Read Online Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin - Free Book Online Page B

some breakfast at home next morning, long before Jennie was out of bed. They did not travel to work together, it was an effort for Jennie to report—for breakfast—before nine-thirty.
    â€œWhat difference does it make? The buyers don’t get in till after ten,” said Jennie.
    But at closing-time Tom was waiting by the elevators. He said, tucking her limp arm through his own, “I’m sorry, Lynn. I must have been crazy.”
    It was not finished then. It was, as a matter of fact, just beginning.
    They resumed their motion pictures, their bus rides.
    When Tom came to the apartment, he brought Slim, or made sure Jennie would be there. Jennie was incurious. What Lynn did—or did not do—was Lynn’s affair. If Jennie had thoughts on the subject she did not utter them. What’s the use? Everyone’s funeral is his own.
    Then one spring day Lynn, coming into the trust officers’ room, hesitated, seeing Sarah occupied. A man sat there by the desk, leaning forward laughing a little. “Come here, Lynn,” said Sarah.

 
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5
    ANYTHING YOU WISH, DAVID
THE MAN AT THE DESK WAS DAVID DWIGHT; HE ROSE as Lynn came up and held out his hand. He said easily, “Miss Dennet and I are old friends; she has told me so much about you.”
    He was a rather short man, very well groomed. He had heavy gray hair, battered into sleekness. He had tired eyes and a quirked sort of mouth and the face and skin of a great actor, all the features mobile, the skin tended.
    He was a great actor. He was one of the greatest trial lawyersof the generation. To employ Dwight as your counsel was an almost certain admission that you were guilty and would be adjudged innocent. He had a low voice. It was an instrument of rescue or destruction, according to which side he was on. He had square, long-fingered hands, not always restrained in gesture. He had that thing called magnetism. No man had it to a greater degree save those historic men who move mountains and make empires.
    He was 48 years old—perhaps.
    He looked at Lynn and his eyes darkened a very little. He said lightly, “Sarah, I’ve bored you to death with my business. Why people die and leave their estates in my hands—even partly—is more than I can see. A more improvident and a less trustworthy person never lived.” His eyes lingered on Lynn’s small face. He thought vaguely of spring, spring outside the great draped windows, spring in the country. His blood, never very stable, quickened. His eyes, never very stable either, were veiled. Then he raised them to Sarah Dennet’s plain and pleasant face. He suggested gaily, “Let’s celebrate, Sarah. Won’t you and Miss Harding lunch with me? Please!”
    Sarah looked at Lynn. Lynn smiled a little. A sensational man, David Dwight. She had read about him, heard about him. Why had Sarah never mentioned him? Sarah said, “We’d like to, wouldn’t we, Lynn?”
    He listened to Sarah, but he watched for Lynn’s nod. He rose, satisfied. “I’ll go in and talk to Norton,” he said, “until you’re ready.”
    He smiled at them both, and together they watched him walking, lightly as a car, toward the inner office. Lynn could see Tom’s shoulders. She could see Tom’s head now as he moved entirely into her line of vision. He was much taller than the older man. Yet Dwight did not seem dwarfed. In a courtroom one forgot lack of physical inches. She said to Sarah delightedly, “Isn’t that a grand break? I never knew you knew him. He’s awfully attractive, isn’t he?”
    Sarah said yes, absently. Lynn vanished to make the rest room, to wash her hands, to powder her nose, to draw a lipstickacross her mouth with more than usual care. It was exciting, lunching with Sarah and David Dwight. He was an exciting man. A personality. If he argued for criminals, he also argued for lost causes. He knew