Peyton Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

Chestnut Street than in the big Connecticut River,” said Peter Drake, who practiced law in town under a double handicap. He was young, and he had not been born in Peyton Place.
♦ 6 ♦
    On Friday nights the men of Chestnut Street met together at Seth Buswell's house to play poker. Usually, all the men came, but on this particular Friday evening there were only four of them sitting around Seth's kitchen table: Charles Partridge, Leslie Harrington, Matthew Swain and Seth.
    “Small gang tonight,” commented Harrington, who was thinking that a small group precluded a large pot.
    “Yep,” said Seth. “Dexter's got his in-laws visitin’ and Jared had to go over to White River. Leighton called me up and said that he had business down to Manchester.”
    “Alley cat business, I'll bet,” said Dr. Swain. “How old Philbrook has managed to avoid the clap this long, I'm sure I don't know.”
    Partridge laughed. “Probably looks after himself like you taught him, Doc,” he said.
    “Well, let's play,” said Harrington impatiently, riffling the cards with his white hands.
    “Can't wait to take our money, eh, Leslie?” asked Seth who disliked Harrington intensely.
    “That's right,” agreed Harrington, who knew very well how Seth felt and smiled, now, into the face of his enemy.
    It excited Leslie Harrington to know that people who hated him nevertheless felt impelled to tolerate him. To Harrington, this was the proof of his success and it renewed in him, every time it happened, a rich sense of the power he wielded. It was no secret in Peyton Place that there was not a single issue that could come to a town vote with any assurance of success unless Harrington was first in favor of it. He was not in the least ashamed of the fact that on various occasions he called his millworkers together and said, “Well, fellers, I'd feel pretty damned good if we didn't vote to put up a new grade school this year. I'd feel so goddamned good that I'd feel inclined to give everybody in this shop a five per cent bonus the week after next.” Seth Buswell, in whose veins flowed the blood of a crusader, was as helpless before Harrington as was a farmer who had fallen behind in his mortgage payments.
    “Cut for the deal,” said Partridge, and the poker game began.
    The men played quietly for an hour, Seth rising from his chair only when there was a need to refill glasses. The newspaper editor played badly, for instead of keeping his mind on the cards, he had been busily thinking up, and discarding, ways to broach a sensitive subject to his guests. At last he decided that tact and diplomacy would be futile in this case, and when the next hand had been won, he spoke.
    “I've been thinkin’ lately,” he said, “about all the tar paper shacks that this town has got spread around. Seems to me like we ought to think about gettin’ zonin’ laws into effect.”
    For a moment no one spoke. Then Partridge, to whom this was an old topic of conversation, took a sip of his drink and sighed audibly.
    “Again, Seth?” asked the lawyer.
    “Yes, again,” said Seth. “I've been tryin’ to talk some sense into you guys for years, and now I'm tellin’ you that it's time to get somethin’ done. I'm goin’ to start runnin’ a series of articles, with pictures, in the paper next week.”
    “Now, now, Seth,” said Harrington soothingly, “I wouldn't be too hasty about this. After all, the folks who own those shacks you're talking about pay taxes the same as the rest of us. This town can't afford to lose any taxpayers.”
    “For Christ's sake, Leslie,” said Dr. Swain. “You must be going soft in the head in your old age to run off at the mouth like that. Sure the shackowners pay taxes, and their property is evaluated so low that what they pay the town is peanuts. Yet they live in their shacks and produce kids by the dozen. We're the ones who are paying to educate their kids, to keep the roads paved and to buy a new piece of fire-fighting