Flight to the Stars

by Pamela Kent

  “Of course, of course,” Melanie assured her.

  Her two young sisters started to talk excitedly over their mother’s shoulder, and they weren’t so much concerned with her taking care, of herself, as her taking fullest advantage of the many opportunities that would undoubtedly be hers.

  They shrieked in unison that she was to get them as many autographs of celebrated American film-stars as she could manage, and she was to take careful note of what the dress-conscious American girl was wearing.

  Melanie replied, in a thinner croak than ever, that she wouldn’t fail them, and the promise seemed quite unimportant at that hour of the night. And then she dragged herself back along the corridor to her own room, and fell into bed at last with the conviction at the back of her mind that it was no easy assignment she had let herself in for. Or, rather, been more or less ordered to undertake.

  And the next few days proved that as a slave-driver Rick Vandraaton could have few rivals. He was, in fact, the perfect slave-driver, and apart from the odd hour or so she had off to get herself photographed for her passport, and collect her visa, she was kept so hard at it that even clothes had no importance, and it didn’t seem to matter what she took with her. Vandraaton said carelessly when she made tentative inquiries about how much she could take with her that she could get anything she lacked once she was on the other side, and that in any case it was always best to travel light—particularly when travelling by air. But he obviously wasn’t keen on acting upon his own advice, for when they finally arrived at the airport he seemed to have accumulated enough luggage to defeat all the regulations.

  His suitcases, like everything else about him, were of the most expensive obtainable, and the weight of the pigskin alone was enough to make airport officials scratch the tops of their heads once they reached the weighing-machine. He wore a carelessly flowing tie, and his air was jaunty—perhaps a little unnaturally jaunty, as if it overlaid a spirit of defiance. And it was Jake Crompton—who, most surprisingly, was accompanying them—who, by comparison with his employer’s son, was the serious, and even dedicated, business man.

  It was Jake who took Melanie by the arm and behaved with the utmost consideration because he said she looked wan to the point of exhaustion. She had sat up half the night before retyping the report with which Rick still wasn’t satisfied, and the tips of her fingers felt slightly numb. But the sight of airport officials and cool grey tarmac set her pulses leaping.

  Jake bought her a coffee in the airport lounge, and in another corner of the same lounge Rick said his farewells to a lovely young woman with shining fair hair and cornflower-blue eyes. The cornflower eyes were heavily and engagingly wistful as she lifted them to the dark, hawk face above her—and as she was very small and daintily proportioned, wearing the latest line that could hardly have become her more than it did—that was considerably far above her.

  Rick said something that made her smile slightly, and then he lifted her hand and carried it up to his lips. Just before the loudspeaker system started up, and the warning came clearly that time was running out, he bent and deliberately kissed her full on the lips.

  Jake moved over to them, smoothly tactful. “Sorry to break things up, Miss Fairchild,” he apologized. “But unfortunately they won’t wait for us!”

  She smiled at him mistily, and then the smile brightened. Surprisingly her blue eyes seemed to flash a kind of inquiry at him, and he nodded his head barely perceptibly.

  “That’s all right. Mr. Crompton. In any case, I always hate saying good-bye.”

  “But we’ll be seeing you soon?” he said.

  “Oh, yes! I’m looking forward to my visit to the United States. Remember, I’ve never seen them yet!” Then she turned and looked rather helplessly at Rick, and her arms went impulsively round his neck. “Goodbye, darling! Have a good trip ... A safe trip!”

  Melanie turned away because the lovely scarlet bottom lip was quivering so noticeably.

  Inside the aircraft Melanie found that she was on one side of the central gangway, and Rick and his henchman (as he no doubt looked upon him) were on the other. Rick’s face was inscrutable and shut-in, as if he had no wish to be disturbed by anyone: and Jake’s was thoughtful, as if, he, too, was feeling a little withdrawn just then.

  Melanie subsided into her seat with the feeling that she had been running a mad sort of race, and had never expected to win in the end. But now she could relax at least for a short while, and absorb as many impressions as possible until she had to tense herself for the fresh demands that would inevitably be made on her. Her fingers were still clinging to her safety belt long after the moment of take-off, and the little excited lump was still in her throat when the stewardess touched her smilingly on the shoulder and indicated that there was no longer any need to remain strapped in.

  Melanie relaxed still more, and on the other side of the aisle both her travelling companions seemed temporarily to have forgotten her. She could understand Ricky’s complete detachment, for his thoughts were almost certainly with the lovely fair girl he had left behind him, and no doubt the memory of those clinging arms about his neck, and the feel of the soft red mouth under his—trembling pathetically because he was being wrenched away from her—were things he wanted to dwell upon.

  And she was fairly certain that this trip was being undertaken without any enthusiasm on his part. Had he been summoned by his father to give an account of himself and his achievements over the past six months? He hadn’t been home for six months, and the Nonpareil had been functioning for twelve, so that possibly was the explanation. The detailed report was an indication that he hoped somehow or other to impress his father. Although, from all she had heard of Lucas Vandraaton, he would not be easy to placate if he didn’t feel like being placated, and the evidence was against the unfortunate individual he had suddenly decided to have carpeted.

  Melanie stole a look at Rick’s arrogant, intractable profile, and she wondered whether he was a chip off the old block in some respects. Lucas Vandraaton was a self-made man; and self-indulgence had been impossible for him; but his son also looked as if he would decline to yield an inch unless the spirit moved him.

  Dinner was served, and the stars were like warm golden lamps outside the windows of the aircraft. Melanie looked up at them, lying on a bed of sable velvet, and a feeling of excitement began to stir in her again. She was being borne by four powerful engines right up amongst the stars, and anyone who took a flight to the stars could never, surely, be quite the same again? Magic must touch them! Magic that would leave its mark.

  She turned her head sideways and saw Rick looking at her, in the gentle diffused light that was making it possible for weary travellers to fall fast asleep after an admirably served meal. But Rick wasn’t anywhere near sleep, and his strange black eyes seemed to be glinting with amusement, which his long wiry eyelashes only partly hid.

  Melanie’s eyes were like stars as a result of the thoughts she had been thinking, and her face was pale and rapt.

  “All right?” he asked. “You look a bit tense.”

  “Oh, no, I’m enjoying this. It’s wonderful—flying through the night!”

  He smiled his curiously twisted smile.

  Melanie sat up.

  “But I thought you wanted to work. You said that we could clear up quite a lot on the journey.”

  “Forget it,” he advised, lazily. “I’ll attach you to the grindstone tomorrow, but tonight you’ll be wise if you get some sleep.”

  “It seems a pity to miss all this by going to sleep,” she remarked childishly.

  His eyebrows ascended quizzically.

  “Miss all what?”

  “The excitement, the—the strangeness!”

  “You really are young, aren’t you?” he observed, and she thought that he closed his eyes because the thought of her excessive youthfulness—when as a matter of fact she was twenty-four, and not a bit youthful in her own opinion—oppressed him. Or, more probably, bored him.

&nb
sp; But just as she was growing drowsy herself, and the steady drone of the four powerful engines seemed to be acting like a sedative, he murmured quietly beside her:

  “By the way, I got in touch with your mother. I telephoned her and told her you would be all right.”

  Her white eyelids flew open.

  “Oh, but that was kind of you!” she said. Her heart warmed and expanded because it really was kind, and unexpectedly thoughtful—quite unlike him, somehow.

  He grimaced mockingly.

  “I have my kind moments. But unfortunately they’re rather rare. You’ll find that out!”

  Idlewild Airport, in the greyness of dawn, was hardly an inspiring beginning to arrival in America. The vast area of nearly five thousand acres seemed to be overhung by a shadow that would disperse when the sun broke through; but before the sun broke through, and with stiffness dragging at her limbs, Melanie was inclined to experience a droop of the spirits.

  A huge car awaited them, chauffeur-driven. Jake Crompton sank back in it gratefully, as if this was the type of transport he favored above all else, and it was noticeable that he had taken the trouble to shave. Rick had a dark stubble clinging to his chin, and his expression was sombre and mutinous.

  “The early morning,” he told Melanie, “is something I could dispense with. The twenty-four hours would be better without it.”

  But Melanie couldn’t agree with him. Already that surging excitement was bubbling in her again, and as they slipped away from the airport a finger of crimson sunlight shone across the gleaming bonnet of the car. Like the stars the night before, she thought of it as an omen.

  They drove straight to an hotel that was unlike any hotel in Melanie’s experience, although the Nonpareil sought to emulate it. She understood it was on Park Avenue, and it seemed to rise in a solid block against the light and the increasing color in the sky. Inside there were rare marbles and delicately matched woods, and the furnishings had an eighteenth-century elegance. She was to discover later that there was a Starlight Roof Garden room, and a cocktail bar where one was suddenly translated to a desert oasis, because the murals all depicted desert scenes. And there were so many suites that nobody appeared to know quite how many there were.

  Melanie’s room was dizzily far above street level, but it was the most luxurious room she had ever occupied in her life. Rick, apparently, had a permanent suite in the hotel, or his father had, and he disappeared into it with the curt warning that he expected to see no one until evening.

  Melanie had a bath in her luxurious bathroom, and slept for a few hours, and then she wished that she dared venture forth and make an attempt to discover New York. The noises that reached her from the street were continuous and exciting. j But for two reasons she did not dare. Her employer might send for her, and she felt overwhelmingly strange.

  At four o’clock she was sent for, and she was grateful for the instinct that had kept her close to her quarters. Rick was wearing a Paisley silk dressing-gown, and was only partially dressed. But he was beautifully shaved.

  He ran a hand along his chin as he looked at her. She was swift to recognize that he hardly saw her.

  “That report, Melanie,” he began at once with a good deal of crispness—and by now it didn’t strike her as strange that he should call her Melanie. “I want you to go over the whole thing again, and even if it takes half the night it’s got to be just right.”

  Jake, correctly and beautifully attired, even to the carefully knotted tie, strolled in through the open window from the garden terrace outside. Melanie could see the golden bars of sunshine that found their way beneath the green sun-blinds and fell across the boxes and tubs of colorful shrubs that reminded her of Rick’s pent-house flat at home, while the constant roar of New York came up from below.

  “Do you honestly think there’s much point in going to quite so much trouble?” the assistant manager of the Nonpareil asked Rick. “Isn’t it rather like putting yourself through an unnecessary sort of ordeal?”

  “The ordeal won’t be mine,” Rick practically snapped at him. “Melanie is the one who has to toil.”

  “Well, even Miss Blake is human,” Jake remarked dryly. “And by going over the whole thing so often you’re anticipating another ordeal, aren’t you?” He added smoothly, “Rather, I should say, unnecessarily.”

  Rick glared at him balefully.

  “I’m not afraid of ordeals, and I’m not afraid of giving an account of myself and my doings—when called upon to do so!”

  “Of course not, my dear chap.” Jake’s hand pressed his shoulder almost paternally. It was a fine-fingered hand, with exquisitely kept nails, and there was a ring on the little finger that looked to Melanie to be a scarab ring. She decided on the instant that she didn’t like scarab rings, and that a man’s hand should look like a man’s hand, and not a slightly larger edition of an extremely feminine member of her own sex. “Of course not,” he repeated soothingly. “But when a prisoner is ordered to be executed he is given three weeks to enjoy himself—or, at any rate, to prepare himself! You should go out on the town tonight, and forget everything but that you’re back home.”

  “I’m dining with my mother,” Rick informed him briefly.

  “Ah!”

  “And that, of course, means my father.”

  “A-a-ah!” Jake exclaimed, very softly.

  Rick turned and glanced at Melanie, and tossed her a bundle of typescript.

  “If you can’t read my notes I’m afraid you’ll just have to guess at them. But they’re mostly legible. I’ll be back about eleven, and we’ll go over the whole thing together.”

  “And don’t forget to order yourself something to eat,” Jake inserted gently, as if he was endeavoring to make up for his employer’s son’s casualness. “No one works well on an empty stomach, and Rick’s kept you pretty hard at it since he took you over from Reception in London.”

  Rick closed his bedroom door with a slight but decisive snap, and Melanie wondered whether it was to make it clear to her that he was not interested in how well, or how badly, a secretary worked on an empty stomach. Her stomach was her own affair, and he resented Jake’s deliberate reference to it. And, in any case, he had far more important things to think about.

  She found herself sighing suddenly, for no particular reason, and then went on with her work.

  “I don’t mind,” she assured Jake quietly.

  He strolled to the window, and stood staring out into the fierce warmth of the afternoon.

  “Sometimes it’s a good thing to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth,” he commented. “But a golden one isn’t always such an advantage. A golden spoon is a little difficult to swallow, and is apt to become lodged half-way down the throat!”

  Melanie said nothing, and he turned and looked at her bent head consideringly. He was a handsome man by accepted standards, but although she knew that his eyes were fixed on her—and they had fixed themselves on her several times lately—she was not precisely flattered. He was not the type of man who could ever appeal to her.

  “Don’t work too hard on that thing,” he advised, moving over to her. “It will be all the same in the end.”

  She looked up at him, as if searching for his meaning.

  He shook his head sadly, while his light blue eyes held hers.

  “I’m very much afraid it will be all the same in the end!” he repeated.

  Melanie stared swiftly down at her typewriter. “Is—is Mr. Vandraaton senior—annoyed with—with Rick?” she asked.

  Jake shrugged his elegant shoulders.

  “Shall we say he’s not too pleased with him?”

  “And that’s why he’s taking such pains with this report?”

  Again the shrug.

  “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and you won’t turn Rick into a business man. He’s the born playboy.” He lighted himself one of his mixed Virginian and Turkish cigarettes, which filled the apartment with a rich aroma like incense. “Unfort
unately the old man hasn’t got much patience with playboys.”

  Melanie said nothing, and Jake recalled to her rather ponderously:

  “Remember the story of the ten talents? Well, Rick has been called upon to give an account of what he has done with the talent that was handed over to him—in short, one magnificent opportunity! And he’s got to admit that he’s done nothing very much. In fact, without the right sort of help and assistance he would have done nothing at all.” The pale eyes glinted as he studied the tip of his cigarette. “Certainly nothing that the great Lucas will approve!”

  “But,” Melanie objected, because she felt she had to object, “you can’t treat a son as you would an employee.”

  Jake smiled at her.

  “Can’t you?”

  “No, of course not. And Rick is what Mr. Vandraaton senior has made of him. What Mr. and Mrs. Vandraaton have made of him! What the money they have spilled out over him has made of him! And therefore I think it’s unreasonable to look for business efficiency where, perhaps, business efficiency doesn’t exist.”

  Jake smiled a little more broadly, and patted her shoulder. The old gleam of sunlight, finding its way into the luxurious room, was making a splendor of her very red head.

  “Tell me,” he mused suddenly, thoughtfully, “Why have I never realized before what an extremely attractive girl you are? Unusually attractive, if you’ll forgive me for saying so! With that hair, and your eyes, and your skin, why haven’t you thrust yourself upon my notice before this?”

  “Perhaps because I’m not in the habit of thrusting myself upon anyone’s notice,” she replied stiffly.

  He touched her cheek with his long index finger.