have made Steven suffer. Cristie understood now why he had spoken of her as he had that afternoon.
Sara was in the middle of a knot of men. There was ferment around her, the stir of raised voices, laughter. There would be. There were other women like that, women who were insatiably vain, who knew the conventions of decent living thoroughly and who used them or cast them aside as it suited their purpose. They were women with the morality of emotional Al Capones. Danger was their natural orbit. Sara Hazard vanished in the crowd. Still no Steven. What could be keeping him?
Cristie was standing in the shadowy embrasure of a window trying to reassure herself, telling herself not to be an idiot, when two women halted on the terrace just outside.
“—but I’ve only got one life to live. What a woman’s husband doesn’t know is her own business.”
Cristie turned her head. The light metallic voice was Sara Hazard’s. Mary Dodd was with her. The latter’s recoil was thinly veiled. Her tall figure was drawn up and she was gazing with displeasure at the lovely, narrow, closed white face looking intently into her own.
Cristie wanted to move, to get away from that voice. She didn’t. The next moment she wished she had. Sara Hazard paused, then it came out with a rush. Fingers busy with a gold cigarette case, smooth head bent, she said abruptly, “Mary, can you loan me some money?”
Mary Dodd didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said a little wearily, “Same old thing, I suppose, Sara. Bills again?”
Sara Hazard struck a match. “Rather—and then some. A man from Prince and Consort’s actually had the impudence to force his way into the apartment this morning and demand a thousand dollars on account immediately— or else. Can you imagine the nerve? There was nothing I could do with him. Heaven knows I tried.” She put the match to the tip of a cigarette. Her thin sinuous lips were curved in a smile. “Anyhow, Mary, the long and short of it is, I’ve got to produce right away or I’m sunk, irrevocably and irretrievably sunk.”
Mary Dodd said slowly, not looking at her companion, “And Steven doesn’t know, I presume. How much do you really have to have, Sara?”
Sara Hazard flicked ash from the gold embroidery clasping her white breast. “I’ve got to have the whole thousand, Mary.”
Mary Dodd said firmly, “It’s impossible, Sara. I haven’t got more than a few hundred in the bank and it will be a couple of weeks before my regular checks come in.”
Sara Hazard turned so that her face was fully illuminated by shafting brightness from a battery of lamps over the piano. Her nostrils were flaring. “Sweetness and light, aren’t you, Mary,” she drawled, “except when it conies to the draw. You can’t give me anything but love, baby.”
Miss Dodd flinched. She was white. She was about to make an angry rejoinder when a couple ambled in her direction followed by a tall man with a beard and a paper cap on. Cristie was glad she didn’t have to listen to any more. Bills, mountains of them apparently, and Steven didn’t know. What else was there that Steven didn’t know? But perhaps he did. Perhaps that was what he had meant when he said there were things he couldn’t tell her. Cristie shook out folds of white chiffon. Over and above the trouble Sara could still cause Steven, she didn’t like the complications that were cropping up, tangled threads whose ends she couldn’t see.
She turned instinctively in a movement toward escape. Two people blocked her way. As she edged around them, the voices of the two women outside followed her. Sara Hazard asked a question about “Cliff.” Cliff was the name of the man Miss Dodd’s niece, Kit Blaketon, was engaged to. Mary Dodd said something about the “Penobscott Club” and “eleven or twelve.”
Cristie was to recall that later. She danced with Euen and then with Johnny, spoke to Margot who looked rather pale in spite of fresh lipstick and rouge. Margot was tired.
Then she ran into Sara Hazard again, or rather didn’t run into her, because her place, the place of unseen observer, had been taken by someone else. Cristie was crossing the hall in the direction of her own bedroom for fresh powder when she turned the corner and stood still. Her bedroom door was open. Sara Hazard was seated at her desk. She was at the telephone. Her voice was low but the desk was close to the door and Cristie heard her say, “Penobscott Club?” And then she didn’t bear any more. Her attention changed its focus.
There was a girl standing between herself and Sara Hazard, a girl in green with flaming red hair. The girl was Kit Blaketon, Miss Dodd’s niece. Kit Blaketon’s face was hidden but there was no mistaking the tension, the stress in the slim body pressed against wall and door jamb. She was invisible from inside the room. She was listening to what Sara Hazard was saying over the telephone.
Cristie drew back, walked away, returned to the living room. She had only just reached it when she saw Sara Hazard leave the hall and go out into the foyer. She was wearing the gold jacket that was part of her gown but she had no wrap on. She had scarcely disappeared from view when the red-haired Kit Blaketon went through the foyer doors in turn. She was carrying a green velvet coat over her arm. Something about the girl’s swift progress suggested a stalking. Was she—could she possibly be trailing the other woman? Cristie watched the doors for some time. Neither of the two returned. She forgot them in her increasing tension about Steven.
It was getting late, he must know that she would be anxious, would be waiting. She exhorted herself to patience. There were a lot of things he might have to do. It wasn’t nearly midnight yet. The party was still in its first flight. The din was continuous. Cristie listened to the music for a while, had a scotch and soda with Euen Firth and heard an interminable story with some vague point which Euen didn’t seem to have quite clear.
The noise, the stir, the incessant merriment began to get on her nerves. They were raw and taut and the discord was like the rasping of a giant file. Her longing to see Steven, to know that he was all right, to know that everything was all right, was like thirst. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes were tired from the colored lights.
She evaded two partners, young friends of Margot’s, went out on the terrace and around to the far side. It was quieter there and cool and dim. She was leaning against the railing at the southern end with her back to the city below when she saw Sara Hazard enter Margot’s bedroom.
Sara Hazard went to Margot’s dressing table, put her purse down, took off the tight-fitting gold jacket, powdered her face, neck and arms and applied fresh lipstick. She scrutinized her face carefully in the mirror, retrieved the jacket and purse. It was a big, black velvet purse with gold corners and her monogram in gold on the front. Cristie thought she was going to leave the room but she didn’t.
The raised bed was loaded with wraps. Sara Hazard’s wasn’t among them. Her cape of summer ermine was thrown over a chair in a recess beyond the bed. She crossed to the recess, paused beside the chair and opened her purse.
Cristie stared. She straightened. The blood drained out of her face and from her heart.
Sara Hazard’s movements were swift. There was no mistaking them or the thing, the object, she removed from the purse and dropped into a capacious pocket of the ermine cape. Light from the lamp glinted on it as it disappeared from sight. It was a small, squat, black pistol.
Sara Hazard had a gun with her, a gun that she was shifting around, a gun that she didn’t want anyone to know about.
Chapter Three
No Longer There
Cristie didn’t know what to do. Margot
