Shadow of Guilt Read Free Page A

office. I mean, this is most embarrassing. It isn’t… well, I think I ought to explain…”
    “Please don’t explain.” Don Saxby shifted his smile from Eve to me. “I’m extremely uninterested in other people’s business. Live and let live. That’s an old Saskatchewan proverb.” As he spoke, Ala came in and at once saw all three of us. She hesitated, obviously surprised, then she hurried toward us.
    “Does she know?” asked Don Saxby.
    “No,” I said. “For God’s sake, no.”
    “Okay.”
    Ala reached the table then.
    “Hi,” I said. “Mrs. Lord and I have been getting a bite to eat after our labors at the office.”
    Ala turned to Don Saxby. “Oh, dear, what a catastrophe. We’ve been caught out.” She looked at me dubiously. “George, you’re not going to tell Connie, are you?”
    “I don’t get it,” Saxby said. “What’s a catastrophe and what’s Connie got to do with it?”
    Ala gave an exaggerated shrug. “There was a ghastly scene after the party on Tuesday. I’m not supposed to see you again. If you knew the complications! I had to tell Connie I was going out with Rosemary Clark. Oh, dear…”
    She was still watching me, her young face half apprehensive, half coaxing. Don Saxby was watching me, too. The smile in his eyes was as friendly as ever.
    He said, “I don’t think Mr. Hadley’s going to rat on you, are you, Mr. Hadley?”
    His eyes moved from mine after a second, but the second was long enough for me to realize that he was indicating not a threat, which he might well have done, but merely a neutrality pact. It was a plea I could hardly reject.
    “Of course I’m not going to rat,” I said. “In fact, let’s have a drink and a little togetherness.”
    We ordered drinks, relaxed and talked. Gradually I began to realize something which made the intricate situation more intricate. Ala was crazy about Don Saxby, and I was almost sure he was fascinated with her. He was mature enough, of course, to be able to play it cool, but Ala was far too young to hide anything. It was in her eyes, her voice, even in the line of her neck as she turned to talk to him. She had never looked even remotely like this with Chuck Ryson.
    My God, I thought, where do we go from here?
    As though on cue Don Saxby said, “It’s too bad Connie’s suddenly turned against me. I can’t really see why she should, but it’s loused up my plan.” He turned to Ala. “Remember that couple you met at the party—Tom and Marian Green? They were very taken with you. They’re giving a big party up at their place in Stockbridge this weekend. They called this morning and wanted to know if I wouldn’t bring you up tomorrow. Now I guess I’ll have to put them off.”
    Ala looked at him, stricken. Then she turned to me. “Oh, George, couldn’t I go?”
    “Hardly, if Connie objects to me,” Saxby said.
    “But George, the Greens, they’re frightfully rich and respectable, with a daughter at Miss Porter’s, all the Connie things. I could tell her I was going out to Westport with Rosemary. Her parents are still in California. Rosemary wouldn’t tell. Connie would never know. Oh, George…”
    As I looked at her, I realized that in the tangle of my own problems I’d never really come to grips with the great Ryson wedding, never really faced the fact that Ala was only nineteen, that she’d been pushed relentlessly for years toward an engagement which was resolving everything for Connie but perhaps was resolving nothing for her. What was Chuck to her, anyway, when she could look at Don Saxby like this? Just Connie’s choice? The good solid kid who’d worshiped her for years—the obvious future?
    Saxby said, “I’d hate to do anything Connie wouldn’t like. She’s been wonderful to me.”
    I looked at him, realizing that if he were a smooth operator he could so easily be forcing our hands, but he wasn’t trying at all. What’s more, Don Saxby wasn’t the point. He could have been Joe Doakes or Ted