style="font-size:15px;"> “Oh, look,” exclaimed Sybil, pointing toward an adjoining room, its doorway hung in heavy crimson. “Roulette! I adore roulette.”
“Better not adore it tonight,” said Tim. “We’re almost broke.”
Sybil didn’t seem to hear him. She was staring with wide, excited eyes at the crowded roulette table. Then she turned to him and said, “I’ve got to spend a penny first. I’ll meet you at the bar.”
She slipped away into the crowd, leaving him with a sudden sense of panic lest he lose her. He looked around for the other couple, but they apparently had seen some people they knew and drifted off. A drink, he thought, might help him shake off this feeling of being on the edge of a maelstrom, and he threaded his way to the bar. The bartender fixed him a Scotch and soda, picked up the dollar Tim laid on the wet mahogany and said, “Thanks for the tip. The drink’ll be two fifty.”
Tim sipped the whisky, trying to get his money’s worth of pleasure out of it, and stared across the room, wondering from what direction Sybil would come. Then he saw her and blinked. She was carrying something, something decidedly large. For a second, it looked like a coffin, then it looked like a door. It was a door, he discovered as he hurried toward her, a green-painted, wooden, slotted door.
“Look at this bloody thing,” said Sybil. “Absolute gimcrack.”
“I’m sure it is, dear,” said Tim in bewilderment, “but why have you got it?”
“I wanted to show it to you.”
“Why?”
“Because I seem to have broken it, and she wants ten dollars for it.”
“Who wants ten dollars for it?”
“She does.”
For the first time Tim was aware of somebody chirping at his elbow. It was a woman, small and middle-aged, who might have looked motherly in different circumstances. Just then, she looked stepmotherly. “She walks right into the powder room, she does,” this small woman was saying, “and rips this door right off its hinges.”
“They open the other way in England,” said Sybil.
“I don’t care how they open in England,” said the small woman. “How would you feel, mister, if somebody walked into your powder room and tore a door right off its hinges?”
“I’d remind myself that the customer is always right,” said Tim.
“You’d expect the customer to pay, though, wouldn’t you, right or wrong?”
“Right or wrong, my customer,” said Tim.
“Anyway,” interrupted Sybil, “you wouldn’t expect the customer to pay ten dollars. Not for a bit of gingerbread like this. I offered her two. All I had.”
“All you had?” repeated Tim. “In that case, I’m afraid—”
“Hey, what the hell’s going on here?” snapped a voice behind him. Tim turned and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in a tightly stretched dinner jacket, a man with blue-black jowls and no forehead to speak of.
Sybil said coldly, “Careful of your language, fellow.”
The big man blinked as if she had struck him on the chin with a fan. His thick lips curled slightly. “I said what the hell’s going on, and that’s what I mean.”
The small woman started to explain. “Okay, pay the ten bucks,” said the big man, “and then get your fanny the hell out of here.”
He could hardly have known that fanny is considered much more offensive in England than in America, but even if he had he could hardly have expected the stinging slap that Sybil planted on his blue-black cheek. He took a dazed step backward, then hunched toward her like an enraged great ape. Tim grabbed at his arm. Under the soft sleeve it felt like an iron bar.
Another voice, to Tim’s frank relief, joined the colloquy. “Easy, Jake,” said the new voice. It belonged to a short, cheerful man in his fifties, with smooth gray hair, a clipped gray mustache, and alert blue eyes. Unlike Jake, he wore his evening clothes as if he was used to them and liked them.
Jake didn’t turn immediately. He looked as if he might be counting ten, then he looked around with a petulant expression. “Okay,” he said, “but you know the powder room’s a concession and I can’t afford no trouble over it.”
“The difficulty with Jake,” the gray-haired man said pleasantly to Tim and Sybil, “is that he can’t get it through his Neanderthal skull that his clientele includes ladies and gentlemen.”
“Ladies!” said Jake. “Did you see her sock me?”
“Ladies can be quite as high-spirited, Jake, as the trulls you associate with. This particular lady, unless I’m much mistaken, spells it with a capital L.” He smiled at Sybil and said, “You are the Lady Sybil Hastings, are you not?”
Tim blinked at the gray-haired man and then at Sybil. Sybil was blinking, too, then a slow, almost sheepish smile crossed her face. “Well, yes,” she said, “but I’ve tried awfully hard to live it down. The Lady part, I mean.”
Tim gaped. “For Pete’s sake,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me?”
Sybil shrugged. “Nonessential,” she said. “And a lot of rot, into the bargain. In any event,” she went on, turning back to the gray-haired man, “I’m Mrs. Tim Ludlow now. This is Mr. Tim Ludlow.”
“Charmed,” said the gray-haired man.
“But how in the world did you know?” asked Sybil. “Do you read the Tatler?”
“Occasionally. It so happens, however, that I had the pleasure of meeting you a good many years ago. When you hadn’t been long out of pigtails. It was on a Mediterranean cruise. Remember?”
“Of course I remember,” cried Sybil excitedly. “And now I remember you. You were the jolly American who used to play bridge with Daddy.”
“Quite so. I might add that I was extremely fond of—of the late Earl.” He lowered his voice a trifle. “His death was a severe blow to me.”
He and Sybil were both silent for a moment, while Tim stared from one to the other.
Then the gray-haired man, speaking more cheerfully, as if to indicate that the solemnities had been duly observed, said, “I must confess that I had the advantage of you. There was a bit in this morning’s paper about you and your fellow brides’ arrival. Or should I say sister-brides?”
“Sisters under the skin,” said Sybil.
The gray-haired man smiled. “It occurred to me,” he went on, “that you might possibly appear in this checkered establishment. Your father was a great one for the old Four Hundred Club, and this is its nearest New York equivalent.”
“Tim, darling,” said Sybil, “this is something wonderful. More wonderful than you dream. I propose we observe the occasion with a bottle of bubbly.”
Tim coughed.
