“Maybe I should say because you stole Laura, and now she’s making a fool of herself—and you—with that Johansen. I wanted her. I’d have had her, too. H. A. and I had it all fixed up.”
It wasn’t worth explaining that MacVeagh and Rogers had equally little just claim on Laura. “Noble,” said MacVeagh. “All for love. You’d let them stretch your neck for love, too?”
Rogers laughed. “You know me, huh, MacVeagh?”
Play for time, that was the only way. “I know you enough to think there’s a stronger motive—stronger for you.”
“You’re right there is. And you’re going to hear it before you go. Go to meet God. Wonder what He’ll think—of meeting another god.”
This was more startling than the automatic. “What do you mean by that, Phil?”
“I’ve heard Luke Sellers talking when he was drunk. About General Wigginsby and the butler’s confession. Everybody thought he was babbling. But I got it. I don’t know how it works, but your paper prints true. What you print happens.”
MacVeagh laughed. “Nonsense. Listen to Luke? You must’ve been tight yourself, Phil. Go home.”
“Uh-uh.” Rogers shook his head, but his hand didn’t move. “That explains it all. All you’ve done to me. You took Laura. You shoved that softie Johansen into the general manager’s job I should have had. You got that sniveling, weak-kneed labor agreement through. You— MacVeagh, I think you ended the war!”
“And you’d hold that against me?”
“Yes. We were doing swell. Now with retooling, new products, trying to crash new markets, everything uncertain— I inherited my aunt’s interest in the company. MacVeagh, you did me out of two—three years of profits.”
“Do you think anybody’d believe this wild yarn of yours, Phil?”
“No. I don’t. I was tight, just tight enough so things made sense. I wouldn’t swallow it sober myself. But I know it’s true, and that’s why I’ve got to kill you, MacVeagh.” His voice rose to a loud, almost soprano cry.
The white hand was very steady. MacVeagh moved his body slowly to one side and watched the nose of the automatic hold its point on him. Then, with the fastest, sharpest movement he’d ever attained in his life, he thrust his chair crashing back and dropped doubled into the kneehole of his desk. The motion was just in time. He heard a bullet thud into the plaster of the wall directly behind where he’d been sitting.
His plans had been unshaped. It was simply that the desk seemed the only armor visible at the moment. And to fire directly into this kneehole would mean coming around and up close where he might possibly grab at Rogers’ legs. The wood between him and Rogers now should be thick enough to—
He heard a bullet plunk into that wood. Then he heard it go past his ear and bury itself in more wood. His guess was wrong. He could be shot in here. This bullet had gone past him as knives go past the boy in the Indian basket trick. But Phil Rogers was not a magician slipping knives into safe places, and no amount of contortion could save MacVeagh from eventually meeting one of those bullets.
He heard scuffling noises. Then he heard a thud that was that of a body, not a bullet, and with it another shot.
MacVeagh crawled out from under the desk. “Undignified posture,” he said, “but what would you do if you were hemmed in and this maniac started— Is he hurt?”
It took a while for exchange of information, MacVeagh giving a much-censored version which made it seem that Phil Rogers was suffering a motiveless breakdown of some sort, the other telling how he’d been waiting outside, heard Phil’s denunciations—though not their words—and then the shots, and decided to intervene. Rogers was so intent on his victim that attack from behind was a snap. The last shot had gone into Rogers’ own left shoulder as they struggled. Nothing serious.
“Don’t know how I can ever thank you, Johansen,” said John MacVeagh.
“Any time,” said his wife’s lover. “It’s a pleasure.”
Rogers was on his feet again now. MacVeagh turned to him and said, “Get out. I don’t care what you do or how you explain that bullet wound. I’m not bringing any charges. Get out.”
Rogers glared at them both. “I’ll settle with you, MacVeagh. You too, Johansen.”
“Uh-uh. You’re having a nervous breakdown. You’re going to a sanitarium for a while. When you come out you’ll feel fine.”
“That’s what you say.”
“Get out,” MacVeagh repeated. And as Rogers left, he jotted down a note to print the sanitarium trip and the necessary follow-ups on convalescence.
Without a word he handed a bottle to Johansen, then drank from it himself. “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t say more than that.”
The tall blond man smiled. “I won’t ask questions. I’ve had run-ins with Rogers myself. The boss’s sister’s nephew— But to tell the truth, John, I’m sorry I saved your life.”
MacVeagh stiffened. “You’ve still got his gun,” he suggested humorlessly.
“I don’t want you to lose your life. But I’m sorry I saved it. Because it makes what I have to say so much harder.”
MacVeagh sat on the edge of his desk. “Go on.”
“Cold, like this? I don’t know how I thought I was going to manage to say this— I never expected this kind of a build-up— All right, John, this is it:
“I told you once that Laura had better be happy. Well, she isn’t. I’ve been seeing her. Probably you know that. I haven’t tried to sneak about it. She doesn’t love you, John. She won’t say it, but I think she still loves me. And if I can make her happy, I’m warning you, I’ll take her away from you.”
MacVeagh said nothing.
Johansen went on hesitantly. “I know what it would mean. A scandal that would
