Evening Star Newspaper, October 11, 1931, Page 80

Ti!_ SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 11, 1931. Five-Dollar Bill A Shorf Story in Which Money Not Only Talks, but Also Sings and Revives an Old Refrain for a Record Romance. BY THOMAS W. DUNCAN Hlustrated by George Clark. ONDAY morning, and no scram- bling into second-best clothing and clattering down hot side- walks toward the clevated. None of that for two rapturous weeks. “I'll be just lazy,” Carla told herself. A fragile cup of black coffec steamed on the table beside the bed. From a tin Carla poured a twisly stream of yellow cream. No sugar, though. When you were 26 and exactly the right weight you had to be careful. She nib- bled at thin slices of browned toast and rustled the big pages of the morning newspaper under her fingers. At the front page, laden with cable dispatches from half the capitals of the world, she glanced only casually. Carla knew no one in London or Vienna. But she did know plenty in Chi- cago. Nice boys they were, too; boys with good jobs who could take her to Vienna on a honey- moon. There was Jerry Wade. Soon he'd be junior pattner in a loop firm of lawyers, and probably at 50 he'd be a Senator. But none of them was Rod Carver. She read through twice the critic's review of Alice Darbell's new film. Rod once told her she looked like Darbell. Carla slipped from bed and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Some one had said that no woman looked desirabie at breakfast, but where she was con- cerned, Carla decided justly, that was untrue. Carla yawned, poking at smooth lips with the back of a hand, slipped into bed again, and to her paper. After a while she'd dress and go downtown for some shopping before meeting Jer:y Wade at lunch. Not much left to read in the paper now. Only these want ads and— OMETHING in the gray pages of agate type caught her gaze and dragged her attention down to the small print. She could hear her heart thumping rapidly as she read. WHAT'LL I DO?—I will pay $5 for the Lark recording (series 63,888) of the Gerald Comb orchestration of “What'll I Do?” Must be in good condition, without scratches. 1f you have this record, telephone Lake Park 2311. It had been their piece—hers and Rod's!— back—back—goodness, how many years? Eight? Yes—eight years ago this Fall, when she was 2 sophomore and he was a senior at the uni- versity. The newspaper whispered through her fingers and rattled to the floor. Carla's eyes were misty and unseeing as she lay staring at the apartment ceiling. “I can't think about it,” Carla murmured, standing up suddenly. “I can’t let myself. It —hurts . . .” =] won't look at it,” she whispered. “Won't read it again. . . . It couldn’t be anything like I've been thinking—just couldn't. And besides, if it wad Rod I wouldn't want to see him. He'd be changed, with all that money, and probably I've changed, too. And I'm just not going to read it again. Just not ” But she did. She sat in the wicker chair by the opened window and while a waim cur- rent of air from Sheffield avenue flowed into the room she read it again and still again. The ad was not in the personals column, and that was one reason Carla thought it might be Rod. In the want-to-buy column it appeared. Who but Rod would pay $5 for an eight-year- old record? Who? “Oh, lots of people.” she argued, rising and going toward the bath. “And anyway,” she added definitely, “I'm not going to phone.” She was a long time in the tub, lolling lux- uriously while the water lapped her shoulders. For 50 weeks in the year you took a quick morning splash, dipped into the water and then out so that you wouldn't be late to the adver- tising offices of the Peter Krust Agency, Inc. Then in August they gave you two weeks off with pay, and you read ads about a song that had been your favorite back in college. . . . Carla hummed the notes. The sad, sad notes. DANCE in the women's quadrangle on a A Fall night of blowing rain. A 30-piece orchestra had come out from Chicago to play. Carla was very young that night—oh, very, very young. And slim and gay. “What'll I Doo-0-0 . . .” sobbed the saxophones with the moan of wind soughing along the roof of a house that has died. “What’ll I Do?” Carla echoed, closing her eyes as she danced. “What . with love aching at my lips until they are npumb . . .” Rodney Carver's hair was the color of bronze, and he had a sort of high courage—the strange gallant1y of jazz music, with valor and cynicism and dolour all mixed together. “Carla,” he said, “that’s our piece. ‘Whenever 1 hear it I'll think of you, and whenever you hear it you must remember this dance. And nothing very terrible can ever happen to us now, for we will always have this night . . .” And then the dance was OVer. Carla wrapped her body in an orange dress- ing robe and stole into the living room. The portable phonograph sat on the library table. She sank to her knees and burrowed into the black stack of brittle records. At the very bottom she found it, a thin disc with music imprisoned in tiny grooves just as her memories were stamped in folds of her brain. “Probably it's out of print,” she mused, turn- ing the crank. “Mould broken.” But im- mediately the piece came to life again, and everything was almost as it had been eight years ago. Almost. What'll I do With just a photograph To tell my troubles to . . . That was Rod’'s pholograph over there on the dresser. The clean chin and firm mouth, and down in the right corner the scrawled words: “For Carla, with all my love, Rod.” After their quarrel—ihat terrible, senseless, jealous quarrel—-he left school. Just quit, two months before graduation. A crazy, impulsive gesture—but that was Rod. And word drifted back that he was in the oil fields of Oklahoma. From time to time the Alumni Bulletin of the college printed paragraphs about him—how he had run up a fortune from a shoestring. And later, strange countries were connected with his name—Mesopotamia, the south c¢f Russia, Mexico. Places where men thirsted or starved or died of fever, drilling through sticky clay to secret pools of the earth. . What'll I do When I'm alone with only Dreams of you What'll I do? . Carla lifted the needle and shut off the motor. “I won't play it any more. No sense to it. 11l —TI'll—break it. . She lifted the record in her two hands. She would marry Jerry Wade, the lawyer— she was dully convinced of it. And it wouldn’t do to have the ghost of a dead song living in their record cabinet. *“I will break it!” Tt there wouldn't be any sense in that, Her host stared at the naked record in his hands: “But—this is a composition of another title!”—*“Perhaps you've got the wrong side. Turn it over.” either. Her thoughts returned to the ad in the morning paper. “I could sell it. . . . Pive dollars.” With that, she might buy a string of near-jade beads to wear this noon when she met Jerry Wade. That, too, would be a gesture. Not Rod's kind of gesture, but her kind. . . . Carla lifted the receiver off its hook. HE voice at the other end of the wire said, “Are you there?” It sounded like the May- fair butler in talking pictures of London society. He called Carla “Miss,” and his diction was cold and correct, like conversation in a Vic- torian novel. “A record? To be sure, a record! I am very anxious to secure it. I would pay a pound —ah—$5 for the record.” And if she would call at 11. . . . He gave her a Sheridan road address. Carla sheathed her slender legs in silk the color of tanned flesh, urged narrow feet into “Carla,” he said, “that’s our piece. Whenever I hear it I shall think of you, and whenever you hear it you must remember this dance. And nothing very terrible can happen to us now, for we will always have this night.” white pumps, slipped into an afternoon gown. At the mirror, she pulled on & saucy hat. The record was wrapped in big squares of newspaper, tying the light package neat'y with grocer's cord. { The apartment building was gray stone rising against the hot blue sky with the cold beauty of a mathematical symbol. The elevator slid to rest on seven; and a man with graying iron hair, precisely brushed above his ears, seated her in a huge chair carved some time early in the Italian Renaissance. “My man told me you would call.” Carla nocdded, holding out the record. ‘Yes. I'm sure it's what you want—the one you ad- vertised for.” She watched him unwrap the black disk into which was etched the music that had belonged to Rod and to her. He did not cut the string. He untied it. Carefully, with dry efficiency, he worked. He was the kind who would not _waste even a burnt match stick. And, strangest of all, why did he desire a record on which was stamped a relic of Yankee jazz? Her host stared at the naked reccrd in his hands. “But . . this is a composition of another title.” “Perhaps you've got the wrong side. it cver.” “Ah, to be sure. Stupid of me. Beg pardon.” He bowed—rather too humbly, she thought— and opened the top of a great walnut phono- graph. And when plaintive horns sobbed grandly from the sound-box, he listened with an air of politeness, but not of comprehension: Turn What'll I do When you are far away And I am blue, What'll I do? . And Rod was far away, seeking oil and ad- venture jn wind-bitten or sun-scorched lands, and she was in Chicago, getting ready to take luncheon with Jerry Wade, who would be Senator . . . What'll I do When I am wondering who Is kissing you, What'll I do? . The machine had gh automatic device which snipped off the mechanism as the music ceased. The Englishman nodded his head, and reached into the pocket of gray morning trousers. “That is the version which I wish,” he said. He handed her a bill. “Five dollars. Is that not ccrrect?” “And—do you have a card. Perhaps you have other records which I might care to buy.” On the back of an envelope Carla scribbled her address and telephone number. “Any record you want.” she told him. “Jus§ call. I'll see if I have it.” “Very good, Miss,” he said, closing the door. *“And thank you!” ARLA was nine minutes late for luncheon. When she arrived at the restaurant, Jerry was already at a table near the fountain. He was nct angry with her. He was just pained. Not a word in rebuke did he utter. He really smiled. But just the same she knew that her tardiness pained him. But over dessert and coffee he again asked her to marry him. In September. They would@ heneymoon in Europe. “Befere I answer, Jerry, will you figure some= thing out for me?” “Why—yes.” “Well—if an Englishman had been a butler all his life, and suddenly his master wanted him to pretend he was a millionaire gentleman, how long could he go without being detected?” Jerry scowled over the problem. “I should say . . . um-m-m . . . not very long.” “Do you think he'd be likely to say to & young lady, ‘Very gocd, Miss?” “Why, yes, I suppose he would. has all that got to do—"" “A lot,” she murmured, reaching across the table and closing tender fingers over his hand. “I'm sorry, Jerry—very, very sorry, but—" She looked up and met his gize. “I'm dreadfully afraid I can never marry you.” It had been Rod's apartment, she could swear it had. Just like him to bring a butler from London. But suppose . . suppose she had bcen mistaken? Maybe Englishmen who made fortunes in trade called young ladies “Miss” She hadn't thought of that. Perhaps, after all, no Rod had been waiting behind & curtained doorway, watching her give the reeor@ to his butler, and planning to surprise her. But it had to be Rzd—just had to be. He might have come in a taxi. He would be waitirg outside her door in the upper hall Hurrying, she climbed the stairs. But the stuffy hall was empty. “Goodby, Rod,” she whispered softly. And then, from beyond the closed door of her apartment, Carla heard music. It was sad music—sad and gallant at the same time—the way jazz is gallant and sad. With fingers that trembled, Carla slipped her key into the lock and twisted it. It seemed achingly strange to be kissing a man whom you hadn't seen in eight years— kissitg him bofore ever uttering a word. But that was Rod. “But how,” breathed Carla at last, “how did you get in?” “The janitor,” Rod grinned. “I slipped him a five-dollar bill and told him we were old friends and that I wanted to return a record. You know,” he said, “it’s wonderful the things you can do with a five-dollar bill. But what