Preserve and Protect Read online

  “What game are you two up to, anyway? Is this some sort of blackmail?”

  “You ought to recognize it,” Bob Leffingwell said swiftly, but again, Fred baffled them. Instead of going into a ranting rage he simply sat back and laughed, with a complete and apparently genuine scorn.

  “If you two don’t take the cake!” he said. “If you don’t win all the prizes in town! Coming here with some phony cock-and-bull story, trying to scare me with these phony threats! Me! Me! Don’t you know better than that?”

  “Fred,” Helen-Anne said earnestly, as to a fractious, willful child, “you must pay attention to what I am saying, because I do know that there was a meeting at the Hilton after Patsy Labaiya’s party at which you—and LeGage Shelby—and Rufus Kleinfert—and Ted Jason—and probably a fifth party—”

  “But you aren’t absolutely sure of it, are you?” Fred interrupted with a cold spitefulness. “You’re just fishing, like all you damned reporters. Why don’t you stop this and run along?”

  “You and Rufus and LeGage and Ted,” Helen-Anne repeated, “and you sat down with an enemy of this country and you planned—”

  But this time Fred did react, his face suddenly livid, his voice snarling upward, his body shaking with the quivering rage they had seen him display in moments of crisis on the Senate floor.

  “Now, see here, you prying bitch!” he said. “You don’t know anything about any damned meeting, you don’t have any proof of any damned meeting—do you?” he demanded quickly as Helen-Anne despite her best efforts was unable to suppress a flicker of expression. “Do you? God damn it,” and he jumped suddenly out of his chair and again started around the desk, “do you?”

  “Stand back!” she shouted, jumping up and raising her enormous handbag ludicrously above her head as Bob also surged to his feet, “Stand back, you raving maniac! Yes, I do have proof. Yes, I do know who was there. Yes, I am going to print it unless you call it off. Now, damn you, sit down!”

  “I think you’d better, Fred,” Bob Leffingwell said quietly into the silence; and presently, glaring at them both and breathing like the heavy in an early film, he did so. For several minutes he stared at them, his expression gradually changing from rage to his usual one of settled contempt for the world in general and them in particular.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said presently in quite an ordinary voice. “Somebody has come to you with some crazy story about a meeting, and you haven’t anything better to write about, so that’s the project for today. Now, who”—and his eyes and voice became speculative in a way that suddenly made Helen-Anne’s skin crawl—“could have told you a fairy-tale like that?”

  “I’ve got my sources,” she said hurriedly, “and they’re no concern of yours.”

  “Somebody,” he said thoughtfully. “Now, who—?”

  “What I want to know is,” she said loudly, “are you going to call it off or aren’t you?”

  But Fred was in some private world of his own, the clever, crooked mind working like lightning.

  “Who—?” Then suddenly the speculative look was gone, his expression was instantly bland and innocent.

  “I think what you’d better do is just forget it,” he said, not unkindly. “And you, too, Bob. Somebody must have had some kind of delusion. There wasn’t any meeting. You’d be better off too, Helen-Anne, if you just didn’t think about it anymore. Thinking too much isn’t healthy,” he said with a sort of amiable inanity. “We all know that, in this town.” He stood up.

  “I warn you, Fred,” Helen-Anne said loudly. He waved her absently to her feet.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get over to the floor.”

  “Then you aren’t going to do anything to stop it?” she asked, and to her intense annoyance sounded almost pleading. Fred smiled, a smile that for once seemed genuine and quite satisfied.

  “What’s to do,” he inquired innocently, “when it’s all a figment of your imagination, anyway?”

  But when they had left he turned at once to the telephone; and outside in the corridor Helen-Anne looked frantically around for a public booth. His call went through at once. Hers took ten minutes, while Bob Leffingwell stood by with a worried frown and held her handbag.

  “You know,” Beth said thoughtfully as they stood by the window and watched the beautiful and terrible machines roar in and out, “I’ve been a little leery of watching planes land ever since—”

  “Now, now,” Dolly said firmly. “Calm, constructive thoughts, please. It rarely happens and when it does there’s usually a reason.”

  “What, I wonder? Have you people heard anything definite?”

  Dolly shook her head.

  “Only the usual rumors. The dead man with the pistol, the two subversives on the ground crew, the Army mess boy in the cabin with the blank-faced little wife he married in Albania—”

  “That I hadn’t heard,” Beth said.

  “Oh, yes. If you could add it all up, it could prove very interesting. But of course with the great, instinctive American disbelief in plots—nobody’s that bad, you know, although of course they have been, for a very long time—it probably wouldn’t be accepted. It would just start another book and play industry—”

  “Thereby putting dollars to work, helping the economy, and contributing substantially to the Gross National Product,” Beth remarked. “It’s probably worth doing, for that alone.”

  “How cynical you’ve grown in Washington’s sunny climes. I believe that must be the kids, just taxiing in.”

  “I believe so,” Beth agreed, looking pleased.

  “How are they?” Dolly asked. “Should I be prepared to—”

  “Just be prepared to be yourself. It’s always more than enough.”

  “I don’t know whether I quite understand that or not,” Dolly said. Beth laughed.

  “Persiflage and hyperbole.”

  “Hmm,” Dolly said thoughtfully. “That may be the ticket the National Committee is looking for: Rutherford B. Persiflage and Oscar W. Hyperbole. ‘So Good They’re Unbelievable.’”

  “Now you’re being nonsensical.”

  “No,” Dolly said. “Just a little excited at seeing your wandering chicks again.”

  “If you’re excited,” Beth said, “guess how I feel.”

  But when Hal and Crystal came along the ramp, Crystal walking a little slowly, Hal supporting her with a protective arm around her waist, Beth was all brisk, comfortable good-humor, just as always. For a second both the children looked as though they might cry, but Beth and Dolly promptly smothered them with kisses and jolly welcomes and the moment became like any other warm family homecoming. Except that of course it wasn’t, quite.

  “How are you feeling, Crystal?” Dolly asked quietly when Beth and Hal had gone to see about the luggage. Crystal managed a reasonable facsimile of a smile.

  “Not too bad. The doctor says I can have another baby, you know, so—

  “Oh, wonderful,” Dolly said. “I am so pleased for you all. That ought to make recuperation a breeze.”

  “Yes,” Crystal said, the smile fading, “except that we seem to be coming back to just—more of the same. At least before there was some consolation that it had all been settled in the convention, but now because of poor Uncle Harley, we have it all to do over again.”

  “I don’t think your father-in-law needs to worry about the outcome,” Dolly said firmly. Crystal’s eyes darkened with the thought of many things.

  “It’s not the outcome,” she said. “It’s what happens while you’re getting there. A funny thing happened on the way to the—” And suddenly her eyes began to fill with tears and Dolly said hastily and sharply, “Stop that. Now, stop it!”

  “I try to,” Crystal said, “but it keeps coming back.”

  “Well—” Dolly began, and fell silent, unable at the moment to think of anything to say that would erase the horrible memory of that swirling fog-bound night outside the Cow Palace in San Francisco only ten days ago.


  “I’m sorry,” Crystal said presently. “How do things look here?”

  “About what you’ve been reading in Carmel, I imagine. Unpleasant, there’s no use in pretending. The Knox house is under guard, and so are we. Lucille Hudson is staying in the guest house, and the very night she moved in somebody got over the wall on the park side and threw a bucket of sewage all over the front door—”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” Dolly said grimly. “That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with in America these days. If they don’t kill you, they defile you.…So,” she went on, more gently, “I’m afraid, my dear, that you’re quite right. You’re going to have to be careful here, too. All of you. But I still believe the prospect for Orrin is bright. The National Committee is under great pressures, but I think it’s moving his way.”

  “Dear Dolly,” Crystal said, a grateful smile returning. “You’re always so kind to us poor old beleaguered Knoxes. And, in fact, to everyone.”

  “I’m sure I’m right,” Dolly said firmly.

  “I want to think so,” Crystal said. “Maybe it’s because Daddy’s been in the Senate twenty years and I’ve been around politics all my life, but I just don’t feel as optimistic as you do.” She smiled again, rather wistfully. “I’ll try, though. I really will try, Dolly.”

  And at the luggage counter Hal was trying, too, though a lifetime of growing up in politics was making it as difficult for him as for his wife. Nor was his mother’s practicality much assistance. Beth, as always, was shrewd and objective about her husband and his chances.

  “How’s Dad doing?” Hal asked as soon as they had left the others and started through the crowded concourse.

  “Fairly well.”

  He frowned.

  “That all? Only fair?”

  “The Committee’s being very close-mouthed,” Beth said. “Actually, some of them are plain scared. But inevitably, things come out. There’s the same Jason group there was at the convention, led principally by Roger Croy of Oregon and Esmé Stryke of California, and they’ve made quite a bit of headway in the preliminary sparring. The Knox forces, as usual”—and despite her quite genuine air of pragmatic humor, a little expression of pain and annoyance did come into her eyes—“are well-meaning, hopeful, busy and disorganized.” She smiled dryly. “Mary Baffleburg and Lizzie McWharter aren’t exactly the world’s most dynamic leaders, you know. And so far, nobody much has come forward from anywhere else to get things moving. Stanley’s done a little work, sounding people out, but his heart isn’t in it anymore.”

  “No,” Hal said somberly, thinking of his father-in-law, the Senate Majority Whip, Stanley Danta of Connecticut, devastated and disheartened by what had happened to his daughter at the convention. “That pretty well threw him for life, I’m afraid.”

  “But it hasn’t you,” Beth said, giving her son a sudden shrewd glance. He shrugged.

  “I’m young. You know it did for a while, but—I guess you can adapt to almost anything when you’re our age. Knowing we can have another helps, of course. It would be pretty awful without that.”

  “How’s Crystal been this past week?”

  “Better,” he said slowly. “Much better. She’s still … afraid.”

  “Coming here won’t help,” Beth said. “This town isn’t very safe, right now.”

  “What place is?” Hal asked. He gave her a sudden shrewd look that was an exact copy of her own. “What kind of deals is Dad going to have to make to get this nomination?”

  “Why should he have to make any?”

  “He may,” Hal said. “He may …”

  “None have been proposed and none have been offered,” Beth said.

  “But they will be,” he suggested. “And what he does then will tell a lot of things.”

  “Do you doubt him?” she asked, and they might have been alone in a desert instead of in the middle of the hurrying concourse, so intent were they upon their conversation.

  “I never have,” he said finally.

  “Then don’t now.”

  “Okay … if you say so.”

  “If you believe so,” she said. He stared at her for a long moment and again said:

  “Okay.”

  “I think your bags are coming along now,” she remarked, her tone becoming businesslike. “That’s Dolly’s car out there, ask the chauffeur to help you. I’ll go get the others and we’ll get on home. You’ll be wanting to see your father.”

  “Yes,” he said, his smile suddenly warm. “I will.”

  “Bob,” Helen-Anne said, “would you do me a favor? I can’t seem to reach their house and the city desk doesn’t seem to be able to find anybody who can help me at the moment. Would you go to the hotel for me while I go to the house?”

  “Damn it, Helen-Anne,” he said, “stop being noble and use sense. You’re not going to a neighborhood where there may be bloodshed if we can’t head it off, and let me go to a nice, safe hotel. Now, be sensible, damn it. I’ll go to T Street, you go to the Hilton. Okay?”

  “But there’s no point in exposing you to—” His expression stopped her.

  “Stop being Fearless Girl Reporter and start being scared, will you?”

  “All right,” she said with a sudden meekness that indicated more than words how scared she really was. “Why don’t you call me at the paper around three? I’ll go back there as soon as I know everything’s all right.”

  “I will,” he promised. She started to turn away and then stopped abruptly and fished in her handbag.

  “Here,” she said hurriedly, holding out a sheaf of folded copy paper. “Keep these for me until—until we see each other again.”

  “Oh, now,” he began, “don’t—”

  “Just keep them for me,” she said. “Okay?”

  “All right,” he said slowly, putting them in his breast pocket. “Be careful.”

  A sad expression touched her face.

  “Be careful,” she echoed, a bitter twist to her lips. “It’s getting to be the password of the age.”

  And now he realized that he must be prepared for unpleasantness, as he turned the familiar corner in the empty corridor of the Old House Office Building and came to the massive door that bore the once-magic words (and still magic, in spite of all the disillusioning years that had passed since he first saw them):

  MR. HAMILTON

  California

  On the other side of them today sat trouble. Or rather, as he saw in a glance as he entered his office, noted the frightened expression in his receptionist’s eyes, and became aware of the tall, rangy figure near the window, stood—talked—paced—glared—trouble.

  Deliberately he paid it no mind at first, asking his receptionist with a fair show of matter-of-factness, though his voice trembled slightly, “Any calls for me?”

  “A few,” she said. “The Agriculture Department wants you to call on that Hempstead matter. The Secretary of State has been trying to reach you—”

  “Oh, well, then—” he began, moving toward the phone, but she held up a hand.

  “No, I told him you were expecting a—a visitor—and he said don’t bother, he’ll call later.”

  “That was after you told him who the visitor was,” LeGage suggested with a sour smile, and she lifted her head defiantly and gave him stare for stare.

  “Yes,” she said. “Assuming it’s any of your business.”

  “Why don’t you invite your old buddy Orrin over, Cullee?” LeGage suggested, deliberately turning his back on her. “Us old buddies might have a real cozy chat together. The damned war maker!”

  “Maybe you’d better come on in my office and get your vomiting over with,” Cullee said coldly, “so I can get back to my work. Get on in there!” he added sharply as LeGage gave him a furious scowl and hesitated. But finally he shook his head with an angry impatience and stepped swiftly inside. Cullee followed and closed the door.

  “Now,” he said, leaning back against it and looking his ex-friend, ex-political a
dviser, ex-Howard University roommate, thoughtfully up and down, “why in hell don’t you try to act civilized, black boy too big for your britches? Or are you still getting your kicks from doing the jungle bit?”

  For a moment he thought LeGage might spring at him and he could feel his muscles tense instinctively for it, welcoming it, wanting it, hoping ’Gage would give him the opportunity to administer a beating that would somehow assuage all the unhappiness and pain he felt because of Sue-Dan’s leaving him and going to LeGage, because of ’Gage’s opposition and dislike and all the bitter-hurtful things that had grown from their once-close friendship. But as always in their arguments, LeGage was too clever to give him the excuse. Instead he turned away with a contemptuous disgust and flung himself into a chair.

  “Not the only black boy who’s too big for his britches,” he remarked, staring out at the tourists straggling through the stately trees and gentle lawns of Capitol Plaza. “Not the only black boy who needs setting down. Could be old Better-Than-Anybody Cullee needs a lesson too.”

  “You and your trash tried to give me one,” Cullee said, moving to his desk, sitting down, propping his legs up on a corner of the desk. “Didn’t take.”

  “There could always be another,” ’Gage observed. Cullee abruptly dropped his legs to the floor, swung around full-face and leaned forward across the desk, staring intently at the clever, sullen face across from him.

  “You won’t be happy until you kill me, will you?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” ’Gage said. “You’re worth too much to us, if you’d just decide to be with your friends instead of against them.”

  “Friends!” Cullee echoed bitterly. “Crazy Fred and Lump-Head Rufus! Is that what you’re calling your friends nowadays? Seems a long way to come from the old days.”

  “Oh, I had a friend once,” LeGage said with a sort of brooding thoughtfulness. “Helped him get elected to Congress, had us some big dreams, thought he might be Senator, Governor, even Vice President someday, maybe, if everything went right. Had us some grand dreams, all right, until he went off with Whitey.”