Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/126

"Speech! Speech!" shouts came from different parts of the hall.

Eric rose, his face flushed. With Fritz beside him he felt more at ease. He made a short speech thanking the members for the honor they had paid him, and pledging fervently that he was ready to serve the cause of Germany's rebirth. Like every loyal German, he would do his best for the common good.

"Hoch, lebe der President!"

Singing, toasting and noise-making followed. At about ten the crowd began to disperse. Eric, too, made for the exit, but Fritz grasped his arm.

"What's your rush? Let's have another drink; just the two of us-alone."

Eric made a grimace. The silence that had descended reminded him of other silences through whose halls he had journeyed to find the ecstasy of love. He suddenly remembered two radiant eyes, like beacons in unknown spaces.

He pulled his arm free, "I'm sorry," he said, "I have an appointment."

Fritz seized his arm again. "Come on," he insisted. "You've got a job ahead of you. Don't worry," he winked an eyelid, "she'll wait."

At a side table Fritz plied Eric with drinks, asking him "innocent" questions which, like a barometer, revealed the slow clouding of Eric's thoughts. Fritz himself didn't drink. Suffering from an inherited stomach weakness, he never ventured anything stronger than Perrier water. But now, as on all important occasions in his life, he made an exception, and mixed a bit of Bordeaux wine with his drink. Small and inconsequential-looking in stature as he was, Fritz always resented the fact that people without a fragment of his intellect, practically idiots, had majestic, heroic builds. He