by Rufus King
“A boiled icing,” he boomed, “the secret of which was divulged to me by a decrepit and utterly penniless countess from Vienna.”
Barry did his best to block him.
“I wonder whether you would let Mrs. Admont know that we are here?”
Blocked, Godfrey came to a standstill and looked down on this pest. He had been bothered by innumerable telephone calls during the day from reporters wanting interviews with the bridal couple, and had further ruined Alan’s reputation to a local correspondent of the Kingston Star who had called in person earlier in the afternoon. These two ganglings were, he now decided, another pair. He was sick of the lot of them.
“Christine,” he said, “has not yet come back from town, and Alan is upstairs asleep. I think he is in a stupor. I think he is drunk. You are another reporter? Well, right now I have not the time to repeat my impressions of that half-baked Hamlet. I am arranging petits fours. Come back again.”
Godfrey managed a by-pass toward the door and had almost reached it when the sound of an automobile horn was heard. It was a French horn, and the effect was one of an elegant chord in G.
“Wait!” Godfrey said. “There is Christine now. It is constitutionally impossible for her to arrive at this bat’s hangout without a fanfare and having the red carpet rolled out.”
He hurried from the room to welcome Christine, and Barry said: “Lida, I’m beginning to wonder.”
“About what, darling?”
“Whether it’s safe for you to stay here.”
“Barry, don’t be absurd.”
“It isn’t absurd. After all, the current incumbents are probably immune to walking illustrations out of Freud, but you’re not.”
“Darling, I’ll call you at the inn at the very first brandish of a carving knife.”
“Or the wave of a garrote?”
“Even the flick of one.”
“Dear, don’t look now, but here’s another. Probably Queen Victoria.”
Cordelia Banning was coming down the turret stairs. Cordelia was elderly, quite plump, and insatiably calm: the aunt type, with soft gray hair, smooth rosy cheeks, and almost moistly kind eyes. She became aware of Barry and Lida and said: “Good afternoon. I’m afraid we didn’t hear the door chimes. We never do. I’m Cordelia Banning. I did hear Christine’s car and came down to welcome her. Dear Christine, she loves to be welcomed.”
“I’m her grandniece, Miss Banning, Lida Belder.”
“Oh, my dear, welcome—Christine will be so happy.”
“This is Barry Vanbuskirk.”
They shook hands, and Christine swept into the room, flanked on either side by Godfrey and Hugo.
Christine was saying to Godfrey: “Honestly, why I live on this deserted roost for eagles heaven alone knows.” She spotted Lida and was, for a brief instant, jounced.
“Lida! Why, my dear—whatever on earth—” She clutched at her social wits and said: “I’m so glad to see you.”
“They are,” Godfrey announced with complete conviction, “two reporters from the capitalistic press.” Lida went to Christine and kissed her.
She said, “Tell him I’m nothing of the sort, Aunt Christine.”
“Dear, the only way to get along with Godfrey is to ignore him. But why aren’t you with Alice Vanbuskirk at Bar Harbor?”
“I was until they wired Barry yesterday that he would be inducted next week.”
Christine became conscious of the spindly and wiry-looking young man.
“Barry?”
“Alice Vanbuskirk’s brother, Aunt Christine.”
“But how nice!”
“How do you do, Mrs. Admont?” Barry said.
Christine offered her hand. “Mr. Vanbuskirk, not a thing makes sense, but I’m delighted you are here.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Admont.”
“The Catskills will depress you after Bar Harbor, but don’t let it throw you. When Charles bought this shattering little mountain peak several decades ago, he was obsessed by Joseph Jefferson’s portrayal of Rip Van Winkle. It took Belder Tor to get it off his chest.”
“But I think it’s terribly—impressive, Mrs. Admont.”
Hugo said thinly: “All major disasters are impressive.” Christine patted his arm.
“Hugo, how right you are.”
She introduced. She blazoned Hugo briefly as a genius at roentgenotherapy and Godfrey at painting, while Cordelia was cacheted as a dear, sweet friend. She was still trying to uncover some faint light as to this sudden encampment of Lida’s.
She said to Barry: “I suppose you had the usual difficulties over locating us in this wilderness?”
“Well, we did ask a dwarf for directions about ten miles back. All he could gibber was Dour Notch while his palsied finger practically boxed the compass.”
“Darling,” Lida said, “it wasn’t nearly as bad as that.” The light burst, and Christine speedily reviewed her knowledge of the Vanbuskirks: wealthy, on speaking terms with the Cabots, a governor, one embassy—not St. James, of course, but still an embassy. “‘Darling’?” she said. “After all, Lida, when you say ‘darling’—”
“I hate to spring this so suddenly, Aunt Christine, but Barry and I are engaged.”
“Enchanting!”
Lida hugged her.
“Then you don’t mind?”
“Mind! My dear child, you don’t know the relief”—Christine pulled herself together—“the relief it is to realize that this happiness has come to you.”
“It’s more than just an engagement, Mrs. Admont,” Barry said. “Lida and I want to get married before next Friday.”
“Friday?”
“That’s when I’m to be inducted. Lida brought me down here to put me on exhibition and ask your consent.”
“You will give it,” Lida said. “Won’t you, Aunt Christine?”
“Fervently. I married Charles at precisely your age, and he was perfectly able to endure it up to four years ago. Influenza. Friday—I must call up St. Thomas’s—”
“Lida and I thought we’d just settle for a justice of the peace, Mrs. Admont,” Barry said.
“Undoubtedly more sensible. There would hardly be time for anything else. I remember that Charles and I were married in Mullinville, Kansas, by a man who lisped. Are those your bags, Lida?”
“Yes, Aunt Christine.”
“Haven’t you any, Mr. Vanbuskirk?”
“I’m staying at the inn, Mrs. Admont. I left them on the way out.”
“So sorry. Hugo dear, do you mind taking Lida’s bags upstairs? Put them in the room next to Cordelia’s. I hope you don’t object to field mice, Lida. We reek with them.”
Hugo picked up the bags. He said: “This house is nothing short of a paradise for Frank Buck.” He went up the turret stairs.
Christine’s efficient eye settled on Cordelia. She suggested that Cordelia go up with Hugo and see that the room was put in shape. (“You don’t mind, do you, dear?”) She slid over Godfrey with the thought that it was time for him to be in the kitchen about dinner. She was herself beginning to feel somewhat exhausted from her active day. She eyed Youth biliously after Cordelia had gone and said: “Do sit down, children, or pour yourselves a drink or something.”
“I’m really due back at the inn, Mrs. Admont,” Barry said. “I arranged a little tea for Lida as our lunch was caught on the fly like a brass ring. I hoped you wouldn’t mind?”
“We’ve so much to plan Aunt Christine,” Lida said.
Christine pressed fingertips to her tired eyes.
“I can think of nothing more agreeable.”
“The food at that inn,” Godfrey boomed. “Inn? In that decalcomania for a Swiss chalet—would disgust a mink.”
“Godfrey,” Christine asked, “where is Alan?”
“He sleeps.”
“When do we dine?”
“At eight. We are having pheasant a la chasseur. Right now I ice the petits fours. You have had welcome enough.”
Godfrey left t
he room, and Christine said: “Bring Lida back in time for dinner, Barry, and you must join us too.”
“Thank you. Mr. Swain telephoned, Mrs. Admont. He is driving here to see you at seven.”
“Dear Stuyvesant!”
Well, Christine wondered, why don’t they go? She wanted to take off her things, to soak in a good warm tub, to relax. How awkward Youth was with partings. She heard Barry saying: “I hope you won’t think this odd, Mrs. Admont, but Friday is such a short time away—”
“I think nothing is odd, dear boy, except those things which fall within the bounds of reason.”
“It’s about Mother and Dad. They’re most anxious to meet you.”
“They’re coming down from Bar Harbor,” Lida said, “and Barry’s driving in to pick them up tomorrow, Aunt Christine.”
“You must bring them at once to Belder Tor. Luncheon—dinner—whenever they happen to arrive. I shall be delighted.”
“That’s awfully kind of you,” Barry said.
“Now run along, both of you. And I do hope you live through that tea at the inn.”
“Until dinner then, Aunt Christine,” Lida said.
“Be here for cocktails at half-past seven. Alan is working through a bar book I picked up several years ago at Cannes, and I think that tonight we’re due for Number Twenty-nine.”
CHAPTER V
Twilight fell on the sullen, overcast afternoon, and the light outside the french windows of the morning room became a vague chiaroscuro of morbid mauves, while the illumination of somber lamps did little to mitigate Belder Tor’s sepulchral atmosphere.
Cordelia came in carrying a small tray of canapés. She was a touch mellow, very happy, and she hummed a bar or two of Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” as she put the tray on the cellaret. Years ago (she refused to remember how many) it was thought that she had a voice, and Fraulein Bieblemann had taught the tune to her in that big, dear old house of Papa’s on Madison Avenue which was now the establishment of a haggard dealer in antiques.
She selected one of the canapés and ate it, then she poured a good shot of Christine’s delightful eight-year-old, hundred-proof scotch and downed it. She thought dreamily of Lida. Such a nice girl. Attractive and well-bred. Cordelia thought she would give her a present.
The telephone rang. Cordelia put down her empty glass and started leisurely toward the spinet desk. She had just picked up the set when Alan almost fell down the turret stairs in his haste to take the call. He thought it might be from Joe.
Alan felt fine. He had slept most of the afternoon and had wakened still very solidly enthroned in the Dumas tradition. Like the faintest mote on the background of his mind was the awareness that Christine was in the house and that the Dove, in his own ghostly time, would attend to her, and good. Alan had spoken with her briefly before starting to dress. He was in his shirt sleeves when the telephone had rung, and his tuxedo tie was still untied.
He all but snatched the receiver from Cordelia.
“I’ll take it, Cordelia.”
“Oh dear, I do hope Miss Belder and Mr. Vanbuskirk haven’t decided to linger at the inn.”
Alan said eagerly into the telephone: “Joe?” Evidently it wasn’t. His face fell. “Oh.”
“Godfrey has the pheasants in the oven,” Cordelia went on placidly, “and he’ll be furious if they’re overdone.”
“Please, Cordelia!” Alan returned to the phone. “Sorry, what was that? Mrs. Glendenning Vanbuskirk? Oh yes, Mrs. Vanbuskirk, this is the home of Mrs. Alan Admont, Belder Tor. Your son and Miss Belder ought to be here any minute. They had tea at the inn. Certainly. I’ll ask him to phone you at the Plaza as soon as he comes. Good-by.”
Alan hung up. He said: “It’s that Boston prig’s mother. She and his undoubtedly also-priggish old man are in New York at the Plaza. They want him to call them up.”
“No, Alan, Barry’s nice, and I think Lida is sweet. She reminds me of Cousin Janette before she married that impossible man from Troy. I am going to give her a present.”
Alan went over to the cellaret.
“How about a quick one, Cordelia?”
“You know I never touch a thing before cocktails, Alan.”
“And how! Straight?”
“Straight.”
Alan poured two shots and gave her one.
“Did you get Miss Belder’s room in shape?”
“Yes.” Cordelia downed the drink. “Mice.”
“Any rats?”
“No, just six mice. That poisoned wheat is marvelous.”
“Poison!” Alan was shocked momentarily bug-eyed into recalling the Dove. He found himself dramatizing Christine’s imminent death, in terms of the soundly cyanided mice. “I wonder if they suffer?”
“I doubt it, Alan. The wheat grains are such a lovely amethyst blue.”
“Even so.”
Alan inspected the ingredients which Cordelia had set out for the cocktails. Hugo came in on his way up to dress. He had been having a happy hour or two in the laboratory. Alan, who hadn’t seen him since he had driven Christine home, noted the trace of a smile on Hugo’s misanthropic face and was mildly astonished. It was so seldom that Hugo looked pleased.
“You must have had a pleasant day in town, old man,” Alan said.
“I did.” Hugo’s smile slid into the smug. “That is, it was pleasant after I dropped Christine at her lawyer’s.” Alan’s hand, holding the glass of scotch, gave a spasmodic jerk.
“What did she want with him, Hugo?”
“She didn’t say.”
A trickle of cold sifted across Alan’s satiny skin.
“Was she there long?”
“Oh, several hours.”
Obliquely, Hugo watched Alan stew. Serve the conceited young fool right (he thought) if she has changed her will. He went on up the turret stairs.
Alan absently finished his drink. He felt suddenly nervous. Had Joe been right in his contention for the need of haste? Had Christine changed her will with this unmannerly swiftness (treachery, when you came right down to it) and cut him off without a cent before the Dove could get in his ashen work? Had all of this promise of splendor come too late?
He felt like rushing in and choking the truth out of Christine. No, that would never do. He must dissemble. He must furiously exert his charms (his self-assurance that he would have no difficulty in doing so greatly calmed him) and win her into changing it back. And on the other hand, this could well be but a teapot tempest he was stirring up. She often dropped in to sting the old buzzard about her investments. He felt serene again.
Faintly, from the distant entrance hall, came the sound of a door chime.
“Must be the niece and the prig,” he said.
Alan ran up the turret stairs, fixing his tie as he went. Cordelia walked through a gloomy corridor to the entrance hall and opened the front door. Stuyvesant stood on the threshold.
“Good evening?” Cordelia said placidly.
“Good evening. I telephoned Mrs. Belder—Mrs. Admont—I find it impossible even to say that name! Anyhow, has she returned here as yet from the city? I am Stuyvesant Swain.”
Cordelia closed the front door.
“Oh yes, Christine speaks about you so often, Mr. Swain.”
“I can well imagine in what terms.”
“I’m Cordelia Banning.”
Stuyvesant accepted a soft, dimpled hand.
“Miss Banning. Would you be good enough to let Christine know that I am here?”
“Of course. Do come into the morning room. It’s the only room in the house we ever use.”
Stuyvesant put his hat and gloves on a console near the door. He shuddered, as he had always shuddered, at the suits of armor. Charley certainly had had the damnedest taste. He followed Cordelia into the morning room, where she left him and went into Christine’s suite.
Nothing much, Stuyvesant decided, had changed. It had been years since he had been here. Since before Charley’s death. But oh, good God, yes. He stood h
ypnotized before Christine’s portrait.
Godfrey came in, carrying a steaming saucepan. Godfrey was pleased to see this well-dressed and expensive-looking stranger admiring his portrait.
“Do you like it?” Godfrey boomed. “It is my best.”
“It’s a—woman, isn’t it?”
“It is Christine.”
“You could be right at that.”
“Where is Cordelia?”
“She went in there.”
“Tell her when she comes out there will be time for one cocktail apiece. No more.” Godfrey gave Stuyvesant a thoroughly menacing glower and said as he left the room, “Pheasants—a la chasseur!”
Stuyvesant, although scarcely surprised, did his best to orient himself in what he honestly considered to be a maniacal ménage. He raised his eyes to heaven and murmured, “Poor Charley!” as Christine came in with Cordelia.
Christine, very stunning in a simple and expensive dinner gown, gave him both her hands.
“Dear Stuyvesant! You are just in time for cocktails. Tonight we are due for Number Twenty-nine.”
“Number Thirty, Christine,” Cordelia said. “We had Twenty-nine last night. I remember the recipe—absinthe, brandy, and a dash of something which Hugo insisted was attar of Gila monster.”
Stuyvesant said with considerable force: “Christine, a large maniac just burst through that door and told me to tell you we would only have time for one apiece. And thank God.”
“That was Godfrey. Do find Alan, Cordelia, and say that any time now.”
“He is just finishing dressing.”
Cordelia went up the turret stairs.
Stuyvesant pressed a chastely monogrammed handkerchief to his brow. Godfrey’s bravura had shaken him more than he had cared to admit.
He said, “Christine, I cannot begin to tell you the shock it was to me when I telephoned and found that you hadn’t reached Belder Tor.”
“But I must have, darling, almost immediately after.” Stuyvesant went to the spinet desk and, taking a legal document from his pocket, spread it out. He took out his fountain pen and tested it.
“After you left,” he said, “it was thought best to make a slight alteration in one of the clauses. It requires your initials. To a measure I was glad of it, as it gave me an excuse to drive up and see with my own eyes that you were safely home, and to assure myself that you had spiked that young reptile’s fangs by telling him about the annuity. You have, of course?”