(1964) The Man by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

a member of the White House press corps, he would naturally defend and admire his own.
    Now Edna realized that Arthur Eaton had come away from the window, and caught her staring at him. Flushing, she turned away, only to observe Senator Dilman going out the corridor door, probably to the washroom. She decided to talk to Jed Stover at the bookshelves.
    Starting toward the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, she became aware of a folded paper lying on the green carpet behind Stover. Quickly she went to it, picked it up, and opened it in order to find out to whom it belonged. The embossed letterhead, she saw, bore the name “Trafford University.” In the left corner was the smaller lettering, “Office of the Chancellor—Dr. Chauncey L. McKaye.” It was addressed to “Dear Senator Dilman.” Not meaning to go further, but unable to escape the typed words in the single paragraph that followed, Edna realized that the head of the University, at the suggestion of the dean of men, was writing the Senator about his son, Julian Dilman, a sophomore, whose grades had seriously fallen off and who would have to be placed on probation if this continued. She noticed words like “inattentive” and “disrespectful,” and the phrase “more interested in outside activities of late than in his schooling.”
    She folded the letter, embarrassed to have seen its private contents, but for the first time she thought of Dilman as a human being. Of those in the room, she knew Senator Dilman the least. This was because, since T. C. had been President, Dilman had been less frequently in the White House than the others. Only in the few days between the Vice-President’s death and the President’s departure for Frankfurt had Dilman appeared several times with the Majority Leader. But now this letter in Edna’s hand: it gave him a son, a son who was a problem, and it made him a father, not just another senator but a human being.
    Noticing that Dilman had reappeared, and was making his way toward Selander and Wickland, Edna hurried to intercept him.
    “Senator, I found this on the floor,” she said. “Apparently you dropped it. I’m sorry, I had to open it.”
    Senator Dilman accepted the letter with the slightest smile. “It’s quite all right. Thank you.”
    Edna turned in time to see Wayne Talley approaching Eaton. “Arthur, it’s past two in the afternoon in Frankfurt. T. C.’s probably gone back into the conference. Think there’s any point in waiting around like this?”
    Eaton shrugged. He addressed not only Talley but everyone. “I think we have no choice but to wait. The President just may feel this is important enough to delay the conference. He may want to speak to us further.”
    As if the deferment in resuming communications was a personal affront, General Fortney charged at the regular telephone once more. For the hundredth time, it seemed, he was calling the Signal Corps.
    About to continue to her chair, and shorthand pad, Edna slowed down, listening hard. She thought that she had heard her own telephone ring in her office. She was listening, trying to make it out above Fortney’s voice, when she heard Representative Wickland, the person nearest to her open door, call to her, “Miss Foster, your phone.”
    She darted past the Congressman into her office, slipped between the electric typewriter stand and the table holding the television set, and caught up the receiver in mid-ring.
    “Hello,” she answered, “the President’s office.”
    For a suspended moment she heard nothing more than the wavy, swooshing sound that indicates a long-distance call. Then a voice came on, a strange voice from far away, and it said, “Is this the White House? Who is this?”
    “This is the President’s personal secretary, Miss Foster. May I ask who is calling?”
    “Oh, Miss Foster—Miss Foster—” And suddenly Edna felt goose pimples on her arms and a chill across her back, for the disembodied voice was quavering and