Executive Suite (29 page)

Now, lying in the darkness, she tried again to probe the mystery of Don's feeling toward Loren Shaw. She was driven by no urgency of discovery because she knew that nothing she might conclude would have any effect on Don's attitude. What made her pursue the subject again, after not having thought about it for a long time, was the still lurking fear—largely subconscious—that her husband's dislike of Loren Shaw was a reflection upon herself because she found him an interesting man. She saw him rarely now, except at the larger parties, because they had long since allowed their social relationship with the Shaws to lapse, but, a few weeks before, at one of the Dudley's big dinner parties, she had been seated next to Loren Shaw and had enjoyed the experience. At the very least, Loren Shaw's wide-roving interest and the sharpness of his mind were clearly preferable to Jesse Grimm's clamlike taciturnity, Fred Alderson's piously unbroken preoccupation with the affairs of the company, or Walt Dudley's perpetual desire to be the life of the party.

“Asleep?”

Don's wide-awake whisper seemed as loud as a shout and she felt a moment of unreasonable embarrassment as if her privacy had been rudely invaded.

“No. Can't you sleep, dear?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

The breaking of the stillness let the night sounds drift in through the open windows. She heard someone walking up the road whistling, adding incongruous trills and off-key variations to the scarcely recognizable melody of “Some Enchanted Evening.” Out of the stillness her ears picked up a sound that it had rejected before, the throbbing of the engine in the pumping station way up on Ridge Road, a distant bark in slow four-four time with a deeper rain-barrel cough on the downbeat.

“I didn't know you were awake,” she whispered.

“Lot to think about tonight.”

“I know.” Reaching out, she found his hand and the hard grip of his fingers was a thrilling reassurance of the intimacy they shared.

“Can't get Fred off my mind,” he said impatiently, as if the attempt had built a background of annoyance. “Don't know why I can't stop thinking about him.”

“Did you really want him to take the presidency, Don?”

“No, not that,” he said with sharp dismissal. “It's just that—you know, it's a pitiful thing to see a man like Fred want something as much as he wanted the presidency, and then sit there and watch him take that horrible beating—punch-drunk—groggy—like an old fighter that just doesn't have it any more.”

“Did he ever have it, Don?”

“Sure. If it hadn't been for Fred—” His voice cut off as if he had suddenly discovered that what he had planned to say was either unthinkable or unsayable. “Maybe he didn't. I don't know. It's hard to separate him from Avery Bullard. They were so close you can't figure out for sure what was Fred's and what was Mr. Bullard's. I guess that's what I was thinking about really. You know, it's an awful thing to let anyone come into your life and mean so much to you that when you lose them you lose yourself.”

Her flinch came so quickly that she could not prevent the shiver from running down her arm and into her hand.

“What's the matter?” he asked in quick concern.

“Nothing, dear. I—”

“Something bothered you. What?”

“It doesn't matter. I know you didn't mean it that way. I'm just being silly.”

“Mean what?”

She made a laugh run ahead of her voice. “That you mustn't let anyone else come into your life and mean so much to you that—”

His lips smothered the words. “Mary, you know I didn't mean—”

Their lips parted just long enough for her to say, “Of course I know, but if I ever lost you—”

“Don't worry, you won't.” His voice was roughly male, more caressing than softness could have been.

She pulled back, feeling the warm glow that was spreading through her body. “No—no, Don, no.”

“No what?”

“Darling, please—I wasn't tricking you into making love to me.”

“Why not?” His hand ran over her and she was trembling and vibrant. She pushed his hand away. “Go to sleep.”

“Why?” The word was a throaty bass note.

“No!”

The bass note was in his low laugh. “You're being a very enticing little bitch.”

She reacted instantly. “What a horrible thing to—” and then she was struggling against his word-smothering kiss again until the struggle became its own defeat.

He lifted his lips to let her say, “Am I really as bad as that?”

“As what?”

“What you said.”

“What did I say?”

“You know.”

“Tell me,” he teased.

“I couldn't”—but there was something that forced her lips to his ear and made her whisper the word.

“Yes, you are!” he said fiercely, twisting her body and crushing her to him. “Damn it, Mary, I wish there were some way to make you understand, once and for all, that I'll never stop loving you.”

“I don't want it to be once and for all,” she whispered. “I want you to keep telling me—over and over and over.”

She could feel his lips moving silently to the words “I love you” as he kissed her.

“Darling, if there's any time when you don't will you promise to tell me?”

“There never will be.”

“Promise me—there are so many times when I'm afraid. Darling, you're such a mystery to me—I want to help you—I want to think the way you think—but when I'm close to you I can't think—all I want is to be a part of you—”

And then she was a part of him through a timeless oblivion and when she could hear the night sounds again the sound that she heard first was his deep-sleep breathing.

She felt as if she were eternally awake, as if she could never sleep again, nor even want to sleep again. She knew now, as she had never known before, that there was nothing more important to him than she was. He had never wanted her as much as he had wanted her tonight … tonight of all nights.

11.56 P.M. EDT

Dwight Prince faced the necessity of making a decision, a prospect that he never found pleasant. He stood in the hallway facing the closed door of the bedroom that he usually shared with his wife. He was confronted with two alternative courses of action—he could either open the door or not open the door. If he chose the latter alternative, he would have to sleep alone in the front guest room. If he chose the former, he might find himself an unwelcome intruder. Julia had obviously wanted to be alone when she had gone flying up the stairs the moment that fellow Shaw was out of the house. But that had been an hour ago.

As usual, Dwight Prince let himself be guided by his instinct, which he had found to be more trustworthy than intelligence in all matters where Julia was concerned. He opened the door.

She had been lying on the bed, but the recoil of her body was so swift that she was in a sitting position before the door was half open.

It was his first thought that his decision had been the wrong one, for there was an embarrassed desperation in the way that she tried to stop the flow of her tears.

“I'm sorry, Dwight,” she gasped, catching up the fullness of her dressing gown and burying her face in its folds as if she dared not let him see her eyes.

Instinct told him to go to her and he did, sitting beside her, his arm tight around the curve of her thin waist, feeling the sobs that she was now choking into silence. The grief that she had stored since they had heard of Avery Bullard's death, withheld from him and later from Loren Shaw, was still unspent.

“If you'd rather be alone—” he started to whisper.

Her hands dropped and her head flashed back. “Do you hate me, Dwight?”

“No. Why would you think that I did?”

“For feeling this way about Avery Bullard.” Her eyes were still avoiding his.

He waited, trying to think and then giving up the attempt. “It's never been a secret that you were once in love with him—you told me that before we were married—so there's no reason now why you should be afraid to let me see your tears.”

She turned to him and the tears that she had not been able to stop before had suddenly stopped. She kissed him then, desperately, forcing her strength to overpower his so that it was an act of her own doing.

The hall clock struck twelve but there was no answering sound from the carillon in the Tredway Tower.

Saturday

June 23

“…
long live the king
”

9

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

4.47 A.M. EDT

Since midnight Van Ormand had been living at the heady peak of his career. Nothing as exciting as this had happened to him since he had been appointed Director of Advertising and Publicity for the Tredway Corporation. After the releases on Avery Bullard's death had been cleared, he had stopped by the Millburgh
Times
to see how they were coming with the story for the morning edition. To his exhilarated delight, Bill Freisch, the city editor, had grabbed his arm and pushed him into a chair at the rewrite desk. There he had experienced the thrill of coming as close as he would ever get to being a real honest-to-God newspaper editor. He had checked a thousand facts, answered a hundred shouted questions, been the focal point of all of the wonderful hubbub of handling the biggest story that had broken in Millburgh in ten years. Yes sir, that's just what Bill had said—the biggest local story in ten years!

Bill was a swell guy and you could say that again! Bill had even let him write most of the feature story on the company's history, and now here it was in type, word for word, just the way he had written it. The pictures were swell, too.

Bill had forgotten all about the pictures the
Times
had used four years ago when Millburgh had staged its Bicentennial Celebration, but he'd said it was a hell of a good idea … that's just what Bill had said … and it sure as hell was a good idea! Mr. Shaw would really get a kick out of it! Made a terrific splash … the line-up of presidents' pictures across the top of page two … old Josiah Tredway dignified as hell … good prestige stuff … and George Tredway with the big beaver and Oliver with the mutton chops … and old Orrin looking like he must have been a nice guy … and then a two-column cut of that Underwood & Underwood shot of Mr. Bullard that he always said was the one to use … “Doesn't make me look like such a stuffed shirt.” Bullard was all right, by God! You could say what you pleased but the old guy had one hell of a lot on the ball!

Out of the corner of his eye, Van Ormand saw Bill Freisch stabbing at the page proof with his pencil and, guiltily, he tried again to concentrate on his own search for errors.

Bill was coming toward him now, flapping a proof in each hand as if they were limp wings. “Catch anything more, Van?”

“Just a few typos, Bill,” he said, professionally flippant.

Freisch leaned over his shoulder, checking. “Yah, I got all of those.” He spread his own proof before them and his pudgy finger found a query. “What's Walling's first name?”

“Don. You got it right, Bill.”

“No abbreviations,” Freisch said curtly. “We always use full names. What is it—Donald?”

Van Ormand fumbled. “Well, I think Don is his full name, just Don. That's the way he always signs—” A vague memory floated into his mind and then suddenly crystallized. “Hey, wait. I got it—MacDonald. I remember seeing it one time on his personnel record when I was checking my story about his being made a V.P.—MacDonald Walling.”

“M—c?” Bill spelled.

“No, with an ‘a,'” he said triumphantly. You sure as hell had to have a memory to be a newspaper man … wasn't any time to go horsing around checking things with that old press waiting to roll.

Bill made scrawls on the corners of the page proofs and pushed them toward the old man who had been waiting. Then he glanced at the clock on the wall. “Only twenty one minutes late. The pressroom can pick up most of that. Not too bad, considering.”

“I think it was wonderful, Bill, and I sure as hell want to thank you for the way you co-operated—that is, speaking for myself and the company, too.”

“Hell, boy, this was news.”

“Well, you sure gave it a fine play, Bill, and I just want you to know that.”

“Good thing it hit on Saturday,” Bill said with a weary grin, looking just the way those big-time newspaper men always looked after the old paper had been put to bed. “We're always light Saturday. If this had smacked me yesterday I don't know what I'd of done for space—all that damn Friday advertising.”

“Yah, advertising is a pain in the neck all right,” Van Ormand said with a tone of professional comradeship. “A lot of times lately I been thinking of getting the hell out of advertising and back on a good old newspaper.”

“Nuts! I bet you're making more dough for yourself than we're paying this whole city room.”

“What's dough if you aren't getting any fun out of life?” Van Ormand asked seriously.

Bill laughed. “Why ask me? I don't get any of either. How about going down for a cup of coffee while they get her to bed?”

“Gee, swell, Bill, swell.”

“Hey, look—crissake, you really ruined yourself, boy.”

Van Ormand glanced down and saw the smudge of grime across the front of his white dinner jacket where he leaned against the composing-room table. “To hell with it!” he laughed, letting a high-pitched giggle slip past his guard. “I'll just put it on the old expense account, that's all I'll do, just put it on the old swindle sheet.”

6.05 A.M. EDT

Loren Shaw opened his eyes again and was grateful that the night had finally faded. He had awakened time after time to darkness and each time the return to sleep had been more difficult and more frightening. His dreams had not been flights of fancy—they never were—but simply uncontrolled continuations of his day-thoughts. It was the lack of control that was alarming. That was what had defeated him last night. Another wrong move might destroy everything that he had worked so long to get.