A Shade of Difference Read Free Page A

case in the UN and it would put us in a position of opposing our allies—”
    “A position of post-Geneva,” the M’Bulu said softly. “Perhaps it is more necessary now than it might once have been.”
    “You’re a very clever young man,” Orrin Knox said without guile. “I wonder what you really want on these shores?”
    “I want only the freedom which is due my country,” Terrible Terry said. “I don’t think that’s so extraordinary.”
    “I wonder … I wonder. Where do you want to go in the United States?”
    “I heard so much about South Carolina when I was at Harvard, but I never got a chance to go down there. I should like to go there now.”
    “I am not at all sure you would be welcome in South Carolina,” the Secretary remarked. Terrible Terry smiled.
    “I am prepared to chance it.”
    “I am afraid we could not permit it,” Orrin Knox said. The gorgeous figure exploded in a happy, sarcastic laugh.
    “How can you prevent it? I’m no Communist diplomat you can keep chained to New York or Washington.”
    “Possibly the British can restrain you.”
    “They wouldn’t dare!” the M’Bulu said scornfully, and Lord Maudulayne sighed.
    “Right you are,” he said. “We wouldn’t dare. Nor, my old friend from the Senate, would you.”
    “So, you see?” Terrible Terry demanded in happy triumph, “It is all so simple, and we might as well all co-operate.”
    “When would you like to go?” Orrin Knox asked.
    “The invitation is for tomorrow noon,” the M’Bulu said, and at his listeners’ looks of surprise he laughed again—in innocent merriment, as the Secretary remarked in the privacy of his own mind, in inno-cent merri-ment.
    “And what invitation is this?” he asked.
    “The Jason Foundation is giving a luncheon for me in Charleston,” Terry said proudly. “Señora Labaiya’s brother, the Governor of California, will introduce me.”
    “Patsy Jason Labaiya’s family fortune is behind that,” the Secretary informed Lord Maudulayne. “It does much good and causes some trouble, like all foundations. So Ted Jason will be there too? I thought the California legislature was in special session. Why don’t you go out there instead? Maybe you could address them.”
    “I have several invitations to be on television here that I have to keep,” the M’Bulu said proudly. “It all helps.”
    “I’m sure it does. Well, I’ll talk to the President. How about letting him designate a member of Congress to go with you as his representative?”
    “And my guard?” Terry suggested with a smile. “Who—Senator Cooley? I’m sure that would guarantee me safe-conduct in South Carolina!”
    “He might just surprise you and do it,” the Secretary said. “There are a few tricks left in old Seab yet. No, I was thinking of Cullee Hamilton, as a matter of fact. He’s one of our young Representatives, from California. A very fine one. And a Negro.”
    “I know him,” the M’Bulu said, and for just a second a contemplative and not too pleasant expression came into his eyes. “He visited my capital of Molobangwe last year for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
    “Did you like him?” the Secretary asked. Terrible Terry’s expression changed to something indefinable. He shrugged.
    “He has a pretty wife.” He stood up briskly, his robes showering down about him in glittering cascade. “Very well, I’ll take old Cullee, then, if that’s what you want. And you will talk to the President. Maybe Thursday night, if he’s free. Then I can have the day Thursday for seeing people in Washington.”
    “It takes time to arrange a White House dinner,” Orrin Knox said.
    “He can do it,” Terry said complacently, and the Secretary thought: Go down through layer after layer after layer and you still find something tenaciously and terribly childlike underneath.
    The M’Bulu smiled happily. “That way, I can still be back here in plenty of time for my speech Friday morning.”
    “Full