Arthur Hailey - Wheels

The Orion's speed nudged 80. Jameson said, "Here's where it happens."

As he spoke, a hum and vibration - additional to the roughness of the California freeway - extended through the car. But the effect was slight, the hum low-pitched, vibration minor. The NVH would no longer be startling to a car's occupants, as it had been on the test track earlier.

Adam queried, "And that's all of it?"

"That's all that's left," Ian Jameson assured him. "The braces take the rest out. As I said, we consider what remains to be at an acceptable level." Adam allowed speed to drop off, and the engineer added, "Let's try it on a smooth road."

With another tape on the control console - a portion of Interstate 80 in Illinois - the road unevenness disappeared while the hum and vibration seemed correspondingly lower.

"We'll try one more road," Jameson said, "a really tough one." He signaled to the lab assistant in the booth, who smiled.

As Adam accelerated, even at 60 mph the Orion jolted alarmingly. Jameson announced, "This is Mississippi - U.S. 90, near Biloxi. The road wasn't good to start with, then Hurricane Camille loused it up completely. The portion we're on now still hasn't been fixed. Naturally, no one would do this speed there unless they had suicide in mind."

At 80 mph the road, transmitted through the dynamometer, was so bad that the car's own vibration was undetectable. Ian Jameson looked pleased.

As speed came off, he commented, "People don't realize how good our engineering has to be to cope with all kinds of roads, including plenty of others like that."

Jameson was off again, Adam thought, in his abstract engineer's world.

Of more practical importance was the fact that the Orion's NVH problem could be solved. Adam had already decided that the add-on route, despite its appalling cost, was the one they would have to travel, rather than delay the Orion's debut. Of course, the company's executive vice-president, Hub Hewitson, who regarded the Orion as his own special baby, would go through the ceiling when he heard about the five dollars added cost. But he would learn to live with it, as Adam had - almost - already.

He got out of the car, Ian Jameson following. On the engineer's instructions, Adam left the motor running. Now, the girl in the booth took over, operating the Orion by remote control. At 80 on the dynamometer, the vibration was no more serious outside than it had been within.

Adam asked Jameson, "You're sure the bracing will stand up to long use?"

"No question about it. We've put it through every test. We're satisfied."

So was Jameson, Adam thought; too damn satisfied. The engineer's detachment - it seemed like complacency - still irritated him. "Doesn't it ever bother you," Adam asked, "that everything you people do here is negative? You don't produce anything. You only take things out, eliminate."

"Oh, we produce something." Jameson pointed to the dynamometer rollers, still turning swiftly, impelled by the Orion's wheels. "See those? They're connected to a generator; so are the other dynamometers in the lab. Every time we operate a car, the rollers generate electricity. We're coupled in to Detroit Edison, and we sell the power to them." He looked challengingly at Adam. "Sometimes I think it's as useful as a few things which have come out of Product Planning."

Adam smiled, conceding. "But not the Orion."

"No," Jameson said. I guess we all have hopes for that."

The nightgown which Erica Trenton finally bought was in Laidlaw-Beldon's on Somerset Mall in Troy. Earlier, she had browsed through stores in Birmingham without seeing anything that appealed to her as sufficiently special for the purpose she had in mind, so she continued to cruise the district in her sports convertible, not really minding because it was pleasant, for a change, to have something special to do.

Somerset Mall was a large, modern plaza, east on Big Beaver Road, with quality stores, drawing much of their patronage from well-to-do auto industry families living in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills. Erica had shopped there often and knew her way around most of the stores, including Laidlaw-Beldon's.

She realized, the instant she saw it, that the nightgown was exactly right. It was a sheer nylon with matching peignoir, in pale-beige, almost the color of her hair. The total effect, she knew, would be to project an image of honey blondeness. A frosted orange lipstick, she decided, would round out the sensual impression she intended to create, tonight, for Adam.

Erica had no charge account at the store, and paid by check. Afterward she went to Cosmetics to buy a lipstick since she was uncertain if she had one at home, quite the right shade.

Cosmetics was busy. While waiting, glancing over a display of lipstick colors, Erica became aware of another shopper at the perfume counter close by. It was a woman in her sixties who was informing a salesclerk, "I want it for my daughter-in-law. I'm really not sure . . . Let me try the Norell."

Using a sample vial, the clerk - a bored brunette - obliged.

"Yes," the woman said. "Yes, that's nice. I'll take that. An ounce size."

From a mirror-faced store shelf behind her, out of reach of customers, the clerk selected a white, black-lettered box and placed it on the counter. "That's fifty dollars, plus sales tax. Will it be cash or charge?"

The older woman hesitated. "Oh, I hadn't realized it would be that much."

"We have smaller sizes, madam."

"No . . . Well, you see, it's a gift. I suppose I ought . . . But I'll wait and think it over."

As the woman left the counter, so did the perfume salesclerk. She moved through an archway, momentarily out of sight. On the counter, the boxed perfume remained where the clerk had left it.

Irrationally, incredibly, in Erica's mind a message formed: Norell's my perfume. Why not take it?

She hesitated, shocked at her own impulse. While she did, a second message urged: Go on! You're wasting time! Act now!

Afterward, she remembered that she waited long enough to wonder: Was it really her own mind at work? Then deliberately, unhurriedly, but as if a magnetic force were in control, Erica moved from Cosmetics to Perfume. Without haste or waste motion, she lifted the package, opened her handbag and dropped it in. The handbag had a spring fastener which snapped as it closed. The sound seemed to Erica like the firing of a gun. It would draw attention!

What had she done?

She stood trembling, waiting, afraid to move, expecting an accusing voice, a hand on her shoulder, a shouted "Thief!"

Nothing happened. But it would; she knew it would, at any moment.

How could she explain? She couldn't. Not with the evidence in her handbag. She reasoned urgently: Should she take the package out, return it to where it was before the foolish, unbelievable impulse swept over her and made her act as she had? She had never done this before, never, nor anything remotely like it.

Still trembling, conscious of her own heartbeat, Erica asked herself: Why? What reason was there, if any, for what she had just done? The most absurd thing was, she didn't need to steal: the perfume or anything else.

There was money in her purse, a checkbook.

Even now she could call the salesclerk to the counter, could spill out money to pay for the package, and that would be that. Providing that she acted quickly. Now!

No.

Obviously, because still nothing had happened, no one had seen her. If they had, Erica thought, by now she would have been accosted, questioned, perhaps taken away. She turned. Casually, feigning indifference, she surveyed the store in all directions. Business was going on as usual. No one seemed in the least interested in her, or was even looking her way. The perfume salesclerk had not reappeared.