The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  The portly peer at the lectern had concluded his tribute and was pointing toward him, and 400 dinner guests throughout the ballroom were noisily on their feet applauding and cheering him once more, and above the din, he could hear Carol’s excited cry, “Oh, how marvelous, Uncle Emmett!”

  Earnshaw bounded to his feet, went forward with his old ebullience, linking his arm in His Lordship’s arm, murmuring his thanks, then waving and waving to his English public out there.

  And then all the lights were brighter, and the applause had ended, and there were the indistinct sounds of groups conversing below, moving their chairs, shuffling toward the gold-trimmed glass doors of the regal entrance that would take them out into Park Lane where their cars would be waiting in the summer night’s fog.

  Earnshaw tried to reach his niece, but he found himself surrounded by both beefy and ascetic English faces, and he was occupied while strange hands pumped his own and strange voices congratulated him, and for fleeting seconds, he enjoyed the emotions of Election Night over again. Presently, when he reached the edge of the platform, he came upon a happy Carol waiting, ignoring attentive swains to be with him. As he spoke his last appreciation for the evening and began to take leave of the festivities, he realized the immensity of his exhaustion. His shoulders and back ached; his arms felt leaden and his legs knobby and ancient. It had been a long trip from California to London. It had been an endless day of sights and events, which he had not resisted because this was Carol’s first trip abroad. It had been an evening of pressure, this evening of his comeback, and now that it was over, a success, he was weary to the marrow of his bones. He wanted only the privacy of his suite, shoes off, cigar, one brandy, and the softness of bed and sleep, since tomorrow he and Carol must awaken early to catch the cruise ship for Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

  Turning down the numerous impromptu invitations to drinks, to supper, to nightclubs—and Carol loyally declining them with him—Earnshaw clumped down the wooden stairs to the ballroom floor. The hotel manager, an assistant, and two Secret Service men were waiting to escort him to his suite. Gratefully, he had started toward them, when a constraining hand gripped his elbow. Turning his head sharply, he found Sir Austin Ormsby next to him.

  A movement of Sir Austin’s eyes signaled him to come to one side for something private. Tired but anxious to be agreeable, Earnshaw followed Sir Austin to the nearest empty table.

  “Well, Austin,” Earnshaw began, “I can’t tell you how pleased—”

  “Emmett, I must see you privately in your rooms at once. There is a pressing matter I must discuss with you.”

  Earnshaw grimaced good-naturedly. “Can’t it wait, Austin? I’ve been looking forward to a little time alone with you. But I thought you might join me at early breakfast, before Carol and I leave. Right now, I don’t mind telling you, I’m suffering from too much of a good thing—too much of your hospitality and too much of too many birthdays. Isn’t it something we can put off until morning?”

  Sir Austin’s countenance, for one so well-bred, reflected a surprising absence of consideration. There was a single-minded determination in his features. “Emmett, I do suggest you make a little time for me now. A matter has just come up, a matter of utmost urgency to you and your welfare. It can’t be put off until morning.”

  Earnshaw’s weariness was instantly pushed aside by curiosity shaded with anxiety. “What’s so urgent it can’t be put off until tomorrow?”

  “You may want to change your plans. It may not be feasible for you to go on to Scandinavia tomorrow.”

  “Look here, Austin, what in the devil is this all about?”

  “It concerns your reputation, Emmett, and it could be serious. I doubt if it would be wise to discuss it further here.”

  Earnshaw nodded. “Very well. I’ll expect you upstairs in—let’s say in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be there,” Sir Austin said grimly.

  Troubled, Earnshaw quickly rejoined Carol and the protective Praetorians, making sure to press a smile onto his face so that there would be no questions from his niece.

  After leaving the Dorchester ballroom, they proceeded through the broad luxurious lobby. Grateful that Carol had engaged their escorts in conversation, Earnshaw tried to evaluate Sir Austin’s ominous words. Concentrating, he was hardly aware of the hotel guests and visitors, two rows deep in the lobby, eagerly trying to catch a glimpse of him. To a spattering of applause, Earnshaw kept his reluctant smile firm, and waved, as he tried to sort out his thoughts once more. He tried to imagine what kind of “matter of utmost urgency,” one involving his “reputation,” one “serious” enough to make him cancel his trip to Scandinavia, Sir Austin could wish to speak to him about.

  Earnshaw’s personal life had always been one of restraint, moderation, good sense. No blemish of scandal or potential scandal marred it. Equally spotless had been the record of his term as President. There had been, of course, the minor scandal of the Varney defection to Communist China during the Zurich Parley, an event oversensationalized by the opposition press. But at his own insistence, that had been aired openly in a Congressional hearing, and the Executive Branch had been held blameless, and after young Brennan’s resignation, the whole matter had been properly dismissed by the public.

  Beyond that, there had been nothing else. True, since he had been out of office, and especially in recent months, there had been mounting criticisms of his Administration. Yet, none of his critics dared even hint at anything dishonest or improper in Earnshaw’s conduct as President. Their carpings usually added up to the same estimate—that Earnshaw had been unimaginative, indecisive, overly conservative, and lacking in initiative and leadership. This criticism always bewildered him more than angered him. Imagine being attacked for an unspectacular term in office, he would think, as if stability were a crime. It is those other ones, he would think, the innovators, agitators, gamblers with human life—like the pinheads who had the ear of his successor, with their airy untried ideas—who should be charged with unpatriotic behavior for treating their countrymen as so many guinea pigs. But certainly, his own theory of government—doing nothing, when nothing need be done—had been neither faulty nor grounds for scandal.

  Yet, apparently, there was something wrong that threatened his reputation, and Earnshaw could not be less than apprehensive, since the carrier of the bad tidings (if such they were) was Sir Austin Ormsby, a trustworthy millionaire, a reliable Cabinet Minister, a staunch Tory, not given to repeating irresponsible gossip.

  “Why suddenly so gloomy, Uncle Emmett?”

  Startled, Earnshaw realized that Carol was addressing him, and that they stood before the green elevators off the lobby entrance.

  Earnshaw sought his smile. “Not gloomy a bit, my dear. Perhaps a little tired. You’d think I was in my sixties or something.”

  He heard the hotel manager say, “The lift, Mr. Earnshaw.”

  Earnshaw touched his niece’s arm. “Here we go.” He thanked the manager and his assistant, and entered the elevator, quickly followed by Carol and the two young Secret Service agents.

  “Eighth floor,” he said to the elderly uniformed operator.

  The ancient bobbed his head to the closing doors. “Oh yes, I know, sir.”

  When they emerged on the eighth floor, Earnshaw led the way up the soft patterned maroon carpet. As they moved between the bright electric candles encased in brass-trimmed boxes bracketed to the corridor walls, Earnshaw listened to Carol chattering with the agents behind him, yet all he could hear, still, was Sir Austin’s disturbed voice. Perhaps, Earnshaw thought, for all of the Englishman’s sensibility, he had become overly concerned about a matter that would prove to be of relative unimportance.

  At the second intersecting corridor, Earnshaw turned right and halted abruptly before the door bearing the lettering harlequin and terrace suites. He waited impatiently for Carol to finish her conversation with the agents, so he could quickly shake hands and thank both of them for their attentive
ness.

  The taller of the Secret Service agents, opening the door for him, said with evident sincerity, “The assignment has been a pleasure for us, Mr. President. If anything should come up, we’ll be here.”

  Earnshaw went through the doorway and started the steep ascent of the staircase, pausing only once to lean against the gold-and-black metal railing to catch his breath and reassure his niece that he was fine. At the landing, where the door’s lettering heralded what lay behind it as the terrace suite, Earnshaw rang the bell. Almost immediately, the door was opened.

  The diminutive cockney valet, head inclined respectfully, welcomed them. “Good evening, Your Honor. I trust it went well, sir.”

  “Just perfect, Thatcher, thank you,” said Earnshaw. He turned to bring Carol into the suite ahead of him; then, in the guest foyer, he stopped to say, “Thatcher, I’m expecting a visitor shortly—Sir Austin Ormsby—in about ten minutes or so. You can let him in, get us some drinks, and that’ll do it for tonight. If I need you later, I’ll buzz.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Undoing his bow tie, Earnshaw entered the spacious, luxuriously furnished sitting room, saw Carol disappear into her bedroom ahead, allowed Thatcher to help him off with his dinner jacket and take it to the closet, and watched the valet close himself into the kitchen. Letting down his suspenders, slowly unbuttoning his starched shirt, Earnshaw found himself at the French doors leading to the terrace. The heavy drapes, of a floral print interwoven with Chinese figures, had been only partially drawn. Through the French doors, Earnshaw could see, behind the mist, the Union Jack hanging limply from the flagpole on the terrace, and then, beyond the terrace wall, barely visible in the night, the outlines of the treetops in Hyde Park.

  In the daytime, the pastoral view, so British, was soothing. Tonight, it showed him little and offered nothing to calm his apprehension.

  Pivoting away, he crossed the room to the small hall and went into the master bedroom. His matched luggage stood in a neat row beside the window desk, already packed by the valet and maid for his departure tomorrow, except for one suitcase that sat open on the canopied bed. The assembled luggage increased his apprehension. Sir Austin had warned him that it might not be feasible to go to Scandinavia tomorrow—whatever in the devil that was supposed to mean.

  Determined to put the minor mystery out of his mind, to cease speculating upon it, Earnshaw hastened into the bathroom to wash and revive himself. But even as he removed his shirt and doused his hot face with cold water, his thoughts willfully returned to his imminent meeting and to Sir Austin Ormsby himself.

  Earnshaw had first met Sir Austin Ormsby fifteen years before, just after Austin had inherited his father’s press empire and well before he would earn himself knighthood through his political activities. Earnshaw had taken temporary leave of a lucrative private law practice to go into politics, and had arrived in London as an earlier President’s special ambassador to treat with the British, French, and West Germans over a grave trade dispute. His London stay had lasted six months, and although Earnshaw was well acquainted with many prominent members of the French and German missions, through his legal work in international corporate law, he had found himself spending most of his spare time with Sir Austin.

  Looking back, it had made no sense, for he and the young Englishman (who had become a self-appointed social host to many of the foreign visitors because of his company’s enormous investments on the Continent) had so little in common. In that year, Earnshaw had been fifty-one years old, and Sir Austin merely twenty-five. Earnshaw had been married for ages, and Sir Austin had been a confirmed bachelor. Above all, their backgrounds had been completely different, and as a consequence, their personalities and tastes had been disparate. Earnshaw had been then, as he was to this day, an easygoing, folksy, grass-roots American, unpolished, frank, simple in habits, opinions, tastes. Sir Austin had been then, as he was still (only more so now), an aristocrat in all but the technical sense of the word, for if his family had not evolved through Burke’s Peerage, it had always been a mainstay of Burke’s Landed Gentry.

  While Earnshaw’s conversations with Sir Austin then, and in their occasional meetings in England and America since, had never been intimate, they had provided Earnshaw with a certain amount of information about the wealthy younger man. Sir Austin had naturally gone to Eton, where the masters felt that he possessed great promise, and he had naturally gone on to Oxford. He had wanted to enter Christ Church, to be one of the “Christ Church Bloodies,” but a muscular parental arm had entered him in Balliol, to become another Macmillan or, at least, a Toynbee. As an undergraduate, he had wanted Engineering, but had again been firmly advised to read History.

  In Oxford, to his father’s distress, Sir Austin had undergone an identity crisis, rebelled against parental authority, and become part of a company of idealistic liberals. His father, in what had amounted to a postal snort, had found and underlined and sent him a newspaper cutting that described Sir Austin’s new companions. “Frail men with earnest, luminous eyes, wearing heavy tweed suits and voluminous colored ties; mostly tubercular, pipe-smokers, courteous, little given to mirth, ethically Christian.” It had gone on like that, and since it had been signed by someone with the improbable name of Muggeridge, Sir Austin had been merely amused and had not taken the description or his parent’s sarcastic disapproval seriously.

  But once he was out of Oxford, and brought into the family firm, Sir Austin’s incipient liberalism had collapsed under the weight of righteous Toryism, tradition, Money-Is-Power, and Power-Demands-Responsibility-and-Duty. In the brief time that he had been heir apparent to his father’s empire, and after he had become the heir, Sir Austin had gradually, then completely, reverted to the aristocratic Englishman that a hundred ancestors had intended him to be, and he had unwaveringly remained that person to this very day.

  The collage of Sir Austin past and Sir Austin present merged into a single unified portrait in Earnshaw’s mind. The bits and pieces that made the whole consisted of a princely, urbane, suave country gentleman and minister to the throne. Sir Austin was tasteful, fastidious, complex, affecting a fatigued Edwardian manner. His eyes were hooded, his nose thinly hooked, his small mustache slicked, his chin undershot. A brilliant public speaker, with a style largely supercilious, ironic, self-deprecating, witty, learned, he had made his debut in the Chamber of the House of Commons demolishing “the Right Honorable Gentleman” of the Opposition and had brought a clamorous ovation from the Strangers’ Gallery. Sir Austin believed in Pageantry, Continuity, Decency, Lord Melbourne, Press Freedom, and The Ruling Class. The family estate in Surrey, built after Arbury Hall, had been remodeled from early Tudor to neo-Gothic, although the wrought-iron gates designed by Sir Christopher Wren had remained untouched. Sir Austin had his hunting dogs, his black Daimler, his membership in the Athenaeum and the Travellers, his town house in Hyde Park Gate, and lately, he had enjoyed two more baubles. One had been the green scrambler telephone installed for all Cabinet Ministers. The other had been, after thirty-nine ascetic years of bachelorhood, his first wife, the former Fleur Grearson, twenty-nine-year-old daughter of a real-estate millionaire. Earnshaw, meeting her for the first time on this visit, had not been sure about Lady Fleur. She had seemed too mannered, too poised, too perfect, and this had made Earnshaw uncomfortable, and her conversation about the arts had been too specialized for him to understand or enjoy. Sir Austin’s most persistent irritant, as Earnshaw remembered it, had been his younger brother, Sydney, who had attended Bristol University (not quite Oxbridge), and whose social life seemed to be devoted to drinking and gambling at White’s and making lewd remarks to chambermaids. Earnshaw had been relieved last night, for Carol’s sake, as well as his own, to know that Sydney was out of the city.

  Recollecting this now, Earnshaw emerged from the bathroom into his bedroom and changed into a sport shirt, gray slacks, and the silk smoking jacket that Isabel had bought for him the year before her death. Knotting the belt of the smoki
ng jacket, Earnshaw concluded that he and Sir Austin, although so contrasting in every way, had become friends from the start—not real friends but, rather, friendly companions or acquaintances—because he had wanted to know a typical upper-class Englishman who was sturdy and dependable, and because Sir Austin had wanted a more agreeable, permissive father image. And although they now had even less in common than in the past, they remained distant friends because Sir Austin was pleased to know a former President of the United States and because Earnshaw was simply a creature of habit.

  Hearing footsteps in the sitting room, Earnshaw located a cigar and went into the room for his confrontation with Sir Austin. Instead, he found Carol, who had exchanged her evening gown for a matching pink sweater and slacks, fiddling with the large television set in the wall above the yellow armchair.

  She was surprised to see him. “Uncle Emmett, I thought you were in bed. You ought to be, you know, after a day like this and all the excitement this evening. It was glorious. I was so proud of you.”

  “I’d like to be in bed,” he said, “but—” The television had come on, and he said, “Carol, do you mind looking at the set in your bedroom? I’m staying up only because I have some business to discuss with Sir Austin. He’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Of course, I don’t mind,” she said cheerfully, moving to the set and turning it off. “Must you see him tonight?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I just hate to see you get too tired.” She had started for the bedroom, then stopped and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d rather eavesdrop on you two than watch television,” she said. “Sir Austin fascinates me.”

  “This is private business, Carol. Nothing that would interest you.”

  “I was only joking, Uncle Emmett, but I meant that about Sir Austin.”

  “Oh yes, he’s interesting enough. Very bright. The youngest one, I believe, in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. Yes, he’s got a lot ahead, no question—”