The Seventh Secret by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

now. When he'd met Valerie, he'd found her dazzling. A beautiful, slim brunette, polished, clever, sophisticated—he had been flattered that she had chosen him from so many, himself a relative nobody.
    But he should have seen it was wrong from the start. They were together for the wrong reasons. She had nothing honest to give, in bed or out of it. No warmth whatsoever. Just fun and games, surface stuff, no intimacy. Her interests scarcely extended beyond parties, staging or attending them. And pseudocultural occasions, a theater opening, a concert, an art museum displaying old masters. Life was an opening night. She was completely Daddy's girl, spoiled, inconsiderate, self-centered. A society-column morsel.
    When her father offered to set his son-in-law up in larger quarters, to feed him new clients, make him an instant success (and dependent), Foster turned him down. He wanted to do it on his own, and he wanted Valerie to live on his income. Valerie had been irritated and impatient with that nonsense. She didn't want to live like a budget-keeping bride in the San Fernando Valley.
    Then there was something else. Being married to a struggling architect seemed, for such a one as herself, a lowly enterprise and demeaning. If he had been a graduate of the Bauhaus, an instant Gropius or Le Corbusier, a real ornament in her world, that would have been different. But a beginner who insisted on making his sweaty way up, that was almost an embarrassment. Soon she had wanted Foster to give short shrift to bread-and-butter architecture and to devote himself to art, to painting. At least a struggling artist was more respectable, so many hadn't been appreciated until they were dead, anyway.
    Finally, while he was working steadily to make it on his own, she had begun to drift away and to occupy herself with some arty group in Pasadena. When he learned she was occupying herself with a supercilious and pretentious young blond abstract painter ten years her junior, and that she had become the young man's patron and finally his bed partner, Foster said enough. In a rage, he kicked her out, and Valerie's father arranged the divorce.
    Following that, Foster had had nothing to devote himself to except his work until his Hitler book project came along. After Valerie and her father, Hitler began to look good. In the last year, Foster had absorbed himself in the architectural book, and continued to be distrustful of his own judgment about women. To him, each freshly encountered woman represented no more than the possibility of a romp. He did not like himself for the feeling, but there it was.
    To his surprise, Foster heard Joan Sawyer's voice once more. "You haven't answered me, Mr. Foster," she was saying. "Is there anything you want to say about that?"
    "About what?"
    "Your marriage, of course. It could be a colorful background."
    Foster was no longer laid back. He sat up. He was becoming truly annoyed with this aggressive young reporter on the make for a byline story. "Lady," he said, you were invited here to discuss my role as an architect, not as a husband. No more diversions. Stick to the ground rules, or good-bye."
    She was flustered, afraid to lose her story, he could see. "I'm sorry," she said, contritely. "You're right. I sometimes let myself get carried away. I was just trying to round out—you know, personalize the story. No more sidetracking, I promise you. Am I forgiven? Can we go on now?''
    He relaxed slightly. She was decent enough. "Go on," he said.
    "We were talking about your business here the last six years. Do you do it all yourself?"
    "Oh, no. Too much work. Fortunately. You met Irene, my secretary and bookkeeper. There are two more of us. I'm the one who meets with clients. I do the original creative design on a structure. Frank Nishimura gets into it next. He's a professional draftsman, not a designer but a draftsman. Don Graham is a general contractor. He follows through on the huts and bolts, the actual production of