Flight to the Stars

by Pamela Kent

  “Yet Rick remembered you! He remembered your red hair! ... And he must number quite a lot of redheads amongst his feminine acquaintances.”

  He straightened himself.

  “Ah, well. I’m going out now to act upon the advice I gave Rick—I’m going out on the town. Pity,” as his glance returned to her, and then travelled over her typewriter and the bundle of typescript beside her, “that you’re not free to do the same thing. But one evening when you’re not so pressed,” with a sarcastic inflection that she felt sure was meant for Rick, “we’ll get together and see a little of New York, shall we?” His finger touched her cheek again. “Until then, I’ll leave you in peace to get on!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The following morning Melanie waited for two hours in the most colossal outer office she had ever been called upon to wait in her life, and was finally summoned into the presence of Lucas Vandraaton, who sat behind a desk as immense as everything else in his private sanctum.

  The outer office had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. So many young women coming and going; so many young women with slick hair styles and perfect manicures, wearing summer cottons as bright as poppies in a cornfield. And although New York was sizzling in the throes of a heat-wave, and much of the wall-space was made of glass, air-conditioning and protective sun-blinds kept the atmosphere as cool and sweet as if a perpetual reviving breeze was blowing through the vast room.

  Mr. Vandraaton’s room was, if anything, several degrees cooler. But he himself looked as if he was feeling the heat. He was a big man with a fair skin and silvery hair—quite unlike the sinuous dark Rick. And he kept mopping at his face with a violently spotted handkerchief.

  Melanie had been kept waiting while Rick had a long talk with his father’s close personal secretary; and then Mr. Vandraaton had arrived unseen, and the son had been closeted with the man with whom he had also dined the night before.

  Melanie had been still working away hard when Rick had surprised her by walking in on her before ten o’clock the previous evening. His evening clothes had showed up the swarthiness of his skin; but for the first time it had struck her that he really wasn’t so very swarthy. There had even been a slight paleness round his mouth, and his eyes had gleamed derisively, and a little recklessly.

  He had strode across and snatched the sheet of paper out of her typewriter and torn it into fragments, flinging them carelessly into the waste-paper-basket.

  “You needn’t carry on with this,” he said. “It’s not wanted any more.”

  “You mean—?”

  “What I say! It’s not wanted!”

  He sat on the arm of a chair and looked at her. “When you go home, Melanie, will your mother want to hear about everything you’ve been doing, and how exactly you’ve spent your time?”

  “She’ll be interested to hear, but she won’t insist upon it.”

  “You’re lucky,” he told her. “You don’t know how lucky!”

  He had prowled restlessly about the room. She hadn’t needed to be told that he was violently perturbed.

  “If there’s one thing I value more than anything else, Melanie,” he confessed, as if he had known her all his life, “it’s freedom! Freedom to do and think and behave as I want to do and think and behave! I’ve never taken kindly to coercion of any sort, and I won’t defer to anyone—not even my father, though he’s as rich as Croesus, and some people might think it worth while.”

  “Then what do you propose to do?” she asked, also as if she had known him all her life, as she sat staring at him.

  “Get married,” he answered her at once. “Not because I want to marry, but because once married, apparently, I can do as I like. There will be no limits, no restrictions, once I’ve put my head well and truly into the noose.”

  Melanie had an almost painfully clear picture of the girl at London Airport—the girl who was so delicate, and golden, and rather rare; and whose lips had clung to Rick’s and then trembled noticeably after the contact.

  She happened to know that the girl’s name was Diane Fairchild.

  “And has your father also decided whom you must marry?” she asked.

  “No, but my mother has.” The mockery in his smile repelled her a little. “And, as a matter of fact, I oughtn’t to have much of a grievance about that, because she’s quite enchanting—in fact, utterly enchanting! You saw us take a tender farewell of one another at London Airport.”

  “I saw you kiss one another. But lots of people kiss good-bye.”

  “Do they?” He looked interested, even intrigued. “Do you know much about that type of kiss?”

  She felt herself coloring painfully, all over her face and neck.

  “Do you?” he insisted, moving sinuously nearer to her.

  “No,” she admitted, and his eyes dwelt thoughtfully on the soft, flower-like curves of her mouth.

  “In that case you oughtn’t to wait much longer before you start learning,” he said. “One of these days when I’m not too busy I might give you a few lessons.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him, and her clear grey eyes blazed with reproach.

  “If there’s nothing more you require of me tonight, Mr. Vandraaton, I’ll go to bed,” she said, and stood up behind the desk. “I’m very tired.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he returned. “I don’t feel too fresh myself.” But he didn’t apologize. Instead, he continued to watch her with a queer mixture of thoughtfulness and the driest form of appreciation as she moved towards the door.

  “I shall want you in the morning—early,” he told her, just before she disappeared. Derisively he added: “Together we will wait upon my father, who is only slightly less formidable than my mother. But no one would accuse my mother of being formidable. Like Diane Fairchild, she looks like a Dresden china shepherdess—rather more faded than Diane, of course, whose freshness is altogether unique.”

  But Melanie didn’t find Lucas Vandraaton in the least formidable. She found his strong, blunt face and clear blue eyes honest and perhaps a little implacable, but nothing to intimidate or remind her too forcefully that she was face to face with a hard-headed tycoon. He waved his spotted handkerchief impatiently at his son.

  “Leave us,” he said. “I want to talk to this young woman alone!”

  And as soon as they were alone he got down to what he wanted to say to her.

  “You look a straightforward, sensible young woman to me,” he remarked, “and as English as they come. Easy on the eye, too!” His eyes twinkled for a moment. “My son has told me that you have been working for him now for six months, and that you know pretty much about him and his ways. That being so, would you give me a simple answer to a simple question? Is his heart in it, or is it hopelessly elsewhere?”

  Melanie only just refrained from gaping at him. So that was what Rick had told him! ... That she had been working for him for six months, when she actually only worked with him for no more than a few days. Why had he told such an unnecessary untruth to such a stern stickler for the truth as she felt sure Lucas Vandraaton was? Her brain worked rapidly, but the explanation eluded her. It seemed so pointless. And then the conviction rose up in her that nothing Rick did was ever quite pointless. He had a reason for most things. There was a reason for this deliberate misleading of his father.

  She felt perturbed, and in an unfair position. Was Rick expecting her to support him in some way? To lie on his behalf to the elder Vandraaton? But that, too, was unlike Rick. He had said only the night before that he was not afraid of facing up to things.

  The night before he had both taken her by surprise and filled her with indignation because he had abruptly crossed the line that divides employer and employee and talked of teaching her how to kiss. Now, if he was calling upon her for some sort of backing, was an excellent opportunity to get back on him for that. To teach him a short and sober lesson!

  But did one teach short and sober lessons to a man who had lifted one out of the rut, and set one breathl
essly climbing a dizzy stairway to the stars? Provided one with the possibility of something that might approach quite close to adventure—something to look back upon in after days!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Well?” Lucas Vandraaton said, and Melanie realized that he sounded impatient.

  A buzzer sounded just as impatiently on his desk, and by the time he had spoken to his secretary in the next room, and settled some sort of query, she knew that there was only one course open to her, whatever Rick’s reason for misleading his father.

  “I hardly think I’m the right person to be questioned in such a way about your son, Mr. Vandraaton,” she said. “It’s a secretary’s duty to have her employer’s interests—and her employer’s interests only!—at heart. Surely Mr. Crompton is in a better position to give you the information you require?”

  Lucas made a dismissing gesture.

  “Jake? I’ve already had a report from Jake on Rick’s general attitude, and so forth, and of course he’s loyal. As loyal apparently, as you feel you ought to be. But I know my own son, and I don’t expect the people near him to pull wool over my eyes. It won’t get any of you anywhere in the long run.”

  Melanie was conscious of surprise that Jake had supported Rick. The impression she had received was that Rick filled Jake—who was almost certainly a much better business man—with contempt.

  “If you know your own son, Mr. Vandraaton,” she retorted almost serenely, “surely there is no need to question anyone about him?”

  Lucas Vandraaton sent her a glance of half unwilling approval.

  “You’re a shrewd young woman,” he observed, “and that should put me in a spot—but it doesn’t. I know my son has an immense amount of drive when he feels the occasion warrants it, but very frequently the occasion anything but warrants it, according to his views. I was never brought up as a playboy, Miss Blake, and I don’t like having a playboy in my family. Money doesn’t enter into it. It’s achievement that counts, and the effort to achieve that provides a high-powered young man like Rick with the only sort of incentive to settle down and make a go of his life. I want him to make a very satisfactory go of his life, and that’s why I handed over the Nonpareil to him. If you think, however, that the Nonpareil would be better off without him I want you to be honest enough to tell me so.”

  Melanie attempted to prevaricate.

  “The Nonpareil’s doing well, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “As well as any hotel that has only been running for a year, and has to prove itself an enormous success before it can even begin to repay expenses.”

  “Well, then, surely that is your answer?”

  “It’s nothing of the kind while thoroughly worthwhile, tireless individuals like Jake Crompton are behind my son.” Vandraaton banged his fist on the desk. “I have every confidence in Jake, but that isn’t enough. I want, and I must have every confidence in Rick! And I believe that if he married and settled down and had a family that confidence would automatically become mine.”

  Melanie looked distinctly dubious.

  “But Rick—” she still didn’t find it easy to call him by that name—“can hardly be expected to marry in order to provide you with confidence, Mr. Vandraaton,” she pointed out.

  The fist was banged a second time.

  “He can while I make it possible for him to marry and live in luxury and security for the rest of his life.” Then he looked at her more quizzically. “It’s easy to see you’re on his side,” he accused her, “whether he works seven days out of seven, over there in England, or merely one days in seven. Are you in love with him?” he astounded her by asking her suddenly.

  “Of course not.” She felt herself blushing scarlet. She was about to add, “How could I be when I hardly know him?” but substituted, with a good deal of quiet dignity: “I wouldn’t be so unwise as to fall in love with an employer, Mr. Vandraaton.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” The quizzical gleam grew stronger. “It’s been done before; and women seem to find it easy to fall in love with Rick. That’s one reason why I’d like to see him settled with someone like—well, with someone his mother and I can approve.”

  “But I still don’t think that by forcing him to marry you will turn him into a successful business man,” Melanie heard herself say with a conviction which had suddenly come to her, and a courage she had hitherto not suspected she possessed.

  Mr. Vandraaton looked down his blunt nose.

  “Well, we’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see!” And then he told her she could go, after informing her that she had been more helpful than she probably realized. “Much more helpful!” He smiled at her in a way that was rather like Rick’s curiously twisted smile. “You must come and spend the week-end with us, Miss Blake. Tell Rick that’s an order. He’s to bring you along to swell the crowd.”

  But when she rejoined Rick he was looking so unusually grave and preoccupied that for some while she said nothing at all of what had transpired between herself and his father at that unexpected meeting.

  He took her by the arm and led her, out determinedly into the sunlight, and when she saw his pale cream-colored car—the black Jaguar had been left behind in England—waiting for them at the curb, she said that there was no real reason why he should drive her back to the hotel. If he had other plans, she could take a taxi.

  “Nonsense,” he said, and almost thrust her into the seat beside him at the wheel. Then he apologized. “If I’m a bit crude sometimes you must put it down to the fact that I wasn’t born one of your polished specimens of Englishman. And now I’m going to take you out to lunch.”

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, as if she felt the need to protest.

  “Oh, yes!” His twisted smile was mocking. “Why, are you afraid to have lunch with me? Does the thought of it fill you with alarm, or distaste, or what?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” she answered quietly. “Only I should think you could find something better to do than to take me out to lunch.”

  The car was caught up in the fever of lunchtime traffic, and he didn’t say anything for several minutes, giving all his attention to driving. And then he observed:

  “You’re modest, aren’t you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You’ve no need to be. Not with that hair, and those eyes of yours, and one or two other things about you I’m beginning to notice.”

  She was silent.

  “Tell me, do you like lunching against a background of incessant music and chatter, or do you like to be quiet?”

  “Since I imagine you’ll want to talk business of some sort we’d better be quiet, hadn’t we?”

  “You shouldn’t let your imagination run away with you,” he returned. “But I do want to talk, so we’ll go somewhere quiet.”

  It was very quiet, and very dignified, when they finally arrived at the restaurant—not unlike one of London’s older, less spectacular eating-houses. There were sporting prints on the walls, and plush-covered seats tucked away in alcoves, and waiters who looked as if they really knew when a wine was at exactly the right temperature. Rick was welcomed with a good deal of quite noticeable deference, and by the time some delectable slices of cool melon were brought to the table he had regained much of the gravity that had enveloped him like a mantle when they left the office.

  “I want to apologize,” he said, “for making use of you, Melanie—or for attempting to make use of you.” He passed her the powdered ginger. “For of course you undeceived my father.”

  She refused the ginger, and shook her head. “As a matter of fact I didn’t.”

  He looked at her in amazement.

  “You mean that you—?” He consulted the wine list. “It's too hot for champagne, but a not-too-dry Sauterne should suit you. Melanie!” His voice was unbelieving. “You mean that you didn’t just calmly inform my father that you’ve worked for me for a matter of days, and that until two days before we left England we’d only spoken to one another on one other occasion?”

&
nbsp; “Yes, that’s what I mean. But I can’t think why my working for you for six months should help you in any way.”

  “That’s because you haven’t got a Machiavellian brain, my child,” with gentle dryness. “But I have, and I wanted someone apart from Jake to put in a booster for me. I don’t know why I ever persuaded myself that you would do that—without even a hint from me!—but I thought there was a remote chance you would play up. You see, Jake knows me through and through, inside out, and all the rest of it. And although he occasionally despises me, I knew I could count upon him. But would my father pay any real attention to his report?”

  “It seems a pity you should have to depend on the good offices of other people to retain the good opinion of your father,” Melanie remarked, as some breast of cold capon was placed in front of her, and a heavenly-looking bowl of salad set down within easy reach.

  “Yes; doesn’t it?” with the old mocking glint in his eyes. “But that’s the way I’m made, little English Melanie! So many defects that the harmony of the entire pattern is disrupted at times. But my friends accept me as what I am, and you apparently did the same this morning when you decided you wouldn’t let me down.” His long fingers reached out and closed over hers unexpectedly, leaving her with a tingling sensation in her fingertips when he suddenly released them. “Of course, I don’t know what sort of conversation you had with my father...”

  “He said I had helped him more than I probably realized myself.”

  “Did he? I wonder what he meant by that?” Rick mused. “Ah, well!” He shrugged. “If the fat’s in the fire we’ll have to leave it there, but I’d have liked another six months to make up my mind.”

  “About what?” Melanie couldn’t resist asking.

  He smiled across the table at her.

  “About all the things that make up an entire future life, little one. Not merely shoes and ships and sealing wax, and where they fit into the scheme of things, but the cement that holds things together. Namely, a life partner! ... For I don’t believe in divorce. When I marry I’m going to stay married.”