Rex Stout (15 page)

Wardell went on, “No one but you could have known of the opportunity. No one else could have known your truck would be there at that hour. Even if they could have got into the grounds—what for, without the truck? Anyway, this settles it: The sentry saw you driving out. That’s enough. You’re done for.”

When he stopped Val Orcutt waited a moment and then said, “Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean,
Yes, sir?
Good God, don’t you see the only thing for you is the truth?”

Val said, “I mean I see I’m done for. I’ve told the truth, but I see you’re not going to believe it. Only one thing: I don’t know how they got into the grounds and I don’t know how they would know the truck would be there, but I suppose lots of people would know that. I go every morning about the same time. But one thing: the sentry didn’t see me drive out. He couldn’t have, because I didn’t drive out. I suppose they put me in the back of the truck after they hit me and I was in there, I don’t know. How could the sentry see me? But listen here, of course I see what you mean talking about my being hit by the President’s cane. I wasn’t, but I see what you mean. But even if I was, how could the sentry see me driving out? Whatever hit me, it didn’t leave me in any shape to drive a truck.”

Mrs. Orcutt distributed a grin, first to her son, then to the others. Chief Skinner did not acknowledge it; Wardell glared at her. He then transferred the glare to her son, and kept it there to cover the effort he would make to recover the attack. Apparently the only thing for it was a bullying explosion, but it was halted before it became vocal by the ringing of the telephone. Skinner got up, but Wardell turned and reached for it. He said, “Hello.”

It was one of the clerks out front. The clerk said that Mr. Billings, Secretary of Agriculture, insisted on speaking to Mr. Wardell and refused to leave a message. Mr. Billings would not take no. Wardell said, “I’ll take it.”

In a moment Billings’ voice, urgent almost to trembling, was in the receiver: “Lewis? I’m talking from the White House study, Mrs. Stanley is with me. The Cabinet, all of them but Molleson, are in the library. You’ve got to come over here right now.”

Wardell snapped, “I can’t come.”

“You’d better. You’ve got to. Mrs. Stanley and I are holding off a vote, but the best we can do is that they’ll wait ten minutes for you. Three minutes are already gone. It will go against you, no question about it, and that will be hell. Come at once.”

“What is it, Brownell? I told Oliver—”

“It’s not only Oliver. Brownell partly, yes. It’s complicated. Don’t talk, come. If they once vote you out—”

“Let them.”

There were a couple of clicks and a scraping in the receiver, then Mrs. Stanley’s voice was in his ear: “For God’s sake, Mr. Wardell, come at once!”

Wardell opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again and said, “All right. Hold them. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to Chief Skinner. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a tangled mess, his collar dirty and crumpled from sweat. He got up and started for a corner to get his hat, saying:

“Skinner. I’m going to the White House. You go on with this. Until you hear to the contrary from me or the Cabinet, you have full authority. Don’t hesitate to use it.”

He went out on the run, not stopping to shut the door behind him. The Chief of the Secret Service got up and went over and closed it, then returned to his chair. He looked at Val Orcutt with his gray doubting eyes and said:

“Well, my lad. Let’s begin over again at the beginning and see if we made any mistakes. For instance, before the doctor comes, who did you think you were when you had the amnesia?”

At four o’clock Wednesday afternoon there were a dozen men in the library of the Grinnell home. Hartley Grinnell, newspaper publisher, whose home it was, was there; old white George Milton, whose money had bought the home and whose daughter’s cultured taste had furnished it; and Martin Drew, New York financier, who had stayed the Monday night after all and after Tuesday’s startling developments had explosively remained. Robert A. Molleson, “Bob,” Vice-President of the United States, too much blood in his face, dark puffs under his eyes, and a long cigar stiff between his teeth, sat on a leather sofa with its back to the long table; the man standing before him, tall and thin, with scraggly dark hair, yellow-green eyes and a large sensitive mouth but certainly not tender, was D. L. Voorman, the steel legislative
agent, the highest-paid lobbyist in the world. The others, either of the circle around the sofa or hovering at its edge, only less famous than Martin Drew and less astute than George Milton, were mostly from New York; one lived in Washington and one was from Chicago. Highball glasses, full, half-gone or empty, were scattered around, and even with the windows open the smoke was so thick that George Milton had long since given up waving his hand in front of his face and was perforce contenting himself with pinching his nostrils now and then to take the smart away.

It was a gathering full of possibilities for commentators. A philosopher would have found occasion for melancholy strictures on the adequacy of the vessels the human race selects as the grand reservoirs for its accumulation of vast and terrible power; an editor of the New York
Herald Tribune
would have gone lyric with amazement that so tremendous an aggregation of sapience, glory, and righteousness should be confined within one room; a Communist would have frothed with fury that the monsters dared to disguise themselves in human shape; an undertaker, referring to the tables of mortality, would have rubbed his hands at the prospect of an early pick-up in business; a statistician would have calculated with dry accuracy that the dozen individuals (specimens) before him represented the control of over five billion dollars of American wealth. Of course their observations would all have been correct, and totally ineffectual to sway the business in hand by the breadth of a hair.

D. L. Voorman was speaking to Vice-President Molleson.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow, that’s it. I think they’re right about that, but believe me, Mr. Vice-President, there is no question of coercion.” Voorman had been in and out of Washington for ten years. He had gone fishing with Molleson half a dozen times but never called him anything but Mr. Vice-President; with Senator Allen and two amiable young ladies he had once spent a genial week-end in a Virginia cabin, but never called him anything but Senator. He was the highest-paid lobbyist in America. “They have no thought of coercing you. They appeal. They’re nervous, that’s all. So are you, so am I, so is everyone. We have to try to keep our heads. We don’t ask you to do anything rash, God knows we don’t want anything rash. An emergency requires a man, and you’re the man for this one.”

Molleson shook his head. His teeth were so tight on the
cigar that it barely wiggled. He took the cigar out. “No, Voorman. I’ve made my position clear. The step you gentlemen suggest may become necessary—”

A shattering voice broke in, a voice meant to shatter and accustomed to it. It came from a tall heavy man, big-jawed, with gray hair, in a miraculously fitting brown suit. “I coerce. Appeal if you want to, Voorman. I coerce. Get that, Molleson, if that’s what you want to call it. You’re just squealing like a rabbit, and in times like this you’ll find out what happens to rabbits.”

Voorman’s large sensitive mouth twisted a little. He waited until the shattering voice was done, then turned and wedged his way out between two chairs. The man in the brown suit stood there. Voorman waited until other voices had started up in the circle facing Molleson, then under their cover muttered, “I’d like a word with you, Mr. Denham.” He started towards the other end of the room and the man in the brown suit followed.

There, near the windows, the shattering voice made only the concession of a little lowering. “You’re an ass to coax him, Voorman. If that’s your technique no wonder it’s been a mess down here for the past month.”

Voorman said, “You ride horses.”

“What if I do?”

“Were you ever on a scared horse? Not a mean one or a contrary one, a scared one. Did you try to bully it? If you did, what happened?”

“Beside the point. You can’t handle things like this by thinking up fables.”

“Maybe not. I’m just illustrating. You called Molleson a rabbit. You couldn’t have said a worse thing because of course that’s what he is. I tell you, Mr. Denham, it is an absolutely desperate situation and we can’t afford to make any mistakes at all. I’m sorry Mr. Drew got you and the others down here; it makes it harder instead of easier. You’re so used to obedience that you think it meets all demands. We’ve got to have more than obedience from the Vice-President, we have to have courage from him. It isn’t a question of his not wanting to; of course he wants to. He’s scared. I can’t think of a poorer way to talk courage into a man than to tell him he’s a rabbit.”

Denham stared briefly. Being a dominant and masterful man, he could not very well continue on that line except by
firing Voorman from his job, and that at the moment was impractical. So he switched: “We’ve got to have war this week.”

“I know that. We may get it.”

“We must get it. The Russians have been pushed across the Tunguska River. Another month will finish them. There will be soviets in Berlin and Rome in two weeks and the fronts will crumble. Federal Steel sold today at twenty-eight. The day our warships leave the coast the market will triple its prices in three hours.”

“Yes. Oh yes.” Voorman’s tone carried soft smooth impatience. “That is the necessity; the point is how to satisfy it. My advice regarding the Vice-President has been ignored; he has been badly handled. There’s no use trying to force him to commit himself because he never does. What was needed with him was to get the idea in his head, get him gently accustomed to it, and give him the feeling that he will have a preponderance of support behind him. That’s as far as he can be got until the Attorney-General is ready to act.”

“And where’s the Attorney-General? Sitting over there with that crew of half-baked—”

“Of course. Mr. Davis would be where he belongs; with the Cabinet. He’s not like Molleson; he has plenty of courage, he likes action; and he is totally impervious to any pressure we might try to use on him. He has imagination; he is patriotic, and he fiercely resents the restrictions by force which the belligerent governments have placed upon our commerce and the movements of our citizens. The men—”

“That’s double-edged. They’re all doing that.”

“But it isn’t feasible, even for Mr. Davis, to enter both sides of a war. He must choose, and of course the choice is made. The men in the best position to swing him will be with him tonight, at Corcoran’s. They have been carefully selected, and they will be there. If they put it to him right he’ll like it, and if he likes it he’ll waste no time doing it. He’ll go to Molleson tomorrow morning and tell him that the Attorney-General is prepared to issue an opinion that the office of President is vacant under the Constitution, and that Molleson is therefore President of the United States. He knows Molleson as well as I do, and he will know how to handle him; he will not mention war; he will simply tell him he is President of the United States. With the bait offered like that, Molleson will be unable to resist it. Davis will render the opinion,
Molleson will assume the office, and then will be the time for our avalanche which he will be even less able to resist. We can get the declaration of war before sundown tomorrow.”

“Wardell will fight, and Liggett. And Sterling and Jackman—they’ll have Molleson enjoined.”

“By whom? The Supreme Court will not act. Where is the judge who will dare to assume jurisdiction? Anyway, there will be no time. Before a move can be agreed upon and made, war will have been declared. Then who can stop it? Not even Stanley himself … should he return an hour after the declaration.”

Denham considered. His eyes were half-closed, his loose self-indulgent lips pushed together, his head down onto his shoulders. With the slow vagueness of undirected movement, his right hand felt for the coat pocket of the miraculous brown suit, found it, and came forth again. He realized there was something in his hand and brought it up to open the tooled leather cigar case. It was empty.

“You got a cigar, Voorman?”

“I smoke cigarettes. There are some in the humidor.”

“Panatelas. I’d just as soon suck a straw.—Voorman. We’re paying you sixty thousand a year?”

“For a while, you have been.”

“You earn it. Where have you put the President?”

The lobbyist’s sensitive mouth twisted, and the yellow-green eyes laughed. The sudden laugh in them was startling. “No, Mr. Denham. Sixty thousand a year wouldn’t pay for that.”

“I know it wouldn’t. You may expect to get paid. Where is he?”

“I haven’t a ghost of an idea. Like everyone else, I have a guess, but I wouldn’t draw to it to save an ante.”

“Correct.” Denham nodded. “You won’t trust even me. Quite correct. I understand they’ve searched your house.”

“They’ve searched half the houses in Washington. No, sir, on that I wouldn’t trust even you, if the question presented itself. But it hasn’t. It doesn’t.”

“That’s straight?”

“As straight as a projectile from one of your guns.”

“What’s your guess?”

“George Milton.” Voorman shrugged his shoulders. “Not by evidence, not even by intuition, just for the sake of a guess. It hangs on two pegs: his money feeds the Gray Shirts,
no doubt of that; and he is too positive of his own theory regarding the President’s disappearance.”

“He’s always positive.”

“Yes. But never about anything so improbable as his idea that the President is in ambush in the White House, awaiting his opportunity to crush us. It’s nonsense. The White House has been searched; and anyway a thing like that couldn’t be done, there would have to be too many in on it. I don’t believe it. George Milton says we underrate Stanley. He pretends to no interest in the enterprise with Molleson and Davis; he says it can come to nothing because Stanley is ready and waiting for us. Preposterous. That’s why I guess George Milton. Look at him, sitting there. He’s letting us do it, and we’ll do it.”