Ending the war had been simple. But now the Sentinel had to print the truth of the postwar adjustments. Domestically these seemed to be working fine, at the moment. Demobilization was being carried out smoothly and gradually, and the startling technological improvements matured in secrecy during wartime were now bursting forth to take up the slack in peacetime production.
The international scene was more difficult. The willful nationalism of a few misguided senators threatened to ruin any possible adjustment. MacVeagh had to keep those men in check, and even more difficult, he had to learn the right answers to all the problems.
The eventual aim, he felt sure, must be a world state. But of what nature? He plowed through Clarence Streit and Ely Culbertson and everything else he could lay hands on, rejecting Culbertson’s overemphasis on the nation as a unit and Streit’s narrow definition of what constitutes democracy, but finding in each essential points that had to be fitted into the whole.
MacVeagh’s desk was heavy with books and notes and card indexes, but he was not thinking of any of these things. He was thinking of Laura.
The breaking point had come that night they went out with Molly and the Gman. (Odd episode, that. Why a G-man here in peaceful Grover? And so secretive about his mission and so abrupt in his departure.) It might have been the picture that brought it on, a teary opus in which Bette Davis suffered nobly.
It was funny that he couldn’t remember the words of the scene. According to all tradition, they should be indelibly engraved on the tablets, et cetera. But he didn’t remember the words, just the general pain and torture.
Laura crying, crying with that helpless quiet desperation that is a woman’s way of drowning her sorrows. Himself, puzzled, hurt, trying to help and comfort her. Laura shuddering away from his touch. Laura talking in little gasps between her sobs about how he was nice and she liked him and he was so good to her, but she didn’t understand, she never had understood how she made up her mind to marry him and she would try to be a good wife, she did want to, but—
He remembered those words. They were the only ones that stayed indelible: “—I just don’t love you.”
He had quieted her finally and left her red-eyed but sleeping. He had slept that night, and all the nights since then, in the guest room that some day was to be converted into a nursery.
Was to have been converted.
There’s a catch, Molly said. Always a catch. You can make your marriage true, but your wife’s love—
A man isn’t fit to be God. A woman who cannot love you is so infinitely more important than the relation of Soviet Russia to Western Europe.
MacVeagh almost barked at Lucretius Sellers when he came in. The old printer was a regular visitor at the Sentinel. He wasn’t needed any longer, of course, with the new presses and the new staff that tended them. But he’d appointed himself an unofficial member of the Sentinel’s forces, and MacVeagh was glad, though sometimes wondering how much of the truth about the truth Luke Sellers might guess.
Tonight Luke glanced at the laden desk and grinned. “Hard at it, Johnny?” He was sober, and there was worry in his eyes behind the grin.
MacVeagh snapped his thoughts back from their desolate wanderings. “Quite a job I’ve got,” he said.
“I know. But if you’ve got a minute, Johnny—”
MacVeagh made a symbolic gesture of pushing books aside. “Sure, Luke. What’s on your mind?”
Luke Sellers was silent a little. Then, “I don’t like to talk like this, Johnny. I wouldn’t if I wasn’t afraid you’d hear it somewhere else. And Molly, even she thinks I ought to tell you. It’s getting her. She slapped Mrs. Manson’s face at the Ladies’ Aid last meeting. Not but what that’s sensible enough, but she’s generally acting funny. Sometimes I’m almost afraid maybe—”
He bogged down.
“That’s a heck of a preamble, Luke. What’s it leading up to? Here—want to oil up your larynx?”
“Thanks, Johnny. Haven’t had a drink all day—wanted to have my head clear to— But maybe this might help— Well, peace forever! Thanks.”
“OK. Now what?”
“It’s— Johnny, you’re going to kick me out of this office on my tail. But it’s about Mrs. MacVeagh.”
“Laura?”
“Now, hold on, Johnny. Hold your horses. I know there’s nothing in it, Molly knows there’s nothing in it, but it’s the way people around town are talking. She’s been seeing a lot of that manager out at the plant, what’s-his-name, Johansen. You work here late at nights, and— Phil Rogers, he saw them out at Cardotti’s roadhouse. So did Jake Willis another night. And I just wanted— Well, Johnny, I’d rather you heard it from me than down at Clem’s barber shop.”
MacVeagh’s face was taut. “It’s no news to me, Luke. I know she’s lonely when I work here. Fact is, I asked Johansen to show her a little fun. He’s a good guy. You might tell that to Mrs. Manson and the boys at Clem’s.”
Luke Sellers stood looking at MacVeagh. Then he took another drink. “I’ll spread it around, Johnny.”
“Thanks, Luke.”
“And I hope I can make it sound more convincing than you did.”
He left. John MacVeagh sat silent, and the room was full of voices.
“How does it feel, MacVeagh? What’s it like to know that your wife— No, MacVeagh, don’t rub your forehead. You’ll prick yourself on the horns—”
“Don’t listen, MacVeagh. It’s just people. People talk. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Where there’s smoke, MacVeagh— Remember? You didn’t think there was any fire in Laura, did you? But where there’s smoke there’s—”
“You could fix it, you know. You could fix it, the way you fix everything. Something could happen to Johansen.”
“Or if you haven’t the heart for that, MacVeagh, you could send him away. Have him called to Washington. That’d be a break for him too.”
“But it wouldn’t solve the problem, would it, MacVeagh? She still wouldn’t love you.”
“You don’t believe it, do you, MacVeagh? She can’t help not loving you, but she wouldn’t deceive you. You trust her, don’t you?”
“MacVeagh.”
It was some seconds before John MacVeagh realized that this last voice was not also inside his head. He looked up to see Phil Rogers, the perfect profile as hyperpale as it had been on the night of his aunt’s murder. His white hand held an automatic.
“Yes?” MacVeagh asked casually. He tensed his body and calculated positions and distances with his eyes, while he wondered furiously what this meant.
“MacVeagh, I’m going to send you to meet God.”
“My. Fancy talk.” It was difficult. MacVeagh was hemmed in by files and a table of reference books. It would be next to impossible to move before Phil Rogers could jerk his right index finger. “And just why, Phil, should you take this job on yourself?”
“Maybe I should say because you stole Laura, and now she’s making a fool of herself—and you—with that Johansen. I wanted her. I’d have had her, too. H. A. and I had it all fixed up.”
It wasn’t worth explaining that MacVeagh and Rogers had equally little just claim on Laura. “Noble,” said MacVeagh. “All for love. You’d let them stretch your neck for love, too?”
Rogers laughed. “You know me, huh, MacVeagh?”
Play for time, that was the only way. “I know you enough to think there’s a stronger motive—stronger for you.”
“You’re right there is. And you’re going to hear it before you go. Go to meet God. Wonder what He’ll think—of meeting another god.”
This was more startling than the automatic. “What do you mean by that, Phil?”
“I’ve heard Luke Sellers talking when he was drunk. About General Wigginsby and the butler’s confession. Everybody thought he was babbling. But I got it. I don’t know how it works, but your paper prints true. What you print happens.”
MacVeagh laughed. “Nonsense. Listen to Luke? You must’ve been ti
ght yourself, Phil. Go home.”
“Uh-uh.” Rogers shook his head, but his hand didn’t move. “That explains it all. All you’ve done to me. You took Laura. You shoved that softie Johansen into the general manager’s job I should have had. You got that sniveling, weak-kneed labor agreement through. You— MacVeagh, I think you ended the war!”
“And you’d hold that against me?”
“Yes. We were doing swell. Now with retooling, new products, trying to crash new markets, everything uncertain— I inherited my aunt’s interest in the company. MacVeagh, you did me out of two—three years of profits.”
“Do you think anybody’d believe this wild yarn of yours, Phil?”
“No. I don’t. I was tight, just tight enough so things made sense. I wouldn’t swallow it sober myself. But I know it’s true, and that’s why I’ve got to kill you, MacVeagh.” His voice rose to a loud, almost soprano cry.
The white hand was very steady. MacVeagh moved his body slowly to one side and watched the nose of the automatic hold its point on him. Then, with the fastest, sharpest movement he’d ever attained in his life, he thrust his chair crashing back and dropped doubled into the kneehole of his desk. The motion was just in time. He heard a bullet thud into the plaster of the wall directly behind where he’d been sitting.
His plans had been unshaped. It was simply that the desk seemed the only armor visible at the moment. And to fire directly into this kneehole would mean coming around and up close where he might possibly grab at Rogers’ legs. The wood between him and Rogers now should be thick enough to—
He heard a bullet plunk into that wood. Then he heard it go past his ear and bury itself in more wood. His guess was wrong. He could be shot in here. This bullet had gone past him as knives go past the boy in the Indian basket trick. But Phil Rogers was not a magician slipping knives into safe places, and no amount of contortion could save MacVeagh from eventually meeting one of those bullets.
He heard scuffling noises. Then he heard a thud that was that of a body, not a bullet, and with it another shot.
MacVeagh crawled out from under the desk. “Undignified posture,” he said, “but what would you do if you were hemmed in and this maniac started— Is he hurt?”
It took a while for exchange of information, MacVeagh giving a much-censored version which made it seem that Phil Rogers was suffering a motiveless breakdown of some sort, the other telling how he’d been waiting outside, heard Phil’s denunciations—though not their words—and then the shots, and decided to intervene. Rogers was so intent on his victim that attack from behind was a snap. The last shot had gone into Rogers’ own left shoulder as they struggled. Nothing serious.
“Don’t know how I can ever thank you, Johansen,” said John MacVeagh.
“Any time,” said his wife’s lover. “It’s a pleasure.”
Rogers was on his feet again now. MacVeagh turned to him and said, “Get out. I don’t care what you do or how you explain that bullet wound. I’m not bringing any charges. Get out.”
Rogers glared at them both. “I’ll settle with you, MacVeagh. You too, Johansen.”
“Uh-uh. You’re having a nervous breakdown. You’re going to a sanitarium for a while. When you come out you’ll feel fine.”
“That’s what you say.”
“Get out,” MacVeagh repeated. And as Rogers left, he jotted down a note to print the sanitarium trip and the necessary follow-ups on convalescence.
Without a word he handed a bottle to Johansen, then drank from it himself. “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t say more than that.”
The tall blond man smiled. “I won’t ask questions. I’ve had run-ins with Rogers myself. The boss’s sister’s nephew— But to tell the truth, John, I’m sorry I saved your life.”
MacVeagh stiffened. “You’ve still got his gun,” he suggested humorlessly.
“I don’t want you to lose your life. But I’m sorry I saved it. Because it makes what I have to say so much harder.”
MacVeagh sat on the edge of his desk. “Go on.”
“Cold, like this? I don’t know how I thought I was going to manage to say this— I never expected this kind of a build-up— All right, John, this is it:
“I told you once that Laura had better be happy. Well, she isn’t. I’ve been seeing her. Probably you know that. I haven’t tried to sneak about it. She doesn’t love you, John. She won’t say it, but I think she still loves me. And if I can make her happy, I’m warning you, I’ll take her away from you.”
MacVeagh said nothing.
Johansen went on hesitantly. “I know what it would mean. A scandal that would make Laura a fallen woman in the eyes of all Grover. A fight with H. A. that would end my job here and pretty much kill my chances in general. I’ll make it clear to Laura—and I think she’ll be as willing to risk it as I am.
“But I’m giving you your chance. If you can make her love you, make her happy, all right. It’s Laura that counts. But if in another month there’s still that haunted emptiness in her eyes—well, John, then it’s up to me.”
The two men stood facing each other for a moment. There were no more words. There was no possibility of words. Ingve Johansen turned and left the room.
If you can make her love you— Was this the limit to the power of the god of the Sentinel? You can’t print EDITOR’S WIFE LOVES EIIM. You can’t—or can you?
Numbly MacVeagh groped his way to the typewriter. His fingers fumbled out words.
“Women have a double task in this new peace time,” Mrs. John MacVeagh, president of the Volunteer Women Workers, stated when interviewed yesterday.
“Like all other citizens, women must take part in the tasks of reconstruction,” said the lovely Mrs. MacVeagh, nee Laura Hitchcock. “But woman’s prime job in reconstruction is assuring happiness in the home. A man’s usefulness to society must depend largely on the love of his wife. I feel that I am doing good work here with the VWW, but I consider the fact that I love my husband my most important contribution to Grover’s welfare.”
MacVeagh sat back and looked at it. His head ached and his mouth tasted foul. Neither a pipe nor a drink helped. He reread what he’d written. Was this the act of a god—or of a louse?
But it had to be. He knew Laura well enough to know that she’d never stand up under the scandal and ostracism that Johansen proposed, no matter how eagerly she might think she welcomed them. As Ingve had said, it’s Laura that counts.
It is so easy to find the most flattering motives for oneself.
He wrote a short item announcing I. L. Johansen’s resignation as manager of the Hitchcock plant and congratulating him on his appointment to the planning board of the new OPR, the Office of Peacetime Reconstruction. He was typing the notice of Philip Rogers’ departure for a sanitarium, phrased with euphemistic clarity, when Luke Sellers came back.
Luke had been gone an hour. Plenty had happened here in that hour, but more where Luke Sellers had been. The old printer had aged a seeming ten years.
He kept twitching at his little scraggle of white beard, and his eyes didn’t focus anywhere. His lips at first had no power to shape words. They twisted hopefully, but what came through them was just sound.
“Molly—” Luke said at last.
John MacVeagh stood up sharply. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Molly— Told you I was worried about her—”
“She— No! She hasn’t! She couldn’t!”
“Iodine. Gulped it down. Messy damned way. Doc Quillan hasn’t much hope—”
“But why? Why?”
“She can’t talk. Vocal cords— It eats, that iodine— Keeps trying to say something. I think it’s— Want to come?”
MacVeagh thought he understood a little. He saw things he should have seen before. How Molly felt about him. How, like Johansen with Laura, she could tolerate his marriage if he was happy, but when that marriage was breaking up and her loss became a pointless farce—
“Coming, Johnny?” Luke Sellers rep
eated.
“No,” said MacVeagh. “I’ve got to work. Molly’d want me to. And she’ll pull through all right, Luke. You’ll read about it in the Sentinel.”
It was the first time that this god had exercised the power of life and death.
VIII
The next morning, Laura looked lovelier than ever at breakfast as she glanced up from the paper and asked, “Did you like my interview?”
MacVeagh reached a hand across the table and touched hers. “What do you think?”
“I’m proud,” she said. “Proud to see it there in print. More coffee?”
“Thanks.”
She rose and filled his cup at the silver urn. “Isn’t it nice to have all the coffee we want again?” As she set the cup back at his place, she leaned over and kissed him. It was a light, tender kiss, and the first she had ever given him unprompted. He caught her hand and held it for a moment.
“Don’t stay too late at the office tonight, dear,” she said softly.
“Most amazing recovery I ever saw,” Doc Quillan mumbled. “Take a while for the throat tissues to heal; but she’ll be back at work in no time. Damned near tempted to call it a miracle, MacVeagh.”
“I guess this OPR appointment settles my part of what we were talking about,” Ingve Johansen said over the phone. “It’s a grand break for me—fine work that I’m anxious to do. So I won’t be around, but remember—I may come back.”
“Gather Phil made a fool of himself last night,” said H. A. Hitchcock. “Don’t worry. Shan’t happen again. Strain, overwork— He’ll be all right after a rest.”
Father Byrne dropped in that morning, happily flourishing a liberal journal which had nominated Grover as the nation’s model town for labor relations.
Chief Hanby dropped in out of pure boredom. The Grover crime rate had become so minute that he feared his occupation was all but gone. “The crooks are all faded,” he said. “ ‘The strangers shall fade away, and be afraid out of their close places.’ Psalms, eighteen, forty-five. Grover’s the Lord’s town now.”
The Compleat Boucher Page 76
