Golden Trap by Hugh Pentecost

bright with excitement. His laugh was relaxed and charming. There was nothing effeminate about his beauty. He was very young, which I envied, and male, and bubbling with energy. Together they were a striking couple, a symbol of gaiety and youthful vitality.
    This young man, I thought, I better not laugh off!
    Mr. Del Greco saw where I was headed and a chair arrived for me at their table just as I did.
    “The usual?” he asked as I arrived.
    I glanced down at the empty glasses on the table. “Once all around,” I said.
    The faintest kind of a cloud crossed the Apollo face as I touched Shelda’s shoulder, and instantly disappeared when Shelda said: “Curtis, this is my boss, Mark Haskell.”
    “Lucky boss,” the young man said. His handshake was firm but not overdone. I wasn’t crippled by it. His accent was Oxford British. He should have been able to make a fortune in films.
    Shelda’s eyes were dancing. She saw that I recognized a threat in young Dark and it pleased her. That’s another gift of hers. She can make me feel completely safe one moment and like crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire the next. I guess that’s what’s called being a woman.
    I thought I wouldn’t miss the chance he’d given me. “I’m a great admirer of your boss,” I said.
    Dark looked genuinely pleased. “You know the Air Marshal?”
    “Around here we are instructed to drop the military title,” I said. “He’s just ‘Mr. Carleton’ at the Beaumont.”
    Dark laughed. “He feels it might be considered ironic for an air marshal to be at the head of a delegation devoted to world peace. He was never regular army, you know. Rose through the ranks in the RAF.”
    Not too fast, I told myself. I turned to Shelda. “When I saw you two together I hoped there wasn’t a Hollywood producer in the room, or both the bosses might be in danger of losing their prize employees.”
    “You’re right about Miss Mason,” Dark said, admiration in his eyes. “How have you managed to keep her out of their clutches this long?”
    I didn’t tell him how.
    “I’ve had a lot of opportunities back home,” Dark said. “The Air Marshal is a great theatre fan and a good many of his friends are in films as well as the theatre. I’ve been tempted. The loot is so enormous if you happen to ring even a small bell. But I can’t leave the Air Marshal as long as I’m useful to him.”
    “In the familiar struggle of loyalty versus loot loyalty doesn’t often win,” I said.
    “My situation isn’t usual,” Dark said. There was something appealingly warm in the way he said it. “You see, I am the Air Marshal’s adopted son.”
    “I didn’t know,” I said.
    “My parents were both killed in the blitz,” he said gravely. “I never knew them. I was in an institution along with hundreds of other war orphans. How I got so lucky I’ll never know, but the Air Marshal was going through the place one day, saw me, and for some reason hooked me out of that place and took me into his home.”
    “How lucky for you,” Shelda said.
    “You have no idea how lucky,” Dark said. “But maybe it was good for him too. His wife, his young son, and his only brother were killed in the war. He seemed to need someone to look out for; someone to take the place of his lost family. By a miracle he chose me. No career could tempt me to leave him until he says the word.”
    “I didn’t know Hilary Carleton had a brother,” I said, as offhandedly as I could.
    “Killed in the war,” Dark said. “They were very close.”
    Nothing in his face or the way he conveyed the information suggested he was aware of the true story—the story of treachery and suicide. Chambrun, I thought, had been right. Dark was too young to have been involved with Lovelace in the old days. Obviously Hilary Carleton would have made every effort to blot out the story of his brother’s defection. Dark might not know about it, and in any event he would have been schooled to keep it covered if