The Other Side of Midnight

by Sidney Sheldon

  Once when they had had a great deal of work to catch up on, Fraser had asked Catherine to have dinner with him at his home so that they could work late. Talmadge, Fraser's chauffeur, was waiting with the limousine in front of the building. Several secretaries coming out of the building watched with knowing eyes as Fraser ushered Catherine into the back seat of the car and slid in next to her. The limousine glided smoothly into the late afternoon traffic.

  "I'm going to ruin your reputation," Catherine said.

  Fraser laughed. "I'll give you some advice. If you ever want to have an affair with a public figure, do it out in the open."

  "What about catching cold?"

  He grinned. "I meant, take your paramour--if they still use that word--out to public places, well-known restaurants, theaters."

  "Shakespearean plays?" Catherine asked innocently.

  Fraser ignored it. "People are always looking for devious motives. They'll say to themselves, 'Uh-huh, he's taking so-and-so out in public. I wonder who he's seeing secretly.' People never believe the obvious."

  "It's an interesting theory."

  "Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a story based on deceiving people with the obvious," Fraser said. "I don't recall the name of it."

  "It was Edgar Allen Poe. 'The Purloined Letter.'" The moment Catherine said it, she wished she hadn't. Men did not like smart girls. But then what did it matter? She was not his girl, she was his secretary.

  They rode the rest of the way in silence.

  Fraser's home in Georgetown was something out of a picture book. It was a four-story Georgian house that must have been over two hundred years old. The door was opened by a butler in a white jacket. Fraser said, "Frank, this is Miss Alexander."

  "Hello, Frank. We've talked on the phone," Catherine said.

  "Yes, ma'am. It's nice to meet you, Miss Alexander."

  Catherine looked at the reception hall. It had a beautiful old staircase leading to the second floor, its oak wood burnished to a sheen. The floor was marble, and overhead was a dazzling chandelier.

  Fraser studied her face. "Like it?" he asked.

  "Like it? Oh, yes!"

  He smiled, and Catherine wondered if she had sounded too enthusiastic, like a girl who was attracted by wealth, like one of those aggressive females who were always chasing him. "It's...it's pleasant," she added lamely.

  Fraser was looking at her mockingly, and Catherine had the terrible feeling that he could read her thoughts. "Come into the study."

  Catherine followed him into a large book-lined room done in dark paneling. It had an aura of another age, the graciousness of an easier, friendlier way of life.

  Fraser was studying her. "Well?" he asked gravely.

  Catherine was not going to be caught again. "It's smaller than the Library of Congress," she said, defensively.

  He laughed aloud. "You're right."

  Frank came into the room carrying a silver ice bucket. He set it on top of the bar in the corner. "What time would you like dinner, Mr. Fraser?"

  "Seven-thirty."

  "I'll tell the cook." Frank left the room.

  "What may I fix you to drink?"

  "Nothing, thank you."

  He looked over at her. "Don't you drink, Catherine?"

  "Not when I'm working," she said. "I get my p's and o's mixed up."

  "You mean p's and q's, don't you?"

  "P's and o's. They're next to each other on the typewriter."

  "I didn't know."

  "You're not supposed to. That's why you pay me a king's ransom every week."

  "What do I pay you?" Fraser asked.

  "Thirty dollars and dinner in the most beautiful house in Washington."

  "You're sure you won't change your mind about that drink?"

  "No, thank you," Catherine said.

  Fraser mixed a martini for himself, and Catherine wandered around the room looking at the books. There were all the traditional classic titles and, in addition, a whole section of books in Italian and another section in Arabic.

  Fraser walked over to her side. "You don't really speak Italian and Arabic, do you?" Catherine asked.

  "Yes. I lived in the Middle East for a few years and learned Arabic."

  "And the Italian?"

  "I went with an Italian actress for a while."

  Her face flushed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

  Fraser looked at her, his eyes filled with amusement, and Catherine felt like a schoolgirl. She was not sure whether she hated William Fraser or loved him. Of one thing she was sure. He was the nicest man she had ever known.

  Dinner was superb. All the dishes were French with divine sauces. The dessert was Cherries Jubilee. No wonder Fraser worked out at the club three mornings a week.

  "How is it?" Fraser asked her.

  "It's not like the food in the commissary," she said and smiled.

  Fraser laughed. "I must eat in the commissary one day."

  "I wouldn't if I were you."

  He looked at her. "Food that bad?"

  "It's not the food. It's the girls. They'd mob you."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "They talk about you all the time."

  "You mean they ask questions about me?"

  "I'll say,"' she grinned.

  "I imagine when they're through, they must feel frustrated by the lack of information."

  She shook her head. "Wrong. I make up all kinds of stories about you."

  Fraser was leaning back in his chair, relaxing over a brandy. "What kind of stories?"

  "Are you sure you want to hear?"

  "Positive."

  "Well, I tell them that you're an ogre and that you scream at me all day long."

  He grinned. "Not all day long."

  "I tell them that you're a nut about hunting and that you carry a loaded rifle around the office while you dictate and I'm constantly afraid that it'll go off and kill me."

  "That must hold their interest."

  "They're having a fine time trying to figure out the real you."

  "Have you figured out the real me?" Fraser's tone had become serious.

  She looked into his bright blue eyes for a moment, then turned away. "I think so," she said.

  "Who am I?"

  Catherine felt a sudden tension within her. The bantering was over and a new note had crept into the conversation. An exciting note, a disturbing note. She did not answer.

  Fraser looked at her for a moment, then smiled. "I'm a dull subject. More dessert?"

  "No, thank you. I won't eat again for a week." "Let's go to work."

  They worked until midnight. Fraser saw Catherine to the door, and Talmadge was waiting outside to drive her back to the apartment.

  She thought about Fraser all the way home. His strength, his humor, his compassion. Someone had once said that a man had to be very strong before he could allow himself to be gentle. William Fraser was very strong. This evening had been one of the nicest evenings of Catherine's life and it worried her. She was afraid that she might turn into one of those jealous secretaries who sits around the office all day hating every girl who telephones her boss. Well, she was not going to allow that to happen. Every eligible female in Washington was throwing herself at Fraser's head. She was not going to join the crowd.

  When Catherine returned to the apartment, Susie was waiting up for her. She pounced on Catherine the moment she came in.

  "Give!" Susie demanded. "What happened?"

  "Nothing happened," Catherine replied. "We had dinner."

  Susie stared at her incredulously. "Didn't he even make a pass at you?"

  "No, of course not."

  Susie sighed. "I should have known it. He was afraid to."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "What I mean by that, sweetie, is that you come off like the Virgin Mary. He was probably afraid if he laid a finger on you, you'd scream 'rape' and faint dead away."

  Catherine felt her cheeks redden. "I'm not interested in him that way," she said st
iffly. "And I don't come off like the Virgin Mary." I come off like the Virgin Catherine. Dear old Saint Catherine. All she had done was to move her holy headquarters to Washington. Nothing else had changed. She was still doing business at the same old church.

  During the next six months Fraser was away a good deal. He made trips to Chicago and San Francisco and to Europe. There was always enough work to keep Catherine busy, and yet the office seemed lonely and empty with Fraser gone.

  There was a constant stream of interesting visitors, most of them men, and Catherine found herself barraged with invitations. She had her choice of lunches, dinners, trips to Europe and bed. She accepted none of the invitations, partly because she was not interested in any of the men but mostly because she felt that Fraser would not approve of her mixing business with pleasure. If Fraser was aware of the constant opportunities she declined, he said nothing. The day after she had had dinner with him at his home he had given her a ten-dollar-a-week raise.

  It seemed to Catherine that there was a change in the tempo of the city. People were moving faster, becoming more tense. The headlines screamed of a constant series of invasions and crises in Europe. The fall of France had affected Americans more deeply than the other swift-moving events in Europe, for they felt a sense of personal violation, a loss of liberty in a country that was one of the cradles of Liberty.

  Norway had fallen, England was fighting for its life in the battle of Britain and a pact had been signed between Germany, Italy and Japan. There was a growing feeling of inevitability that America was going to get into the war. Catherine asked Fraser about it one day.

  "I think it's just a question of time before we get involved," he said thoughtfully. "If England can't stop Hitler, we're going to have to."

  "But Senator Borah says..."

  "The symbol of the America Firsters should be an ostrich," Fraser commented angrily.

  "What will you do if there's a war?"

  "Be a hero," he said.

  Catherine visualized him handsome in an officer's uniform going off to war, and she hated the idea. It seemed stupid to her that in this enlightened age people should still think they could solve their differences by murdering one another.

  "Don't worry, Catherine," Fraser said. "Nothing will happen for a while. And when it does happen, we'll be ready for it."

  "What about England?" she asked. "If Hitler decides to invade, will it be able to stand up against him? He has so many tanks and planes and they have nothing."

  "They will have," Fraser assured her. "Very soon."

  He had changed the subject, and they had gone back to work.

  One week later the headlines were filled with the news of Roosevelt's new concept of lend-lease. So Fraser had known about it and had tried to reassure her without revealing any information.

  The weeks went by swiftly. Catherine accepted an occasional date, but each time she found herself comparing her escort to William Fraser, and she wondered why she bothered going with anyone. She was aware that she had backed herself into a bad emotional corner, but she did not know how to get out of it. She told herself that she was merely infatuated with Fraser and would get over it, but meanwhile her feelings kept her from enjoying the company of other men because they all fell so far short of him.

  Late one evening as Catherine was working, Fraser came back to the office unexpectedly after attending a play. She looked up, startled, as he walked in.

  "What in hell are we running here?" he growled. "A slave ship?"

  "I wanted to finish this report," she said, "so you could take it with you to San Francisco tomorrow."

  "You could have mailed it to me," he replied. He sat down in a chair opposite Catherine and studied her. "Don't you have better things to do with your evenings than get out dull reports?" he asked.

  "I happened to be free this evening."

  Fraser leaned back in the chair, folded his fingers together and dropped them under his chin, staring at her. "Do you remember what you said the first day you walked into this office?"

  "I said a lot of silly things."

  "You said you didn't want to be a secretary. You wanted to be my assistant."

  She smiled. "I didn't know any better."

  "You do now."

  She looked up at him. "I don't understand."

  "It's very simple, Catherine," he said quietly. "For the past three months, you've really been my assistant. Now I'm going to make it official."

  She stared at him, unbelievingly. "Are you sure that you...?"

  "I didn't give you the title or a salary raise sooner because I didn't want it to scare you. But now you know you can do it."

  "I don't know what to say," Catherine stammered. "I--you won't be sorry, Mr. Fraser."

  "I'm sorry already. My assistants always call me Bill."

  "Bill."

  Later that night as Catherine lay in bed, she remembered how he had looked at her and how it had made her feel, and it was a long time before she was able to go to sleep.

  Catherine had written to her father several times asking him when he was coming to Washington to visit her. She was eager to show him around the city and introduce him to her friends and to Bill Fraser. She had received no reply to her last two letters. Worried, she telephoned her uncle's house in Omaha. Her uncle answered the phone.

  "Cathy! I--I was just about to call you."

  Catherine's heart sank.

  "How's father?"

  There was a brief pause.

  "He's had a stroke. I wanted to call you sooner but your father asked me to wait until he was better."

  Catherine gripped the receiver.

  "Is he better?"

  "I'm afraid not, Cathy," her uncle's voice said. "He's paralyzed."

  "I'm on my way," Catherine said.

  She went in to Bill Fraser and told him the news.

  "I'm sorry," Fraser said. "What can I do to help?"

  "I don't know. I want to go to him right away, Bill."

  "Of course." And he picked up a telephone and began to make calls. His chauffeur drove Catherine to her apartment, where she threw some clothes into a suitcase, and then took her to the airport, where Fraser had arranged a plane reservation for her.

  When the plane landed at the Omaha airport, Catherine's aunt and uncle were there to meet her, and one look at their faces told her that she was too late. They drove in silence to the funeral parlor and as Catherine entered the building she was filled with an ineffable sense of loss, of loneliness. A part of her had died and could never be recovered. She was ushered into the small chapel. Her father's body was lying in a simple coffin wearing his best suit. Time had shrunk him, as though the constant abrasion of living had worn him down and made him smaller. Her uncle had handed Catherine her father's personal effects, the accumulations and treasures of a lifetime, and they consisted of fifty dollars in cash, some old snapshots, a few receipted bills, a wristwatch, a tarnished silver penknife and a collection of her letters to him, neatly tied with a piece of string and dog-eared from constant reading. It was a pitiful legacy for any man to have left, and Catherine's heart broke for her father. His dreams were so big and his successes so small. She remembered how alive and vital he had been when she was a little girl and the excitement when he came home from the road with his pockets full of money and his arms full of presents. She remembered his wonderful inventions that never quite worked. It wasn't much to remember, but it was all there was left of him. There were suddenly so many things Catherine wanted to say to him, so much she wanted to do for him; and it would always be too late.

  They buried her father in the small graveyard next to the church. Catherine had planned on spending the night with her aunt and uncle and taking the train back the next day, but suddenly she could not bear to stay a moment longer, and she called the airport and made a reservation on the next plane to Washington. Bill Fraser was at the airport to meet her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to be there, waiting for her, taking care o
f her when she needed him.

  He took Catherine to an old country inn in Virginia for dinner, and he listened while she talked about her father. In the middle of telling a funny story about him, Catherine began to cry, but strangely she felt no embarrassment in front of Bill Fraser.

  He suggested that Catherine take some time off, but she wanted to keep busy, wanted to keep her mind filled with anything but the death of her father. She slipped into the habit of having dinner with Fraser once or twice a week, and Catherine felt closer to him than ever before.

  It happened without any planning or forethought. They had been working late at the office. Catherine was checking some papers and sensed Bill Fraser standing in back of her. His fingers touched her neck, slowly and caressingly.

  "Catherine..."

  She turned to look up at him and an instant later she was in his arms. It was as though they had kissed a thousand times before, as though this was her past as well as her future, where she had always belonged.

  It's this simple, Catherine thought. It's always been this simple, but I didn't know it.

  "Get your coat, darling," Bill Fraser said. "We're going home."

  In the car driving to Georgetown they sat close together, Fraser's arm around Catherine, gentle and protective. She had never known such happiness. She was sure she was in love with him, and it did not matter if he was not in love with her. He was fond of her, and she would settle for that. When she thought of what she had been willing to settle for before--Ron Peterson--she shuddered.

  "Anything wrong?" Fraser asked.

  Catherine thought of the motel room with the dirty cracked mirror. She looked at the strong intelligent face of the man with his arm around her. "Not now," she said gratefully. She swallowed. "I have to tell you something. I'm a virgin."

  Fraser smiled and shook his head in wonder. "It's incredible," he said. "How did I wind up with the only virgin in the city of Washington?"

  "I tried to correct it," Catherine said earnestly, "but it just didn't work out."

  "I'm glad it didn't," Fraser said.

  "You mean you don't mind?"