“Get a plate. Something tells me that you won’t be popular if you use that pewter,” she protested as he took two pieces from the dresser.
“The best is none too good for this party. What shall I do next?”
“Put them on the table. Lay a slice of toast on each one. Now spread it lightly with the anchovy paste from the tube—not too much! That’s right. Get the forks.”
She heaped fluffly yellow mixture on the toast, shook paprika over it till it blushed rosily.
“There! Isn’t that fit for the gods?” She poured boiling water into the teapot, peeled off the voluminous apron, seated herself in the chair he held for her. He smiled as he sat opposite.
“You are domestic, are—ain’t you? Your cheeks are pink; your eyes are—kinder sparklin’; you look’s though you were havin’ the time of your life.” He tasted the egg. “Say, you’re a swell cook!”
Sandra laughed as she filled a cup. His English had threatened to slip back to normalcy. She felt absurdly lighthearted. “I’m good—I hate to talk about myself, but I’m good,” she boasted theatrically. “If I fade-out as a social secretary, I can cook.”
“I’ll—I’ll bet Mr. Hoyt would take you on here.”
Sandra stiffened. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t care to work for your Mr. Hoyt.”
Nanny O’Day appeared at the hall door with a dog on each side of her. They defied the spitting cat and charged at the man who had risen from his chair, thumped forepaws on his shoulders, and tried to reach his face with their rough red tongues.
“Well, Mr. Nick. Why didn’t you let me know you were back? I’ve been taking messages for you on the phone till I’m beat out,” the woman explained reproachfully.
“Mr. Nick!” Sandra repeated in an incredulous whisper.
Nanny O’Day babbled on like a brook. “Certain, certain. Sure an’ it’s nice you two young people eatin’ eggs together sociable like. I told you Mr. Nicholas liked to take a bite here in my kitchen, my dear.”
“Yes, I remember.” Fury crisped Sandra’s voice. Nicholas Hoyt must be vastly amused at her gullibility, or did he think that she had known who he was and was just one more hound on the trail? She would show him!
“I didn’t realize that it was so late, Nanny O’Day; I must be going. I left my jacket in the living room.”
“Down boys!” Hoyt pushed the dogs away, and with an authoritative “Stay here!” to the chunky little woman, followed Sandra into the living room with Bud and Buddy at his heels.
“I can’t let you go like this, Miss Duval. Let me explain.”
“I won’t listen to explanations.”
“Oh yes, you will. Having walked of your own accord into the lion’s den, you’ll hear what the lion has to say in explanation.”
He held her knit jacket. She thrust her arms into the sleeves. She responded to his darkly intent eyes with defiant amusement.
“Did you think that you had fooled me with your English? A hint of servility in the ‘Miss,’ a double negative here and there, an occasional crude phrasing to add verity to the whole; that I was so stupid that I would not realize that ‘I do set my bow in the clouds’ was out of character, that I didn’t know when I gave you that money that you were bluffing? I wasn’t quite bright enough, however, I never suspected who you were. I thought you a gentleman turf man out of luck. Why waste such God-given talent on me?”
He backed against the mantel with its tall carved pilasters. He had not the air of a man whose home and fortune were threatened; he had the manner of a conquering hero. His silence infuriated Sandra.
“You have mistaken your vocation. To think that such a star actor should be lost in a mere banker! Why did you keep up the deception? Why did you forbid Curtis Newsome to tell me who you were that day at the paddock?”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He did not, but being ordinarily intelligent, I can put two and two together.”
“Can you? Then you ought to be able to figure out why I didn’t want you to know who I was—for a while. Mrs. Pat hasn’t given me too good a reputation, has she? You needn’t answer. I know.”
He was maddeningly cool and authoritative. She might have known from what she had heard of him that Nicholas Hoyt would be like that. There was something in his eyes when they met hers which made her curiously shivery. Anger, of course, but anger never had affected her so before. Would she ever forget that behind his respectful gravity he must have been convulsed with mirth when he had accepted that money? Hadn’t she been laughing too? He had been laughing at her this very afternoon. She hated being made ridiculous.
“How did you happen to come to Seven Chimneys? Who sent you?” Hoyt demanded.
“Who sent me? What do you mean? Don’t you know that—”
“Just a minute!”
He picked up the phone in answer to a ring.
“Nicholas Hoyt speaking.”
Was this another lady-hound on his trail? Sandra coughed back a nervous giggle. She watched him in fascinated interest, saw two sharp lines cut between his brows, before she realized that this was her chance to slip away.
“Hulloa, Blanche! Wait!”
He caught her hand and held her. She had wondered what his hands would be like; now she knew. Wellshaped, beautifully cared for, strong. Though his hold was light, it was uncompromising. Of course she could break away, but why gratify him by making a scene? She waited, apparently passive, as he talked.
“No, I didn’t mean you, Blanche.… Dinner tomorrow? Can’t.… You have? … Sure, I like ’em blonde.… Does it? I’ve turned over a new leaf; perhaps my voice shows it. I’ve been taking the thing too seriously.… Well, if you do, others don’t like me that way.… Make it the day after and I’ll come.… Okay! Good-bye!”
He released Sandra’s hand as he laid the phone on its stand.
“You weren’t playing fair to make a break for freedom when I was busy.”
“Don’t flatter yourself that you kept me. I remembered your suspicion. Don’t you know that your own partner, Mr. Damon, sent me here?”
“Yes, but did he know that you and Philippe Rousseau were old friends?”
Sandra never had met eyes so cold, so intent. She felt the color rush to her hair. Apparently Mr. Damon had not told Nicholas Hoyt of his friendship with her father. Neither had he told Mrs. Pat. What had been back of his reticence? She relented:
“Why should he tell you? He didn’t know. Believe it or not, I never was so surprised in my life as when Philippe turned and faced me in the library at Seven Chimneys.”
He sat on the corner of the flat desk and folded his arms. Sandra felt like a criminal before a judge.
“And yet Rousseau told Langdon that he had talked the matter of the inheritance over with your father before he came.”
“Philippe told him that! Well, if he did, I suppose it’s true—but it would be wasting breath to tell you again that I never heard of it. You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’m not so sure about that. It’s more important to know whether you believe Rousseau’s story.”
Sandra did not answer. He paced the floor as if inaction were impossible.
“You can’t! Look here, do you think I’m such a poor stick that I wouldn’t have been glad to have Uncle Mark’s son come into his own? He would have been my cousin, almost like a brother; I’ve never had any one young—belong to me. I can’t tell you why, but the moment I saw Rousseau I knew that he was a fake. Oh, I grant that he has plastered his claim with all the trappings appropriate to such a situation—old, old scars of burns on his shoulders; ‘The strange and haunting barrier which always stood between him and the woman he had thought his mother’; ‘Veiled suggestions from her as to the marvelous fortune which should be his’; ‘Hints of what might happen if parents were to emerge from the mists of a far country and claim him as their son.’—All that bologny, thank God, isn’t evidence; it is merely one of those difficulties in litigation which the ingenuity of the bar is supposed
to overcome. He is no more Mark Hoyt’s son than—than Jed Langdon is. It’s a racket!”
Sandra felt as if she had been snatched up in a cloudburst of concentrated fury, and as suddenly dropped. Was Philippe a fraud? How could she be so disloyal? She said hurriedly:
“Speaking of impersonations, why the pretense that day at the station?”
“Damon had phoned that he was sending a secretary, that I’d better look her over. We had made sure that Rousseau had heard of the advertisement; it would give him a chance to get in an ally.”
“Why are you so determined to believe Philippe dishonest?”
He ignored her indignation.
“With a claimant to the property and a strange horse here to compete in the Charity Races, we are not taking chances. I had to know what sort of secretary was coming to Seven Chimneys. After I got started, you were so patronizing—I expected at any moment you would call me ‘My good man’—that it began to be corking fun, and I tried to see how good I could be.”
“You were good, but not too good. And all the time you were laughing at me. Was the chauffeur’s failure to meet me prearranged?”
“Just a minute! I wasn’t laughing at you; I was having fun with myself. As to Dan, he is a friend of mine. He still believes me the rightful heir.”
“I suppose taking that money was the peak of the—to you—humorous situation.”
“Not the peak, rather the foundation of a situation which something tells me may not be humorous. I carry that bill here.” He put his hand over his breast pocket. “I may need it—if I lose my inheritance.”
Did the gravity of his voice mean that he feared that Philippe Rousseau might win? “I must go. I hadn’t forgotten that you had forbidden any one of the Seven Chimneys’ outfit to step foot on your place, but Mrs. Pat is away for a day, and I had to see this adorable house.”
“You’re not alone at Seven Chimneys with Rousseau?”
“It could hardly be called ‘alone’ with sixteen servants and Mrs. Carter, could it?”
“I forgot them. You—you don’t like me, do you?”
“Mad about you. What an ornament to your times!”
Her tone darkened his face with color. “You were friendly enough before you knew who I was. We’ll let that ride—for the present. Glad to know that you exercise Bud and Buddy. I used to take them out—they were my uncle’s pets—but when Mrs. Pat married Newsome, they remained at Seven Chimneys and I—came here.”
Was the emotion in his voice real or a theatric touch to gain her sympathy? Whichever it was, she didn’t like him, she told herself; they had been antagonistic the first time they met—the kitchen episode had been but a truce. To bridge the disturbing pause, she explained lightly:
“The dogs have taken me to their hearts. Usually when I go up in the evening I find them waiting at my door. Bridie, the chambermaid, knows that I love them, so she sneaks them up to keep me company. They sleep on the two balconies. Something tells me that Huckins the butler, who is my idea of what the devil might be in his lighter moments, would spray forked blue fire from his long, sinister fingers if he caught the three B’s on their way up. I asked Mrs. Pat if she objected, and she said that if any one could make up to them for missing—”
“Go on, you needn’t spare my feelings; I realize that she had already slammed Nick Hoyt to you. I am not a jealous person—at least in regard to dogs. I am glad they are crazy about you; they are—they are a protection.”
“Alas, it isn’t all devotion; I keep a box of candy for them.”
“There’s that infernal phone. Be a sport; don’t go until I answer.
“Nicholas Hoyt speaking.… When did you get back, Gladys? … Nope. No! … Haven’t a free evening this week.… Another visiting girl! The woods are full of them.… Sure, I like ’em dark.… Can’t make it. Good-bye!”
He was frowning as he laid down the phone. His expression roused a little demon in Sandra. She hummed:
“The hounds are on the trail,
The hounds are on the trail—”
“What are you singing?”
“Was I singing? You really should have a secretary.”
“Will you take the job?”
“Sorry, but ‘I ain’t got the education.’ ”
He reddened. “You haven’t forgiven me for that fool trick, have you?”
“I hate being laughed at.”
She was uncomfortably aware of him as he followed her through the hall with the dogs at his heels. At the door he demanded abruptly:
“So you believe that Rousseau is really Philip Hoyt?”
She deliberated—she hoped maddeningly, he was so dictatorial.
“Isn’t it possible? He has charm, he has the grand seigneur manner. Il y a toujours la manière. He has everything to make him an ideal master of this great estate.”
She was a little frightened after she had said it. The eyes looking down at her blazed in a white face.
“Which is a lot of hooey any way you look at it. You’re not thinking of marrying him, are you?”
“Marry him!” Sandra changed the pitch of her voice from angry scorn to amused tolerance. “Who can tell? The day has gone by when one plots the curve of one’s matrimonial future.”
“I suppose you are all for the modern jumping-off-in-the-dark method, now that divorce has dropped to the nickle-in-a-slot class. As you are such a partisan of Rousseau, I’ll give you something to think of. You believe in him, don’t you? Well, you’re going to believe in Nicholas Hoyt and—like it.”
CHAPTER IX
“Miss Duval assured you that there were no sentimental entanglements? That’s your phrase, not mine,” Nicholas Hoyt reminded.
Back to the mantel in the firelighted living room at Stone House, he frowned thoughtfully at Ben Damon in the big red chair. The elder man fitted the square-tipped fingers of both hands carefully together as he regarded his questioner from under shaggy brows.
“She did. So emphatically that I believed her.”
“Then what do you make of her friendship with Rousseau? It couldn’t be coincidence that she came to the very house that cagey Kentuckian is claiming. He must have put her on to that advertisement for a social secretary.”
“Don’t growl, Nick. It wasn’t coincidence. I haven’t told you, for reasons that do not concern you, that her father was a boyhood friend of mine and your uncle’s—you’ve heard of Jimmy Duval, one of the Three Musketeers of Melton, haven’t you?”
Laughter banished gravity from Nicholas Hoyt’s eyes. “And then some. He was the leader of the gang, wasn’t he? I was brought up on their escapades. Next to the ghost episode my favorite is the time they filled the gardener’s hip boots with water.”
Damon chuckled. “I’ve been round the world some since, but I never have heard a more colorful peroration than that man’s when he put his foot into the boot. It was Jimmy’s idea. He certainly had an imagination. Those were the days—but to get back to his daughter. I had seen Jim from time to time abroad and when he came over here, but never had met the girl. When I saw her, I thought her an ideal person for Mrs. Pat and engaged her.”
The white angora cat stalked into the room. She sprang into Damon’s lap, settled into the curve of her orange tail, folded her forepaws under her snowy breast, and regarded Nicholas with inscrutable topaz eyes. Damon stroked her fluffy back.
“Of course I hadn’t a suspicion that Sandra Duval ever had seen or heard of Rousseau. I had a talk with her the other day and got the whole story—much—much more than she realized she was telling.”
Nicholas rapped the tobacco from his pipe and refilled it. “Go on. What did she say? Don’t you realize that any information about this Peerless Pretender—Estelle struck it when she dubbed Rousseau that—is of vital importance to me?”
“Take it easy, Nick! Take it easy! It seems that last year while the Duvals were in London, Rousseau presented a letter of introduction. As he had brought over a couple of racers, Jim was interested at
once. The crafty Philippe—crafty is my word, not hers—encouraged the invalid to talk of his boyhood days here, of Mark Hoyt and the tragedy of the burned child, but never mentioned the reason of his interest.”
“Sounds probable, doesn’t it?”
“You’ve seen Sandra Duval. Do you think she’d lie to me?”
Nicholas crossed to the lattice window and looked out upon the garden border. The slanting sun was tinting leaves and blossoms with red gold. “No, I don’t, but we can’t get away from the fact that they are both at Seven Chimneys, that she believes in his claim, she admitted as much to me. I’d like to punch his head! When this case is settled, I will, no matter which way it goes.”
“So that’s it, is it?” In his excitement Damon pulled the cat’s ear. She promptly scratched him and he as promptly dumped her on the floor.
“What’s ‘it’?”
“Nothing, nothing, just mumbling to myself. Don’t wonder you’re on edge, boy, with this fight coming on.”
“You are still convinced that the diary is forged, aren’t you, B.D.?”
“I’m convinced that Anne Pardoe Rousseau left enough of a diary so that, as he read, a great idea was born in the tricky mind of her son. He would be the dead Philip, if there were property enough to make it pay. He wouldn’t have tried it had your Uncle Mark been living. I’ll bet that Jim Duval was not the only Melton old-timer with whom Rousseau got in touch. He was bright enough to steer clear of me.”
“How can we prove the diary a fake without a word in Anne Pardoe’s writing with which to compare it? Didn’t the expert say that the genuine and disputed writing should be put close together for comparison, to interpret the similar or different characteristics? Uncle Mark must have had slews of letters while she was taking care of the boy. Where are they? We’ve held off court proceedings while we searched. Experts are to examine Rousseau’s evidence three weeks from now and we haven’t a scrap of paper with which to prove him a liar. Where are those letters?”
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