You chose not to, but you did find the time to advise me to postpone judgment on the loan to Henry!
'Anne, I am sorry. I can understand how that might look and why you are upset, but there really was a reason, believe me. May I come around and explain everything to you?'
'No, Alan, you can't. You're all ganging up against my husband. None of you wants to give him a chance to prove himself. Well, I am going to give him that chance!
Anne put the telephone down, pleased with herself, feeling she had been loyal to Henry in a way that fully atoned for her ever having doubted him in the first place.
Alan Lloyd rang back, but Anne instructed the maid to say she was out for the rest of the day. When Henry returned home that night, he was delighted to heax how Anne had dealt with Alan.
'It will all turn out for the best, my love, you'll see. On Thursday morning I will be awarded the contract, and you can kiss and make up with Alan; still, you had better keep out of his way until then. In fact, if you like we can have a celebration lunch on Thursday at the Ritz and wave at him from the other side of the room.'
Anne sn - ~Ied and agreed. She could not help remembering that she was meant to be seeing Ricardo for the last time at twelve o'clock that day.
Still, that would be early enough for her to be at the Ritz by one and she could celebrate both triumphs at once.
Alan tried repeatedly to reach Anne, but the maid always had a ready excuse. Since the document had been signed by two trustees, he could not hold up the payment for more than twenty - four hours. The wording was typical of a legal agreement drawn up by Richard Kane; there were no loop - holes to crawl out of. When the cheque for five hundred thousand dollars left the bank by special messenger on Tuesday afternoon, Alan sat down and wrote a long letter to William setting out the events that had culminated in the transfer of the money, withholding only the unconfirmed findings of his departmental reports. He sent a copy of the letter to each director of the bank, conscious that although he had behaved with the utmost propriety, he had laid himself open to accusations of concealment.
William received Alan Lloyd's letter at St. Paul's on the Thursday morning while having breakfast with Matthew.
Breakfast on Thursday morning at Beacon Hill was the usual eggs and bacon, hot toast, cold oatmeal, and a pot of steaming coffee. Henry was simultaneously tense and jaunty, snapping at the maid, joking with a junior city official who telephoned to say the name of the company who had been awarded the hospital contract would be posted on the notice board at City Hall around ten o'clock. Anne was almost looking forward to her last meeting with Glen Ricardo. She flicked through Vogue, trying not to notice that Henry's hands, clutching the Boston Globe, were trembling.
'What are you going to do this morning?' Henry asked, trying to make conversation.
'Oh, nothing much before we have our celebration lunch.
Will you be able to build the c1d1dren's wing in memory of Richard?'Anne asked.
'Not in memory of Richard, my darling. This will be my achievement, so let it be in your honour - 'qle Mrs. Henry Osborne Wing",'he added grandly.
'What a good idea,' Anne said, as she put her magazine down and snAled at him. 'But you mustn't let me drink too much champagne at lunch as I have a full check - up with Doctor MacKenzie this afternoon, and I don't think he would approve of me being drunk only nine weeks before the baby is due. When will you know for certain that the contract is yours?'
'I know now,' Henry said. 'The clerk I just spoke to was a hundred per cent confident, but it will be official at ten o'clock!
qbe first thing you must do then, Henry, is to phone Alan and tell him the good news. I'm beginning to feel quite guilty about the way I treated him last week.'
'No need for you to feel any guilt; he didn!t bother to keep you informed of William's actions!
'No, but he tried to explain later, Henry, and I didn't give him a chance to tell me his side of the story!
'All right, all right, anything you say. If it'll make