“Party or no party, I’m going to sit here until I can get this to work. I planned on wearing it and I won’t go down without it. You really should take it back and have them fix it for me, Hugh; I had this same trouble last time.”
He was already at the telephone.
“Hello?” he said incautiously.
“Hello,” a mocking soprano echoed.
The shock was like a pailful of icy water dashed full into his face.
Luckily she wasn’t looking at him just then, only had eyes for the catch. He turned sharply the other way, phone and all, so that his back was to her.
“Hello, Grainger,” he said.
“Grainger?” the soprano jeered. “Since when? All right, you talk your way and I’ll talk mine. And I’ll be at the punch line afore you.”
If he hung up, that would be worse; Florence would wonder about his curtness.
“I’m a little busy right now,” he said.
“This comes under the head of business. Haven’t you forgotten something this month? You’re a little overdue, aren’t you? It’s already past the fifteenth. I’ve waited as long as I can, but my expenses go on just the same, you know.”
“I told you about that,” he said curtly. “You’ll have to handle that yourself from now on, the best you can.”
“I’m not taking what you told me. You can’t walk out of it that easy.”
“Look, call me at the office tomorrow.”
“Oh, no you don’t. I tried that all this week. And all last. And all the week before. I don’t get through down there. You’ve got it fixed. That’s why I called you tonight, where you are now. Now I’ve got you where I want you, haven’t I? I should have thought of it before.”
Florence had finally fixed the bracelet. She had risen, was leaving the room. At the door she turned, flung her arm out toward him with impatient disgust. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, get rid of him, whoever he is, Hugh! I need you downstairs with me, they’ll be arriving any minute now.”
The door closed. But it would be even worse now. She might pick up the main telephone below and accidentally cut in on the two of them.
He hurried the conversation to a ruthless close.
“Listen, you bitch,” he said savagely, “I’m through with you. I’ve carried you long enough.”
“Oh, she left the room, hunh? You owe me fifteen hundred dollars for this month and another fifteen hundred you didn’t give me last month. Are you coming down here with it?”
“Go out and shake your tail on the streets.”
“Either you come here or I’ll come up there. I’ll walk right in, in front of your wife and all her guests, and let the whole world know about us. I’ll give you until nine o’clock.”
“I’ll kill you!” he vowed maniacally. “You show your face anywhere near here and I’ll kill you with my own hands!”
She cut short her own peal of derisive, silvery laughter by hanging up.
The dancing began at about nine, after what had turned out to be one of Florence’s more memorable and brilliant dinner parties. The second-string guests, invited only for the dancing, easily tripled or even quadrupled the number of people present. It was by any standard a full-fledged ball, complete even to hired name band and interspersed cabaret acts. When Florence entertained, she pulled out all the stops.
He was doing his duty by one of Florence’s more mature and less appealing women friends, the kind the good host deliberately singles out to be attentive to simply because they are in that category; not for their sake, but for the sake of his own party, to keep it from developing dead spots. And as she moved backward before him, overrouged, overjeweled and oversimpering, in a skippy little hop that was probably the last actively surviving example of the 1905 two-step, the wide entryway to the ballroom slowly turntabled around into frontal perspective and came before him.
Suddenly he saw her out there. Tall and lithe and coruscating in spangled white; knew her unmistakably, even at that distance. She was giving the butler her stone-marten wrap. The stone-marten wrap he had given her, once long ago when they were in love. He knew her way of posing, he’d seen her prepare to enter so many rooms. Turning gracefully half sideways, and drawing one knee slightly in toward the other. He knew her way of smiling complacently, eyelids half down, in a way that infuriated women, but wasn’t meant for them anyway. She was doing it now. He knew that trick she had of upturning one forearm and gently stroking whatever bracelets she happened to be wearing down toward the elbow. She was doing that now too.
She’d changed her way of doing her hair, in the weeks since he’d been avoiding her. There was a time she wouldn’t have had time to change her way of doing her hair, without his almost watching her in the act of doing it; now she’d had plenty of time.
It wasn’t good. Nothing about her could have pleased him; no change and no remaining as before. He didn’t like her any more.
It even overcame his fear, his rage and hate, and somehow held him steady, where otherwise he would have crumbled in dismay.
He looked around, and Florence was at the upper end of the oversized room. (They really had an enormous room, for dancing, and for the first time he was glad of it.) She wouldn’t see her yet until the slow progress of the dance brought her around in turn to where he was now. But once she did— Even though they’d never met, she was an anonymous guest, an arrival at her door, and Florence was punctilious about such things. He had to get out there first.
He made a sudden, a crazy swing to the side, simply to get his encumbering partner off the floor and spare her the humiliation of being left standing alone in the middle of it. Then released her without a word, paused for a moment just within the room opening, then strode forward down the entrance gallery. His face was a little gray, but stonily composed. His heart was frothing hate like an eggbeater.
“Good evening, Mr. Strickland,” she said sociably. “So nice of you to ask me.”
“Did I?” he said in a deadly undertone, his lips scarcely stirring.
She gave that famous vacant smile of hers, eyes half-shuttered. “What a lovely party. And one of my favorite tunes. Shall we go in?”
Again his lips scarcely moved. “I told you what I’d do.” There was a butler hovering in the background. “Just a minute. Don’t put that away yet.”
She’d always had great presence of mind. And tonight she was relying on it entirely, anyway; it was what had carried her here. She motioned negligently, backhand over one shoulder. “Very well, then leave it out. It’s insured. You can’t very well expect me to keep it on on the dance floor.” Her hand sidled through under his arm. “And you are dancing with me, aren’t you, Mr. Strickland?”
He motioned the butler back now, out of earshot. “You won’t get away with this,” he breathed apoplectically.
She wasn’t listening. Her eyes had strayed over his shoulder, into the distance. “She is lovely,” she murmured almost raptly. “Why, you’ve never done her justice. You must be blind or something. How could you ever have preferred—?” She didn’t finish it. For a moment she had seemed to be completely, obliviously sincere.
He glanced around briefly, and Florence was slowly coursing past the ballroom opening in the arms of a partner. At that instant she wasn’t looking out at them. She might have been just a second before; she might be just a second from now. He didn’t keep looking to find out.
Sweat peered out on his forehead.
“Will the money handle it?” he said swiftly.
She gave her answer in the strangest way. She raised her wispy, gauzy, scented handkerchief and gently patted his brow with it.
“Stand over here on the side a minute,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone.”
“I never do at parties of this kind, without an introduction,” she promised him. “Well, give me someone’s name, just in case. . . .”
“You’re a friend of Bob Mallory’s. He’s in there half-stewed. He wouldn’t know the difference even if he came out here to you.”
He left her swiftly and plunged into the library. He’d already started to lock the door, when he became aware of a spooning couple nestled in the lamplight. They reared their heads from a semiprostrate position and looked at him.
“Would you two excuse me?” he said harriedly.
“Oh, that’s all right,” the youth assured him. “We don’t mind who comes in here.” And they both prepared to settle back again.
“I mean, could I have this room for a minute.”
The girl nudged her companion in the ribs, whispered audibly, “Must be our host,” and they went out hand in hand, snickering together.
“We didn’t know it was out of bounds,” the boy said impudently over his shoulder. “Should have told us.”
Strickland locked the door. He opened up the wall safe, took out the cash box. There was an even thousand in it. He took that, tremblingly scratched out a check for the additional five hundred, made out to bearer. She wouldn’t have accepted it any other way, he knew. He was so unstable and in such haste, he spoiled the first check, had to write a second.
Then he unlocked the door and went out to her.
She was there where he’d left her, sitting now; she’d remained undiscovered.
“Let me have your evening bag a second,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
He put it in, handed it back to her.
“Now . . .” He looked meaningly at the door.
She rose, graciously unhurried. She motioned slightly, with merely the tips of her curled fingers, and the butler came over, put the stone-marten cape around her.
“It would have been a lovely party,” she said with pleasant ruefulness to Strickland. “And I dressed so carefully too.”
“Harris,” he said, “will you get the lady a taxi.”
For a moment they were alone in the open doorway.
“You’ll never live to do this to me again,” he promised her grimly.
Then the Rogers left, and there were only two couples left, the Whitings and the Devraux. And when they were on the point of following suit, it was Florence who coaxed them into remaining a few moments more. She who was always so anxious to be rid of the rearguard, after a tiring event like tonight’s.
“The last part of every party, you know. How did the old song go? ‘Is the real part, the best of all.’ Let’s go into the study and have a nightcap all around. I’m sick of this railroad station.”
They went in and had their nightcap, just the six of them.
“Look, I’ll show you what I mean.” She sprawled back on a sofa, deliberately unstrapped her sandals, let her bare feet play upon the floor.
“Why do we give parties, anyway?” she asked. “It feels so good when they’re over.”
“That’s why we give them,” somebody answered. “It’s like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.”
“Strick looks tired,” one of the other women said commiseratingly.
She didn’t even turn to look at him. “Hugh always looks tired,” she said somewhat waspishly.
Were they never going? He wanted to bend down over the table and pound his fist on it, again and again, until it was splintered. See them start to their feet, see their stunned expressions, see them hurriedly make for the door.
He didn’t. You never do the things you really want to do, he reflected.
He just looked down at the polished tabletop. And then put his glass down on it rather heavily, so that it thumped out.
Unintentionally, it worked nearly as well as the more explosive alternative that had passed through his mind.
One of the women stood up at once. The other within seconds after. Women were quicker at getting nuances that way.
“Well, now we really must, Flo—”
“Yes, before we’re thrown out.”
Nobody looked at him, but he knew the whole five people in the room were acutely aware of him as being the cause of the exodus.
The amenities be damned.
He was already up in their bedroom, before she had even finished seeing them off at the door.
He stripped off his coat, put on a business jacket in its place, the first thing his hands fell on.
Then he went over to the bureau, opened a drawer, and took out the revolver they’d kept there ever since that time they’d been held up and robbed right here in their home six years ago. Everything had been recovered later, but they’d had a bad few moments facing a gun.
He put the gun away inside his coat.
She came into the room, cool and charming. As cool and charming as though it were eight instead of three. As though there had been no party. As though there had been no extra, uninvited guest. (Well, maybe for her there hadn’t been.)
She closed the bedroom door. She was smiling benignly.
“Well, dear—” she said sweetly. She put her hands to the back of her neck and started to undo the diamond necklace. She crossed the room while she was doing so. “—what’d you think of it? I think it was one of our more successful ones, don’t you?”
“What was?” he said, coming back to her with an effort.
She laughed indulgently. “The party, dear.” Nothing could seem to ruffle her tonight.
Oh, God, that party! He shuddered inwardly.
“You weren’t very cordial at the end.”
“My head,” he said. “It’s ready to burst.”
“An aspirin wouldn’t—” he started to say.
“Why don’t you take an aspirin?” she said.
She finished it for him before he could. “No, an aspirin wouldn’t help, would it?”
He looked at her askance. What did she mean by that? What did she know?
Apparently she didn’t mean anything by it, she didn’t know anything; it was just his own self-consciousness. She was out of her party gown now and into a silk negligee, placid, untroubled.
Suddenly, he became aware she’d been at the bureau a moment ago, at that same drawer; she’d already quitted it, was coming away, by the time the fact registered on him.
“What’d you want there just now?” he asked her sharply.
“Why, I was putting away something,” she said vaguely. She chuckled, as you would at a cross child.
“Can’t I even go to my own bureau drawer?”
She couldn’t have seen the gun was gone. She would have said something about it, and she didn’t, not a word.
She didn’t even notice the contrasting stripe on his evening trousers, beneath the business jacket. She was all taken up in herself, in a world of her own; probably reliving and resavoring the party. Women had a habit of doing that, he knew.
He put his hand out to the bedroom doorknob. “I have to get some air,” he said. “That’s the only thing’ll cool off my head.”
She didn’t oppose him.
“Be sure you take your key, dear,” was all she said. “The servants are all dead to the world, poor souls.”
“I won’t disturb you,” he promised sombrely.
She came over to him, quite innocuously. “I’ll say good night to you now,” she said, and gave him one of their perfunctory cheek-kisses.
He stiffened, too late.
Her fingertips had just lightly strayed past the place where the gun was. So deft were they, he only realized it once it was done and they had gone on by. No pressure, just a surface stroke.
She gave no sign. She must have mistaken it for that bulky cigar case he carried in there sometimes. He looked slyly past her, and saw it lying there as big as life across the room. But she didn’t glance over that way.
She went over to her bed and lightly whisked the covers aside. She was smiling, she was charming, she was cool to the last. You would have thought their guests were still present.
She airily touched two fingertips to her own lips, then fluttered them toward him, sending him a final little good-night salutation.
His last glimpse of her, as he closed the door, showed her to him sitting propped against the pillows, abou
t to take up a book and read herself to sleep; a rosy halo from the bedside lamp pinking her face and shoulders; her snowy hair, soft as a young girl’s, falling in thick curls below her shoulders.
She looked like an eighteenth-century marquise ready to hold court at a levee in her bedroom.
He went rapidly down their slowly curving stairs (he’d always hated those stairs; they took so long getting you down). A grotesque shadow of himself rippled along beside him over the ivory-pale wall panels, cast from the night lamp left burning in the broad hall below. Like a ghostly adviser spurring him on to evil deeds.
In the hall as he passed, he noted a strange thing, a trifling yet somehow bizarre memento, overlooked from that party, that now seemed to have taken place a thousand years ago. A goblet of flat champagne left standing forgotten on the edge of a table beside the wall, an empty chair drawn up alongside it. It must have been hers, it now occurred to him. That was where she’d been sitting waiting those few moments, in that very chair. And though he could no longer remember seeing her hold or sip a glass of champagne, she must have asked for one or the butler must have offered her one unasked.
Suddenly, in a flash of anger, he went over to it, pitched it shoulder-high in venomous oblation, and downed it, flat as it was. He had just toasted her death with her own drink.
A flicker of chill night air needled the hall, the door clumped shut, and he’d left the house.
He didn’t ring, he didn’t knock. He didn’t have to. He took the key she’d given him, once long ago, and unlocked the door with very little sound.
He took the key out, went in, and closed the door. With not much more sound than its opening had made.
He knew right where the switch was, knew where to put his hand without even having to look. He snapped it, and the garish peach ceiling lights she affected went on in a little ringed cluster.
He knew the place so well. Knew everything about it. It had once been like a second home to him. No, once it had been his first home, and the place he had just come from, that had been his second. Funny how you changed.
Every piece of furniture, every object, every chair, had some part in his history. There—that one over there—he’d sat there that night when he’d been a little drunk, back in their early days, and vowed he was never going home to Florence again; he was going to break off clean with her, that very night, that very hour. She’d had to sit beside him on the chair arm, and cajole and talk him out of it, and finally gently disengage the telephone from him, which he’d been holding in his hand then. She’d smoothed his ruffled fur, and winked at him knowingly, and said, “We’re doing all right; why go out of our way looking for trouble? Here, have another drink and pretend you’re single; it works just as good.”
Rendezvous in Black Page 5
