"Fun?" she asked.
"Wonderful," Doak said. "And Martha surprised me by being able to swim. None of my other girls can swim a lick."
"Martha"s no girl," Mrs. Klein said. "She"s twenty-seven."
Martha laughed. "Why, mother, you"ll never get rid of me that way."
Mrs. Klein said, "I almost forgot. Mr. Arnold called. Wants to see you, Mr. Parker, tonight."
"Well, maybe he is sold. Wonder how he knew I was here."
"There isn"t much he doesn"t know about what"s going on in town,"
Mrs. Klein said. "I"d wager there isn"t _anything_." She looked at Martha as she said that last.
Martha"s face was blank.
"Maybe I can put it off until tomorrow," Doak said. "It"s been a pretty good day up to now."
He called the Senator from the drug store in town. He told him, "Nothing definite, yet, Senator."
"Don"t give me that," Arnold said raspingly. "Get up here right away, Parker."
Doak stopped at the house on the way back. He told Mrs. Klein, "I might be a little late for supper. I think I"ll run up and see the Senator now and get it over with."
"We"ll hold it," she said. She looked around to see if Martha was within hearing. Then, "You"re not trifling with my girl, Mr. Parker?"
"Not for a second," Doak a.s.sured her. "Though I have an uncomfortable feeling she"s trifling with me, but good."
Mrs. Klein shook her dark head. "Not with that sick-calf look on her face. The girl"s smitten. You watch your step, Mr. Parker."
"I promise," he said. "I"ll be back as soon as possible."
The hot room, the face like ashes, the cracked voice. No chair again for Doak. Arnold said, "You went up there last night, I know. Well?"
"I"ll make a full report to my superior," Doak said. "I"m not permitted to discuss Department business with _anybody_, Senator."
Arnold"s thin lips were open, his bony jaw slack. "Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned. Do you know who you"re talking to, young man?"
"An _ex_-Senator," Doak answered.
"That"s right--and the man who put your superior where he is. He"d still be peddling papers if I hadn"t got him into the Department."
Doak said nothing.
"I could get your job in a minute," Arnold went on. "I"m a h.e.l.l of a long ways from dead, Parker. You"d better wake up."
Doak had no words.
"Well, d.a.m.n it, man, are you dumb? What have you got to say?"
"I"ve said it, sir," Doak said quietly.
For long and silent seconds, Arnold glared at him. And then he said, "All right. I"ll get my report from Ryder--and your job. Now get out."
Fine, _great_! Hero Doak Parker, of Security. Lion bearder, hair-splitter, cutter-of-his-own-throat, lover of a country la.s.s. And man without a future, it looked like now.
The dogs s...o...b..red and watched, the gravel grated under his feet. The great gates swung open and Doak took a deep breath of the warm clean air. Why did he feel so free?
Martha was sitting on the front porch. She looked up and smiled as he came near and he stooped to kiss her.
"Hey!" she said. "Watch it, city man." But she hadn"t taken her lips away for a few seconds.
From his jacket pocket he took the _Heritage Herald_ and tossed it in her lap. She looked down at it for seconds, then up to read his face.
He said nothing.
"Last night," she said, "you got it. I missed it when I went upstairs, last night, but I thought someone else might have taken it."
"_I_ took it--last night."
Her eyes searched his wonderingly but there was no evident tension in her. Doak sat on the glider.
She said, "I was too forward to be believed this afternoon, perhaps?
Did you listen last night?"
"I listened. I"m from Security, Martha--or was. I"m resigning."
"Oh? To fight the good fight?"
He nodded. "But legally--or what is known as legally. Through the pressure-group pattern. I know my way around Washington, Martha. I think, in time and with the right people behind me, I think I could--oh, h.e.l.l!"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, h.e.l.l! When you were swimming this afternoon we could have got this, Doak. I told them to wait. I told them I thought you had the makings of an honest man."
"Why?" He stared at her.
"I don"t know why. Maybe your curly hair. I"m admitting nothing along that line, not yet, Doak. I want to see what kind of fighter you are, how much man you are."
"I wish I knew," he said quietly. "One thing I"m sure of, I"m going to enjoy the battle."
"You"re going to enjoy both battles," Martha said. "And probably win both. But oh, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we"re going to have to fight."
He smiled and looked out at the shadowed lawn. This would be a place for the historians, the _writing_ historians, Dubbinville, U.S.A. And why should a man be happy, looking forward to so d.a.m.ned much trouble?
_Mr. Gault has just presented us with a wholly plausible if highly terrifying view of a reasonably near future. Such things could, conceivably, come to pa.s.s. And prophecy, from the time of Jules Verne to the present, has long been one of the several spinal columns of science fiction. Yet is it possible for anyone to predict an unvisited future? We are inclined to think not. Gadgetry to come, as repeatedly demonstrated by Verne, is easy. But no one yet has been able to tell what human beings are going to do from day to day, much less years and years ahead of time._