Irving Wallace - The Man

She wanted to hug him for his perception and gallantry. What held her back was a heavy anchor of failure, tied to a rope of guilt. “Maybe I have let you down, George-”

“Stop it, Edna. You’re not involved.”

“I mean, you’ve always been so wonderful, knowing my responsibilities, what my position entails, never even being curious. So maybe I am a little to blame, George. Maybe I’ve been leaning over backward to your detriment.”

“Forget it. I don’t want to even discuss it.”

“You’re so kind, George. There are story leaks, let’s face it. Every day it happens. That Blaser story we were just reading. Kemmler and the President did have a disagreement today about the kidnaping. But it was secret. How did Blaser find out? Someone must have leaked it to him.”

“You bet your life. Somebody over at Justice. Maybe even Kemmler himself. They want to look good, get on the record. All the big press correspondents have inside contacts whom they use, and who use them.”

“Except you, because of me!” cried Edna. The resolve came to her, and she gave voice to it “I won’t have you penalized any more, simply because you happen to be seeing me. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open, and if there is something that-that doesn’t endanger security-that I know someone else will let out before-hand anyway-I’ll tell you first. I promise, George.”

“I told you-forget it,” he said gruffly. “Tri-State isn’t the only syndicate. I’ll look around. We’ll make it yet.” He stood up. “Come on, we’d better check in.”

She came to her feet slowly. “George,” she said, “I think I want to keep my seat at the bullfight.”

“Not for me,” he said. “Don’t do it for me.”

“For us,” she said. “I want to do it for us.”

His thin lips curled upward, and he pulled her arm through the crook of his elbow and propelled her toward Pennsylvania Avenue. “That’s different,” he said. “That makes me very happy. We’ll make out somehow, together.”

They crossed Pennsylvania Avenue in silence, and entered through the open driveway gate leading to the White House, both automatically flashing their passes and greeting the police guards, now doubled in number for this evening’s State Dinner.

As they walked in step to the West Wing lobby, they heard someone hurrying behind them. Edna glanced over her shoulder and grimaced. Reb Blaser, skipping on stubby legs, was alongside them, a grin on his frog face.

“Hiya, Edna-Georgie, old boy,” he drawled. “How are the love doves?” He did not wait for an answer, but gestured toward the front entrance of the White House, ablaze with light. “Looks like a big night, eh?”

“To paint the White House black,” said Edna indignantly.

“Aw, come now, Edna girl,” Blaser said, still grinning. “I got me a job to do, that’s all. Matter of fact, might be some truth to what I wrote, even though I admit to applying a trifle too much tar and feather. But that’s Zeke for you. Don’t blame you none for being loyal to your employer, though.”

Before Edna could speak again, George Murdock said hastily, “It was a little too rough, Reb, like you said, but that was quite a thing about Kemmler and Dilman disagreeing. Where’d you get it?”

One of Blaser’s warted eyelids winked. “Connections, George. Comes of being slavey for a big-time Congressman.” They had reached the door to the West Wing, and all three halted. “Incidentally, George, my Congressman brought up your name to me day before yesterday. Meant to tell you, but been too plumb beat out to remember.”

“Zeke Miller mentioned me?” asked George Murdock cautiously.

“Nobody else but you. Seems one of our stringers sent him a clip of the piece you did on Miller’s speech on farm subsidies. He liked it, liked it powerfully. ‘That’s a smart young man, that Murdock,’ he said to me. ‘Sharp nose for news. Let’s keep on eye on him.’ ”

“That’s nice of Miller,” said George Murdock.

“Oh, he’s not half as bad as everyone makes him out,” said Reb Blaser. “Hell, he’s a successful business tycoon from the South, and he knows what side his bread is buttered on. Yes, he’s right impressed with you, George.”

Edna turned her glare from Blaser’s nauseating face to George, and she disliked the way George was swallowing this syrupy flattery whole and enjoying it.

She said briskly, ignoring Blaser, “Good night, George. Don’t work too hard. See you tomorrow.”

“Yes-good night, Edna. I’ll call you.”

She started into the lobby, but at the door, turning sideways to let a correspondent slip past her, she had one more glimpse of George and Reb Blaser. The frog was still croaking, and George was still listening, eager, deferential, pleased. For an instant she wished that George wouldn’t stand there, that he would be more than that, but then she knew that she was being unfair. It had been a bad, bad day for George, and now for her also.

She would have to do something for him. But what?

Unhappily, she went inside to resume her seat at the bullfight.

The one emotion that Douglass Dilman suffered, as he stared at the dessert being placed before him, was deep mortification.

He had suspected what was happening earlier in the evening, when he and Kwame Amboko had stood against the wall of the East Room, he uncomfortable in his new white tie and long-used unstylish dinner suit, Amboko at ease in his blue-and-white-striped silk peaked hat and matching cape draped over his dress suit, the two of them receiving the splendidly garmented guests. Dilman had suspected something was wrong, because it had gone so quickly. He had meant to draw Sally Watson aside and put it bluntly to her, but she had been busy, her fashionably coiffured blond hair and bare shoulders and shimmering white satin evening gown everywhere, and he had been unable to catch her eye.

Only when Dilman had arrived in the enormous white-and-gilt State Dining Room, and had taken his place in the gold-covered Queen Anne chair at the head of the immense horseshoe table, with Kwame Amboko to one side of him and Amboko’s older sister at the other side, and the guests had seated themselves at the main table, and at the four smaller tables near the Red Room, had his earlier suspicion been fully confirmed.

Once the guests had been seated, in the interval before the waiters swarmed through the room from the pantry hidden behind the Chinese screen, Dilman was able to see the truth. Of the 104 invitations sent out, Sally Watson had advised him this morning that ninety-six had been accepted. The seating plan, which Illingsworth had shown him before he had dressed, had provided for fifty-six guests at the three sections of the main horseshoe table, and forty more guests at the four smaller tables. Ninety-six guests in all. And when these were seated, Dilman was reminded-he had almost forgotten in the excitement-that he was not Washington’s social Commander in Chief, but T. C.’s humble orderly.

Humiliation had filled every pore of his being: naked shame before his honored guest and the latter’s entourage from Africa, before his official family, before the White House waiters. He had been witness to a similar scene twice in his life, as an onlooker, when he had viewed the old motion picture, Stella Dallas , on television, and when he had attended a screening of the silent film, The Gold Rush , with pathetic Charlie Chaplin. Both times he had been moved, for, as a Negro, he had understood. Now he was witness to it a third time, not witness but participant and the solitary object of this shattering ostracism.

Every second gold-covered chair at the horseshoe table, it seemed, was empty. The four smaller tables mocked him with their gaping vacancies. Ninety-six important guests had accepted the invitations to his first State Dinner. No more than fifty had appeared. To all intents and purposes, President of the United States or not, he was still segregated, and the house he lived in was segregated too.