No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) Read Online Free PDF Page A

them.”
    “Good! I thought the Stars and Stripes draped over the coffin was a pleasant touch, and Mama’s long cross of lilies was most touching!”
    “You must tell her so,” Gary suggested.
    “I am quite sure that Wynstan has gone upstairs to do that. I am sorry she could not have been present.”
    “It would have been too much of an ordeal for her even though she is better.”
    “I am aware of that, but there is always something especially poignant in a mother’s grief.”
    “I think the whole country will be grieving with you tomorrow, Harvey, when they read the newspapers.”
    “If Elvin had to die it could not have been at a better moment than now,” Harvey Vanderfeld said, “on the eve of an election when a great number of people have no wish to see Theodore Roosevelt elected for a second term in the White House.”
    “There are however a large number who admire the strong hand he is taking over the disorders in the Caribbean countries. His policy of extending American power is popular.”
    “Yankee Imperialism!” Harvey sneered. “If I am elected as President I shall stop all that nonsense! What we should do is look after ourselves at home, not poke our noses into foreign countries which are of no importance to us.”
    “No need to canvass me, Harvey,” Gary replied with a smile. “I have heard you too often on a platform.”
    “Yes, yes, of course,” Harvey agreed.
    He was outstandingly handsome but he was thickening about his body and walked like a man older than his thirty-six years. He had however a smile which proved an invaluable vote-catcher.
    Gary at thirty-three had already begun to grow fat with too much luxurious living. He also however, had a charm which was inescapable and which was so characteristic of all the Vanderfeld brothers that they had been nick-named by the press, ‘The Princes Charming’.
    Harvey was the most ambitious and most ruthless. He had fought his way to power, and his stupendous fortune was at the moment being utilised in the most extravagant and most expensive election campaign the United States had ever seen.
    He was completely confident that he would beat Theodore Roosevelt and the whole Vanderfeld clan had rallied behind him, eager to find themselves in the White House.
    The Vanderfelds were of Dutch origin, and the first member of the family had come to America in the 17th century to live in New Amsterdam, as New York City was then known.
    In the following centuries the family fortune was founded to increase with every succeeding generation until the ‘House of Vanderfeld’ was looked on in America almost as if it were Royalty.
    The huge mansion on Fifth Avenue was only one of their properties. They had a house at Hyde Park on the Hudson River, Gary had recently built himself a marble palace at Newport, and there were ranches, plantations and Estates scattered all over America.
    Their mother, Mrs. Chigwell Vanderfeld, had lived in the house on Fifth Avenue ever since she had been widowed, and Harvey’s wife, a quiet, unassuming woman, had not attempted to take her place.
    It was Mrs. Vanderfeld who decided what should or should not be done by her children, and who was undoubtedly responsible for the good looks of her family as well as their ambition.
    She had been a Hamilton and her ancestors had come out from England, but not, as the Vanderfelds always said scornfully, in the overcrowded ‘Mayflower’ which must have been as large as Noah’s Ark.
    The ship which had brought their great-great - grandfather from his native Scotland was his own, and he had filled it with a crowd of retainers, their families and their children, so that there was no room for anyone else.
    Mrs. Vanderfeld was proud of her Scottish descent, but even more proud of the fact that she came from Virginia, and had been brought up in the middle of the peach country among the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
    Like the Vanderfelds, the Hamiltons had made a fortune, but then