THE EINHORNS
637
home where a great mankind was at home, I've never seen any reason
why not. Though unable to go along one hundred per cent with a
man like the Reverend Beec}ler telling
his
congregation, "Ye are Gods,
you are crystalline, your faces are radiant!" I'm not an optimist of
that degree, from the actual faces, congregated or separate, that I've
seen; always admitting that the true vision of things is a gift, par–
ticularly in times of special disfigurement and worldwide Babylonish–
ness, when plug-ugly macadam and volcanic peperino look com–
moner than crystal- to eyes with an ordinary amount of grace, any–
how-and when it appears like a good sensible policy to settle for
medium grade quartz. I wonder where in the creation there would
be much of a double-take at the cry
U
Homo Sum!"
But I was and
have always been ready to venture as far as possible; even though I
was never as much imposed on by Einhorn as he wanted me to be
in his big moments, with his banker's trousers and chancellor's cravat,
and
his
unemployable squiggle feet on the barber-chair-like mount
of his wheeled contraption made to his specifications. And I never
could decide whether he meant that he was a genius or had one;
I suppose he wanted there should be some doubt about the mean–
ing. He wasn't the man to come out and declare that he wasn't
a genius while there was the chance he might be one, a thing like
that coming about
nolens volens.
To some, like his half-brother Ding–
bat, he was one. Dingbat swore up and down, "Willie is a wizard.
Give him two bits worth of telephone slugs and he'll parley it into
big dough." His wife agreed, too, without reservations that Einhorn
was a wizard. Anything he did- and that covers a lot of territory–
was
all
right with her. There wasn't any higher authority, not
even her brother Karas who ran the Holloway Enterprises and
Management Company and was a demon money-maker himself.
Karas, that bad, rank character, cinder-crawed, wise to all angles,
dressed to kill, with a kitty-cornered little smile and extortionist's eyes,
she was in awe of
him
also, but he wasn't presumed to be in Einhorn's
class.
But Einhorn wasn't exactly buried in front of
his
pleasures. He
carried on with one woman or another and, in particular, he had a
great need of girls like Lollie Fewter. His explanation was that he took
after
his
father. The Commissioner, in a kindly, sleepy, warm-aired,
fascinated way, petted and admired all women, and put his hands
