Rosaverian, Vol. VIII, Issue 11

              by Anne Therese Coyle
The Amazing Case of Mr. McGillevry
Mr. McGillevry was not in a good
humor. In fact any candidly honest
observer would have said that Mr. Mc­Gillevry
was “mad.” After fifty-seven
years of happy and generally placid
existence during which he had acquired
I'^llen, his charming wife, three equally
charming daughters, Mr. McGillevry
had come to the conclusion that he hated
women. Unfortunately, Mr. McGill­evry
had made that decision suddenly
and had not yet had time to exclude
those women that he didn’t hate.
Six hours before, when he had enter­ed
his insurance office, Mr. McGillevry
had l)een a match in pleasantness for
any of the 135,986,472 people that the
first edition of Helen Benson’s Studies
ill Statistics had declared to be the cur­rent
|K)pu'lation of the United S ta te s :
but the first ten minutes in the office
had served to hurl him into a mood of
perturljed unhappiness that had readily
waxed into anger.
Me could yet recall the polite phrases
of the i)hone call that had caused that
change of mood. He heard the con­stant
echo of the woman’s voice that
had uttered a seemingly innojent re-
(luest, but a request, however, which
one in his position could not refuse,
lie was haunted by the memory of his
own voice weakly articulating that
simple but fatal “Yes” with which he
had replied. All through the day that
“Yes,” like an ill omen, had shadowed
his every action.
* * *
The phone had rung at the very
moment at which he put his hand on
the knob of the office door. Two mhi-utes
later his secretary had presented
him with several policies for immediate
study. Anne Weber’s Dance Service,
Themes and Decorations, Incorporated,
were taking a policy on displays re­quested
for the New Orleans Mardi
Gras. To add to his trouble there was
a new document for Margaret Mur­phy’s
Museum of Western History to
cover a recently accpiired set of ‘six-shooters”
and an annotated list of
“Cowboys of Today.” In addition, Mr.
Mc(iillevry had to study a policy for
Lord and Taylor which concerned their
new department, directed by Audrey
Kiefer, dedidated to exclusive models
in nurses’ uniforms and caps. To in­crease
his problems, he had to read one
JUNE 4, 1945
for Norine O ’Bryan covering specific
materials of National Importers, Limit­ed,
and to insert special clauses in a pro­tection
policy for the manuscript copy
of Helen O ’Connell’s book, “History
of Northern New York.”
But, in the midst of all these pro­blems,
the shadow of that early phone
call was darkening almost to a point of
eclipse of Mr. McGillevry’s mind. "Wo­men—”
he muttered to his secretary,
“Women! They drive a man crazy.
Look at these cockeyed policies and
they’re all for women— !’’
“Women,” at this point that word
had the effect of a sword piercing his
very brain for he recalled that his
wife’s cousins were arriving from the
West and that Ellen, at breakfast, had
asked him to meet them.
Mr. McGillevry was hastily on his
way. Entering the elevator, he man­aged
to hit the purses of eight of the
feminine employees of Margaret Leon­ard’s
Radio Advertising Agency, of
A. T. Coyle Creations, of Decor­ations
by Faith Coss and of Agnes
Mullin, Commercial Photograi>her: all
of whom were leaving work to attend
the weekly publicity forum directed by
Stephanie Lisowski of the Magazine
Advertising Company. Mr. McGill­evry’s
sense of justice made him give
an even score of two purses pushed out
of place per concern. Upon exiting
from the elevator, he managed to ram,
in order, Betty Kilroy, photogra])her’s
model; Marianne Ford, book reviewer
of the Nciu York Observer', chemist-cosmetician,
Charlotte Bell; Helen
Hausmann, editor of Who's Who in
American Kindergartens; and Eileen
Stiglmeier, the popular “Personal Shop­per.”
With a “mow ’em down” ability that
would have put him on the Notre Dame
team, Mr, McGillevry made the street
without so much as brushing a Stetson.
His dislike of women was growing.
In the taxi to the station, he sought
distraction via radio and successive
clicks of the dial brought the voice of
Helen Sherritt in her program of read­ing,
“'I'he Best in Literature,” the news
of the day commentary of Ruth Coak-ley,
and the announcement by Mary
Lou Morrison of the opening of a
Mexican branch of her popular Cai>e
Cod “Spanish Colony Resort.”
THE ROSAVERIAN
“Women!” thundered Mr. McGil-evry.
The dial went to “o f f .”
He glanced out the window and
relis'hed for the moment the masculine
granite of the National Bank until he
realized that the small placard at the
corner of one glass face read “Special
women’s service de^xirtnient; Marion
Ginecki, Manager.”
It would be difficult to determine
whether the “Humph” that Mr. Mc-
(jillevry next grumbled was aimed at
that placard or the several shops he
was in rapid sequence ])assing: Rose
Al)ernethy’s Business Investigations,
Portrait Photography by I'heresa Ro-tundo,
the Dolores Budnick Labor­atory,
Par ty Plans by Peggy Mangan
or The Phyllis Lonergan Theater . . .
And perhaps he was just remembering
the phone call.
Mind you, we would severely err to
say that any ill will went towards his
wife’s cousins. Rememlier the phone
call hadn’t been about them. The
Shadow? Oh, yes, it was still there.
It did not help a certain gentleman’s
temper as he reached the station and
left the cab to l>e pushed rudely aside
by a surging crowd from whose com­ments
he deduced that Connie O’Brien
had returned from California where
she had l^een lecturing on “The Defense
of Benjamin Franklin’s Contribution to
the Professions,” that on the same train
had arrived Eve Yerkovich, currently
associated with the technical direction
of the film “The Modern Florence
Nightingale,’’ that Mary Renaud’s
Newsreel service was recording for the
annual publidiition March of Meuiories
their arrivals as well as those of Regina
Daley, professor of Latin at Notre
I3ame of Saskatchewan, and of Beverly
St. George in town after a record-breaking
singing engagement at the
Canadian resort. Lake Louise.
In his ordinary spirit of honesty, Mr.
McGillevry might have become angry
at the crowd but today was the day of
the phone call. Mr. Me (lillevry was
{Continued on Taye 11, col. 1)
. . . being a glimpse
into our prophet’s
crystal ball