Dangerous Inheritance (28 page)

‘Good for you, Truss. And you got your way.'

‘Surely. The old man put me through the mill, of course. He wouldn't give me a job in our own organisation. Said it would upset the staff and lead to favouritism. But he fixed one for me with a subsidiary of the Chase Manhattan, and arranged for
them to change my job time to time so I'd get maximum experience. The whole of the first year I spent in small towns out in the back of beyond. That was pretty dreary; but later I was posted to cities and given work that was worth while. Six months ago my old man pulled me out and I was put through a grilling all afternoon by four of our top executives. Seems I made the grade. In fact I know I did. I wouldn't be here else.'

‘Well done, my dear. But what has being here to do with it?'

‘Making this trip with my old man is part of the pay-off. He was so pleased at the way things have turned out that he aims to give me a responsible job in our Far Eastern department; and giving me the chance to meet our principal contacts here, in Singapore, Hong Kong and other places is the sort of break fellers don't normally get till they're a good bit older. He says that if I don't go off the rails he'll have me made a Vice-President time I'm thirty.'

‘Truss, that's marvellous. But how about the rails? Do you feel an inclination to go off them now and then? Or are you still sticking to the straight and narrow, like you were when we met in Corfu?'

‘It depends what you mean by “rails”,' Truss smiled. ‘In my old man's sense it's playing the market with money you haven't got, taking to drink or dope, or getting hitched up to some little gold-digger who's right outside the social orbit. I don't think there's much likelihood of my doing any of those things; though better fellers than me have come a cropper before now through meeting the wrong kind of dame. I got myself in bad that way during the first year I was on my own, and it took the lawyers to get me out of it.'

Fleur's face showed her concern. ‘You … you don't mean that some bitch trapped you into marrying her?'

‘No, it didn't come to that. This was during my second assignment. I'd been sent to a bank in a god-forsaken dorp in the corn belt. While at college I'd had my buddies, the winter sports and all that. In the vacations there were always lots of jolly people, fishing, riding and other things to do. But at Drover's Springs there was nothing. The folks were kind enough but they just didn't talk my language. Most of them
thought their little town the tops, had never been anywhere and didn't want to go. After a fortnight I was near blowing my top with boredom.'

‘So you began to take an interest in the local blonde?'

‘That's it. She worked in the drug-store on the corner. Her name was Esmée and she was as near a cretin as makes no matter; but she had chocolate-box colouring and the right sort of curves.'

‘Poor Truss. I thought you were frightfully choosey, and would never have fallen for that sort of thing.'

‘Ah!' Truss held up a finger. ‘Time was when I wouldn't have. And I'd have been too scared of her trying to inveigle me into marrying her to have gone further than a necking party. But the previous year I'd been on a trip to Europe, and there I'd met a girl. Maybe you've forgotten what you once said to me about a tiger who's tasted blood?'

Fleur stared at him aghast. ‘Oh, Truss! Please don't tell me that it was because I … because of what happened in Corfu that you got into this trouble.'

‘Good Lord, no!' he laughed. ‘If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else, and it was quite time I grew up. The fact that it was you was the sort of break that very few fellers are fortunate enough to get. I've often thought of that week and what heaven it was; but, pretty naturally, after the tiger had once tasted blood he wanted to see it on the menu pretty frequently.'

She frowned. ‘So at least I'm answerable for your becoming an habitual lecher.'

‘I'm not. And even if I were it wouldn't be your fault. As a healthy man I wouldn't have stayed a virgin all my life. But after I left Corfu I didn't turn up my nose quite so much at the prettiest dance hostesses in the night spots. Of course, I found them disappointing after you, but going back to their apartments with them filled my need for the moment; and I was always hoping that I'd find something better. When I got back home I had plenty of nice girls to choose from, and I'd gotten over my belief that the one idea in all their pretty heads was to nail me for a husband. With a few I had to be a bit wary, but
most of them didn't have to go after money and were just out for a good time. Well, by then I'd about gotten over you, and I was feeling on top of the world; so for a few months I gave it them, and plenty.'

‘That sounds like the period I put in at that awful place in the Cromwell Road,' Fleur commented, ‘when the girls I was living with talked of practically nothing else and none of us could have enough of it.'

Truss nodded. ‘I remember your telling me, and that after a while you quit. Me too. It's a sort of fever that's got to be worked out of the blood, and it ended with me when I was sent off to my first assignment in a little backwoods town. For quite a time I was really thankful that I didn't have a date to sleep with anybody.'

‘But that didn't last?' Fleur smiled.

‘No. Time I got to Drover's Springs I was thinking girls again. And I don't mind admitting you figured pretty large in the programme. By then I'd had fun with plenty others but you had the whole works. With you I was happy; real happy until that——' Truss broke off and gave a rueful grin. ‘I'm afraid I was going to say that so-and-so Douglas came along—forgetting that he is your husband. I suppose, too, he wouldn't much like us to be exchanging this sort of confidence?'

Fleur shrugged. ‘There's no need for him to know. And, after all, why shouldn't we? We've been friends from childhood. Go on. You had just paid me a very charming compliment.'

‘What, that I've always thought of you as the tops in bed—and out of it, for that matter? But we were talking of Drover's Springs and Esmée. It wouldn't be fair to say she really made a play for me. She hadn't the wit. But she did know that I was a Van Ryn and her ma and pa knew it too. On that account, no doubt, no objection was made to my taking treble time to transport her home after the Saturday-night local hops. Time came, of course, when I persuaded her to let me have her. God help me, it couldn't have been more disappointing; her body all tensed up, no warmth, no response. Then tears and lamentations. But I'd done it, and pretty soon the bill came in. She had told her ma, and her pa sent for me. Drover's Springs had grown
out of shot-gun marriages; but only just. Esmée's pa wanted an assurance that having ruined his daughter I meant to do the right thing by her. I stalled, of course—said I'd have to communicate with my folks. And I did. I wrote off post-haste to my old man; gave him a full account of the whole miserable business.'

‘How did he react?'

‘Like the grand guy that he is. He arranged for me to be transferred from Drover's Springs within twenty-four hours, and sent his attorney down to talk turkey to Esmée's pa. He warned me, though, that seducing unmarried girls nearly always leads to trouble and that I'd be wiser in future to blow off steam with women who were just as eager to play as I was.'

‘That was certainly sound advice. I hope you took it.'

‘I did; although it was not all that easy to follow as long as I remained out in the wilds. Small towns never seem to have such a high percentage of good-lookers as the cities; and the few who are worth having an affaire with, even if they're willing, tend to hide their lights under bushels. They have to, for fear of gossip. The local lads know the form, of course; but to find a willing girl friend isn't easy for a stranger.'

‘Poor Truss.' Fleur's tone held a shade of mockery. ‘So you nobly resisted temptation for fear of burning your fingers again.'

‘Well, yes. The Esmée affair resulted in my reverting to the line I used to take with girls before our affaire in Corfu. I'd become scared again that one would try to hook me by saying I'd put her in the family way, or a husband would suddenly come on the scene and cite me as co-respondent.'

‘Then you can't have felt the urge to go to bed with a girl very badly.'

‘Oh yes I did. Not as an obsession, of course, but now and then. Occasionally there were nights when I'd have given everything I possessed to have that week with you in Corfu over again.'

Colouring slightly, Fleur said, ‘Truss dear, it's a charming compliment that you should have felt like that; but really it's a bit embarrassing for you to tell me so. I do hope, too, that since
you came out of the backwoods you have had other affaires that you can look back on just as happily.'

‘Well, to be honest, not quite. But soon after I was posted to San Francisco I had a break. She was an artists' model named Sally: as pretty as they come and no strings attached. All she wanted was an apartment of her own, a guy to take her about and plenty of loving. We got on famously and I was real sorry when I had to leave her to go to a branch of the bank in Denver.'

‘Did you have any luck there?'

‘Not much, and Sally had been pretty demanding; so I was quite content to concentrate on my work for a while. Towards the end of my stay I got to know a call-girl who was a very decent kid, and now and then spent a night with her. But you couldn't call it an affaire. I had another lucky break in Boston, though. She was the wife of an officer in the Navy and his ship was way off with the Sixth Fleet. In her own way she was the faithful type. She had two young children, really cared about her husband, and wouldn't have divorced him even if I'd been so mad about her that I'd have implored her to, or have let anyone lay a finger on her as long as he was within call. But she was very highly sexed, and when he was at sea for long spells she just had to have a man: someone she liked and could trust, and I happened to fill the bill.'

‘You were lucky, then,' Fleur remarked, ‘and I don't think one can blame her. I'd feel the same if my husband had to leave me for months at a stretch; and all the odds are that he was having his fun in foreign ports. After Boston who was your next?'

Truss smiled. ‘That was my last post. And you can imagine what New York is like. Now I'm back in circulation I could go to bed with a different girl every night if I liked. I don't because too much of that sort of thing would be bad for my work. But I get all the fun I want. How about yourself?'

She looked away quickly. ‘Oh, I'm in quite a different category. I'm married.'

‘Sure; but so were five out of the seven lovelies I've had brief affaires with in New York during the past six months.'

Fleur shrugged. ‘They couldn't have got away with that here. In Colombo if a wife makes one false move she's finished; and she simply wouldn't dare take the slightest risk because she's spied on the whole time by a houseful of native servants.'

‘That's just too bad. D'you mean you've had no fun on the side at all, then?'

‘Certainly not,' she replied a shade sharply. ‘And I've no desire to.'

‘Oh come, honey,' Truss grinned. ‘Leopards don't change their spots. After all you told me about yourself in Corfu I just can't believe you would have kept to the straight and narrow all this time if you'd seen a chance to do otherwise with a fellow you had a yen for.'

‘You're wrong; entirely wrong. No woman could have a better husband than Douglas, and I'm devoted to him.'

‘What, after two and a half years? You're kidding. At least I hope you are.' Truss leaned right forward and stretched out a hand to lay it on hers. ‘You're lovelier than ever. And you're the attraction that made me jump at the chance of coming to Ceylon. I was counting on we two getting together again.'

Suddenly Fleur's eyes narrowed, she drew her hand from under his and smacked him with it sharply across the face. Then her voice came, half choked with indignation. ‘So that's how you thought of me, eh? As someone who'd be only too willing to deceive her husband for you and become your mistress for a week or two, then be waved a cheerful good-bye when you flew off to scavenge Singapore and Hong Kong for other likely bitches to amuse you.'

A bright red patch showed on his cheek, but he only blinked and did not draw back. After a moment he said quietly, ‘That's just about it. Time was when I would have liked to have you for keeps, but you didn't even wait till I was leaving to wave
me
good-bye. And you'd made it clear from the beginning that you had no scruples about going to bed with anyone you took a fancy to. Well, that goes for me, too, these days. How was I to know that you were still nuts about Douglas? I've never yet tried to get a woman who was still in love with her husband.
But it isn't normal for a girl who's kicked up her heels with a score of men before she was married to remain faithful to one for two and a half years afterwards. As I see it I was quite justified in hoping that we might again have some good times together with no hard thoughts about one another afterwards. But I was wrong. All right. I apologise.'

The anger had drained from Fleur's face, and she said, ‘I'm sorry, Truss. I shouldn't have done that. It was … well, I've been awfully wrought up tonight about what may have happened to Greyeyes. And … and nobody has made a pass at me for years. No Sinhalese would think of doing so, out of respect for Douglas, and although some of the men among the white residents might like to, they never get a chance. You see, if the servants hadn't already gone to bed when Simon arrived here, our head boy would still be about. For me to be alone with a man at this hour of night is something quite exceptional.'

He nodded. ‘Let's forget it.' Then he added on a lighter note, ‘It's quite an amusing situation, though. In Corfu you were the scarlet woman who seduced the innocent lad, and here I've taken the role of the unprincipled lecher trying to seduce the chaste wife. It would make a hit play if only we could think of a good third act.'