom door earlier, or else someone did it for her. But even that didn’t explain why Rogers didn’t go on into the storeroom after her. Finally, I’d gone over it so much that I was beginning to think in circles, so I decided to think about something else. That was when I remembered about the papers that Madame Stregovitch had given me.
    It was a few pages from the magazine section of the Sunday Times, with an article about Alcott-Simpson’s. A long time ago I’d started a scrapbook about the store, and of course I’d told Madame about it. Actually it had been quite a while since I’d added anything to the book, but since Madame had gone to the trouble to save it for me, I decided to tape it in. So I got the book out of my closet and opened it to the first empty page.
    It was one of those five-and-dime store scrapbooks with the picture of a collie dog’s head stamped on the front. Inside, there were no pictures on the first page—only some big careful printing that said: ALCOTT-SIMPSON’S THE GREATEST STORE ON EARTH —by Dion James. It was pretty stupid and childish, but I’d started it when I was only eight. After the fancy title page there were dozens of pages of pictures—some with corny comments written under them in green ink. They were mostly newspaper pictures, like a spread the Times did when Alcott’s opened the remodeled mezzanine; plus some advertisements that I happened to think were particularly interesting. There was a magazine story that came out when the store had a big fiftieth anniversary and some nice slicks of display windows that Madame got for me from the art department. It was all put together very carefully and neatly and I could remember how much time I used to spend working on it or just looking over the pictures.
    Actually, a lot of kids make scrapbooks—particularly a certain type of kid, like I was, who gets a kick out of saving and organizing stuff. The only difference is that most kids make books about airplanes or sports heroes or that kind of thing; I just happened to make one about a store. It’s not as if Alcott-Simpson’s was just any big city department store. I’ve been around quite a bit in the last few years and I’ve seen a lot more than I had when I was eight years old; and there just wasn’t anything anywhere quite like it. It seems the original Alcott and Simpson were a couple of old millionaires who decided to build the world’s most beautiful and luxurious commercial palace. The ground floor was divided into a lot of fancy little shops connected by a walk called The Mall. Then in the center there was a kind of indoor garden with a