Read Online All The Way by Charles Williams - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Charles Williams
Ads: Link
girl.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She tugged the slip down. “I’m irresistible to twenty-eight-year-old wolves. I’m female, breathing, and within reach.”
“Thanks a million,” I said. “From both of us.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out there and get busy. And start the tape over; you’ve missed part of it.”
“So you will give yourself that much?”
She waved a slender hand. “Out, Cyrano.”
Five
I shrugged, and went back to my study of Harris Chapman. She came out after a while and left to get the sandwiches. I looked after her. She could disturb a room by walking through it, and leave it empty by walking out of it. I forced my attention back to the tape. What was the matter with me, anyway?
When she returned, we didn’t even stop while we ate. She asked questions about the things we’d covered so far, and tried to catch me in errors. “Who is Robert Wingard?”
“Robin Wingard,” I said. “He’s manager of the radio station.”
“Good. And Bill McEwen? What does he do?”
“Bill McEwen is a girl.”
She shot me an approving glance. “Very good.”
“Her real name is Billy Jean, she’s twenty-seven years old, unmarried, and she’s half the editorial staff of the paper, and sells advertising.”
“Correct,” she said. “But don’t get too cocky. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface.” She finished half her sandwich, threw the rest of it in the kitchen garbage can, and started a fresh roll of tape on the recorder.
“I was born in Cleveland,” she began. “And went to school at Stanford. My mother died when I was in my early teens, and my father never remarried. He was a physician. A gynecologist, and a good one. In about thirty-five years of practice he must have made considerably over a million dollars, and when he died a few years ago he left an estate of less than twenty thousand. Bad investments. Some day, maybe, somebody will write a book about the investment habits of doctors— But never mind. It was his money. The point I’m trying to make is that it was probably his horrible example that first interested me in business and investment.
When we entered the war she enrolled in a business college for a quick course in shorthand and typing, and went to work in a defense plant. And she liked it, from the first. She was alert, interested, and highly competitive, and in less than a year she was the private secretary to one of the top brass of the firm. In the spring of 1944 she met and married Kenneth Forsyth. He was a flier sent home for reassignment as an instructor at an air base near San Antonio, Texas.
They were happy enough, but she couldn’t stand the boredom of having nothing to do but police a one-room apartment, so she went back to work, this time for the local office of one of the big nationwide brokerage outfits. She immediately fell in love with the stock market as if she’d invented it. Here was something you could get your teeth into; this was the whole world of business and industry, distilled. She studied it with the passionate intensity of another Baruch, trying to learn everything there was to learn about it. Forsyth remained in the service after the end of the war, but was transferred to another field near Dallas. Keeping house still bored her, so she went to work for the Dallas office of the same brokerage house.
Then in 1949 Forsyth was transferred to the air field at Thomaston, Louisiana, and she was out of a job. She found it unbearably dull. She didn’t like small towns and their clique-ridden social life, and for a woman with ambition and a restless mind it was stifling. Then she met Chapman. That changed everything.
He’d just opened his law office, and while he wasn’t very busy he did need somebody once in a while to type briefs and answer the phone. She offered to do it, partly out of boredom and partly because he interested her. And before long he interested her even more. Here was a man with drive, business ability, and daring,
“Yes, yes, I know.” She tugged the slip down. “I’m irresistible to twenty-eight-year-old wolves. I’m female, breathing, and within reach.”
“Thanks a million,” I said. “From both of us.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out there and get busy. And start the tape over; you’ve missed part of it.”
“So you will give yourself that much?”
She waved a slender hand. “Out, Cyrano.”
Five
I shrugged, and went back to my study of Harris Chapman. She came out after a while and left to get the sandwiches. I looked after her. She could disturb a room by walking through it, and leave it empty by walking out of it. I forced my attention back to the tape. What was the matter with me, anyway?
When she returned, we didn’t even stop while we ate. She asked questions about the things we’d covered so far, and tried to catch me in errors. “Who is Robert Wingard?”
“Robin Wingard,” I said. “He’s manager of the radio station.”
“Good. And Bill McEwen? What does he do?”
“Bill McEwen is a girl.”
She shot me an approving glance. “Very good.”
“Her real name is Billy Jean, she’s twenty-seven years old, unmarried, and she’s half the editorial staff of the paper, and sells advertising.”
“Correct,” she said. “But don’t get too cocky. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface.” She finished half her sandwich, threw the rest of it in the kitchen garbage can, and started a fresh roll of tape on the recorder.
“I was born in Cleveland,” she began. “And went to school at Stanford. My mother died when I was in my early teens, and my father never remarried. He was a physician. A gynecologist, and a good one. In about thirty-five years of practice he must have made considerably over a million dollars, and when he died a few years ago he left an estate of less than twenty thousand. Bad investments. Some day, maybe, somebody will write a book about the investment habits of doctors— But never mind. It was his money. The point I’m trying to make is that it was probably his horrible example that first interested me in business and investment.
When we entered the war she enrolled in a business college for a quick course in shorthand and typing, and went to work in a defense plant. And she liked it, from the first. She was alert, interested, and highly competitive, and in less than a year she was the private secretary to one of the top brass of the firm. In the spring of 1944 she met and married Kenneth Forsyth. He was a flier sent home for reassignment as an instructor at an air base near San Antonio, Texas.
They were happy enough, but she couldn’t stand the boredom of having nothing to do but police a one-room apartment, so she went back to work, this time for the local office of one of the big nationwide brokerage outfits. She immediately fell in love with the stock market as if she’d invented it. Here was something you could get your teeth into; this was the whole world of business and industry, distilled. She studied it with the passionate intensity of another Baruch, trying to learn everything there was to learn about it. Forsyth remained in the service after the end of the war, but was transferred to another field near Dallas. Keeping house still bored her, so she went to work for the Dallas office of the same brokerage house.
Then in 1949 Forsyth was transferred to the air field at Thomaston, Louisiana, and she was out of a job. She found it unbearably dull. She didn’t like small towns and their clique-ridden social life, and for a woman with ambition and a restless mind it was stifling. Then she met Chapman. That changed everything.
He’d just opened his law office, and while he wasn’t very busy he did need somebody once in a while to type briefs and answer the phone. She offered to do it, partly out of boredom and partly because he interested her. And before long he interested her even more. Here was a man with drive, business ability, and daring,
Similar Books
