Part 5 Senator Richard Devereaux
Chapter 1
The Vancouver Post, a newspaper not given to decorous pussyfooting, had accorded full human-interest treatment to Dan Orliffe's report on the would-be immigrant, Henri Duval. The story ran at the top left on page one through all Christmas Eve editions, taking second place only to a day-old sex slaying which led the paper. A four-column head proclaimed:
Homeless Ocean Waif
Faces Bleak, Lone Yule
Below, also across four columns, and forty lines deep, was a close-up picture of the young stowaway, his back to a ship's boat. Unusually for a press photograph, the camera had caught a depth of expression which coarse newsprint etching had not entirely lost; it combined a suggestion of yearning and something close to innocence.
The effect of story and picture was such that the managing editor scribbled upon a proof copy, 'Good, let's keep this hot,' and sent it to the city desk. The city editor, phoning Dan Orliffe at home, said, 'Try to find a forward angle for Thursday, Dan, and see what you can get out of the Immigration people besides bull. Looks like this thing may rouse a lot of interest.'
Locally the interest began at a high point and sustained itself over the Christmas holiday. Across the city and its environs the Vastervik's stowaway was a major topic of conversation in homes, clubs, and bars. Some who discussed the young man's plight were moved to pity, others angrily referred to 'damned officialdom' and 'bureaucratic inhumanity'. Thirty-seven phone calls, beginning an hour after publication, commended the Post for its initiative in bringing the matter to public attention. As usual on such occasions, all calls were carefully logged so that, afterwards, advertisers could be shown just how much impact there had been from a typical Post newsbeat.
There were other signs. Five local disc jockeys referred sympathetically to the item on the air, one of their number dedicating a platter of 'Silent Night' to Henri Duval 'in case our" friend from the seven seas is tuned to Vancouver's most listened-to station'. In Chinatown, amid applause, a night-club stripper dedicated her next uncovering to 'that lonely little guy on the ship'. And in pulpits, at least eight Christmas sermons had been hastily revised to include a topical reference to the 'Stranger that is within thy gates'.
Fifteen people were sufficiently moved to compose letters to the editor, fourteen of which were subsequently printed. The fifteenth, largely incoherent, exposed the incident as part of an infiltration plot from outer space, with Duval a Martian agent. Apart from the last, most letter writers were agreed that something should be done by somebody, but were not clear as to what way or by whom.
A handful did practical things. A Salvation Army officer and a Catholic priest made notes to visit Henri Duval and subsequently did. The mink-weighted widow of a one-time gold prospector personally gift-wrapped a parcel of food and cigarettes and dispatched it, via her uniformed chauffeur and white Cadillac, to the Vastervik. As an afterthought she also sent a bottle of her late husband's favourite whisky. At first the chauffeur had considered stealing this, but en route, discovering it to be of a kind much inferior to the brand he favoured himself, he rewrapped the bottle and delivered it as instructed.
An electrical-appliance dealer, desperately harried by impending bankruptcy, took a new portable radio from his stock and, without quite knowing why, addressed the carton to Duval and delivered it to the ship's side. An age-bent railroad pensioner, eking out his years on a monthly sum which would have been just adequate if the cost of living had stayed at 1940 levels, put two dollars in an envelope and mailed it to the Post for transmission to the stowaway. A group of bus drivers, reading the Post report before going on duty, passed around a uniform cap and collected seven dollars and thirty cents. The cap owner took it to Duval in person on Christmas morning.
The ripples went beyond Vancouver.
The first news story appeared in the Post's Mainland edition at 10 AM, December 24th. By 10.10 Canadian Press wire service had rewritten and condensed the item, then fed it out to press and radio stations in the West. Another wire carried the news to Eastern papers, and CP in Toronto rerouted it to AP and Reuters in New York. The American agencies, news-starved over the Christmas holiday, capsuled the piece some more and fanned it out across the world.
The Johannesburg Star gave the item an inch and the Stockholm Europa Press a quarter of a column. The London Daily Mail allowed four lines and the Times of India delivered itself of an editorial. The Melbourne Herald used a paragraph, as did the Buenos Aires La Prensa. In Moscow, Pravda quoted the incident as an example of 'capitalist hypocrisy'.
In New York the UN Peruvian delegate learned of the story and resolved to ask the General Assembly if something couldn't be done. In Washington the British Ambassador heard the report and frowned.
'The news got to Ottawa by early afternoon in time for the late editions of the capital's two evening newspapers. The
Citizen front-paged the CP dispatch and tagged it:
Man Minus Country
Pleads'Let Me In'
More sedately, the Journal ran the item on page three under the head:
Ship's Stowaway
Asks Entry Here
Brian Richardson, who had been brooding about the problem which the party would face when the secret Washington proposals eventually became known, read both paper? in his sparsely furnished Sparks Street office. The party director was a big, athletically built man with blue eyes, sandy hair, and ruddy cheeks. His expression, most times, conveyed an amused scepticism, but he could be quick to anger and there was a sense of latent power about him. Now his heavy, broad-shouldered figure was slumped into a tilted chair, both feet planted upon a cluttered desk, a pipe clenched between his teeth. The office was lonely and silent. His second in command, as well as the assistants, researchers, and office workers who formed the sizeable staff of party headquarters, had gone home, some laden with Christmas parcels, several hours earlier.
Having gone through the two newspapers thoroughly, he returned to the stowaway item. Long experience had given Richardson a sensitive nose for political trouble and it was reacting now. Compared with the bigger issues pending, he knew that the matter was unimportant; all the same, it was the kind of thing the public was likely to seize on. He sighed; there were times when vexations seemed endless. He had still not heard from the Prime Minister since his own call to Milly earlier in the day. Uneasily putting the newspapers aside, he refilled his pipe and settled down once more to wait. '
Chapter 2
Less than a quarter-mile from Brian Richardson, within the sacrosanct cloister of the Rideau Club on Wellington Street, Senator Richard Deveraux, who was killing time before a scheduled jet flight to Vancouver, also read both papers, then rested his cigar in an ashtray and smilingly tore the stowaway item out. Unlike Richardson, who hoped fervently that the case would not embarrass the Government, the Senator – chairman of the Opposition party organization – was happily confident that it would.
Senator Deveraux had purloined the news item in the Rideau Club's reading room – a square, lofty chamber overlooking Parliament Hill, and guarded at its doorway by a stern bronze bust of Queen Victoria. To the ageing Senator, both the reading room and the club itself were an old familiar habitat.
The Rideau Club of Ottawa (as its members sometimes point out) is so exclusive and discreet that not even its name appears outside the building. A pedestrian passing by would never know what place it was unless he were told, and, if curious, he might take it for a private, though somewhat seedy, mansion.