“Who do you think you are, giving me orders?”
“I don’t think, I know I am here to pinch-hit in a business deal for the man she married, authorized by him to act in all matters concerning her happiness and safety. I’m sure had he seen you bending over his wife a few moments ago he would have pinned your ears back, I’m not living up to orders not to do it for him.”
“Is that so? Now we’re getting somewhere.” Harding took a menacing stride forward. The patio door slammed.
“What are you two men up to?” Sarah Ann Parker demanded. Her cheeks were as red as her checked dress. “I see you through the window drawn up like two pugs startin’ to fight. You go ’long, both of you. Who’s that on the chaise longy? ‘Tain’t Cindy. Cindy Clinton?” She pushed Harding aside with a force that rocked him on his feet. “What’s happened to her?” Her breath caught in a sob. “She been run over.”
“This guy Damon says she’s asleep, Miss Parker. He gave me a song and dance about her being worn out by the cares of business. Phooey. Cinderella Clinton asleep at this time of day. Tell that to the Marines.”
“He’s right,” the girl asserted as she slowly swung her feet to the flagged patio. She stretched her arms. Stood up. Swayed a little and steadied. “I was asleep, but I’ve been awake with my eyes closed since you bent over me, Hal. I thought for a minute you had the Sleeping Beauty story mixed with that of Cinderella who was not awakened by a kiss. If the gentlemen will excuse us, Sary, we’ll go in where it is cooler.”
Sarah Ann Parker picked up the white sandals and pink jacket and followed her into the house. The patio door banged.
“Something tells me you are not the person you claim to be, Damon,” Harding accused furiously. “There’s a report going the rounds that over 250,000 persons are living under assumed names in this country, some of them out-and-out swindlers, some of them posing as glamorous personalities.”
“Surely you don’t count me in the glamorous class?”
“You won’t feel so much like grinning when I get through with you. There is a rumor that queer things are being seen and heard in this neighborhood. From this minute I make it my business to find out who you are and why you are here.”
“O.K. When you’ve found out report to me, I’d like to get in on this mystery at which you’re hinting. I’m a mystery-yarn addict. Meanwhile —” he picked up his white coat, opened the door to the house, closed it behind him with a reverberating bang and shot the safety bolt.
I’ve made an enemy of him, he thought as he watched Harding stalk along the path, turn toward the front of the house. Let him find out the truth. I can’t double for Ken Stewart much longer. I only hope he’ll hold off until after the annulment, when I’ll tell Cindy myself. Keen to know if the property was sold, wasn’t he? Had the price down pat. That ties in with the report that he’s desperately in need of money.
I don’t like his hint as to a mystery. It may mean danger for Alida Barclay. If she — He stopped to listen to the sound of feet running down the stairs. Had Cindy —
He started for the hall. Sarah Ann Parker narrowly missed a collision in the doorway. He caught her shoulder and drew her into the kitchen.
“What’s happened?” he demanded. “Is she all right?”
“Sure,” Miss Parker adjusted her spectacles which were hanging by the band. “All right, ’cept she’s scared ’bout out of her wits. She said she was with you on the bluff, remembers feelin’ terrible sleepy, the next thing she knew she was lyin’ on the chaise longy and Hal Harding was bendin’ over her. ’Fore she could make a move to push him away you spoke. She’s frightened for fear she had an attack of am-am — you know the thing folks have when they forget where they are?”
“You mean amnesia. Nonsense.” He explained what happened. “She has been carrying a big responsibility for years. When it was lifted nature took over and put her to sleep.”
She nodded in sage agreement.
“Responsibility, you’re right, an’ she couldn’t ever have felt young an’ happy the way a girl her age should feel. Her father was a good man, but a fusser, an’ one of the leaning kind. Everything had to be just as he wanted it or he’d raise a rumpus. Want to know somethin’? Just before Trader Armstrong come to see her the first time she was talkin’ ’bout the business an’ tellin’ about a man named Atlas holdin’ up the heavens on his shoulders an’ then she says, ‘I been holdin’ up the oil business on mine. If ever I get rid of it I’ll sleep for a week.’”
“You see, I was right in my diagnosis. I —” he stopped speaking as, after an experimental turn of the handle the door from the patio swung in cautiously. As if reconnoitering, a head appeared in the opening. Sarah Ann Parker caught his arm and administered a warning squeeze to command silence. The two stood motionless in the cool, darkened kitchen as a figure in a pink and white striped dress slipped in and soundlessly closed the door behind her. It was the girl in the red swim suit whose picture Cindy had snapped at the beach.
“My sakes, Rena, why you stealin’ into this house as if you was afraid you’d be caught?”
Startled by Sarah Ann Parker’s rasping query the girl dropped the basket she carried.
“Gosh, Miss Parker. You seared me out of a year’s growth. I thought you’d gone to the — Coming in from the blazing sunlight I couldn’t see anything in this dark kitchen.”
“Hmp. So I gathered. What do you want?”
“Mrs. Drew has unexpected guests coming to dinner and she wondered if you could spare a dozen eggs. I couldn’t get one in the village. The cook needs them.” Her voice which had been shaky at first gained assurance.
“From the size of the basket you just picked up looks as if you expected to lug home a crate of them.”
“It is big, I had a lot of things to buy. Can you spare the eggs?”
“I cannot.”
“Nothing in my life, it’s the cook’s problem. It isn’t part of my work to market. I was trying to help. Sorry I burst in on what looks to be a secret meeting.” From under long black lashes she glanced at the man standing at the window hands thrust into the pockets of his coat.
“Don’t be saucy, Rena Foster. The next time you come into my kitchen knock before you open the door.”
“Sure, I will before I come into your kitchen. How long since you owned The Castle? I’ll tell Mrs. Drew that you wouldn’t accommodate her about the eggs.”
The door slammed. Sarah watched from the window as she ran across the garden, the putting green toward the pier.
“Now, what do you make of that, Mr. Damon?”
“Is she in the habit of entering without knocking?”
“Yes, but she wasn’t ‘enterin’,’ she was stealin’ in. Didn’t you hear her begin, ‘I thought you’d gone to the —’ then she stopped short. ’Twas her that told me Ella Crane had a television set, an’ she hasn’t got one. Looks kinder like she was tryin’ to get me out of the way so she could get in for somethin’, don’t it?”
“Who is the girl?”
“Rena Foster. She’s what’s called a parlormaid at Mrs. Drew’s. Folks say she’s runnin’ round with a tough-lookin’ man who’s tryin’ to get a job at one of the summer places.”
A tough-looking man trying to get a job at one of the summer places. He mentally filed the description for further reference.
“Didn’t you have a dozen eggs to loan, Miss Parker?”
“Sure, I had, you don’t think I’d get caught with supplies so low I’d have to borrer, do you? I didn’t like the way that girl came in, something sly about it. ’Twasn’t eggs she was after.”
“Any suspicion what she would come for? Ever heard that she is dishonest?”
“Nothin’ that was proved. When she burst in I was just about to ask if you’d go up and tell Cindy what you told me, that it was natural for her to drop off to sleep. She’s scared it may happen again when that divorce goes through.”
“It won’t, you may assure her of that. She has had no lunch
. Tempt her to eat, then suggest that she drive to the Country Club and see her friends. It is too hot for tennis.”
“It’s too hot to live, if you ask me. You won’t go up?”
“She doesn’t need me. Tell her what I said.”
“I will. Perhaps I can make her believe it, though she’s terrible jittery.” She dropped her spectacles by the band and drew her right hand across her wet eyes. “When I saw that child lyin’ there so still, though I knew he had nothin’ to do with it, I could have choked that Kenniston Stewart with my bare hands.”
“Sarah Ann Parker, that goes for me too — and double. Better hustle up a lunch for Cindy. She’ll be gay as a lark after she eats. So long.”
“Queer things are being seen and heard in this neighborhood,” Harding’s voice echoed through his memory as he crossed the patio to his car. Sary was suspicious of the Foster girl’s reason for surreptitiously entering the kitchen a few moments ago. “Folks say, she’s runnin’ round with a tough-lookin’ man who’s tryin’ to get a job at one of the summer places.” He had seen them together at the beach. The situation would stand looking into.
She was employed as parlormaid by the owner of the yacht which dropped anchor often off the Rockledge shore. Did these facts tie together? Had Ally Barclay missed a trick when she decided that “the rich businesswoman” Mrs. Drew, was above suspicion?
CHAPTER TWELVE
“GAME and set for us, Cinderella, I hope we can add ‘match’ tomorrow. We knocked Lydia Fane and that boy she is running round with out of the tournament. Not that he isn’t tops. I bet he’s champ material. He has a volley that will take him places. Jupiter, Maine sea breezes have burned my Western skin to a crisp.” Tom Slade tenderly touched his bright scarlet cheek before he tucked his arm under hers. “Let’s go somewhere for lunch.”
“Not today. Thomas, you are everlastingly wanting to ‘go’ somewhere. Don’t you ever sit still and reflect on world problems or the beauties of nature?”
“I’m reflecting on the beauty of you in that white tennis rig and light blue cardigan, this minute. Sure I reflect on world problems, how can one help it if one reads of the menace of the cold war and the unrest simmering beneath the thin shell of diplomacy? But not when I am on vacation visiting my girl. Don’t stiffen. I’m done. What a day. All green and gold and blue and a breeze straight from the ocean. Sniff the salt.”
“And is the coolness appreciated after the wilting heat of yesterday? The Stars and Stripes and the Club pennant are standing out straight.”
“Did you get the oil deal tied up?”
“We did."
“Did it take you all day to do it? I called at The Castle soon after lunch, rang and rang. When I phoned in the evening that watchdog of yours said you’d had a hard day and had gone to bed.”
“Sarah Ann Parker told you that? At about three I looked in at the Club — no one there, too hot —” evidently the news of her sleep-fest had not reached the air waves — “I went home and found Mrs. Barclay there, making a formal call, she is Counselor Armstrong’s sister, in case you care, and accepted her invitation for buffet supper and an evening at Canasta with her brother and herself.” Had Bill Damon prompted the invitation? The two exciting games had been just what she needed to restore her self-confidence. The sudden sleep had frightened her.
“Who made the fourth?”
“I object to the hint of suspicion in the question. Three can play. Of course you don’t play partners, but it is lots of fun.”
“Do you like Mrs. Barclay?”
“Very much. She is charming. A glowing sort of person, if you get what I mean.”
“Sure I get what you mean, that’s the sort of person you are. You give out something, friendliness and interest, that makes the other fellow respond with the best that’s in him.”
“Tom Slade. That is the loveliest thing ever said to me.”
“Don’t let it turn your head. Lyd Fane says she thinks the ruddy Armstrong has views about you.”
“What does she mean, ‘views’?”
“The next Mrs. Armstrong. Guess telling you that was a mistake. May get your hopes up.”
“Now who is kidding? Thomas, when, if ever, I get out of the present matrimonial quicksands it will be many a day before I am drawn into one again.”
“Is that so? Let’s tune in on another station. I sure am sold on your Maine coast. When I have made an immortal reputation as a jurist and incidentally, my pile, I’ll buy a place in this town and raise strawberries. I’ve never yet had my fill of big luscious ones. Would that suit you, Cinderella?”
“Like the girl in Mother Goose who sat on a cushion and sewed a fine seam, dined upon strawberries, sugar and cream? No thank you. The prospect leaves me cold.”
“Wrong number. I’ll try again. Darn it, here comes the Fane menace. Wonder if she’s sore because we beat her?”
“No. Whatever Lyd’s faults, she’s a good sport. She’s had a curious life, parents separated, each has had two additional marriages. She spent several years abroad, Ella Crane says ‘with a fast set.’”
“She may have had a curious life, but she remains a pest,” Slade muttered.
“You’ll come to the Bal Masqué at the Inn next week Friday night, won’t you, Tommy?” Lydia slipped her hand under his arm and raised appealing eyes to his. “Small name band but a good one. Be-bop, jazz and waltzes. No do-si-do. Five dollars per person, not couple — for the hospital. Be a dear and make him come, Cindy.”
“Wrong slant, Lyd. Thomas Slade, Second, can’t be told to do anything. Of course he will go under his own power.”
“Sure of that?” By shifting his racquet Slade detached the clinging hand from his arm. “How do I know I’ll have any partners? You gals all but mobbed that Damon fella when he came out to get into his car this A.M. YOU had no eyes for me sitting on the porch rail.”
“Don’t be touchy, Tommy. We are all crazy about you.” Lydia cooed, “but there is an unwritten law that we can’t cut in on another girl’s beau.” The expression in the green eyes as they flashed to hers brought color to Cindy’s face. She means Tom is mine, she thought.
“To return to Bill Damon; did you see him beat Tod Currier a few minutes ago? Our returned hero will draw a crowd tomorrow when he appears for the finals. This morning we were trying to sell him on the Bal Masqué.”
“What luck?” Cindy asked.
“He promised to take tickets. Whether he came would depend upon what he could think up for a costume. There is a rumor that he is at the Inn to be near his heartbeat.”
Where did she pick up that gossip, Cindy wondered.
Should she tell her the real reason for his presence in this village, that he had come to clear up Kenniston Stewart’s business, matrimonial and otherwise? Lydia would love to broadcast that morsel.
“The plot thickens,” Tom Slade declared dramatically. “Which gal at the Inn is his heartbeat?” Above the light he was holding to a cigarette he winked at Cindy.
“It isn’t one of us girls, worse luck. The other night Alida Barclay, Lady Barclay to you, was his guest at dinner. I’ll hand it to her for having clothes sense. Fashion firsts from haircut to shoes. She looked as a Duchess should and rarely does. A little bird chirped that they sat in a shadowy corner of the porch for all hours, very near together, watching the moon.”
“Which one of the Inn young ladies put on the espionage act? Too bad there weren’t wires to tap.”
“Cut the sarcasm, Tommy. We are not snooping. We sent several emissaries to invite them to join us at cards, but they were so absorbed in one another that no one dared break in.”
“Mighty considerate of the messengers not to disturb love’s young dream.”
“Young dream?” Lydia's laugh was a shriek of derision. “Alida Barclay must be at least ten years older than Bill Damon.”
“What’s ten years when Love is at the helm?” Cindy was shocked at the edge in her own voice.
“If you ask me, d
earie, ten years is twenty when it is on the woman’s side. Aren’t you two coming in for a cold drink?”
Lydia Fane’s question flagged Cindy’s train of thought to an abrupt stop.
“No,” she said hastily. “I’m going home to change my tennis clothes for something chic and elegant, after which I shall call on Mrs. Sally Drew at Rockledge. I hear she complains that the cottagers have ignored her. Come with me?”
“I’m not a cottager, that lets me out. Someone ought to tell her that blonde bleach may be a lifesaver, but when it turns hair the color of the brass rings at a merry-go-round, it shoots her into a different class. I’d go, though, if I thought her ‘secretary’ — interrogation point — would be among those present. I’m told he’s blond as a Viking, has a where-have-you-been-all-my-life manner and lives on her yacht.”
“Is the yacht that comes in so often really hers? I’ve heard rumors to that effect but never have been sure.”
“Page Ella Crane. My information came from her. Bring down two birds with one stone, Cindy, sell her tickets to the masquerade.”
“Not a chance when I am making a first call.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll tackle the secretary. So like you to hear and respond to the conscience-call of neighborly duty. Lucky it isn’t so insistent as the call of marriage bells. Don’t forget your names are drawn for the masquerade — send checks to me. We’ll be agog to see who picks up your glass slipper at the stroke of twelve, Cinderella. Wouldn’t it be thrilling if the long-distance husband appeared? Now that’s an idea. By.” She ran up the Club House steps and vanished.
“If that gal belonged to me I’d wring her lovely neck and wring it hard. Though she didn’t mention it, I bet she was getting back at us with her wisecracks for knocking her out of the tournament. Don’t you mind her, Cindy, you look as if she’d given you a jolting right to the head.”
“That suggestion of the return of the long-distance husband made it whirl for a minute. I don’t mind Lyd Fane. I’m conditioned to her viperish tongue. Counselor Armstrong phoned me just before I left home that my annulment would come up for a hearing tomorrow. Two cases that preceded it have gone off the list.”
To Love and to Honour Page 9
