K. (A Crime Thriller Novel). Mary Roberts Rinehart
“Two places!” she commented. “Lovers, of course. Or perhaps honeymooners.”
K. tried to fall into her mood.
“A box of candy against a good cigar, they are a stolid married couple.”
“How shall we know?”
“That's easy. If they loll back and watch the kitchen door, I win. If they lean forward, elbows on the table, and talk, you get the candy.”
Sidney, who had been leaning forward, talking eagerly over the table, suddenly straightened and flushed.
Carlotta Harrison came out alone. Although the tapping of her heels was dulled by the grass, although she had exchanged her cap for the black hat, Sidney knew her at once. A sort of thrill ran over her. It was the pretty nurse from Dr. Wilson's office. Was it possible—but of course not! The book of rules stated explicitly that such things were forbidden.
“Don't turn around,” she said swiftly. “It is the Miss Harrison I told you about. She is looking at us.”
Carlotta's eyes were blinded for a moment by the glare of the house lights. She dropped into her chair, with a flash of resentment at the proximity of the other table. She languidly surveyed its two occupants. Then she sat up, her eyes on Le Moyne's grave profile turned toward the valley.
Lucky for her that Wilson had stopped in the bar, that Sidney's instinctive good manners forbade her staring, that only the edge of the summer moon shone through the trees. She went white and clutched the edge of the table, with her eyes closed. That gave her quick brain a chance. It was madness, June madness. She was always seeing him even in her dreams. This man was older, much older. She looked again.
She had not been mistaken. Here, and after all these months! K. Le Moyne, quite unconscious of her presence, looked down into the valley.
Wilson appeared on the wooden porch above the terrace, and stood, his eyes searching the half light for her. If he came down to her, the man at the next table might turn, would see her—
She rose and went swiftly back toward the hotel. All the gayety was gone out of the evening for her, but she forced a lightness she did not feel:—
“It is so dark and depressing out there—it makes me sad.”
“Surely you do not want to dine in the house?”
“Do you mind?”
“Just as you wish. This is your evening.”
But he was not pleased. The prospect of the glaring lights and soiled linen of the dining-room jarred on his aesthetic sense. He wanted a setting for himself, for the girl. Environment was vital to him. But when, in the full light of the moon, he saw the purplish shadows under her eyes, he forgot his resentment. She had had a hard day. She was tired. His easy sympathies were roused. He leaned over and ran his and caressingly along her bare forearm.
“Your wish is my law—to-night,” he said softly.
After all, the evening was a disappointment to him. The spontaneity had gone out of it, for some reason. The girl who had thrilled to his glance those two mornings in his office, whose somber eyes had met his fire for fire, across the operating-room, was not playing up. She sat back in her chair, eating little, starting at every step. Her eyes, which by every rule of the game should have been gazing into his, were fixed on the oilcloth-covered passage outside the door.
“I think, after all, you are frightened!”
“Terribly.”
“A little danger adds to the zest of things. You know what Nietzsche says about that.”
“I am not fond of Nietzsche.” Then, with an effort: “What does he say?”
“Two things are wanted by the true man—danger and play. Therefore he seeketh woman as the most dangerous of toys.”
“Women are dangerous only when you think of them as toys. When a man finds that a woman can reason,—do anything but feel,—he regards her as a menace. But the reasoning woman is really less dangerous than the other sort.”
This was more like the real thing. To talk careful abstractions like this, with beneath each abstraction its concealed personal application, to talk of woman and look in her eyes, to discuss new philosophies with their freedoms, to discard old creeds and old moralities—that was his game. Wilson became content, interested again. The girl was nimble-minded. She challenged his philosophy and gave him a chance to defend it. With the conviction, as their meal went on, that Le Moyne and his companion must surely have gone, she gained ease.
It was only by wild driving that she got back to the hospital by ten o'clock.
Wilson left her at the corner, well content with himself. He had had the rest he needed in congenial company. The girl stimulated his interest. She was mental, but not too mental. And he approved of his own attitude. He had been discreet. Even if she talked, there was nothing to tell. But he felt confident that she would not talk.
As he drove up the Street, he glanced across at the Page house. Sidney was there on the doorstep, talking to a tall man who stood below and looked up at her. Wilson settled his tie, in the darkness. Sidney was a mighty pretty girl. The June night was in his blood. He was sorry he had not kissed Carlotta good-night. He rather thought, now he looked back, she had expected it.
As he got out of his car at the curb, a young man who had been standing in the shadow of the tree-box moved quickly away.
Wilson smiled after him in the darkness.
“That you, Joe?” he called.
But the boy went on.
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