“If necessary, you must smash his beautiful face,” Vera demanded fiercely.
“I don’t think that will be necessary. I do have the major financial interest in the production. I think that puts me in quite an advantageous spot.”
Vera snuggled into his lap like an ecstatic kitten. “Oh, how delightful it will be—to see that cad cringe before my handsome knight.”
“Angel,” Mike laughed, “I’m afraid you’re getting your fantasies and realities mixed up.”
Mike confronted the Russian, Solonoff, at the theater that evening. He’d suggested to Vera that he see the man alone but when he tapped on Solonoff’s door and was invited to enter, Vera was right behind him.
Solonoff was at his dressing table. He turned to exhibit the aristocratic bearing for which he was famous. At first, he saw only Mike and his contempt was supreme, a perfect demonstration of the blood prince regarding the money-grubbing tradesman. The fact that Mike had backed the show obviously did not impress the haughty actor.
“We may as well get right to it,” Mike said, not unpleasantly. “You’ve been causing my wife a great deal of distress by your calculated—”
At this point, Solonoff saw Vera peeking around the edge of the door and he sprang to his feet. He was transformed instantly into a figure of tragedy.
“Oh, my golden dove! How could you do this to me?” Mike was swept backward by Solonoff’s dramatic lunge toward the door. As he stared, Solonoff seized Vera’s hand arid drew her into the room. Holding her hand as though it were a piece of rare Ming china, he dropped to one knee.
“Now wait a minute,” Mike objected. “Vera, if you’ll just go to your dressing room, I’ll settle this thing and-”
Vera didn’t appear to hear him. Her look of smug satisfaction was directed downward, toward Solonoff’s tragic face. “I told you to stop wet-nursing that stupid little brunette—”
“But it is all your imagination, my sweet! In the blazing light of your golden beauty—”
“You were in her dressing room for an hour after the matinee yesterday!”
“But only to coach her on that second act entrance, my dearest. If you’ll remember, she practically tripped you—”
“I can take care of myself on the stage, and I’ll thank you to remember that!”
With Solonoff still on one knee and Vera making no effort to disengage her hand, Mike came out of his shock. “Now just a minute! What is all this?”
It was as though he had been brought along to act the part of the objective observer. Neither his wife nor this Russian clown paid him the least attention. Solonoff put passionate lips to Vera’s hand and was clear up to her shoulder before Mike reacted. But when his reaction did come, there was nothing casual about it. He grabbed Solonoff by the collar and jerked him to his feet. Solonoff’s expression changed. It said, Remove your filthy hand from my collar, oaf.
Solonoff’s misfortune was in having too expressive a face. It said other things Mike refused to accept. Still holding Solonoff by his collar, Mike doubled his right fist and swung it. His knuckles skidded off the point of the Russian’s jaw and Solonoff staggered backward and went down. There was a distressing klunk as his skull connected with the wrought iron leg of a ridiculously ornate telephone stand. The impact dislodged the instrument also and it banged down on his aristocratic face.
Vera screamed and dropped down beside him. She pushed the phone away and kissed both of the closed, long-lashed eyes. Then she turned her fury on Mike.
“You brute! You utter beast! It was only a small difference between us! You didn’t have to assault him!”
As Mike stared, Vera plastered kisses all over the still face. “Oh, my darling! Speak to me!”
And it seemed to Mike that Solonoff, in a voice far more Brooklynese than Russian, muttered, “Who dropped the set on me?”
But Mike couldn’t be sure of that because all he saw was a typical small college campus on a typical late afternoon, with typical students going here and there.
Two of them, he thought, greeted him, but he wasn’t sure about that either. He was sure, however, that they both turned to stare at him. They were probably wondering about the odd look on his face. What could a man be scared of on a safe, placid college campus on a bright and sunny afternoon?
Without stopping to inform them, Mike went straight across it and into Faculty Row. He passed his own apartment and strode to the far end and rang the bell beside the white door of the last house.
While he waited, he began to count. “One—two—three—four—”
Yes, time did seem to pass. The spaces between the words definitely approximated seconds. Out on the campus, the trees stayed firmly rooted both in soil and passing moments and the symphonic murmuring of the leaves had a cadence, each whisper following the previous whisper in an orderly stream.
The door opened…
CHAPTER 2
“So I lost a wife I didn’t even know I had and punched a character who’d taken her away from me in a theater I’d never seen before.”’
After making that statement, Mike gulped at his scotch and soda and waited for Paul Bender’s comment. It came in due course.
“You’ve been a busy little man.”
“Please, Paul. I’m serious. This thing’s got me scared silly.”
“I don’t blame you, but let’s keep the blood pressure down and see what we can figure out.”
Paul Bender was the prestige member of Kane’s faculty. By merely being there, he got the college jots and tittles of publicity it could never have merited otherwise. He knew as much about space age technology—theoretical and practical—as any living man, and far more than perhaps a scant dozen or so. He owned patents on such curious things as airborne sensor stabilizers and isolators and inertial reference analyzers that were the envy of giant corporations. His genius circled the moon and went to Venus in the form of supersensitive gadgetry that made the trips possible.
But he’d spent only a minor part of his sixty-five years in fussing with such absolutes. As a young man he’d acquired his first financial success by superintending a small revolution in Central America.
He then went on to larger ones on the South American continent proper, and then retired from righting political wrongs because he found it to be a fruitless business. Nothing was ever really solved by violently heaving out the ins.
Besides, he had made a good deal of money at it and he wanted to be a musician. It took him four years to become really accomplished at the piano and the cello. To prove his grasp of the instruments, he wrote music for both—irritating, mocking compositions that went into most professional portfolios but were seldom played.
Then he went to India to find out exactly why those people felt singularly honored when cows wandered into their homes and evacuated on their floors. This led him down many happy bypaths and his years kited by.
Paul Bender would have been welcomed to the faculty of any college or university in the world. Why he chose insignificant little Kane was a question he refused to answer at press gatherings but it was certainly indicative of his complete contempt for public honor.
When he arrived at Kane, he selected his friends by rebuffing those petitioners for the honor who didn’t qualify. The ones he did select were supposed to be friends in every respect. He hated being looked up to above all other dislikes. And it followed of course, that Mike Strong saw his acceptance by Bender as a precious thing.
Bender smoked the strongest tobacco known to man and as Mike peered through the cloud around Benders chair to see if he were still there, Mike said, “I