AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mrs. McHugh also went to the ladies' room and, like Greg, McHugh waited nearby. Greg studied him from behind a pillar. He had no briefcase, no raincoat under which to conceal a package or a file. But all the same, something about him was wrong. What was it?
Then Greg realized. "The newspaper!" he said.
"What?"
"When Barney came in he was carrying a newspaper. They did the crossword while waiting for the show. Now he doesn't have it!"
"Either he threw it away--or he passed it to Yenkov, with something concealed inside."
"Yenkov and his wife have left already."
"They may still be outside."
Bicks and Greg ran for the door.
Bicks shoved his way through the crowd still filing out of the exits. Greg stayed close behind. They reached the sidewalk outside and looked both ways. Greg could not see Yenkov, but Bicks had sharp eyes. "Across the street!" he cried.
The attache and his dowdy wife were standing at the curb, and a black limousine was approaching them slowly.
Yenkov was holding a folded newspaper.
Greg and Bicks ran across the road.
The limousine stopped.
Greg was faster than Bicks and reached the far sidewalk first.
Yenkov had not noticed them. Unhurriedly, he opened the car door, then stepped back to let his wife get in.
Greg threw himself at Yenkov. They both fell to the ground. Mrs. Yenkov screamed.
Greg scrambled to his feet. The chauffeur had got out of the car and was coming around it, but Bicks yelled: "FBI!" and held up his badge.
Yenkov had dropped the newspaper. Now he reached for it. But Greg was faster. He picked it up, stepped back, and opened it.
Inside was a sheaf of papers. The top one was a diagram. Greg recognized it immediately. It showed the working of an implosion trigger for a plutonium bomb. "Jesus Christ," he said. "This is the very latest stuff!"
Yenkov jumped into the car, slammed the door, and locked it from the inside.
The chauffeur got back in and drove away.
iii
It was Saturday night, and Daisy's apartment in Piccadilly was heaving. There had to be a hundred people there, she thought, feeling pleased.
She had become the leader of a social group based on the American Red Cross in London. Every Saturday she gave a party for American servicemen, and invited nurses from St. Bart's Hospital to meet them. RAF pilots came too. They drank her unlimited Scotch and gin, and danced to Glenn Miller records on her gramophone. Conscious that it might be the last party the men ever attended, she did everything she could to make them happy--except kiss them, but the nurses did plenty of that.
Daisy never drank liquor at her own parties. She had too much to think about. Couples were always locking themselves in the toilet, and having to be dragged out because the room was needed for its regular purpose. If a really important general got drunk he had to be seen safely home. She often ran out of ice--she could not make her British staff understand how much ice a party needed.
For a while after she split up with Boy Fitzherbert her only friends had been the Leckwith family. Lloyd's mother, Ethel, had never judged her. Although Ethel was the height of respectability now, she had mistakes in her past, and that made her more understanding. Daisy still went to Ethel's house in Aldgate every Wednesday evening, and drank cocoa around the radio. It was her favorite night of the week.
She had now been socially rejected twice, once in Buffalo and again in London, and the depressing thought occurred to her that it might be her fault. Perhaps she did not really belong in those prissy high-society groups, with their strict rules of conduct. She was a fool to be attracted to them.
The trouble was that she loved parties and picnics and sporting events and any gathering where people dressed up and had fun.
However, she now knew she did not need British aristocrats or old-money Americans to have fun. She had created her own society, and it was a lot more exciting than theirs. Some of the people who had refused to speak to her after she left Boy now hinted heavily that they would like an invitation to one of her famous Saturday nights. And many guests came to her apartment to let their hair down after an excruciatingly grand dinner in a palatial Mayfair residence.
Tonight was the best party so far, for Lloyd was home on leave.
