Triumph Read Free Page B

Sound.

    His eyes lifted and moved among the steeples and trees and flashing clapboard walls of Fenwich Village. Five and three-tenths miles to--apparently--the steeple of the Congregational Church. In that drooping, dusty greenery he caught sight of a frothy rainbow where the Lute River splashed down a short falls. Nearer still was the titanic tailing, the down-slide of boulders new-blasted from the cliff on Sachem's Watch.

    What were they mining? Mining, because this was not evidence of quarrying.
    This colossal slide of limestone had not been taken from the hill for itself: the rock lay unused and there was no sign of machinery to cut, trim, or otherwise work the vast stones. Still, perhaps he was wrong. For he noticed a railroad spur that went, evidently, to the foot of the cliff. The rails shone in the sun, blue and recently-used. He gave up.
    Probably they hauled off the stuff, after dynamiting it again into manageable size.

    His thoughts turned to Faith.

    Her stunning question echoed in his mind. He wondered how long it would go on echoing there. And he could not quite explain it. Faith was impulsive, but not mean. She enjoyed jokes, but it hadn't been said in jest, exactly. She was curious, yet not idly and inconsiderately curious. So, why?

    He began to unpack. Then to change into slacks, a sports shirt, and loafers. He thought of the Priscilla-John-Alden-Miles-Standish classic: Speak for yourself, John.

    He grinned, and without realizing it, said aloud, "Pfui!"

    CHAPTER 2

    When he entered the Farr living room he heard Faith's mother but, at first, could not see her. She was talking on the phone. A fountain was busy making muted cascade noises somewhere, too. And music was issuing from an unseen loudspeaker.

    "Too bad, Vance!" Valerie said. "Of course, I understand. You'll be late. And bring Mr. Lee with you. What's that?"

    Mrs. Farr's voice was a good deal like her daughter's: deep and deft and broad-A-ed. But she talked more rapidly and she now slurred an occasional word slightly.

    It was, Ben reflected, after five. And the sun went over the yardarm, for Mrs.
    Valerie Farr, about four, he knew. All day long the tall, dark woman who didn't look her fifty years and did look attractive would be integrated, busy, sober. But by six o'clock she would be a bit squiffy. By eleven or twelve, every night, plain drunk. Faith's mother was an alcoholic, a fact he'd learned in the days when Faith had been mending in the hospital on Long Island, not far from Brookhaven National Laboratories or from the spot where he'd found the young woman under the snow.

    He knew Mrs. Farr that well, and her husband, too, for they had liked him, he was certain, from the first. But he had not presumed. After Faith had been discharged--
    limping, still, for a while, but healed--Ben had seen her several times in New York City.
    He'd had a lunch or two with Vance. However, this invitation to the Connecticut place was Ben's first, of its sort, and the first time he'd seen any member of the family since late May. Still, he knew about Valerie Farr . . . and her drinking.

    She now repeated, "What's that?" And paused. Then she said, lightly, amiably,
    "All right, dear. We'll expect Miss Lee for dinner. And I'll have a guest room ready for her, and one for her father, whenever you both come in." She added, not quite sincerely,
    "Have fun, you and your Mr. Lee!" And hung up.

    Ben had located her by then.

    The living room in Uxmal had a deeply-recessed "well" in one end, an oval pit of the sort that had grown increasingly popular in the past dozen years among those who built new houses and could afford such, to Ben, incomprehensible innovations. Black, gray, robin's-egg-blue and gold, this long room had magnificent glass walls now half-shaded by an outside awning. Like the window in his suite, it faced south. Valerie Farr was sitting on a banquette that ran around the depressed part of the room, with a plug-in telephone in one hand and a drink