I

Party for a Stranger

The brown young man with the dark eyes and the charming, courteous smile did not seem nearly as disconcerted as he should have been by the fact that he was forty-two minutes late, the guest of honor, and to the best of his knowledge a total stranger to eleven of the thirteen people seated in an alertly decorous circle about Mrs. Temple’s famous crystal table in her famous gray-and-silver dining room. He stood in the doorway just long enough to permit the obviously scandalized butler to announce “Mr. Karl Sheridan!” in a loud, reproachful voice, and proceeded to cover the expanse of gray velvet carpet that lay between him and his hostess’s chair as swiftly and confidently as though he were the bearer of great good tidings.

“Aunt Cara, it’s too wonderful to see you again! Now I know how I’ve been missing you for all these years. You got my message about that wretched train? It was good of you not to wait.”

“My dear little K, I’m far too spoiled a lady to be good about waiting or anything else,” said Caroline Temple gayly. “And the dinner is far too good a dinner to be spoiled by any mere infant, even if he has come all the way from Vienna. No, don’t bother about Greg now; your seat’s over there, between the prettiest girl in Washington and the most outrageous woman in America, and you’re just in time for a fish soufflé that I trust will make the Tour d’Argent’s taste like lead sinkers. Come and tell me exactly how grateful you are later.”

She dipped the pretty head with its wreath of feathery silver in a gesture that blended greeting and dismissal, and the young gentleman who had come all the way from Vienna clicked his heels in a bow that must have come from there, too, and followed the bitterly disapproving butler to the single vacant seat with a composure that was not generally an attribute of the young and tardy.

The girl at his left, who was undoubtedly the prettiest one in Washington or a radius of several thousand miles of it, did not turn her head, even under the slight insistence of his gaze as he maneuvered the deep mauve-and-silver-brocaded chair into its most strategic position. Why didn’t more people in an exhausted world realize that down cushions and skillfully placed arms would go further to insure the success of any dinner party ever given than the most perfect pâté yet invented? He leaned back, luxuriously content, his eyes sweeping the table on which daffodils and cottage tulips and blue hyacinths bloomed as serenely as in a garden. All around the easy, gracious swing of its oval, women’s faces, soft and brilliant as flowers, rose above dresses like flowers in a lovely animated wreath.… Nice place, America, thought Karl Sheridan, smiling contentedly to himself; and as he smiled, his dark, grave young face dropped a good third of its twenty-eight severely disciplined years. An even nicer place, Washington, commented the dark eyes, shrewd, noncommittal, and amused. Something more profound, more sensitive, and more penetrating than mere shrewdness flashed for a moment behind their gray-green barrier and was gone. Nicest place of all, obviously, this charming, silvery room that was a garden—and fortune and Aunt Cara had seen to it that the most desirable place in it had fallen to his lot.

A sidelong glance confirmed his first impression of hair of the palest amber silk, parted, sleeked, and woven into a knot that Nausicaa might have envied, a velvety sweep from brow to chin, fastidiously pure as any Florentine saint’s, and a wide, generous, beautiful mouth, curved magnificently in lacquer-red defiance—young as the latest toast from Hollywood, old with Cleopatra’s immortal challenge.

She was wearing a dress cut with the audacity of a cynic and the skill of a master out of the snowy stuff, gauzy, crisp, and billowing, in which little girls go walking sedately through the pale May sunshine, with white rose wreaths on their heads and white rosaries in their hands. No jewels at all, save one great ruby on the fine, long hand; no other touch of color, save the red tips of the camellias pinned on either side of the waxen knot of tuberoses that made the little white satin bag as festive as a nosegay. A lady so young, so wise, so fair, and so sure of herself that she could leave her pearls at home, pin her flowers to her bag, and look sophisticated in organdy was worth coming four thousand miles to dine with, surely. It was ten thousand pities that the young man on her right seemed to have arrived at precisely the same conclusion, and was all too obviously expatiating on the fact in a voice that was low enough to conceal the contents of his talk, but not too low to confirm a Gaelic eloquence and fervor that the visitor from Vienna could only deplore.… Sheridan smiled again a trifle ruefully, nodded acquiescence to the butler with the Chablis, and turned dutifully to the lady on his left.

Lady Parrish, who had for some time been only tenuously restrained by the exhausted young man on her far side, was contemplating him with a really ominous glitter in her round, dark eyes, luminous with all the arrogant melancholy of a prize Pekinese—a glitter that suggested, accurately enough, that she had been crouched to spring at something new in the line of diversion for a long, long time and that at last she had found it. The prospective victim eyed her with mingled apprehension and anticipation.

It was difficult to place the lady’s age—an optimist might have guessed her at thirty-five, a pessimist at forty-seven, and they would have been almost equally in error. Every inch of her, from the flaming, particolored topknot, brilliant as a bunch of nasturtiums, to the heels of her slim, black velvet sandals, was as vibrant and charged with potential mischief as an electric wire—and there must have been close to seventy inches. She settled her chin deeper in the great black tulle ruff that vaguely suggested Pierrot in mourning, pushed the half-emptied plate from her with a gesture of finality, and addressed him in a voice that might easily have penetrated the remotest coat closet in the capital.

“Aha! The policeman from Vienna!”

“You flatter me,” replied the young man called K, amiably. “It is, I imagine, this same generosity that makes your too gracious sex call very young lieutenants Major?”

“Snooty, too,” diagnosed the undaunted female competently. “Trying to put me in my place the first crack out of the box! Child, when you know me better—and, believe me, you’re going to know me better—you’re going to realize that there’s no place in this vale of tears to put me in. So just lean back and relax. You’re a policeman and you’re from Vienna, and you’re late enough to be a dowager. My God, what happened to you, anyway? We thought you were dead.”

“I was unlucky enough to have the engineer decide that this would be the very day to run into a train wreck,” explained the young man, who had been tranquilly disposing of his excellent soufflé as he waited for the tumult and the shouting at his side to subside. “Eight miles this side of Baltimore. We stayed there three hours. Didn’t Aunt Cara deliver my excuses?”

“Only thirty-two miles? Why didn’t you walk?”

“Believe me, if I had for one moment suspected that you were waiting, I should have run—and every step of the way at that.”

“There’s something funny about you,” said the lady on his left judiciously. “Not intentionally, of course, though I give you credit for trying hard enough. But you’ve got a weird little cuckoo accent, and Cara’s no more your aunt than she’s mine. No one in the world but an only child could get as spoiled as Caroline Temple in a paltry sixty years.”

“It is possibly the Harvard accent that confuses you,” proffered the young man helpfully. “I believe that mine is not the first to arouse adverse comment. And you say that Aunt Cara is sixty? You astound me!”

He looked more skeptical than astounded, and more amused than either.

“If that’s a Harvard accent, mine’s Notre Dame,” said the lady, with even profounder skepticism. “Harvard my eye!”

The young man sighed deeply.

“Well, you needn’t cry about it,” admonished Lady Parrish severely. “Are policemen always as irritating as this?”

“I sighed only because I was wondering what I had acquired in four long years of Harvard, if not an accent,” he explained with his most charming smile. “But you are quite right; my favorite aunt is not my aunt at all—only my mother’s boarding-school roommate, and my own godmother.”

“Just baptized into the family, hey? Proving that water’s thicker than blood, after all they’ve told me. What was your mother’s name?”

“She was Hannele von Leiden, before she was my mother. You knew her perhaps?”

“Well, I dimly remember crouching at the head of the stairs in a red merino wrapper and watching her lead a cotillion with my youngest uncle. She looked like the angel off the Christmas tree, but I’m pleased to say that that was my last cotillion. So you’re old Von Leiden’s grandson. That accounts for the accent, of course, and the slight aroma of delusions of grandeur that I smell in the background. What were our Austrian friends sending over here before they decided to be our enemies—ministers or ambassadors, or what not?”

“My grandfather was the Austrian ambassador,” said the young man with great distinctness. “My father, who died when I was five, was an assistant secretary in the State Department. My stepfather has a blond mustache and is charming enough to merit even your attention. When I was seven I had a governess called Miss Trout, and when I was ten I had a dog called Don Juan, and when I was nineteen I had a roommate called Hinky Dink. I am five feet eleven, twenty-eight years old, very, very susceptible, but with so poor a memory that no harm is done. Now, is it not your turn?”

“You’re a good bit fresher than I generally pick ’em,” commented Lady Parrish meditatively. “But I can feel myself falling. What are you particularly anxious to know about me?”

“Your name,” said the young man promptly.

“Are you telling me that you don’t know who I am? Me? I don’t believe it! You’re simply making it up.”

“It is Aunt Cara who has confused me,” he explained humbly. “She assured me, you see, that she was placing me between the prettiest lady in Washington and the most entertaining one in the world. You fill so perfectly either formula that I find myself entirely at a loss.”

“You’re a liar,” remarked the lady without any marked displeasure. “And twice in one sentence at that. You know perfectly well that Caroline Temple never said anything of the kind, and I know perfectly well that you’ve already had a good long look at Tess Stuart. I saw your eyes simply popping out of your head. Just to keep the record clear, I’m Lady Parrish. The Lady Parrish, I’d have you know, but Freddy to you, my pet—Freddy to you.”

The young man sketched again that little inclination that was almost a bow.

“And I, Freddy, am Karl Sheridan—though my friends are kind enough to call me K.”

“I’d hate to tell you what my friends are kind enough to call me,” remarked Frederika Parrish with a gleefully reminiscent grin. “Not unless I had a pocketful of dashes and asterisks handy! How long are you—”

The pale young man on her left said in a voice buoyed by the courage of desperation:

“Freddy, ma toute belle, it is to me that you must listen now, if you please. For these fifteen minutes and more our charming hostess, she throws at me little looks of fury and indignation that go through me like so many sharp knives. Be merciful, I beg.”

“A little less noise out of you, my lad,” counseled his unwilling neighbor with considerable asperity. “Can’t you see that I’m falling in love? It drives me straight out of my head to be interrupted when I’m falling in love. Besides, Tess is a lot too busy with Dion to be bothered with K. Now just eat your salad and keep quiet.”

A deep, lovely young voice said sadly, “Dion hasn’t said a word to me for hours and hours. If you’re really a policeman, could you tell me whether they can arrest me for going to sleep at a dinner party?”

Karl Sheridan swung towards the sound of that voice as abruptly as though a cord had jerked him, and found himself looking into a pair of immense eyes of the purest, the clearest silver gray—still and shining as the sky just before dawn, as young rain falling through a spring twilight, as moonlight on quiet waters. Wide-spaced, unwavering, transparently candid as a child’s, they met his so gravely and steadily that they turned the reckless gayety of the bright curved mouth into an unconscionable liar.

“But, great heavens above, it is the War Baby!” cried the startled young policeman from Vienna.

“I was wondering whether you’d remember,” said the deep voice tranquilly. “Sixteen years—that’s a long time to remember even an enemy. Welcome home.”

“Oh, dear Lord, give me patience!” invoked Freddy Parrish passionately. “Just when he was practically mine forever—and now it turns out that they shared bibs and rattles. Oh, well, go on, go on, don’t pay any attention to me.”

Mr. Sheridan prepared to obey this injunction with alacrity and a brief valedictory smile.

“No, but surely it wasn’t Tess that we called you?” he demanded urgently of the snow maiden at his side. “No, wait, I remember perfectly; it was Charity—Charity Stuart, and you wore red mittens with gauntlets up to your elbows, and a red béret far back on your head, and a red wool sash around your waist, and you could throw the hardest, straightest snowball in Lafayette Park, even though you were only six years old and a girl at that!”

“If you knew what the little girls and boys used to say when they called me Charity,” the girl with the lost War Baby’s eyes was saying, “you wouldn’t be surprised that I abandoned it fifteen years ago. Poor Mother apologized humbly and tried to make up for it by suggesting Tess—from her maiden name, you know—she was Hope de Tessaincourt. It’s my middle name, too, so I really have a right to it.”

“Charity de Tessaincourt Stuart.” The young man repeated it thoughtfully. “Such a great name for such a little girl in red mittens; no, I do not blame you for changing it. And Tess has a brave sound. I had forgotten that your mother was French.”

“Not really French. Just New Orleans. But, K, how could you possibly have forgotten?”

“I was only eleven when I left, you see—or was it twelve? But I have not forgotten how pretty she was with those little dark fur muffs and Parma violets—and all the pearls and lace—and those great parasols with frills like flowers.”

“Oh, you do remember!” she cried. “That’s the way I love to remember her, too, with hats like bouquets, and little veils that made her eyes look bigger and darker than anyone else’s, and little gloves, soft as white kittens and smelling of orris, wrinkling around her wrists.”

“Remember her?” he repeated. “But—do you, too, have to remember her then?”

“Yes—oh, yes. She died when I was ten; didn’t you know?”

“She was a most lovely lady,” he said gently. “I had not heard.”

“It was a long time ago,” she told him, curving her mouth bravely in reassurance. But the clear and steadfast eyes said, uncomforted, It was yesterday.

“I wish I could remember my father so clearly and so well, but I was only five, and now all I can remember is how sometimes I would look up quickly from the floor where I was playing just so that I could catch them smiling at each other with their eyes, as if they shared some strange and beautiful secret. It was because I remembered that smile so well, I think, that I came all the way back to America to go to his college.”

“And your mother—she married again? I heard you telling Freddy Parrish about your stepfather. When it began to seem as though I weren’t ever going to get any first-hand information, I eavesdropped shamelessly!”

“Yes, almost ten years ago, to the best fellow in the world, and certainly the best chemist. We are all of us great friends.”

“But, K, I still can’t possibly see how you could forget that my mother was almost French. Don’t you remember—that’s how those simply magnificent rows started? Don’t you remember Mademoiselle making me pray every night that the Kaiser would die of an apoplexy, and how you said that that was a cad’s trick, and I was so frantic that I banged my head against a cherry tree until I had a bump as big as a duck’s egg, because I simply couldn’t bear not being big enough to hurt you? That was when you started calling me the War Baby, and all the other children did, too. Oh, you can’t say that you don’t remember!”

“But of course, of course I remember! Do I not then! And how you came flying at me like three kinds of a small mad thing!” He threw back his dark head with a sudden shout of delighted laughter. “I can still see those wild legs kicking out in their leather gaiters—and what is more, I can still feel them!”

“That’s splendid; I sound like a very estimable child. And you,” she added severely, “sound like a horrid, horrid little boy.”

“Poor War Baby!” he condoled. “Standing there with those little paws curled up into angry balls inside those red mittens, crying—crying like a fountain and never making any sound at all. I can see you now!”

“I still cry that way. Absurd, isn’t it?”

“Do you still cry, then? A great girl like you?”

She said briefly, in the low voice that stamped even light and trivial words with a strange significance:

“Not often.… Not now.… Have you come back to Washington to live?”

“I don’t know. For a year at least, I think, but it all depends on how certain things with which I am experimenting turn out.” He hesitated for a moment and then added with a sudden impish sparkle in the dark gray eyes, “Your admirable officials here may decide that they do not care for me as a playmate. In which case I must certainly look for greener pastures!”

Tess Stuart leaned forward, her own face lit with an answering sparkle.

“But, K, what on earth is all this nonsense about the police? Cara and Freddy—and now you—I’m probably being excessively slow-witted, but I honestly don’t get the point.”

“Oh, there is no nonsense whatever, I assure you. I am in all good truth a member of the Viennese police force, which has been gracious enough to grant me a year of absence in order that I may conduct these experiments.”

“But, K—no, it’s no use; I simply can’t believe it. Do you wear kid gloves and a helmet and bang people over the head if they won’t stop when you whistle at them?”

Karl Sheridan met this vivid impression of police morals and manners with a grin of pure delight.

“No, no—I am neither so fortunate nor so powerful. Where do you get your ideas of the force, my dear Tess? Back numbers of Punch? It makes me feel more insignificant than ever. My stepfather never told me that I was entitled to a whistle.”

“Are you a captain or something?” she inquired suspiciously.

“Not by ten years or so of work hard enough to break your back and your heart! I am among the humblest of the Applikanten, I assure you. It is only fair to state, however, that there are perhaps certain differences between the exigencies of the Austrian police system and your own undoubtedly admirable one. We are more—shall we say?—specialists.”

“Specialists in what?”

“Crime,” said the young man from Vienna gravely. “It is, quite frankly, our hobby. For me, I confess, it is more. For me, it is my passion.”

She repeated “Crime!” in a strange little voice as though it were a foreign word that she was pronouncing for the first time. After a moment she said slowly:

“You mean murder?”

“Do I now, I wonder? Why is it that with this world full of counterfeiters and burglars and blackmailers and swindlers and bigamists, it is of murder that one always thinks when that little word ‘crime’ is spoken? Murder.… You see, Tess, that that is not really a fair test for us; it strains our resources of detection until often they break, because there we are not dealing with rational minds using rational methods to evade the law; there we are dealing with the dreadful handiwork of amateurs—dreamers and lunatics, savages and romanticists, optimists and egotists—so deafened and blinded by their desperate need that the law is no longer even a word to them. It is a miracle, I think, each time we run one down.”

His dark face turned away from her for a moment, tense and strained, as though he heard far off the sound of horns and the baying of hounds. Tess Stuart said quietly with a small, enigmatic smile:

“Still, I’m inclined to believe that when you said crime was a passion to you, you meant murder.”

“God forgive us both,” said Karl Sheridan, his dark young face relaxing into its singularly gracious and charming smile. “I fear that you are right.”

“Do you know,” she said, still smiling down faintly at the ring that was the color of blood, “I believe that I’d have made rather a good—criminal; or rather a good detective, if it comes to that. What are the qualifications of a good detective, K?”

“What are yours?”

“Let me think. I don’t lose my head; I see everything that’s in front of me; and I have enough imagination to put myself in the other fellow’s boots. Wouldn’t that make a good detective?”

“Not even a good criminal, I am afraid. Imagination—ah, now, there has been the death of many a good criminal—and of many a good detective, too. If you can put yourself into that other fellow’s boots, how can you bring yourself to slip a noose about his throat and throttle him until his face turns black? Still less, if you are a detective, how will you bear to slip that halter about another human being’s neck, so that he may hang by that neck until dead—no matter how richly he may merit death?”

“Yes.… Yes, I see. Imagination doesn’t sound very useful.”

“And you will see, too, that if you keep your head, it is never quite possible either to commit or detect a crime. You must not for one moment count costs, nor risks, nor victory, nor defeat. You must lose your head a little to win your game. Not too much, but a little.”

“Yes. I can see that, too.”

“I am quite sure that you can, Tess. Why else have you eyes so clear and wide? And to be a good detective, one must see, not what lies before those eyes, but what lies behind them. Sometimes a long, long way behind—days and months and years. Because what lies before your eyes will tell you only what this man has done; what lies behind will tell you why he did it. And if you know that, then already your hand is on that man’s shoulder.”

“I’m afraid you were flattering me about my eyes. I feel hopelessly mixed up. Are you trying to tell me that in crime—in murder—it’s the motive that counts, more than the means or the opportunity?”

“More than them both together, surely. No, I was not flattering you.”

She said slowly,

“You make it all sound rather fascinating—and rather terrifying.… What is this mysterious experiment that you’re making here?”

“It is not mysterious in the slightest. I am detailed to work here with your Division of Investigation, where I am installing some new equipment in their already excellent laboratories.”

“Equipment? But what for?”

“For the purpose of scientific crime detection. It contains many of the important new devices that we in Vienna are using—in connection with photography, physics, chemistry, and half a hundred other things almost as important. I am to be placed tentatively in charge.”

“Oh, K!” The silver-gray eyes were wide with reproachful regret. “Then you aren’t really a policeman at all—not even a detective—just a chemist or a biologist or some other kind of a scientist. I do think that’s a most awful come-down. I’ll probably hear next that you belong to the Cosmos Club and are lecturing before the National Geographic Society.”

Karl Sheridan laughed outright at the undisguised disappointment of his former admirer.

“I plead guilty to the chemistry charge, my poor Tess, but I am still, I swear, a detective—a true, an honest-to-God detective, and not such a bad one at that.”

“I mistrust you. You’re probably the dinner-jackety kind that collects Persian ceramics and incunabula and words over four syllables. I’ve met a lot of you lately, and what I’ve been simply praying for was somebody who wore shabby tweed, and said a few short, gruff words through his teeth when he wasn’t using brass knuckles and a blackjack. It’s not a bit of good pretending that I’m not heart-scalded.”

“Some day,” promised Sheridan, looking young and elated, “I will straighten out some of your truly extraordinary ideas as to the duties and privileges of the professional detective. And while I am doing it, I shall produce my little black bag as Exhibit A in the case of Karl Sheridan versus The Wholly Unfounded Suspicions of Charity de Tessaincourt Stuart.”

“What kind of a black bag?”

“Oh, quite a small one. It is my humble substitute for the blackjack. You shall judge whether it is an efficient one.”

“Produce it now.”

“Indeed no. This has been enough of me—and too much. The black bag I shall hold as a hostage of your interest. How have we gone so far afield? You were asking me whether I was to be here long, and I have taken all this time to say I hope so—now.”

“You’re staying with Cara?”

“No, no; I love her far too well for that! I am the worst of house guests; I need badly some small place that I can call my own to stretch in. In a day or so I shall set about finding it. Now for you, please—Washington is still your home?”

“Oh, not still—again!” She shook her head absently at the hovering butler with the champagne. “I was off on a South Seas cruise for most of last year, and Dad’s been circling the civilized and uncivilized globe for ages, and we’ve tagged along after him when we haven’t been standing boarding schools and convents on their heads! Funny places for children, some of them—Chile and Puerto Rico and Peking—and then he was governor for two terms—and three years in Geneva. Commissions are his pet hobby, though; he’s in the Senate now, but he’s managed to creep off on one to the Canal Zone.”

“When you said ‘we’ a moment ago, was that other disturber of convents the quite tiny little one who trotted along behind you in the park and tried to roll a hoop far bigger than herself?”

“Fay? Oh, yes—she’s certainly done her bit when it comes to convents!”

“She had eyes that flew everywhere like blue butterflies, and fluffs of hair pale as primroses—she is not here tonight? No, I am quite sure that I would know her.”

“No, she’s not here. She’s been down at Warrenton on a house party; Kippy Todd and she are motoring back tonight after dinner. You’d know her, I think—she still has hair like primroses and eyes like butterflies, and is tinier than almost anyone in the world.”

“But you call her Fay? That was not what you called her then; I have a better memory for names than you, it seems. Then, surely, her name was Faith?”

“If you have a mother called Hope who is optimistic enough to call her daughters Faith and Charity,” she told him, “the daughters have to find the best way out they can.… Mine was just a makeshift, but Fay’s suits her perfectly.”

“Better than Faith, you find?” he asked laughing.

Her eyes flashed up to his with a look as startled, as outraged and astonished as though he had struck her. After a second they withdrew; he saw only the gold-tipped wings of her lashes as she answered lightly:

“Let’s say that you can’t improve on perfection, shall we? Of course you can’t be expected to know how absolutely right ‘Fay’ is for her until you see her.”

Now what—what in God’s name had sent that strange lightning through her eyes? Fay—Faith.… He put it aside, matching his tone scrupulously to hers.

“You make it difficult to wait.… Now then, will you be my good Samaritan? Since I was so stupid as to be late, nine of these thirteen most ornamental people about this most ornamental table are complete strangers to me, and one a very new acquaintance. You could help me not to be quite so great a dunce later if you would tell me just a little who some of them are?”

“Am I the new acquaintance?”

“You? You should know better, you who are an old, old friend. No, it is the truly ineffable lady on my left, who has hair like carrots dipped in lava, and a voice like a battle cry. I did not dream her?”

Tess Stuart cast an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lady on the left, who was indulging in the series of Valkyrie cries that constituted small talk for her, aimed at an obviously diverted gentleman across the table.

“Freddy?” Her voice dropped even lower to the discreetest of murmurs. “No, no—you’re not resourceful enough to do that, even if you have spent four years learning how to be a policeman. No human being could invent Freddy, even in a dream.”

“She assured me that she was called Lady Parrish. That, also, is no dream? It struck me—gratefully, I may say—that she somewhat lacks ‘that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.’”

“Oh, Freddy’s certainly not depressingly Anglo-Saxon; she comes from San Francisco, and a good many other points north, south, east, and west.”

“Hey, when do I get another shot at this cop?” demanded the terrible Freddy in a voice that evoked a pair of guilty starts from the absorbed conversationalists. “Merciful Moses, you’ve had him all through guinea hen and chestnut purée—and now they’re whisking away the aspic and in about half a split second Cara’s going to be showing off those damned Crêpes Suzettes that I always fall for in half-dozen lots. Give him back, you pig in the manger! I finished everything I had to say to Raoul two years ago last Christmas.”

“In five minutes, darling.” Tess Stuart’s voice was a perfect blend of cajolery and inflexibility. “I’m doing the grand tour of the table for him—all about who’s who, and why—and you must admit that it would be fairly hard on him and everyone else if he got his first impression of Washington’s prides and joys from you! They’d undoubtedly be his last impressions, too; you’d have him shaking our dust off his heels before they brought in the finger bowls. Raoul, just rivet her attention a little firmly, will you?”

Raoul Chevalier uttered a truly sepulchral sigh.

“Tess, my dear darleeng, why you do not ask me to do some little, simple thing like move a mountain? Freddy, turn this way your too beautiful head and I will tell you what the great Papa Anatole say to the chambermaid who—”

“You mean I’ll tell you,” replied Freddy firmly. “Good Lord, I’ve told it to you three times this spring, and I’ll bet you five thousand francs, on or off the gold standard, that you haven’t got it straight yet.… There, Tess Stuart, what did I tell you? Three blooming, burning chafing dishes of the little devils, looking cozy as kittens in hell.” She cast a baleful glare at the majestic procession of advancing servitors, bearing the funeral pyre of the doomed Crêpes, and groaned lustily. “Well, I’ll go this far, seeing as how you’re the only nice gal in town. If you’ll let me tell the boy detective about Abby Stirling, I’ll keep this doggone dinner party sitting at the table until I’ve downed five Crêpes Suzettes, one at a time, Indian file. Then he’s mine. Is it a bargain?”

“Oh, it’s two bargains!” Astounding girl, thought K, holding the echo of her swift laughter in his ear, where he could listen to it ring at leisure. Never in this world would he have expected that clear untroubled gayety from the grave and witty young sophisticate at his side. This—why this might have been the War Baby laughing, so fresh, so surprised, so enchanted; the long-lost War Baby, laughing wide-eyed at her very first white rabbit being pulled out of her very first silk hat. “We’ll be sitting here till twelve; Cara will be out of her mind with rage! K, that man straight across the table—”

“Never mind the man across the table,” Sheridan begged his cicerone. “Let us start once more at the beginning with this all too agreeable-looking young man on your right, who is for the moment fortunately five fathoms deep in conversation with his other neighbor.”

“That’s Dion Mallory—almost pure Irish, and second secretary at the British embassy! He is rather agreeable-looking, isn’t he?” The low voice was once more armed in lightness.

“And will you tell me why this kindest of secretaries has left paradise to me all this time while he listens to the little girl with the face of a bad little boy? He is as devoutly attentive as though he were head over heels in love with her—but, do you know, Tess, I think that he is not in love with her at all.”

“You’re perfectly right, of course; not at all! But how on earth did you know?”

“It is simply that I saw him looking at you when I first found myself lucky enough to be sitting beside you—and realized that Aunt Cara was a godmother straight out of a fairy tale.”

“Ah, now you’re making me feel as though Cara should have provided a string orchestra. Things like that really ought to be sung; they’re far too pretty for ordinary table talk.”

“You were saying something to that young man very wise and important and earnest,” K continued imperturbably. “But I do not believe that he heard you. He was looking down at you, and I do not believe that he heard you at all.”

“I’m glad that you aren’t always infallible,” she said, staidly, though her eyes danced. “He heard every word; that’s why he’s neglecting me so outrageously. I was asking him to please be very attentive to poor Vicki; it’s rather a bad mix-up, because she and the man on the other side of her haven’t been speaking to each other for a week.”

“And besides the fact that he is admirable to behold and commendably obedient, what else should I know about this Mr. Mallory?”

“Oh, for an accurate description of Dion, you must go to someone less prejudiced.” She met his eye, serenely undaunted. “Just at present he’s one of my very best young men, so you can see that my testimony is thoroughly unreliable.”

“At present?” repeated the policeman from Vienna, with a slight inflection. “And for the future?”

“Oh, the future!” She put eternity in its place with a light-hearted shrug. “The future belongs to devils and angels, doesn’t it? You mustn’t ask a lucky girl to bother about that. And if you really get me started about Dion, we’ll never get a quarter of an inch further, and there’s Freddy, on her third Crêpe.”

“Let us most certainly not talk about him,” Sheridan agreed with marked alacrity. “Let us never mention his name again—I feel that already I know far, far too much about this all too admirable young man. As for the others, we will give them ten words apiece. His partner, now, who brags with that poor little impudent face?”

“Vicki,” said Tess Stuart and was silent for a moment. “Well, she and her mother came here from Detroit a year or so ago; her mother was a divorcee with apparently unlimited millions, and she gave a simply fantastic coming out party for Vicki—an old-fashioned cotillion with flower toques and parasols from Reboux, and enamel vanity cases and gold penknives from Cartier’s; and Paul Whiteman to play fox-trots, and Rudy Vallee to play waltzes, and a ten-piece marimba affair from Havana to play rumbas and tangos. And then last fall she was killed in an automobile smash near Baltimore—and about a week ago it suddenly became perfectly clear that Vicki was going to get a few thousand instead of a few millions.”

K narrowed appraising eyes at the cropped head, glossy as a horse chestnut, rising above a silver jacket that was tailored as impeccably as any man’s black broadcloth—lingered for a moment over the restless hazel eyes and the nervous tension of the jaw, over the soft young mouth, hard-set as a gangster’s—and returned contentedly to the clear serenity of the girl at his side.

“She has not learned yet how to be unhappy,” he said. “But that is a hard lesson, and she is still young.”

“Oh, it’s wicked and stupid that she should have to learn it at all!” cried Tess Stuart, suddenly and surprisingly vehement. “When she came here first she was as friendly and amusing and hopeful as a puppy—” She pulled her-self up abruptly, nodding at the butler, still hovering assiduously with the white-swathed bottle. “I think I’ll have some, after all.… It isn’t a very pretty world, is it?”

“Not very,” he assented quietly. “And the curly-headed gentleman next to her to whom she has not spoken for a week—is he, too, a friend of yours?”

She said, carelessly:

“I don’t have many friends—not so many as Dr. Byrd, probably. I understand that he’s very popular indeed—with some people.”

“But not with you?”

“But not with me,” said Tess Stuart evenly.

Sheridan, seemingly absorbed with a recalcitrant cigarette, eyed the profile presented by the blond and handsome Byrd somewhat critically.

“Nor with me,” he remarked finally. “The eye is just a trifle too blue and candid, should you not say, and the smile, like the hair, a trifle too curly?”

“Everyone believed that he and Vicki were engaged,” said Tess Stuart, her low voice quite colorless. “But last week things apparently broke up.”

“About the time that the news came of the lady’s vanished fortune?”

“About a day after.”

“He is not notably intelligent, then, our popular young doctor?” he inquired thoughtfully. “Or did he decide that his popularity was sufficient to stand any strain?”

“I think that he decided that there’s always a plethora of rats on any sinking ship,” said the girl with delicate precision, and Karl Sheridan realized with a sudden odd contraction of his heart that here was a good friend—and a bitter foe.

“Come, then, let us waste no more of our precious moments on this doctor. A jolly good fellow and a jolly bad egg, I fancy. Now, then, next to him—the little dark happy one in the dress like good Burgundy wine—who is she?”

Tess Stuart’s face was suddenly warm with affection as her eyes followed his to the small, radiant creature holding the man on either side of her enthralled in a story that evidently called for an almost continuous play of expressive hands and extravagant eyelashes and dimples.

“Oh, that’s Joan—Joan Lindsay. She has the finest pearls and the prettiest laugh in Washington, and she’s a treasure and a delight. Everyone’s head over ears in love with her, from the President to my street cleaner, and she’s in love with her husband. Isn’t that clever of her? That’s Allan directly opposite you; doesn’t he look like a gentleman who knows he’s lucky?”

K’s approving glance traveled from the richly colored little face with its great fringed eyes and its small mouth, sweet and secret as a child’s, to the sunny head and friendly smile of his debonair vis-à-vis.

“They are both lucky, it seems. I hope that you are going to help me to see more of your Lindsays.… Of Aunt Cara’s husband I know nothing save that in my youth he was a lavish purveyor of chocolates and fifty-cent pieces, and that he is now a brigadier general, an excellent judge of claret, and the owner of an admirably controlled mustache. Should I know more?”

“I don’t think there is very much more,” said Tess, tilting the shining perfection of her head to a more judicial attitude. “He’s one of those nice naïve people who are frightfully good at their own job, and so simple about everything else that it’s downright touching. Just now he’s pretty morose about the state of the whole terrestrial globe, poor darling—wait till you hear him on the younger generation and free silver and modern music! You may not know it, K, but Stalin’s at the bottom of the whole thing.”

“You confirm my worst suspicions,” replied Karl Sheridan gravely. “And Uncle Gregory is undoubtedly my real affinity at this feast of reason. I, too, am all for older and better generations, free gold instead of free love, and the kind of music that they play on April evenings on barrel organs.… And the amusing-looking one on his other hand—the one with the black satin hair and the nose and eyebrows that tilt?”

“Andrée Chevalier. She’s the wife of the poor boy who’s still struggling with Freddy. Truly, you’re going to have to rescue him pretty promptly! I caught his eye a second ago, and he made a sound as though he were going down for the third time. Raoul’s the French naval attaché, and they’ve been here so long that they’re practically oldest inhabitants. Great friends of the Lindsays—and mine—and Dion’s. Very chic and very, very civilized. Andrée loves to flirt, and Raoul loves to be flatteringly jealous, and they sing hill-billy songs and tell fortunes and are tremendous additions to any party.”

“Good! And the next is the lucky Mr. Lindsay. Should I know more of him than that?”

She knitted conscientious brows.

“I don’t think so—anyway, you’ll find out for yourself. I couldn’t possibly produce anything nicer for you to play with than Allan, and Allan’s heavenly place in Virginia, and Allan’s heavenly babies, and Allan’s heavenly Joan. They’re giving a party at Green Gardens Monday; I’ll get you an invitation to it tonight, and you’ll spend the rest of your life being grateful to me.”

“That,” said the young man from Vienna, “I have suspected for some time since.… And the one in the green dress that matches her eyes, and whose taffy hair is as neat as Alice in Wonderland’s?”

“Oh, Abby Stirling!” Laughter ran once more contentedly below the level of her voice. “I promised Freddy that she could do the honors for her; they have a battle to the death as to which one gets the title of the rudest woman in Washington. I suppose that it actually comes down to whether you believe that a rapier or a cannon ball can do the more damage.”

“Both being in the hands of an undisputed expert, I gather? Am I supposed to gather, too, that Miss—or is it Mrs.?—Stirling is not the wielder of cannon balls?”

“No, no—you’re still batting a thousand on omniscience!” she assured him with an amused twist at the corner of the too expressive mouth. “It’s most certainly rapiers for young Mrs. Stirling! Bill isn’t here tonight; he must be at the dinner that the press is giving to the prime minister. He’s one of our leading newspaper lights—special correspondent of the Baltimore Planet and he and Abby put on the most magnificent longshoreman’s brawls that crisp the hair on their pleased friends’ heads—but I’m rather afraid that they adore each other. The one between Abby and Cara is Freddy’s Sir Oliver, and—”

“Just suppose you leave Freddy’s Sir Oliver to Freddy, you greedy young magpie!” remarked a loud, threatening voice that caused Sheridan and his ex-guide to exchange diverted and despairing shudders. “Good God, don’t you ever stop talking, De Tessaincourt Stuart? You must breathe through your ears.… Dion Mallory, if you can’t think of anything to say to Tess, try growling and counting up to a hundred by fives. That’s how they get all those swell mob effects.”

Dion Mallory leaned towards her, and Sheridan noted with reluctant approval the easy Irish magic of the swift smile, the warm, brilliant voice, and the dark blue eyes that swore that life was a good enough friend to the merry and the gallant.

“Freddy, angel, there’s not a day dawns nor a night falls that’s long enough by twelve hours to get me half through with what I have to say to the girl.… If it weren’t that Vicki here’s cast a spell over me—”

The brown child spoke across him, her voice taut with its effort at lightness.

“Tess, what’s that divine place we went to in New York? You know—the one that had real vodka and quails wrapped up in vine leaves—”

“Somewhere in the Fifties, you mean? Well, aren’t they all called Toni’s? This is Karl Sheridan, Vicki. You must be especially nice to him, because I kicked him so violently on the shins when I was six that he says it still hurts. Miss Wilde and Mr. Mallory, K—I think you’ve already met Lady Parrish?”

“Shut up,” commanded Lady Parrish succinctly. “If I hear another squeak out of you I’ll murder you.… And as for you, my elegant young policeman, kindly look straight at me; I don’t want to see that classic profile of yours again tonight!… Just keep perfectly still, Caroline; it’s no use trying to make a scene.”

Cara Temple said with a somewhat embittered smile:

“You aren’t even funny, dearest. If I hadn’t been having such a perfect time with Noll and Raoul I’d have stood you in the corner a long time ago.” She rose with a charming sweep of rosy lace and feathered fan. “Just one cigarette, please, Greg? There’re a few people coming in to dance. Coffee and liqueurs in the living room, Dalton.”

Sheridan, on his feet, smiled down companionably at the airy impudence of the tall, red-headed minx in the Pierrot ruff.

“And still you have left the famous Mrs. Stirling quite unscathed?”

Lady Freddy cast a really virulent glance in the direction of the flawless serenity of the small, pale face vanishing through the crystal doors.

“One word is all that girl rates,” she remarked distinctly. “One short, snappy, little Anglo-Saxon word—only Noll’s a bit fussy about having me use it. I tell him that what’s good enough for the Theatre Guild ought to be good enough for him, but he can’t see it that way. Very, very early Victorian, that lad! Give you three guesses.”

“You flatter me,” he assured her. “Being quite late Victorian, I need only one.… This is only a very temporary parting, I trust?”

“Try to lose me!” she laughed over her shoulder. “Just try, that’s all.… Hey, Joan, wait for baby!”

Halfway across the room Tess Stuart had paused, her fingers linked about the Wilde girl’s thin brown wrist. She glanced up, caught his eye, and he was at her side quicker than the smile that she had flashed him. Vicki Wilde slipped by them with the briefest of nods.

“Aunt Cara has promised us dancing, has she not? Then may I have the first dance—and the last dance—and twenty or thirty dances in between?”

“The first one belongs to Dion; but since he’s deserting us early, maybe the twenty or thirty next ones. Don’t you hope they’re all waltzes? I’m pretty good at waltzes.”

She smiled again and was gone. After a moment, he turned and went slowly back to the table, stopping for a moment short of his place to hold out his hand to the tall soldier who was his host.

“It’s good to see you again, sir. You and Aunt Cara have made me feel that now I have actually come home.”

“My dear fellow, that’s excellent! How did you leave our enchanting Hannele?”

“More enchanting than ever, thanks. She sent you a thousand messages, and will have a thousand more to deliver in person when she comes over this fall.”

“We’re counting on it. You’re going to try a little of this cognac? I can recommend it.”

Sheridan bowed, smiling, and resumed his seat in time to preside over the ceremonious transfer of a conservative inch of brandy from the impressively antediluvian bottle to the impressively enormous goblet of crystal.

“Cigarette?” inquired Dion Mallory hospitably, pushing a well-worn, severely handsome case of Russian leather towards him. “I’m afraid these are rather good ones. You have to apologize for anything better than Luckies these days—the smarter one is, I gather, the worse the tobacco. If you’re royalty, it’s gaspers or nothing!”

Sheridan eyed the slim white cylinder with its elaborately gilded inscription appreciatively. “Benson & Hedges—Old Rare Vendije Gulaks, no less—and vintage crop at that. Many thanks!”

“I can’t get along without them for more than ten minutes, I’m afraid. Tess has been telling me that you’re to be with us for a bit.” Mallory lifted the great glass in a friendly gesture of welcome. “I understand that you’re practically an oldest inhabitant, and make denizens of three or four years’ standing like myself seem sheer upstarts! Are you well fixed for lodgings?”

“Well, just for the present I’m impersonating a transient at the Mayflower. You might be able to help me—is there anything in these parts to correspond with that admirable British institution, the service flat?”

“Oddly enough, I think I’m the lucky possessor of about the only one—rather the only two. I leased a fine little midget bandbox of a house over in Georgetown two years ago; it has a garden the size of a pocket handkerchief, and my brilliant predecessors—a pair of promising young architects—fixed up the first floor with a living room, bedroom, and kitchenette, and the second with a bedroom and a sitting room. There’s a fairly well-stocked cellar, plenty of books, and a jewel of a darky butler and his even greater treasure of a wife who are common property for both floors. My housemate’s just deserted me for a month or so, and Tess was wondering whether it might appeal to you while you were finding your way about?”

Karl Sheridan put his glass down, a quick flush of amazed pleasure under his dark skin.

“But how uncommonly—how extraordinarily kind of you! It would prove a godsend, naturally. You’re in earnest?”

“Oh, absolutely. I’d kidnap you and install you tonight, if it weren’t that I’ll be having to dash off to New York in something short of an hour. The most revolting nuisance; wasting hours and hours of my valuable young life dashing off cross country in the rattletrap that I rate as a car simply because that old blighter Harrington who left last night forgot an attaché case of what I suspect are highly unimportant documents; we’ve been turning the embassy upside down hunting for them ever since he wired this morning, because the chief thinks that it would be jolly for him to have them before he sails.”

“Harrington? Oh, yes; he’s your big tariff expert, isn’t he?”

“Isn’t he just! I’d be considerably more impressed with him if he could remember for five minutes together where he left his overshoes. I only discovered his thrice-accursed papers behind the guest-room sofa at five minutes to eight tonight, and his appalling boat sails at six tomorrow morning. The last train that could catch him was just pulling out, of course, and as I unfortunately happen to possess an ancient car and a reputation for amiability that borders on lunacy, I naturally find myself cast for the rôle of John Gilpin! Never be a second secretary, Sheridan. I give you my word that old Uncle Tom led a carefree existence, compared to mine!”

His laugh was better than his smile, decided Karl Sheridan, and his smile was heart-warming enough to disarm Herod.

“If I hadn’t half a dozen all too professional engagements tomorrow, I swear I’d make you take me along. Riding at night I love now better even than when I was ten! How long will it take you?”

“With luck, I’m counting on something around six hours. It’s running it a bit finer than the chief would approve, I suspect, and I don’t promise that I’ll slow down at every corner, but I particularly didn’t want to miss this dinner. After all, that ought to allow me an hour or so’s clear margin for wrong turns and blowouts and miscellaneous deviltry.”

“More power to your elbow! Are you returning also like Jove’s thunderbolt or will you linger awhile in New York?”

“I rather think I’ll turn round in my tracks. I’m booked for what promises to be an amusing shindy at the Stirlings’ tomorrow night, and New York doesn’t hold any particular charms for me.… Let’s say that I’ll get in touch with you late in the afternoon, and you can move in bags and baggage, lugs and luggage, sometime before dinner. Will that suit you?”

“Better than I can say. If you’re really sure that it’s not an imposition—”

“My dear fellow, it’s a kindness, I swear. I’m a gregarious, sociable sort of a cove, and I’ve missed Hardy rather badly. We’ll consider it settled, then.… Tess told me something about your job. Are you actually getting down to work tomorrow?”

“Actually, not for several days. I stipulated that length of time to get my bearings in what’s rather a tricky business. Outside experts are apt to be prophets without honor, I imagine.”

“Well, there’s a danger there, of course—though I’d be inclined to think that you’ll get around it in good shape.” He smiled reassuringly over the bubble that held the brandy. “You don’t strike me as being loaded down with the overweening cockiness that is apt to tip the average expert over flat on his face. I’m not wrong in suspecting that you are an expert, am I?”

“From the point of view of the Criminalistic Institute of Vienna, you’re indulging in the grossest flattery! But they are somewhat exigent. I myself, taking a more liberal view of the matter, consider that I am an expert of the very first water in my own particular line.”

“Which is—”

“Which is chemistry, and more especially the violet ray—the fluoroscope—used in connection with inks, graphites, paints, engraving and printing—the whole field of forgery, counterfeiting, and questioned documents.”

“But doesn’t the Vienna institute give a general training in—what do they call it?—all-round sleuthing?”

“Scientific crime detection,” Sheridan submitted, in a tone of regrettable levity. “Believe me, you would not hesitate to describe it as such if you had once endeavored to pass the examinations! You must be a college graduate before you can even qualify as a student, of course, but by the time that they have put you through three or four semesters of criminalistic microscopy, criminalistic optics, toxology, psychiatry, industrial technology, photochemistry, legal medicine, and anthropology, both you and they have agreed to forget about any such juvenilia as the average college education.”

“But, God of our fathers, what for?” demanded Dion Mallory, his vivid face stricken into violent protest. “What does it profit you when you’ve lost your own soul and substituted that unholy conglomeration for it? What happens to you then?”

“You are then qualified to mount the first rung of the ladder that leads to promotion above the rank of noncommissioned officer in the police force of Vienna.” Sheridan laughed outright at the blank incredulity in his attentive listener’s eyes. “Do not let it upset you. It is only the preliminary qualification!”

“You’re actually telling me that you have to spend years on end studying criminalistic photochemical optics or whatever you call the damn things before you can become even a police lieutenant?”

Sheridan laughed again.

“‘Even!’ Oh, my dear Mallory, that is as though you were to say ‘Even a member of Parliament.’ I have described to you only the kindergarten of our education.”

“Well, I’d give a good pound sterling at the old rate to hear you outlining your curriculum to a London bobby,” remarked Mallory, suddenly overcome by mirth. “Or to certain members of the Washington police force, if it comes to that. Let me in on your first conference, will you?”

Sheridan grinned back at him imperturbably. “My dear fellow, I am not to be attached to the police force I Frankly, though, I doubt whether our particular technique of education would be very useful with an ordinary police organization. On the Continent, as you undoubtedly know, the criminal is apt to be a highly trained expert, too; he uses his wits, we use ours, and machine guns are not called in to settle the argument. But in a land of amateurs and gangsters our occupation, like Othello’s, would be gone. A smattering of ballistics, a good file of fingerprints, a length of rubber hose, and a night stick—what more equipment is needed here, should you say?”

“Not a single violet ray, if you’re asking me! But then why in—”

“Ah, why indeed! Your Bureau of Investigation, however, is quite another matter. Like my alma mater it employs experts to fight the expert criminal. I’ll expound on the subject for hours on end, if it won’t bore you too much, but just now I think that Uncle Greg is looking our way with a very marked ‘Shall we join the ladies?’ expression in his eyes. Exactly!”

They were all on their feet, propelled by the expert marshaling of their host, and as they passed leisurely through the crystal doors, the sound of music reached them, seductive and imperious. General Temple, with a guilty glance in its direction, quickened his pace.

The living room, green and tranquil as a forest, was sweet with the flowering branches of young fruit trees, starring its dark peace with their fragile, tremulous beauty. There were half a dozen new faces scattered about among the companionable groups of deep chairs and small tables, and in a wide, bare room beyond, which seemed to be furnished principally with blue moonlight and silver curtains, two or three couples were drifting with the lovely, aimless ease engendered only by ample space, a perfect floor, and music that flowed with the clear cadence of water. Tess Stuart, seated with Vicki Wilde and Cara Temple in the group nearest the door, rose as they came towards her.

“Ours, Tess?” asked Mallory, and she answered, smiling, her hand already on his arm:

“Ours, of course.… I waited. Yours next, isn’t it, K?”

Incredible how long one waltz could last; simply incredible. K circled the shining room three times with Cara Temple, light and graceful as a girl in her trailing laces and high silvered heels, all radiant interest in darling Hannele’s little boy.

“Staying with Dion Mallory? Oh, but K, how perfect—and how clever of you! You’ll adore Dion, and he can be really useful to you; you simply couldn’t find anyone who knows the ropes better.… Oh, dearie dear, look what a horrid, purposeful expression Raoul Chevalier has—and he can’t even touch you when it comes to waltzing.… Aren’t you good to an old lady, Raoul! Of course, I will. K, have you met everyone? Mrs. Lindsay? This is Karl Sheridan, Joan; please be especially nice to my favorite godchild!”

Four times round with the small, soft-voiced enchantress known as Joan, who danced like a highly intelligent fairy, and whose eyelashes and dimples were even more extravagant than they had seemed across the table. Before he turned her over to the all too handsome Dr. Byrd, she had informed him in a dovelike murmur that Vienna was her passion, that she was in a frightful hurry to get back to Green Gardens because her daughter Midget had a new tooth and Elsie Dinsmore, the cocker spaniel, had produced three utterly peerless puppies no bigger than blond mice early that morning—and that the party Monday evening would be an utter fiasco if Karl Sheridan did not honor it with his presence.… Twice with Vicki Wilde, who confined herself to curt, ungracious monosyllables, and turned from him unsmiling in reply to Lindsay’s gay insistence. The music was rising to a final crescendo before it trailed languorously off into temporary silence, and he stood leaning against the doorway in the hall, his eyes following the progress of the white cloud dipping and swirling with airy assurance in the protecting circle of Dion Mallory’s arms.… She caught his eye, lifted her hand in greeting, and a second later had drifted half across the room to his side.

“Dion’s going,” she mourned, her hand still on Dion’s arm. “Will you dance with me, K? Will you stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples? He’s taking a girl with him, too. A girl with green eyes and a bad headache and a lot of fine, tall talk about equal rights for men and women to make fools of themselves—”

“I’ll drop the poor girl on her doorstep soft and easy as a kitten, darling,” laughed Mallory. “And she’s got more than a headache, let me tell you! Bill’s informed her that he may be bringing home a gang of those press lads from the dinner, and she has to be there to cut the sandwiches and pour the beer. She’s straight on the road to my diggings, anyway, where I have to change these clothes and pick up those confounded papers. Ah, now, don’t stand there looking at me so lovely and so sad, or I’ll never be able to leave at all, and Geneva’ll go wondering all the days of its life what kind of papers the eminent Mr. Harrington collected in America.”

“Oh, how I loathe—how I detest foggy-minded old gentlemen who go around leaving packages behind them!” murmured Miss Stuart with soft vehemence. “Dion, don’t drive too fast—no, and don’t drive too slow, either. And hurry back, darling; I’m going to miss you so frightfully.”

“If you aren’t a bit careful, you’ll have me setting a speed record for future generations to shoot at! Sheridan, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow surely; I’m counting it grand good luck that you’re willing to take a chance on me as a housemate.… Yes, coming, Abby.… Good-bye—good-bye, darling.”

Darling.… Well, everyone in America apparently addressed every one he or she spoke six words to as “darling,” the young man from Vienna decided with a certain amount of bitterness. Probably they saluted the footman and dismissed the butler with those two well-chosen syllables.… Darling indeed! He stood for a moment watching his future host bending just low enough over Cara Temple’s extended hands, saluting Cara’s husband with just the right touch of affectionate respect, turning to the green-eyed Abby with precisely the right degree of amused and sympathetic solicitude.… Undoubtedly—oh, undoubtedly—the very nicest fellow that he had met in twenty years.… He suppressed a really dismal sigh, grinned companionably at his juvenile idiocy, and turned to the lady who was Dion Mallory’s darling.

“Do we dance?”

“K, would you mind awfully if we didn’t? Not just now, I mean. Unlike Peter Pan’s fairies, I don’t feel particularly dancy. What time is it?”

“Eleven—no, five minutes past. Good Lord, where has the time gone to?”

“Isn’t it dreadful? But you see dinner was frightfully late—and frightfully long, thanks to your train and your charms! Listen, K, I’m a little worried about Fay. She hasn’t been well lately, and I want to make sure that she got home all right from Warrenton. Just wait one minute till I telephone, and then I’ll devote the rest of the evening to showing you the prettiest thing in Washington. The telephone’s in the library. Sure you don’t mind being kidnaped?”

“Quite sure.”

She pushed the door open—and collided on the threshold with Vicki Wilde, her mouth a little tenser than usual, her eyes feverishly bright.

“Look out, darling—where’s the fire?”

“Oh, Tess, the damnedest nuisance, honestly. Freddy was going to give me a lift to Sally Hitchcock’s—they’re playing off the backgammon semifinals there, you know—and just because I was out in the garden for about two minutes, she dashed off and left me flat. She just telephoned; I do think it was hateful of her. Now if I can’t find someone in there to cadge or lift off of, it means a taxi—and God knows how I loathe taxis!”

“Cadge one off me,” suggested a voice from the hall, lightly and amiably. “I’m bound Sallywards myself. Tie on your bonnet and come along.”

Karl Sheridan stood watching every drop of blood drain back out of the hard little face before he let his eyes travel past it to the hall, where the doctor whose hair was a trifle too curly stood elaborately at ease, hat in hand, overcoat on arm.

The pale child, her eyes riveted, moistened her lips and murmured in a voice barely above a whisper, “Yes. All right.… All right. Let’s go,” and brushed by them as though they were not there. Miss Stuart, looking suddenly remote and delicately scornful, dismissed the two of them with a fastidious flicker of her lashes.

“The human race,” she informed her companion, “is simply more than I can cope with. Remind me to have nothing whatever to do with it, will you?”

She seated herself on the edge of the table, drawing the telephone towards her, and tapping out the number in a series of impatient little clicks.

“I did—I did think that wretched child had more pride,” she murmured forlornly. “After everything I’ve said to her—”

Her voice trailed off into silence as she bent her head, listening intently. Sheridan could hear it, too; a faint buzzing far off and insistent.

After a moment she put back the receiver carefully; lifted it again, and once more turned the dial, this time with meticulous deliberation. Then he could hear a tiny voice, infinitely remote and impersonal. It ceased, and Tess Stuart replaced the little black horn with a gesture of curious finality.

“It’s the operator; she says that the line is out of order. Someone else has been trying to get the number for the last hour. Or she may have left the receiver off.”

She put her hand to her head, as though she were suddenly and mortally tired.

“No, but see here,” said Sheridan impulsively. “If you are worried, why do you not let me get your car, and—”

“No, no. She’d be furious.… It’s stupid of me to give it a thought, I know, and I wouldn’t if I were sure that Kippy was with her when she left, and that she wasn’t—oh, what an abject idiot I am! I’ll call the Tappans, of course. They can tell me in a minute.”

She leaned towards the dial impatiently, and Sheridan, noticing how suddenly and strangely dark the eyes were under the fine, straight brows, said with the grave courtesy that he had brought from another and a distant land:

“Shall I not wait outside, Tess? I myself detest to hold telephone conversations with three corners.”

“No, don’t go. It won’t take a minute, truly.… Hello? Is Mrs. Tappan there? Nell? … Nell, it’s Tess Stuart. Did Fay get off all right? … What time? … Before nine? Oh, then she must have been home for ages.… She was all right, wasn’t she? … No, it’s just that the telephone didn’t answer, and like a lunatic, I began to worry. She’s been having those ghastly headaches again, you know.… Kippy Todd was with her, wasn’t he? … Oh, then he undoubtedly came in to amuse her, and the little demon’s probably left the receiver off on purpose.… Was it a grand party? … I’ll wager you did! Thanks, darling—good-night.… No, I’m not bothered now, honestly. No, honestly.… Good-night.”

She hung up the receiver slowly, a flicker of annoyed amusement in her eyes.

“You know she really is an imp of the first water! Any time that romance strikes her as more agreeable than reality, she simply turns down the lights, lifts off the receiver, and lets the rest of the world go mad. Shall we try the winter garden?”

“By all means. These gloves here on the chair, are they yours?”

Tess ran them critically through her fingers.

“No, I never wear gloves—they’re like veils and stiff collars and high boots—they all make me feel as though I were strangling to death in jail. Ridiculous, isn’t it? … These must be Vicki’s. I’ll see she gets them.… It’s right through these doors. Look out for the step.”

“Thanks. And this—this Kippy Todd—he represents romance to Fay for the time being, you think?”

Tess Stuart, a white dream in the dark doorway, lifted bare shoulders in a small, amused shrug, disdainful and indulgent.

“Oh, anyone a foot or so away is Fay’s idea of romance, if the lights have the right kind of shades! The current of her emotions flows from the fingertips to the heart, not from the heart to the fingertips.” She ran lightly down the steps, turning towards him with a proud wave of the hand, her lifted face starry with delight, the gown billowing about her, light as foam. “There, didn’t I tell you that it was perfect? Look at the little brick wall with the wicket gate in it, that makes you think that it’s going on and on forever—look at the flagged path winding along with moss in its cracks—look at those lilies that come to my shoulder, and this larkspur that comes to my eyebrows, and pansies that come just to the tips of my toes. And oh, oh, look at these chairs on the terrace! Shades of the Arabian nights, did you ever see such luxury?”

But the disobedient Mr. Sheridan was looking at something else. Something more shining than the far-off stars—something that gleamed with a more radiant and mysterious pallor than the flowers themselves, turned by the night to white moths and silver butterflies.

“Never. Never in all my life have I seen anything one half so lovely,” he assured her with profound conviction.

Tess, already deep in the lacquer-red cushions of the basket chair, linked her hands behind the honey-colored head and smiled up contentedly at the stars.

“Oh, but you should see it in winter! That’s when it seems an absolute miracle, with drifts of snow against the glass roof and drifts of night-blooming jasmine reaching up to them. Making spring and summer bloom together in the snow—isn’t that the prettiest miracle you ever heard of?”

Karl Sheridan, his eyes on the drifted white against the scarlet cushions, shook a noncommittal head.

“You must not make me the judge of miracles!” he said. “Tonight they have come so thick and fast that I have touched my eyes with my fingers more than once to make sure they are not betraying me. But do you know, I think that a snowdrift in May is perhaps even a prettier miracle than flowers in January.… I have not yet thanked you for the kind thought that you put into Mallory’s kind head.”

“He’s delighted that you’re coming. It wasn’t kindness on my part—nor on his. He really wants you.… Is installing this laboratory going to keep you fairly tied down, or are you going to have some time to play with us?”

“Plenty of time, I dare prophesy. I do not believe that the Division of Investigation is going to clamor for eight hours a day of laboratory instruction; in fact, I doubt whether just now they would trust me a block out of sight with my little bag.”

“Oh, the bag!” The gray eyes traveled swift and clear as light, from the far-off stars to the brown, amused face, barely a hand’s breadth away. “You were going to tell me what was in it—you promised. Tell now.”

“Now? But what is in that little bag does not go, believe me, with stars and flowers. Nor with a lady who is made of both! Let us leave the bag safe in its drawer and listen to what that poor fellow in there is trying to tell us on the violin.”

“I’m tired through to my bones of flowers and stars and music,” she told him amiably. “And of polite young gentlemen telling polite little lies. Unpack the bag for me, K.”

“You have no heart,” said Karl Sheridan in a voice that he hoped was dispassionate. “And probably no soul, either. It is distinctly unscrupulous to wear eyes and mouth like that if you have no heart and no soul.… There are twenty-eight articles in the bag.”

“Twenty-eight? It must be a fine, fat little bag.”

“On the contrary, it is quite flat and neat; you can wear it over your shoulder, like a knapsack, or around your waist on a belt. I brought it over to check up with the one used by the field agents of your Division of Investigation. It is what is known as the Thorndyke equipment, somewhat modified by the famous Herr Doktor Gross and your humble servant. Each thing has its own pocket or its own strap, so that you can check them quickly before you start.”

“Start where?”

“For X, naturally; where else?”

“X, of course,” repeated Tess, in the small, far-away voice of a dreaming child. “X marks the spot where the body fell.… Begin, please. Begin counting the things in the bag.”

“A steel tape measure,” said Karl Sheridan; and she checked off the steel tape measure on the little finger of the slim white hand. “A flashlight. A strong magnifying glass. A fountain pen. A box of metal-bound tags to mark exhibits. A packet of envelopes to contain them. A notebook. A compass. A small mirror—”

The finger with the ruby on it, which had been reached in the orderly process of checking, was raised in peremptory protest.

“A mirror? What is this? The Thorndyke equipment or a vanity case?”

“Perhaps you are right,” said the young man gravely. “Perhaps, as you suggest, it is a vanity case. ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher… all is vanity.’ Life—and death, too, perhaps.… You must hold the little mirror quite close to lips that will not tell you their secret; if no cloud rises on its surface, then you can be very sure that you have reached X. It is a better guide than even the compass.”

“Yes. I see.” The deep young voice sounded farther away than ever, but it was as steady as his. “What is ten?”

“A ball of twine. A tin of what chemists call gray powder, used to develop fingerprints. A small spray, known as an insufflator, and a camel’s-hair brush for the same purpose. A rubber roller, a tube of printer’s ink, a glass slab—all to take prints. Rubber gloves. A bottle of iodine. A cake of soap. A towel.”

“Soap? But why on earth—”

“I can assure you,” said the young man grimly, “that there are moments when in spite of the aid of rubber gloves and discretion, a cake of soap and a towel are imperative necessities. And sometimes the murderer has forgotten to provide them.”

“Twenty.… What’s twenty-one?”

“A pair of scissors. Four test tubes to contain samples of fluid. A flask of brandy. A package of cigarettes. Matches. The last three items, which you may imagine as more appropriate to a picnic basket, are, I assure you, more cherished than our revolvers. Every good detective is, naturally, equipped with a nerve of steel, a will of iron, and heart of gold—but I have known times when four swallows of brandy and three puffs of a cigarette have kept nausea and hysteria more successfully at bay than the memory of Sherlock Holmes’s excellent morale.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can see that, too. Herr Gross and Master Thorndyke strike me as a highly resourceful pair, and I’m sure that you’re a great credit to them.… Does that empty our bag?”

“As bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.”

“And all that you need to get your man is locked up in a few inches of black leather that you can carry in your hand?”

“Oh, but on the contrary! All that I need to get my man is locked up in even fewer inches here.” He struck his knuckles lightly against his forehead, with a smile that was neither gay nor reassuring. “The black bag is simply an extremely primitive instrument for gathering together a few poor broken little straws that will show in what way a very small wind is blowing. Straws that may tell us what that man did for his pleasure—what were his habits—what his occupation. If we are lucky we may get a fairly good portrait of that man, then all we have left to do is to find the original of the portrait.”

“You mean cigarette ashes, and buttons, and little scraps of cloth under fingernails?”

This time his laugh was gay enough to please the most exacting.

“Tess, you are most wonderful! No, I am no disciple of what that good Scotland Yard calls the dominant clue. The dominant clue for me is the motive—and then again the motive—and then, after that, the motive. Let these clues tell me what manner of man this was, and I can tell you perhaps why he did it. If I can tell you why he did it, then even more possibly I can tell you who he is. Or she, if it comes to that.”

“Yes,” said Tess thoughtfully, “I can see that it might come to that, of course. Then the little black bag isn’t really important at all?”

“Oh, it is important enough!” he said indifferently. “But now I will make a bargain with you. The next time that you come across a really good murder, I will agree to leave the little black bag at home and still find you the murderer—if you let me have just one party.”

“A party? What kind of a party?”

“A party where there will be plenty of little cold cocktails and plenty of big cold whiskies and sodas. Plenty of cigarettes and frocks with frills on them and torch songs and moonlight. A good party, with all the very dearest friends of the late lamented corpse present and accounted for.”

“Now I know that I’m stupid,” she murmured tranquilly. “You mean that one’s nearest and dearest are addicted to murder?”

“Not quite. Though murder undoubtedly implies a certain degree of—intimacy. No, what I mean is that if the party starts early enough and lasts late enough, and there is a moon sufficiently bright and torch songs sufficiently low, I will only have to sit quite quiet, with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, while they tell me who the murderer is. I do not say that they will know that they are telling me, but assuredly, assuredly, before the cock crows, I will know his name. I will admit that I have never been asked to such a party.… What is it that smells so sweet, Charity de Tessaincourt Stuart?”

“Honeysuckle—here, right under my hand. Doesn’t it grow in Austria?”

“I don’t know. I know it never had so magical a smell—but perhaps that was because it never flowered beneath your hand. Will you dance with me now?”

She brought her eyes back from the stars, smiling a little and shaking the honey-colored head.

“You don’t mind? Shall I tell you what I’d really like to do?”

“Tell me.”

“I’d like to have you take me home. It’s after twelve, isn’t it?”

“Close to one.”

His voice was pleasantly courteous and detached as ever, but from his eyes a small boy stared at her, reproachful and rebuffed, and she smiled back.

“Then Fay’s probably still up—she’s the most dreadful little night owl—and if she hasn’t hung out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, we’ll raid the night nursery for some cold chicken and drinks, and all settle down to a really serious discussion of roller skates and snowballs.”

The little boy looking out from the dark eyes cried elatedly, “The night nursery? The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign? Now, Tess, what in heaven’s name is that?”

“It’s a perfectly beautiful little red-and-black sign that Fay stole from a hotel in Bangor. And if either of us has a visitor that she feels would benefit from uninterrupted privacy, she hangs it on the outside doorknob of the night nursery. That’s our fourth-floor sitting room; we have an apartment all to ourselves made over from the ones that used to belong to us when we were babies. Fay’s bedroom is the day nursery, mine is the governess’s room, and the night nursery is the sitting room in between. We have our own kitchenette, and we couldn’t possibly feel more magnificently independent! Dad had it remodeled last year because we both gave up smoking and drinking for six months.”

“Most exemplary of babies!” he murmured. “And most fortunate of nurseries.… Do you frequently avail yourself of the monopoly established by the black-and-red sign?”

“I try not to abuse it, thank you,” she informed him sedately; and then laughed suddenly, the surprised and enchanted laughter that had been the War Baby’s heritage. “Oh, darling, don’t look so solemn! If Fay hasn’t staked out a claim on it, I’ll hang it out tonight for our own especial benefit. Now will you come?”

Darling. Of course, she called everyone darling. It didn’t mean anything, then. No, then it meant everything. Darling.… He could still hear the deep, gay young voice murmuring it when she kissed Cara Temple good-night; it rang in his ears above the boom of the carriage caller, chanting his pompous “Miss Stuart’s car. Miss Stuart’s ca-ar-r!”; he could hear it, caressing and mocking, while she sat wrapped in snow and silence in the far corner of the car, fingers linked about the little flowering bag from which rose so heady and innocent a fragrance. Darling—darling—clear and soft and amused above the click of the latchkey in the lock; above the tap of the silver heels across the black and white marble blocks of the cool, empty hall; above the reassuring purr of the tiny crystal elevator as it carried them up to the nurseries where once upon a time the golden Stuart babies had dreamed in swiss hung cribs. Darling.…

The landing of the fourth floor was dark, but under the central door of the three that faced them a golden pencil had drawn a line of light.

“There, she’s still up—what did I tell you?”

She turned on the light switch triumphantly and was halfway to the door before she stopped, lifting a warning hand.

“Oh, devil take that child—the sign’s out! Of all the inhospitable little demons I … I’m so frightfully sorry, K. No one knows how greedy I was feeling about chicken bones and apple sauce and roller skates.” She held out her hands to him with a rueful smile, all friendliness and charm. “Never mind; come tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll dangle the wretched little sign from the doorknob for hours on end.”

He released her hands, slowly.

“You were not, I think, one half so greedy as I.… Will you say it once again?”

“Say what?”

She paused, one hand on the handle of the door to the left, the friendly laughter still lighting her eyes, and he thought that he had never seen a coroneted head—no, nor yet a crowned one—held so proudly and so lightly as this small shining one that belonged to a senator’s tall young daughter.

“Say ‘Don’t look so solemn, darling.’ I feel, I assure you, very solemn indeed.”

This time the smile broke into laughter, hushed instantly to wide-eyed and decorous silence.

“K, are you flirting with me? Are you? How perfectly beautiful!” She lifted the finger with the ruby to her lips, in a gesture so swift that he could not be sure whether it were a signal for silence or a blown kiss, whispered “Don’t look so solemn, darling!”—and was gone.

On the doorstep, he stood gazing vaguely up and down the silent street, wondering how in the world you went about getting a taxi at this hour of the night—and abandoning the idea with a contented shrug. It was far too pretty a night to waste on taxis, and a good brisk stroll was clearly indicated. It proved to be an agreeable but dangerous pastime; during the twenty minutes that he occupied in traversing the mile between the hotel and the Stuart mansion, he received the fervid and highly articulate assurance of at least one public cab driver and two private citizens that he had thrice escaped death by an entirely undeserved hair’s breadth, and it was idle to pretend that he had not tried his key in three doors before he realized that he was on the wrong floor of the hotel.

This, however, was undoubtedly his room. There in the corner stood the highly professional-looking table with the new chemical microscope that was his special pride, polarizer and compensator neatly adjusted, and that new crystal solution invitingly at hand. He leaned forward, pulling the slide towards him.

It was a good three quarters of an hour later that he halted by the dressing table, peeling the cuff links abstractedly from his shirt and balancing them in his hand with as much gravity as though they were dangling on the scales of justice itself. There were ways of saying “Darling,” surely. Ways in which it meant nothing at all—ways in which it meant everything. “Hurry back—I’ll miss you so, darling.” … Well, that was the kind of thing anyone might say to a pet uncle—or a favorite feminine bridge player as she boarded the Île de France—or to someone that needed such indulgent kindness because of the disagreeable task that lay ahead.

“Don’t look so solemn, darling!” Now that was different, distinctly. “Darling, don’t look so—” The extremely solemn-looking young man glanced up swiftly from the diamond-and-platinum disks in his hand, caught the owlish absorption of the mirrored countenance, and yielded to an abrupt and astounded bark of diversion. Was it humanly possible that this—this callow, moon-eyed dreamer, standing there in a trance of Schwärmerei and maunderings of the most revolting description, was actually and indisputably the not undistinguished Mr. Sheridan, shrewd analyst, relentless scientist, diverted cosmopolite? And reduced to this amazing state of disintegration by what? By a pair of eyes, clear and cool as rain water? By a deep and distant sound of laughter? By a white finger lifted to gay and reckless lips? By a small, proud head, shining too palely for amber, too deeply for honey? Oh, come, come, my good Karl! He flung a sardonic smile at the dark young face in the mirror, tossed the links onto the table, and turning on his heel, moved towards the window with elaborate leisureliness. Why in the name of the gods of wind and air did some anonymous and diligent hotel demon spend his entire time creeping about closing windows that had been left carefully opened? The room was hot and stuffy as a badly aired bandbox, and yet just outside that dark noncommittal square of glass there were stars shining, and a little breeze still murmuring to itself of the green leaves in the park, and—He halted, riveted, one hand on the sash, his incredulous eyes staring back at him from the glass that the night beyond had turned into a dim mirror.… The telephone.… Just behind him the telephone was ringing, strident, urgent, and imperious, as though its energy would shake its small frame apart.

He went towards it slowly, the incredulity still darkening his eyes.

A voice, small, strange, and very far away, said:

“Mr. Sheridan?”

“Yes. This is Mr. Sheridan.”

The voice spoke again, barely above a whisper:

“It’s Tess, K. It’s Tess Stuart. Could you come to the house?”

He asked blankly, his eyes on the blandly impersonal face of the clock above the door, pointing its neat black fingers at twenty-five past two:

“To the house? But when, Tess?”

“Now. Quickly, please. Don’t ring. I’ll leave the door on the latch.”

For a moment he stood perfectly still, feeling a small, cold wind rising about him; feeling a small, cold hand closing about his wrist, fragile and relentless, pulling him towards something distant and dark. With a violent effort he shook it off, bending his head to the black disk with a laugh that sounded strange even, to himself.

“But naturally, I will be delighted! Ten minutes should get me there in a taxi, should it not? I gather that the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is down, and that I am once more to meet the small Fay, and share that famous cold chicken? Oh, excellent!”

The far-away voice said, suddenly and appallingly distinct:

“No. No. The sign is still there. Dismiss the taxi a block or so before you get here and use the stairs instead of the elevator, please. I’ll be waiting outside the night nursery.”

The night nursery? He could feel the invisible fingers, icy and clinging, tightening about his heart.

“Very well. In ten minutes, then. I will use the stairs.”

There was a second’s clicking and whirring on the line from the vast and indignant deity that presides over the crowded highways of the air; then once more the voice reached him:

“Thank you. Hurry, please.… And will you bring the black bag?”

Steadying himself with one hand against the table, he said in a tone void of any expression whatever:

“Forgive me, but there was a disturbance on the wire: I am not quite sure that I understood. You said that you wanted the black bag?”

“Yes. I said hurry—hurry, please.” The voice wavered, failed, rallied to a terrible clearness. “I said—I said to be sure to bring the black bag.”