“Really?” she said. “Art?”
“Antiques.”
“How interesting.”
“It can be at times. Are you over for long? I assume you’re from England.”
“We have a country house just outside London but we travel quite a bit so we keep a base of operations here, too. Actually I work as a researcher for my father. He writes a syndicated column. Sir Colin Willoughby? The ‘Willow Report?’”
“Of course. I’ve read his articles. Quite perceptive. You were in the Orient recently.”
“Yes.”
“Interesting observation about the political situation in Japan. Does he really think we can avoid war with them?”
“Well, you certainly should try. The situation over there is quite desperate, you know. The emperor doesn’t really seem to know what’s going on. Actually the country is under the control of Tojo and the right-wing military faction. The army and air force are quite strong and they have a very powerful navy.”
Allenbee smiled. It was refreshing to meet a woman as intelligent and perceptive as she was.
“I have my car,” she said. “May we drop you somewhere?”
“May I be presumptuous and offer you a drink? The new bar at the Empire State Building is right up the street. I hear it’s quite exquisite.”
She hedged a bit, looked at her watch, then finally shrugged.
“Sounds charming,” she said. “But I only have an hour.”
The car was a chauffeur-driven Packard. Obviously, Sir Colin did rather well with his column. The bar was brass and enamel, its style ultra deco. They sat in a corner booth and sipped martinis. She studied him carefully. Ward Allenbee was a handsome man with pale blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. His thin black hair was graying and archly widow- peaked and he wore a meticulously trimmed Prince Albert beard. His clothes were expensive and stylish, his speech perfect, his voice resonant. And he was intelligent and well informed. Quite interesting, she thought.
Twenty-seven saw a woman in her late thirties, handsome, well groomed, yet oddly cold and detached. Her posture was a little too correct, her classic features a little too perfect, from the angular nose and pale green eyes to the petulant mouth, her red hair a little too tightly combed, her eyes a little too cold and suspicious. A snob who covered priggishness with a veneer of sophistication. She was awesomely well informed and outrageously opinionated and she was a casual name dropper. Some men might have found her intimidating. Twenty-seven saw in her a frustrated and repressed woman of high caste, ripe for the picking, a widow whose husband had been dead for years. A wonderful diversion while he awaited the next step in the mission.
One drink became two drinks and then a third. The first hour passed and they were deep into the second when he suggested dinner at Delmonico’s. She eyed him momentarily, her eyes softened by vermouth and gin, then she smiled.
“Why not,” she said. “But we must stop by my place, first. I really must change clothes.”
She had an ample one-bedroom suite adjoining her father’s larger quarters in the Waldorf North Tower. It was pleasantly furnished but hotel furniture was hotel furniture no matter what one did with it.
“I won’t take long, I promise,” she said. “I’ll make you a drink before I change.” She went to the bar in the corner and stirred him another martini.
He sipped the drink and nodded emphatically.
“Excellent,” he said. “You are really something. You’re a walking journal of events, you’re quite beautiful and you make a great martini. You’re full of surprises, Lady Penelope.”
He reached out, very lightly stroked her hair, then her throat. Stepping closer, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. She responded hungrily, a woman who had been chaste, untrusting of men, for years.
She wanted him desperately, feeling he was a safe port in her otherwise stormy life. But that could wait. As he wrapped his arms around her, she buried her face in his neck, then raising her lips slightly, she whispered in his ear:
Twenty-seven was astonished when he heard her whisper the code phrase. Was she really his contact, this rich, tided Englishwoman whose father, the internationally famous journalist, had taken so many pot shots at Hitler through the years? Taken completely unaware, he stood flabbergasted as Lady Penelope walked across the room and opened the door to her father’s suite.
“Daddy,” she said.
The tall, trim, impeccable Englishman strode into the room. He wore a red velvet smoking jacket and a blue ascot. He was a handsome man, his mustache trimmed and waxed, his fingers manicured, his silver hair perfectly trimmed, his posture military. There was about him a cool, tailored, untouchable air. So this was the author of the famous “Willow Report.” Looking at them together, Allenbee saw the family resemblance in the painfully correct posture, the classic features, the snobbish air.
Willoughby thrust his hand out.
“Well, well,” he said. “At last we meet. We’ve waited a long time for this moment.”
“Sir Colin,” Allenbee said cautiously. The Britisher leaned toward him and spoke a simple code phrase,
