Holt said, “The Secret Service should have a record of that.”
“Right,” said Eugene. “I’ll have to get in touch with Welling—” He broke off and said to Evelyn, “You realize I’ll have to talk to some people. This isn’t something that can be handled by we four in this room.”
“This is beginning to spread,” Robert Pratt said doubtfully. “What Evelyn is mainly concerned with is protecting Bradford’s good name. She doesn’t want a lot of publicity.”
Eugene said, “None of us do, man. We all want the lid on this as tight as we can get it.”
Evelyn said to Eugene, “You started to say Wellington.” She offered a thin nervous smile. “That’s all right, I’d already suspected Wellington had something to do with espionage. But he’s family, he’s Bradford’s son, so it’s all right. Just so it doesn’t get outside the family.”
“If at all possible,” Eugene told her, and turned to Holt. “Did he come today? I haven’t seen him here.”
“Bradford?” Holt shook his head. “No, he didn’t feel up to a mob like this. He phoned a little before noon and talked to them both, Greg and Audrey.”
Evelyn said, “And they’re going to stop in and see him after the honeymoon.”
Eugene looked at his watch. Calmly he said, “Then he could have left already, couldn’t he? He could have a three hour start on us right now.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “He promised me he wouldn’t leave today. He wants me to go with him, that’s why he told me about it in the first place. I haven’t given him an answer yet.”
Robert Pratt said, “It’s a stall that won’t work much longer, though. Bradford thinks now the answer is going to be no, that Evelyn’s going to want to stay in this country because of me.”
“He talks against Robert now,” Evelyn said in a small voice. “I think he still hopes he can overcome Robert’s influence on me.”
Holt said, “But he knows that Robert is aware of his plans and doesn’t agree with them. Even with this threat of his to call a news conference if anybody tries to stop him, he’ll probably want to make his move soon.”
“What a mess,” Eugene said.
Holt said, “Evelyn, has there been any other odd behavior from Bradford in the last few months? Anything out of the ordinary.”
“No, not really.” But then she said, “Well, yes, in a way. But that was because of the mess in Paris, that whole thing over there going so badly.”
“What was?”
“He was very short-tempered with Harrison, in July. You know what happened to Herbert.”
“I don’t,” Eugene said.
Holt explained to him, “Herbert Jarvis, Harrison’s partner.”
“His brother-in-law, yes. Died a few months ago.”
“Killed himself,” Holt said. “Out at Bradford’s place. I fudged the death certificate myself.”
Eugene held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Wait a minute. You people are hitting me with too much all at once. Herbert Jarvis killed himself?”
“I have no idea why,” Holt said. “Business worries, I suppose.” To Evelyn he said, “Weren’t they having trouble with some sort of real estate scheme in California?”
“They went to Bradford for help,” she said, “that’s what it was all about. That’s why they were there. And Bradford was very hard, very cold. He wouldn’t talk to Herbert at all, and he wouldn’t help Harrison, not until after Herbert killed himself. All he’d suggest was some sort of crazy idea for a four-hundred-mile pipeline across a desert.”
“A serious suggestion?”
“I don’t know. He kept saying it was, but it couldn’t have been. It wasn’t a sensible idea, it would have cost more than all the partners had together, and Bradford wanted Harrison to do it all by himself.”
“Why?”
“He said it was because Harrison never tried to do anything large and selfless for other people, so he’d never be remembered, but if he did this pipeline he’d be remembered as the man who built a city in a desert.”
Holt glanced at Eugene and found Eugene meeting his eye.
In a small voice, Evelyn said, “This is the same kind of thing, isn’t it? For himself, this time.”
Eugene said, “What did Harrison do?”
“Bradford finally helped him. Herbert killed himself, and after that Bradford made some phone calls and fixed things up.”
“So he can be reached,” Eugene said.
“Possibly,” Holt said.
“And he sent the bus for them,” Evelyn added.
“He did what?”
She told the story about the bus, and then Holt said, “Has there been anything else like that? Where he’s been harsher than usual, or more unnoticing of other people’s feelings?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe in small ways, day by day, but nothing like that. He’s shouted at the servants more than he used to, I think, but I just thought that was part of his agitation. First the business in France going badly, and then Harrison’s trouble and Herbert killing himself, and then getting all excited about running for Congress, and that rug being pulled out from under—”
“Running for Congress?” Eugene was lost again. “Bradford?”
Holt said, “That’s a part of it I was a witness to. Two or three months ago, he got the idea he’d take his old seat back in the House. Seems John Adams did the same thing, after his Presidency.”
“John Quincy Adams,” Evelyn said.
“Excuse me,” Holt said.
“It seems to me,” Eugene said, “there’ve been enough clues. The man’s been acting oddly for months. Surely somebody should have seen something before now.”
“Not necessarily,” Holt said, cutting in before Evelyn’s outrage could find voice. “He hasn’t been all that odd, and up to now there’ve been perfectly normal explanations for everything. Fatigue, disappointment, boredom. They could even be the explanation for what’s happening now.”
“Not the full explanation, surely,” Eugene said.
“Probably not,” Holt admitted. “But there was that television interview a week or two ago, did you see that?”
“The tail end of it, is all. I was at a late meeting.”
“He was perfectly all right there,” Holt said. “Blander than usual, if anything.”
“Well, I’ll tell you the reason for that,” Evelyn said sharply. “They cut out everything important he had to say.”
Holt looked at her in sudden interest. “That wasn’t the complete interview?”
“No! George talked to him for an hour and a half, and they cut a whole hour out of it. Everything really meaningful that Bradford felt was important to say.”
Holt said, musingly, “I wonder if they’d still have the parts they cut?”
Eugene said, “Worth a phone call.”
“George is still out in the garden, I believe,” Holt said.
“I’ll talk to him later. Joe, will you be free tomorrow and Tuesday?”
“I can be,” Holt said.
“I’ll set things up as quickly as I can,” Eugene said.
Evelyn said, “For what?”
“For a meeting,” Eugene told her, and added, “Family members only, I promise. But we’ll have to talk things over, so we’ll have to get together.”
“I can be there,” she said. “Wherever you meet, I can be there.”
“I think you should stay with Bradford,” Eugene told her. “I think you should be with him as much as possible.”
“Before you do anything,” she said, “anything at all, you’ve got to talk to me about it. If you want to have a meeting behind my back—”
“It’s not a meeting behind your back, it’s simply—”
“I know exactly what it is. All right, you think you’ll be able to talk more freely if I’m not there, because of the way I feel about Bradford. And probably because I’m a woman. All right. But before you do anything, come talk to me. Because if you don’t, and if I think you’re doing something to hurt Bradford, I’ll warn him. I’ll tell him what’s going on, I’ll even help him get out of the country. You talk to me before you do a thing.”