The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  One small table, in the second row of the Café Francais, was relatively isolated from the lazing customers enjoying their coffee, croissants, and newspapers en plein air this Sunday afternoon. They took their places at this table beneath the shade of a spreading umbrella, and they ordered sandwiches and tea. Hazel Smith lit Medora’s cigarette and her own, and after an interval of silence they looked at one another.

  “Medora,” said Hazel Smith, “I’m not prying, and turn me off if you think I am, but I gather from you that there’s more to your whole involvement in the Paddy Jameson affair than anyone knows. Do you want to talk about it? I mean, look.” She opened her palms to Medora. “No pen, no paper. In fact, as the kids say in America when they ride a bike, no-hands. It’s up to you.”

  “If you’re sure it wouldn’t bore you?”

  “Bore me? Get off it. As long as it isn’t too painful for you.”

  “Oh, it’s not all that painful. It might even be good for me, telling someone the whole truth and nothing but. If we’re to be friends, I should be thankful for some advice or guidance.”

  “When were you last home, Medora?”

  “Not since before the trial. Better than three years ago.”

  “You mean you’ve been rattling around Europe all that time? Why? For a career?”

  “Crikey, no. I detest what I’m doing. I’m here because that bloody bastard, Sir Austin Ormsby, talked me into leaving England. Now he won’t let me back.”

  Hazel Smith’s eyes were round with astonishment. “Sir Austin?”

  “None other.”

  “But how could he?”

  “Well,” said Medora, “I’ll be glad to tell you.”

  And in the next half hour, in a voice flat and worn by the unpleasant familiarity of the events so long past, she related what had happened to her.

  Hazel Smith was incredulous. “I’ve never heard anything like this. Not even in Moscow. He really framed you.”

  “That’s right,” said Medora, and feeling cleansed, she drank her cold tea.

  “But you should have done something about this,” Hazel Smith insisted. “It’s an outrage. You should have told the whole world, everybody you could get to.”

  Medora made a bitter sound. “I tried, Hazel, I assure you that I tried. Nobody would believe me. They had their views of me. I’m unstable. I’m immoral. My word is suspect. I tried to get the press to print it. They all refused. No proof.”

  “I’ll print it,” said Hazel Smith grimly.

  “Without proof beyond my word? I don’t think your press association would let you.”

  “Well, you must have some evidence?”

  “Not an iota in writing. No, I haven’t.”

  “I see,” said Hazel Smith. “You’re right. It would be tough to get the full story into print, especially with your antagonist being such a big shot.”

  “It was always his spotless word against my tarnished word. So there’s never been a chance, and I’ve had to stew and make my own way—”

  “How have you lived, Medora? What’s it been like these last years?”

  Willingly, without restraint, almost as a catharsis, Medora confessed it all to her, the endless circle of cheap and smoky clubs in France, Germany, Italy, the countless rows of frightful male audiences with leering eyes and busy hands, the never-ending queue of men offering to barter their assistance for her body (and after possessing her goods, delivering nothing in exchange but promises, after all).

  Finishing, Medora slumped back in her chair, spent. “That’s most of it,” she said wearily. “I don’t know if anyone who hasn’t been through it can possibly understand what it has been like.”

  “I understand,” said Hazel Smith firmly.

  With curiosity, Medora looked at the American. “You sound as if you do. Do you mean you’ve been through something like this?”

  Hazel Smith stared off. “Not exactly. But in a way, yes. I know the feeling.” She seemed to search for the exact words to convey her feeling, and then she said, “In a sense, I’ve been as alone as you, and as alienated from, well, from a normal woman’s life. All because of one man, one fatheaded slob, a real son of a bitch—you wouldn’t recognize his name, you’re too young—but in his day he was as well known as Sir Austin, and nobody, at least nobody like me, was good enough for him, and I blame him for everything—well, most of everything—that’s happened to me since.” She stopped, and smiled wanly at Medora. “So, you see, I do understand, and if there is anything on earth I can do to help—”

  “Thank you, but I think I can manage now,” said Medora. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your offer, Hazel. It’s a good feeling to know that there is one person in the world who wants to help, although…” She was thoughtful a moment. “When we met, you asked why I was in Paris. You were almost right when you guessed. I am here to see Sir Austin Ormsby. He doesn’t know it yet. But that’s why I’m here.” She had come alive again, and she drew her chair closer to Hazel’s. “I said it was good to know there’s one person in the world ready to help me. Meaning you. But actually, there is one other. He’s done a wonderful thing for me. He’s given me my chance.” She paused. “Have you ever heard of the painter, Nardeau? You have? Well, I’ll tell you why I’m really in Paris…”

  I’m looking for Hazel Smith,” he said. “I’m an old friend. I’ve just flown into Paris to see her. Is she around?”

  The French secretary licked the down on her upper lip and appeared puzzled. “Je ne comprends pas,” she said worriedly. “Répétez s’il vous plaît.” Spacing his words, speaking slowly, he repeated his inquiry. “I am looking for Miss Hazel Smith, one of your journalists. I am an old friend.”

  The French secretary’s squeezed visage suddenly opened up brightly. “Ah, Ay-zell Smith!” She held up a finger. “Excusez-moi, monsieur! Attendez!”

  She dashed off between the cluttered desks of the main editorial office of the Atlas News Association’s Paris Bureau, halted to consult another French girl who was typing, and then dashed off into an adjacent office.

  After she disappeared, Jay Thomas Doyle nervously waited to see if she would reappear with Hazel Smith. When she did not emerge immediately, Doyle wondered if Hazel was instructing the girl to say that she was not in and to dismiss him. After unpacking his luggage at the Hotel George-V, Doyle had considered telephoning Hazel to announce his arrival and beg for a reunion. He had rejected the telephone approach as one less likely to be effective than surprising her in person. On the telephone, she could hang up. But confronted by his bulk, she could only give him the cold shoulder, and he could still overwhelm her with his eagerness, his desire, his need to be reunited with an old love.

  Finding that he was still puffing from the exertion of his four-block walk from the Hotel George-V to the New York Herald Tribune Building in the Rue de Berri, he began to inhale deeply in a desperate effort to regain his equilibrium. Part of his short breath, he knew, came not from the walk or his considerable avoirdupois but from his eagerness about the reunion. Even within the confines of the creeping elevator that had brought him up to the ANA offices on the sixth floor, Doyle had been unable to alleviate his difficulty in breathing. No, it was neither excessive exertion nor excessive weight, Doyle knew. It was fear. It was Hazel Smith.

  Despite all this gasping, this outer manifestation of the anxiety that triggered it, Jay Thomas Doyle felt that his inner confidence was rocklike. Whether it was truly rocklike, or merely papier-mâché, did not matter. That is, whether his confidence was solidly based on his good cause, or whether it was an artificial self-assurance developed by the appetite-depressant pill (a yellow, fifteen-grain mighty mite that made even the thought of food nauseating, and that compensated for his lack of protein by offering in its place doses of pep, energy, well-being), was of no consequence. All that mattered was that he felt strong, strong enough for Hazel, strong enough to obliterate their darker moments of the past and revive their best days of love. She would give him
the final chapter for The Conspirators Who Killed Kennedy. Then at last, together, they would own the world.

  But now, as his sight roved across the editorial office, he realized that his arithmetic was faulty. Together, they would own the world meant that the two of them would own it. The fact remained that one of them already owned it, Hazel owned it, was on top of it, and finally, his fantasy of fulfillment was only for himself.

  Observing the activity in the editorial room, he suffered a deep pang of yearning for the past. There were the cigarette-scarred, booze-spotted desks, each with its spindle laden with news reports, memorandums, cablegrams. There were the girls typing feverishly, the intent French legmen hastening in and out, the American foreign editors and correspondents in the next office, conferring on the news that was and the news that would be, and determining assignments and strategy, and deciding who would be on the night shift, and who would cover the Palais Rose, and who would have the next turn at the pretty Herald Tribune file clerk imported last week from Sarah Lawrence College.

  A wonderful world, this, more alive than any other, to be so committed to the times, to have one foot in today and another in tomorrow. It was so much better than fame or money or power, if those involved only appreciated their unique good fortune. Remembering his own newspaper experience, Doyle appreciated it now, longed for it now as one longs for youth, and the memory painfully reminded him of his present situation. He was an outsider. And the shameful cookbook made him feel even more an outsider. Only the Kennedy assassination book could lead him back inside. But that book was not born yet, and until it was, he would have to suffer being one of those outside whose pitiful noses were pressed against the shop window.

  Hearing the sudden clatter of a teletype, he was drawn to it. Standing over the miniature window, mesmerized by the automatic keys hitting the roll of paper (BULLETIN MATTER… FIRST LEAD HONG KONG… LONDON, FIRST ADD FIRST LEAD… XXX… MORE), was like peeking into a seer’s globe that reflected all of the activities of the human race in a single day. The keys hammered ceaselessly. The teletyped news cascaded from the squat machine. A fire. A flood. A tennis score. A murder trial. A press conference. A financial report. A death. A birth. Then, ring-a-ling, an announcement from the Élysée Palace. Chinese Chairman Kuo Shu-tung safely landed at Orly, all leaders of the five powers now gathered in Paris.

  Miserably, Jay Thomas Doyle pulled his belly away from the teletype. It was unendurable, being a reader of the news instead of a purveyor of the news.

  When he turned around, he saw that the French secretary had come out of the inner office, accompanied not by Hazel Smith but by a gangling young American with a crew cut and in shirt-sleeves, holding a sheet of yellow copy paper. The secretary had pointed out Doyle, and the young reporter came swiftly through the maze of desks to where Doyle stood.

  “Sorry to keep you, sir,” the young man said. “I was on the phone with Orly. They’re sure crowding us today. I’m Fowler, on rewrite temporarily, but usually, I’m on the outside, so I don’t know the office too well. But maybe I can be of some help?”

  “I told the girl I wanted to see Miss Hazel Smith,” said Doyle.

  “I thought that was it. You never know. Those French secretaries, their English is atrocious, like their typing, although their legs are fine. But I guess our girl got it right You told her you had an appointment with Miss Smith? Because if that’s—”

  “No,” Doyle interrupted. “I flew in from Vienna this a.m. to see Miss Smith on a personal matter. We’re old, old friends. I wanted to surprise her. So I came straight over.”

  “I get it,” said Fowler. “I saw her for half a second when I came on, but she went out. I think she’s been out all morning. Let me have a look. We’ve set up a temporary desk for her, and she usually leaves a note on her appointments in case we have to contact her.”

  He hurried to a small oak desk in the center of the room, and rummaged through the papers. Victoriously waving a piece of note paper, he returned. “Here it is. Let me see.”

  He read aloud from the sheet. “‘Eleven-thirty to twelve forty-five, lunch interview with Legrande at Méditerranée, Place de l’Odéon. One o’clock, Embassy tour of Palais Rose. Two-thirty, interview with Mlle. Hart at Club Lautrec.’” He looked up. “That’s it. You might still catch her at the Club Lautrec.”

  “Off the Champs-Élysées, isn’t it?”

  “Rue la Boëtie. You can’t miss it. There’s a giant poster of Medora Hart on the sidewalk in front. Wish I had that assignment, seeing that Hart babe. I’d sure like to make time with her.” He shook himself from this momentary reverie. “Anyway, if you miss Hazel there, she’s certain to show up here later. You can leave a message.”

  “I think I’d better,” said Doyle.

  “One sec.” Fowler found a pencil, and turned over Hazel Smith’s schedule in order to scribble on the back of it. “Okay.”

  “Tell her I came by to see her, and I’ll call again. Tell her I’m at the George-V.”

  “Who should I say?”

  “Oh, sorry. Tell her Jay Thomas Doyle wants to see her.”

  The young correspondent had begun to write when his pencil seemed to freeze to the paper. He looked up alertly, his face transformed into cub awe, as if Doyle were a Presence like Richard Harding Davis or Floyd Gibbons or Ernie Pyle. “You—you said Jay Thomas Doyle? Are you the Doyle, the ‘Inside and Straight’ Doyle?”

  “None other,” said Doyle, childishly pleased.

  “Holy mackerel! I’m sure honored to meet you,” said Fowler, his breeziness having given way to formal reverence. “I grew up on you in high school and college. We used to study your columns in Journalism and in Social Science. My old man used to quote you more than the Bible.”

  “Thank you,” said Doyle loftily, now the Prince being benign to the Pauper.

  “Half of us are in this racket because you made it so glamorous. When I first started working, I used to wonder what had happened to your column. I thought you’d retired, but—”

  Doyle’s ego, which had been ballooning, suddenly deflated. “No. As a matter of fact, I’ve been more active than ever. I decided that I’d had enough of journalism and I should give my time to creative writing. Several publishers were after me. I’ve been on a secret book project for some time.”

  “Boy, I can’t wait for that one,” said Fowler. “I bet it’ll be a dilly. When’s it coming out?”

  “Oh, in the near future, when I’m satisfied with it.” He decided to exit while his stature was still intact. “Well, I’d better try to catch Hazel at the Club Lautrec. Be sure to give her that message anyway, young man.”

  “I positively will. Gosh, this was certainly a pleasure, Mr. Doyle. Wait’ll I write my old man. It’ll make his day, knowing you’re still active.”

  Masking his shudder at the last remark with a weak smile, eager to escape the young man and his Old Folks’ Home, Doyle bade him good-bye and made an active but measured monarchial exit.

  Leaving the Herald Tribune Building, starting up the Rue de Berri, Doyle found himself wheezing asthmatically and blamed it on the psychosomatic encounter upstairs. He hoped fervently that while his energy was still at its peak he would be in time to trap Hazel in the Club Lautrec. He tried to rehearse his opening lines to her, was momentarily diverted by the framed photographs of semi-nude dancers in the forecourt of an unprepossessing nightclub he was passing, then he resumed experimenting with his Hazel lines once more.

  Approaching the glass entrance doors of the Hotel Lancaster, he could see a Cadillac limousine with United States Embassy plates parked before them, and a chauffeur opening the rear door of the car. Two men and a young girl, plain and plainly American, came out of the hotel. Doyle was almost upon them when a lanky, elderly gentleman, for whom they were obviously waiting, hurried out of the hotel, and Doyle saw the bush of white hair, pug nose, cleft chin, and identified him immediately. This was unmistakably Emmett A. Earnshaw himself.

  Earnshaw had slow
ed to call back to someone inside the hotel, and in doing so he swerved. Doyle jumped sideways to avoid him, averting a collision only by holding a protective hand out against the former President’s back.

  Startled, Earnshaw maintained his balance and came around to offer his apologies. “I’m sorry—” he began, then swallowed his next words, thrusting his head forward to squint at Doyle, and instantly, his blue eyes lit up with recognition. “Sa-ay now, aren’t you—why, I’ll be darned, you’re Doyle, Jay Doyle, that’s right.”

  “That’s right, Mr. President,” said Doyle, beaming over the former President’s remembrance of him. “Good to see you after so long.”

  Doyle accepted the former President’s hearty handshake and started to move on, but Earnshaw remained planted in front of him. “Uh—well, now—this is unexpected,” said Earnshaw. “Almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “It’s been a number of years, sir.”

  “No, it’s your weight. You’ve put on some poundage since I saw you last. Too much good living, eh?”

  Doyle tried to smile. “You might say so, sir. You look trimmer than ever.”

  “You eat half of what you order, that’s the secret, Doyle, that and early to bed, early to rise… Have you met my entourage? Carol! Callahan! Secret Agent X!” The three came quickly, and Earnshaw introduced them—his niece, his Embassy guide, his Secret Service protector—to Jay Thomas Doyle, giving them an elaborate and impressive briefing on Doyle’s fame. “Now all of you get in your cars. Be with you in a minute… Well, Doyle, we—uh—those were some good times we had in the White House.”

  “I wish you were still there, sir,” said Doyle politely. “Are you here as a delegate?”

  “Golly Moses, no. You couldn’t drag me or my blood pressure into that tangle with a team of mules. Nope, let the young men do the shouting. It’s their world now. But I’m taking advantage of all the courtesies and freeloading, of course. This is Carol’s first visit here, and I want her to see what she can while our Embassy and the French still feel they owe me some attention. Uh—we’re off to the Quai d’Orsay for one of those overspiced lunches that give me heartburn, and after that, maybe an hour of sightseeing around town. What about you, Doyle? Here to cover the conference?”