Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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There were three puzzling loans, each for $500, from Horace Locke. This could only be the Horace Locke who for so many years had been a Chief of Division, and yet it seemed most unlikely that his father would know this Horace Locke well enough to borrow from him. The loans had been made in the years 1931, '32, and '33, always in September. What had happened in those years? Weren't they the lean years of government economy, and the fifteen per cent cut in his father's salary? Yes, of course they were. He also recalled them as three of the four years he'd gone to Lawrenceville. The notes, like all the notes and bills in the ledgers, were acknowledged, "paid in full."

The house on Q Street, its bricks crumbling under the porch and its bedroom wallpaper peeling, seemed dreary and aloof as a summer cottage in January. It held him a stranger, and hostile. When Jeff found he could sell it for twice the mortgage, and he might never get such a price again, and that he could move in with Stud Beecham, he sold it. They had grown up together in Georgetown, he and Stud, together fought the tough kids from Foggy Bottom, and double-dated to their first dances. Now Stud was a Field Inspector for Interior. He had a three-room apartment in Riggs Court, off Dupont Circle. It was ample for both of them, so long as they kept each other informed of their plans, and exercised consideration and discretion when returning home after midnight.