Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
She had long willowy legs under the flaring skirt and a tight little bottom in lace panties.
'She is probably,' he thought, and then corrected himself, 'she is without doubt the most beautiful child in the entire world." Isabella stopped suddenly, and assumed a woebegone expression.
'Oh, Papa!" she cried in anguish.
'What is it now?" Shasa leaned back in his swivel chair and hid his smile.
'Both Patty and Lenora are going to have new dresses, and I shall look an awful frump." 'A frump, forsooth! We cannot have that now, can we?" And she rushed to him.
'Does that mean I may have a new dress, Daddy darling?" She wound both arms around his neck again. The sound of a motor car coming up the drive interrupted their idyll.
'Here comes Mommy!" Isabella sprang from his lap and seizing his hand dragged him to the window. 'We can tell her about the party and the dress now, can't we, darling Daddy." The new Chevrolet with the high tail fins and great chromed grille pulled up at the front steps, and the new chauffeur stepped out. He was an imposing man, tall and broad-shouldered in a dove-grey livery and cap with patent-leather peak. He opened the rear door, and Tara slipped out of her seat. As she passed him she tapped the chauffeur on the arm, an over-friendly gesture so typical of Tara's treatment of the servants which irritated Shasa as much as usual.
Tara came up the front stairs and disappeared from Shasa's view, while the chauffeur went back into the driver's seat and pulled away towards the garages. As he drove below the windows of the study, he glanced up. His face was half obscured by the peak of his cap, but there was something vaguely familiar about his jawline and the way his head was set on that corded neck and those powerful shoulders.
Shasa frowned, trying to place him, but the memory was an ancient one, or erroneous, and then behind him Isabella was calling in her special honeyed voice.
'Oh Mommy, Daddy and I have something to tell you,' and Shasa turned from the window, steeling himself for Tara's familiar accusation of favouritism and indulgence.
The hidden door to Shasa's parliamentary suite of offices provide› the key to the problem that they had been working on over the weeks that Moses Gama had been in Cape Town.
It was simple enough for Moses to enter the parliament buildin itself, dressed in chauffeur's livery and carrying an armful oJ shopping - shoe boxes and hat boxes from the most expensive stores He merely followed Tara as she swept past the doormen at the front entrance. There was virtually no security in operation, no register to sign, no lapel badges were necessary. A stranger might be asked to show a visitor's pass at the entrance, but as the wife of cabinet minister, Tara merited a respectful salute, and she made point of getting to know the doormen. Sometimes she paused to ask after a sick child, or the janitor's arthritis, and with her sunny personality and her concerned condescension, she was soon a favourite of the uniformed staff who guarded the entrance.
She did not take Moses in with her on every occasion, only when she was certain that there was no risk of meeting Shasa. She brought him often enough to establish his presence and his right to be there. When they reached Shasa's suite, Tara would order him to place the parcels in the inner office while she paused to chat with Shasa's secretary. Then, when Moses emerged from the office emptyhanded, she would dismiss him lightly.
'Thank you, Stephen. You may go down now. I will need the car at eleven. Please bring it around to the front and wait for me." Then Moses would walk down the main staircase, standing respectfully aside for parliamentary messengers and members and cabinet members, once he even passed the prime minister on the stairs, and he had to drop his gaze in case Verwoerd recognized the hatred in his eyes. It gave him a weird feeling of unreality to pass only arm's length from the man who was the author of his people's misery, who more than any other represented all the forces of injustice and oppression. The man who had elevated racial discrimination to a quasi-religious philosophy.
Moses found he was trembling as he went on down the stairs, but he passed the doormen without a glance and the janitor in his cubicle barely lifted his eyes before concentrating once more on his newspaper.
It was vital to Moses' plans that he should be able to leave the building unaccompanied, and constant repetition had made that possible.
To the doormen he was almost invisible.
However, they had still not solved the problem of access to Shasa's inner office. Moses might go in there long enough to deposit the armful of parcels, but he could not risk remaining longer, and especially he could not be in there behind a closed door, or alone with Tara. Tricia, Shasa's secretary, was alert and observant, and obsessively loyal to Shasa; like all Shasa's female employees she was more than just a little in love with him.
The discovery of the concealed rear door to the suite came as a blessing when they were almost desperately considering leaving the final preparation to Tara alone.
'Heavens, it was so simple, after all our worrying!" Tara laughed with relief, and the next time Shasa left for his inspection tour of the H'am Mine, taking Garry with him as usual, she and Moses made one of their visits to parliament to test their arrangement.
After Moses had left her parcels in the inner office and in front of Tricia, Tara sent him away. 'I won't need the car until much later, Stephen, I'm having lunch with my father in the dining-room." Then as he left, closing the outer door behind him, Tara turned back to Tricia.
'I have a few letters to write. I'll use my husband's office. Please see that I'm not disturbed." Tricia looked dubious, she knew that Shasa was fussy about his desk and the contents of his drawers, but she could not think of any way to prevent Tara making use of it, and while she hesitated, Tara marched into Shasa's office, closed the door and firmly locked it behind her. Another precedent had been set.
On the outside there was a light tap, and it took her a moment to discover the inside lock, disguised as a light switch. She opened the panelled door a crack, Moses slipped through it into the office. She held her breath against the snap of the lock, and then turned eagerly to Moses.
'Both doors are locked,' she whispered, and she embraced him.
'Oh Moses, Moses - it's been so long." Even though they spent so much time in each' other's company, the moments of total privacy were rare and precious and she clung to him.
'Not now,' he whispered. 'There is work to do." Reluctantly she opened her embrace and let him go. He went to the window first, standing to one side as he drew the drapes so that he could not be seen from outside, and then he switched on the desk lamp and removed his uniform jacket, hanging it on the back of Shasa's chair, before crossing to the altar chest. He paused before it, putting Tara in mind of a worshipper, for his head was bowed and his hands clasped before him reverently. Then he roused himself and lifted the heavy bronze Van Wouw sculpture from the top of th chest. He carried it across the room and placed it on Shasa's desk He went back and carefully opened the lid, wincing as the antiqu, hinges squeaked.
The interior of the chest had been half-filled with the overflor from Shasa's bookshelves. Piles of old copies of Hansard, out-of date white papers and old parliamentary reports. Moses was annoye( at this unexpected obstacle.
'You must help me,' he whispered to Tara, and between them the began to unpack the chest.
'Keep everything in the same order,' Moses warned, as he passer the piles of publications to her. 'We will have to leave it exactly as il was." The chest was so deep that at the end Moses found it easier to climb into it and pass the last of the contents out to her. The carpel was covered with stacks of paper now, but the chest was empty.
