Listening to one side of the talk, Kit realized that his mother, coming forcefully to his aid, was going to fix, grease and appease everything and everybody. His mother, he reflected, was completely indispensable to him. The least he could do was to please her in this matter of marriage.
When she hung lip, she didn’t even make it a long lecture. “Take me weeks to get the thing straightened out,” she said, concluding it, “and don’t ever fly like that again! But, Kit, I want to go back to our previous talk.” She nodded the butler out of the room. “As I said, an odd thing has happened at the bank.”
“Really? What, Muzz?”
“You know John Jessup?”
He shook his head.
“You should remember him from childhood. An old horse thief—and one of the smartest men in Larkimer County! Made millions, in cattle mostly. He was one of your father’s cronies, years back. It’s not important. The thing that’s important is this: the bank takes care of his holdings. He doesn’t even look things over for long periods. Trusts us, of course, and leaves us free to make certain kinds of changes, so his holdings are open always and we have a limited power of attorney.”
“Somebody cleaned him out!” Kit guessed.
Minerva’s eyes acknowledged the guess. “Not cleaned him out. Just took six thousand, in bonds.”
“Who?” And, of course, he knew. “Beau Bailey! But he’s been with you forever! Muzz!”
Mrs. Sloan was looking at her china rail-seeing, now, the expensive plates it supported.
“There is no proof, as yet, and Beau denies it, of course. As a matter of fact, the theft of the bonds was a good thing for the bank, showed us an old-fashioned, inadequate method of keeping track that made it easy for certain people to purloin things. We’ve stopped that system. Jessup came in today, missed the certificates himself, reported. They could have been taken any time in the past several years. Though the ink on the receipt appears quite fresh. However, I suspected Beau instantly—”
“Why Beau, particularly?”
She smiled. “There shouldn’t be any little secrets between mother and son, should there?
I suspected him, Kit, because I almost hoped it would be Beau. I needed, for reasons I trust are now clear, a better hold on Beau even than the power to fire him. He could get a good job in several banks, not only because he’s adequate, but because he knows so much about the operations and activities of Sloan Trust. I must say, the moment I thought of Beau and checked to make sure he’d had the opportunity, I did realize that I knew—heaven knows how! Gossip, I suppose—that Beau had always stage-managed a forty-thousand-dollar-a-year way of life on a seventeen-thousand-five-hundred salary.”
“They do sort of put on dog, in a small, cheesy way. Like a modernized housefront and barbecue pits, and Netta Bailey—a harridan if I ever saw one—goes for clothes.”
“Of course,” Minerva went on, “I then really did some digging. I’ve spent the day at it, largely. Most absorbing. Beau’s run up bills just everywhere. He belongs to seven clubs that require stiff dues, stiff for him. They’ve sent that girl through college lavishly. But what I finally learned—after all, a bank has to have connections with all sorts of people—is that Beau’s been betting the horses for some time. And losing.”
“So? What’s it got to do with Lenore? She never struck me as lacking in guts. If her dad’s disgraced, I can imagine she’d bear it. Get a job. She’s had some dandy offers for everything from modeling in New York, and a Hollywood screen test, to working in labs at Hobart Metal.”
Minerva chuckled. “Be ironic, wouldn’t it? Beau took Hobart bonds.”
“I don’t see—”
“I’ve decided it’s past time for you to marry, Kit. I merely felt I should make sure, by a heart-to-heart talk with you, that you really liked Lenore Bailey. She’s quite suitable, and any suitable girl would satisfy me, as I’ve said a thousand times, if I’ve said it once.”
“Would the daughter of a bank thief be suitable?”
“As far as her father’s concerned, he isn’t what people generally mean by a thief. He’s merely ambitious; he’s got more ambition than moral strength. He probably found himself in a situation he thought desperate—it was inevitable he would, sooner or later, with his living standards—and sold his soul for a miserable six thousand dollars in bonds. I’ve seen brighter men do it for less.”
“What’s the pitch?”
“The bank, of course, made instant restitution to Jessup. I ordered the matter kept in strict confidence. I haven’t proved it against Beau, but I know now 1 could, by asking certain people the right questions in the right way.”
“Meaning a certain big-shot bookie?”
“How right! I could readily, through Netta—I see a good deal of her, one way or another—she’s one of a number of social bootlickers who see to it they stay in my good graces—
I could easily have a talk with her. I could ask her to get a note from Beau admitting the defalcation. I could then arrange to recover the bonds—he must have borrowed cash on them somewhere in Green Prairie or River City—and that, also, could be learned. Netta could and would see to it, afterward, that any little wish of mine, or yours, was met, Kit.”
“Very nice little shotgun wedding—with both barrels pointed not at the groom, but the bride’s papa.”
“I said, Kit, that I wanted to know how you felt about Lenore. And then I wanted you to act—not fiddle years away.”
It was all there, he thought, laid on the table, on the damask, right in front of the centerpiece, the bowl of flowers. His last ideas concerning demurrer came to him, and were unvoiced. He did not mention the early background of Netta Bailey. He did not need to. The Sloan name would compensate, socially, for nearly any background stain. And, suddenly, a brand-new vision had come into his mind. He could see himself married to Lenore, no longer engaged in a struggle with her, but holding a lifelong whip over her. If they married because she had to, because she’d done it to save her father from prison, probably she’d go on saving him all her life. Kit could come and go as he pleased, do as he pleased, be as free as he pleased, and she’d have to take it because of a Signed confession his mother had somewhere.
This opportunity, to become a husband and remain what he thought of as a “man,”
appealed to him greatly. Lenore, he had intuitively known, was emotionally far stronger than he.
She would have managed him and bossed him. Now, it would be another kettle of fish. He was aware that Minerva had gone through the same thought process, come to the same conclusion and was prepared to explain it if necessary.
He got up, walked around the table, kissed her fervently. “All right, Mother. I don’t know if it’ll help my cause. But it might. She’s about as headstrong and independent a wench as I ever met. I’d need a way to handle her!”
“I think,” his mother answered, “we’ve discovered a way.”
2
The vast airfield shook with motor noise in the gray, windy afternoon. A dozen huge bombers had left the hardstands and roared out on the runways to take off on a regular training flight.
Each one had six propellers. Each prop sent back a wash of air and dust and din, adding it to the boring Texas wind.