Preserve and Protect (37 page)

“It could be quite protracted,” Ted said soberly. “There will be attempts to delay, to confuse—”

“Orrin won’t stop at anything,” Justice Davis said. “He is absolutely ruthless.”

“—there may be stratagems and devious methods. We may find it necessary”—and Ted’s voice dropped significantly—“to fight fire with fire.” He paused and stared at Tommy with an earnest intentness that made the little Justice feel, deliciously, that he was about to be taken into the innermost secrets of Jason strategy, as indeed he was. “Do you think you could find it in your heart to assist us, if it came to that?”

“Tell me how,” Justice Davis said solemnly; and when Ted had, he shook his head with an admiring air.

“My dear boy—my dear Governor—my dear Mr. President!—I think you have devised a positively brilliant strategy. I don’t see how it can fail.”

“You are the key,” Governor Jason assured him gravely, and was ironically amused to see that Tommy was almost visibly glowing with the excitement and importance of it all.

“I shall do my best,” he said with an equal gravity, “Providing it goes as planned, below—”

“It will.”

“Then I see no real reason why there should be any doubt. I haven’t searched the precedents—”

“There are none,” Ted said and Tommy laughed.

“Of course not! Then I shall go down in history by creating one! And in an absolutely worthy cause.”

“I was sure we could rely upon you.”

“Completely, my dear boy. Completely.”

“Good,” Ted said, starting to rise. “Then I won’t take up more of your valuable time—”

“Not at all,” Justice Davis said, waving him down again. “Do sit and chat for a moment. There’s really nothing going on here today—”

But in this he was mistaken, for there was a sudden commotion in the office outside, the door flew open and Bob Leffingwell strode into the room with Tommy’s secretary hanging on one arm.

“But you mustn’t,” she was crying frantically. “But you
mustn’t—”

“Oh, yes, I must,” Bob said in a tone of such cold rage that she stopped with a gasp and let go of his arm. “Tommy!” he snapped. “Tell this sniveling woman to get out, and then stay where you are. I have something to say to this—this”—and he gestured toward the Governor—“now that I’ve managed to track him down, and I want you to be witness. Are you going to get out?” he demanded, turning on the secretary.

Justice Davis said hastily, “Yes, yes, do go! It’s quite all right, I’m sure, quite all right.”

“Shall I call the guards?” she quavered from the door. Bob Leffingwell uttered an angry laugh.

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, “but if you’d feel better, by all means do. Just keep them outside until the Justice calls for them, though. We don’t want to be interrupted.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, giving him a terrified glance as Tommy said, somewhat shakily, “Yes, do that, my dear. It’s all right. Just keep them out there. I’m sure I won’t need them … And now,” he said after she had hurried out, slamming the door behind her in her nervous haste, “Now,” he said with an attempt at restored dignity that came off pretty well considering the circumstances, “what
is
this?”

“Apparently you haven’t heard,” Bob said, flinging the
Star
extra onto the desk so hard it skidded and knocked over an antique inkwell that was one of Tommy’s joys. Fortunately it was empty.

Ted got up at once and came to stand beside the Justice as he obediently spread out the paper. For quite some time no one said anything. Finally Tommy Davis said in a hushed voice,

“My goodness. Oh, my goodness.”

“Yes, ‘my goodness,’” Bob echoed harshly. He glared at Ted. “What do you know about this?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Governor Jason said flatly. “Why the hell should I?”

“Because she was onto something involving you,” Bob said in the same harsh tone, “and the crowd you’re running with these days kills. That’s why you should”—he bit off the title—“Governor!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ted said quietly. “Suppose you sit down, and let us sit down, and we can try to find out what this is all about.”

“It’s obvious what it’s about,” Bob said, refusing to take a chair though Ted and the Justice slowly resumed theirs. “It’s about murder. Three of them. And a fire. And it’s also about the death of a hard-headed child whom we couldn’t afford to lose. But you wouldn’t know about that. I think maybe you do know about the murders and the fire.”

“Bob,” Governor Jason said, and this time his solemnity was genuine, “I swear to you before God and this witness that I do not know what you are talking about. I honestly
do not know.”

“Look,” Bob Leffingwell said bluntly, “even in times like these it is not customary for a famous correspondent and a colored boy to be gunned down together on the streets of Washington, D.C., at the same time the colored boy’s house is being burned and his grandmother killed. That isn’t quite commonplace yet, though you and your friends are fast getting us to that condition. Therefore there must be a reason. I think I know what it is, and I think you do too, oaths or no oaths, God or no God.
God?”
he repeated bitterly. “I’m surprised He takes the time to bother with this country anymore.”

“Now, Bob,” Justice Davis said nervously, “now, Bob, that kind of language isn’t going to get us anywhere—”

“You be still and listen!” Bob Leffingwell ordered, so sharply that the little Justice literally seemed to shrivel in his chair.

“Yes, Tommy,” Governor Jason said quietly, “we might as well. Apparently this is not going to stop until it has run its course, no matter what the truth is, no matter what proof there may be that I know noth—”

“Proof!” Bob snapped, pulling several sheets of folded copy paper from his vest pocket. “I don’t know what proof you have, but I happen to have a little.”

“Of
what?”
Ted demanded with a genuine exasperation. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Of a meeting at the Hilton at which you and your friends conspired with a deadly enemy of the United States—”

“Now, see here!” Governor Jason said angrily, and now he too was on his feet, as Justice Davis seemed to shrink back even further behind his desk.
“I attended no such meeting.
I swear to you by—by anything you want me to swear by—that I attended no—such—meeting. Nor,” he said, more quietly, “do I believe that any such meeting ever existed, except in the inflamed imagination of a poor woman whose journalistic fantasies finally, apparently, led her into a fatal situation. But I didn’t create the situation, and
I
didn’t lead her into it, and in simple fairness, if nothing else, I don’t think you should say that I did.”

“What a strange man you are,” Bob Leffingwell said slowly. “I suppose you have the mind—the divided mind—that is necessary for power. So that you can create a climate—or not prevent one being created in your name—in which awful things can happen, and still pretend to yourself that there is no connection between the climate and its consequences … so that while you may vaguely admit to yourself that you might have had something, remotely, to do with the climate, you can simply absolve yourself of all responsibility for the consequences. I suppose those who rise very high in government, or business, or whatever have to have something of that, don’t they? Otherwise they couldn’t bear the thought of the abyss on whose edge they stand all the time.”

“Bob—” Justice Davis began nervously, but Bob Leffingwell gestured him to silence almost absent-mindedly.

“You are a very strange man,” he repeated in a puzzled, thoughtful voice. “A very strange man …”

“Do you believe that I do not know of any such meeting?” Ted asked quietly, and after a moment Bob nodded.

“Yes, I believe you. But I’m wondering how it is that you don’t know.”

“Do you believe that there was no such meeting?” Ted asked, and this time Bob shook his head slowly and lifted the sheaf of copy paper.

“I know there was.”

“I say there was not!” Ted said with a sudden anger, and with an equal anger Bob shot back,

“You met with Shelby and Van Ackerman and Kleinfert after Patsy’s party. I don’t know what you plotted, I expect it was bad enough, but then after you left, so that no one could say you were directly involved, someone else joined them and the discussion really got down to cases. That is what Helen-Anne’s investigation disclosed, and that is what I believe.”

“No!” Ted said sharply. “No, no,
no!”

“How do you know?” Bob demanded, and for several seconds the Governor stared at him without speaking. When he did it was with a calm simplicity.

“Because I got worried myself that there might have been some further meeting after I left, and I asked them.”

“And what did they tell you?”

“All three assured me that no such meeting occurred.”

“And you believed them,” Bob Leffingwell said with a genuine wonderment. “You
believed
them.”

“What proof is there that I should not?” Ted asked reasonably. “Were there any witnesses?”

“There was one,” Bob said bleakly, “but he died this afternoon outside the Hilton.”

“Very well—” Ted began, but Bob again held up the sheaf of notes.

“And there was one very competent reporter who investigated and made extensive notes.”

“What are you going to do with them?” Governor Jason asked with a sudden savage sarcasm. “Sell them to
life?
”

“No, I am not,” Bob Leffingwell said; and he turned abruptly to Justice Davis, listening with a nervous intensity, and tossed them onto the desk in front of him. “I am going to give them to this witness, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—”

“Oh, dear,” Tommy said weakly. “Oh,
dear.”

“—whom I believe to be, essentially and in the final analysis, an honest man, and I am going to ask him to retain them in his safekeeping, as an earnest that the Governor of California will from this point forward disengage himself from people whose fundamental and overriding aim is the destruction of the country whose Chief Magistrate he wishes to be.”

Again there was a silence, during which Tommy said, “Oh,
dear”
several times but did not touch the notes.

“That was quite a speech,” Governor Jason said at last. “Quite a speech. Are you going to accept these papers, Mr. Justice?”

“Oh,
dear,”
Tommy said again. “I don’t know what—I just don’t know—I just—”

“I would suggest that you do,” Ted said calmly. “I can think of no more reliable and trustworthy repository.”

“Well—”

“Take them,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Take them, and after we leave, read them and then put them in a secure place.…Go on,” he ordered with a sudden impatience. “Take them!”

“I really think you should,” Ted said; and after a few more seconds of uncertainty the Justice did, picking them up slowly, turning to a wall safe set into the bookshelves behind his desk, concentrating for a minute on the combination, opening it, putting them in, closing it again with a quick involuntary shiver that seemed to shake the whole of his frail little body.

“And now,” Bob said, turning to the Governor, “I would advise you to leave these people—to cut them off completely—to free yourself and your campaign from everything having to do with them. Because the proof rests there”—he pointed to the safe—“and the witness is here”—Tommy instinctively stepped back a pace—“and if you go ahead as you are doing, he and I will know that from now on it is deliberate choice, and you will know that there are two people in the world who can never again accept any pretense that you are not part and parcel of whatever evil may befall this country.”

“And not part and parcel of whatever good may befall it?” Ted inquired with a musing bitterness. “How blind and one-sided you are! How willfully you twist everything to suit your own interpretation of me and of those who don’t agree with this Administration’s policies. How neatly you have it all worked out … Understand me!” he said with a sudden commanding strength. “I shall continue to do what I believe best to save this nation and I shall continue to accept and welcome the support of all sincere people who genuinely wish to assist me in changing a course that can only end in terrible disaster for us and all mankind.
I will not swerve one inch,
and no witches’ tales of sinister influences and secret meetings and deep, dark conspiracies can make me do so.…So guide yourself,” he concluded softly, “accordingly.”

For a long moment he and Bob Leffingwell stared at one another without expression; and then Bob said quietly, “You can be sure I will,” turned quickly, opened the door, brushed past the still wide-eyed secretary and two elderly and apprehensive Court policemen, and was gone.

“My goodness,” Justice Davis said automatically. “My goodness.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tommy,” Ted Jason said. “Everything is going to work out all right.”

“But, my
goodness—”

“Everything,” the Governor repeated firmly, “is going to be all right.”

And was able, with a combination of faith, determination and sheer Jason will power, to say it and believe it.

“And so you see,” Lafe Smith typed laboriously at seven p.m. in his silent office, after his staff had closed up and gone home, “things are really in an awful mess here. Helen-Anne was such a good reporter and such a good pal to so many people around town, that none of us can really take it in, yet. The rumor is—you know D.C.—that she was onto something that could possibly have had a really damaging effect on Ted. So a lot of people, at least on our side, are saying some pretty frightening things. According to our Iowa National Committeeman, it has scared some weak ones on the Committee even more than they were already.

“I still think, though, that it is going to go well when the Committee meets. I wish you could be here, Mabel, as it’s really going to be a (an?) historic show. Isn’t there a chance you could get away? We could arrange a nice apartment for you somewhere nearby for a couple of weeks, and there are plenty of baby sitters who could look after Pidge. Say you will. It would be a lot of fun to have you here. And another thing (always have to be the politician and think of all the angles, don’t I?) it would be a real help to Orrin, too. Your name and Brig’s carry a lot of weight in the West, and Orrin needs all the help he can get. It looks good for him, I think, but we can’t afford to relax for a moment. So: he needs you—I need you. How can you resist? Write and say you’ll come. “Love to my two girls in Utah”