Agent in Place by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

now. He carried it into the kitchen, emptied it down the sink, and poured himself a double vodka. He had earned it.

5
    Tom Kelso got back to the hotel at ten past six, after a day divided between meetings—one with an editorial staff-member at the Times , to discuss the shape of his visit to France; another with a television reporter who had just ended a three-year assignment there; a third with an attaché on leave from the Embassy in Paris—and found Dorothea, clad in a black chiffon negligee and a white felt hat. She was seated before her dressing-table mirror, studying a profile view of the upturn-and-dip of the hat’s wide brim. She turned to welcome him, as he came through the sitting-room and halted at the bedroom door, and gave him a smile that would lift any tired man’s heart. “What do you think?” she asked him.
    “A lot of things.” He lifted the hat from her head, tossed it on to a chair. And I’ve only got fifteen minutes to shower and change, and order drinks from the bar, he thought in sudden frustration.
    “Don’t you like it?”
    “It gets in the way.” He bent down and planted a kiss on top of her soft smooth hair. She raised her face, still flushed and pink from her perfumed hot bath, to offer him a proper kiss on her lips. She smelled delicious, damn it. “I’ll take a two-minute shower. Would you get out my blue shirt and red tie, honey?” He was on his way to the bathroom, pulling off his clothes as he went. “And you’d better start dressing, Thea.”
    “But Chuck won’t be here till seven thiry. There’s plenty of time.”
    “Not as much as you think. Tony Lawton is coming up for a drink. Brad Gillon, too.”
    “When?” she called in alarm, rising from the dressing-table and going into quick motion. First the shirt and tie. Tom was already in the shower, her question drowned out in a flood of water. She began pulling on panty-hose and bra. Gillon she knew well, an old friend of Tom’s, once attached to the State Department but now out of Washington and into New York publishing. Tony Lawton? She started creaming and powdering. Yes, she remembered, she had met him once before—on a quick Washington visit—English—lived in London when he wasn’t travelling around—another of Tom’s friends from abroad. Some eyebrow-pencil, lipstick, hair combed into place. She was almost ready for her little black dress, in fashion again like the hat she had bought on impulse at the end of a hard day’s shopping. Saturday wasn’t her choice, exactly, to find Christmas presents, but that was the way Tom’s schedule had been arranged, and so—she shrugged her shoulders. Tom was out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry. “When are they due?” she asked, dress in hand.
    “At six thiry, dammit.”
    “Oh, heavens!” She began stepping into her dress.
    “It’s always the way—” He stopped combing his hair. “I’m getting an awful lot of grey at the sides,” he said worriedly, looking into the mirror.
    “It suits you, darling.” She took a minute off dressing, and studied him. At forty-two, he was a healthy specimen: muscles firm, waistline still trim (he brooded about it, kept swearing off second helpings and desserts, but that was a vanity he shared with a million other men), dark hair plentiful even if greying at the temples, dark eyes watching her with a smile as he studied her in turn.
    “Come on, blondie,” he said, “get that dress on, however much it spoils the view. Old Brad would lose the sight of his good eye if he were to see you like that.”
    “Oh, Tom!” Her even eyebrows were raised, black eyelashes flickered, pink lips parted into a gentle protest.
    “Yes, it’s always the way,” Tom said again, pulling on his own clothes. He had been delighted today when Tony Lawton had called him at the office, suggesting a drink this evening—and would Tom invite Brad Gillon, too? “Why didn’t I say seven o’clock?”
    “Because Chuck is coming at seven thiry.