THE TRIP TO GALENA
785
his
first start-he still represents these people and for some damn
reason thinks he's an Englishman himself, though I keep telling him
Neff is a French name. It burns him up. He says Norman. Anyway,
his model is the Bond Street-City man with a homburg and umbrella.
So I think he's a jerk. Maybe you think I'm too particular a brother
and that nobody would suit me. No, I think she could do worse. I
don't like him, but I'm going to tell you something, Scampi, she
has
done worse."
Here came the thing he was compelled to talk about, and Scampi
could not refuse to hear it any more than, if Weyl had said, "Give
me your hand," he could have refused him his hand. Weyl's influ–
ence on him, and probably on everyone, was physical. He made his
weight literally felt.
"You see," he said, "it isn't so simple. There was a man. There
had been. Somebody much worse, living in the hotel where she
stayed, a small-time racketeer. She told me all about
it.
I was away
when this happened. And he, you see, he was one of those people
who live out of their hats; two or three of them in every line-up down
at detective headquarters. He started by slipping notes under her
door saying he only wanted to take her to a steak dinner and a show
because he was lonely. She refused at first, and then she didn't. I
don't know why she changed her mind. Maybe she wanted a taste
of something different, or was curious about the foregone conclusion
that a woman like herself, handsome, young, and respectable, could
never have anything to do with such a man. Why never? He may
have had a disagreeable personality but he was also a man, he had
an identity. A quick, let's say. Maybe that quick was like everybody
else's. Maybe, after they were started, his lovemaking pleased her ..."
Weyl said this as he had said everything else, but Scampi sensed the
difficulty of it. "Well, she told me, after a while he began to be
troublesome and abused her. He was jealous, he wanted her to
stay in when he couldn't take her out, he wanted to rent a flat and
expected her to move into it. Finally she got herself under control
and rid herself of him. For all I know, she threatened to kill him, and
he would have realized that she was likely to do it, too, and that that
was a likely kind of fate for him, and finally he let her alone. So,
you understand, she didn't make out well on her own. And now,
after this trashy business-and it was happening everywhere during
