Preserve and Protect

by Allen Drury

  “I shall,” Bob Leffingwell promised. “Good night, Mr. President.”

  “Good night.” There was a click from the extension, and: “Bob Munson—”

  “Yes, sir. Bill, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, sir?”

  “That’s my problem,” the President said glumly. “Jawbone still had the House stalled when they adjourned an hour ago, and your friend Van Ackerman successfully did the same to the Senate. At least he didn’t threaten violence, though. It was all pro-peace and antiwar, with the threat left out.”

  “Everybody was arguing on a noble plane today,” Senator Munson said dryly. “That was part of the strategy. The violence will come back tomorrow if the decision doesn’t go the right way.…What do you want done on those two sections of the bill, incidentally?”

  “I want them modified, naturally,” the President said. “But,” he added grimly, “I want a few people scared shitless, first.”

  “I’m not sure we can hold them in line,” Senator Munson said thoughtfully. “There’s a very strong sentiment, particularly in the House, for going all the way. Whether we can scare people as you want but still get enough amendment to make it reasonable, I don’t know. They may want all or nothing.”

  “Well, try,” the President said.

  “You know I will, Bill.”

  “I know you will. Incidentally, I think you two did a magnificent job yourselves, this afternoon. I was proud of you.”

  “Be proudest of Bob,” Senator Munson said. “He did the most—and also had the most to lose, and the most to live up to, in doing what he did.”

  “I’ve changed my opinion of him a lot in recent days,” the President said.

  “So have many people,” Senator Munson said. “Some for the better, some for the worse.”

  “I hope he values the ones for the better.”

  “Oh, he does. He’s come a long way.”

  “And may go further if we can get this country straightened out and back on the right path again.”

  “We must,” Senator Munson said.

  “We must,” the President agreed.

  “What we must do,” George Harrison Wattersill said earnestly in Patsy’s enormous living room in Dumbarton Oaks, “is get this country straightened out and back on the right path again. That is what you will do, Governor,” he said, beaming down upon Ted from his position beside the grand piano, where he stood with a Scotch-on-the-rocks in his hand.

  “I hope so,” Ted said gravely. “I hope so. I am not so sure, after this afternoon, that it is going to be so simple.”

  “Why is that, Governor?” Roger P. Croy asked with some surprise and a trace of alarm. “Were you dissatisfied with—”

  “Oh, no,” Ted said. “Not at all, Governor. I thought you both did a magnificent job.”

  “We tried,” George Wattersill said modestly. “We tried, because we are both so deeply aware of the enormous importance of your cause, and the great—I might say, the desperate—necessity that you win this battle. Not only the nation but the whole world needs you, Governor—”

  “Yes,” Ted interrupted, “you’ve stated that, George. We know that. Thank you. Don’t think I’m ungrateful,” he added quickly, as democracy’s defender looked a little crestfallen. “I am most humbly grateful for all that you both did. No, it was Tommy who puzzled me a little. I think,” he said carefully, “he’s got something on his mind.”

  “I thought he presided very fairly,” Patsy said, coming in with a tray of hors-d’oeuvres she had decided to serve herself, rather than let the maid do it, because this was a very confidential talk that shouldn’t be overheard by outsiders. “Having to put up with all that nonsense from Bob Leffingwell and Bob Munson would be enough to drive ANYBODY around the bend. But he remained perfectly calm and pleasant, I thought, even when they were doing their best to confuse the issue.”

  “They did try,” Roger P. Croy said with a reminiscent smile.

  “But we wouldn’t let them,” George Wattersill said with satisfaction. “We kept returning to the single, fundamental point. I really thought Justice Davis was impressed. Aside from that one early question, he said very, very little.”

  “Perhaps that’s what worries me,” Governor Jason said with a smile. “It’s so unlike our little friend to be so silent.”

  “Well, you must remember, Governor,” Roger Croy said, “he was representing the Court, of course; in fact, he was the Court, at that moment. That is quite a responsibility for a single Justice, and I am sure any undue gravity”—he also smiled—“was due to that.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Ted said; and then, lightly, because he knew his sister could sense what the others would not, that he was genuinely worried, “Pat, what on earth have you cooked up there to make us fat?”

  She gave him a quick, shrewd glance.

  “Just some odds and ends to tide us over. I know Roger and George will have to be back up at the Court before long to hear the decision, so I thought we’d just have a few nibbles now, and then go to the Jockey Club or the Gangplank or some place like that where we can be seen, for the victory dinner afterward, I think,” she said with a certain grim relish, “they should SEE us being victorious. Some of them DESERVE it!”

  “You sound quite Madame Defarge-ish,” George Harrison Wattersill said with a laugh, helping himself as she brought the tray around.

  “Pat’s my commander-in-chief when we go over the barricades,” Governor Jason said. “Incidentally,” he added, more seriously, “I do want to commend you on the demeanor of the crowds outside the Court. I understand that was your doing, and I thought it was very sensible. I trust it marks the beginning of the end of the sort of outburst that has disfigured this campaign to some extent.”

  For just a second both Roger Croy and George Wattersill looked at him with curious expressions, half-puzzled, half-quizzical. Then Roger Croy said carefully,

  “You did not transmit the order to George through Senator Van Ackerman, Mr. Shelby and Mr. Kleinfert at his house this morning? They gave him to understand that—”

  “No, I saw no necessity,” Ted said, taking a plate and several hors-d’oeuvres as Patsy came to him. “They had already assured me that from now on they were going to control their people and not permit things to get out of hand. I saw no reason to reaffirm this with them. Apparently there was no reason to. They did it, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” George Wattersill agreed quickly, dismissing whatever doubts he might have in favor of the cause he believed in, “and it was a most shrewd decision, which I am sure they would not have reached had it not been for the prior discussion they had with you. It showed not only an astute appraisal on your part of the realities of presenting a good image to the country and the world, but it also was a gesture of genuine responsibility, I thought. It is the sort of thing which makes your leadership so valuable to the cause of world peace. And makes me,” he said with his flair for gracious phraseology, “so humbly grateful that I have been selected to work, in some small capacity, at your side.”

  “No small capacity at all,” the Governor said. “An indispensable capacity, I should say. We will want you with us for the duration, if you would be willing.”

  “Nothing,” said George Harrison Wattersill gravely, “would please me more.”

  “Well, good!” Patsy said, setting down the tray, taking up her own Scotch and soda, raising it high. “Let’s drink to THAT, and to the gathering of all good friends and the confounding of all Ted’s enemies!”

  “And to Mr. Justice Davis,” Ted said, lightly again but still, she could sense, uneasy. “May he do the right thing.”

  “For US,” Patsy said.

  “For us,” he echoed.

  And with a hearty laugh they all did drink to Tommy Davis, who of course would do the right thing. They knew he would, because, as Patsy added a moment later, he simply HAD to.

  “Miss Wilson,” he had said quietly over the intercom when the Marshal had escorted him back to hi
s office through the deserted, echoing marble corridors shortly after six p.m., “will you please have the kitchen send up a small bowl of tomato soup, a chicken sandwich, and some vanilla ice cream. Tell them to knock and leave it, please. Thank you.”

  And ten minutes later when he had heard, first the chink and tinkle of china and silver on the cart, and then the dutiful knock, and then the silence left by someone going away, he had gone to the door and brought it in himself, because he did not want anyone or anything to destroy his concentration in these final hours when he was alone with his case, his conscience and his God.

  He wondered now, as he pushed back his half-eaten snack and stared in profound thought at the sheaf of notes from a dead hand which lay before him on the desk, what they were all doing, while the world waited for him to speak; and knowing his Washington, he could guess fairly well.

  He could imagine that the two sides, confident yet worried, were talking and speculating—as they were. He could see members of the National Committee at Fort Myer or, with their Army escorts and guards, visiting friends or attending parties around Washington to await his decision—as they were. He could see his friends of press and television, already gathering in the chamber, gossiping nervously, jockeying for vantage point and position as the harassed press officer of the Court tried to find space for everyone and keep everyone happy: and this was happening. He could visualize the steamy thousands of NAWAC, still outside on the lawns, singing or drinking or even, behind the hospitable bushes of Capitol Plaza, making love—and this was occurring. And all across the country and the world—what George Harrison Wattersill, that flamboyant young man, had called “yea, the great globe itself”—he could imagine his countrymen and all the scurrying races of man, trying to tend to the business of ordinary living that must be done, but not able to concentrate very much because their minds were occupied so intensely with him—and this, too, was the fact of it.

  For these few remaining hours, no man on earth was more important, or more obsessively on the minds of other men, than Mr. Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis of the United States Supreme Court.

  And how did he feel about it? Well, certainly not egotistical, he could say that honestly. Certainly not self-important, for his importance now transcended self. Certainly not worried, for here, too, the demand upon him was so great that he could not afford worry. And certainly, he told himself, and was quietly surprised and pleased to find that it was true, certainly not afraid, either of history or of himself.

  Once long ago when Mr. Justice Davis was a very small boy, his father, who had been a lawyer before him and had been chief justice of the New York state supreme court, though he had never risen as high as his son, had said to Tommy: “Don’t be afraid of what life may bring, for men of character find that they have the strength to do what must be done.”

  And he had always found this to be true, for under his gossiping and his busy-bodying and his bustling about among the famous men and issues of his time, Tommy, in his own fussy, quirky, inimitable way, was a man of character, and he had found his father’s statement to be sound.

  He thought with some amusement now that he had probably confounded them all with his demeanor at the hearing. They had probably expected him to be as voluble and gossipy as his reputation said he was, and as his friends privately knew him to be. Perhaps Bob Leffingwell had expected him to be as nervous and upset as he had been on the day Bob had given him that sheaf of notes. But he hadn’t been, because he had conducted himself as what, after all, he was: Justice of the Supreme Court.

  And also, he had read that sheaf of notes.

  He could reconstruct very vividly now, for in fact he still felt it, the horror and dismay that had swept over him when he had gone patiently through Helen-Anne’s scribblings to the end. At first he had experienced a little difficulty with her slap-dash reporter’s abbreviations and rusty, catch-as-catch-can shorthand, but his days as a law clerk had come to his rescue and it had not taken him long to piece together what she had to say.

  The unholy trinity of violence in the streets had held a meeting, right enough, first with Ted Jason and then, after he had left, with someone else; and Tommy could understand, after he had read through the details as an excellent reporter had been able to piece them together, both why Bob Leffingwell could have been so upset in his office and why Governor Jason could have been so calm and confident.

  Ted was a dupe, but he was something more: he was a dupe whose egotism and self-confidence were so great that they made it almost inevitable that he should have become a dupe. No wonder he could accept denials from Fred, LeGage and Rufus: he was so supremely sure of himself that he was tailor-made for their purposes. He honestly did not know about the later meeting, but more than that—and much more disturbing to Justice Davis as he sat alone in his utterly silent wing of the beautiful building—was the fact that he quite obviously did not want to know about it, and in fact would not let himself know.

  The revelation that a meeting had occurred, and one sufficiently dangerous in its implications to justify the concern of both Helen-Anne and Bob Leffingwell, had in a sense not been nearly as shattering for the little Justice as this revelation of the character of the man whose political cause and personal integrity he had believed in so completely. Somebody’s money—probably, he suspected, Patsy’s—had been given freely to buy the silence of all—except one—who could bear witness to the individuals who had gone up to the twelfth floor that night. Whether Patsy knew this, he was not sure: in all likelihood not. Someone she recognized as friendly to her brother had probably said funds were urgently needed for the campaign, and she had dashed off a check and that was it, as far as she was concerned. From buying silence it had spread to—he didn’t want to face it, but there was no way to avoid it—Helen-Anne and a busboy dead in the street. And it could spread much, much beyond; and the only man who could really repudiate it and stop it was Governor Jason, and he evidently was unable—or unwilling, which was much more serious, because consciously or subconsciously, that made it a deliberate decision—to face it in all its implications.

  To do so—and here also Tommy had to force himself to go on, but he did it—would be to jeopardize the effective foundations of Ted’s campaign and very likely terminate his ambition to be President.

  Beyond that point in his thinking, Mr. Justice Davis, at this moment, did not want to go. What it did to his whole concept of the Jason cause, what it did to his whole concept of Ted himself, what he himself should do from now on about both Ted and his cause, he did not know right now. That would require a very careful thinking-out, and one in which he would have to struggle with his heart and conscience, and with many very deep-seated convictions about many things. It was not something he wanted to tackle now, nor did he have to: but he knew it was waiting for him, as soon as these hectic hours of his dubious and difficult fame were over.

  At eight o’clock, as he had requested, Robert A. Leffingwell knocked on his door; and after he had told Bob about his reaction to the notes, and his thoughts about them, and to some degree about Ted Jason, and about Bob himself, Bob had shaken his hand gravely and gone away, still uncertain what Tommy’s decision would be, but thinking perhaps he had helped him clarify it a little.

  And shortly before nine one other, perhaps the only one who would think of inviting himself at such a time, appeared and did what he could to clarify Tommy’s thinking, from his own point of view, more angrily than George, more vehemently than Bob; and also shook Tommy’s hand and departed uncertain, but not before the little Justice had said, “Please see me after the decision. There is a visit I want to make, and I would like to have you accompany me.” The other, almost as though he guessed where—though how could he, it had only that moment popped into Tommy’s head—had said with a wary caution, “We’ll discuss it when I see you.”

  And now it was time for him to write his decision. Placing a large pad of yellow legal note paper neatly before him on the desk, he did so in no more
than fifteen minutes, for it had really been inevitable from the first.

  With that completed, he did one more thing, which in some curious way was a linkback to old, unhappy events; something which he recognized, with a little prickling of the hair on the back of his neck, as a penance, a payment, a settling of accounts with the gallant, unhappy ghost of Brigham Anderson, whom he had joined with others to drive from life a year and a half ago.

  He took an envelope, inserted Helen-Anne’s notes, sealed it, franked it with his signature; opened his door and took it himself, though the waiting bailiff offered to do it, to the nearest mail chute and dropped it in.

  It would reach the addressee tomorrow. Mr. Justice Davis had no idea at all what he would do with it. But that he should have it seemed right and just and somehow a thing that would make not only that earlier unhappy ghost, but Helen-Anne’s as well, rest more easily this fateful night.

  Then he went back and asked his secretary to notify the press officer that he would appear in the chamber in fifteen minutes’ time, at ten p.m. sharp, to deliver his decision.

  “Damn it, stop shoving!” the Los Angeles Times said in exasperation to France-Presse, and from the row behind Reuters leaned forward to poke them both in the back.

  “Let us have more international friendship and cooperation,” he suggested. “And also, if both of you would please lean to the left so that I can see past—”

  “We’re so squeezed in we can’t lean either way,” the L.A. Times tossed over his shoulder, still sounding annoyed but beginning to relent a little. “Anyway, what makes you think we would both want to lean left.”

  “I’m not thinking of your preference but my view,” Reuters said. “What a mess!”