The Murder of a Fifth Columnist Read Free Page A

nice! I didn’t know you were going to be here. Corliss, you’re looking unbearably fit! How was South America? Don’t tell me—let me read it. Hullo, Larry darling. You were wonderful this morning. How do you find out so much. Is it really true that Madame Blank dropped her wig in the punch bowl?”
    She turned back to me. “You know Grace Latham, don’t you, Mrs. Sherwood.—Oh, sorry… how stupid of me. She wouldn’t be here if you weren’t friends.—Hello, Sam!”
    Then she was telling Congressman—or ex-Congressman—Sam Wharton how blind the country was in not returning leaders like him. I could hear her while I was shaking hands with Mrs. Addison Sherwood.
    Mrs. Sherwood wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she was a handsome one—about forty-five, I’d say, though she looked younger. Or would have if there hadn’t been something around her gray eyes that was deeper and more mature than her slim figure in a beautifully cut white gown would indicate. Her skin was warm and sun-tanned, and her hair had been light and was smartly cut and curled with no attempt to disguise the graying strands in it. She’d got up with a simple cordiality that would have made Sylvia’s Ruth Draper act look a little shoddy if Sylvia hadn’t herself been just as much to the manner born. She smiled at me.
    “I don’t know Grace Latham—but I’ve met her and liked her, and I wanted to know her.”
    I don’t think anyone else heard that, except possibly Larry Villiers, who could be in Omaha and hear what people were saying in Los Angeles if it was column.
    She took my arm. “You know everybody, don’t you? Mrs. Wharton and the Congressman?”
    Effie Wharton said, “Yes, I know Mrs. Latham,” rather as if it was my fault that I could go on living in Washington while she had to leave it shortly. The Congressman said, “Yes, indeed,” with a twinkle in his eye. He looked ten years younger than he had in October when he rushed back home to do a hurried and ineffectual job of political fence repairing.
    “And Mr. Hofmann?” Mrs. Sherwood said.
    “No,” I said. “But of course I’ve read Terror Unleashed.”
    The noted anti-Totalitarian, big and blond with a saber scar down his cheek, dropped his eyeglass and bowed from the waist. “I’m very glad, madame,” he said. Just a touch of foreign accent did something to his middle “r’s.”
    “I hope all Americans will read it and be warned in time—if indeed it is not already too late.”
    “I guess we’ll manage,” Sam Wharton drawled.
    Mrs. Sherwood interrupted, laughing. “Now, now—I’ve told you, Mr. Hofmann, that Mr. Wharton doesn’t believe there’s anything the United States can’t do when it puts its mind to it.”
    Kurt Hofmann bowed again.
    “I respect his opinion, madame, but I deplore the lack of insight that has enabled him to form it.”
    I could see the color seeping up around Sam Wharton’s ears.
    “We haven’t all had your opportunities, sir,” he said, with the suggestion of a bow himself.
    I went over to Corliss Marshall. If I couldn’t figure out why I had been asked to this party, I certainly couldn’t see why he had. Neither could he, apparently. He was looking at his watch as if his train was long overdue, and sort of shaking his withers. He kept his back to Pete Hamilton as well as he could, but it was hard to keep it to Pete and to Congressman Wharton at the same time—and while columnists are supposed to be able to attack the President and go cheerfully to the White House, I doubt if that holds all down the line. Furthermore, Corliss just couldn’t look at Sam Wharton without a glint of malicious triumph brightening his eyes. He’d been unbelievably bitter about Sam. He’d accused him of selling the country down the river, of making political capital out of the heart’s blood of small investors, and of practically every public crime in the index. All of which might be true—I wouldn’t know. But the day he devoted his