by Pamela Kent
She went to the cloakroom and made up her face, and the perspiration beading it before she did so shocked both her and the cloakroom attendant. When she rejoined Terry he was waiting on the gravel terrace outside for her, and he confided eagerly that he had thought of an excellent substitute for an overcrowded dance floor.
His car was amongst those parked on the drive, and if she would wait a few moments he would extricate it from the solid phalanx and they would go for a cool spin in the moonlight. A reviving spin ... She would feel much better, and it would be very quiet and peaceful.
He tried every argument he knew to induce her to go with him, but she was wearily begging to be taken home when Rick appeared from the dense shadow of a clump of trees and said curtly that he would take her home.
“Go and look for someone young and fresh and dance with her,” he said to Ransome. “Melanie’s young enough, but can’t you recognize the signs of exhaustion when you see them? If you don’t want her to pass out altogether stop pestering her, and leave her to me! Or, better still, you can wait with her until I’ve got my own car out of that crush!”
Terry didn’t attempt to argue any further, in fact he looked almost startled by the violence of the other man’s speech. As Rick strode off to get his car the younger man looked down at Melanie and said apologetically:
“I'm awfully sorry. I honestly didn’t realize you were feeling groggy...”
In the car Melanie let her head fall back against the seat, and the cool night air coming in at the window made her feel as if she was being temporarily re-born. At the same time she was so physically weary that she was hardly aware of Rick on the seat beside her, controlling the wheel with his hard, firm fingers, and she made no effort to talk, or even to thank him for tearing himself away from the delights of the evening in order to drive her back to his father’s house.
He let down the window beside him so that she would get the maximum benefit from the night air, and when she still lay very limp and still opened the wind-screen, so that air played all round her. She moved her head very slightly, and thanked him with a grateful murmur.
“It’s the last time I listen to Aunt Octavia,” he muttered suddenly and savagely. “I always thought she had common sense!”
“Oh, but I’m sure she has,” Melanie murmured dreamily. “She’s probably got heaps of common sense.”
“She knew you weren’t fit enough for an evening out!”
“Perhaps I wasn’t. But she meant it kindly.”
“She’s an interfering old—” He tore hard at his lower lip, and then more calmly: “I’ve been watching you all evening, Melanie, and you ought to have been in bed.”
She was conscious of surprise, but her lassitude was too great for it to be more than a passing surprise.
“Bed grows wearisome,” she told him. “And I’m not an invalid.” And then tears pricked behind her eyes, hot, heavy tears. “Perhaps I ought to go home,” she suggested. “In fact, I’d like to go home!”
“To England?” The two words were like a charge of explosive. “You’ll go home to England when I want you to go home, and not before!”
But when the car stopped, and he went round to open her door for her, his voice was all gentleness.
“I’m going to carry you up to your room, Melanie, as I did before. And we’ll get my mother’s maid to help you undress...”
But she insisted on standing on her own feet. “No, no, I’m perfectly all right! And I decline to be fussed over!” Her voice was unnaturally sharp.
As he looked down at her she looked up at him, and he caught the shine of a tear on her cheek. “Melanie!” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she returned, with a composure that didn’t match with that bright drop on her cheek—and even as she turned away it rolled down and watered the gravel beneath their feet. “Except that I want to be alone! Really want to be alone! You’d better go back and fetch Miss Fairchild!”
As she gathered her strength and walked away from him he stood looking after her with a completely peculiar expression on his face. For one instant, although she never turned her head, she was certain he was coming after her. But he didn’t.
He climbed back into his car and started up the engine.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Before the week-end Melanie began to feel much more like herself, and the lump under her hair faded altogether. Mrs. Vandraaton’s maid gave her a special shampoo which brought out all the lovely Titian lights in her rich, curling hair, and with a little natural color returned to her cheeks she began to feel less deserving of pitying glances. Contemptuously pitying glances in the case of Diane Fairchild!
Mr. Vandraaton senior allowed her to start working for him again, and she felt brightened by her daily contact with the genial millionaire. Rick seemed deliberately to avoid her, but that might have been entirely due to her own imagination.
He certainly didn’t avoid Diane. But Diane didn’t spend every evening after dinner strolling with him—and him alone!—in the moonlit grounds.
One evening Melanie stole away by herself once dinner was over, and she came upon a new corner of the far-flung gardens that enchanted her. It was a plantation of straight young trees, and with the moonlight filtering through and making a silver checkerboard at her feet she found it a pleasant place in which to linger. She sat on a fallen tree trunk and listened to the sea crooning away on the beach below her, and for a short while it was very pleasant.
Then the consciousness of her aloneness—and her unwantedness!—began to take hold of her. She felt very far removed from everyone and everything human, and the remembrance that Rick had once sought to get her out of his way pressed upon her like an actual load lying to destroy her spirits.
She found herself mentally reviewing everything that had taken place between herself and Rick since that first moment in London when he had really condescended to notice her. His manner towards her had undergone a considerable change since then; he was undoubtedly conscious of a certain amount of weakness where she was concerned, and if he had got her out of his way it might well be that it was for safety’s sake ... Because he couldn’t really afford to have anything go wrong with his plans for marriage to Diane. Quite apart from any attraction she might, or might not have for him, marriage to her meant security in the future, the renewed confidence of his parents—particularly that of Vandraaton senior—and the Nonpareil made over to him, quite possibly as a wedding present. He wanted to be certain of the things that were important to him in life—polo ponies and specially built racing cars, travel and change, and; of course, luxury. All his life so far had been lived against a luxurious background, and he couldn’t dispense with it now.
Although if he had to dispense with it ... Somehow Melanie didn’t think he would go to the wall. Not with that square chin of his, and those eyes that could snap as coldly and determinedly as his father’s at times.
The moon slipped behind the plantation, and Melanie was conscious of feeling cold—cold and drearily uncertain of her own future. It seemed to stretch like a barren road ahead of her.
She stood up, and started to return to the house, but barely had she taken a few steps when she all but blundered into a couple who were standing with their arms tightly clasping one another, and their lips locked together.
The woman’s hair was touched by a finger of moonlight, and it was silvery pale. The man was tall and dark—but not quite as tall, or as dark, as Rick.
Melanie uttered a swift apology:
“I’m so sorry!”
Diane Fairchild released herself swiftly from the arms that held her, and wheeled upon Melanie with a choked exclamation of annoyance.
“You!” she exclaimed. “What an unpleasant young woman you are! Does Mr. Vandraaton pay you extra to spy upon people?—even although they happen to be his guests!”
“Diane!” Jake Crompton’s voice was stern, and it was also full of warning. “There isn’t the slightest need to be abusive to a
nyone.”
“Isn’t there?” But although she tossed her head slightly, her face was pale in the moonlight, and she tore hard at her lower lip. “If you think to make capital out of what you’ve just seen—or thought you saw!...” to Melanie.
But Jake took her arm firmly, and led her away.
“Miss Blake isn’t the type, to make capital out of anyone,” he observed soothingly, and Melanie wondered whether he really believed that, or whether it was a case of wishful thinking.
But as she continued on her way back to the house, wondering why two pieces of straightforward evidence that Diane would prove entirely the wrong wife for Rick had been put into her hands, she decided that Jake had made his statement in absolute confidence. She was the wrong type to make capital out of anyone, but she was beginning to feel achingly anxious for Rick.
The following morning Lucas proved to the entire household that he had returned to his old form, and not only did he talk about returning to New York immediately, but when he sent for Melanie to deal with the morning’s mail his mood struck her as almost dangerously self-contained. There was none of the usual high color which had gradually come back after his heart attack, and his eyes glittered like pale ice. He waited until they had dealt with a number of the routine letters, and then thrust an open letter in front of her.
“I don’t expect you to know very much about this,” he said. “After all, it was never your responsibility, and in no way your concern. But read it!”
Melanie complied with the request, and her feeling of uneasiness mounted—the certainty that the day had begun on a most inauspicious not for someone! Judging solely by the glacial stare in Lucas Vandraaton’s eyes.
When she had finished reading the letter, which was from the manager of the Nonpareil in London, her heart was thumping so unevenly that it interfered with her breathing.
“Well?” Lucas demanded, pin-pointing her with those frightening eyes.
Melanie waved the letter helplessly.
“There—there must be some mistake.”
“There is no mistake! It’s the sort of thing that could only happen with Rick at the head of affairs! ... But after this,” a purplish look mounting to the elder Vandraaton’s cheeks, “there will be no question of him being at the head of affairs!”
Melanie read the letter again. There had been a series of minor thefts, culminating in one major theft, at the London Hotel, and although under ordinary circumstances this would not have put the cat among the pigeons, as it were, or created a load of anxiety for anyone, in the circumstances as they were the manager felt it necessary to communicate with Mr. Lucas Vandraaton direct. And the communication was like a bombshell bursting in the quiet study in the luxurious Long Island home.
For the stolen articles were not covered by insurance ... Or by no means adequately covered, at least. There was a diamond necklace belonging to a dowager duchess that had vanished like smoke, and the police had little hope of tracing it; and in addition there were other articles almost as valuable. They had been reposing in the hotel safe, and the hotel safe had been rifled.
Mr. Vandraaton senior looked like having another heart attack as he stormed up and down.
“I envisaged this situation weeks ago—months ago! And I told Rick we mustn’t run any risks, and the very maximum coverage must be taken out in the way of insurance. I wrote to him so specifically about it that even his incompetent brain must have grasped the urgency of the matter, and I remember he wrote to me by return mail that the matter had been dealt with. Had been dealt with! ... And now this!”
He snatched the letter out of Melanie’s hand, and kept his finger on the bell on his desk until a flurried servant answered it.
“Fetch Mr. Rick—and Mr. Crompton, too!” the master of the place ordered. “And tell them to hurry! Hurry!”
Melanie was aware of a sick dismay that was spreading inside her, and if she herself had been the culprit it could not have been more complete dismay. “Oh, Rick!” she thought, as her cold fingers reached for the support of the edge of her desk. “How could you let a thing like this happen! In your own best interests surely you could have devoted a little more of your time to the job you were entrusted with. But perhaps you did. Perhaps it isn’t altogether your fault! Perhaps you can explain things!...”
And then cold reason asserted itself.
What explanation could Rick offer in the face of the evidence?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rick came in with all the sang-froid in the world. Behind him was Jake Crompton, also completely composed.
Rick’s glance went to Melanie, and his eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t intend you to work this morning, Melanie,” he told her. “I don’t think you’re fit enough.”
The senior Vandraaton banged his fist on his desk.
“Is anyone fit enough to work in this outfit?” he demanded. “Apart from myself, that, is! Do you ever do any work, Rick? Would it kill you altogether if you spent a whole day at an office desk?”
Rick answered, with a flash of humor:
“I’ve tried it—and I’m still alive!”
“Yes, you’re still alive!” Lucas surveyed him under lowering brows. “And fairly cock-a-hoop about it. But perhaps you won’t be quite so cock-a-hoop when you’ve read this!” and he handed over the letter.
While Rick read it the older Vandraaton watched his face. Melanie, experiencing a surge of sympathy for Lucas, realized that he wasn’t expecting Rick to defend himself, or to have any defence to offer, and she knew that he was filled with bitterness because his only son was such an acute disappointment. Such a bitter disappointment to a man who believed that an active brain and a tireless body were the only really valuable assets a man of worth could feel tempted to boast he possessed! And Rick’s brain, even if it was good enough in its way, was certainly not allied to a tireless body.
The body had been rendered soft by easy living, or so Mr. Vandraaton believed; and Rick’s energy was expended in altogether the wrong direction. “Well?” Lucas barked at last.
Rick looked up with a gleam of puzzlement in his eyes.
“I don’t understand this,” he said. “I don’t understand it at all.”
Lucas sneered:
“I don’t suppose you do. I wonder you comprehend what the whole thing is about! Let Jake see the letter.”
Jake read it, and then glanced at Rick.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “I thought that you—in fact, I was absolutely certain! ...” “Yes?” Lucas insisted, watching him keenly. “What were you certain about, Crompton?”
Jake appeared not merely dismayed, but covered in embarrassment.
“This is very unpleasant for me, sir,” he admitted. “I’m by no means infallible myself, and by rights this insurance coverage was my job .... I should have seen to it that such a situation as this couldn’t possibly have arisen, and under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have arisen. I pride myself that when any thing this peculiarly my province has to be attended to it is attended to at once...”
“Yes, yes,” Vandraaton interrupted impatiently. “But this wasn’t your province. I instructed Rick myself.”
“I know, sir,” Jake glanced sideways at Rick, as if silently imploring him to forgive him. “That’s what I mean, sir. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, my concern. But nevertheless I was perfectly ready to make it my concern if only Rick hadn’t been so insistent on dealing with the matter himself. And naturally I thought he did deal with it.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true, Crompton,” Rick drawled suddenly, staring into space. “So far as my memory serves me I did ask you to deal with it. In fact, I particularly requested you to deal with it, and as you never fail in these matters I didn’t attempt to verify whether you had done so or not. It was a Friday morning, and I was off to join a house-party at Ascot, and I just left the question of the insurance in your hands. Surely you remember that much?”
“Sorry, old boy,” Jake
muttered in response; “but I can’t remember anything at all along those lines.”
Lucas Vandraaton looked ready to explode.
“I don’t suppose you can, Jake. Rick’s just signed his own death warrant by admitting that you never fail. And now because it suits him he’s trying to offload this thing on you! But I’m not a fool, and if a son of mine prefers house-parties to business he can get out and go to all the house-parties he wants to.” He mimicked furiously: “I was off to join a house party at Ascot! ... Great heavens, Rick! What in the world do you take me for?”
Rick's dark face was paler than Melanie had ever seen it, but his strange eyes gleamed dangerously.
“Not the sort of man to sire a liar,” he replied. “And having been called a liar by both of you I’ll most decidedly get out!”
He turned towards the heavy oak door of the study, and as he did so it was burst inwards, and Diane, obviously agitated, came unbidden into the room.
“Oh, Rick!” She went to him and caught his arm. “Rawlins has just told me there was a spot of bother, and that you’ve done something wrong! What is it, darling? Surely it’s nothing serious?” He freed his arm from her clutching fingers, and harshly, mockingly, he replied:
“Just how serious it really is depends on you, my sweet! Will you marry me and live in poverty with me for the rest of my days? For my father is turning me out, and in future I’ll survive by my wits only, and if you want to fill the enviable role of my wife you’ll have to survive also on the fruits of my wits! Are you willing as they say in good old-fashioned novels, to ‘throw in your lot with mine?’ ”