This early morning, the top and banner headline, bolder and inkier than any that had appeared before, read: SCANDAL! EXCLUSIVE! DILMAN HAS DAUGHTER PASSING AS WHITE! The second headline, scarcely smaller, as brazen and black, read: PRESIDENT’S HIDDEN OFFSPRING ASHAMED OF HER RACE—AND PRESIDENT KNEW IT ALL ALONG! Slowly, Douglass Dilman folded the newspaper until the headlines were no longer visible, and then he folded it again and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the Buchanan desk. He slumped in his chair for a moment, feeling old and feeble, sickened to the marrow of his bones, but then he forced himself to lift his bowed head and meet Tim Flannery’s angry look and Nat Abrahams’ worried one. “Why?” Dilman asked despairingly. “Doesn’t that Zeke Miller have enough without this?” “No,” said Tim Flannery. “He wants to be sure you’re a dead horse, a real dead horse, before he stops beating you.”
