Five days, he thought, and laughed a little, soundlessly. Nice of them to give me five days. He laughed again and slipped the warning halfway into his shirt pocket, fixing it so that it stuck out. He sat again and scanned the street, ready to break out in a smile.

Chapter Eleven

THE shock of the garbage pail seemed to have sharpened Newman’s sense, of the practical. Instead of stupidly returning to the big resounding names of the business world he studied the help-wanted ads from a new angle and fastened upon those calling for hundreds of mechanics, tinsmiths, tool and die men. Any company, he figured, which required so many new workers was likely to need a man to hire them. And it was by this logic that he decided to go to the administrative offices of the Meyers-Peterson Corporation, a company he had never heard of before.

The main plant was in Paterson, New Jersey, but here on the tenth floor of a Twenty-ninth Street building in Manhattan was an air-conditioned layout which began to heat his deep-grown admiration for bigness and stability. The company in peacetime made fans and other electrical equipment. The offices – at least this waiting room, which was all he had so far seen of the place – were modern but respectably worn. He was pleased, too, at the executive-type gentlemen who were waiting on the other chairs and couches for appointments within. If he could get set here, he felt, he had a good chance for a job that would last into the postwar period.

Sitting on the leather chair as an outsider waiting to see a Mr Ardell, he feared this coming disastrous era. But when he permitted himself to believe that he would be hired today he rather enjoyed the prospect of having a job in the midst of the coming unemployment. For he had never gotten over resenting the wages that were being paid to nearly any man who could lift a hammer. In fact, as a man of so many private distinctions he could not help longing secretly for the old days of the other depression, when he was so certain of his job while others were being let out all around him. There was less pleasure in earning when it was easy to earn.

And somehow, as he studied the waiting room and the girl at the reception desk, he got the strong impression that he would be working for this firm. He tried the name of the company on his lips. ‘I work for the Meyers-Peterson Corporation, electrical stuff,’ he said, as though to an inquiring friend. And it almost sounded all right.

In all his calculations this day, the image of a garbage pail lying on its side never rose before his eyes. Because it rested deep down in him by now. For three days he had been wandering around the city with the overturned can in his mind. He had gone to the city that morning and returned at night. After dinner he had gone down to Fred’s cellar and told him about the incident. Fred had seemed surprised and assured him it was a mistake. Either a mistake or the result of some of the boys getting out of hand. And he had been relieved then. It was only after he had gone to bed that he began to wonder. Surely Fred must have noticed the garbage when he walked his dogs before going to work that morning. Why had he wanted to seem ignorant of it? Fred always walked his dogs at seven in the morning.