the speech, resenting the fact that he might now be delayed, and had better phone her to come later-and then he entered the small reception room and went on into the main reception room. The desk there, too, was empty. He noted the time. It was eleven minutes after six o’clock. Everyone had gone home.
Yet not quite everyone, Eaton realized. Two clerks passed busily through the corridor. Assistant Secretary Stover, in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a dispatch, waved at him. The sight of such activity pleased Eaton. At least here, in his dominion, there were no mysteries, and nothing was unknown to him. Under his exacting rule, guided by his cool intelligence and supported by a five-hundred-million-dollar annual budget, his army of seven thousand foreign affairs specialists toiled, and one thousand of these worked through the night. It gave him pride that his palace, the Department of State Building, was never dark-as, so suddenly, the White House had become dark.
Restlessly, to kill time, Arthur Eaton wandered into the corridor. He turned right, made his way across the rich blue carpeting, absently glanced at the framed pictures of the nation’s previous Secretaries of State on the wall, then came to a halt before Room 7228, the corridor entrance to his own office. He studied the two words lettered on the walnut panel of his door. They read simply: the secretary. He thought of the many persons who saw these two words daily, and how few understood the encompassing, far-reaching nature of his responsibility, reaching back to T. C., reaching ahead to every American citizen everywhere, reaching now into that suddenly secretive Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was time for Talley to arrive, he decided.
Quickiy he went to his private elevator, found and inserted his special key, observed the arrow light up red. Once inside, he was whisked to the eighth floor, a treasure house of history visited by no one except himself, his luncheon guests, and those he invited to attend diplomatic functions and State Department dinners during the evenings.
Leaving the elevator, Eaton hastened through the lounge, past the bar, and pulled open the two doors that led into the small, dimly lighted Madison Dining Room, the private hideaway where he ate lunch almost daily. None of the dozen chairs around the center table, nor the chairs drawn up before the television set, were occupied.
Annoyed, Eaton crossed the room, entered the adjacent dining room, also empty, and then he continued through this room and made his way to the outside terrace. The night air had turned cold, and he shivered. He went to the cement rail, kept his balance by holding onto a metal pillar, and peered down into E Street, studying the area between the parked automobiles and the green canopy that covered the walk to his private elevator. There was no one to be seen.
He looked up, and in the distance he could make out the Lincoln Memorial and the mass of the Pentagon Building behind it. Tonight he wished that he could see the White House half so clearly. He became aware that as he exhaled, his breath was condensing into visible clouds of vapor. Why the devil was Talley being so slow? Well, he told himself, it was not worth risking pneumonia to catch sight of his arrival.
He left the terrace for the heated interior of the eight floor, and then returned to the Madison Dining Room. As he entered, he saw Wayne Talley bustling in from the lounge, tugging off his camel’s hair overcoat, and dropping it and his hat across a chair.
“My God, Wayne, it’s about time.” Eaton tried to keep the peevishness out of his voice. “Where have you been?”
“The traffic,” said Talley breathlessly. “Even Moses couldn’t have made that sea of cars part, let alone a White House limousine.”
They met at the dining table. “What happened?” Eaton demanded. “Try to remember everything.”
“I wish there was much more to tell you besides what I told you on the phone, but there isn’t,” Talley said. “When I gave him the draft of the speech last night, I assured him I’d be waiting to consult with him on any changes. He said he was grateful, and I thought he was. I waited around in my office all morning, and not a word from him. After lunch I dropped in on Edna Foster and asked if the President had been looking for me. She said no, he was tied up. I asked if he had the speech on his desk. She said she thought she had seen it there. I told her to be sure to tell him I was standing by for any last-minute changes or modifications. She said she’d tell him. Well, the whole afternoon passed and not a word-”
“Didn’t you see Dilman at all today? I mean, on anything else?”
“Not even a glimpse of him.” Talley complained. “I think this is the first day that’s ever happened Well, about an hour ago I couldn’t stand it any more, so I went back to Miss Foster’s office and again I asked if he’d been looking for me. She said no, not as far as she knew. That was too much, so I said, ‘Edna I’d like to see the President.’ And she said-you know what she said?-she said, ‘I’m sorry, Governor Talley, but he canceled every one of his appointments and left strict orders not to be disturbed.’ How do you like that, Arthur? Well, I didn’t, not at all, so I said, ‘What in the heck is he so busy with?’ She said, ‘I really don’t know, except he’s been writing the entire morning and afternoon.’ Writing? That exasperated me-”
Eaton looked up from his watch crossly. “Governor, do you mind skipping your feelings and traumas, and sticking to what happened? In a few more minutes, we won’t be alone.”
Hurt, Talley said, “Geez, Arthur, I was only trying-okay, okay-so I said to her firmly, ‘Edna, I’m his aide, and if he knows I’m out here he will probably want to see me. So you go in there, you tell him I sent you in, and tell him I’d like to know what he thinks of the speech, and if he’d like to talk it over.’ She was kind of hesitant, but I insisted. So she went inside, and I cooled my heels for maybe a minute. Then she came out, and you know what she had in her hand? This.” Wayne Talley reached inside his suit coat and jerked forth the folded typescript of the speech they had jointly prepared for Dilman the night before, Talley opened it and pointed to the pen-written scrawl across the top.
Eaton cocked his head, squinted his eyes, trying to decipher the scrawl. Haltingly, he read the President’s notation aloud. “ ‘Thanks for all your trouble. D. D.’ ” Eaton frowned, and pursed his lips. “I wonder if he even read it.”
“I don’t know,” said Talley. “All I know is Miss Foster stuck it in my hands and said, ‘President Dilman asked me to tell you he appreciates this, the work that went into it, but he won’t need it because he’s writing his own speech.’ I was so appalled, I blurted out to her, I said, ‘Edna, for Chrissakes, no President in living memory has ever written his own speech. It takes writers, real writers, and in this instance, specialists in domestic matters. No man can do it alone. He’d botch it.’ And she said, ‘I don’t think you have to worry, Governor. He didn’t do it entirely alone. When I told him you were standing by to help, he said to tell you he’d had plenty of help all day long from friends of his.’ I got sore, and I said, ‘I thought you told me no one saw him today.’ She said, ‘That’s right, at least not through this office or Mr. Lucas’ office. But he may have seen someone in his own apartment at lunch. Besides, I didn’t say that no one
“I think I don’t like it, and I thin our President is a fool,” Eaton said. “He is liable to make a bloody mess of it. I can only pray he is literate and lucid enough to make the meaning and intent of the bill clear to the people.”
“Well, I’ve had time to cool off, and I’m becoming philosophical about the whole thing,” Talley said. “What difference what he says about it, as long as he signs it? I only resent his being so high-handed, and ignoring us. Besides”-Talley smoothed the typescript almost lovingly where it lay on the table-“it was such a damn beautiful bit of rhetoric, would have kicked the whole minorities program off in high. Christ, what T. C. could have done with this. Lookee here-”
He began to read snatches of the rejected speech. “ ‘This magnificent Federal program follows in the great American tradition of the WPA at home and the Marshall Plan abroad, both milestones in our democratic effort to lend a strong, undemanding hand to those of our citizens who need a hand, and to give aid and comfort to those millions who desire their country’s help even as they help themselves. It is with pride in my fellow citizens, and with the greatest confidence in our future well-being and security, that I endorse the Minorities Rehabilitation Program approved by our Congress, and that I put my name to it before all of you.’ ” Talley looked up. “Not bad, Arthur?” He dipped his head again. “I like this part best. ‘This bill, my fellow Americans, will stand as a monument more enduring than granite to the name and memory of my predecessor, the late President, who-’ ”
“That’s enough, Governor,” Eaton interrupted. “It’s a waste of time. It has as much meaning now as a letter that was never mailed.” He paused, and listened. “Is that the elevator?”
Quickly Talley folded the speech and shoved it into his pocket. He sidled up to Eaton. “What do we tell
