The Other Side of Midnight

"How did you find it so quickly?"

"I went down to the barber shop. Barber shops and dentists' offices always have old issues lying around."

"I see." Fraser smiled, and his craggy face seemed less formidable. "I don't think that would have occurred to me," he said. "Are you that bright about everything?"

Catherine thought about Ron Peterson. "No, sir," she replied.

"Are you looking for a job as a secretary?"

"Not really." Catherine saw his look of surprise. "I'll take it," she added hastily. "What I'd really like to be is your assistant."

"Why don't we start you out as a secretary today?" Fraser said dryly. "Tomorrow you can be my assistant."

She looked at him hopefully. "You mean I have the job?"

"On trial." He flicked down the intercom key and leaned toward the box. "Sally, would you please thank the young ladies. Tell them the position is filled."

"Right, Mr. Fraser."

He flicked the button up. "Will thirty dollars a week be satisfactory?"

"Oh yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Fraser."

"You can start tomorrow morning, nine o'clock. Have Sally give you a personnel form to fill out."

When Catherine left the office, she walked over to the Washington Post. The policeman at the desk in the lobby stopped her.

"I'm William Fraser's personal secretary," she said loftily, "over at the State Department. I need some information from your morgue."

"What kind of information?"

"On William Fraser."

He studied her a moment and said, "That's the weirdest request I've had all week. Has your boss been bothering you, or something?"

"No," she said disarmingly. "I'm planning to write an expose on him."

Five minutes later, a clerk was showing her into the morgue. He pulled out the file on William Fraser, and Catherine began to read.

One hour later Catherine was one of the world's foremost authorities on William Fraser. He was forty-five years old, had been graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, had started an advertising agency, Fraser Associates, which had become one of the most successful agencies in the business, and had taken a leave of absence a year ago at the request of the President, to work for the government. He had been married to Lydia Campion, a wealthy socialite. They had been divorced for four years. There were no children. Fraser was a millionaire and had a home in Georgetown and a summer place at Bar Harbor, Maine. His hobbies were tennis, boating and polo. Several of the news stories referred to him as "one of America's most eligible bachelors."

When Catherine arrived home and told Susie her good news, Susie insisted that they go out to celebrate. Two rich Annapolis cadets were in town.

Catherine's date turned out to be a pleasant enough boy, but all evening she kept mentally comparing him to William Fraser, and compared to Fraser the boy seemed callow and dull. Catherine wondered whether she was going to fall in love with her new boss. She had not felt any girlish tingly feeling when she had been with him, but there was something else, a liking for him as a person and a feeling of respect. She decided that the tingly feeling probably existed only in French sex novels.

The cadets took the girls to a small Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Washington where they had an excellent dinner, then went to see Arsenic and Old Lace, which Catherine enjoyed tremendously. At the end of the evening the boys brought them home, and Susie invited them in for a nightcap. When it appeared to Catherine that they were starting to settle down for the night, she excused herself and said she had to go to bed.

Her date protested. "We haven't even gotten started yet," he said. "Look at them."

Susie and her escort were on the couch, locked in a passionate embrace.

Catherine's escort clutched her arm. "There could be a war soon," he said earnestly. Before Catherine could stop him, he took her hand and placed it against the hardness between his legs. "You wouldn't send a man into battle in this condition, would you?" Catherine withdrew her hand, fighting not to be angry. "I've given it a lot of thought," she said evenly, "and I've decided to sleep only with the walking wounde

d." She turned and went into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. She found it difficult to go to sleep. She lay in bed thinking about William Fraser, her new job and the male hardness of the boy from Annapolis. An hour after she had gone to bed, she heard Susie's bedsprings creaking wildly. From then on sleep was impossible.

At eight-thirty the next morning Catherine arrived at her new office. The door was unlocked, and the light in the reception office was on. From the inner office she heard the sound of a man's voice and she walked inside.

William Fraser was at his desk, dictating into a machine. He looked up as Catherine entered and snapped off the machine. "You're early," he said.