Point of No Return by John P. Marquand Page A

desk already. Charles repressed an instinct to hurry and hang up his hat and coat but instead he walked slowly past the desks and stopped where Miss Marble was typing and asked her if there was anything new.
    â€œNothing new,” Miss Marble said. “I called up Mrs. Gray and told her you couldn’t catch the five-thirty. She said to remember that you’re going to the country club tonight.”
    â€œIt isn’t tonight, is it?” Charles asked.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me to put it on the calendar,” Miss Marble said, “but Mrs. Gray said to remind you.”
    â€œWell, call her again and tell her I’ll meet her there,” Charles said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can, but I’ll be late.”
    He stopped in front of the washroom mirror to see that his tie was straight. His short, sandy hair was in order and he looked competent and carefree. It was time to put the luncheon out of his mind. Malcolm had said that he was a nice boy, Charley, and he was not a nice boy any longer. He did not look the way he had at Clyde, though even there his mother had always said that he had the Gray high cheekbones and the Gray pointed chin. The roundness had gone out of his face. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his mouth was tighter but there was no gray in his hair. It was not the face that he used to have but it still looked young.
    â€œCharley,” he heard Malcolm Bryant saying, “it takes guts to be your type, these days. Good-by, good luck, Charley.”
    He was still not sure whether or not Malcolm Bryant had been laughing at him. Businessmen were not on the pinnacle they had once occupied. It was hard sometimes to tell the difference between strength of mind and habit.
    The tellers’ cages would close at three and already, as was usual in the afternoon, the pace was growing more leisurely. There were always new problems in the morning but these grew old by afternoon, fitting with still older problems into a symmetrical design so that you had a sense of everything running smoothly, a sense of teamwork, if you wanted to call it that, or what Mr. Burton called a meshing of the gears. You could think of the whole system of capital, of rates, discounts, markets and production, as running without interruption, like the traffic on the Avenue.
    Charles had devised a system that permitted him to examine every trust account personally at least once a month, and now Miss Marble brought to his cleared desk the ones which he was to review that day. As he thanked her and settled himself in his chair, he glanced across at Roger Blakesley. Roger’s desk was heaped with piles of papers. It was a habit of Roger’s to shove a great many papers around in the afternoon, especially toward closing time.
    â€œHello there, Charley,” Roger said. “Everything’s backing up on me.”
    Charles knew this was not true but it gave the picture that Roger wanted, a picture of heavy and unremitting labor.
    â€œYou’re back early,” Charles said. “I thought you were going to have lunch with Tony.”
    â€œHe canceled it,” Roger said. “Something came up the last minute.” Roger took off his glasses and polished them. When his glasses were off, his blinking eyes gave him a vacant, guileless look. “Are you going to the country club tonight?”
    â€œYes,” Charles said, “but I’m afraid I’ll be late.”
    â€œWho was that bird you went to lunch with?”
    There was no privacy. Everyone heard everything, particularly Roger.
    â€œA man I used to know,” Charles said, and then some impulse made him explain it further. “He’s an anthropologist.”
    â€œA what?”
    Then Charles knew that it would have been better not to have mentioned it. It was just the sort of thing that Roger would remember.
    â€œAn anthropologist.”
    â€œHe looked like a teacher in business