“The Adriatic coast is the place where everybody goes now,” she continued, trying to make it up to him. “It’s less expensive and even more beautiful-it’s not as commercial, not as touristy.”
“The Adriatic? I’ll have to look into that. Someday, maybe . .
.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed, then asked: “Have you got all the vouchers entered?”
“Yes.” She glanced at her watch. “I better call my sister.”
“Carolyn…” Hughes hesitated a moment. “Look, why don’t you go ahead and take off? I can finish up here alone.”
She shook her head. “You know the regulations. Got to have a watcher to watch the watcher.”
“Afraid I’ll grab the money and run off to the Adriatic ;coast?”
He laughed. “Not that it isn’t a thought.”
“No, of course not.” She knew her face was slightly red. “But I’m in charge of the vault and if anyone found out…”
“Don’t sweat it, I’ll cover for you.” She still hesitated.
“Go ahead, Carolyn, get out of here-there’s not that much left to do anyway.”
She reached for her coat which was draped over a desk chair and said, “You sure you don’t need me?”
“Of course I need you but why spoil both our evenings?
Besides, the weather’s getting bad and if you wait any longer, you won’t be able to go at all. The guys in the architects’ division left an hour ago.”
“Thanks a lot, Lex.” She paused at the door. ‘Anybody ever tell you that you’re a very nice man? Thanks again.”
He touched an imaginary cap with his forefinger and said, “My pleasure.” She had talked about the trip all last week and had mentioned several times that the son of her uncle’s best friend was also visiting and that her uncle had wanted her to meet him. She had made fun of the idea she had no hopes, none at all, but then, who knew?
She deserved a last chance. Besides, his evening was nothing to look forward to even if he went home.
With good luck, Hughes thought, Carolyn would do better with her uncle’s visitor than he had done with Maggie. Maggie. How had it all happened, anyway? The year in New York, the chance with the show-for peanuts, of course, but a chance nonetheless. And then Maggie had told him she was pregnant. One could barely live on an Equity salary in those days; it was absolutely impossible for two. So he had done the decent thing and married her-abortion was out-and got himself a clerk’s job, the type of work he had done ever since. And Maggie hadn’t changed. Still giddy, with a vivacity that was charming in a girl of twenty and appalling in a woman of forty, and an absolute conviction that clothes made ‘the woman-if the price was high and the labels right.
He finished the last entry and began to run the totals.
When he was through, he picked up the tray of money to take it to the vault. So much money, he thought again, more than thirty thousand dollars-a lot more, closer to forty. And there was more money in the vault, plus negotiable securities and bonds that some of the officers kept there. If he were a dishonest man, now was his chance. And that was the irony of it all, he thought. He couldn’t be a thief if his life-depended on it, his early training had laced him into a moral straitjacket.
Hadn’t it?
He glanced up at the camera eye scanning him. Of course it had.
Thou Seest Me.
The spark has grown stronger now, fanned by the faint breeze from the ventilator. It glows brightly, like a firefly in the evening shadows. The strand of frayed cotton, slowly eaten by the spark, feathers into a light gray ash that falls as dust to the floor below.
The spark has nibbled its way two inches up the wispy hair of cotton to two threads, the warp and woof of the fabric above it. The new supply of food is too much for the spark and it slowly starts to darken, dying of indigestion. The threads at the juncture point blacken, pulling heat away from the sparkles now too weak to burn past the slight pressure point where the two strands of cotton meet.
It dims some more; the beast is dying before it’s ever really had a chance to live.
The temperature in the room has continued to drop and somewhere in the depths, of the wall, near the ceiling, two dissimilar metals of different coefficients of expansion twist in a common embrace, reaching out in their struggle to touch a cadmium nickel contact. A brief electrical flash marks the tripping of a relay many floors below and a fan deep in the bowels of the building slowly sobs to life. Overhead in the room,.warm air abruptly floods from the ventilator grill. The sudden displacement of air in the darkened room blows away the smothering layer of combustion products and fresh oxygen swirls around the fading spark. It flares under the sudden gust of air and leaps the juncture of the two threads. In the next instant, the juncture separates and two sparks glow in the darkness where only one had glowed before.
The flow of warm air from the ventilator grill in the ceiling grows stronger. The sparks grow brighter.
The infant beast now has two arms.
CHAPTER 7
Well, the old saying was sure right, Krost thought to himself. It took a real drinker to recognize another drinker.
He smiled half crookedly with secret knowledge and said, “Mr. Donaldson said, you got trouble up here, Mr. Bigelow?”
Bigelow stared at him with red-rimmed eyes and read the same message.
“Back there,” he said curtly, jerking his head in the direction of the executive suite. Krost padded obediently after him through the storage room, glancing curiously about at the styrofoam Santa Clauses and reindeer; it looked like the toy section of a huge department store, he thought. Then they were in the suite itself and Bigelow was pointing an accusing finger at the refrigerator in the kitchen nook.
“How the hell can a man entertain a client without any ice? I don’t know what’s wrong with the damned thing, the light won’t even come on.”
“Yes sir, it sure must be inconvenient, but we’ll have it fixed in a jiffy, Mr. Bigelow.” His eyes were darting about the suite as he was talking.”If Bigelow was entertaining, there wasn’t much indication of it; he was the only one present in the suite, there were no coats on the sofa or business papers scattered over the coffee table or brief cases leaning against it.
Krost knelt down by the refrigerator. “I don’t know what’s wrong with companies any more, you get things right from the factory and quality check or something before they shipped them out but, no sir, they never seem to touch the things, it’s just sell ‘em and forget ‘em.” What was wrong was that the plug had been pulled out of the wall in back but it was hard to get at and not immediately noticeable. You’d have to get down -on your hands and knees and fish around in the dust behind the unit, but Bigelow didn’t look like the type who would be willing to wrinkle his trousers or get grease on his fancy, thick-heeled shoes. “Should have it fixed in a moment, Mr. Bigelow; doesn’t look like anything major.”
Bigelow was nervous and getting more so. “Just go ahead and fix it, don’t talk my ear off about it.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Bigelow, like I was telling Daisy the other night, you really can’t concentrate on anything difficult if you’re talking at the same time. If silence isn’t golden, at least it sometimes pays off.”
Krost spotted it then. The closed door, probably the bathroom, had to be the bathroom. And not a sound from it. He had left a pair of pliers on the counter and stood up to get them. Two glasses in the sink, one with a thick smear of red around the rim. Well, it just had to be that way; who would be entertaining a client on Thanksgiving Eve?
Maybe Donaldson was dumb enough to think so but he certainly wasn’t.
He made noises with the pliers for a moment, then pushed the plug into the wall socket and blinked at the sudden flood of light from the refrigerator in its darkened nook.
“I guess that’ll do it, okay, Mr. Bigelow?” He’d give a lot to know who was up there; Bigelow didn’t look like the hooker type. Maybe one of the secretaries who worked in the building; that’d make for a nice scandal, maybe
