“I know why you haven’t gone to Reno, Pen.”
“Of course you know. I’ve just told you.”
Roger gave a mirthless chuckle. He leaned forward again.
“How’s Laurence?” he asked.
Penelope laid down another smoke screen, for which Barney was grateful because he was beginning to squirm with embarrassment. He did not remember having met Mr. Laurence but he had heard Vivian speak of a smoothie who had exerted considerable fascination over Pen.
“Laurence?” Pen asked, with a rising inflection that was intended to convey great amazement. “Laurence who? Not Lawrence of Arabia?”
“Of Bessarabia, more likely,” Roger said. “Pierre Laurence. At least that’s what he calls himself.”
“Oh, Pierre.” Penelope waved away the smoke with a gesture of trivial annoyance. “What makes you speak of Pierre?”
“An idea that Pierre has absorbed the money that I gave you to divorce me with. Am I right?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you still have the money?”
“Naturally.”
“In that case you will be able to leave for Reno next week and establish residence. I want you to file suit as soon as possible.”
“Oh, Roger, you’re making such a fuss over nothing. There’s no hurry, is there? I’ll go out in March. I’m always bored with the winter by March.”
“Do you refuse to go now—next week?”
“Of course I refuse. You’re being positively unreasonable, Roger. I—”
“Then I shall resume residence in our conjugal domicile,” declared Roger Dunne.
“You’ll—what?”
“I’ll move back into this apartment. I’m still your husband, and you apparently have no desire to divorce me. Or would you rather I sued you for divorce?”
“You couldn’t divorce me, Roger. You have no grounds.”
“I think I have grounds,” Roger said, “for a New York divorce, in fact. But I’m too much of a gentleman to do that, Pen. I’ll merely come back here and supervise your life, which I assure you is in dire need of supervision.”
“Roger, you won’t do anything of the sort.”
“Yes, I will,” said Roger simply. “This afternoon.”
“Roger, you can’t. You’re being ridiculous. Besides I’m not going to be here this afternoon. I am going to Connecticut for the week-end.”
“That’s quite all right,” Roger said. “I won’t need you to get settled. I still have my key, you remember. Just go ahead and have one last fling. Because you’ll find me installed here when you get back.”
“Roger, you’re a—”
The ivory-colored telephone rang. Penelope leaned over to take the instrument. The cigarette wobbled in her lips as she said, “Hello… Oh, hello, Julia.… I was just about to leave for your place… Just this minute. I have my hat on… Who? No, why should he?… Not in months… Not even by phone. No, I couldn’t have missed him because I have that phone-answering service now, you know… He’s probably lying, Julia. He’s very good at it… No, of course not. Why should I be furious with him?… Just ignore it, Julia. See you in a jiffy, darling. By-by.”
She replaced the instrument, ground out her cigarette in a Lalique bowl of opalescent glass. Roger was watching her narrowly.
“You were about to say,” Roger prompted, “that I was—what? Something unpleasant, no doubt.”
“It’s not important,” Pen seemed suddenly very weary. “Roger, I’m leaving now.”
“For Julia Frye’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks, Roger, but I’ve called a cab.”
“I’ve got to go past Julia’s anyhow—on my way to pick up my things.” Roger smiled grimly.
“Then go ahead. I’ll wait for my cab. I’ve another phone call to make, anyhow.”
“I’ll go down with you, Roger,” Barney said, making a quick dash for his hat. Penelope intercepted him.
“Don’t go yet, Barney. Please. I haven’t finished talking to you.” She grasped his arm. He could feel her long scarlet fingernails biting through his sleeve.
“Good-by, Pen.” Roger opened the door. “See you Monday. I’ll be here when you get back.” He bowed with mock gallantry.
Pen glared at him. She was still clinging to Barney. She said, “Roger, why must you be so utterly despicable?”
Roger bowed again. “So you can feel sweet and self-righteous by comparison,” he said. Then he closed the door.
Pen turned to Barney, seized his other arm. She closed her eyes and gave her head a quick shake, that set her earrings flashing rhythmically. When they had come to rest, she opened her eyes slowly. Barney felt something rise within him as he stared at the strange fire smoldering in their depths. There was fear there, not a helpless fear, but a wild, desperate panic that seemed on the point of bursting into fierce, flaming action.
“Why did he have to come here today?” she cried.
“Because you didn’t divorce him,” Barney said.
“Do you think he’s really coming back?”
“He seemed pretty determined. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I don’t know any more. I can’t think of a thing except—Barney, do come to the country with me.”
“Can’t,” Barney said. “Where do you suppose Tony would be?”
“I really can’t imagine.”
“I’ll come back later. Maybe he’ll be here then. Anything you want me to tell the folks at home for you, Pen?”
“Of course. You’re going West. I’d forgotten. Give them all my love. Tell them I’m fine—and very happy—Tell them anything you want, Barney.”
“Good-by,” Barney said.
Pen kissed him.
Waiting for the elevator, Barney was disturbed to find himself speculating on what he might have missed by not going to Connecticut with Pen. He was glad circumstances placed him beyond temptation because while it would probably be fun, as Pen had promised, it would be far from placid fun, and Barney was in no mood for violence. He wondered how an alluring female like Pen managed to get herself involved in such continuous and nerve-racking complications. Probably her heritage of Grove restlessness.
IV
WHEN JULIA FRYE FINISHED TALKING to Penelope, she hung up the telephone, turned to the man sitting on the floor at her feet, and burst into a musical laugh. The man laughed, too, but not musically; there was something bored and unpleasantly artificial in the sound, something that matched perfectly his glossy black hair and the tiny hairline mustache, like a shallow W, on his upper lip.
“She says you’re probably lying, Pierre,” Julia said, “and that you’re very good at it. She hasn’t seen you for months, she says!”
“And she says I’m lying?” Pierre had a faint accent when he spoke, so faint that it probably would have disappeared altogether were he not so intent upon preserving his exotic personality. “Did you tell her you knew I was lying—lying at your feet? Or don’t you think I’m so good at that?”
“You’re marvelous, darling.” Julia’s face changed as she spoke. Framed by ash-blond hair that fell straight to her shoulders and by low bangs cut straight against her white forehead, it was normally the face of a Madonna by a highly stylized modern painter. Her almost translucent pallor and her long, lowered lashes accentuated the impression. But when she looked at Pierre, her gray eyes darkened, her lashes lifted to dispel completely her air of modesty. The muscles about her mouth moved slightly, changing the contours of her full, red lips just enough to ravish them of their expression of innocence. As she looked at Pierre, she was an untamed animal. She bent slightly toward him.
Pierre reached up one long arm, caught her behind the head, drew her down until her lips rested upon his. It was a casual movement, but Pierre was a casual person—casual and sleek, and glib. He was one of those ageless men who was probably forty, but might just as well have been thirty or fifty. There was an intr
iguing foreignness about his clothes—the slightest deviation from the normal cut, which at first glance might seem quaint but at second look was unquestionably correct and sophisticated and Continental.
Pierre held onto Julia’s hand as he got carefully to his feet and asked, “When did Penelope say she was leaving her apartment?”
“Immediately. She had her hat on, she said.”
“Then she will be gone when I get there—if I go now.”
“Give yourself a little leeway,” Julia said. “You know how Pen is. She always has to change her dress or write an ode or take a bath at the last minute.”
“It will not matter if I meet her in the lobby,” Pierre said.
“What about Tony?”
“Tony!” Pierre’s shoulders were contemptuous.
“I still think you’re being silly and bullheaded about this, darling. But if you must, I suppose you must.”
“Yes, I must. Definitely.”
Julia threw her arms around Pierre, buried her face against his shoulder.
“Pierre darling, I won’t see you until Monday. I wish I didn’t have to go away on this stupid week-end.”
“Then don’t go.”
“I don’t see any way out of it now. Penelope phoned Tom first, and Tom is keen on going.”
“Forget Tom, pigeon. Permanently. Go away with me. We’ll be married.”
Her face still against Pierre’s shoulder, Julia shook her head. She said, “You say that because you know it’s impossible. You know what would happen. You’ve seen my father in action.”
“You’re of age, Julia.”
“I know, but—” She raised her head to look at him and gave him a curious, twisted smile. “It’s a vicious circle, Pierre. If Father tossed me out, I wouldn’t be able to support you in the style to which you’re accustomed, darling.”
“Does money mean as much as all that, pigeon?”
“Not to me, darling. To you.”
“Julia! Is that a kind thing to say—when I’ve just offered to marry you, even knowing your disgustingly rich father hates me?”
Julia continued to look at him with her curious little smile. She said, “Pierre, I love you. But I can see the wheels going around inside that handsome head of yours. You think Father will relent when he’s faced with legal and holy wedlock. I know he won’t. And when you know, you’ll clear out. I’m a pragmatist, darling. I believe in compromise. Instead of losing you completely, I’d rather go along the way we are—for as long as it lasts.”
“But you would marry me—if Papa said yes?”
“Papa won’t. Let’s not kid ourselves.”
“I think Papa will.”
“Pierre! You say that as if you really believed it. Why? You must have some reason for thinking Father might change his mind.”
Pierre Laurence chuckled. His smug smile said, “There are plenty of reasons, but I’m not saying anything until the proper time comes.” His eyes were confident and superior.
Julia exclaimed, “Pierre! I have an idea.”
“What, my pigeon?”
“Come along to Bensons’. I’d love to see Penelope’s face when I tell her you’re going along to Connecticut with us. And she can’t object, because it’s my car we’re going in.”
“What about Tom Norfolk?”
“Tom will think you’re going along for Penelope.”
Pierre shook his head.
“Tom is not such a big fool as you think,” he said. “And he is terribly jealous of you. There is no use going out of our way to look for trouble, pigeon. Besides, I have this other business to attend to. Monday will be here soon, pigeon.”
“It’s going to seem ages, darling. Kiss me, Pierre.”
V
BARNEY WENT from Pen’s apartment to the telegraph office around the corner on Broadway. Besides the sensation of walking deeper and deeper into a nightmare in which familiar characters had unfamiliar faces and nothing quite made sense, he carried with him a determination not to leave New York until he had found out more about the sinister web which was obviously weaving itself around the lives of the Groves, and how far Vivian was already entangled in its spreading meshes. If he could find out enough, he might have an argument potent enough to convince Vivian that she should come back with him.
He sent a telegram to the dean at Academia College, reading: Reserving judgment. Will inform you my decision within forty-eight hours. Then he went past his house to see if Tony’s car was still at the curb. It was.
He examined the keys Tony had given him, and wondered what the big one was for. It probably fitted Penelope’s apartment. He clinked the keys together for several thoughtful moments, then walked back to the Hudson. He strolled along the river for nearly an hour, thinking hard, to give Tony time to come home—if he was coming home.
By the time he approached Penelope’s apartment house again, the bleak tracery of naked trees was very black against the glowing haze of the sunset over the New Jersey Palisades. The river took on a brassy gleam in the cold, wan light, and the beetling cliffs of the river-front apartments seemed to be incandescent with their own light—a melancholy, shrinking light that made them grimly and forbiddingly impersonal. All the somber brooding of a dying year was crowded into the last few moments of this twilight.
Crossing the Drive, Barney was surprised to see Tom Norfolk getting into a car in front of Pen’s apartment house. At least it looked like Tom, although he drove off before Barney was close enough to be sure.
The elevator operator took Barney to Pen’s floor without a question. Barney was about to ring the bell when he noticed that the door was not quite pushed shut, as if it had been closed by someone in too much of a hurry to notice whether or not the latch had caught. Barney’s index finger remained poised in mid-air, about three inches from the bell push. He hesitated, while his pulses inexplicably quickened. Then he laughed silently at himself and pushed the door open a trifle. He heard the sound of something moving in the foyer or the room beyond.
“Hello!” he called.
He no longer heard any sound, except the pounding of his heart against his ribs. The strange feeling of foreboding persisted; so did the challenge to laugh it off.
He took off his hat, poked it through the opening, beyond the edge of the door.
“Shoot if you must this old gray headgear,” he said loudly. He tried hard to make his voice sound gay and facetious, but he knew he had failed. The attempt at humor sounded dismal even to himself, and he knew the tone of his voice was not at all reassured. He pushed the door wide open and walked in boldly.
Immediately he was surrounded by a flurry of movement and shrill sound. He dropped his hat before he realized that he was ankle-deep in Penelope’s feathery Pekinese dogs. As they retreated, they raised their yapping voices two full tones and another twenty decibels.
“Kou!” said Barney. “Kou!”
He wasn’t quite sure what kou meant, but Penelope, who insisted that Ping and Pong understood only Mandarin, used it as a sort of canine sedative. Penelope said that kou meant “enough” when pronounced with the fourth Peking tone, and “dog” when pronounced with the third tone. Barney didn’t know which tone he was using, but the pugs subsided. After a few final sniffs and an asthmatic snarl at the hat, they retired to their pink silken cushions to regard him with flat-faced ill-humor.
“Hello, Pen?” Barney called.
There was no answer.
“Tony?”
The silence in the apartment began to get on Barney’s nerves—again without reason. The peculiar chill he had experienced at the pit of his stomach, and which had gone away during the outbreak of dogs, was returning. He closed the door and glanced about him for some clue as to why being alone in Pen’s apartment with a pair of aged Pekinese should affect him so queerly.
The apartment was the typical product of that cynical breed of Manhattan architects who flourished, early in the century, on the popular supposition that Upper West Siders didn’t care wh
ere or how they slept and ate as long as they had an enormous and beautiful living-room with view. Pen’s living-room was large enough to serve as a small ballroom; it was beautiful, if you didn’t mind the pale, noseless Marie Laurencin ladies who stared at you with button eyes from the walls, or the transparent table tops, or the sheet-copper and aluminum slipcases that made Pen’s bookshelves resemble the control room of a submarine; and there were trees and the Hudson in the front yard, and a precariously narrow balcony to view them from if you weren’t too finicky about pigeons. Pen’s bedroom, too, had part of the balcony and the river view and the pigeons, and was big enough to turn around in. The rest of the apartment, however, consisted of a series of cubicles and monastic cells, connected by mole runs and evidently designed for a race of pygmies wearing miner’s caps. The sun shone into the dining-room for fifteen minutes once a year, if June twenty-first happened to be a fine day.
Barney groped his way through the dark adit that led to Tony Grove’s quarters. He made gestures above his head without succeeding in locating a single light cord. There was nobody in Tony’s room, anyhow. Nobody in the kitchen or dining-room, or the bar—a cubicle which Pen had furnished in garish red lacquer and Chinese brasses, and which was always haunted by the faint, dead smell of stale incense. He was about to look into the maid’s room when he thought he heard a door closing softly somewhere in the front part of the apartment.
He called, “Hello! Pen?”
There was no sound but the rumble of a bus going by.
He hurried back through the dim labyrinth, barking his shins on a dining-room chair. There was still nobody in the living-room—except the two Pekinese who growled at him wearily. He went on to Penelope’s bedroom and stood in the open doorway, looking in.
The last gleam of daylight filtered through the pale-rose slats of the Venetian blinds and furnished a bizarre illumination for the baroque interior of Pen’s chamber. The bedroom was as frilly and feminine as the living-room was cold and modern. The living-room expressed the sophisticated woman of the metropolis; the bedroom belonged to the little girl from Academia, the Cleopatra from the Hinterland. There were huge pink flowers on the wallpaper, a white bearskin rug beside the white bed, and lots of frills on all the white chairs and on the cretonne drapes. There was also a profusion of lace pillows and stuffed dogs about—plush Sealyhams as footstools, floppy-eared velvet spaniels on the bed and in the corners, poodle pincushions on the dresser, porcelain terriers and terra cotta whippets in odd places. Barney was smiling at the general effect, when he happened to see, reflected in the big mirror of Pen’s vanity table, something that didn’t belong there—a pair of legs dangling over the back of the chaise longue.
See You at the Morgue Page 4