Читать книгу Fool's Paradise - John Russell Fearn - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

It was about the time that Ken left the Bland Edifice that Mortimer Bland himself was enjoying an agreeable evening amidst the soft lights and sweet music of the Heart Throb Café. It was situated in the centre of London’s sprawling huddle of buildings—exclusively extravagant, hiding many a dubious tête-à-tête, its staff trained unswervingly to admit the fact that the customer is always right.

Mortimer Bland, one of the city’s wealthiest industrialists, was a frequent visitor. So was Milly Morton, the unusually lovely blonde who invariably accompanied him. What Bland liked about Milly, apart from her curves, was the fact that his money could not only buy for her whatever she wished, but could also buy from her whatever he wished. Which to his commercial mind seemed a fair exchange.

They sat now in an alcove, their table hidden—as were the other tables—from the rest of the café. The champagne was just right; so was the meal. Mortimer Bland was glowing like a well-fed bulldog and not looking unlike one, either. Money, hearty eating, and lack of exercise had given him a beefy face and bulgy grey eyes, but it had not yet greyed the black hair swept back from his forehead.

At sixty he was as strong as an ox, and proud of it. Milly was quite thirty-five years younger, but this fact did not bother her in the least when weighed against the advantages of being one of Bland’s most favoured girlfriends.

“I think,” Milly said, as she set down her champagne glass, “that I’m going to ask you to do me a favour, Mort.”

Bland grinned and revealed yellow teeth. “How much?”

Milly laughed, and it made her more beautiful. Bland liked her even white teeth, and the way in which the concealed lighting caught the waves in her honey-coloured hair.

“It isn’t money,” Milly said. “I want a job.”

“What!” Bland stared at her. “You, a musical comedy star, wanting a job?”

“My contract’s run out, and nobody wants to renew it. I’m one of those girls who spend as they go and now I— Well, I have to stay alive, haven’t I?”

Bland set his jaw. “Nobody can kick you around like that, Milly! I’ll get you into a new production if I have to buy up a chain of theatres to do it—”

“But I’m getting tired of the stage,” Milly interrupted. “And it’s time I planned for the future.”

“In what way?”

“I suppose we could get married, couldn’t we? Or is that too prosaic? Besides, we wouldn’t be such good friends if we married. I couldn’t stand being your wife and shut up in that big house of yours.”

“Then we’ll not even consider it,” Bland said, who had no intention of marrying his latest infatuation.

“So,” Milly said, smiling again, “I’d like some kind of position in your organisation. There must be room for a little girl like me, surely?”

Bland never mixed business with pleasure. “Afraid not, my dear. My business is scientific, and what do you know about science?”

“But surely everybody doesn’t have to be a scientist, down to the office boy? What about the clerical side? I can’t type or use a computer, but I’d soon learn.”

Bland poured out more champagne whilst he considered; then he asked a question, “Why this decision to get into my organisation?”

Milly raised and lowered a semi-bare shoulder. “Just the way it is. I’d feel safer with you at the head of things.”

“You’d find me very different in business.”

“Not so different, Mort. You’d be nice to me. If you weren’t, it might cause an awful lot of trouble.”

“In what way?”

“Well.…” Milly inspected her immaculate nails. “We have had moments that wouldn’t sound so good in print, haven’t we? And you have written me letters. The dirt rakers are just waiting to throw mud at a famous personality like you, Mort.”

“Polite blackmail, eh?” Bland’s steel-trap mouth set hard for a moment, then he relaxed. “And how damned right you are! I don’t blame you, Milly, because not being a saint myself, I can see how you look at it. All right—what sort of a job do you want in my organisation?”

“Personal secretary.”

“Can’t be done, my dear. Miss Hawkins has been with me for twenty-five years.”

“Then it’s time she went. I’ve seen the old hag. I should think she frightens away more business than she brings.”

“She’s indispensable,” Bland temporized.

“Nobody’s that. Get rid of her.”

Milly finished her champagne and looked at Bland steadily with her sapphire blue eyes. Her smile had gone. Her red lips were set in a firm line. Her beautiful face was like marble.

“All right,” Bland said, shrugging. “I’ll manage something.”

“Good!” Milly smiled again. “You see, Mort, our association works both ways. I’ve given you plenty up to now, and naturally there are other rewards I want besides the presents you give me. Not marriage or anything dull like that—just a comfortable job with a good salary of, say.…” She paused, and then named a high figure.

Bland jumped visibly. “What!”

“To commence with,” Milly amended. “A personal secretary has a lot of responsibility.”

“But it’s preposterous! Miss Hawkins doesn’t get anything like that.”

“Look at Miss Hawkins—then at me,” Milly suggested. “I’ll add glamour to the place.”

Bland was silent. His reputation must be kept undefiled at all costs: so much depended on it. He spent a few seconds cursing himself for a fool for not having been more careful in his lighter moments.

He knew he would have to agree. But later, perhaps he might think of a way round the problem. So he smiled at Milly genially, and she smiled back…but her blue eyes were as hard as the gems at her white throat.

* * * * * * *

The most surprised person at the institution of Milly as Bland’s personal secretary was Anton Drew. The formidable Miss Hawkins had not been so much surprised as vitriolic, but had departed with the assurance that she could easily find a post with a rival concern.

For Milly, Drew’s frozen contempt for her was something she could not tolerate, and one morning she said so to the great man himself.

“I want that creature fired!” she told Bland flatly, striding into his enormous office.

“Who? Oh, you mean the man who has just left? Drew?”

“Yes, Drew! That—that thing in the dirty overall who looks at me as though I’d crawled out of a drain.”

“He can’t be fired,” Bland said calmly. “He’s the backbone of the organisation.”

“I know he’s the chief scientist; he hasn’t forgotten to tell me so—but any more looks like the one he gave me just mow when he left and I’ll blow up the place to get rid of him, if I have to!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, be reasonable!’” Bland protested. “I know he looks at everybody as if they don’t count, but it’s only his way. Don’t antagonise him.”

Milly reflected, then her blurred eyes gleamed.

“All right, maybe I can teach him manners.…”

Ignoring Bland’s protests as he struggled clumsily to rise from his swivel-chair, she hurried from the office, through her own secretarial sanctum, and out into the immaculate corridor which led to the major laboratory. When she had entered it, she stood looking about her.

The gathered assistants, busy at their various tasks, looked long enough to wonder; then their eyes followed her lithe movements towards Drew’s desk at the far end of the laboratory where he sat brooding over the latest spectro-heliograph plates.

“Listen, you!” Milly hanged her fist on the desk.

Drew looked up, removing his pipe from his teeth,

“Well, Miss Morton?”

The cold level of his voice took her off balance.

“I think you and I should come to an understanding,” she continued. “I don’t like the way you behave towards me.”

“No?” Drew surveyed her, and remarked she was an unusually lovely girl using an unusually lovely perfume.

“Next time,” Milly added, “treat me as though I’m a human being and not one of those things that run up and down a jar.”

“You mean a culture? Cultures are interesting, Miss Morton.”

“Meaning I’m not?” Milly blazed. “You confounded—”

“You are supposed to be a secretary,” Drew cut in. “As such you are a supreme blunderer. You have beauty, Miss Morton, and everything that goes to make a young woman attractive—only I don’t happen to be the type that can be attracted. I look only for efficiency in this organization, and I never get it from you. That is why I regard you as a confounded nuisance! In your own sphere I don’t doubt that you are a great success: I’d be delighted if you’d return to it.”

Milly’s highly rouged cheeks coloured more deeply—then in sudden uncontrollable rage she whipped up the spectro-plates from the desk and slammed them with all her force to the floor. They splintered immediately on the hard rubberoid, shards of glass scattering in all directions.

Drew jumped to his feet, the whiteness of his face sufficient indication of his fury.

“You vicious, selfish little idiot!” he shouted. “Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed the very evidence upon which the saving of a world might depend—”

“World?” Milly repeated, half-frightened, half-stupid.

Drew came round the desk and clutched her arm fiercely.

In spite of all her protests, he whirled down the corridor and into Mortimer Bland’s office. Astounded, the big fellow sat staring.

“What the devil’s all this about?” he demanded.

“You’ve an ultimatum on your hands, Mr. Bland,” Drew snapped. “Either get rid of this playtime baby of yours, or I quit.”

“But what’s happened?” Bland’s prominent eyes popped.

Drew released the girl savagely and told of the laboratory incident.

“Those plates were beyond price,” he finished heatedly. “Solar photographs which I’ll need as proof of the—”

Drew stopped suddenly. Bland seized on the silence.

“Proof of what?” he demanded. “And what the hell do you want spectro-plates for? They’ve nothing to do with this organisation, have they?”

“Only on the astronomical side, for the observatories.”

“No observatory has asked for spectro-plates, Drew. I see everything which goes out of this organisation. So what’s the explanation?”

Drew pulled out his pipe and bit into it. “Experimental work and very essential. Concerning the present rash of sunspots.”

Milly folded her rounded arms and gave Bland a glance.

“A man who can spend his time studying sunspots doesn’t seem so indispensable to me,” she remarked sourly. “What have they got to do with the stuff this place turns out?”

“I could explain the whole thing, but the time isn’t ripe for me to do so,” Drew retorted. “All I can say now is that the destruction of those plates has ruined the work of months.”

Bland’s eyes became hard. “Listen to me, Drew. I engaged Miss Morton, and I stand by it; and I’m getting the impression that I’ve been mistaken in you, too. Your job is to supervise the science of this organisation, not study sunspots. I know we check astronomical findings with our observatory apparatus, but that doesn’t mean you can make experiments on your own.”

“If it were not for the fact I’d start a panic, I’d tell you what it’s all about!” Drew snapped.

“Nice of you! All I can see is that you have been using my time and instruments to your own advantage, besides insulting Miss Morton. There’s only one answer to that.”

The shock-haired scientist hesitated, his cold eyes turning to consider Milly’s triumphant face; then without a word he strode from the office and slammed the door behind him. Bland relaxed in his swivel chair with a sigh of relief.

“I wonder if we did right,” Milly mused.

“What?” Bland sat up again.

“I’m wondering about something he said,” Milly continued. “Something about my destroying plates upon which the saving of a world depends. There was something rather frightening about the way he said it. Maybe he should have stayed on to work the thing out.”

“Which world?” Bland asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know. I suppose he meant this one. What other world could there be?”

“Oh, there are others,” Bland assured her, none too certain of himself. “Venus, Mars, and the rest of ’em in the System. But there’s no reason why he should wish to save those, far as I can see.”

Silence. In the presence of Milly, Bland would not admit that Drew had left behind him a curious air of disquiet. Bland knew only too well that Drew was not the kind of man to keep silent about anything scientific unless it were vitally important that he do so—and somehow the saving of a world, and sunspots, had an unpleasant connection.…