Triumph Read Free Page A

had watched to see what he would do. Paulus Davey said, "Pleased to meet you, Doctor," and picked up the luggage.

    Faith had already started for a near door. She turned. "Wear shorts, if you like. A bathing suit'd be even better! Swim down to the terrace. Mama'll be in the front room--"
    she pointed--"and I'll meet you in a mo'."

    Ben studied the man at his side and said, "She has no imagination." Paulus Davey protested. "Miss Farr? She has too much, if you take some of her friends' attitudes."

    "None at all," Ben argued calmly. "Otherwise she'd never have suggested shorts for me. If the girl had imagination, she'd even have realized I brought no such garment!
    Shorts, indeed!"

    The butler laughed with a deep sound and in agreeable amusement. Then, quickly, he moved toward a different door. Ben followed. It was cool, mercifully so: air-conditioned--even the passageways. They went up a short flight of steps, along a flagged corridor, and were about to descend a longer flight when Paulus Davey halted, set down his burden, whipped open a door, and called, "Glyph! Get out of there!"

    Looking over his shoulder, Ben saw a large collie stop its bemused swim in the moat and turn, reluctantly, to the stone edge only inches above the water surface. The dog heaved itself out and shook, filling the air with brilliance and marking the stones with falling spray. Davey went on. Ben repeated, "Cliff?"

    "Glyph," the butler replied, and spelled it. "He has a funny patch of white on his chest--"

    "I noticed."

    "--that Mrs. Farr says is exactly like a Mayan glyph."

    "Oh."

    "Here we are."

    Ben had been ready for anything in the matter of guest accommodations at Uxmal: an Egyptian room, say, or something with a roof of corbeled arches, all stone, with feather decorations that might even have actually once been the cloak of some cruel, gaudy Aztec. Instead, he was led into a suite--living room, writing alcove, library alcove, bedroom, and bath. It made him think of the "best" suites in the newest motels. The prevailing color scheme was yellow and brown; but blue-green ornaments, bath towels and mats, curtains and small rugs cooled that rather too-warm combination.

    It was the sort of place that, save for variation in color scheme (and a book-lined anteroom), one could enjoy everywhere in America--at a price. Living quarters in which you knew exactly where to find the phone, extract ice cubes, tum on lights, press the switch that would cause a panel to slide back and expose the fifty-inch screen of a color television set, and where you'd know how to operate the light-dimmer and the electric blanket--not needed, now.

    Paulus Davey adjusted an air-conditioning control after glancing at a thermometer. He had put the briefcase and the shiny, magnesium suitcase on two luggage racks at the feet of twin beds. After Ben had thanked him and said he needed nothing more, the butler departed.

    Ben walked to the exterior wall and pulled cords which drew back yellow traverse curtains lined in brown. He had expected a vista but not so grand a one.

    From his position in the center of a glass wall he could see far, far away a black-brown opacity where the air was smoky, and, vaguely, in that, verticles which were the faint, sun-illumined edges of Manhattan skyscrapers. In front of the floor-to-ceiling, crystal-clear plate-glass wall was a table which, he thought, had been placed there to prevent people from bumping into the invisible surface. Looking down at it, however, he saw a map under glass on the table top, a map marked with ruled lines pointing from Sachem's Watch to the old Empire State Building, the new Pan-American Building, Bridgeport, and other objects and places.

    Distances were marked on the lines:

    Forty-three and seven-tenths miles to the Empire State, a mere shimmer in the heated smog now; forty-two and three-tenths miles to the Pan-Am tower; a bit less than forty to the bluish haze that in clear weather would be Long Island