“Nothing I can tell.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m no prude, and I have the average gift of understanding.”
“It sounds foolish, Vanny—but I’m afraid of that fellow Edmond Hall.”
“For Pete’s sake, why? You could crack him. like a nut!”
“Well, the other night—that’s when I quit—he wanted me to bring him here!”
Vanny stared at Paul’s distressed face, broke into a peal of laughter.
“He wouldn’t be the first freak you’ve dragged around, Honey!”
“All right,” said Paul, again sullen. “You would have it, and there it is.”
“But still, what’s the trouble? Why not bring him over some evening? You’re not jealous in advance, are you.”
“Yes! I am!”
Vanny laughed again, with a taunt in her eyes.
“Not in the way you think,” said Paul.
“Of course not.” She was still teasing.
“Oh, I don’t think you’d ever fall for him! He’s too devoid of sex appeal.’
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul, “except that I feel he’s an ill-omened bird. He’s got a raven soul, and it croaks behind his every mood.”
“Baa!” said Vanny. “You get tiresome. Your soul’s an old woman soul, and doesn’t take second honors anywhere in croaking.”
She cast off his arm, rose, and pirouetted before him, ending in a curtsy.
“Come on, Paul. Switch on the radio, and let’s dance.”
“I don’t feel like dancing.”
Vanny crossed the room, spun the glowing dial. A dance orchestra swelled into melodious syncopation.
She danced over to Paul, seized his hand and pulled him reluctantly erect, drawing herself into his arms as they swayed into the rhythm of the music.
“Paul”—she threw back her head to look up at him—“why don’t you bring him over?”
“Never!”
“You don’t have to be jealous, Honey. I’d just like to meet him again.”
“You never will through me!”
“Well, you needn’t snap at me so!”
“If you want to see him, call him up yourself!”
“It would be a bit presumptuous, hardly having seen him for ten years—not since high school days.” They swayed easily to the music. “However—perhaps I will!”
CHAPTER II
THE SEED SPROUTS
EDMOND felt no more anger at Paul’s defection than he felt at the rain or wind or force of gravity, or any other natural circumstance. Indeed, he had anticipated it, perceiving in Paul’s nature the emotional seeds from which the refusal sprang. Still, a quality in his own nature, either the goad of ennui or a certain grim persistence led him to maintain Vanny as his objective. His usual merciless scrutiny of his own motives led him to a realization that a certain preference lay behind his persistence; this girl offered a rather rare aesthetic appeal that drew him more, perhaps, than his original plan contemplated.
“I weave nets to entrap myself,” he reflected, answering at the same moment in another part of his mind, “Surely I am strong enough to break any snare of my own creating.”
Thus he set about the task of rebuilding an acquaintanceship of his past. He wished to arrange an apparently casual meeting, confiding thereafter in designs of his own, and he was content for the present to trust to chance to provide the encounter.
For several mornings he drove his car along Sheridan Road, past Vanny’s accustomed bus-stop, but failed to meet her. Once he fancied he glimpsed her entering a lumbering bus several blocks ahead of him. He did not pursue; the chancy seeming of the meeting would have been destroyed—a subtlety he preferred to preserve.
In his complex mentalities he reflected, “Paul has beyond doubt informed this girl of my suggestion; let her vanity be a little flattered by my interest, and then a little piqued by my lack of it. Inis at least will give our ultimate encounter a spice of attention.” Thus he reflected, and afterwards parked his car on a side street; spending the better part of the day watching a school of minnows that sported through the lagoon in Lincoln Park. He thought idly of many things, amusing himself for a time trying to imagine a feat impossible to perform in the world of the Material.
“All things are possible,” he concluded, “given time and a price, and the greater the span of time, the smaller is the price required—and this in effect is but saying that in eternity whatever can happen must happen. Flammarion glimpsed this truth, but his specious theory of past eternity and future is obviously fallacious.”
The meeting was not entirely unexpected by Vanny. She sat at a table in Kelsey’s Venice, with Walter Nussman. The orchestra, ensconced in its gondola, drifted silent in the fifteen-foot pool. Vanny was a little flushed, her black eyes a trifle brighter than usual; she had already taken four highballs from Walters rather capacious flask. Walter was becoming a bit solicitous; indeed, Vanny seldom indulged very freely, yet here she was sipping her fifth, and the evening still young.
“Why don’t you quit worrying about Paul, Vanny? Hell be around as usual!”
“Listen, Grandpa! My worries are my personal property! For your information, I’m not worrying anyway.”
“What’s the trouble between you? As your elder, I always thought you two made such an attractive couple.”
“We had a spat—and besides, I won’t be coupled with anybody! I’m a trust-buster!”
“Huh?”
“He was acting in restraint of trade, and I’m the Sherman Law. Verstehen Sie?”
“You’re pickled,” said Walter, with a judicial air. “You’re soused, pie-eyed, blotto, besotted!”
Something in his remark seemed deliciously funny to the girl; she laughed unrestrainedly.
“Why I am not! I’m as sober as you are!”
“My God!” said Walter. “Then we’d better leave at once!”
Vanny raised her glass as the orchestra emitted a blare or introductory chords. Walter seized the opportunity.
“Put it down and let’s dance.”
“Sure,” said Vanny. “You just whirl me around. That’s as good as a drink.”
They moved on toward the floor, joining the throng already swinging into the time of the music. Vanny was just a shade unsteady.
“Put some pep into it!” she complained; but the sedate Walter danced as he always danced, marking time as if the staccato blues were a Teutonic march. After a while Vanny succeeded in losing herself in the music; she hummed the piece to herself—the perennial St. Louis Blues—and achieved the sensation of drifting bodiless on a gently undulating sea. She closed her eyes. Walter’s methodical steps required no effort to follow; all her consciousness flowed into the single sensation of rhythmic movement. She was dizzily content; there was a faint realization of the forgetting of something unpleasant. Paul! That was it. Well, let him do the remembering; she was well enough able to get along.
The undulations seemed to be lengthening, rising to a peak, and then a long downward slide. Not nearly so pleasant. Better open her eyes—so. The room was swaying a little; she forced her eyes to focus more sharply, and gazed without surprise into the eyes of Edmond Hall. She flashed him a smile of recognition; he responded. Alone at a table; did he always come to these places just to sit and drink? “There’s Edmond Hall,” she said.
Walter spun her around and gazed over her shoulder.
“The cat-eyed gent sitting alone? Is he the electrical inventor?”
“You don’t have to spin me around so! I don’t like it.”
“I had to write a Sunday feature about his radio tube,” said Walter. “Wrote it without an interview, too; he was in Europe. There’s something deep about it. Half the authorities I called on said the thing didn’t exist, and the rest said it was a fake. Finally got a little information out of this fellow Alfred Stein at Northwestern.” He chuckled. “The paper’s still getting peeved letters from professorial cranks!”
The music stopped. Th
ey joined the general exit from the floor. Seated again, Vanny toyed with the remains of her highball. It was nearly flat, she added a little ginger ale.
“I went to school with him,” she said.
“With whom? Oh—Edmond Hall.”
“He’s funny, but not as bad as Paul makes out.”
“Can’t prove anything by me,” said Walter. “Didn’t we see him once before—at Spangli’s?”
“Yes. Paul was working for him then.”
She sipped the amber-fired glass before her.
“Lister, Walter. He likes me.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m telling you. You’re my father confessor. That’s what started Paul and me quarreling. That’s why Paul quit his job. Hall wanted to come over. And I said I’d ask him.”
“I never saw you at the confidential stage before! You’ll be crying on my shoulder next.”
“I’m all right. I’m going to ask him over to our table.”
“That’s your privilege, my dear,”
Vanny turned; Edmond was still regarding her with cold amber eyes. She smiled and beckoned, and the other answered, rising.
“Walter Nussman,” said Edmond, at the introduction. “Do you write for the Sun-Bulletin?”
“Guilty as charged,” Walter laughed. “You must have seen my feature on your A-tube.”
“I did see it. If ever I want to conceal the mechanics of any device of mine, I will surely let you explain it.”
“Perhaps the article was a bit inaccurate.”
“A trifle so. I believe you did have my name correct.”
“Now I wonder how that happened! I’ll speak to the proof-reader.”
“Say, you two!” put in Vanny. “I’m being overwhelmed! Such mutual admiration!” She turned to Edmond. “Won’t you sit down? I thought you looked lonesome.”
“Thank you,” said Edmond, meanwhile reflecting, “Paul has been playing my game, else I should have been compelled to make my own opening.”
“I’m thirsty,” announced Vanny. “Walter, mix me a drink.”
Walter inverted his flask.
“Empty, my dear—and lucky for you that it is!”
“I have some,” said Edmond, producing his flask. He was unobtrusively watching Vanny; she was still in control of herself, he perceived, though not with her usual cool self-assurance. “Her conscious self is relaxing,” he observed. “Paul has forewarned her; let me use the means at hand to pierce this resistance.” He permitted the girl to pour her own drink, while Walter grumbled.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you! You’ll suffer the consequences yourself.”
“Listen to me, Old Man! Have I ever disgraced you? Have I?” she insisted.
“I guess not.”
‘Well! And I’m all right—a little dizzy, but perfectly all right!”
She raised her glass. A feeling of recklessness swept into her; she did not note that Edmond’s eyes were fixed on her. “Wheel” she said, and drained the contents. “How do you like that, Ancient?” she taunted Walter.
“About as well as you will in another half-hour!”
“Quit croaking! This isn’t an inquest, and you’re not the coroner. I came here for a pleasant evening, and that’s what I’m going to have!”
Edmond’s flask still lay on the table. Suddenly Vanny snatched it, opened it, and raised it to her lips. Walter seized it, jerking it away with a trickle of tea-colored spots spreading down the crimson silk front of her dress. Someone laughed at an adjoining table. She wiped her Ups with a napkin, dabbing at the spotted silk.
“Boor!” she snapped. But somehow the last swallow hadn’t tasted right; the floor was gyrating too precariously. “I didn’t want any more anyway,” she finished.
Edmond stoppered his flask and removed it. “This is sufficient,” he thought, and turned his mind to the furtherance of his designs. Vanny’s control was at low ebb, and he fixed his eyes on her with a certain compulsion in his gaze; there was something he wanted her to say. She swayed in her chair, shifting her gaze as if to avoid some disturbing sight.
“I want to dance!” she said.
“Better not,” said Walter. “We’d better be leaving.”
Edmond was peering at the girl, apparently estimating her condition; Walters near-sighted vision failed to note the intensity of the lambent eyes.
“She’s all right for the present,” he said. “I’ll dance with you, Vanny, if I may.”
They rose, and Edmond led her to the crowded floor. She moved erectly and steadily enough, but with an effort. They swung into the moving huddle of couples. Edmond danced for the first time in his life, but observation served him, or perhaps his partner was in too uncritical a condition to judge. They moved smoothly, however, and Edmond kept his curious eyes on Vanny’s, gazing coldly persistently into hers with some unspoken command. The girl leaned more heavily on his arm.
“I want to sit down!” she said finally; he halfsupported her across the floor to their table. She sank into her chair and dropped her face into her hands, while Walter watched with a look of consternation. “My God, don’t pass out here!” he exclaimed.
She felt, suddenly, a sense of foreboding. Decidedly, the world as expressed in her immediate surroundings did not seem nearly as pleasant as it had some minutes before. That last highball had been a mistake, as well as the fiery draught of straight whiskey. Walter was speaking to her; his words didn’t register clearly in the blur of sensations. She was trying to formulate something, a thought that seemed trying to emerge by itself from a whirling turmoil of dizziness.
“Listen, both of you,” she said, “while I’m still on deck. Tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it?”
“Certainly is,” agreed Walter.
“Well, I want both of you to come over in the afternoon. About four. Paul’s coming, I think. Both of you—especially you, Edmond Hall!”
She dropped her face to her hands again.
“It’s hot in here. I want to get out.”
There was a muddle of words about her. Walter—“No, we came in a taxi.” And Edmond’s voice: “I have my car.” She did not see the triumphant gleam in his amber eyes as he took her arm to assist her.
Walter stood at her left. Her last clear memory of the place was of a full-length mirror in the hall; she glimpsed herself very pallid, but the strangeness of the memory was of Edmond; he seemed to duplicate himself, so that he supported her from both sides. She stood between two twin Edmonds and Walter’s reflection did not appear.
CHAPTER III
THE PLANT FLOWERS
EBLIS stalked into the room, spat indignantly at Walter for daring to occupy his accustomed chair, and leaped to Vanny’s lap. She caressed his black velvet fur with her hand, stretched out her pajamaed legs.
“Was I very awful?” she asked ruefully.
“Never saw anyone worse.”
“I’m terribly ashamed. I only wanted to get a little happy.”
“You succeeded. Remember the ride home?”
“Not very much. It was Edmond’s car.” She thought a moment. “We stopped somewhere, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Several times. Once in Lincoln Park for your benefit, and once in front of his house. Say, speaking of that, how do you feel today?”
“Not bad at all. I’ve felt worse with less cause, my?”
“Well, he gave you something. Don’t you remember?”
“Omit the questions. I’m doing the listening.”
“Well, he went into his house and got something and I sort of supported you while he persuaded you to drink it. Said it’d ease off the after affects.”
“It must have.”
“Whatever the dope was, it laid you out like a black-jack. I was a little worried, but he said he’d studied medicine.”
Vanny reflected. “I believe he did.”
“Well, then he drove us here with you peacefully out on my shoulder, and between us we got you upstairs.”
“And left, I hope
, like good boys.”
Walter grinned. “We held an inquest, and I was the coroner and you the corpus delicti.”
Vanny flushed. “I remember the remark, but you don’t have to rub it in. I was miserable enough this morning.”
Walter relented. “We didn’t do much after delivering you to the proper address. I was all for waiting around but he said the stuff would keep you quiet for five or six hours, and you’d come out of it fairly O. K. So—we parked you right there on the davenport and left.”
Vanny gave another rueful smile. “That’s where I woke up this morning—in a black and red dress that had seen its last party. I liked that dress”—she sighed—“and all I could think of was my invitation to you and Edmond to come over today. I remembered that perfectly. Think he’ll come?”
“Why not? It’s the gentlemanly thing to inquire as to your state of health.” Walter paused. “Incidentally I came early, so that if you’d reconsidered—we could always leave, you know. Plead forgetfulness. I thought it might be a trifle unpleasant for you if Paul and he were present together.”
“Thoughtful of you, at that,” she said. “Of course I’m not sure Paul’s coming since our spat—that’s just a hunch. It’s been a habit of his to drop in for a cold snack Sunday evening. Besides, I’ve a hankering to see Edmond when I’m sober; my impressions of last night are not of the clearest.” She was remembering mainly the strange double image of the hall mirror. Do inebriates literally see double? And why twin images of Edmond at the expense of Walters respectable reflection?
“The choice is yours, Dark Princess,” Walter was replying.
“We’ll stay, then,” Vanny decided.
The bell rang. Walter rose to answer; glanced down the apartment hall. He shrugged, and stole a glance at Vanny. “Paul” his lips formed silently. She spread her hands in a quizzical gesture of resignation, and Paul entered. He was patently not over pleased to see Walter and greeted Vanny with, “I’d hoped to find you alone.”
“I was just on the point of leaving,” put in Walter, seating himself and ostentatiously packing his pipe. Paid glared at him as he lit up and puffed complacently, but Vanny flashed him a smile of gratitude; she would thoroughly appreciate his restraining presence should Edmond appear.
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