A Variety of Weapons. Rufus King
von Heinmann to steal the imitations, and he was very happy about it all, and so was I.”
“So the ocelots brought the jewels home?”
“Yes. You have no idea, Miss Ledrick, how frequently it pays to be considered odd. That is, if you have the bank balance to back you up. Otherwise they put you in an institution.”
Ann listened and was conscious of the undercurrent of unease. She felt this undercurrent increasing through the passing minutes and more especially so with Marlow, whose knuckles were white when Washburn announced from the doorway: “Mr. Ludwig Appleby.”
Ann saw Appleby unclearly at first as he stood at the room’s distant end. He approached them slowly and became a tall, middle-aged man of heavy build with a shock of ink-black hair and bold features of the stamp, Ann felt, which practiced matrons would consider both informative and alluring. The lips, on closer view, were lushly thick.
Marlow had stood up. He did not offer his hand. He said, “Good evening, Ludwig. This pleasure is becoming increasingly frequent.”
Appleby’s voice was rich with assurance and with glutted good living.
“You’re looking a bit better tonight, Justin,” he said. “Not a day over your age.” Then he turned his eyes thoughtfully on Estelle. “And you too, Estelle. Somewhat plumper, perhaps? I ought to chase you around the block.”
Estelle said calmly, “After dinner if you wish, Ludwig. This is Miss Ledrick—Mr. Appleby.”
Ann said, “How do you do?” and found that Appleby said nothing whatever.
He stood looking down at her with his prominent dark eyes during a pause that ended in a puzzled frown. He said, “This is most extraordinary.”
Estelle said sharply, “Miss Ledrick has come up from Fanny Mistral’s to photograph the ocelots.”
“Oh?” Ludwig said.
Then he smiled.
CHAPTER IV
The dinner was in keeping with Fanny Mistral’s forecast, and Ann was hungry. She did a good job on clear green turtle soup with sherry, followed by pompano served with broiled mushrooms, and cucumbers, all helped to their destination by a glass of Rauentaler.
The extensive charm of the dining room had stopped impressing her. A four-part Sheraton table had been reduced to conversational size, and (her appetite clipped of its edge) she was beginning to feel annoyed at the persistency with which Appleby, who faced her, was regarding her. She decided it was a speculative rather than a predatory look. It was irritatingly unpleasant.
Appleby said, while a saddle of mutton was being served, “Are you from New England, Miss Ledrick?”
“No, Mr. Appleby. Long Island.”
“Really? I would have said New England. Boston, perhaps. Do you know Boston?”
“Most sketchily. Almost from a football point of view.”
Appleby’s voice tightened, and the interest in his dark, vital eyes sharpened noticeably.
“Do you,” he asked, “know the Charings?”
It occurred to Ann that Justin and Estelle Marlow were suddenly not only silent but motionless as well. They had the waxwork look of effigies who were gripped in the drama of some situation which involved them strongly and which they were helpless to control. Marlow grew pale, and his anemic fingers were nervelessly quiescent on the stem of a glass which Washburn had just filled with champagne.
“No,” Ann said, “I do not.”
Ann heard Estelle Marlow sigh gently in the stillness with a breath that had been held and was, with relief, expelled.
Then Estelle took over with determination.
“Ludwig, there is no more reason why Miss Ledrick should know the Charings than that you should know the Osterbrooks of Paris. The Osterbrooks, Miss Ledrick, were a fanatic family from Indiana who enjoyed spending quantities of money in collecting worthless paintings that were so modern they had turned sour.”
“I fail to see any connection, Estelle,” Ludwig said. “After all, the Charings are Back Bay.”
“There is no connection. I simply wish to change the subject. We will discuss the Secretary of Labor, Miss Perkins. That woman—”
Miss Perkins was taken apart through a heavenly thing which Estelle Marlow informed Ann was a gooseberry charlotte. Its mechanics, Estelle said, consisted in lining a charlotte mold either with slices of génoise or sponge cake, then dumping in gooseberry cream and chilling until firm.
The dinner (and Miss Perkins) ended. They returned to the lounge for coffee and cognac, after which two rubbers of bridge were managed in a heavy atmosphere which seemed to Ann to have been stripped of all zest. The pleasant intimacy which had been set up before Appleby’s arrival was gone, and in its place was one which seemed to her as impending; just of what, she did not know.
All of their rooms were on the third floor, and Ann thought it kind when Estelle went with her into her living room and said that if Ann did not mind she would sit there for a moment and smoke a cigarette.
The coals were still glowing on the hearth and the room was so silent that the sound of an ember dropping was distinctly audible.
Estelle said, “Do you mind if I call you Ann?”
“Not at all, Miss Marlow. I’d like it.”
“And I should be pleased if you would call me Estelle.”
“Certainly.”
“May I ask whether you have been happy?”
“Here? Now? Most happy.”
“No, dear. I mean the years before. You’re twenty-two, aren’t you?”
“Yes, just. How could you tell so accurately? I mean, we’re all supposed to look either younger or older.”
“I asked during my telephone conversation with Fanny Mistral. I wanted to know the general sort of woman to expect, as you would be with us for a week or longer. Tell me, have your years been happy ones?”
“Very happy. Naturally there has been some lonesomeness since Father died last spring. There were only the two of us. Mother died quite a while ago.”
“Then there is no one? Now?”
“There is a pleasant idiot in Washington named Bill Forrest who has made up his mind to marry me next Friday.”
Whether it was a trick of the firelight or not, Ann could not tell, but Estelle seemed to withdraw in suddenly upon herself.
“And you, Ann?”
“I?”
“Do you intend to let Mr. Forrest marry you, as you put it?”
“I put it that way because the first news I had about it was when Bill announced his intention by telephone from Washington this afternoon.”
“Mr. Forrest sounds somewhat bewitching.”
“He is much too bewitching. He’s so utterly sure of himself. He wants to take me off to the wars with him in a watch.”
“A watch?”
“Bill has just joined the Marines, may heaven help them. Naturally he has to have a snapshot of a wife bravely smiling and keeping the home fires stoked. His mind works that way. It seems he has selected me. So far, Bill’s nearest approach to a romantic gesture has been to call me up at four in the morning to relieve his insomnia. He is definitely not of the doublets-and-knee-bending school.”
“Then it is nothing really serious?”
“I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.”
“You said—Friday?”
“Yes.”