She wasn’t, aware that she spoke until she heard her own voice with its forlorn attempt at steadiness.
“What did she say, Steve?”
Steven said in that same harsh monotone, “I put it up to her as soon as I left you this afternoon. I offered her practically everything. She refused. She laughed. She told me not only that she wouldn’t give me a divorce, but that she was going to South America with me.”
Cristie’s grip on the iron railing tightened. “And you, Steven? Are you going through with it? Are you going away?”
“Yes.”
His voice changed, thickened. He put his hand on her shoulder fumblingly. She shivered, didn’t move as he continued, “There’s nothing else to do. I’ve got to get away, Cristie. If I stay in New York and you’re here—I wouldn’t be able to stand it. No. Unless…”
Every instinct within Cristie cried out to her to complete that sentence, to throw Sara aside, treat her as though she didn’t exist, fling her out of the way. The temptation was there, an almost overwhelming temptation. She couldn’t do it. Something deep, elemental, held her back.
“No,” she whispered. “No, Steve.”
Steven’s hand fell from her shoulder. He said quietly, “Then this is good-bye.”
Good-bye! The night rocketed into a thousand pieces. Cristie was alone in the middle of a spinning darkness. Anguish shook her, immense, unbearable. She tried to call out. Her throat was sealed.
Steven’s voice came to her dimly, from a long distance off. He was saying, “If it’s got to be, Cristie, let it be fast.” He went on talking. There was something about a ship, a ship that sailed on Monday. Monday—and this was Saturday. All that Cristie knew was that Steven mustn’t leave her like this. He mustn’t! She wrenched herself dear of chaos, turned.
Steven was no longer there. He was crossing the terrace with quick strides. He went through the glass doors. Had he misinterpreted her silence? She had to see him again, if only for a moment, to tell him the truth, tell him she loved him and would always love him, no matter what happened or how much distance separated them.
She started after him. The hall was crowded. She collided with people. They kept getting in her way. She was forced to a halt near the entrance to the dining room. Steven was standing less than twenty feet away. He was talking to someone. Who was it? Oh, Mary Dodd and Johnny. Johnny left them. Steven looked dreadful. Mary Dodd’s face wore a frown of concern. He went on talking to her. Mary Dodd looked frightened. She laid a hand on his arm, interrupting him. Steven shook her hand off. He swung, strode round a bank of azaleas and went into the living room.
Was he looking for his wife? At the thought of them together, weakness swam up around Cristie. She leaned against the door frame.
Then she saw Steven again. He was going into Margot’s bedroom. He was only there for a moment, came out with his hat in his hand. Had he left his hat in Margot’s room? Most of the men had put their things in the study. Cristie’s heart took a queer little sideways slip.
When she reached the spot where she had last seen him, Steven was gone. The fear was there in her then, vague, formless, unacknowledged. It steadied into deadly close-pressing certainty when she paused beside the chair in the recess beyond the bed on the far side of Margot’s room and lifted Sara Hazard’s cape of summer ermine. Again and again she sent her fingers exploring. She shook out the snowy folds. She looked on the seat of the chair, under the chair, on the gray felting, all around.
Steven had been in the room. He had no business there. Sara Hazard had dropped a gun into the pocket of her cape earlier that night. The gun was gone. And so was Steven.
Chapter Four
Through the Railing
It was a little after one when Steven Hazard left the St. Vrain penthouse. It was almost a quarter of two before Cristie went to the telephone.
She made herself face facts coldly. The square, black automatic that Sara Hazard had parked in her cape was no longer there. Steven was gone and Steven was in a dangerous frame of mind. His coolness, his detachment, his judgment had been scattered to the four winds by the events of the afternoon and evening. Anything might happen now. Anything. Cristie had to do something. The time for inaction was past. She had to locate Steven, get the pistol away from him and make him listen to reason.
Violence wasn’t an answer to anything. The idea of it, and of what it would mean, was unthinkable. In spite of the dark shadow hanging over her, her clarity had returned. She saw things again in focus, objectively. She knew there was only one course to pursue.
Give Steven time to get home, if he was going home, and try there first. Don’t think any further than that yet, one step at a time. It would take him anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to get to the apartment in Franklin Place. As long as Sara Hazard was in the penthouse there was no real cause for worry.
When she reached her bedroom the telephone was in use. A large, dark, masterful woman was talking endlessly to someone named Mabel about a baby’s bottle and a two o’clock feeding. It was just before two when Cristie slipped into the place the large, dark woman had vacated after closing the door behind her. Cristie looked around, then took the receiver off the hook.
She dialed the number of Steven’s Franklin Place apartment. A voice answered. It wasn’t Steven. It was the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice.
Cristie said, “Is Mr. Hazard there? Has he arrived yet?”
And the maid answered, “No, Mr. Hazard isn’t here. Who is this calling? Is there any message?”
Cristie couldn’t see the emotion evoked by the sound of her round young voice, but a little stab of terror went through her when the maid continued smoothly, “Would this be Miss Lansing?” How did the woman know her name? She had never been at the Franklin Place apartment. But Steven might have called her from there after their first meeting. Cristie had an inkling then that the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice, knew about herself and Steven. She wasn’t to realize until later how much the maid knew about everything. She hung up without answering.
If Steven wasn’t at the Franklin Place apartment, where was he? She pushed the inertia of helplessness from her. She couldn’t go searching all over New York for him; to intercept him was her only chance, to intercept him before he and Sara met again. The point of interception had to be the apartment on Franklin Place.
It was getting late. Sara Hazard would be returning there in a short while. Steven would go back eventually. She had to get hold of him first. The crowd was beginning to thin, but there were still a lot of people milling around, laughing and talking and drinking and dancing.
She went back into her bedroom. No time to change now. She slipped into a black velvet evening coat with wide velvet sleeves, tied a black silk scarf over her head. Not the front door, she didn’t want to attract attention. She left the penthouse by way of the side terrace and the service elevator.
The service entrance debouched on the pavement thirty feet from the front door of the apartment house. Cristie mounted a small flight of steps. Madison lay to the west, Park to the east. The street was dark, deserted. There were no cabs in sight.
She was about to step out and start toward Park Avenue when she stood still. The doors of the main entrance
