Tomorrow! by Philip Wylie Read Free Book Online Page A

the first words she had ever known. She sat up. “You’ve been gambling !”

    “How do you know?”

    “Horses!”

    “And I did all right.” Her guess seemed to release him. “And if I had some real dough to lay on the line, I could get back what I’m down—!”

    “Where? What bookie. Jake! That was Jake on the phone!”

    Now, for the first time, Netta was more frightened than angry. “Beau, do you really owe Jake Tanetti five thousand dollars?”

    “I didn’t think it was that much. I thought—around three. But he says five.”

    “Then it’s five.” Netta sat silent for a moment, her chest heaving. Once or twice she looked speculatively at Beau. Finally she smiled at him wanly. “Come over here. Sit beside me.”

    “Net, I don’t want to. I’m too ashamed.”

    She beckoned. Heavily, he rose and cautiously approached. He seated himself as gingerly as if the divan had been an electric chair. But Netta didn’t swat him or even yell at him. She just took his hand and held it in her own and stared at it and finally said, softly, “Beau, my boy, you’ve done some dumb things in your day, but—this is really Grade-A trouble. I’m not sore.
    I’m sorry.”

    She meant it. Meant the compassion she displayed, the calm. Intellectually Netta knew that the only way to manage Beau now would be with gentleness. Anything harsh might easily snap the thin threads of his remaining pride and cause him to do something still more rash. Not suicide. But—he might confess to Minerva Sloan and throw himself (and her and Lenore, as incidentals) on the mercy of the old woman. There was no such thing as mercy in Minerva, Netta knew; she’d had a good deal of experience in the absence of mercy. So there was reason for her to hold her tongue and to treat Beau with restraint.

    But something much deeper also moved Netta, something she did not understand. It was pity. She realized that she had never pitied Beau before; she had always, in fact, felt slightly inferior to him because of her background. Now, however, she suddenly felt equal. His descent to this level, his victimization by the bookmaker, even his gambling per se, as his way of trying to clamber from his eternally sticky finances, touched Netta in a familiar spot. Her mother, father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles had lived in this place, owing what they could not pay, guilty of merely taking a chance and losing, and faced in sudden consequence with the malignity of forces vastly mightier than themselves: rackets, unions, the law, the church, street gangs, hoods, noble powers that became suddenly evil and evil powers that were ceaselessly opposed to everybody, to life itself and letting live.

    Netta came closer to loving Beau then than ever before.

    “You’re the cashier of a big bank,” she said carefully, “so you can’t gamble. That means this business must not come out.”

    “If I don’t pay Jake—”

    “Sure. If you don’t—it will. That’s Jake.” She said it as if “Jake” were a force of nature, not a person. “So he has to get paid.”

    “How?”

    “That’s what we’ve got to figure. He’ll probably take something down. . . .”

    Beau brightened a little. “He said he would. Half now. Half later.”

    “So, okay. All you need right off is two grand and a half.”

    He shrugged. “Might as well be two million.”

    “I’ve heard you say, Beau, you could lay your hands on fortunes, and nobody would be wiser for years.”

    He pulled away from her. “The bank?”

    “You said. . . ?” she gestured casually.

    “My God, Net! I said so, sure. Portfolios full of negotiable stuff that I check, sometimes.
    You could slip out millions and borrow on it—cash it in—and nobody would know till somebody looked. Maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe longer. But that’s out!”

    “You got any different inspirations? Or better ones?”

    “That one isn’t even an idea. Look, Net. I appreciate the way you’re taking