A. R. Butler was on his feet again. Some, though not all, of the apparent good humour had returned. But behind him Edgar Kramer was scowling.
'My lord, I wish to announce that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, having regard to Your Lordship's wishes - though not, I would point out, legally bound to do so - has decided to hold a special inquiry into the case of my friend's client, Mr Duval.'
Leaning forward, Mr Justice Willis said sharply, 'I expressed no wish.'
'If Your Lordship pleases...'
'I expressed no wish,' the judge repeated firmly. 'If the department chooses to hold a hearing, it is its own decision. But there has been no pressure from this source. Is that clearly understood, Mr Butler?'
A. R. Butler appeared to swallow. 'Yes, my lord, it is understood.'
Facing Alan, the judge asked sternly, 'Are you satisfied, Mr Maitland?'
Alan rose, 'Yes, my lord,' he answered. 'Entirely satisfied.'
There was a second hurried consultation between A. R. Butler and Edgar Kramer. The latter appeared to be making an emphatic point. The lawyer nodded several times and, at the end, was smiling. Now he faced the judge again.
'There is one further point, my lord.'
'Yes?'
Glancing sideways towards Alan, A. R. Butler asked, 'Would Mr Maitland be free for further consultation on this matter later today?'
Mr Justice Willis frowned. This was time wasting. Private meetings between opposing counsel were no business of the court's.
With a sense of embarrassment for Butler, Alan nodded and answered, 'Yes.' Now that he had gained his objective there was no point, he thought, in being uncooperative.
Ignoring the judge's frown, A. R. Butler said blandly, 'I am glad of Mr Maitland's assurance on that point because in view of the special circumstances it would seem expedient to bring on this matter promptly. Therefore the Department of Citizenship and Immigration proposes to hold the special inquiry later today at a time convenient to Mr Maitland and his client.'
He had, Alan realized glumly, been neatly hooked by an expert angler. Except for his own too eager assent of a moment earlier, he could have objected to the short notice, pleaded other business...
The score, if you thought of it that way, was even.
The austere gaze of Mr Justice Willis was upon him. 'We may as well settle this. Is that agreeable, Mr Maitland?'
Alan hesitated, then glanced at Tom Lewis who shrugged. They shared the same thought, Alan knew: that once more Edgar Kramer had foreseen and forestalled their plan of delaying tactics - the only real resource they had. Now, with the special inquiry this afternoon, even the legal steps to follow might not last long enough to keep Henri Duval ashore until the Vastervik sailed. Victory, which a moment ago had seemed within reach, had now receded.
Reluctantly Alan said, 'Yes, my lord - agreeable.'
As A. R. Butler smiled benignly, the reporters scrambled for the door. Only one figure was ahead of them - Edgar Kramer, his face strained and body tense, was hurrying, almost running, from the courtroom.
Chapter 2
As Alan Maitland left the courtroom he was surrounded by a half-dozen reporters who had returned from telephoning their stories.
'Mr Maitland, what are the chances now?'... 'When do we get to see Duval?' ... 'Hey, Maitland! - what's with this special inquiry?' ... 'Yeah, what's so special about it?' ... 'Tell us about that writ business. Did you get the wrong one?'
'No; Alan snapped. 'I didn't.'
More reporters were joining the group, partially blocking the already busy corridor.
'Then what the...'
'Look,' Alan protested, 'I can't talk about a case that's still under way. You all know that.'
'Explain that to my editor, chum...'
'For crying out loud, give us something!'
'All right,' Alan said. There was an immediate quietening. The group pressed in as people from other courts pushed by.
'The situation is simply that the Department of Immigration has agreed to hold a special inquiry into my client's case.'
Some of the passers-by looked at Alan curiously.
'Who does the inquiring?'
'Usually a senior immigration officer.'
'Will young Duval be present?'
'Of course,' Alan said. 'He has to answer questions.'
'How about you?'
'Yes, I'll be there.'
'Where is it held - this hearing?'
'At the Immigration Building.'
'Can we get in?'
'No. It's a departmental inquiry and it isn't open to the public or the Press.'
'Will there be a statement afterwards?'
'You'll have to ask Mr Kramer about that.'
Someone murmured: 'That stiff-necked sod!'
'What good will a hearing do if you couldn't get Duval in the country already?'
'Sometimes at a proper inquiry new facts come out which are important.' But it was only a slender hope, Alan knew. Any real chance for the youthful stowaway lay in legal delay, which now had been circumvented.
'What's your feeling about what happened this morning?'
'Sorry. I can't discuss that.'
Tom Lewis appeared quietly beside Alan.
'Hi; Alan greeted him. 'Where'd you disappear to?'
His partner replied softly, 'I was curious about Kramer, so I followed him out. Well, did you fix a time with your buddy, Butler?'
'I talked to him. We agreed on four o'clock;
A reporter asked, 'What was that?'
Alan answered, 'The special inquiry is to be held at four o'clock. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a lot to do before then.'
Disengaging himself from the group, he moved away with Tom Lewis.
Out of the reporters' hearing Alan asked, 'What was that about Kramer?'
'Nothing really. He was just in a hurry to get to the can. While I was there I hung out beside him and for a minute or two he seemed almost in pain. I figured the poor bastard has some kind of prostate trouble.'
It explained Edgar Kramer's restlessness in court, the obvious distress towards the end. The fact was insignificant; all the same, Alan filed it away mentally.
Walking along, they had come to the wide stone stairway leading to the main floor below.
A soft voice behind them said, 'Mr Maitland, could you answer one more question?'
'I already explained...' Alan turned, then stopped. 'All I wanted to know,' Sharon Deveraux said, her deep eyes innocent, 'was where are you going to lunch?'
Startled and pleased, Alan asked, 'Where did you spring from?'
'Spring is the word,' Tom said. He was looking at Sharon's hat, a wispy affair of velvet and net veiling. 'You remind me of it.'
'I was in court,' Sharon smiled. 'I snuck in at the back. I didn't understand it all, but I thought Alan was wonderful, didn't you?'
'Oh, sure,' Tom Lewis said. 'Of course, he just happened to have the judge in his pocket, but he was wonderful, all right.' 'Aren't lawyers supposed to be responsive?' Sharon said.
'No one's answered my question about lunch.'
'I hadn't planned anything,' Alan said, then brightened. 'Right by our office we could offer you a nice line in pizza pie.'
Together they began walking down the stairs, Sharon between them.
'Or streaming, creamy spaghetti,' Tom urged. 'With oozy hot meat sauce - the kind that trickles out both corners of your mouth and meets in rivulets at the chin.'
Sharon laughed. 'Some day I'd love to. What I really came to say, though, is that Granddaddy wondered if you could join him. He'd very much like to hear from you directly how things are going.'
The prospect of accompanying Sharon anywhere was enticing. All the same, Alan looked doubtfully at his watch.
'It needn't take long,' Sharon assured him. 'Granddaddy has a suite in the Georgia. He keeps it for when he's downtown, and he's there now.'
'You mean,' Tom asked curiously, 'he rents a suite there all the time?'
'I know.' Sharon nodded. 'It's dreadfully extravagant and
I'm always telling him so. Sometimes it goes for weeks without being used.'
'Oh, I wouldn't worry about that,' Tom told her airily. 'I'm just sorry I've never thought of it myself. Only the day before yesterday I was caught in a shower downtown with just a drugstore to go into.'
Sharon laughed again. At the foot of the stairs they halted.
For an instant Tom Lewis switched his glance between the faces of the other two: Sharon, lighthearted, unself-conscious;
Alan, at the moment serious, thoughtful, with a part of his mind still back in the courtroom where this morning's hearing had been held. And yet for all the outward difference, Tom Lewis thought, there was a warm affinity between the two. He suspected they could care about the same things. He wondered if they were aware of it yet.
Remembering his wife at home, pregnant, Tom gave an inward nostalgic sigh for carefree, single days.
'I'd love to come,' Alan said, meaning it. He took Sharon's arm. 'But do you mind if we hurry a bit? I have to be at that inquiry this afternoon.' There was just enough time, he decided - as a matter of courtesy - to fill Senator Deveraux in on the background of events so far.
Sharon asked, 'You'll join us as well, Mr Lewis, won't you?'
Tom shook his head. 'Thanks all the same, but this isn't my show. I'll walk to the hotel with you, though.'
With Alan and Tom on either side of the Senator's granddaughter, they left the echoing lobby of the Supreme Court Building by the Hornby Street side door. The cold of the narrow cavernous street outside was a sharp, biting contrast to the building's warm interior. A bitter blast of wind caught, and for a moment held them, and Sharon pulled her sable-trimmed coat tightly around her. She had a sense of pleasure at Alan's nearness.
'The weather's from the sea,' Tom said. There was a sidewalk excavation ahead and he led the way, jaywalking through traffic, to the northwest side of Hornby, turning towards West Georgia. 'It must be the coldest day of winter.'
With one hand Sharon was holding her impractical hat tightly. She told Alan, 'Every time I think of the sea I think of our stowaway, and what it must be like never going ashore. Is the ship as bad as the newspapers say?' He answered curtly, 'Worse, if anything.' 'Shall you mind very much - I mean really mind - if you don't win?'
With a vehemence that surprised himself Alan answered, 'I shall mind like hell. I shall wonder what kind of rotten, stinking country I belong to which can turn away someone homeless like this: a good man, young, who'd be an asset...'
Tom Lewis asked quietly, 'Are you sure about being an asset?'
'Yes.' Alan sounded surprised. 'Aren't you?'
'No,' Tom said. 'I don't think I am.'
'Why?' It was Sharon's question. They had come to West Georgia Street, waited for the lights, then crossed on green. 'Tell me why,' Sharon insisted. 'I don't know,' Tom said. They re-crossed Hornby, reached the Georgia Hotel and stopped, sheltering a little from the wind by the front entrance door. There was a dampness in the air which spoke of rain to come. 'I don't know,' Tom repeated. 'It isn't something you can put a finger on. A sort of instinct, I guess.'
Alan asked abruptly, 'What makes you feel that way?'
'When I served the captain's order nisi I talked to Duval. I asked you if I could meet him, remember?'
Alan nodded. 'Well, I did, and tried to like him. But I had a feeing there was a flaw somewhere; a weakness. It was almost as if he had a crack down the middle - maybe not his own fault, maybe something his background put there.' 'What kind of a crack?' Alan frowned. 'I told you it wasn't something I could be specific about.
But I had a feeling that if we get him ashore and make him an immigrant, he'll come apart in pieces.'
Sharon said, 'Isn't that all rather vague?' She had a feeling of defensiveness, as if something Alan cared about were being assailed.
'Yes,' Tom answered. 'It's why I haven't mentioned it till now.'
'I don't think you're right,' Alan said shortly. 'But even if you are it doesn't change the legal situation - his rights and all the rest.'
'I know,' Tom Lewis said. 'That's what I keep telling myself.' He pulled his coat collar tighter, preparing to turn away. 'Anyhow, good luck this afternoon!'
Chapter 3
The substantial double doors of the twelfth-floor hotel suite were open as Alan and Sharon approached, along a carpeted corridor, from the elevator. All the way up, from the moment they had left Tom Lewis in the street below, he had had an exciting awareness of their closeness to each other. It still persisted as, through the doorway of the suite, Alan could see an elderly uniformed waiter transferring the contents of a room-service trolley - apparently a buffet luncheon - to a white-clothed table in the room's centre.
Senator Deveraux was seated in an upholstered wing chair, his back to the doorway, facing the harbour view which the centre window of the suite's living-room commanded. At the sound of Sharon's and Alan's entry he turned his head without rising.
'Well, Sharon my dear, my compliments to you for successfully ensnaring the hero of the hour.' The Senator offered Alan his hand. 'Allow me to congratulate you, my boy, on a most remarkable success.'
Alan took the proffered hand. Momentarily he was shocked to see how much frailer and aged the Senator appeared than at their last meeting. The old man's face had a marked pallor, its earlier ruddiness gone, and his voice, by comparison, was weak.
"There hasn't been a success by any means,' Alan said uncomfortably. 'Not even much of a dent, I'm afraid.'
'Nonsense, my boy! - even though your modesty becomes you. Why, a moment ago I was listening to a paean of praise about you on the radio news.'
'What did they say?' Sharon asked. 'It was described as a clear-cut victory for the forces of humanity against the monstrous tyranny of our existing Government.'
Alan asked doubtfully, 'Did they actually use those words?'
The Senator waved a hand airily. 'I may have paraphrased a little, but that was the gist of it all. And Alan Maitland, that young upstanding lawyer, justly armed, was described as having routed the opposing forces.'
'If someone really said that, they may have some fancy backtracking to do.' The elderly waiter was hovering beside them and Alan slipped off his overcoat, handing it to the man, who hung it in a closet, then discreetly left. Sharon disappeared through an adjoining door. Alan's eyes followed her, then he moved to a window seat and sat facing the Senator. 'We gained a temporary advantage, it's true. But through a piece of stupidity I managed to lose part of it.' He related what happened at judge's chambers and his own final outwitting by A.
R. Butler.
Senator Deveraux nodded sagely. 'Even so, I would say your efforts have produced a splendid outcome.'
'So they did,' Sharon said, returning to join them. She had taken off her outdoor clothes, revealing a soft woollen dress.
'Alan was simply magnificent.'
Alan smiled resignedly. It seemed useless to protest. 'All the same,' he said, 'we're a long way from getting Henri Duval admitted here as a landed immigrant.'
The older man made no immediate answer, his eyes returning to the waterfront and harbour spread beneath them. Turning his head, Alan could see Burrard Inlet, spume flecked from the streaming wind, the North Shore whipped by spray. A ship was leaving port - a grain boat, low in the water, laden; from the markings it looked Japanese. A Vancouver Island ferry headed in, cutting white water through the First Narrows, beginning a wide starboard turn towards the CPR pier. Elsewhere were other arrivals, departures: of ships and men, cargoes, commerce, the weft and warp of a busy deep-sea port.
At length the Senator said, 'Well, of course, in the end we may not achieve that final objective of landing our stowaway. One can win battles and lose a war. But never underestimate the importance of the battles, my boy, particularly, in political affairs.'
'I. think we've gone over that. Senator,' Alan rejoined. 'I'm not concerned about the p
olitics, just in doing the best I can for my client!'
'Indeed! Indeed!' The old man's voice, for the first time held a trace of testiness. 'And I think you'll allow that you lose no opportunity to point it out. Sometimes, if I may say so, there is nothing quite so tedious as the self-righteousness of the very young.'
Alan flushed at the rebuke.
'But you'll forgive an old campaigner,' the Senator said, 'if I rejoice in the discomfiture which, in certain quarters, your resourceful actions have aroused.'
'I guess there's no harm in that.' Alan tried to make the remark sound light. He had an uncomfortable feeling of having been boorish without need.
Behind them a telephone bell rang. The room-service waiter, who had quietly reappeared, answered. The man moved familiarly around, Alan noticed, as if he were used to the habits of this private suite and had served the Senator many times before.
To Alan and Sharon the Senator said, 'Why don't you two young people have lunch? It's there behind you. I think you'll find whatever you need.'
'All right,' Sharon said. 'But aren't you having something, Granddaddy?'
The Senator shook his head. 'Perhaps later, my dear; not now.'
The waiter put down the telephone and came forward. He announced, 'It's your call to Ottawa, Senator, and they have Mr Bonar Deitz on the line. Will you take it here?'
'No, I'll go in the bedroom.' The old man eased upward in the chair, then, as if the effort were too much for him, fell back. 'Dear me, I seem to be a little heavy today.'
Concernedly, Sharon came to his side. 'Granddaddy, you shouldn't try to do so much!'
'Stuff and nonsense!' The Senator reached out, taking
Sharon's hands, and she helped him to his feet.
'May I, sir?' Alan offered his arm. 'No, thank you, my boy. I'm not ready for cripplehood yet.
It's merely to overcome gravity that I need some trifling help. Perambulation I've always managed myself and always shall, I hope.'
In High Places Page 30
