The impact of sound was immediate, in spite of an apparent effort to contain the noise by means of draperies and soft carpets. Around the tables for roulette, chemin-de-fer—“chemmy,” as Dacia called it—blackjack and other games, Alicia’s elegantly dressed clientele played with the casual air of well-mannered people. Those of London’s swinging social set who frequented the better casinos were well-to-do, and not especially young. Gambling at such places was not for the impecunious. The croupiers were properly suave, their calls low-voiced, their manners impeccable.
A great deal of richly elegant red and deep gold had been used about this lower room, abetted by the clever use of mirrors. Nothing was strident in the manner of Las Vegas, and this seemed, on the surface at least, a totally different world. Even the lighting, focused effectively above the tables where it mattered most, carried a pinkish tinge that was flattering to the women.
Several attendants and some of the guests spoke to Justin, and where it was necessary, he presented me as Mrs. North. For the moment I was his wife, yet I did not know where we were going, or what he might intend. I took each step with care and asked no questions.
As we made our way through the room toward the stairway at the rear I looked about for Marc, but did not see him in the main room. We stopped at none of the gaming tables but went immediately upstairs. While the club served no suppers, since Mayfair was filled with fine restaurants, there were small tables scattered about this upper room, where guests might sit and order something to drink. Again, deep crimson had been used lavishly in walls and floor coverings, with the white of table linen furnishing an accent of contrast. In the center of the room the open oval, railed in red velvet, overlooked the gaming area below. Here tables stood close to the rail, where one might look down through the opening at the play and players beneath.
Justin moved toward a particular table, and I saw that Alicia and Marc sat opposite each other next to the rail, apparently engaged in tense conversation. Tonight she made a striking figure with her high-piled golden hair threaded with silver ribbon. The silver-satin sheath she wore beneath cloud-gray chiffon was slashed down the front with a vivid zigzag of pink-and-yellow lightning in a mod design. Her bare white shoulders were rounded as the contours of Grecian marble and she looked altogether beautiful, but for once I attempted no comparison between Alicia and me. Whatever I was must be a compound of my own faults and virtues, my own style and manner—even my own ability to grow.
As Marc bent toward Alicia, I saw that his face was flushed, his eyes a bright blue, and I knew he must have been drinking for some time. He saw us before she did and stared with a look which bore me nothing but animosity. In Alicia’s face there was obvious strain, a tightening about her eyes and mouth which she tried to erase when she looked up and saw Justin. For me—though my presence there must have disturbed her—she had only a stiff smile. I felt quite calm and ready for the subtly scathing little remarks at which she was so adept.
She held out her hand to Justin and tried to draw him into a chair beside her, but he would not sit down.
“I’d like to talk with you,” he said, sounding formal and stiff.
She rose at once and her alarm was evident. “Of course,” she said in her light, English voice. “In my office, if you like.”
There would be no encounter between us after all. This was a frightened woman, a woman disarmed, and therefore all the more dangerous. Open conflict would be easier to face. I seated myself at the table across from Marc feeling like a warrior who has just been told there will be no battle and he can go home to bed. Or was it only that styles of warfare changed and the battle would now continue in a different way and on different grounds, leaving me still unprepared?
Marc ordered the vermouth I asked for, but I hardly spoke to him. I leaned an arm on the velvet rail and watched the animated scene below. All of me was waiting—arrested until Justin finished his talk with Alicia and I could know the outcome. From where I sat I was able to see the door through which they had disappeared, and little else interested me.
Marc was more voluble as he regarded the gaming tables below us with unconcealed resentment.
“They’ve barred me from the play downstairs,” he said, disbelief in his voice. “I’m not to be allowed at the tables tonight!”
I brought myself back from breathless waiting. “Isn’t that natural with a new owner? Considering what you owe the club?”
He gave me a surprised look. “What have you heard? Do you know who has bought the club?”
I shook my head. I had no intention of betraying Dacia as my source of information.
“You might as well know,” I went on, “that I’ve told Justin how serious your debts are. He should have been informed before this. There’s been too much held back that is really his concern.”
Marc’s flush faded to a sickly pallor. “What an absolute fool you are! Are you trying to destroy him?”
“Aren’t you doing pretty well at that? Perhaps he needs to be put in a better position to defend himself.”
“Justin always comes out on top,” Marc said. “He always has. So far.”
I did not like the sound of that. Our drinks came, but we did not toast each other. I tasted my vermouth and thought about Justin. One step at a time, as Dacia had said. I must hold to that.
The intensity of Marc’s dislike for me was almost tangible tonight. It made me remember the roughness of his hands that night on the roof. But nothing could happen to me in this place. It was only necessary not to be alone with him when others were not around.
“It was clever of you,” he said without warning, “to have an enlargement made of that picture you took near the old ruins.”
I must have gaped at him, for he recovered himself enough to smile with something of his old mockery.
“What luck for me that I happened on Nellie when she went to fetch it for you,” he said. “Though you mustn’t blame Nellie. She didn’t want to give it up to me. I’m afraid I annexed it, rather. Interesting, that picture. Odd that you should have happened on the fellow so close to the time when that wall toppled over on poor Old Daniel.”
This was a thoroughly disturbing turn of events.
“Then you know who is in the picture?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Couldn’t make a thing of it—what with that smudge of bushes hiding the outline. But I turned it over to Alicia tonight, since she’s been dying to get her hands on it. She claims to know who it is and she seems excited about it—though she won’t tell me why.”
“She insisted to me that it was Maggie I’d caught in the picture,” I said.
“Oh, did she? In that case I’ll need to have another talk with her. Come to think of it, she didn’t mention whether the person you snapped was male or female. At least I can say what I like to her now—with the club out of her hands. Perhaps there are a few old scores to pay up with Alicia Daven.”
Nevertheless, I could see that my words had worried him. Perhaps he was mentally trying out the image of Maggie in his memory of the enlargement, testing whether she might fit the picture. Would he consider it convenient for him if she did?
I let him speculate and after another glance at the closed door of Alicia’s office, gave my attention to the scene directly below the place where I sat. Lights fell upon a roulette table and upon the heads of men and women awaiting the turn of the wheel. A mingling of perfume and cigarette smoke drifted up to me, with the volume of sound increasing as the evening picked up momentum.
In spite of well-mannered, elegantly dressed guests, in spite of the pretense that losing a good deal of money did not matter, the room seemed pervaded by that curious excitement which hangs upon the turn of a wheel, the flip of a card. One caught it in the brightness of a fixed gaze, the reaching movement of a hand, the tensely expelled breath.
Beyond the bright circle of lights about the table I could glimpse the entryway, where double doors opened upon the foyer, and as I glanced in that direction the door
s parted and a woman came through and stood gazing about.
I gasped and touched Marc’s arm. “Look. It’s Maggie!”
He turned toward the rail and stared down at the woman in black who stood regarding the room with her usual air of assurance. But this was a Maggie I hardly knew. Her short hair had been brushed expertly into a lacquered, silver-streaked mound, and her tailored clothes had been changed for something more glamorously feminine. Her black crepe dress was long and hid her sturdy, sportswoman’s legs, and for once she was wearing high-heeled black satin sandals. Around her throat and at her ears the Athmore pearls glowed softly rich.
“Good Lord!” Marc said softly, “Maggie has got herself up to the nines. I wonder what’s up? She never comes here. Hates the place.”
She seemed to be unescorted, but clearly the fact did not embarrass her. With the same quiet air of assurance she took a few steps into the room and waited for an attendant to come to her.
“I didn’t know she was in London,” I said.
Marc answered shortly. “I brought her with me when I came up today. I thought she needed a bit of a rest from old Nigel, and she wanted a look at Dacia for herself.”
I had not known he’d been home, not having seen him around, and I wondered where he had stayed.
As we watched, the attendant reached her and she spoke to him, then continued into the room with an air of interest which did not seem in the least self-conscious. But then—Maggie would be at home anywhere. I had always known that. Only in the last week had I seen her façade of self-possession begin to crack under strain.
“Let’s go rescue her,” Marc said. “In spite of the way she looks, she’s a fish out of water.”
As I went downstairs with him I wondered how well Marc, or any of us knew Maggie. I had not felt easy about her since our encounter in the blue lady’s room.
She had stopped near one of the roulette tables looking on at the game with more interest than I’d have expected, considering her often expressed distaste for all forms of gambling. The wheel whirred, the ball rolled and came to rest on red. Maggie nodded to someone at the table and glanced toward the stairs. Noting our descent, she came toward us without hurry.
“Hello, Eve. Hello, Marc darling,” she said, her manner so high-spirited that I felt more at a loss than ever. She might be a fish out of water, but it seemed she would enjoy learning how to conduct herself in this new element.
Marc kissed her cheek. “So you’ve finally decided on the primrose path? You look marvelous. Will you come upstairs and have a drink to hasten your descent?”
“I might, at that,” she told him cheerfully. “Do you mean you aren’t playing tonight, Marc?”
He had brightened momentarily at the sight of her, but now gloomy resentment returned. “I’ve been barred from play. Wait till you hear! Somebody’s bought Alicia out and orders have been given to keep me away from the tables.”
Maggie smiled at him brightly. “Good! I’m glad my directions have been carried out. How do you like me as the new owner of Club Casella?”
We both stared at her. Marc recovered first and as we reached the foot of the stairs he put an arm about her, laughing and more than a little drunk. Quite evidently Maggie’s news had relieved his anxiety.
“Maggie! Angel! Why, didn’t you tell me on the way to London today? You can’t imagine how I’ve been suffering over who might take over when Alicia stepped out. I’ve been having foreclosure nightmares ever since I heard, and Alicia wouldn’t tell me a word.”
Quietly Maggie extricated herself from his clasp. “Those were my orders too, since I wanted to tell you myself. Because now, my dear, you’re going to pay up. Every last farthing, Marc! And without recourse to Justin. In the meantime you’ll do no playing at the tables.”
As I had always known, there was a toughness in Maggie when the chips were down. She might be soft of heart and yielding toward those she loved, but once her mind was made up and a direction chosen, she had all the determination of a true Athmore.
If Marc had sudden misgivings, he did not show them. “Come along and tell me all about it.” He took her arm and urged her up the stairs, bantering and merry, still congratulating both himself and Maggie. All his life he had been getting around her, and he had no reason to think it would be any different now, no matter what she said.
She turned back to me when Marc would have ignored me, and held out her hand so that we could go together up the stairs. It was not so much a friendly gesture as it was one of natural courtesy.
Alicia’s table was still empty. The conference between her and Justin seemed to be going on for a very long while, I thought uneasily. Maggie and I sat next the rail and Maggie leaned upon it with a proprietary air, as though fully enjoying this new and intoxicating role of power.
Marc sat between us. “Now, then—tell all!” he said. “Where did you find the coin of the realm, Maggie dear? This was Nigel’s doing, I suppose?”
Maggie regarded him a bit distantly, as though she sensed the need for remaining on guard and not being beguiled by him.
“Of course,” she agreed. “We’re going to be married soon, and I asked for a wedding gift ahead of time. I think I rather bowled him over when I asked him to buy the Club Casella for me—but he came through nobly. He has managed all the negotiations, though he has warned me straight through that I am not getting a very good bargain. Alicia hasn’t been clever about money, it seems. For some time now she’s lived off her dwindling capital, and fooled us all about the wealth she would bring to Athmore. I don’t like that, Marc. I don’t like it at all.”
“You don’t like it!” Marc said a bit wildly.
“Besides this, she’s been carrying your debts at the club to a ridiculous degree. Why, Marc—why? What have you been doing for her that she’s had to buy you this way?”
Marc seemed to be struggling with his own rising fury, and I wished Maggie would stop baiting him while he was the worse for the liquor he had been drinking.
“Now there’ll be no more piling up of debts,” she went on, paying no attention to signs of warning. “Nor will Justin now have to take on your debts, as he would surely have done if I hadn’t interfered to prevent it.”
“I haven’t asked him to take them on!” Marc snapped.
She went on gently, maddeningly reasonable. “Sometimes a foster mother makes mistakes in the giving of her affection. Sometimes she indulges foolishly and for too long—perhaps trying to buy affection in return. Which is always a mistake—as she may realize too late.”
Marc glared at her. “If that’s the way you feel, I’m sorry for Nigel. Because he’s making the same error, isn’t he? Paying a high price for which he may not get good measure—trying to buy your affection!”
For once Maggie’s control wavered, and I knew that Marc had cut her to the quick. With Maggie, those who belonged to Athmore came first, and their welfare was worth whatever price she might have to pay. Even if the man she married was short-changed. But she would not like to have this pointed out.
Part of my attention was still upon the door of Alicia’s office, so that I noticed the moment it opened. Justin and Alicia came out and walked around the end of the oval. She did not come with Justin to our table, but parted from him at the head of the stairs. Her fair, handsomely coiffed head was held carefully high as she went down to the lower room. If the groove along Justin’s left cheek had deepened, he showed no other display of emotion as he watched her go.
He came to our table, apparently unsurprised to find Maggie there, and kissed her cheek. Then he drew up another chair.
“How do you like owning this den of iniquity?” he asked.
So Alicia had told him. He knew it all now.
“I rather like it,” Maggie said, and glanced affectionately at Marc, who merely glared at them both.
“You know, of course,” Justin said quietly, “that you’ve bought the entire weight of Marc’s indebtedness and that it must be paid off.”
She nodded, still confident and quite aware that she was giving generously. “Of course. I’ve just told Marc so. He’ll have to pay up the whole thing. I shall expect to get every pound back from him. He’s been very naughty indeed for much too long a time, and now he must pay the piper—me.”
“Plus interest?” Justin said, and Marc scowled at his brother.
“Oh, no! I shall waive that, of course. Nigel doesn’t mind. He’s being very good to me.” She glanced reproachfully at Marc. “And I do mean to make him a good wife.”
“I suppose you’ll carry off whatever you set out to do,” Justin told her evenly. “Even to trying your hand at running the Club Casella. But you must know that it would take Marc years to pay back what he now owes, if indeed he could ever manage it—which I doubt. And you’re unlikely to make a success of the club without Alicia’s personal touch to carry it off with the clientele. So there’ll be little income here.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Maggie said. “I probably shan’t keep it anyway. Nigel knows exactly how I feel about all this.”
“Perhaps the thing none of you grasps is how I feel,” Justin said. “If you’re making some sort of grand sacrifice for Marc’s sake, Maggie, you needn’t. Because I shall of course see that you and Nigel are paid back myself. And as promptly as possible. With proper interest.”
Maggie stared at him, obviously shaken. Marc looked both angry and shocked, suddenly realizing where Justin was heading.
“My dear—no!” Maggie cried.
“The answer is yes,” Justin said. “If my current efforts work out as I hope, then this may not be impossible. If they don’t, then we must sell Athmore. There could be worse solutions than that.”
Abruptly Marc pushed back his chair and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I want a talk with Alicia myself.”
“Wait—” Maggie began, “—Marc, do be careful. Don’t do anything reckless!”
Marc was already running down the stairs. We watched over the rail, saw him emerge below and stand looking about the lower room. He was more than a little drunk, and furiously angry.
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