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Title: With Banners
Date of first publication: 1934
Author: Emilie Loring (1864-1951)
Date first posted: October 31 2012
Date last updated: October 31 2012
Faded Page eBook #20121048

This eBook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                          _WITH BANNERS_

                          _Emilie Loring_


    THE PENN PUBLISHING
    COMPANY · PHILADELPHIA

    Copyright 1934 by Emilie Loring

    WITH BANNERS

    First Printing, October, 1934
    Second Printing, October, 1934

    Manufactured in the United States of America

       *       *       *       *       *

               _To_
    THE PLAYWRIGHTS AND PLAYERS
         PAST AND PRESENT
           OF MY FAMILY




_With Banners_




I


With a nice sense of dramatic values, the heel of Brooke Reyburn's shoe
turned sharply as she ran across the street. She went down on one knee
just as the traffic light turned green. She had a confused sense of an
automobile bearing down on her, the screech of brakes, of panting cars,
of arms lifting her to the sidewalk.

"Hurt?" a voice demanded.

She was conscious of the sticky dampness of one knee even as she shook
her head and dazedly looked about. The gold dome of the State House
shone in the afternoon sun; boys were calling the headlines of the
evening papers; an autogiro was crawling like a huge spider across the
blue ceiling of the sky. She was still in the world. For one horrible
instant she had thought she might be passing out of it; her heart beat
like a tom-tom.

She looked up into the eyes blazing down at her. She must have had a
narrow escape to have wiped the color from the man's face. It was
chalky. Even the lips below his clipped dark mustache were colorless.

"I'm all right, really I am. It was my silly heel that threw me," she
assured breathlessly, even as she moved her knee experimentally. It
worked. It wasn't broken.

"Why wear such fool heels? If you're not hurt, why did you wince?"

The man's voice was husky; his eyes had a third-degree intentness which
roused a little demon of opposition. Brooke retorted crisply:

"If you insist upon probing the secrets of my young life, I think I've
skinned my knee."

"Perhaps that skinned knee will teach you not to sprint across the
street against the traffic light. I almost lost my mind when I saw you
go down just as that car cut around the corner. Don't you know better
than to try such a foolish stunt?"

Even making allowance for his fright and for the fact that a man usually
roared at the nearest woman when frightened, he had no right to speak to
her as if she were a dumbbell. Wasn't it maddening enough to fall in the
middle of a city street without being lectured for it? Brooke's eyes
flashed up to his.

"At least I know better than to stand on a street corner talking to a
stranger," she retorted in a voice which was fiercely satisfying to the
tumult within her.

She thought the man spoke as she merged in the stream of passers-by. She
passed the building to which she had been hurrying to keep an
appointment when she crossed the street. She wouldn't go in yet, she'd
better wait till her still thumping heart quieted before she entered the
offices of Stewart and Stewart, Attorneys at Law, she had too much pride
to appear there breathless and shaken. That had been a narrow escape,
not only for her, but for the man who had snatched her from the path of
that speeding car, and--horrible thought--she hadn't even said "Thank
you!"

Her cheeks burned as she remembered the risk he had taken for her and
her abrupt and ungracious departure. He had made it clear enough when he
had deposited her on her feet on the sidewalk that he thought her brain
quite devoid of gray matter. Her apparent ingratitude wouldn't send her
stock up.

If only she knew who he was she could write to him, but he might have
been a stranger passing through the city whom she never would see again.
In that case she would have to bear always this pricking sense of being
ashamed of herself, it would bring her sitting straight up in bed when
she thought of it at night.

She stopped at a flower shop. Its color and beauty were like a soothing
hand on her smarting conscience. The air had but a hint of the crispness
of early October. It was so mild that great pots of chrysanthemums,
white, yellow, pink, rusty-orange, and browny-red, were massed under gay
awnings. There was a flat dish of rosy japonicas in the window;
gladioli, dozens of them; spikes of heavenly blue larkspur; violets,
deeply purple, by the alluring bunch; unbelievably perfect Templar roses
in crimson masses, and a tray of gardenias in waxy perfection.

Overhead a steeple clock chimed. The sound reminded Brooke of her
engagement. She winced as she moved. The words of her rescuer flashed
through her mind:

"Perhaps that skinned knee will teach you not to sprint across the
street against the traffic light."

Dictator! She made a little disdainful face as his flashed on the
screen of her mind. To shake off the memory she glanced again at the
flower-shop window. The violets were ravishing. How she would like a
bunch but--no "but" about it now, she could buy them. Hadn't she
incredibly and miraculously acquired a fortune?

The fragrance of the purple flowers tucked into the green tweed jacket
of her suit helped unbelievably to keep her mind off her smarting knee
and pricking conscience as she entered the office of the junior partner
of Stewart and Stewart. No one here?

After a furtive look about, she examined her knee. Skinned. She had
known it. Shreds of her silk stocking clung to the raw flesh. She winced
as her lowered skirt scraped it. Her unknown rescuer and dictator need
not fear that she would forget that lesson in a hurry.

Where was Mr. Jed Stewart?

There was an open book on his large flat desk. The title fairly jumped
at her.

     UNDERWOOD ON WILLS

Brooke's heart did a nose-dive. Did that particular book on that
particular desk mean that Stewart and Stewart were preparing to contest
the will in which she had been named residuary legatee?

Silly, she derided herself, wasn't the firm executor of the estate of
Mary Amanda Dane? Hadn't Mr. Jed Stewart notified her that the will had
been allowed, hadn't he asked her to be at his office today at four? It
was her late shake-up and this gloomy room which had started her
imagination on the rampage. Where it wasn't knotty pine it was walled
with books impressively, if mustily, bound in calf. An Indian drugget,
worn thin under the swivel chair at the desk, covered the floor. The
brass top of a massive inkwell glowed red gold where a vagrant ray from
the slanting sun struck it. Heavy rust-color hangings framed the
windows. No wonder the electric lights were on at this time in the
afternoon.

From outside came faint distant noises in the corridor; footsteps
thudding, scuffing, springing past; the incessant clang of elevator
doors. Inside, "Tick-tock! Tick-tock!" the wall clock marked time for
the quick procession of the minutes.

And the minutes were marching along. Where was Mr. Stewart? Was it part
of legal procedure to keep clients in suspense? The secretary in the
outer office had shown her into this room, had said that she was
expected, that the junior partner was in conference but would be at
liberty in a few moments.

She compared her wrist watch with the clock. When she had dashed across
the street, she had thought she was late for the appointment, she had
been detained at the store. She had been in business long enough to
realize what it meant to keep a person waiting, that time was money. The
rumble of voices in an adjoining office drifted through an open transom.
If only Jed Stewart would cut his conference short and tell her why he
had sent for her. If the legacy was to be held up, she would like to
know. She hated uncertainty.

Restlessly she crossed to the window. She slipped behind one of the
hangings to shut off the electric light in the room behind her. What a
view! Roofs. Tiers of roofs alive with pigeons. Patches of bright blue
broke up the pattern of gray clouds. Weather vanes pointed to the north.
Innumerable wires etched gigantic cobwebs against the sky. Skylights
shone like sheets of molten brass as they reflected the sun. Flags were
flying. Smoke from chimneys was blowing out as straight as the tails of
kites in action. Huge signs glimmered with faint lights. Far away on the
hazy violet horizon a white spire pointed the way to Heaven. The beat of
drums, the shrill of a traffic whistle, the wail of a siren on a
fireboat in the harbor pierced the muted roar and rattle, the rhythmic,
vibrant throb of the city which rose from the street thirty floors
below, pierced even the deafening thunder of the wings of the night mail
as it passed overhead.

Her eyes lingered on the roofs. Beneath them business units were pitched
together. Honesty and fraud; virtue and vice; ups and downs; efficiency
and stupidity; ambition and lethargy; each unit moving in its own orbit
and each thinking itself of supreme importance in the complicated
pattern of the business world. She ought to know something of that
world. She had been buffeting her way in it for five years.

Had been. Her throat tightened. Could she really use that tense? Was it
possible that in future she need not squeeze every nickel until the
buffalo on it bucked? Was it true that while everyone she knew was
adapting expenses to meet a reduced income, a small fortune had dropped
into her lap from an absolutely clear sky? It was a "Through the
Looking-glass" reversal. It had a fairy-story quality, it belonged in
Once upon a Time land--but--she touched the violets, it was true.

"Miss Reyburn ought to be here, Mark, but I suppose like the majority of
women she has no idea of the value of a man's time."

The annoyed comment in the room behind her snapped Brooke out of her
reflections. How like a man to assume that she was at fault. She would
make a dramatic entrance, and then--

"Glad she is late. I told you, Jed, that I didn't want to meet her. It
was a _beau geste_ for her to offer me half of the money, all of which
should be mine by inheritance. I'll make my get-away before she comes.
Let her move into Lookout House pronto. I'm the only person in the world
with the right to contest Aunt Mary Amanda Dane's will, and, much as I
would like to own the family heirlooms and add her part of the house to
mine, I won't do that. I would have to prove 'undue influence' or
'unsound mind,' wouldn't I? How could I do that when under oath I would
have to acknowledge that my aunt had said she would cut me out of her
will? The fact that I didn't believe she would do it wouldn't cut any
ice with the Court. Nothing doing. I've had publicity enough over my
domestic casualty to last the rest of my life."

Brooke's hand dropped from the hanging. That must be Mark Trent's deep
voice tinged with anger. By "her" did he mean herself? So he thought her
offer to share with him merely a _beau geste_. Should she have refused
to take any of the legacy? This was hardly the tactful moment to make
her entrance. He was going. As soon as the door closed, she would
appear and explain to Mr. Stewart why she had been at the window;
meantime she would be strictly honorable and not listen. She stuffed her
fingers into her ears.

At the same moment on the other side of the hangings, Jed Stewart was
saying:

"I never did understand why Lookout House was cut in two, Mark."

"It wasn't. Grandfather Trent had two houses built exactly alike, one
for his daughter, Mary Amanda, and one for his son, my father; the Other
House, the family called ours. Not satisfied with that, he had them set
side by side on a rocky promontory--he intended them for summer homes
only--with doors through the library downstairs and the hall on the
second floor and connecting balconies; he was a glutton for balconies.
Aunt Mary Amanda recently has lived there the year round. I inherited
Father's house, but I haven't lived there since--well, for three years.
It has been closed. I haven't rented it because I thought it might be
unpleasant for my aunt to have strangers near when she was wheeled into
the garden which serves for both places. Now, see what she does to me.
She picks up this girl and later, while I'm starting a branch office in
South America, leaves her her half of the real estate and all her money.
Well, I'll be off. I have a date."

"Don't go, Mark. I asked Miss Reyburn to come here this afternoon to
tell her what financial arrangements have been made for her, but
principally to get you two face to face so that we could straighten out
this mess about the personal property in the house."

"Mess! Do you call a sound, unbreakable will a mess? Aunt Mary Amanda
Dane warned me that if I married Lola she would cut me off with the
proverbial shilling; then, when my divorce became necessary, she was
more opposed to it than she had been to the marriage. Can you beat that
for inconsistency? I've always had a hunch that the French man and wife
who have worked for and worked Mary Amanda for years might hypnotize her
into leaving all her property to them--I warned her against them and
somehow they found out and have hated me ever since--but I didn't think
she would leave it to a comparative stranger. In my opinion, Clotilde
and Henri Jacques are no better than a couple of bandits; they'll bear
watching. I don't trust the Reyburn female either, her fine Italian hand
crops up all through that will, but I don't like the idea of a girl
living in the same house with them. However, she'd probably think I had
an axe to grind if I warned her. Why in heaven's name didn't you give me
a hint how the property was going?"

"Yellow journals and hectic fiction to the contrary, lawyers don't talk
about the affairs of a client, even to their best friend, fella."

"Don't blow up like a pouter pigeon, Jed. Of course I didn't expect you
to tell me; equally, of course, I wouldn't try to upset that will. My
aunt's High Church convictions wouldn't permit her to approve of my
separation from a wife who had been sordidly unfaithful. I thought she
might soften toward me when Lola married the third time, but evidently
not. If she wanted to bequeath her house, her money, and her jewels to a
girl she had picked up via radio, okay. But perhaps you can tell me
where all the money she left came from? I knew that she inherited half
of Grandfather Trent's property, but I hadn't supposed that her husband,
Dane, left much. About five hundred thousand, you said?"

"Plus, and all in savings banks and gilt-edge securities, that is, as
gilt-edge as any investment, these days. Can you beat that for a mild
little crippled old lady who looked as if she didn't dare call her soul
her own?"

"And who lived as if the big bad wolf of a moneyless future were forever
sniffing at her door. I about laugh my head off when I think of the
cheque I sent her each month with which to buy a few little luxuries,
knowing how incomes had been cut--I thought it must take all of hers to
keep her home going--the money was a long delayed return for the fun I
had visiting her when I was a kid. Mother wouldn't live in our half of
the house, but for years I spent Thanksgiving with Aunt Mary Amanda. I
hadn't thought she had much of a sense of humor, but she must have
crackled with it when she dropped my small cheques into her fat bank
account."

"But she didn't drop them into her bank account, Mark. Have you
forgotten her reference to that in the will?"

"Not a chance. I know it by heart. She kept the money in a separate
deposit, which was to be paid to me with interest. She had accepted it
because she thought it good discipline for a youth in this wild
generation to deny himself for someone else. Why didn't she tell me
about the Reyburn female? Why not ask me to meet her before I went to
South America? That's what makes me suspicious. The secrecy of their
friendship. Was the girl afraid that if I knew I would try to influence
my aunt against her? If I was so dense, how do you suppose she got wise
to Mary Amanda's fortune? I understand that she had supper and spent a
night with her once a week, the night the companion-nurse had off. She
must have had a strong motive to commute twenty miles after business
hours. She's a fashion adviser in one of the big shops, isn't she?"

"Yep. Worked up from a model. Mary Amanda Dane tuned in on the radio one
morning just as Brooke Reyburn was giving her fashion talk. She fell in
love with her voice, and wrote to the girl asking what the well-dressed
invalid tied to a wheel chair was wearing. Miss Reyburn answered with
such sympathetic understanding that your aunt invited her to Lookout
House."

"It's a fairy story brought up to date. Only, for the spell of a witch,
substitute the broadcast of a girl's voice. The little schemer got not
only the money but Mary Amanda's jewels, many of which were my
grandmother's."

Brooke dropped her hands from her ears after what seemed hours. Still
talking? Perhaps Jed Stewart was talking to the office boy. She heard
him say:

"Your aunt said in her will, remember, that if she left the jewels to
you, you might--well, that Miss Reyburn would appreciate them. She
relented toward you to the extent of naming you legatee should the girl
die without children; she was canny enough to prevent her fortune from
falling into the hands of her family. You wouldn't think Brooke Reyburn
a schemer if you saw her; you'd know that she had a background of
cultivated living. She has a vivid face with a deep dimple at one
corner of her lovely mouth; her voice is sweet, spiced with daring. She
came out of college to carry her whole darn family when her father
died--he was one of the tragic twenty-niners whose investments were
wiped out--now, I suppose, her brother, who is acting in a stock
company, and her sister will chuck their jobs and settle down on her.
Her hair is like copper with the sun on it; her eyes change from brown
to amber, and when she smiles at me I feel as cocky as a drum major at
the head of a regiment."

"Help! You're raving, Jed. Perhaps you're thinking of marrying her?"

"Marry her yourself, Mark, and keep the fortune in the family."

"I! Marry that girl who hypnotized an old woman into leaving her a
fortune! You're crazy. Besides, I am married."

"You haven't caught your aunt's ideas on divorce, have you? You don't
feel tied to that woman who ran away with that French Count, do you? You
divorced her, didn't you? You--"

"Hold everything! We were talking of the Reyburn girl. You have nerve to
make the suggestion that I marry her. Men have been put on the spot for
less. I wouldn't marry that schemer if--"

Brooke flung back the hanging in a passion of rage.

"Nobody asked you to!" She cleared her voice of hoarseness, and flamed:

"Has it never occurred to you, Mark Trent--" She stopped, her eyes wide
with amazement. Was this really the man who had pulled her from in
front of that speeding car? After the first flash there was no
recognition in his eyes, nor any concern, rather a quiet mockery, which,
she felt, at the first word of hers would turn into active dislike.

"You! You--" Her breath caught in a laugh that was half sob. "What a
mean break for you that you didn't know who I was, that you didn't let
that car hit me! Then you would have had the money."

She had never seen a face so colorless as Mark Trent's as his eyes met
hers steadily.

"Lucky I didn't know who you were, wasn't it? I might have been tempted.
Schemers somehow lead charmed lives."

For a split second Brooke thought that fury had paralyzed her tongue.
She made two attempts to speak before she protested angrily:

"I'm not a schemer! I suppose it never has occurred to you that the
'Reyburn girl' may have loved Mary Amanda Dane? May have been glad to
spend one evening a week in a homey old house away from her whole 'darn
family' in a crowded city apartment?"

Failure of breath alone stopped Brooke's tirade. There was plenty more
she could say, she was apt to be good when she started. A laugh twitched
at her lips. The two men facing her couldn't have looked more stunned
when she made her theatrical entrance had a hold-up man with leveled gun
suddenly stepped from behind the hanging. So this was Mark Trent. She
had been careful never to go to Lookout House when he was there, for
fear that he might think she had planned to meet him, and then he had
gone to South America. Mrs. Mary Amanda Dane had had no photographs of
him about. Once she had spoken of his youth, of his prowess in football,
tennis, and his election as Class Day marshal, and his promotion to head
a large insurance business, and then bitterly of his marriage and
divorce.

In reporting her Lookout House visits to the family upon her return, she
had referred always to Mrs. Dane's nephew as Mark the Magnificent, with
a spicy twist to her voice which had delighted her audience. But she had
not realized that he would be so bronzed nor so tall, that his dark eyes
were so uncompromising, nor that the set of his mouth and chin could be
so indomitable. There was a fiery, strong quality of life in him which
sent prickles of excitement like red-hot slivers shooting through her
veins. She knew now that she should have appeared from behind that
hanging at Jed Stewart's first word.

Stewart's always ruddy face was the color of a fully grown beet. He
coughed apologetically.

"Sorry, Miss Reyburn. Didn't know you'd come. I'll slit the throat of
that secretary of mine for not telling me. So you two have met before?
That's a coincidence."

"No coincidence about it, Jed. Apparently we were both on the way to
this office to keep an appointment with you, when we 'met' in the street
almost in front of this building."

Brooke's anger flared again at Mark Trent's cool explanation. She met
the terrier brightness of Jed Stewart's gray-green eyes. She had liked
him when she had come to his office in response to the Court's amazing
notification that she was residuary legatee under the will of Mary
Amanda Dane. The black and white check of his suit accentuated the
rotundity of his body. He puffed out his lips as he regarded her with
boyish entreaty. She laughed.

"The present uncomfortable situation only goes to prove, doesn't it, Mr.
Stewart, that listeners never hear any good of themselves? Though really
I wasn't listening. I stepped behind the hanging to look at the
marvelous view, and then--"

"You heard Jed say that your hair was like copper with the sun on it,
and--"

"I stuffed my fingers in my ears for a while, but I heard a lot more, a
whole lot more," Brooke cut in on Mark Trent's sarcastic reminder,
"before I heard you refuse to marry me."

"But that was before I had seen you." The suavity of his voice brought
hot tears of fury to her eyes. Before she could rally a caustic retort,
he picked up his hat.

"That's a bully exit line. I'll be seeing you, Jed. Hope you'll enjoy
the house and the fortune, Miss Reyburn. Happy landings!" He laughed.
"I'd better say, 'Safe landings!' You're such a reckless person."

"Hi! Fella!"

With an impatient jerk, Mark Trent shook off the hand on his sleeve,
rammed his soft hat over one eye, and closed the door smartly behind
him. Stewart relieved his feelings in an explosive sigh and pulled
forward a chair.

"That seems to be that. Sit down, Miss Reyburn, while I tell you about
the allowance which will be made you while Mrs. Dane's estate is being
settled."




II


From the lighted stage Brooke Reyburn looked into the auditorium of the
department store in which she had worked for four years. She had begun
by modeling sports clothes, and because she had loved her work and had
given it all the enthusiasm and drive there was in her she had been
promoted steadily. The first of this last year she had been made head
fashion adviser and had been sent to Paris. She had made frequent trips
to New York, but never before had she been abroad. Now she was talking
for the last time to a hall full of women, many of whom she had come to
know by sight. She had given her last radio talk. It was the end of her
business career. What would the new life bring her?

Even as she thought these things, she told her audience that the silver
frock the lovely blonde on the stage was modeling was a copy of Chanel,
called attention to its touch of theatre; that the smart black tailleur
she herself was wearing was from the Misses Better Dress Shop at $29.50;
that neither brown as a color nor gold jewelry should be worn by the
grey-haired woman; that a questionnaire had brought out the amusing fact
that the majority of married men liked to see their wives in blue; asked
if the ravishing scent she was spraying from the atomizer was reaching
them--one dollar a dram at the perfume bar--and said for the last time
in closing:

"This concludes our fashion show. Thank you."

As she stepped from the stage, Madame Céleste, the autocratic head of
the store's department of clothes for women, stopped her. Her figure was
a restrained thirty-six; her black frock was as chic as only a Lanvin
model could be; the pearls at her ears were the size of able-bodied
marbles; her make-up would have done marvelous things for a younger
woman, for her it achieved nothing short of a miracle. A hint of emotion
warmed the hard blue of her eyes as she caught Brooke's hands.

"_Cherie_," her French was slightly denatured by a down-east twang, "I
shall lose my right hand when you go. Why did that meddlesome old party
want to butt in and leave you money? You were on the way to making it
here."

"I shall miss you, Madame Céleste." Brooke's voice was none too steady.

"Perhaps you won't have to long. In this here-today-and-gone-tomorrow
age, money doesn't stay in one pocket. Remember, _cherie_, whenever you
want a job, come to me. You'll be needing one. _Au revoir!_"

"Cheering thought that I may lose the fortune," Brooke reflected, as she
approached her office across the hall. Suddenly the black letters:

     MISS REYBURN

on the ground-glass panel of the door jiggled fantastically.

She blinked moisture from her lashes--she hadn't supposed she would feel
choky about leaving. She opened the door, closed it quickly behind her,
and backed against it as a man slid to his feet from the corner of her
desk. His black hair shone like the coat of a sleek well-brushed pony;
his dark eyes were quizzically amused as they met hers; his teeth were
beautifully white; he was correctly turned out in spic and span business
clothes. He was likable, but there was something missing--rather curious
that never before had she felt it. He lacked--he lacked salt, Brooke
decided, and then reproached herself for being critical. He had been
marvelously kind to her, and she was quite outside his social
circle--now, she would not have been during her father's lifetime.

"How's tricks?" he inquired gaily.

"How did you get in here, Jerry Field?"

"Easy as rolling off a log. A taxi, an elevator, a few strides on shanks
mare, and here I am."

"I've told you time and again not to come to my office."

"While you were on the job, you said, sweet thing. I've stayed away and
all the time the old wolf jealousy gnawed at my heart. I've imagined you
here entertaining the male heads of departments and letting them, or
stopping them, make love to you."

"You've been seeing too many movies. I shall drop fathoms in your
estimation when I tell you that no man in the organization has ever been
otherwise than friendly and helpful. Perhaps I'm not a glamorous person,
perhaps I haven't the divine spark which touches off the male
imagination."

"Perhaps it's because they know that those corking eyes of yours look
straight into their minds. We're wasting time. You are through, and
here I am all in a dither to take you teaing and stepping and dining to
celebrate your entrance into the land of the free."

"Nice of you but--I wonder how free I shall be."

Brooke crossed her arms on the back of a chair and looked about the
office. She would miss it, miss even the display figure in the corner
with its red polka dotted cheeks and staring eyes. There had been hectic
moments when she had talked out her problems to its wax immobility. Her
glance came back to the man watching her.

"How long is it since you and I first met, Jerry?"

He drew a memoranda book from his pocket and consulted its pages.

"Six months, one week, and six days."

"Foolish! Pretending you have it in black and white."

He tapped the closely lined page. "Believe it or not, there it is, the
date when you and I spent an hour trapped in an elevator which wouldn't
move. You were coming from a radio talk and I from a conference with my
broker who had informed me that my account was figuring exclusively in
the red. Fate, sweet thing, fate."

"Fate! The starter told me it was a balky cog. It was an experience I
hope never to repeat, even if it brought you and me together. I was
frightened."

"But you laughed. That's what got me, your sportsmanship, and when you
clutched at my coat it was like fingers on my heart."

Brooke turned quickly to the closet. She must switch him from that
track. As she took down her short lapin jacket and slipped into it, she
said lightly:

"How you dramatize life. You have been miscast. Instead of being born a
rich man's son and spending your days dabbling in paint and the stock
market, you should be on the stage. With your flair for good theatre,
you'd be packing them in. Perhaps Sam can get you a chance in his
company. Have you seen the play in which he is acting?" she asked with a
quick change from lightness to gravity.

"Yes. Your brother's good."

"But you don't like the play?"

"I can't hand it much."

"Neither can I. It's a dummy with not a breath of life, not a drop of
red blood, just clever epigrams and stuffed-shirt characters. I wish Sam
hadn't been cast in it."

"Don't worry. It won't last long. What's the next play on the stock
list?"

"The Tempest. The apartment rings with, 'Bestir! Bestir! Heigh my
hearts! Cheerily, cheerily my hearts!'"

"You're not bad yourself, Brooke. Why didn't you take to acting?"

"I ought to be good. We children were raised on dramatics and
quotations. It was Father's habit to orate when he was shaving, and we
could spout Shakespeare before we could spell. Besides being a
publisher, he was a playwright for amateurs, but Sam is ambitious to
write for the professional stage; he has one three-act comedy finished,
that is, as finished as a play can be until it is put into rehearsal.
That is why he is acting, that he may know all there is to know of stage
technic. I've had theatre enough in my late job. Late! I can't believe
that I'm through. Come on, Jerry, before I sob on the shoulder of that
display figure."

"Lot you'll sob on that when I'm here." He patted his shoulder and
grinned engagingly. "This one is warranted sound, kind, and a corking
tear-absorber."

"I'll wager my next week's salary that it is damp from constant use.
Let's go. I asked the girls not to come to say good-bye as if I were
going away forever. They gave me a grand farewell party last night, and
I have perfume, hosiery, and bags enough to last the rest of my natural
life. Go ahead. I want to snap out the light myself."

As she stopped on the threshold, Jerry Field caught her arm.

"Hey, no looking back. Remember what happened to Lot's wife. I'd make a
hit, wouldn't I, tugging a pillar of salt round the dance floor." He
shut the door smartly behind them.

Brooke blinked and swallowed. "Okay, Jerry, from now on I go straight
ahead like an army with banners, but straight ahead doesn't mean teaing
and dancing with you tonight."

When they reached the already darkening street, Jerry Field demanded:

"Why won't you go stepping with me now?"

"Because I am going home to plan with the family about moving, and to
plot the curve of our domestic future."

"Look here, Brooke, don't persist in that silly idea of living in the
house Mrs. Dane left you. It's all right for spring and summer, but what
will you do marooned on a rocky point of land almost entirely surrounded
by water when the days get short, in a place where the residents dig in
and nothing ever happens? The causeway which connects the peninsula
with the mainland sometimes is submerged in a storm. Suppose we have one
of our typical New England winters?"

Brooke had thought of that. She loved living in the city, loved this
time of day and this time of year when the shops glittered with lights,
when the smell of roasting chestnuts seeped from glowing braziers on
corners, when the streets were jammed with traffic and every person in
the crowd hurried as if he or she had somewhere to go and were on the
way. She drew a long breath of the keen October air and let it go in a
sigh.

"It is a charming old house, Jerry. I shall love it. I'm a business
woman on the outside and a home-maker at heart. I hear that many of the
residents who usually summer there are planning to keep their homes open
and live in them this winter--it's a trend--so perhaps something will
happen, something exciting, on that peninsula of land you scorn. These
are the melodramatic thirties, remember. It will be rather thrilling to
go into an absolutely new environment; an adventure in living. One never
can tell what's waiting to pounce as one turns the corner. Twenty miles
isn't far from town."

"It's twenty miles too far. If you were here in the city, I could pick
you up in a minute and we could go places. To date you've handed out the
excuse that you were too busy. People are planning to winter there, are
they? That's an idea. You won't lose the fortune if you don't live in
the old place, will you? It wasn't a condition?"

They were walking toward the crimson and jade sunset against which a
huge electric clock seemed colorless.

"No. Mrs. Dane merely left a note with her lawyer, in which she wrote
that she wished I would live there for two years, or at least until I
had cleared the house of her belongings, that she knew that I would not
laugh at her treasures, that I would understand, and that I would care
for her parrot, Mr. Micawber. That parrot leaves me cold, Jerry. So you
see, I must live in the house for a while--now that the lordly Mark
Trent has given permission. I--"

"What has Mark Trent to say about it?"

Brooke looked up in surprise as they waited for the traffic light at the
corner to change to red and yellow.

"Don't bite. Do you know him, Jerry?"

"Sure, I know him."

"Why haven't you told me?"

"Why should I? I'd forgotten that he was Mrs. Dane's nephew who had been
cut off with a shilling or less."

She caught his arm. "Look out! Wait for the light! I had that lesson
seared into my mind last week--and ground into my knee," she added to
herself.

"Now we can go. You must have been excited to start to walk in front of
a car. Why do you dislike Mark Trent?"

"Don't dislike him. Just don't want to think about the man, that's all.
My sister Daphne went cockeyed about him and he turned her down hard.
Like a perfect gentleman, of course, but it got my goat."

Brooke visualized Mark Trent as he had glared down at her on the street,
and later as she had seen him in Jed Stewart's office. She couldn't
imagine him changing his mind when once he had determined on a line of
action. He looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and was
out to get it. Even the memory of him sent little prickles along her
veins.

"Are you sure he turned her down?"

"Sure. I'm not blaming him, I'm ashamed for her, that's all. He was
probably fed up with her type. His ex-wife was never quite sober, I've
heard. Daphne fell for him the minute she saw him, she had worried me by
her crazy ideas of freedom for a girl, she'd picked up a post-war germ
somewhere--all talk of course--and when Trent came along, she stopped
drinking and staying out till morning at Night Clubs. I was relieved.
Then he side-stepped. Forget it. I don't know why I told you. Nice
street this, isn't it?"

Brooke nodded assent as they passed houses whose polished windows,
violet-paned some of them, screened by laces of unbelievable fineness,
regarded her with inscrutable calm. Thoroughbred dogs, proudly conscious
of their gay collars and smart breast-straps, decorously escorted their
young masters. Shining limousines waited before charming old doors. In
the distance rose the faint, far sound of traffic, murmurous as a mighty
flood which never rolled nearer.

"Here we are at your door. Sure you won't change your mind and go
stepping?" The boyish quality was back in Field's voice. "Grand old
house. Pity it was turned into apartments. Do you realize that you never
have invited me to meet the family? What's wrong? Ashamed of your
home--or me?"

"Neither. What a beastly suggestion, Jerry. If you must know, I haven't
told them about our friendship. I have the finest family in the world,
but their bump of humor is over-developed, it isn't a bump, it's a
coconut."

"What is there about me that's a joke?"

"Nothing; don't be so touchy. I decided to be a little mysterious,
that's all. Sam resents it if I ask him a question about his friends,
thinks I am treating him like a boy when he is almost two years older
than I; and since I got Lucette the chance to model and she is
financially independent, she scorns my interest."

"Is your mother like that?"

"No, Mother's a dear, but she is so bound up in her children that she
has no real life of her own. It's a pity because she is a comparatively
young woman."

"She sounds old-fashioned and motherly to me. Grade A in mothers. I like
that kind. Can't I come in and meet her? I had planned to celebrate with
you. Now that you've turned me down, I haven't any place to go."

"You carry off that aggrieved, little-boy pose well, Jerry, but it
leaves me cold. You, with your Crowd--capital C--, having nowhere to go!
That's the funniest thing I ever heard. I intend to devote the next two
hours to making plans with the family. It's hard to get hold of Sam, but
he promised to stay at home until he had to go to the theatre."

"How soon do you take to the sticks?"

"I'm going down tomorrow to look over the house, my half of it, though
it isn't a half, it's a whole twin. A week ago Mr. Stewart told me what
I might spend to make it livable--it's a dangerous concession, he
doesn't know my spending capacity. It has been on leash so long that I
tremble to think what will happen when I loose it. I'll take one
gorgeous crack at extravagance."

"Is that guy doling out money to you? Isn't it yours?"

"Not for a year. He could hold it up if he wanted to, but, as Mark the
Magnificent--that's what we call him in the family councils--is the only
legal heir and as he won't contest the will,--I wanted him to take half
of the property or a third even, but he turned me down hard--it is safe
to give me an allowance. When we are settled, I will invite you to
Lookout House. Good-night, Jerry."

As she waited in the hall for the elevator to descend, Brooke thought of
Jerry Field's question:

"Ashamed of your home--or of me?"

She certainly was not ashamed of her home. The apartment might be small
and crowded, but there were many fine pieces of maple and mahogany and
the family portraits were choice, but no choicer than the family itself.
This change of fortune would change her outwardly. It would free her
real self, the impetuous self whose impulse was to help, to be
hospitable. She had had so little money since her father's death that
the old bogey, FUTURE, had jogged her elbow whenever her fingers started
toward her purse. She must remember always what it meant to have little.
People were so apt to forget when they became prosperous, so apt to
become slightly contemptuous of those who were struggling to make ends
meet. She had seen it happen a number of times. She would be much
happier if Mark Trent had a share of the money, but he must know how
bitter his aunt had been about him. Probably that was the reason he
wouldn't touch it.

The front door slammed with a force which shook the house. Sam, of
course. The atmosphere tingled when he appeared. He was whistling as
usual. Good-looking boy! His horn-rimmed spectacles added a touch of
distinction. She patted his sleeve as he stopped beside her.

"Had a nice day, Sammy?"

"Not too good. They're taking off the play tomorrow. Our dear public
wouldn't see it."

He pulled open the elevator door. "Hop in." As it clanged shut, he
asked:

"All through being a working girl?"

Brooke swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded.

"It will seem queer being a lady of leisure."

"Leisure! You don't know the first letter of the word. I can see you
wondering what you'll do next. Leisure isn't your line. You'll plunge
into classes and sports. There won't be hours enough in a day for you."

The elevator stopped. A voice seeped through the cracks around the
apartment door. Sam Reyburn grinned.

"Say, listen! Lucette's on the air--and how."

"Oh dear, what's her grievance now?" Brooke whispered, and put her key
into the lock.

She tried to appraise with the eyes of a stranger the high-ceilinged,
large living-room she entered. A connoisseur of portraits would know
that Grandfather Reyburn over the mantel had been painted by a great
artist; that the portrait of his daughter on the opposite wall was a
choice bit of work; that the Duchess of Argyle in her sables, green
satin, and emeralds was a masterpiece. Always she had wanted to decorate
a room as a background for the picture. Now she could. The Duchess was
hers. The mahogany and maple was sadly in need of rubbing up, but no
amount of wear and tear could disguise its period and value.

Her eyes lingered on her mother perched on the arm of a couch. She did
young things like that. Her hair was a sheeny platinum; her eyes were
dark; her skin was clear and smooth; her figure in the amethyst crêpe
frock was round without in the least suggesting fat. There was a
quizzical twist to her lovely mouth as she looked at her younger
daughter, who, with legs thrust straight out before her, was slumped in
a chair. Her red beret, which matched the belt of her slim green plaid
frock, was on the floor. Her hair was black and wavy; her eyes were
brilliantly dark; her painted lips drooped at the corners. Brooke
recognized the symptoms. Sam had been right, Lucette was on the air. She
said as she slipped out of her lapin coat:

"In the Valley of Despond again, Lucette? Had a nice day, Mother?"

Mrs. Reyburn smiled and nodded. She would make her home-coming children
think she had had a nice day, if the heavens had fallen. She was like
that. Lucette answered her question.

"You'd be in the Valley of Despond, if you had had the day I've had,
Brooke Reyburn. I'm dead to the world. A woman came into the sports shop
with three daughters, and kept me showing clothes all the afternoon.
Gosh! My feet ache like teeth gone nervy."

"Did she buy much?"

"Not that baby. She bought that little blue number only. For Pete's
sake, why does Sam have to whistle when he's under the shower? The walls
of this apartment are regular sounding boards."

"Bear up, Lucette, you will be out of it soon. If we can't sublet this
apartment, we'll shut it up."

"Spoken like a lady and a multi, Brooke darling. And after that what?"

"You won't have to model for fussy women and you'll have a dressing room
of your very own. Mr. Stewart has told me that I may take possession of
Lookout House as soon as I like. Mark the Magnificent has given the
Jovian nod. He won't contest the will. I'm going there tomorrow with a
plumber. A bath for every bed will be my battle-cry."

Silence followed her words, a silence fraught with significance. Brooke
caught her sister's look at her mother before she sat up straight and
tense. She knew that posture, she was preparing for a skirmish. Lucette
said defiantly:

"Glad you brought up that subject, Brooke. News flash! I'm not going to
the sticks with you, not if you offer me a gold tub with diamond
settings. I spent one night at the home of the late Mary Amanda Dane,
and, so far as I am concerned, the name means look out and not go there
again. That sealed door in her living-room gave me the creeps. I kept
thinking, 'What's on the other side?' for all the world like Alice when
she wonders what goes on in Looking-Glass house. There might be bodies
concealed there or loot, it has been shut up so long. No thanks! I'm all
for the city. 800,000 residents can't be wrong. Sam isn't--"

She dashed to the hall as the telephone rang.

"Lucette Reyburn speaking," she answered eagerly.

"Yes--yes--he is. I'll call him." Her voice was as flat as de-bubbled
champagne. She pounded on the bath-room door.

"Phone for you, Sam.--How do I know? It's the girl who always calls just
as you've stepped under the shower.--All right."

She returned to the phone. "Hold the line. He'll be here in a minute."

Back in the living-room she dropped into a chair. With elbows propped on
her knees, chin in her palms, she stared at the floor.

What had Lucette meant by "Sam isn't--" Brooke wondered. She watched her
brother as, knotting the cord of a striped bathrobe about his waist, he
scuffed to the telephone in slippers several sizes too large for him. He
leaned against the side of the doorway as he talked. Stunning boy. No
wonder girls called him at all hours. His hair, with a tinge of red in
it, stood out from his head like a curly wet mop. His shortsighted blue
eyes were clear and forthright, wonderful eyes. He was a tease and a
torment and dictatorial, but a rock of dependability, and she adored
him. Who was the girl calling? He was frowning, and his voice was
brittle as he refused:

"Can't make it--No. It's not another girl, it's a family confab. Sam
Reyburn signing off. Good-bye!"

He slammed down the receiver. "And I know of no reason why I should
explain to you what I'm doing," he growled under his breath.

"Hi! Sammy! What's the shower-dame's name?" Lucette called.

Her brother scowled at her. "There's about as much privacy in this
apartment as there is in the bandstand on the Common."

"Cheerio, darling. You'll have privacy, and how, if you live with
Brooke. She's going house-owner in a big way. If there's to be a bath
for every bed, of course there will be a sound-proof telephone booth
with every room. What did you say the girl friend's name was?"

"It's none of your business, kiddo, who calls me." Hands deep in the
pockets of his hectic bathrobe, Sam paced the living-room floor.

"Darned ungrateful, I calls it," Lucette persisted impishly. "But it's a
man's world. Don't I break my neck to answer the phone? Don't your fans
ring you at all hours? Before you are up in the morning, while you're
shaving--sometime you'll cut off an ear in your excitement--lucky
television isn't attached to the phone yet, but I'm betting on the
shower-dame. Usually your voice goes kind of mushy when you answer her.
You'll be the proud possessor of a daughter-in-law before you know it,
Mother."

Sam Reyburn frowned at his younger sister.

"Get this, Lucette. No girl is going to invade my life. I've seen too
many of my friends dragging a ball and chain. No marriage in mine."

His mother laughed softly. As he glared at her, she patted the couch.

"Stop walking the floor like a hungry lion and sit down, Sam. Lucette
started something just before the phone rang. She should have known
better than to start anything in the Reyburn family before it has been
fed, but now that she has, you'd better finish it."

"What d'you mean by started, Mother?"

Brooke perched on the arm of a chair at the desk. She faced them all.
Most of the time she could tell quite well what they were thinking. She
answered her brother's question before her mother could.

"She means that Lucette announced that she did not intend to live at
Lookout House with me, and that you--"

"Were not going either, Sam," Lucette finished triumphantly.

"Aren't you, Sam?"

"Say listen, Brooke. Don't you see how it is? I have to be at the
theatre early; I'm late when I get through; rehearsing all the morning.
Twenty miles is a long way to commute."

"I had planned to buy you the snappiest convertible coupe on the
market."

"Don't make me feel like a brute. Don't you see--"

"Of course I see, Sammy. You want to be on your own. I do understand."

"Don't worry about his being on his own, darling," Lucette cut in
bitterly. "No one can be on his own in this family. The Great Adviser
intends to stay right here to look after his little sister."

Brooke's eyes met her brother's; he nodded. Lucette flamed on:

"And Mother's going to stay to look after both of us."

"Mother!" Brooke echoed the word with shocked incredulity. "But I've
planned the most wonderful things for Mother. Is it true?"

Celia Reyburn's eyes shone through a mist as they met her elder
daughter's. Her lips curved in a lovely, trembly smile.

"When you say Mother, Brooke, I think it the most beautiful word in the
world. But I will not make my home with you--at present. First, because
Lookout House is yours and you should assume the responsibility and
direction of it. You will do it more easily if I am not there. Second, I
want to stay in the city, not so much because of the children, but
because now that your financial future is assured, I shall feel that I
may use a little of the money your father left me. I want--I want to be
in the heart of things. I'll have an experienced maid, I'll have the
right clothes, and--and I'll go places, I'm dying to go places."

Her impassioned voice broke. "Perhaps I'm selfish, perhaps you children
think I'm a silly old woman."

Sam flung his arm about his mother. "Hooray for the Spirit of '56!
Sorry; I shouldn't have mentioned your age, Celia Reyburn. Don't worry
that you won't get enough of your family, Brooke. I'll have to drag
these two giddy girls off to the country for rest occasionally. When
Lucette quits work--"

"Who says I'm going to quit. I'm not. I'm going to work as Brooke worked
till I get her job and hit the airlanes. Why the chuckle? What is there
about that so funny?"

Brooke shook her head. "I wasn't laughing at what you said, Lucette."

She couldn't tell them that Jed Stewart's words had echoed in her mind:

"Now I suppose the brother and sister will chuck their jobs and settle
down on her."

How little he knew them. How like Sam, much as he would love being on
his own, to stand by Lucette. She wasn't old enough yet to live alone,
and she was much too pretty and daring. And her mother--how cheerfully
she had kept on the treadmill of housework while all the time she had
ached for a certain amount of freedom. They were all looking at her.
What did they expect her to say? She met Sam's anxious eyes.

"Aren't sore at us, are you, Brooke? Don't feel that we have let you
down to go on alone?"

"Of course I don't, you old dear. Why shouldn't each one of us do as we
like, now that there is some money back of us? Because I feel that I
must carry out Mrs. Dane's wishes is no reason for dragging the rest of
you into the country. It is like Through the Looking-glass though, isn't
it?"

"What do you mean?" Lucette demanded. "Don't talk riddles."

"Nothing, except everything is reversed, not as one expected things
would happen."

"What did you think would happen? That we'd all stop work and live on
you?" Sam accused testily.

Brooke laughed. "I didn't think that. Let's get busy planning. If you
are all sold on staying in the city, we'll have a bigger apartment. I
may want to spend a week-end away from the sticks myself."




III


Through the open transom above the office door came the hum of
typewriters. Mark Trent, behind his desk, scowled in the direction of
the sound. He had paid good money for those machines on the
understanding that they were noiseless. Curious that he never had been
annoyed by them before. Must be this confounded note in his hands. He
read again:

     DEAR MR. TRENT--

     Many times your aunt has told me of the Thanksgivings you spent
     with her at Lookout House. Won't you dine here on the coming
     holiday? My mother, sister and brother will be with me. There are
     many family treasures which you should have. I would like to go
     over them with you, and more than all, I want to thank you for
     pulling me out from under that car. I really wasn't so ungrateful
     as I sounded. This is a late invitation because I have been
     bolstering up my courage to ask you. Please come. Bury the hatchet,
     or accept the olive branch, or however peace between
     enemies--though I am not for a moment your enemy--is being
     accomplished now.

     Sincerely yours,
     BROOKE REYBURN
     _Lookout House_

He dropped the note and frowned at the red carnations in a crystal vase
on his desk. He lived over the instant he had seen a girl go down in the
street, had seen a speeding car almost upon her. How had he managed to
save her? Colorless and dazed as she was, he had thought her the
loveliest thing he ever had seen as she looked up at him. As for a
second he had steadied her in his arms, his brain had fought against her
attraction and the live warmth of her body had prompted him to growl at
her. No wonder she had been angry, and no wonder--he admitted
honestly--Mary Amanda Dane had been taken in by her. Well, one victim in
the family was enough. She shouldn't hypnotize him.

He drew letter paper toward him and picked up a pen. He'd settle this
question of friendship between them for good and all. Little schemer!
Now that she had the property she wanted to appear friendly with him.
Probably thought it would help her socially in the community in which
she had taken up her residence. If what he had heard was true, the
conservative old-timers there had held an indignation meeting, and
because he had been cut out of the property, had turned thumbs down on
the legatee. They would freeze her out, and they could do it, he had
seen the method applied to one girl. It must not be done. If only Aunt
Mary Amanda's old friend Anne Gregory were on this side of the water, he
would appeal to her to be decent to Brooke Reyburn. The Empress, as her
friends called her, was the social arbiter of the community. Meanwhile
the invitation must be answered.

Dear Miss Reyburn, he wrote.

As he hesitated as to how to word his regrets, another picture of the
girl as she had appeared between the hangings in Stewart's office
flashed in his mind with startling clarity. Brown eyes blazing with
amber lights, lovely scornful mouth, glints of gold in the copper bronze
of her hair, red spots which were not rouge in her cheeks, and her
slender body rigid with rage. He seemed destined to make her angry. Had
her pose been acting? Her brother was on the stage. Why be unjust? She
wouldn't have been human had she not been furious. Hadn't she heard him
refuse to marry her?

He must get along with that note. His frowning regard of the opening
door changed to a welcoming smile as a head poked in.

"Come in, Jed. What's on the little mind now?"

Jed Stewart perched on a corner of the flat desk. He pulled one of the
red carnations from the vase and drew the stem through the buttonhole of
the lapel of his checked coat.

"I'm taking a lady to tea, need a posy to make me look like a million,
so combined utility with business and came here. Knew you always had
them."

"What's the business? If you've been sent again to ask me to take half
of that--"

"Hold everything; that's all washed up. The matter has not been
mentioned to me since the day you and Brooke Reyburn met in my office. I
guess you killed her interest in you by your infernal sarcasm:

"'Hope you'll enjoy the house and fortune, Miss Reyburn. Happy landings!
Perhaps I'd better say, safe landings,' sez you."

"Oh, you think so? Read that."

Jed Stewart frowned over the note Mark Trent tossed to him. He read it
through, reread it. Looked at his friend.

"Going?"

"Going! What do you think?" Mark answered a buzzer. "Who? Mrs. Gregory.
Of course I'll see her."

He explained hurriedly to Stewart. "It's an old friend of Aunt Mary
Amanda's. She sailed for France a week before my aunt died. She's a
martinet, one of those terrible women who don't care where the lash of
their tongue falls, and a confirmed matchmaker. They call her The
Empress. I always got on with her, though she resented it because I did
not marry a girl she had picked out for me. Don't go, Jed. I've been
wishing I could see her. I hear that the social registerites are
planning to freeze out--

"This is mighty good of you, Mrs. Gregory, and it's a clear case of
thought transference; not ten minutes ago I was thinking of you."

A wave of feeling menaced the clarity of Mark's voice as he bent over
the white-gloved hand of the woman who had entered the office. She had
been a vital part of the life at Lookout House which now seemed so
irretrievably far behind him. A smile tugged at his lips as he observed
that the floppy wide-brimmed picture hat was the model she had worn
since as a boy he had admired the deeply waved blonde hair it shadowed.
The hair was still faultlessly marcelled, but it was snow white. He
thought now, as he had thought then, that the large hat needed only
streamers to make it go Bo-Peep, and that if her tall ebony cane had a
crook, it would be the last perfect touch. In spite of changes the
years had wrought in her, there was still a hint of exceptional charm.

She settled into a chair with the same rustle of taffeta he remembered,
and adjusted a diamond brooch of a size and brilliance to make a
discriminating thief avidly flex supple fingers. She peered up at him
through a jeweled lorgnette, with eyes once a brilliant blue, now the
color of faded larkspur.

"Handsome as ever, aren't you, Mark, in spite of the way those two women
let you down. First that wife, with a _grande amoureuse_ complex, and
then Mary Amanda. I don't wonder that your hair at the temples looks as
if it had been touched by frosty fingers, if you are only thirty. Who's
he?"

She waved her lorgnette toward Stewart, who, back to the room,
apparently had been absorbed in a study of the calf-bound books on the
shelf.

"Stewart, of the firm of Stewart and Stewart, attorneys. Jed, come here.
I want to present you to Mrs. Gregory, my first love."

"Hmp! Flatterer! You always could coax my heart out of my breast with
your wonderful smile and your voice, Mark. They haven't changed.
Whenever I see you I want to hit the ceiling because you won't represent
our district in the Great and General Court." She peered through her
lorgnette as Jed Stewart took the hand she extended with the air of a
sovereign.

"Stewart and Stewart! You were Mary Amanda Dane's lawyer, weren't you?"

The contempt in her voice deepened the color of Jed Stewart's already
sufficiently ruddy face.

"I had that honor."

"Honor! Do you call it an honor to help cheat her nephew out of his
inheritance?"

"Really, Mrs. Gregory, Jed can't be held responsible--"

"Hold your tongue, Mark. I've started, and now I intend to get rid of a
few things that have been boiling and sizzling inside me since the day I
heard that Mary Amanda had cut you out in favor of that fashion adviser
she'd gone crazy about. When they heard of her will, I'll wager my
step-daughters hugged themselves to think that their father left his
money in a trust fund which I couldn't will away if I happened to have a
brain storm."

The shortness of her breath, the feverish light in her eyes, the spots
on her cheeks which glowed like red traffic lights frightened Mark. He
had been half angry, half amused at her outburst at first, but people
had suffered strokes under less excitement. He said soothingly:

"Forget it, Mrs. Gregory. I don't need the money--"

"Of course you need it. No one has money enough now because no one has a
sense of financial security. Didn't you take over all the lame ducks as
your share of your grandfather's property so that your aunt wouldn't be
worried by them? Aren't you making that ex-wife of yours an allowance?
Mary Amanda told me. What's she been doing since she left you for that
French Count? It was a French Count year, wasn't it? They were buzzing
round rich girls thick as wasps about a broiled live lobster."

"She has married, I understand."

"Married! After she divorced the Count! The third time! Getting to be a
habit, isn't it? She isn't entitled to a penny. I don't wonder your aunt
was furious when she found out that you were giving her money. Perhaps
that's the real reason she cut you off, though I thought it was because
she didn't believe in divorce; on that subject she was stuck back in the
eighties. However, that wasn't what I came here to talk about. I just
wanted to tell you that if I had known what was in that will I witnessed
two days before I sailed for Europe--it was just a week before she
died--now, Stewart, don't look at me with your jaw dropped as if I were
a moron with a Medusa complex--of course, I know that a person isn't
supposed to know the contents of the will she witnesses, but I still say
that had I known that your aunt was leaving her money away from you,
Mark, I would have cut off my hand before I signed."

Mark Trent's heart stopped and galloped furiously on. A will witnessed a
week before Mary Amanda's death! The will which had been probated was of
a date two months prior. As he opened suddenly stiffened lips to reply,
he met Jed Stewart's warning eyes, eyes which seemed like flames in a
chalky face. Jed was as amazed as he.

In the second of silence which followed Mrs. Gregory's angry
declaration, Mark wondered if he were in a dream. He listened.
Typewriters were purring in the outer office; a whistle, shrill but
faint, rose from the street, the traffic cop was on his job; a plane
roared overhead; the four lights in the room, the spicy scent of red
carnations were real. He was awake.

Jed Stewart stepped hard on his foot as he passed to offer a cigarette
to the woman in the chair. She sniffed.

"You ought to know by looking at me, young man, that I wouldn't take one
of those. Lawyers aren't as bright as they used to be. Oh, go on, smoke,
you needn't ask my permission, that courtesy went out when the speakeasy
era came in, though judging by the shakiness of your hand, Stewart, I'd
suggest that you cut out tobacco for a while."

Mark looked at Jed Stewart. Jed shaky. It was incredible. He watched as
his friend flung down the cigarette, perched on the arm of a chair, and
clasped his hands hard about one knee.

"You're right, madam, I am smoking too much, but I was lighting that one
to steady my nerves. I was fond of my client Mrs. Dane, and your
reference to her last will brought back a picture of the delicate woman
in her wheel chair with--"

"With that disreputable parrot swearing in the cage behind her. The bird
was there when I witnessed the will; I didn't know but that she would
insist upon Micawber's being the other witness, but she called in
Clotilde and Henri Jacques, it was her nurse-companion's day off. If I
had to choose between the parrot and that French butler as my
co-resident on a desert island, I'd take Mr. Micawber. After they went
out, Mary Amanda and I were alone for a few moments in the firelight. It
was the last time I saw her--" Mrs. Gregory dabbed her reddening eyes
with a lace-edged handkerchief.

"I'm traveling fast, Mark. You are too young to know that tightening of
the heart as one by one friends vanish into the haze ahead; I'm getting
used, though not resigned, to picking up the paper and seeing that
someone with whom I had played cards, perhaps the day before, had been
paged, had been touched on the shoulder with that mysterious summons:

"'Wanted on long distance, madam.'

"Perhaps the increasing number of empty chairs in one's friendship
circle make it easier to leave one's own."

She straightened, demanded angrily:

"Why am I slobbering like that? I love life! I wouldn't give up my place
in this problem-logged world for all the starry halos and golden harps
you could offer. Thinking of your aunt set me off. The last few times I
saw her I had noticed that she seemed distrait, as if something were
worrying her. I've wondered since if she would have told me what she had
done if I had not had to hurry away. I called Henri before I left. As I
looked back, she seemed white and exhausted. As I drove away I saw that
girl driving in."

"That girl! You mean--"

"The Reyburn girl, of course, Stewart. You ought to get a position
somewhere as an echo. I'd met her several times and I liked her too
before I knew what she had done to Mark. She made me forget that I was
old enough to be her grandmother. Charming manners. Well, I must run
along. I'm looking in at three debutante teas--mothers have waked up to
the fact that it's advisable to invite older guests as well as younger.
I had to come, Mark, and tell you that I was sorry for my share in that
unjust will. I always liked you."

"Thank you for your interest in me, Mrs. Gregory. I'm going down to your
car with you. Wait for me, Jed."

The woman turned on the threshold. "I hope, if ever you draw another
will cutting out a rightful heir, young man, you'll be swished in
boiling oil."

Stewart grinned. "Not boiling oil, madam, not boiling; couldn't you
reduce the temperature a degree?"

She smiled. "We'll see, we'll see. You're an engaging boy, if you are a
poor lawyer. I'm to spend the winter in my country house--not far from
the Dane-Trent property--everybody's doing it this year. Motor down some
Sunday for lunch. I like men. I grew up with three brothers, had two
husbands and a son. They're all gone. I'm sick of seeing nothing but
women. When I get too old to live alone I'll apply for admittance to a
home for nice old gentlemen--and not too old at that. Don't forget to
come to lunch, Stewart."

"Sure, I'll come. Meanwhile, would you mind not telling anyone that you
witnessed Mrs. Dane's will?"

"You don't think I'm proud of my part in that robbery, do you? I
wouldn't have mentioned it now, but I wanted to square myself with
Mark."

Mark Trent's mind was in a tumult as he chatted with her in the
corridor, inquired for her health on the way down in the elevator, told
her that he thought of her rich fruit cake whenever he attended a
wedding. She looked up at him sharply as they waited at the curb.

"Then you still attend weddings?"

"Why not? I rather like them."

"After your experience, I should think you would shun them. Ever see
Lola?"

"No."

"Here's my car. That's Dominique at the wheel. Remember him, don't you?
He drove my horses before I had an automobile, and the only thing I have
against him is that he recommended his friends the Jacques to your aunt.
She made so much of Henri that he got dictator-minded and tried to run
the whole place. When God wants to destroy a fool He gives him power. It
will be interesting to watch the man. He'll crack up some way. I hear
Miss Reyburn has kept him and his wife as servants. Bring that Stewart
man with you some Sunday. I like him. Good-bye. Don't hold my signature
against me."

Mark Trent stood looking after the limousine as it shot into the line of
traffic. Why did she question him about the woman who had been his wife?
Had been. Why couldn't he think in the past tense always and not feel
bound by that, "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder"?

Why spend a moment on the past, with Mrs. Gregory's startling revelation
to be confronted that his aunt had made a later will than the one which
had been probated?

Jed Stewart was walking the floor when he entered his office. He stopped
abruptly.

"Well," he demanded, "did she talk any more?"

"Not about the will. Why the dickens didn't you ask questions?"

"Didn't dare. Don't you see, Mark? Boy, don't you understand? Someone
has snitched that second will she witnessed."

"Did you draw it?"

"Never heard of it. Perhaps your aunt had an acute attack of remorse. I
argued with her, as much as a lawyer can argue, against cutting you
out; she wouldn't come to me about a new will. Didn't Mrs. Gregory say
that she had been distrait the last few times they had been together?
She thinks it was because Mrs. Dane was making up her mind to disinherit
you; you and I know that the will to that effect already had been
drawn."

"You passed up a grand chance to cross-examine her, Jed."

"Didn't dare. She thinks the will she witnessed is the one probated;
doesn't know that if it had been she would have been summoned to prove
her signature. We mustn't let a suspicion of this second will get out.
Where is it?"

"She said the Reyburn girl drove in as she left the place. Do you
suppose Aunt Mary Amanda told her what was in it and that she--"

Jed Stewart stopped his restless pacing. His eyes and voice were
troubled.

"Destroyed it? But how could Brooke Reyburn have known what was in the
first will? Perhaps your aunt had told her that she was to be residuary
legatee--it doesn't seem probable, but women do fool things." He
grinned. "Of course men never do. We've got to get busy. If it isn't
destroyed, that will may be at Lookout House; you've never liked the
Jacques and you say that they hate you. I have an idea. Open your house.
Live there. Get friendly with the girl."

"I would feel like a sneak to go there to spy on her."

"You suspect that she may have influenced your aunt to make a will in
her favor, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then give her a chance to prove that she didn't. Take a couple of Japs
and go down and live next door."

"I won't commit myself to that proposition in a hurry. If I decide to do
it, will you come with me?"

"Sure, I've been hoping you'd ask me. Philo Vance is my middle name."
Stewart picked up the note lying on the desk. "You'd better open the
investigation by accepting this."

"The Reyburn girl's invitation to dine on Thanksgiving Day? I would feel
like a spy, a traitor. The turkey would choke me."

"Do you want the truth about this will?"

"You bet I do."

"Then go. Don't write. 'We never send a letter when we can send a man.'
Phone the night before that you are coming. She'll have less time in
which to think why you are accepting."




IV


Brooke Reyburn stood in the doorway of the living-room at Lookout House.
Behind her in the hall a graceful circular stairway wound up and up. She
nodded approval. The room was the perfect setting she had visualized for
the Duchess of Argyle since the day she had known that her father had
willed her the portrait. The green of the walls and trim repeated the
color of the satin gown of the woman in the dull gold frame which hung
above the mantel of carved black Italian marble, repeated also the shade
of the feathers of the dozing parrot in a gilded cage, threw into relief
dark polished surfaces of mahogany. On each side of the fireplace in
which birch logs blazed and crackled, choicely bound books lined the
walls from baseboard to ceiling. Softly shaded lamps shed light on deep,
inviting chairs and intensified the rich coloring of the
hollyhock-printed chintz which covered them. A sun porch was filled from
floor to ceiling with chrysanthemums in pots, shading from feathery
white at the top through pale pink and rose to crimson.

Brooke's throat contracted as her glance rested on the large flat-topped
mahogany desk. That, as well as the books, had been her father's. There
had been no room for them in the apartment. If only he could have lived
to share her good fortune. He had been such a wonderful father.

What would Mark Trent think of the changes--if he came? She needn't
worry about that. It was evident that he wasn't coming, would not accept
her last-minute invitation, he probably had dozens for the holiday. What
was he thinking of her for having invited a man who had persistently
snubbed all attempts at friendliness, to dine with her on Thanksgiving
day? She needn't wonder about that either. She knew. She had sent the
note two days ago, because she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that
unwittingly she had robbed him, and she so wanted to tell him that she
had known nothing of his aunt's will, and to thank him for saving her,
if not from death, from being terribly messed up the day he had pulled
her from in front of that speeding roadster. He had not replied to her
invitation. It was her last flourish of the olive branch. She didn't
like him anyway. Whenever she thought of his lordly declaration that he
"wouldn't marry that schemer," she felt a furious urge to hurt him, hurt
him terribly. So that was that.

She had had everything that she thought belonged to his family stored in
the apartment over the garage. Curious that she had found so little
silver. But she had found other things, heaps of useless things. Dozens
of old corks, empty bottles galore, boxes in all shapes and sizes, bags
of string neatly coiled and tied that had been taken from packages.
Before she finished clearing closets and drawers, she had begun to
wonder if everything that ever had come into the house had been saved.

She looked at the door which Mary Amanda Dane had told her opened into
the twin house. Something uncanny about it. Whenever she was in the
room it drew her eyes like a magnet. Mark Trent's house was on the other
side. It had not been lived in for years. What a waste. Had his wife
refused to live there? His wife? She couldn't think of him as having had
a wife. Why think of him at all?

She resolutely switched her thoughts to her surroundings. This was the
same room in which she had first seen Mrs. Dane in her wheel chair, but
how different. Then it had been drab and heavy; now it glowed with soft
color. She would never forget the pathos in the woman's eyes as they had
met hers, nor the eagerness of her greeting. She had registered a
passionate vow to make her lovely and attractive in appropriate clothes.
That had been her job--then--and a thrilling job, too, to help women
make the most of their good points.

Brooke smiled as she remembered the "Stop! Look! Listen!" with which the
parrot had greeted her appearance; her face sobered as she remembered
also the ill concealed animosity of Henri, the butler, as he had
lingered in the doorway. In his beady black eyes there had been
something menacing, something greedy which had stopped her heart for an
instant.

How Mary Amanda Dane had fooled her about money. The crippled woman had
kept her feet firmly on the ground when it came to spending. Planning
inexpensive, attractive clothes for her had been an exciting challenge.
She had succeeded. The frocks had been charming, and with her drab
wardrobe the invalid had shed much of her crabbedness. Lovely clothes
did that for a woman. Pity that more husbands didn't realize the fact.
Now she was gone and had left a small fortune behind her. Why had she
denied herself so many of the luxuries of life? Brooke blinked long wet
lashes and said aloud, as she had said many times since she had come to
live at Lookout House:

"Thank you for everything, Mrs. Mary Amanda. Thanks billions."

She swallowed the lump which rose in her throat whenever she thought of
the woman's incredible kindness. Hardly the time to go sentimental when
at any moment the family might burst in on her. They were on their way
to spend Thanksgiving. For the first time they would see the changes in
the house; she had postponed their coming until it should be in perfect
order.

What sort of an evening was the weather clerk handing them after two
days of storm? She had been too busy to think of it before. She pushed
back the long chintz hangings at the French window. She leaned her
forehead against the cool glass. Heavenly night. The sea was fairly
quiet. There was a faint reverberation only as it drove against the
rocks below the terrace, curled back on itself and drove again. Rows of
lights, looking from a distance like a procession of cloudy jewels,
outlined the causeway. A faint wind stirred the blinds as if ghostly
fingers were running up and down the slats, moaned eerily at the corners
of the house. Lights blazed and twinkled on the shore across the bay,
but so far as she could see to the east, except for one jutting rock,
the ocean stretched in unbroken immensity on and on to a distant
continent. Where sea and sky met, a big red moon was rising. It cast a
coppery mist on the shimmering water. That gorgeous gleaming bubble
gave one a no-account feeling, a sense of being alone in a big
indifferent world. Curious, it never had had that effect on her when she
had seen it peering above the roofs of the city.

The city. The adorable city. Resolutely she shut out the mental flash of
brilliantly lighted streets; of crowds of people, laughing, frowning,
pushing; of processions of automobiles, all of them going somewhere.

She drew the hangings and crossed to the desk. The parrot opened one
eye, muttered something deep in his throat, and shivered until every
green and yellow feather stood on end as if electrified.

Brooke watched him from under her lashes as she rearranged the rich
foliage of two perfect Templar roses in a bubble vase on the desk. He
was dozing again, the old reprobate. Queer that she disliked him so. She
distrusted Mr. Micawber almost as much as she distrusted Clotilde and
Henri Jacques whom she had kept on as servants. The man was so--so
obsequious--oily was a better word. A cadaverous, gray-haired hypocrite.
Particularly she hated his slack mouth, his false teeth which clicked
when he talked. Uriah Heep with French manners. His wife was fat and
sullen, but--an excellent cook. They had not been part of her legacy.
She had kept them on only until the house was in order.

Now that it was in order, what next, she wondered with a touch of panic.
Her life had been so full that she would grow mentally flabby without an
absorbing interest. The business world had sharpened all her senses, it
didn't seem as if home-making for herself would keep them keen. Since
she had come to Lookout House, she had missed the stimulating impact of
rival firms on her mind, the sting of ambition to make good, the glamour
and color of fashionable clothes. Had the family come with her, it would
have been different.

She crossed her arms on the mantel and studied the face of the portrait.
How did the Duchess like being transplanted? The painted eyes looked
down at her steadily. Brooke nodded and confided:

"Something tells me that your spirit never shirked responsibility which
would broaden character, nor evaded experience which would give stamina
and courage to carry on. I'll wager you went forward like an army with
banners. What you could do, your descendant many generations removed can
do. Watch her, that's all, just watch her go on!"

She wafted a kiss to the painted face. "With banners, Duchess! With
banners!" Her smile vanished. She thought:

"That's all right so far as it goes, but I feel a pricking in my thumbs.
I wonder what experience, what test of courage is lying in wait to
pounce on me as I turn the next corner?"

The honk-honk of an automobile horn outside was followed by voices
singing lustily:

    "'Over the river and through the wood,
    Trot fast, my dapple-gray!
    Spring over the ground
    Like a hunting hound
    For this is Thanksgiving day.'"

The gay chorus was followed by laughter and vociferous cries:

"Whoa there! Stand still, Lightning! Whoa!"

Laughing, Brooke dashed for the front door. It was so like the Reyburn
family to dramatize its arrival.

In a rush of cold air and excited greetings she piloted her mother and
sister to the library. The startled parrot shrieked, "Stop! Look!
Listen!"

"Boy, you don't need a burglar alarm with that announcer. You ought to
loan him to a bank."

Lucette made a gamin face at the parrot as she slipped out of her ocelot
coat. She dragged off her hat and patted the swirl of her dark hair.

Brooke hugged her mother. "It's wonderful to have you here, Celia
Reyburn, and aren't you devastating in that eel-gray ensemble!"

"Not as devastating as you are in that shimmery white, daughter. It
brings out the copper lights in your hair."

Brooke laughed. "We are like two diplomats exchanging compliments, the
difference is that ours come from the heart. Where's Sam? Don't tell me
Sam isn't coming!"

Lucette held a lighter to a cigarette with a faint hint of bravado.

"Don't cry, darling. Sam came. Didn't you recognize his voice singing as
if his little heart would burst from joy as we approached this baronial
hall? Doubtless he is kissing his peachy convertible good-night in your
garage. He's crazy about that coupe you gave him, Brooke. He has named
it Lightning. And can it go! Who's the tall gent with the undertaker
expression who pulled our bags from the car as if he were extracting
upper and lower molars?"

"Henri. He and his wife, Clotilde, worked for years for Mrs. Dane. I
kept them on to help me settle. They take a lot of handling, believe it
or not."

"I believe it. This room looks like part of a House Beautiful exhibit.
It's corking."

"Wait till you see the rest of the house, Lucette. Here's Sam. I would
recognize his bang of a door if I heard it in Timbuctoo. Welcome to
Lookout House, Sammy! It's wonderful that the theatre closed just at
this time."

"Yeah! It's all in the point of view. There are them who think
otherwise. However, I'm not kicking."

He caught Brooke in a bearlike hug. He kept his arm about her as he
looked around the room.

"Swell joint you've got here. I like the greenhousey smell from those
plants. Say listen, we've missed you like the dickens, haven't we,
Mother?"

"We have, Sam." Celia Reyburn steadied her voice. "We'd better stop
emotionalizing and get ready for dinner. I have kept house years enough
to know that promptness at meals helps to keep the home-maker's life's
walk easy."

"You would think of that, Mother. It isn't dinner tonight. I planned a
buffet supper, not being sure at what time my relatives from the big
town would arrive. Come upstairs and I'll show you your rooms."

A family might get on each other's nerves, as of course it did at times,
but there was nothing like it, Brooke concluded fervently, as after
supper on a floor cushion in front of the library fire she leaned
against her mother's knees. And every family needed a house in which to
spread out, and blazing logs around which to gather and exchange
confidences, her thoughts ran on. People slipped aside their masks in a
room lighted only by the flames on the hearth. Sam's face, usually gay
and debonair, had settled into grave lines as he thoughtfully cracked
nuts. Was he worrying about a job? Lucette's black brows were contracted
in a slight frown as, on the floor, legs out straight before her, she
leaned back against the broad couch. Brooke couldn't see her mother's
face. Was she remembering the evenings they had sat about the fire like
this when her husband had been the sun about which all their lives
revolved?

Perhaps it was because she had been too absorbed in her own concerns
before to notice, but Sam and Lucette seemed to have grown older, to
have changed, seemed also to have something weighty on their minds. What
was it? What had happened?

As if she knew what she was thinking, Lucette burst out nervously:

"If Sam can stop that nut-munching Marathon, perhaps he'll announce the
latest Reyburn news flash."

Brooke sat erect. "What news?"

Sam took careful aim at the parrot's perch. The nutshell struck its
bullseye and roused the dozing bird.

"Hell's bells!" he croaked, and ruffled his feathers.

"Looks as if he were caught in a typhoon, doesn't he?" The laughter in
Sam's voice vanished. "Mother has been invited to spend the winter in
England with her friend Lady Jaffrey."

"Sam!" With the exclamation Brooke was on her feet. "Do you mean it? How
perfectly grand! She lives in an old castle, doesn't she?"

"Hey, pipe down, Brooke. There's a nigger in the wood pile. Wait till
you hear the condition."

"A condition in Lady Jaffrey's invitation, Sam? I can't believe it."

"Be quiet, children. Let me talk." Arms crossed on the back of the wing
chair in which she had been sitting, Celia Reyburn faced her family. Her
cheeks were pink; her eyes, as blue as her son's, were brilliant with
excitement. She clasped her hands tightly as if to steady them.

"The chair recognizes the lady from the big city," Sam encouraged with a
grin.

"What's the condition, Mother? Don't you want to go?"

"Very, very much, Brooke, but I shouldn't enjoy a moment of the visit if
I left your brother and sister in that apartment alone. Quote. I'm
old-fashioned, and my feelings date me. Unquote. Let me finish,
Lucette." Celia Reyburn spoke in the tone her children never failed to
respect. "I know by heart your argument that you are old enough to live
by yourself, that most girls are doing it; that Sam, a man of
twenty-seven, should live in bachelor quarters--"

"I've never even thought of that, Mother."

"I know, Sam, I know. You've been a tower of strength to me. When I am
with you I feel warmed through, as if I had been sitting in the sun.
When I hear your key in the apartment door at night, I close my eyes
secure in your protection. I feel as if nothing could hurt me or your
sisters." She steadied her voice and brushed her hand across her eyes.
She laughed.

"I didn't mean to turn on what Lucette calls the water-works. I would
love to spend the winter with Elaine Jaffrey, Brooke; she was my
room-mate for four years in college. I realize that I have been in a
deep rut, that I have been stagnating. It's the water which keeps
moving, if only a little, which gets to the sea. Perhaps I'm a selfish
woman, but I would like to go and will go, if my mind is perfectly at
ease about Lucette and Sam. If they will come here to you, and if you
will have them--"

"Have them! Mother, don't be foolish! I have been rattling round in this
big house like a dried coconut in a shell. Of course I want them--but
will they come?"

"Who's being foolish now?" Lucette flung her cigarette into the fire.
Her cheeks were almost as red as her painted lips. "Of course we'll
come, Brooke Reyburn. Of course we'll play ball Mother's way. Sam and I
aren't cold-blooded fish. If taking to the sticks to be chaperoned by
big sister will make Mother's visit happier, we'll settle down here with
bells on. She's earned all the fun she can get. She'll have one grand
time and mow those stiff Britishers down in swaths and come home
Countess Whoosit, or I miss my guess."

"Lucette!" Celia Reyburn protested indignantly.

"Don't mind her, Mother," Brooke reassured. "By the time you return your
younger daughter will have acquired all the social graces--"

"Just a minute! Now I make a condition. I come only if I keep on with my
job."

"It would mean early and late commuting, Lucette."

"I've thought that out. In Sam's convertible we can make it."

"But you and Sam won't be coming down at the same time, and--"

"Don't be so sure, Brooke." Sam aimed a nutshell at the parrot. "The
theatre has closed permanently and I'm up against one of those simple
economic problems, where's the next job coming from? I'll go to New York
to see off Mother and take my play. Now that producers have begun to
sniff around for bargains, I may get my chance."

"Sam--dear--" Brooke attempted to lighten her dismayed voice. Bad enough
for him to be out of work without having her turn sob-sister. "You'll
find something. I read the other day that the theatre is on the
up-grade. If you don't--oh, Sammy, what a chance for you to write! Why
not give your play a try-out here? We'll do it for the town's welfare
fund, in the Club House theatre. What a chance to try 'Islands Arise' on
the dog!"

"News flash! The Reyburns stage a play!" Lucette cut in.

"Why not?" Brooke persisted eagerly. "Most of the summer homes are to be
kept open during the winter and--Answer the phone, will you, Sam? Take
the message for me. I've been pestered to death by tradespeople and
insurance agents wanting to sell me something. Tell them I'm out of town
for the evening--anything."

The silence of the room was broken only by the snap and hiss of the fire
as Sam Reyburn put the receiver of the handset to his ear.

"Hulloa.--Yes.--Miss Reyburn is out of town for the evening.--Sure,
she'll be back tomorrow.--Oh, it is!--Yes, I'll give her your message.
She'll be pleased purple.--I get you. I'll tell her. 'Bye!" He laid the
phone on the stand.

"Who was it, Sam? What will please me purple?" Brooke demanded uneasily.

Sam backed up to the mantel. With hands deep in his pockets, he grinned
at his sister.

"Holding out on us, weren't you, gal?"

"What do you mean? Sam, who called?"

Her brother cracked a nut with maddening deliberation and crunched the
meat between his strong white teeth before he answered:

"A party by the name of Trent."

"Trent! Not Mark the Magnificent? Why didn't you let me answer?"

Sam struck an attitude. "Ungrateful female! Didn't I imperil my immortal
soul by lying for you? Saying you were out of town?"

"Cut the dramatics, Sam. What did Mark Trent want?"

"Wanted me to tell you that he had been away."

"What of it? For goodness' sake, stop stalling! What did he want?"

"Not much. Only to say that he accepted your invitation for Thanksgiving
dinner with pleasure."




V


Brooke noticed Mark Trent's quick glance about as he entered the
dining-room at Lookout House. Did he approve of the change from the dark
figured paper and oak trim of his aunt's regime to creamy white walls
and woodwork, white damask hangings, and the gorgeous Sirapi rug, with
its ivory ground patterned in soft Persian colors, rose, cream, a touch
of blue and a touch of green? If he had a flair for the beautiful, he
must like the tile of Rembrandt's Man with the Pearls over the mantel.
Her father had brought that home from abroad in his days of affluence.

She felt an instant of self-consciousness as she took the seat against
the variegated yellow background of tall mimosas and acacias which
filled a broad bay-window, which her mother refused with a quick shake
of her head and a smile. She immediately forgot herself in pride of her
sporting family. Each one was so gay, so determined to do his or her
share to make the party a real festivity. Holidays were hard days since
her father's death, but always someone who was alone had been invited to
keep the feast with them. Thinking of others helped immeasurably to
bridge the sense of loss, Celia Reyburn argued.

The oysters were big and cold and luscious; the turkey was cooked to a
turn. When Sam's knife touched the joints they fell apart. The squash
was a golden mound of lusciousness; the potatoes a fluffy mass of
perfection; the broccoli Hollandaise of melting green tenderness; and
the cranberry jelly a triumph. There was avocado salad, and plum
pudding, and mince and squash pies. She had tried to have the dinner as
much like those they had had in their own home as possible, even to the
mass of yellow and bronze chrysanthemums in the centre of the table.
When the cheese board was passed, her mother looked at her and smiled.
Did she realize that her daughter felt that her home-making ways
couldn't be improved upon?

Brooke breathed a little sigh of relief as she rose from the table. This
Thanksgiving dinner had been the first entertaining in her own home. Of
course the guests had been her family and Mark Trent only, but she had
felt pride in having it a success.

As she served coffee from the massive silver tray in the living-room,
she glanced at Mark Trent standing before the fire. With his elbow on
the mantel, he was talking to Celia Reyburn seated in a corner of the
couch. The orchids he had brought her added the perfect touch to her
amethyst frock. Orchids for her mother, gardenias for Lucette, and deep
fragrant purple violets for his hostess. He had said it with flowers. A
lavish gentleman. Had Henri turned chalky as he had announced dinner, or
had she imagined it? He had stared at Mark Trent as if seeing an
unwelcome apparition.

With a groan of repletion Sam pulled himself out of a deep chair.

"Boy, let's get out and walk! I feel like a stuffed, trussed turkey. Why
do we eat so much more on Thanksgiving? Because we haven't any sense.
Notice that I'm acquiring the analytic method, question and answer.
Anybody here got the energy to take the shore walk?"

Lucette curled deeper into her chair.

"Can't go. I've got to finish this." She waved a mass of knitted wool.

"Don't apologize."

"I'm not apologizing. I'm explaining, Sam Reyburn. You never can seem to
sense the difference."

"Won't go, you mean, lazy! If you don't exercise more, Lucette, you'll
look like a butter ball stumping round on toothpicks."

"The Great Adviser on the air again! Butter ball or not, I stay right
here. Knitted skirts have gone longer, and I'll never finish this if I
don't keep everlastingly at it. Drag Brooke along."

"I'll go with you, Sammy." Celia Reyburn smiled at her tall son. "Elaine
Jaffrey is a great hiker; she will probably walk me all over the British
Isles. I must get in practise. Just wait until I change my shoes."

"Boy, I'm glad we have one sport in the family. I'll bet Lucette has a
heavy date, and is expecting someone. Coming, Brooke? Don't tell me that
you've gone knitting-minded. Coming, Mr. Trent?"

"Mark to you, I hope, Sam. Do come, Miss Reyburn," Mark Trent urged.
"It's a grand day. After hours of storm, there is enough wind to make
the surf worth looking at."

"Worth looking at" were colorless words to express the grandeur of the
shore, Brooke thought, as, standing on a jutting crag, holding on her
beret with one hand, skirts blowing, she looked down at the driving
current, cold and stealthy in places, in others foaming and tossing
white-edged green waves against ledges transformed by the magic of the
slanting sun into ruddy copper, dark brown in the crevices. Spray,
diaphanous as a mist from a giant atomizer, iridescent as jeweled
malines, shimmered in the light. Beyond the surf a dozen lavender winged
gulls floated on the water. Overhead, clouds, which had the pink depths
and crinkled edges of a conch-shell, were encroaching stealthily on the
limpid blue sky. Toward the east, the ocean, deeply malachite, stretched
on illimitably till it merged into the purple horizon. Above the din,
the suck and thud of the sea, floated the haunting wail of a distant
siren, the screech of gulls, came a drift of music from a great ship
outward bound. An amber green wave outlashed its predecessors, hissed,
roared, broke against a ledge, and showered Brooke with crystal spray.

"Oh!" Instinctively she clutched Mark Trent's arm. "It--it took my
breath!"

He drew her back to the path, pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped her
wet face.

"I should have known better than to let you stand there."

"It wasn't your fault. I adored it. It made me feel as if every inch of
me had been electrified. Why is it that when we are together I need to
be rescued from difficulties? I want to thank you for--"

"Please, don't."

She wondered at the embarrassed fierceness of his voice.

"I won't, except to add that I know I owe my life to you. There, that's
over. I promise never to mention it again."

Spurred by the stimulating air, she took her courage in both hands and
plunged.

"Won't you please be friends? I didn't know Mrs. Mary Amanda Dane had
any money, really I didn't, Mr. Trent."

In the instant that she waited for his answer, sun, sea, the roar of the
surf were blotted out. Only his straight-gazing eyes meeting hers were
real. They touched her heart, quickly, passionately. Then Mark Trent
thrust his handkerchief into his pocket.

"Forget that Mr. Trent stuff. Being legatees in the same estate--my aunt
left me a bank account, you know--ought to make us friends, oughtn't
it?" His voice was light, but she sensed a tinge of irony. "We'd better
keep going if we are to walk around the Point before dark. Your mother
and Sam went on some time ago. What did she mean when she spoke of
hiking over the British Isles?"

"She is going to England to visit her college classmate. Of course, I'm
crazy to have her go, but--but I didn't realize how precious she was
until I thought of her being so far away."

Brooke hoped fervently that Mark Trent had not noticed the break in her
voice. Apparently he hadn't, for he asked casually:

"Are your brother and sister going?"

"No. They are to be with me while Mother is away. I am so glad. It will
give me heaps to do. I'm not used to this poison-ivy leisure that looked
so alluring before I had tried it. My life was so full before--"

"Before you had Lookout House stuffed down your throat, you mean? I
don't see why the dickens Aunt Mary Amanda tied that string to her
legacy, forced you to live in this house."

"It wasn't a string, and she didn't force me. I like old towns, and I
love Lookout House."

"My mistake." Trent's laugh turned to a frown. "What are the town
fathers thinking of to allow a gas station stuck out on this road? Has
that house been sold?"

Brooke promptly defended the brilliant equipment in front of a small
white cottage.

"I don't know who owns the place, but doubtless the town fathers were
thinking of giving the poor man who has started the filling-station
another chance. I heard that he had money, lost it, began to drink too
much, and that a friend set him up in business here hoping to steady
him."

"Who told you the story of his life?"

"Henri."

"Henri! Does he know the man?"

"He will have to answer that question. He asked me to buy gas at the new
filling-station, and I do to encourage the poor fellow to keep on trying
to make good."

"How about encouraging honest Mike Cassidy who started the garage at the
end of the causeway years ago and has served the public faithfully and
unselfishly? He has a wife and five children to support."

Why did his voice rouse opposition in her, Brooke wondered. She had had
doubts herself lately as to the permanency of the filling-station
owner's reform. Twice when she had stopped for gas, a young Irish girl
had reported the boss as "sick" and she had wondered if he were
backsliding. Mark the Magnificent need not know that, however.

"Don't you believe in helping a man to come back?" she asked crisply.

"I do, most decidedly, but I believe also in helping an honest
hard-working man like Cassidy, who has had the strength of character to
leave drink alone, to keep his kids in shoes. Come on. We are almost
quarreling. Why should you and I fight over a filling-station owner?"

"You're right, when we have so many other things about which to
disagree."

Brooke's brown eyes met his, intent and darkly gray; wistfulness tinged
her voice as she urged:

"Speaking of disagreeing--will you please behave like a sensible person
and take the family treasures which belong to you?"

"Aunt Mary Amanda left them to you."

"I know, but it isn't right for me to have them, and what's more, I
don't need or want them. I'd rather go without rings all my life than
wear one of those gorgeous things she left, which are rightfully yours.
Mr. Stewart has put all the jewelry in a bank vault for you. I have
Mother's lovely china and glass and furniture which have been in storage
since our home was broken up. I've had everything which belonged to your
family moved to the chauffeur's apartment over the garage. There seems
to be very little silver. Perhaps your aunt gave it to you?"

"Silver! Very little silver! She had the Trent service which came
originally from England and any number of beautiful pieces. That silver
is a family tradition. Where is it? She didn't give it to me. What does
Stewart say about it?"

"He thought that because of the epidemic of crime reported in the
newspapers, Mrs. Dane might have become timid about keeping valuables in
the house and had it stored in a bank. But he found no receipt for it
among her papers. Do you think she sold it?"

"Sold it! No. I'll bet--" he broke off abruptly. "See that great rock
sticking up off shore? I used to imagine it the peak of a submerged
island rising from the sea."

"Perhaps it is. 'Islands arise, grow old and disappear.' That isn't
original. Sam has taken the title for his comedy from it. The first
night I spent at Lookout House I was kept awake by the wailing of that
distant siren. Now I don't notice it."

"You'll notice it if you stay here during the winter as Jed told me you
were planning to do. There goes the sun behind the city! Couldn't you
hear the kerplunk as it dropped below the skyline?"

Across the harbor, buildings, towers, and chunky blocks made a vast
irregular pattern of unreal beauty against the crimson horizon, a
pattern punctured by myriad blinking yellow lights which were windows.

"I could. See the lights springing up in the houses, see how the shapes
of things are beginning to lose their sharpness of outline? I love
twilight, love lighted windows. They are like the welcoming eyes of a
home. I love this town. I'd like to help here, there is a lot to be done
besides voting and paying taxes, even in this small place. Of course
there is heartache, and suffering, and even wickedness, I suppose, but
one doesn't run into it at every turn as one does in the city; there one
sees constantly the neglected child, the small merchant with tragic eyes
hanging on by his teeth, the hard-boiled women--out for all they can
get--and all the time, one feels so powerless to help."

She felt rather than saw Mark Trent's sharp look at her before, straight
and immobile as a soldier on parade, he walked on beside her. The light
from the afterglow accentuated the lines of repression in his face. Was
this his habitual self, and the man who had rescued her the self who
emerged only under stress? What was he thinking, she wondered, and
wished that she had not made that reference to hard-boiled women. From
what she had heard, his wife must have been of that type. She said
quickly:

"Don't mind my thinking aloud. I acquired the habit when working out
problems in my office. I promise never to bore you again. Isn't that
shimmery light on the water beautiful? See how it colors the sea-stained
rocks. It has turned the roof of Lookout House a lovely pink. Here we
are, home again."

She stopped to look at the massive stone houses set in cedar hedges,
framed by sombre hemlocks, side by side on a ledge. They had a sort of
splendid detachment from the world about them, a rugged picturesque
beauty. They were a beautiful gray, not unlike that of weathered boards,
toned by dashes of red and yellow iron rust, with hospitable doorways
and long French windows on two floors opening on balconies railed and
trellised in wrought-iron of lace-like delicacy, with great chimneys
smothered in skeletons of vines. Brooke drew a little breath of sheer
happiness.

"I adore Lookout House! To me home is not merely a convenience, a
sentiment; it is a ruling passion." Embarrassed by her burst of emotion,
she asked quickly:

"Whose sleek roadster is that, I wonder?"

On the threshold of the living-room she stopped in startled unbelief.
Jerry Field stood by the fire talking to her mother. Who was the
brown-haired girl in blue beside Lucette?

"Couldn't wait for you to send out At Home cards, Brooke," Jerry Field
greeted jauntily. "You remember that you said I could come to Lookout
House when you were settled, don't you? I wanted to meet your family,
wanted them to know that I'm in your stag line for sure."

His eyes flashed beyond her to Mark Trent on the threshold. There was
laughter in his voice and a hint of challenge. Before she could answer,
he commanded:

"Come hither, Daphne, and meet our neighbor. This is my sister."

"Neighbor!" Brooke smiled at the brown-haired girl as she welcomed her
with a cordial handshake. "I would know that you were Jerry's sister,
you look so like him; but is the neighbor stuff a joke?"

"No, Miss Reyburn, we really are staying on the Point."

Daphne Field's smile disclosed small teeth as perfect in color and size
as a row of matched pearls. She turned to Sam.

"I've heard that you are the coming playwright, Mr. Reyburn, that you
have a touch of O'Neil's tragic outlook, a seasoning of Kaufman's humor,
and a hint of Coward's sophistication."

Sam grinned. "Is that original, or did you get it from The Times?"

The girl pouted:

"Of course it's original. Why, Mark!"

Daphne Field's breathless exclamation, the radiance of her face revealed
so much that Brooke had the embarrassed sense of having looked for an
instant at a naked heart. Trent came forward. Was the firelight playing
pranks, or had his face gone dark with color?

"Where did you drop from, Daphne? How are you, Field?"

Why didn't someone say something and smash the strained silence, Brooke
wondered impatiently. It was as if the firelight had cast a spell and
tied all their tongues. Her mother's eyes were on Daphne Field as she
thoughtfully pulled her gloves through her hands. Sam, back to the room,
was poking at the parrot. He hated emotional scenes--off the stage. The
atmosphere fairly quivered with things unsaid. Lucette came to life.

"Turn on the lights, Sam, this gloom may be artistic, but it gives me
the merry-pranks. This has turned out to be meet-your-neighbor day,
hasn't it? Who's the dame in the floppy hat, Brooke, who looks like a
super-animated Bo-peep, and carries a cane which easily could be
mistaken for a shepherd's crook? There's the chance of a lifetime for
you to get in a little missionary work as clothes adviser; you'd better
begin with a streamline diet. She thinks everything here, including
Mother, 'charming.'"

"It must have been Mrs. Dane's friend Mrs. Gregory; they call her The
Empress here. So she has called. That means, if she likes us, that we
shall be admitted into the inner social circle. Jerry, I was so dazed by
your appearance that I forgot to ask what you meant by that word
'neighbor.'"

The lamps in the room diffused a soft glow, set the chrysanthemums in
the conservatory shimmering like mother-of-pearl, brought out the warm
color in the chintz, and lighted the eyes of the Duchess over the
mantel. Celia Reyburn was looking at Jerry Field. Brooke was familiar
with that appraising scrutiny, it was the same look she had given Daphne
who was perched on the arm of the chair in which Lucette sat knitting.
Side by side, Sam and Mark Trent stood back to the mantel, almost as if
they had joined forces against something. She felt Jerry Field's eyes on
her and looked at him questioningly.

"I was waiting for your kind attention before answering your question,
Brooke. Sure, we're neighbors. Daphne and I have taken a house here for
the season."

"Season! What season?"

"This winter, of course. Didn't you say that many of the houses were to
be kept open?"

"Ye-s. But why--" Surprise crisped Brooke's voice.

"I've been wanting for years to paint snow. Found I could hire a house
with a studio here. You don't mind, I hope?"

"Don't be foolish, Jerry. Of course I don't, only--"

"No matter what Brooke thinks, I'm all for it, Mr. Field," Lucette
encouraged. "It will be grand to have someone kind of young in the
neighborhood--and--Oh, Sam, two more recruits for the cast of your play!
Line of applicants for parts will please form on the left."

"Play! What play? I adore dramatics." Daphne Field's voice and eyes were
eager.

"We've been talking about producing Sam's comedy, 'Islands Arise,' for
charity. Of course it's a terrific job. We always paint our own
scenery--"

"Hold! Jerry the boy artist will paint the scenery;"--Field's enthusiasm
cooled--"afraid my box of a studio wouldn't be big enough though."

"There is a large empty room on the second floor next to Lucette's.
Couldn't decide just how to furnish it, so I've waited. We can use that.
Won't it be grand, Sam?" Brooke explained and demanded in the same
breath.

"Yeah, but what does that prove? How do I know whether the Field team
can act, or whether they'll gum up the show?"

"Don't be a grouch, Master Reyburn," Lucette jibed. "You'd better page
the family Lost and Found Department for your manners. I adore
neighbors. I'm pleased purple that we are to have two such snappy ones."

Mark Trent straightened and flung the cigarette he had but a moment
before lighted into the fire. He kept his eyes on Lucette as he
announced:

"News flash! Not two new neighbors, but four, lady. I'm opening my house
next week. Jed Stewart and I will keep bachelor hall there. My
announcement doubtless lacks the romantic overtones of Field's, but
we'll do our best to make you Reyburns neighbor-conscious."




VI


In the firelit library of his house, Mark Trent was perched on the
corner of the large flat desk. As he filled his pipe he compared the
old-fashioned air of dignified restfulness of the room with its deep
chairs in the smoking-room manner and its two-story book-lined walls,
divided half way up by a gallery, with the charm of its twin on the
other side of the brocade hanging which screened the door connecting the
two houses. He might have the piano moved to the drawing room, the huge
mirror taken out, and some figured stuff in place of those red curtains,
he thought. Perhaps Brooke Reyburn would make a suggestion to pep up the
place a little.

Jed Stewart, lounging in a crimson leather chair, hands in his trousers
pockets, legs outstretched, was staring at the blazing logs, watching
the blue and yellow, copper and green tongues of flame lick at the
chimney. The faint thunder of waves dashing against ledges, the
ceaseless crying of sea gulls stole through the heavy hangings drawn
across the long windows. Impatiently he sat up.

"Don't those mournful sounds ever stop?"

The question brought Mark Trent's thoughts right-about-face on the trail
they were following.

"What sounds?"

"That infernal pound of the surf and those darned birds."

"What can you expect when the day blustered in with dark ragged clouds
flying before a near gale? And gulls must live. You'll get used to it in
time, Jed."

"So what! Remember the cow that was being taught to eat sawdust? When
she learned she up and died?"

"Died! You're not planning to die on my hands, are you? You don't hate
the place that much, do you? Because if you do, you don't have to stay."

"Who said I hated it? Who said I didn't want to stay? I think this
house, stuck up on a ledge, is the berries. Because at times I'd like to
soft pedal that surf doesn't mean that I'm quitting, does it? Couldn't
if I wanted to, could I?" He lowered his voice. "We've been here a week,
Mark, and we are not the fraction of a degree nearer finding that last
will and testament of Mary Amanda Dane's--if there is such a thing."

"And the silver; don't forget the silver, Jed. I can account for the
will being lost--if there was one--but what has become of the silver?
I've had it so much on my mind that I consulted Bill Harrison."

"Who's he?"

"The Inspector in charge of Police Headquarters across the causeway.
He's been on the force here since I was a small boy. He was my hero and
when he sang at the A. E. F. celebrations--well, no grand opera
celebrity ever has made my heart turn over as it turned when Bill sang
'Sweet Adeline.' He's keen. Never drinks. His voice is his only vanity.
He loves to be asked to sing. He has had plenty of chances to go to
bigger cities, but he stayed here because his children were in school
and he wouldn't take them away from their friends."

"What did he say about the silver?"

"He didn't say, he doesn't talk much. He asked a few questions about the
Jacques and said he would drop in here this afternoon to take a look
around. Mrs. Gregory is coming later--hope they don't meet--I asked her
to have tea with us. Met her yesterday on the street, and she let it be
known that her feelings were hurt that I had not invited her before.
I--I asked her to bring Miss Reyburn."

Mark Trent slid from the desk and absentmindedly twirled a globe which
showed the countries of the world as they had been before the Treaty of
Versailles had remade the map of Europe.

"Do you think Brooke Reyburn suspects that we are here as amateur
detectives, Jed?"

Elbow on his knee, chin in his hand, Jed Stewart scowled at the fire.
The licking flames cast curious shadows, for all the world like thoughts
flitting across the ruddy brightness of his face.

"Amateurs! We may be, but you've called in a professional on the job,
haven't you? You can't tell what that girl thinks, but why should she
suspect our reason for being here more than Field's, and one couldn't
suspect that lad of ulterior motives. He always looks to me as if he
were on the verge of kissing a lady's hand. Why didn't you accept the
lead in Sam's comedy? It was offered to you, wasn't it?"

"It was, but long ago I outgrew dramatics. What do you think of
'Islands Arise'--that's the name of the play, isn't it?"

"That it will get a fair hearing, at least. The theatre-going world
isn't so cocky and hard-boiled as it was some years ago and it may
appreciate Sam's ideas and ideals. You'd be a knock-out in the lead,
fella."

"I wouldn't take part in the play if I were aching to act. I see the
Reyburns as seldom as possible. Thanksgiving day when Brooke started to
thank me for pulling her from under that car, I burned with shame when I
remembered why I had accepted her invitation. I don't care for this spy
stuff, even if I do believe that the girl by some hocus pocus hypnotized
Aunt Mary Amanda. I'd let this missing will--if there is such a
thing--slide if it weren't for the justice of the thing. The Missing
Will; or Silver, Silver, Who Snitched the Silver? It sounds like a
melodrama of the gay nineties."

"Mebbe so, mebbe so, but if you followed the court calendar as I do,
you'd refuse to believe the fool things to which people sign their
names. Only yesterday the number of wills in a contested estate we are
handling was increased to five when a will dated before the death of the
testator's husband was presented. The state ought to provide a
university extension course devoted exclusively to wills. I'd donate my
services as instructor. Gay nineties, sez you. There's nothing the
matter with the experimental thirties for producing cockeyed wills, sez
I."

"I'll take your word for it, but I hate the whole miserable business.
Whenever I see one of the family from Lookout House I have a feeling of
sick distaste."

"You show it. Getting to be the strong, silent type, aren't you, Mark?
If you feel that way about her, why did you ask Mrs. Gregory to bring
Brooke here this afternoon? You never have been fair to that girl. You
started with the idea that she's crooked, and you're sticking to it like
honey to a glass dish."

"Like her a lot, don't you?"

"I'm not the only one. I haven't dropped in at Lookout House yet without
finding a lad or two from the big city--late business associates, I
gathered--drinking tea or after-dinner coffee. I'll bet her stag line,
if laid end to end, would reach from here across the causeway. She's got
soul and--"

Trent blew a shrill whistle through his fingers. Stewart laughed.

"I get you, the stop signal. I'll toss her one more posy, then I'll
quit. I'm supposed to be stage manager of Sam's play, but I'd sure make
a mess of it without Brooke as my property woman. She's executive and
then some. She never forgets."

"When does the play come off?"

"First Thursday in January. Sam thought of New Year's eve but gave that
up for fear he couldn't lure a producer away from New York festivities."

"That isn't far off. We'll have a grand celebration here for the cast
and friends who come from town. We'll invite the neighbors to supper and
dance after the show. Have you a speaking part?"

"If you can call one line a speaking part. I'm qualifying for what is
called in the profession 'a short part and type actor.' You can't have
an after-the-show party without inviting the Reyburns."

"Of course they'll be invited. Where did you get the crazy idea I would
leave them out?"

"You're so suspicious of Brooke, and--"

"How can I help being suspicious? Didn't Mrs. Gregory say that the girl
drove in as she went out that last day? That she--"

Mark Trent stopped speaking to stare at the ceiling. Had a door banged
overhead, or had he imagined the sound? The servants, Taku and Kowa,
were in the kitchen at this time of day; they wouldn't be on the third
floor anyway, he had not had that opened up, plenty of room below for
Jed and himself. It seemed as if he kept fascinated eyes upraised for an
hour, but it was a mere second by the tall clock in the corner before he
crossed to the window and drew aside the curtains.

"What a drab December afternoon! The clouds are retreating and the
setting sun is edging them with gold, but the temperature is dropping,
must be near freezing point. The boom and beat and bang of the tide
against the ledge rattles the shutters. I'll bet we're in for an
old-fashioned New England winter." On his way back to the fire he
stopped to listen.

"What pearls of wisdom were you about to scatter, Mark, when you stopped
as if, like a Mohammedan, you heard the muezzin call, '_Allah, il Allah,
Allah akbar!_'? Who's here?"

A man entered the room with a purposeful stride. He was ample of jowl,
slightly opulent as to waistline; he had the flinty eyes of an eagle
who can stare straight at the sun. A sense of force was his outstanding
characteristic.

"Here I am, Mark. That Jap outside wanted to bow me in, but I shooed him
off." Inspector Bill Harrison's voice was surprisingly soft with a
persuasive inflection.

"Glad you've come, Inspector. This is my friend Jed Stewart."

Inspector Harrison nodded. "How are you, Mr. Stewart. Does he know about
the silver, Mark?" He lowered himself into a deep chair and accepted a
cigar.

"Yes, he's staying here to help me--us solve the mystery."

"What else have you lost?"

"Why do you think we've lost anything else?"

"Would you two city guys come to this burg to stay just to find a lot of
silverware?"

"It's more than mere silverware; the pieces are antiques of great
value."

Inspector Harrison pulled himself from the enticing crimson depths to
his feet.

"All right, Mark, have it your own way, but I ain't mixin' up in a case
where folks are holding out on me. I work best when the interested party
works with me. Get that?"

Mark's laugh was quick and disarming.

"Hold everything, Bill Harrison; you can't walk out on us like that. Sit
down again. Jed, tell him what Mrs. Gregory told us about the will she
witnessed. You understand, Inspector, that there may be nothing to
it--so it's off the record."

"Say, Mark, do you suppose I climbed up on the force by talking my head
off? I play the rules. Spill it, Mr. Stewart."

Stewart repeated Mrs. Gregory's astonishing announcement that she had
witnessed a will of Mary Amanda Dane's of a date later than the will
allowed; told of the decision of Mark and himself to turn detectives and
of their absolute unsuccess to date.

Inspector Bill Harrison blew a perfect smoke ring.

"Did Mrs. Gregory say there was anyone else present but Mrs. Dane and
the other witnesses when she signed?"

"No."

Mark Trent's answer was nothing short of explosive. The Inspector's soft
grudging laugh, in such marked contrast to his bird-of-prey eyes,
brought guilty color to his face. It wasn't keeping back information not
to tell that Brooke Reyburn had driven in that afternoon just as Mrs.
Gregory had driven out from Lookout House, was it?

Inspector Bill Harrison rose. With a cigar tucked in one corner of his
mouth, he nodded.

"I'll be going. Guess I've got all the dope. Don't give that Henri
Jacques and his wife the idea that you've missed the silver. Let it drop
out of their minds. When you have any news, come to headquarters, don't
phone. That reminds me. Know anything about the people who've started
the filling-station here on the Point?"

"No. But I understand that Henri Jacques is recommending them."

"Oh, he is? That Henri's just naturally helpful, ain't he? Well, I must
get back." He added in his soft persuasive voice:

"Whenever you're ready to come across with the name of the other party
who was in the neighborhood of Lookout House the day that last will of
Mrs. Dane's was signed, Mark, I'm just across the causeway. I'll be
seeing you."

"Don't go yet, Bill!"

He mustn't leave thinking that he and Jed were holding out on him, Mark
realized. He dropped to the piano bench and struck a few chords.

"Sing for us. Give us 'Sweet Adeline,' Bill. Not five minutes ago I was
telling Stewart about the thrill I got as a boy from hearing you sing
it."

Inspector Bill Harrison's generous mouth widened in a pleased smile,
even his flinty eyes softened. He straightened and jerked down his
waistcoat.

"Well, if I can remember it."

"Of course you can remember it. Attaboy!"

Mark played a few opening chords.

    "'In the evening when I sit alone a-dreaming
    Of days gone by, love, to me so dear.'"

sang Inspector Harrison in a powerful, untrained, yet singularly sweet,
tenor.

At the end of the verse he motioned to the two men to join in the
chorus. Mark Trent contributed a rich baritone and swayed on the piano
bench as he pounded out the accompaniment with gusto. Jed Stewart marked
time with his pipe to a rumbling bass:

    "'Sweet Adeline,
    My Adeline.
    At night, dear heart,
    For you I pine.
    In all my dreams
    Your fair face beams;
    You're the flower of my heart
    Sweet Adeline.'"

Laughing as he had not laughed for years, Mark Trent spurred on the two
somewhat breathless men, who grinned back at him.

"That's showing 'em. Don't stop, Bill. Give us all the trills and
trimmings. We've just got going. Come on!" He ran his fingers over the
keys. Jed Stewart grabbed his shoulder.

"Hold on, Mark. See who's here!"

Mark Trent turned. Surprise brought him to his feet, wiped the smile
from his lips. That couldn't be Lola on the threshold! It was. Hunt, her
name was now, Lola Hunt, he must remember.

"Say, Mark, I'll be making my get-away."

He nodded response to Bill Harrison's mumble. Knew when he opened the
door which led to the print room and vanished. Evidently the Inspector
didn't care to meet Lola. Who did? With the question Mark thrust his
hands hard into his coat pockets and took a step forward.

"Well?"

The sound was more a growl than a word, he realized, as he looked
steadily at the woman who had been his wife. Had been. At last he had
come to think of her in the past tense. It had taken three years to
accomplish that. The shame, the humiliation, the unbearable heartache he
had suffered in the years they had lived together swept over him in a
sickening tide. What did she want now? She was the type of woman who
constantly and everlastingly wanted something. Wasn't he giving her
enough? There had been no justice in his giving her anything, but when
she had written him that her current husband was out of a job and that
she was hungry, what could he do but make her an allowance till the man
found work? Her clothing had a cheap smartness; the dark brilliance of
her eyes was intensified by artificial shadows; her skin was thick and
flushed; her short black hair needed trimming; her mouth drooped at the
corners. She pouted lips which resembled nothing so much as a bloody
smear.

"Don't stare at me as if I were a ghost from out a purple past, Mark. I
told your Jap that I was an old friend, that I wanted to surprise you.
You were all bearing down so heavily on 'Sweet Adeline,' I began to
think I never would make myself heard. Bill Harrison's voice was shaking
the roof. If you don't close your mouth soon, Jed Stewart, your jaws
will never snap back into place. I hate to keep the gentlemen standing.
Won't you ask me to sit down?"

Without waiting for an answer, she sank into the large chair before the
fire and flung back her cape of silver fox. It was the last extravagant
gift he had bought her, Mark Trent remembered, and the only thing she
was wearing that was not cheap. She drew off fabric gloves with the care
she might have given the finest kid. She still wore her rings, he
noticed, rare and brilliant stones; she need never go hungry while she
had those to sell. Her dark eyes sparkled with malice as she looked up
at the two men who stood side by side before the fire.

"Still pals you two, aren't you? Funny how much longer friendship lasts
between men than love between a man and woman. Mark, I came here to talk
to you. Jed, you may go."

Mark Trent's hand closed on Stewart's arm with a grip which turned his
nails white.

"Jed will stay and hear what you have to say. Surely we can have no
secrets from the man who saw us through the divorce court."

She shrugged. "All right with me. I've nothing to lose. Thought you
might object to having what I say get on the air."

"Methinks the lady is implying that I'm a gossip."

"I don't like the twist you gave that 'lady,' Jed Stewart. Don't shake
your head at the Jap, Mark. Why shouldn't I have a cup of tea with you?
I'm famished. Place it here."

The servant looked at Mark Trent before he pressed the springs which
released the legs of the tray he was carrying and set it before the
woman. He brought in a muffin stand with sandwiches and cakes.

"You needn't wait," she dismissed the man as if she were the mistress of
the house. Mark nodded confirmation as the Jap's eyes sought his. Did he
know that the woman so dictatorially giving orders had been his wife?

"Pity this gorgeous silver service wasn't one of our wedding presents,
instead of your mother's, Mark; then I could have claimed it. Still take
two lumps, Jed?"

"No tea, thanks."

She shrugged. "Shall I ring for cocktails?"

"I'll order what Jed wants." Mark Trent spoke sharply. "Drink your tea,
Lola, and--"

"'Get out,' I suppose you're thinking, though being a perfect gentleman
you wouldn't say it. You always were scrupulously polite, even when we
were fighting, Mark."

With a moderation which fired Mark Trent with a mad urge to kick over
the tea table, she filled her cup and selected a sandwich. It would be
unbearable to have Brooke Reyburn see her here.

Side by side the two men watched her, watched her restless hands. Once
she had been told by a stag that her hands were like pale butterflies,
Mark remembered, and they had fluttered ever since. In the silence the
tick of the clock set the air vibrating; the fire snapped and blazed
cheerily; the tide against the ledges boomed a dull undertone.

Lola Hunt flung a crumpled doily to the table.

"Now a cigarette, Mark, and I shall be ready to proceed with my story."

"Sorry, haven't any."

She raised brows which had been plucked to a thin arch.

"You do want to get rid of me, don't you. Well, I strive to please." She
rose and crossed to the desk. With a glance over her shoulder, she
opened a box of Chinese lacquer.

"You see I still know my way around. Oh, by the way, your aunt's legatee
is living at Lookout House, I hear. Henri wrote me--"

"Henri!"

"Yes. I always got on with Henri, perhaps because he knew that I
detested your aunt as much as he did. He wrote that Miss Reyburn
evidently didn't like his wife and himself, asked if I would give him a
reference in case they lost the position."

Was that all Henri Jacques had written, Mark wondered. There was a hint
of mockery in Lola's voice and eyes. What was behind that letter? He
watched her thoughtfully as she perched on the corner of the desk,
crossed her knees and lighted a cigarette. She blew a ring of smoke
toward the two men standing back to the fire.

"Forgot these were in the box, didn't you, Mark? You really should do
something about your memory; it's slipping." Her eyes and voice
sharpened. "Well, here's my news. Bert Hunt--he's my present husband, in
case you've forgotten--is planning to go into business in the
residential part of this town, has gone, in fact. I shall help when he's
rushed or--indisposed. When I heard that you had opened this house, I
thought perhaps you wouldn't care to have your former wife working--I've
been warned that I've been taking chances with my heart--that perhaps
you'd like to buy us off. With twenty thousand dollars we could go
abroad and stay for a time. Don't stand there like a bronze Nemesis
ready to swoop. Nothing shameful about any kind of a job these days, is
there?"

Mark Trent laughed. It was not an especially merry burst of sound, but
it would serve.

"Do you call extortion a job? Nothing doing, Lola. Your heart! You've
used your weak heart as an excuse to get what you wanted for years. Why
should I deprive the town of Hunt's business ability and so charming an
assistant?"

She slid to her feet. Her face, which had been blank with amazement at
his laugh, went white with anger.

"You mean that you don't mind my working--here?"

"If it's what you like, why should I? But," his face was as colorless as
hers, "if you do stay in this town, the allowance I am making
you--which, you may remember, is purely voluntary--will stop."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Not for a minute. I'm merely reminding you--"

"Then I'll remind you that it may cost you more--"

"Mrs. Gregory, Miss Reyburn," murmured Kowa at the door.

In the instant of silence which followed the servant's announcement,
Mark Trent frowned at the figures reflected in the great mirror which
covered one wall. The looking-glass was old and played queer pranks with
faces. It turned normal shadows into smudges, drew a mouth down, tilted
a nose unduly. It reflected Martha Gregory, the broad brim of her hat,
her ebony cane, her sable cape and long black taffeta dress, her white
gloved hand extended as she advanced like a trim yacht under full sail,
the shocked amazement in her deep-set tired eyes as they stared at Lola
Hunt.

The mirror faithfully reproduced the flippant tilt of the chin of his
former wife, showed up pitilessly her shallow, vain face in contrast to
the vivid, beautiful face of Brooke Reyburn in her smart green knit
frock, her swagger coat of beaver; mirrored Jed Stewart in his checked
suit, red carnation in his buttonhole, with a cigarette half way to his
lips. He met his own eyes in the mirror, eyes blazing with anger at the
awkward situation in which Lola had placed him. Had he ever loved the
woman? He knew now that his feeling for her had been nine parts
chivalry and one part physical attraction. He had been conscious that he
was wilfully shutting his eyes to grave faults. Hadn't he plenty
himself, he had argued.

Mrs. Gregory moved and the spell of the mirror was broken. Her skin
mottled, her eyes flashed as she thumped her cane on the rug and went
into action.

"What are you doing in this house, Lola?"

"I might ask you that." Lola Hunt's eyes moved insolently from her to
the girl beside her. "Matchmaking mayhap? As I remember it was one of
your passions." Her glance brought color to Brooke Reyburn's face.

"Just as cheap in your answers as ever, aren't you, Lola? Wisecracking,
I believe they call it now. Don't tell me you have taken her back,
Mark."

"Taken me back! That's the joke of the week. He couldn't get me back."

Lola Hunt pulled the silver fox cape about her shoulders and drew on her
fabric gloves.

"So glad to have met you here, Mrs. Gregory. It will save sending you a
card."

Anne Gregory's face took on a purple tint. She thumped her cane on the
rug.

"A card! A card to what, you brazen hussy?"

Lola Hunt shrugged. "Don't try to stop her, Mark. She would call a woman
who chose to live her life according to modern ideas of marriage, a
hussy. You'd know that from her clothes, they're so deliciously
Victorian. I really must go."

She stopped on the threshold. "Dear Mrs. Gregory, I didn't answer your
question, did I? The card to which I referred is an invitation to
patronize the business which we have started in my old home on the
Point. You remember that house, I am sure, remember how you and your
friends tried to freeze out the girl who came there to live. She didn't
freeze, did she? She burned up a few of the husbands and all the lads.
Is it any more shocking for me to go into business than for some of your
pet socialites to sponsor cigarettes, soap, or bedding in every magazine
in the country?"

She turned to Brooke.

"You are Miss Reyburn, aren't you? I'll give you a tip. Had I been left
the late, not too lamented, Mary Amanda Dane's money, I would be
wondering why her rightful heir and his lawyer had camped down in the
house next to mine, why they were hob-nobbing with Inspector Bill
Harrison. In a movie it would be because they intended to prove 'undue
influence' or, perhaps, because the dispossessed heir planned to marry
the heiress to keep the money in the family. That's a thought!"

She looked back over her shoulder.

"Think over my proposition, Mark, darling. It may be cheaper for you--in
the end."




VII


Lola Hunt's malicious laugh lingered eerily in the silence which
followed her theatrical exit from the room. Somewhere a door closed with
a bang which clanged through the house.

Her spiteful warning stuck like an irritating burr in Brooke Reyburn's
mind. She glanced at the two men standing back to the fire: Stewart's
eyes, still on the doorway, smoldered with anger; the tortured look in
Mark Trent's hurt her unbearably; even with his pride knifed, his
courtesy had been invincible. The woman had warned him also. Why think
of him, she asked herself angrily. Better have her mind on what Mrs.
Hunt had insinuated. Had those two men come to live in this house
because they suspected her, Brooke Reyburn, of dishonestly influencing
Mary Amanda Dane? If so, what could they do about it? Drag her into
court? Was that why Inspector Harrison had been with them? It was
fantastic, incredible, yet hadn't she wondered times without number why
they, city men so obviously, should have come to this village for the
winter? Why was she so amazed? The day she had met Mark Trent in Jed
Stewart's office, he had intimated that he thought her a schemer. As for
that marriage-to-keep-the-money-in-the-family stuff, it was too absurd
to think of.

Had the woman's first suggestion been merely a hap-hazard thrust
because she was angry? Whichever it was, she was a hateful creature. She
was Trent's former wife! No wonder his face had been colorless if a
woman like that was trying to re-enter his life. As if her thoughts had
drawn his eyes to her, Mark Trent regretted:

"Sorry, Miss Reyburn, that you should have been bored with a scene."

He pressed a bell beside the fireplace. With a little snort of anger,
Anne Gregory settled heavily into a chair and flung back her sable cape.
The color of her face suggested a red-hot balloon. Temper and voice blew
up.

"How about me, Mark? Do you think I liked meeting that shameless woman
here? Shameless! Perhaps I'm too hard on Lola. She was right. We old
residents did our best to snub her when she came here to live, and she
did have every man in the place parking on her doorstep sooner or later.
From the time she was a little girl she was shuttled from her Spanish
mother living with her fourth husband to her father living with his
third wife. What can you expect of children who have light-o'-love
parents?"

"That's the modern technic of marriage, I understand."

"Modern fiddlesticks, Jed Stewart! You don't believe in this modern
technic, as you call it, do you?"

"No, Mrs. Gregory, I believe passionately in what are at present called
the old-fashioned virtues, honor, chastity, friendship, fidelity to
ideals." There was a tone in Jed Stewart's voice Brooke never before had
heard.

Mrs. Gregory sniffed audibly. "I might have known you were like that
when you are Mark's friend. You're nice boys. Come to dinner on
Wednesday, Stewart. I want to change my will. In spite of the trust
fund, I have something to leave. You're sitting there like a mouse,
Brooke Reyburn. What do you think of this modern code?"

"I? Oh, I'm old-fashioned too, even if I am a modern little
electromagnetic field made up of nicely assembled atoms complete with
protons, electrons, and all the other 'ons.' If a woman came after my
man, first I'd pull her hair out by the roots, figuratively speaking,
then I'd go on such a spree of extravagance that friend husband would
wear himself to a shadow trying to earn money enough to pay my bills."

Jed Stewart chuckled.

"Judging from the fervor with which you remodeled Lookout House, you
could do it--and how!"

Brooke hoped that Mrs. Gregory's thoughts had been switched from Mrs.
Hunt, but the older woman went back to the subject like a deer to the
salt-lick.

"What did Lola mean, she hoped I'd patronize the business she and her
husband were about to start?"

"She didn't say what sort of business, did she? Let's forget her. Let me
take your coat, Miss Reyburn." Trent stood behind Brooke as the servant
appeared in the doorway.

"Kowa, take out the tray and bring fresh tea."

"All things out, sir?"

"Yes. Be quick."

Brooke noticed the crumpled doily as the servant passed. Had Mark
Trent's former wife had tea? Did he want to clear the room of everything
she had touched? If only she herself could as easily rid her mind of the
suspicion the woman had planted. Its barbs still pricked. Had those two
men settled down in this house to watch the girl to whom Mary Amanda
Dane had left her fortune? That Mark Trent had any thought of marrying
her was too absurd. Why couldn't she forget that silly suggestion? Yet,
how red their faces had been after the Hunt woman had flung her warning.

Mrs. Gregory removed her gloves and resumed cross-examination.

"Did Lola really mean that she and her present husband are going into
business in this village?"

"What's strange in that? It's being done every day." Mark Trent crossed
his arms on the mantel and stared at the fire.

In spite of her suspicion of his motive in coming to live next door to
Lookout House, Brooke's sympathy surged out to him. Why didn't Mrs.
Gregory drop the subject of the Hunts? Couldn't she see that he was sick
at heart over the whole sordid situation? With more kindness than
finesse, Jed Stewart plunged into the breach.

"Has that pair of Japanese goldfish I ordered for you arrived yet, Mrs.
Gregory?"

Anne Gregory looked up at him with eyes made shrewd by years of living,
by joys, by uprooted affections, by hopes unrealized. She shook her
head.

"You can't sidetrack me, young man, even with goldfish. I mean to get at
what Lola is after--not merely customers, I am sure of that, she was
here to hound Mark, I know her. I'll see that she doesn't get a license
to carry on business on this Point. I still have influence. Miss Reyburn
will pour the tea," she directed, as Kowa approached her with the
replenished tray.

Involuntarily Brooke looked at Mark Trent. He smiled.

"Please. Stewart and I have given up cocktails, they're too effeminate.
We have become tea-minded since we came here. The cup that cheers
offsets to a degree the pound of the surf outside. Have a sandwich,
Empress?"

"You haven't forgotten that nickname, have you, Mark? I like it from
you. You use your mother's silver, don't you? By the way, what became of
that gorgeous antique service of your aunt's? I haven't seen any of it
at Lookout House, Brooke."

The girl felt as if the eyes of both men were regarding her with
suspicious attention. She finished filling a cup, added a slice of lemon
and two lumps of sugar.

"For Mrs. Gregory, Mr. Stewart. Will you have yours the same strength?
Oh, about Mrs. Dane's silver. There isn't any."

"Isn't any! You say there isn't any silver? Where is it, then? Did your
aunt relent and give it to you, Mark?"

"No. Miss Reyburn and I were wondering about it on Thanksgiving day.
Glad you brought up the subject. Aunt Mary Amanda didn't speak of having
disposed of it, the day you wit--the last day you saw her, did she?"

Why had Mark Trent floundered in his question? What had he meant by "The
day you wit--"? Why change the end of the sentence? Witness was the word
he had started to use. What had Mrs. Gregory witnessed?

The questions jostled each other in Brooke's mind as she carefully
prepared a cup of tea. Witnesses of signatures were required on all
sorts of papers, she knew that. Deeds and wills especially. Mrs.
Gregory's name had not been on the will of Mary Amanda Dane which had
been probated and allowed. Hadn't she a copy of it? Hadn't she read the
amazing document through an hundred times? She felt the tug of an
undercurrent. Suppose there was a foundation for the Hunt woman's
warning? Suppose those two men had Lookout House and its occupants under
a microscope? What would she better do about it? Nothing yet, she
answered her own question promptly. They must not suspect that she even
remembered the ex-wife's suggestion. She would take a hand in their game
of watchful waiting.

Even while she was driving Mrs. Gregory home, under a sky already
freckled with stars, making what she hoped were intelligent responses to
her monologue of question and answer, Brooke was weighing and disposing
of conjectures as to the meaning of the Hunt woman's warning. It was
with a sense of strain lifted that she helped the older woman out of the
car. Mrs. Gregory laid her hand on her arm.

"You're a darling, Brooke. I appreciate now the color, and the sense of
'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world' you brought into Mary
Amanda Dane's life. I had intended to start a boycott against you and
your family here because you had cut Mark out of his inheritance, but he
asked me to be nice to you. I adore that boy. I would do anything for
him. He lived in a nightmare of humiliation with a wife who came home
night after night barely able to keep her feet. Why, why can't women
realize that it's their privilege to keep up the standards of decency?
He stood by her, though, and held his head high, and wouldn't allow his
soul to be warped by the experience."

She turned on the threshold as an elderly parlor-maid opened the door.

"Don't remember a word that shameless woman said, about being suspicious
of Mark and Jed--she hasn't a tongue, she has fangs and poisonous ones
at that--and don't think she'll be allowed to start any kind of business
in this community. I'll stop that. Good-night! It was a nice party."

How could she help remembering what Mrs. Hunt had said, Brooke asked
herself, as she started her car. She went over in her mind the
conversation in which Mrs. Gregory had vigorously denied having received
confidences from Mary Amanda Dane as to the disposal of her property.

It had not been imagination that Mark Trent and Jed Stewart had firmly
led her away from the subject. Stewart had plunged into a recital of the
difficulties Sam had encountered in casting his play. He had been
amusing and Mrs. Gregory, who knew most of the subscribers for the
charity benefit, had added blistering comments to his. There had been
some truth in Mrs. Hunt's hint--not about Mark planning to marry the
residuary legatee of his aunt's property; that was too silly to
remember--or the two men would not have shifted conversational gears so
quickly. So Mark Trent had asked "the Empress" to be "nice" to her. Was
that part of the espionage plan?

She reached the question and Lookout House at the same time. She left
her town car in the garage. She was thoughtfully drawing off her gloves
as she approached the garden door of her house. A stream of light laid a
golden path on leafless shrubs and graveled walk. A woman was at the
door! A woman in a fox cape. Mrs. Hunt! Talking with Henri.

Brooke stepped into the purple shadow of a spruce. She could see and she
could hear:

"If you keep a level head we can't lose, Henri."

The man's murmur was indistinct. He closed the door softly as the woman
went down the steps. She flung a furtive look at the windows of the
house before she vanished in the dusk.

"That seems to be that," Brooke said to herself, before she started
around Mark Trent's house that she might enter her own front door
unobserved by a possible watcher in the garden.

As she entered the living-room at Lookout House, she rang for Henri. The
green parrot squawked, "Stop!", ruffled his feathers, and hopped up and
down in his cage. She was standing near the fire, letter opener in hand,
looking over the mail she had found on the desk when the butler entered.

"Did anyone call, Henri?"

"On the phone, Miss?"

"At the house."

Henri opened the door of the parrot's cage. Mr. Micawber hopped to his
shoulder and began tweaking his ear.

"Never mind about the parrot, Henri. Answer my question."

"But I take him out like this for a walk around three times a day,
Miss; the old madame wanted him to have a change of scene. Not a person
called at this house. Were you expecting someone?"

"Yes, the lady who is to have charge of selling tickets for the play
phoned that she might come this afternoon. Probably she couldn't make
it. That's all."

Her eyes followed him as he left the room with the green bird muttering
on his shoulder. Always she had distrusted the man of whom Mary Amanda
Dane had been so fond. Why should he have lied to her about Mrs. Hunt's
presence at the garden door of Lookout House? Because the woman was
there to see him of course. With her thoughts still on Henri and his
evasions, she slit one of the envelopes in her hand and drew out the
letter it contained. All thought of the butler fled as she saw that the
letterhead was that of the firm for which she had been fashion adviser.

     Dear Miss Reyburn,--she read--

     Any chance of your wanting a job? We are opening a dress shop at
     Palm Beach under the name of Carston's Inc. Very swank, very
     expensive. Céleste will be business manager. We'd like you to be
     top mannequin--with a salary, of course, and percentage on the
     sales of the frocks you model. We'll put on a fashion show later in
     the season. Society girls as mannequins. We'll open this year
     January first. Don't say 'No' until you think it over. Come in and
     we'll give you more details.

     Céleste and the directors are all for you on the job.

     Yours truly--

Brooke's face flushed as she reread the letter. Of course she couldn't
accept--some girl who needed the money should have the chance--but it
was thrilling to know that she was wanted. Palm Beach. All sunshine and
fragrance and flowers. What a contrast to this stern and rockbound coast
with the pound of surf, the wail of the siren, and the cries of gulls,
to which she was anchored for the present.

The contents of the letter glowed in her mind as she dressed for the
evening. It was heart-warming to know that her hard work had been
appreciated. Better not speak of it. Sam's mind was on his play and
Lucette might go temperamental because she had not been given the
chance, and lose her job. Women in business couldn't afford to admit
that their feelings had been hurt; there was no place for the person
with a grievance; she had learned that while working.

Not until later, as, snuggled in a big chair before the fire in the
living-room, she waited for Lucette and Sam to change for dinner, did
the memory of Mrs. Hunt's presence at the garden door recur to her. Now
it surged to the top of her mind. With unseeing eyes on the green parrot
back in his cage, she thought of the woman's warning to her, of her
threat to Mark Trent--it had been a threat, in spite of that sugary
"darling." What had she meant? What object could Henri have had in
denying her presence? Why should the remembrance of the low voice
declaring: "If you keep a level head we can't lose, Henri," send icy
prickles crawling up her spine and coasting down; why had it flashed
upon the screen of her mind the glaring headlines of an editorial in
last night's newspaper:

     WOMEN! YOU HAVE SHOWN YOUR POWER. WHAT ARE YOU, SITTING BEFORE YOUR
     FIRES, DOING ABOUT THE CRIMES BEING COMMITTED? TOMORROW IT MAY BE
     YOU, YOU WHO WILL BE THE VICTIM!

Cheery thought! Brooke surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder. The
charming room was still and cozy in the flickering firelight, fragrant
with the breath of the Templar roses in the bubble vase, and the smell
of moist earth from the chrysanthemums in the conservatory. She drew a
long breath. Silly, as if criminals would attempt to operate on this
point of land where they would be caught before they could leave it.
Mrs. Gregory's question about Mary Amanda Dane's silver had started the
train of thought. Just the same, where was it? A silver service couldn't
walk off by itself. Was it possible that Mrs. Hunt knew of its
whereabouts? Evidently she was terribly hard up for money, and the need
of money sometimes killed a person's soul. What could she and Henri
"lose"?

Brooke thoughtfully smoothed the lace of her dinner frock, lace the very
shade of the highlights in her hair. If this were a movie, there might
be a trick cupboard in the green paneling in which the silver had been
hidden, but there was nothing so exciting here. She had been at Lookout
House when the walls and trim were painted.

"Calling car 5! Car 5! Car 5!"

The frenzied call brought Brooke to her feet, set her heart thumping
madly. Then she laughed as the parrot with a squawk preened his green
and yellow feathers. She made a disdainful face at the chuckling bird.

"Mr. Micawber, sometime when you yell like that I'll forget that I'm a
perfect lady and wring your neck. Sam, did you teach the parrot that
police radio call?" she demanded, as her brother entered the room.

His eyes twinkled behind the lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles. He
pulled a piece of cracker from the pocket of his blue coat.

"Sure, I taught him. I've been at work on that bird ever since I came.
Here, stout fella!"

The parrot twisted his head completely round, blinked lidless eyes,
before he nipped at the reward which Sam had thrust through the bars of
his square cage.

"That bird's a peach, Brooke. You can teach him anything if you try hard
enough. Boy, I wish I had him in the play. He'd show some of the stiffs
how to speak their lines."

"Who's the biggest problem?"

"Daphne Field. She's pretty enough but dumb. She'll stop the show, all
right, but not because she's an actress. Hers is a feed-part for the
leading woman. She's one of those darnfool girls who go off their heads
in a crisis--in real life, I mean, not in the play. Glad she's not in
the lead. Laura Crane, who is, is good; she's got plenty on the ball."

"How is Jerry in his part?"

"Okay, but I don't like the man who is playing the male lead. He's a
spotlight hog. I wish Mark Trent would take it. He's just the type and a
natural. I think he's great--and--he's darn friendly, but--" Sam leaned
against the mantel and faced his sister. "Have you ever thought that he
is not particularly keen about the Reyburn family?"

Brooke, perched on the arm of the wing chair, put her hand to her face
to screen it from the heat of the fire and incidentally from Sam's
observation. His question set the Hunt woman's warning echoing in her
mind. Should she tell him? No. Better not until she was sure that it had
been more than a random shot she had aimed at her former husband; better
not tell him that she had been talking to Henri, either. She said
thoughtfully:

"Would he be likely to be keen, as you express it, about a family which
was spending money that he felt should be his? I think he has behaved
decently."

"Who said he hadn't? I have a kind of feeling, that's all. He told Jed
Stewart that we might take anything we liked from his house for stage
setting." Sam's grin was broad. "If Mother were here, she could tell him
what scavengers we are."

"Poor mother. She was a heroine; she would see her treasures trucked off
to set a stage without one protest. Now that I have a house of my own, I
know how it must have hurt. The drop for the forest scene is great, Sam.
Jerry Field's tree trunks are so real that I have to touch them to make
sure they haven't sprung up through the house; Mark Trent gave him a
hand on them. I stopped in the studio before I went out this afternoon
and added a splash of red to the cabin roof and a few leaves."

"Leaves! Those daubs of paint look like an explosion of green worms, and
it's lucky Field put a red roof on that brown cabin or it might have
been shot for a deer. However, it will all go great when the foots are
on. I'll be glad when the show is over; sometimes I think I've written
a smash hit and sometimes that the play is just a lot of tripe. I
daren't hope for one or two first-string critics to give me the low-down
on it. Anyway, a manager who liked those two sketches I wrote for the
Workshop is coming for the opening to give it the once-over, and he'll
bring a New York producer."

"Really, Sam! How perfectly grand! We--"

"Hi! Soft pedal! Here comes Lucette. I don't want her to know that
they'll be in front, it might rattle her."

There was the sound of running feet on the stairs, a gay voice singing.
Lucette dashed into the room. Her black hair was silky; her thin frock
was only a shade redder than her lips and cheeks and fingernails. She
dropped to the rug in front of the fire, hugged her knees, and looked up
at her sister.

"How soon do we eat, Brooke? I'm starving."

"Henri waits till he hears you tumble downstairs before he announces
dinner. What kind of a day did you have?"

"Hectic. Every woman in the city apparently has gone sports-clothes
minded. They've stopped boasting of the extreme age of their frocks and
hats and have begun to spend real money. They are buying for themselves
and for Christmas gifts in spite of the fact that prices are being
stepped up. I should worry. I get a sliver of commission on my sales.
The girl who has taken your place had just one of those days, today.
Madame Céleste was on the war-path. Her heart, like the Mother Goose
man's little gun, is made of lead, lead, lead. I brought Jerry Field
down in the car. He was a gob of gloom when he came in and you were not
here. He had no interest in this T. B. W. though I tried to be a little
ray of sunshine. I told him that probably you had taken your knitting to
Mrs. Gregory's. You certainly are a hit, Brooke, with what in the store
we call the older woman."

Brooke laughed. Lucette was being subtle. Since the children had grown
up, there was a live-and-let-live law in the Reyburn family that no
member of it should be asked why or where she was going or where she had
been. Celia Reyburn argued that living close together was sufficient
strain on dispositions without having every move commented on.

"Cagey, aren't you, Lucette, trying to find out without asking what
Brooke did with her afternoon, and say, instead of looking like the
fingers of a Tired Business Woman, your nails look as if you'd been
digging out the entrails of some animal, old Greek and Roman sacrifice
stuff, or what have you."

Sam's tolerant man-of-the-world voice was especially pitched to
aggravate his younger sister. Brooke recognized storm signals and spoke
before Lucette could think up a sufficiently caustic reply.

"If you'd like to know, Mrs. Gregory and I had tea with neighbors.
Home-town boys."

"Not in there?" Lucette's eyes were round with incredulity. She nodded
toward the connecting door. "Did you go in that way?"

"Good heavens, no! You don't think I would be the one to unseal that, do
you? We were ceremoniously admitted at the front door by the Jap with
the black eyes which always make me think of those little nuggets of
obsidian we picked up near the cliff at the Yellowstone."

"What's the Looking-Glass house like? Gloomy?"

"Not gloomy, but, except for the lovely circular stairway, like ours,
completely gay-ninetyish. Entering it is like stepping back into another
century. I like it though; like the great domed library shelved with
books which look as if they had been read, put back, taken down and read
again; I liked the woodfire on the deep hearth, the tick of the old
clock in the corner, the portrait of a man in a periwig above the
mantel."

"My word, it sounds pre-historic to me. I'll bet after a few weeks of
exposure to this peachy room Mark Trent will be doing his over. Other
guests?"

"It wasn't a party, Lucette."

Better not mention Mrs. Hunt, Brooke decided, it would start a fusillade
of questions; besides, the woman had not been a guest, it had been quite
apparent that she had been neither invited nor welcome.

"Then someone else was there. Going secretive on us, aren't you,
darling? I get you. I'm not! News flash! Who do you think runs that new
filling-station in the white cottage?

"Mark Trent's ex-wife and her husband!"




VIII


Brooke stood before the fire in the softly lighted living-room at
Lookout House. Three days had passed since she had received the letter
offering her the Palm Beach position, since she had heard that the Hunts
were the proprietors of the filling-station she had been patronizing.
She had refused promptly the business offer and had dropped it from her
mind, but she couldn't forget the other. Sometimes she wondered if she
would ever think of anything else. Questions were everlastingly popping
up. Could Mrs. Gregory wipe the filling-station off the map? Had Lola
Hunt gone to Mark Trent's house to tell him about it, or had he known
already? Why later had the woman been talking so confidentially to Henri
at the garden door of Lookout House? What had she meant by: "If you keep
a level head we can't lose, Henri"? What was behind that snapped off
"wit" of Mark Trent's?

She had built a high, strong, impregnable wall of dislike between
herself and him; hadn't he called her a schemer? But for some
inexplicable reason it hurt to think that he was being heckled by an
unprincipled woman. Mrs. Gregory had said he had not only been fair in
his treatment of his former wife, but that he'd been maddeningly
quixotic. What would he do about that filling-station? It must be
unendurable for him to know that his ex-wife was selling gas.

Why was she spending a moment's thought on Mark Trent's problems? Hadn't
she plenty of her own? She frowned at the empty gilt cage. Where was Mr.
Micawber? When she had come in this afternoon, Henri had been wringing
his hands. He had gone completely French as he chattered, but she had
gathered from the jargon that when he had stepped out on the lawn with
the parrot on his shoulder, the door had banged behind him and the
frightened bird had flown away. It wasn't that she cared for the parrot,
she detested him, but Mrs. Dane had loved him and she felt as if she had
broken faith with her benefactress.

"Wake up, sister!" Lucette prodded from the doorway. "Sam and I have
been staring at you for three minutes, trying thought transference.
Nothing doing. We couldn't penetrate your skull. You've been scowling as
if addressing a hall full of women who refused to rally to your one-time
battle-cry:

"Old age isn't necessary, it is nothing but a germ! Watch out that you
don't pick it up!"

Brooke laughed. "I had no idea that the precepts of her elders made such
an impression on our little sister, had you, Sam?"

"No. I--Where is Mr. Micawber?"

Brooke told him.

"No kidding, what do you know about that! I'll bet Henri let him go."

"He wouldn't do that, Sam, though he should have known better than to go
to the open door with him. Mrs. Dane wouldn't have the bird's wings
clipped; of course he would fly when he got the chance. Henri takes all
the care of him, thank heaven. I think he adores him, if he can adore
anything. Curious, Mr. Micawber likes Henri and you; he doesn't try to
conceal the fact that he dislikes Lucette and me. I'm really troubled
about the parrot. He may be flying outside, and Mrs. Dane was so careful
never to expose him to draughts. Who is calling, I wonder?" Brooke
asked, as the butler passed in the hall on his way to the front door.

"Cricky! I forgot! Jerry Field is coming to dinner. Thought we could all
go to rehearsal together. Do you mind, Brooke?"

"Of course not, Lucette. Did you tell Henri to set a place for him?"

Lucette nodded before she greeted Jerry Field.

"How are you, stranger?"

"Little girls shouldn't be sarcastic, Lucette." He unfolded a green
waxed paper. "For you, Brooke."

"Gardenias! I've never seen more perfect ones. What wax-like petals!
What lovely leaves! Thanks billions, Jerry."

Brooke turned to the mirror and pinned on the flowers. She saw Jerry
Field watching her as he said:

"I strive to please. Sam, you slave-driver, why did you call a rehearsal
again tonight? We've been working every evening this week."

"What does that prove? Call what you've been doing working? I calls it
playing. We'll run through the three acts tonight, and, m'lad, for the
love of Mike, put some punch into your part, even if we are rehearsing
with no props. Last night when the woman lead gave the cue for your
quote:

    'Islands arise, grow old, and disappear,'

you mumbled your lines as if you were going to sleep on us. If you talk
like that the night of the show, you'll have the audience in an hypnotic
slumber."

He ran his fingers through his hair.

"Boy, 'Islands Arise' is the name of the play! Don't you get what that
play stands for, Jerry? The birth of a man's soul; the waking of love;
the breaking up; the forging to steel by sorrow and disillusionment, and
the renewing to full and abundant life. Can't you convey some shades of
meaning of it in your voice? It isn't the lead but yours is a fat part."

Sam's outburst died down as quickly as it had flared. Only Brooke
realized the sense of frustration which had smoldered in her brother's
heart as he had watched scenes, listened to lines over which he had
spent days of passionate enthusiasm being butchered because the cast
wouldn't settle down to real work, to be line-perfect.

Jerry Field's eyes and voice were ludicrously awed as he demanded:

"My eye, is all that in the play? I thought it was a comedy."

"It is a comedy, but even a comedy has to be built on life, hasn't it,
and aren't there tragic undertones in life? That play is my declaration
of faith that there is a big theatre public for things that matter, for
something besides sordid infidelities and bawdy lines. Oh, what's the
use trying to make a lot of dumbbells understand!"

There was a break in the last word as Sam crossed his arms on the mantel
and dropped his head on them.

"Ain't the life of a playwright grand!" Lucette mocked, but there was a
suspicious moisture on her lashes. "Come on, Sammy, let's eat. Life
won't seem so dark after dinner.

"'Just around the corner there's a rainbow in the sky,'" she sang, as
she linked her arm in her brother's.

The dining-room was cheery with firelight and the flames of tall yellow
candles, which matched to a tint the acacias in the bay window. The blue
of bachelor buttons, the soft pink of carnations, the yellow of Souvenir
roses in the golden bowl on the table repeated the colors in the rare
Persian rug. The flickering lights threw fantastic patterns on the walls
and smudged the butler's face with shadows as he drew out Brooke's
chair. She smiled at her brother who sat opposite.

"Cheerio, Samuel. Something tells me that 'Islands Arise' will be the
hit of next season. Picture your adoring family in a box at the opening,
fairly swooning with pride when the audience yells:

"'Author! Auth--'"

The telephone interrupted. Henri answered it and returned to the
dining-room.

"Call for you, Miss Reyburn."

"Probably someone panicky for fear she can't get tickets to the great
and only show of the season, Sam," Brooke said on her way to the door.

In the living-room she answered the call;

"Brooke Reyburn speaking."

"This is Mark Trent. I want to show you something. Make an excuse to
stay at home from rehearsal, will you?"

"Yes."

"Get Henri and Clotilde out of the house. Can you?"

"It's movie night in the village. They'll go."

"Phone me as soon as they start."

"I will."

"Good-bye."

What could Mark Trent have to show her? His voice had been drenched with
mystery. Brooke was projecting and rejecting answers to the question as
she went back to the dining-room.

"How many did they want?"

She wrinkled puzzled brows as she looked across the table at her
brother.

"How many of what, Sam?"

"Has the little old memory gone blotto? Didn't you say the call was
about tickets?"

"Don't beat me, Sammy. I thought it was. It was only a--an insurance
agent who has been on my trail. How did the market behave today, Jerry?"

Field reported jauntily and in detail on the rise of certain of his pet
stocks, and the shuttlecock of conversation was in the air again.

As Brooke poured coffee in the living-room after dinner, she planned to
plead a letter to her mother as an excuse for staying away from the
rehearsal; as property woman she wasn't important yet. She was
positively tingling with curiosity. What had Mark Trent to show her? Why
had his voice been hushed as if he feared he might be overheard?

"Boy, you wouldn't think old Micawber making his get-away would leave
such a hole, would you? It's almost as if someone in the house had
died." Sam's voice interrupted her thoughts. "When we get back from
rehearsal we'd better make this find-the-parrot-night. Suppose he's
hiding up in a tree on the grounds, Brooke?"

"If he is, Henri will get him. He was white when he told me he had lost
the parrot. I'll slip into a coat, go out and whistle for him myself
when you've all gone to rehearsal."

"What's the big idea walking out on us, Brooke?" Jerry Field demanded in
his most spoiled-boy tone as he held Lucette's coat in the hall.

"I told you, a letter to Mother, and sandwiches to make. Bring the cast
back here after rehearsal, Sam, for a bite to eat."

"What's the use having two servants and doing a lot of work yourself?"

"Don't mind Jerry, Brooke. It's evident he's never seen our sunshiny
Clotilde on location when asked to do something extra. I'll help you
when I get home. Come on, boys, the stage waits!"

Lucette dashed out with the two men at her heels. As she watched from
the porch, Brooke saw Jed Stewart join them from the Other House. Their
voices and laughter drifted back. Did Jed know that Mark Trent had
phoned? She waited, drawing in long breaths of the cold salty air, until
the rear light of the car was but a red spark in the distance.

When she returned to the living-room, Henri was collecting cups and
saucers. She watched him in the mirror while she pretended to be
absorbed in fastening the two gardenias more securely to the shoulder of
her lace frock. He stopped on the threshold, holding the silver tray.

"Anything more this evening, Miss?"

"Nothing, Henri, except that I wish you would impress it upon
Clotilde--I can't seem to--that when I order Rocquefort cheese dressing
for a salad, I mean that, and not mayonnaise. This is the third time she
has made the mistake."

"She thinks mayonnaise more suitable. You don't like Clotilde and me
much, do you, Miss Reyburn?" His smile was an ugly thing, having under
it the suggestion that it would be to her advantage to like them.

"I don't!" was on the tip of Brooke's tongue, but she caught the words
back. With the production of the play so near, this was not the time to
change servants. After that she would get rid of the couple if it meant
doing the work herself. She temporized:

"Because I insist upon having my orders carried out, doesn't mean
necessarily that I don't like you, Henri. Can anything more be done
about finding the parrot?"

"I'll look round before I go to bed, Miss, but I think in the morning
we'll find him huddled in a corner near the house."

"This is movie night in the village, isn't it?"

"Yes, Miss, though if you are to be alone and mind--"

"Of course you are to go, Henri." Brooke had an instant of panic.
Suppose he insisted upon staying at home? "I shan't be alone long. Mr.
Trent and Mr. Stewart will be here with the cast after rehearsal for a
little supper."

"Will the supper keep up till late?"

"Probably, but we will take care of the dishes."

"Thank you, Miss."

"Have you put plenty of gingerale and White Rock on the ice?"

"Yes, Miss. The mint is chopped and the fruit juices are ready for the
drink just as you told me." Henri's eyes seemed but sparks in cavernous
depths.

"Excuse me, Miss, you'd better like Clotilde and me. We could put you
out of this house if we wanted to. Anything more?"

Brooke was too indignant to answer. What did the man mean by the threat
he had inserted so casually between two sentences? What did he know? Had
Jed Stewart and Mark Trent confided to him their suspicions as to "undue
influence"? Were they grooming him to testify for them? Had they set him
spying upon her? Should she repeat his threat and demand to know the
truth when Mark Trent came? No. Better cool down. She was too furious
now. She would wait until after Sam's play. That must go smoothly; it
might be his big chance--after that--well, after that she would
investigate a few things, she would find out why Mrs. Hunt and Henri
were so friendly, to begin with.

She attempted to read the evening newspaper as she waited for the
servants to finish their work and depart for the movies, but her
thoughts kept reverting to Henri's insinuation:

"We could put you out of this house if we wanted to."

Had that threat any connection with Mrs. Hunt's:

"If you keep a level head we can't lose, Henri"?

She flung down the paper after she had read a paragraph three times. She
hurled defiance at an imaginary Henri:

"Of course you can't put me out! Suppose you could? It isn't too late to
get the Palm Beach job."

Curious how heart-warming was the knowledge that she was wanted in the
business world. Not half so heart-warming as this house, she corrected
herself, as she glanced about the room she had planned with such
thrilled pleasure. It seemed empty without the parrot. Was it possible
that she had begun to like Mr. Micawber?

With eyes wandering to the tall clock, ears strained to hear the chug of
the servants' flivver on the drive, inhaling the scent of gardenias with
every breath, her thoughts returned to Mark Trent's message. Why had he
phoned? Perhaps she was dramatizing his voice, perhaps it hadn't been
mysterious except in her imagination.

"There they go! I'd know the wheeze of their car if I heard it among a
million. I'll wait five minutes before I phone Mark the Magnificent.
Must be something in the air. First I have a hot chill and then a cold
chill, I'm so excited."

She watched the clock. Dialed. Waited. Probably Kowa had gone to the
movies. He--She put her mouth close to the transmitter.

"Mr. Trent? Brooke Reyburn. They've gone."

"Okay. I'll be there like a shot."

Brooke replaced the telephone. His voice was excited. It had set her
nerves tingling. She would be at the front door to open it before he had
a chance to ring.

In the hall she listened for his step on the terrace. Why did he take so
long? His "like a shot" was more like an hour.

"I'm here," a low voice announced behind her.

In her surprise, Brooke leaned back against the door and looked up at
Mark Trent. She never before had realized how tall he was, nor how black
his gray eyes could be.

"How did you get in?"

"The connecting door upstairs. Took the quickest way. Lock that door.
Give me the key. I'll put it in my pocket. Queer things are in the air.
We won't take a chance at being locked in or--out."

That didn't sound as if Henri were his tool, Brooke thought, as she
entered the living-room.

"Where is Mr. Micawber?" Mark Trent demanded, his eyes on the empty
cage.

Brooke told him what Henri had told her.

"Um, lost him, did he? The plot thickens."

His voice was uncompromising, his eyes unflinching and direct as, hands
in the pockets of his dinner jacket, his brows knitted, he looked at
her.

"Ooch, I'd hate to battle with you," Brooke thought. "It would be like
trying to dent a steel wall." Aloud she said:

"What is the mystery? It is a mystery, isn't it? I've been jittery ever
since you phoned."

His smile was a flash of white teeth below his small dark mustache.

"Glad I got my Big Moment over. Can't have Sam monopolizing all the
drama in the neighborhood. Sure the Jacques have gone?"

"I heard their car go out. One couldn't mistake its wheeze. I told Henri
that we would have supper here for the cast after rehearsal and that he
would not be needed."

"Fair enough." He caught her hand. "Step on it!"

Why was Mark Trent afraid to have Henri, his tool,--if he were his
tool--know what he was doing, Brooke wondered, as, side by side, they
hastily mounted the winding stairs. She felt as if she were in a dream,
as if at any moment she might waken to find herself snuggled in the wing
chair before the fire. But the squeak of a tread was real; Mark the
Magnificent's muttered execration at the sound was real; so was his grip
of her hand. Why was he so careful about being heard? He appeared
friendly with her; was that part of his plan, his and Jed Stewart's?

On the second floor before the door which opened into his house, he
stopped.

"Look," he whispered. "I tried this, had a hunch I might get through
quickly this way. When it opened, that key was in your side." He turned
the knob. "Better leave it where it is. We don't want anyone to know
that we have seen it. Come."

He followed her into the hall of his house and closed the door gently
behind him.

"Now we can speak aloud. Kowa and Taku have gone to the movies. You're
not afraid?"

"Afraid! Of what?"

"Of being alone in the house of the enemy?"

"Are you my enemy? Was your--was Mrs. Hunt right that afternoon when she
warned me that you and Jed Stewart had come here to--to watch me?"

How maddening! She had let him know that she attached significance to
Lola Hunt's warning, and she had intended to keep the two men guessing
as to what she thought. She watched his color darken, his brows knit in
a frown.

"Why take that silly question of mine seriously? I don't know why I
asked it. Must have picked up one of the theatrical germs with which the
air has been filled since Sam started the play. Jed rants by the hour."

"Most interesting, but did you bring me here only to explain your
reaction to the Reyburn dramatics?"

The wave of Brooke's hand included the hall hung with massively framed
paintings, the circular stairways descending and ascending, the doors
opening into dark rooms in some of which furniture was dimly outlined.

"I brought you here to show you something. Come on."

"You're so like the Red Queen in Alice. She was forever saying, 'Come
on!' and never getting anywhere. I hope ordering me about is not getting
to be a habit with you," Brooke protested.

He pressed a button which switched on a light in the floor above and ran
up the stairs.

She followed slowly. Where was he taking her? It seemed hours since they
had left her living-room. Suppose Henri slipped back and found her gone?
Would he suspect where she was? Of course he had left the key in that
connecting door. Who else would have done it? What business had he in
Mark Trent's house? Did he come for instructions?

She reached the question and a door at the same time. As Mark Trent
opened it, a slightly musty smell, a blend of camphor and old books and
ancient furniture, stole out. He motioned with the flash in his hand.
Brooke's eyes followed the light. She set her teeth hard in her lips to
keep back an exclamation of astonishment. On a large table, illumined by
the spotlight, surrounded by boxes and trunks and storeroom litter, was
a massive tea-service and perhaps a dozen dishes and pitchers of silver,
tarnished to a light copper color. A scrap of paper drifted to the
floor.

"It's a great hide-out, isn't it?"

She nodded in answer to the low, amused question.

"When did you discover it?"

"Thought I heard strange sounds upstairs when Jed and I were waiting for
you in the living-room the other afternoon. The Japs' rooms are in the L
on the first floor, and when I had this house opened I told the
caretaker not to touch the third. After you and Mrs. Gregory left, I
investigated and found this silver. I've been on the watch ever since to
discover who put it here. This afternoon someone slipped a cog, and left
both keys; must have been frightened off, or else they were left
purposely so that a second party might have access to the loot."

"Who put the loot, as you call it, in that room?"

"That's what you and I will find out."

That "you and I" was fuse to dynamite. Brooke leaned back against the
balustrade.

"You will, you mean, you and your sleuth Jed Stewart. You and he are
spies, aren't you? Amateur detectives. 'Mark, to you,' you say to Sam,
and all the time you are spying on his sister and accusing her of 'undue
influence,' of hypnotizing an old woman into leaving her a fortune. I
ought to have known what you thought of me when you said that. I do now.
Find out who stole the silver. You've put Inspector Harrison on the
case, haven't you? I wish you luck."

She jerked her wrist free and ran down the stairs. She stopped at the
foot of them. A tirade like that she had just delivered took one's
breath for a minute. Why, why had she let Mark the Magnificent know that
she suspected his reason for occupying his house? She, who had prided
herself on her self-control in business? Why couldn't she be diplomatic?
Her outrageous temper was the answer. Thank Heaven she had had sense
enough not to tell him of Henri's threat that he could put her out of
Lookout House.

A sound! Someone had touched the knob on the other side of the door! Had
the person remembered that both keys had been left? Now--now Mark and
she would find out who had taken the silver.

Stealthily she touched the button and plunged the top floor into
darkness. She raced up the stairs. Caromed into Mark Trent coming out of
the storeroom. She clutched his sleeve; whispered:

"Shut the door! Quick! Someone is fumbling at the hall key. Perhaps
he'll come for this one."

He held her by one arm as he noiselessly closed the door. In the dark he
drew her into another room. Side by side they waited. Brooke's heart
shook her body. How could the man so near her help hearing it thump in
the tomblike silence?

A spot of light. Creeping up! Creeping up! Her breath caught in a gasp.
An arm slipped round her shoulders and held her so close that the scent
of the crushed gardenias was sickish.

"Ssch! Mustn't let him know we are here!" Mark Trent whispered.

The spot of light illumined the key in the door, illumined the
black-gloved hand which gently turned it and as gently drew it out.




IX


Mark Trent felt the hard beating of the girl's heart as his arm
tightened about her shoulders, the softness of her skin against his
hand. He didn't dare release her for fear she might make a sound and
reveal their presence to the unknown person in the hall. What a good
little sport she was. She had followed him into his house with no
embarrassment, but with a modern girl's interpretation of propriety, her
ignoring of outworn conventions. Just the same, he wished fervently that
she was back in her own living-room in that chair before the fire, for
there was no dodging the fact that black-gloved fingers had withdrawn
the key from the lock. To whom had they belonged? The words on the scrap
of paper he had picked up from the floor of the storeroom and replaced
on the table teased at his mind.

"Make X on cover when--"

That was all. What cover? Much as he wanted to know, he couldn't let
Brooke Reyburn get mixed up in the mess. When he had discovered the
silver, his first thought had been of her and the thrill she would get
from seeing it. If he hadn't brought her, he would be on the man's neck
by this time.

It seemed hours that he stood rigid, listening, with the only sound the
roweling of the tide against jutting ledges, like the underground roar
of a great city, the faint wail of the distant siren, and the girl's
unsteady breathing. He strained his ears. Was a door being closed
cautiously, or was his imagination playing tricks? He must find out. He
couldn't stay here forever. He put his mouth close to Brooke's ear. He
felt the softness of her hair against his face.

"Don't move. Don't speak. I'll come back."

Whenever in after life he smelled the fragrance of a gardenia, he would
remember this night, he told himself.

He took a cautious step into the hall. Listened. The house was so quiet
that he could hear the tick of the old clock on the stairs below. He
tiptoed to the door of the room in which he had found the silver and ran
his fingers lightly over the knob. The key was gone.

He felt his way down; he didn't dare use the flash. The lamp in the
lower hall provided a faint light. Gently he turned the knob of the
connecting door. It was locked. Someone had followed him down the
stairs! He felt a presence. Fool, not to have suspected that an
accomplice might be hidden in the dark. He shouldn't have left Brooke.
He must get back to her no matter who was between them.

He wheeled with pantherlike agility. Raised his flashlight to bring it
crashing down on a head.

"Mark! Mark!"

It was Brooke Reyburn's voice, her hand on his arm. The stiffening went
out of his knees. Relief was submerged in a mighty rush of anger as he
gripped her shoulders.

"What do you mean by coming down when I told you not to move? What do
you mean? I might have struck you!"

"But you didn't, Mark. I felt like a quitter hiding in the dark while
you came down alone, so I crept after you. What did you see?"

"Nothing here--but the door is locked."

"A black-gloved hand did pull the key from the storeroom door, didn't
it? I didn't dream it, did I?"

"If you did, I was in the same dream, Brooke. Wonder when they intend to
remove the stuff."

"You think someone is planning to take it away?"

"Why else should it be there? It probably was moved from Lookout House
to this one, which has been unoccupied for years, before I came back
here to live. After Aunt Mary Amanda went, I was the only person who
would know about the silver, and I was far away in South America. That's
why Henri's face turned chalky when he saw me enter your living-room on
Thanksgiving day."

"Then you noticed it too? I thought it might be my imagination."

"He was white, all right. Come on, we can't get back to Lookout House
through this door. We'd better beat it downstairs and out that way.
Lucky I pocketed your key."

"Hurry! Hurry! Suppose it was Henri who left those keys in the doors?
Suppose he remembered that he had left them and stole back from the
movies? I told him that you and Jed Stewart would be with us for supper
after rehearsal. He may be looking for me now to see if I was telling
the truth."

In the lower hall, which was slightly scented by the smoky aroma of
open fires, Mark laid a detaining hand on her shoulder.

"Wait! Listen!"

The stillness of the high-ceilinged rooms was accentuated by the low
moan of the wind at a corner of the house, by the muted thunder of the
sea, by the sharp crackle of a burning log; was haunted by the weird
wail of the distant siren, but no human sound intruded.

"Coast's clear. Let's go. Hold on!" Mark Trent frowned at her bare arms
and throat, ivory tinted above the lace of her frock. "You need a wrap."

"To go from one door to another! Don't be foolish. If we don't hurry,
Henri may get there before us and then--"

Why had she stopped? Was she afraid of Henri? Had he a hold on her? He
and she had been the only persons with Mary Amanda Dane after she had
signed the will Anne Gregory had witnessed. Even while remembering all
that, he couldn't distrust her, Mark told himself.

They stepped from the warmth of the house into a cold world of starlit
beauty. Frosted shrubs, brown tree trunks glittered. The long vistas of
lights on the causeway were like opaque opal helmets on the heads of
prim rows of soldiers. Bare branches tinkled like the iridescent
pendants of a crystal chandelier; the high note of a startled bird was a
thin thread of sound above the steady boom of the sea as it foamed
against the ledges throwing up a silver-gray screen of spray. A star
fell, clear and green as a huge emerald; followed a shower of meteors
thick as the golden rain of a rocket against the black velvet of the
sky.

"That was so beautiful it made me shiver," Brooke confided breathlessly.

"It was beautiful, but it's standing out here in the cold with no wrap
that makes you shiver. Give me your hand. The steps are frosty."

In the green-walled living-room at Lookout House, Mark Trent threw a log
on the smoldering fire and poked it into flame.

"Come here and get warm, Brooke. You are still shivering."

"If I am, it is from excitement, not cold." She toasted her fingers at
the blaze. She closed her eyes and opened them. "I have been trying to
convince myself that the happenings of the last half hour--it seems more
than that--were not a dream. I've been checking up. There is the
newspaper I flung to the floor when I started to phone you, and that
flashlight bulging from your pocket is real, isn't it?" She touched it.
"It is. I haven't been in a nightmare. I'm awake. That fact being
settled to my satisfaction, what do we do next?"

"Watchful waiting seems our best bet."

"You would say that."

"I don't like the implication, but we'll let that ride--for the present.
What move would you suggest?"

"I don't know, but let's do something. I hate sitting on the sidelines.
I hate waiting. First we must find out who took the key from the
storeroom door. If you hadn't held me, I would have dashed at him and
found out."

"I had a hunch you would; that's why I grabbed you. Afraid I crushed
your gardenia."

Brooke put her hand to her shoulder. "They're gone! Where could I have
lost them?"

"Don't make a tragedy of it. I'll get you another."

Mark Trent had never seen brown eyes so flamingly gold, cheeks so red as
Brooke's.

"I'm not making a tragedy of it, and I don't want another gardenia. For
an amateur detective--amateur is the word with a capital A--you are
dense, Mark Trent. Suppose the person in the attic went back for
something and picked them up? Wouldn't he know at once that he was being
watched?"

"I thought of that so--I brought this along." He held a flower in the
palm of his hand. The once waxen petals were brown at the edges, but
they had the feel of velvet in his fingers. "You don't want it now, do
you?" He slipped it back into his pocket. "I'll keep it as a souvenir of
our late dive into the underworld."

"I do want it and the other too."

"Because Field gave them to you? I don't know where the other is; didn't
realize that there were two. You dropped this as you came into this
house. Better let me keep it. Would you want him to know that it had
been crushed out of shape against my shoulder?"

From the depths of the wing chair before the fire Brooke disdainfully
looked back at him. Her eyes were so clear, so forthright; her mouth
when not smiling was so wistful, so tender, how could he have thought
that she would deliberately influence a sick old woman to leave her a
fortune? That line of R. L. S.'s expressed her:

"Honor, courage, valor, fire."

"Just why should Jerry assume that it was your shoulder against which
the gardenia was crushed? You are not the only man in my life, you
know," Brooke reminded disdainfully.

"I intend--to keep the flower."

Mark Trent felt the color surge to his hair and recede. He had caught
back "to be" in time. What had become of his conviction that he was
still the husband of a woman who had been untrue to him, who had married
another man; of his certainty that this girl had cajoled his aunt into
making an unjust will, of his faint suspicion that she might know the
whereabouts of a later one? Swept away, all of it, by the light in her
eyes, by the magic in her smile.

It was evident that she didn't like him. On Thanksgiving day she had
been warmly friendly. Was that infernal insinuation of Lola's that he
would try to keep his aunt's money in the family by marriage, making
trouble? He said quickly:

"I haven't had a chance, Brooke, to tell you how ridiculous Mrs. Hunt's
suggestion was that--that I had any thought of trying to keep Aunt Mary
Amanda's money in the family by--"

"Why stumble over it? Why tell me again that you wouldn't marry me? This
is the second time. First in Jed Stewart's office and now here. To save
a third attempt to impress the fact on me, I'll tell you that I wouldn't
marry you if you were the only man in the world. Divorced men leave me
cold. Sometime perhaps I'll have the privilege of refusing to marry
you."

He knew now the sensation of a knife being plunged into his heart. He
drew the gardenia from his pocket and dropped it into her lap.

"Here it is. Water may revive it."

She twirled the stem in her fingers.

"It is past recovery." She flung it into the wastebasket. "I don't care
for rejuvenated gardenias any more than I care for warmed-over love.
That sounds like a car. Can they have come so soon?"

"Better not speak of what we discovered," Mark suggested hastily, as she
started for the hall.

She left the room without answering. He salvaged the flower and thrust
it into his pocket. He was not keeping it for sentimental reasons, he
assured himself, but as a reminder of how near he had come to forgetting
that all he had to offer a girl was "warmed-over" love.

Sam Reyburn entered the living-room and flung his blue covered script to
the table. He dropped into the wing chair with a groan. Voices in the
hall thinned in the distance. Mark Trent could distinguish Jerry Field's
laugh, Lucette's rather high-pitched tone, Brooke's questioning murmur,
and Daphne's drawl. He looked at the dejected figure in the chair, at
the long legs outstretched.

"What's wrong, Sam? Aren't you home early?"

"What's wrong with you, you're white as a sheet?"

"I'm okay, it's these artistic lights that play the dickens with one's
color. Didn't Stewart and the rest of the cast come with you?"

"Jed stopped at your house for a minute, he'll be here pronto; the other
actors--so-called--have gone home. I'll say I'm here early. After they'd
walked through the first act, it was a choice between dismissing the
cast or shooting them. I had a sane interval and decided not to shoot.
I'm giving them tomorrow night off."

"Then I'll throw a party for the Reyburns and Fields at that new Supper
Club just opened in town. Give them a let-up from the play. What say,
maestro?"

"Okay with me. It's darned good of you. Perhaps I have overworked them,
but there is so little time before the performance." Sam sat up and ran
his fingers through his hair. "With that so near, wouldn't you think
those dumbbells would know their parts? I ask you! Besides that, the
leading man has walked out on us."

Mark Trent's throat tightened in response to the despair in the boy's
voice. It must be devastating to care so much, to have one's heart
shredded to shoestrings because the work one loved was being murdered.
It made him wonder if he had cared deeply for anyone or anything since
he had lost his mother. In spite of the humiliation, Lola's going had
been a relief, she had grown so impossible to live with. He flung off
the past.

"It's tough. Can I help, Sam?"

"Can you help! I'll say you can. 'Now is the time for all good men to
come to the aid of their party.' Take the lead." He caught Trent's arm.
"Be a good scout. Help a poor, distracted playwright-producer, will you?
With you and the Crane woman in the leads, we'll make a two-star
offering of it. That girl's good."

Sam's despair had changed to exultation. Mark Trent temporized:

"How do you know I'm good?"

"How do those bozos out in Hollywood know an actor will be a wow on the
screen sometimes before they give him a try-out? Something here, m'lad,
something here," Sam tapped his broad brow, "tells me you'll be stopping
the show."

"That same something couldn't tell you where I'm to get the time for a
theatrical career, could it? All right, all right," Mark conceded in
response to Sam's groan, "I'll take the part. Give me the sides and I'll
try to know the lines at the next rehearsal."

"A break at last! I didn't like the way that male lead was looking at
Lucette. I feel the responsibility of her while Mother is away. I kept
one eye on him while I rehearsed the gang. It kind of cramped my style
at directing."

With a whoop he caught Brooke as she entered the room. He hugged her as
he exulted:

"What d'you think, gal? Trent has signed up for 'Islands Arise'! Will he
pack 'em in as the lead? I ask you!"

"What's happened to the man who had the part?"

"Walked out on us. When he comes round tomorrow ready to eat out of my
hand, he'll find he's not wanted. Get that?"

"Not quite, but I suppose a playwright-producer is a law unto himself."
Brooke looked at Mark. "I can't imagine you acting--behind the
footlights."

There was a hint in her light tone that she could imagine him acting off
the stage. He smiled.

"It has been suggested that I am getting stale, old, with a capacity for
warmed-over affection only. Here's where I step out for romance and
adventure."

Had the emphasis he had given the last words brought that sudden color
to Brooke's face? Jerry Field appeared at the door beating a huge spoon
against a tin pan.

"First call for the dining car! First call--"

Sam held up his hand.

"Just a minute! We're all invited to dine and dance tomorrow by the new
male lead in 'Islands Arise,' Mark Trent! Sam Reyburn announcing."

"You in the play, Mark?"

"How exciting!"

"Dinner and dance in the big city! What a break!"

Jerry Field interrupted the excited comments.

"Where are your gardenias, Brooke?"

His tone set Mark Trent's lips twitching. Under cover of lighting a
cigarette, he caught the girl's furtive glance at the wastebasket. She
put her hand to her shoulder.

"Why--why I must have dropped them."

"Where've you been?"

"Hi there, m'lad!" Sam's tone and manner were those of a stern parent
guarding his offspring. "That isn't a topic for group discussion. We
don't make people punch the time-clock in this family."

Jerry Field's face turned a bright and lively crimson; his voice and
eyes were furious.

"I wasn't asking Brooke to punch the time-clock. I thought I might find
the gardenias for her. I--"

He stopped as Jed Stewart appeared on the threshold. He was tapping a
gardenia against his lips.

"Run to earth, Mark. Who's the charmer who leaves a flower outside your
door?"




X


An hour later Jed Stewart slumped deeper into a crimson-cushioned chair
in Mark Trent's library and demanded:

"How was I to know that Field had brought Brooke the gardenias? Didn't
he look like a meat-axe though, when I barged into Lookout House waving
that flower and giving the whole show away by telling where I picked it
up? I'm the original village cut-up, I am." He lighted his pipe.

"It wasn't all my fault. I didn't know, did I, Mark, that you and she
had been cruising round this house?"

"You didn't. I hadn't told you then that I had discovered Aunt Mary
Amanda's silver parked in a storeroom. Decided to wait till I had the
goods on someone, but I couldn't resist the temptation to show it to
Brooke. You should have seen her eyes when she saw it piled on that
table."

He poked the fire till orange and scarlet flames, shot with pale green,
roared up the chimney and sent a tangy puff of wood smoke into the room.

"Going to tip off Inspector Harrison that the stuff has been located,
Mark?"

"Not tonight. Every person who knows where it is increases the
possibility of its whereabouts getting on the air. I would like to catch
the thief myself. Dollars to doughnuts he's hooked up with the paper
Mrs. Gregory witnessed."

"Apparently you've eliminated Brooke Reyburn from the list of suspects."

"I have. Haven't you? I thought you liked her, believed in her, that I
was the doubting Thomas."

Jed Stewart scowled at the fire. "I did believe in her. I was sold on
the whole family. They're such straight-shooting youngsters--doubtless
they know plenty about the evil in the world--they're omnivorous
readers, and they go to plays and movies--but it doesn't smirch them.
Their home-training has made them world-proof. Decent instincts, that's
the answer. But Brooke might be all that and yet be tempted beyond her
strength. Who doesn't stumble occasionally? I thought her the eighth
wonder of the world till Mrs. Gregory prattled about the will she had
witnessed and let out that the girl drove into the yard just as she
drove out."

"We've been on the wrong track, Jed. I set out on the will hunt with the
conviction that the girl was guilty. I would be chucked off a jury if I
tried to serve with my mind made up against the defendant in a trial,
wouldn't I? At the time Mrs. Gregory witnessed that paper, Brooke
Reyburn didn't know that Aunt Mary Amanda had left her a fortune, did
she?"

"Not unless your aunt had told her, and it would have been out of
character for her to do that. The only way she could have known was by
some reference to the former will in this last one Mrs. Gregory
witnessed. Suppose she had read it? Suppose your aunt at the last moment
had relented, had made you residuary legatee? Could one really condemn a
girl who had had to work her head off the last few years, if she were
tempted to hold back a document--perhaps for a few months only--which
would deprive her of a fortune? Now we are back where we started. Where
is that paper? It couldn't have been casually mislaid; neither could it
have walked out and lost itself. Why doesn't your wonder-sleuth, Bill
Harrison, find out something? Mrs. Gregory wouldn't spin that witness
yarn out of whole cloth, would she?"

"No, she is a racy raconteuse but she's not a liar. Suppose we lay our
cards on the table and tell Brooke what we have heard? It wouldn't
surprise her. She accused me tonight of having settled down in this
house for the sole purpose of espionage. She referred to the way I
switched the subject when we were questioning Mrs. Gregory about the
silver the other afternoon."

"She did! Well, that's nothing to get steamed up about; it may have been
merely a shot in the dark; Lola's confounded insinuation may have
started her on that line. She may suspect, but she doesn't know why we
came. We'll keep her guessing. Do you think Brooke took in that catty
suggestion of Lola's that you came to this house with the idea of
marrying her to keep the Dane money in the family?"

"Do I think! I know that she took it in. I had her reaction to it
tonight. Forget it."

"Okay, you're the doctor. Have you ever wondered why the Fields dropped
down in this particular spot for the winter? Nuts as Daphne is about
you--"

"Tune in on another wave length, Jed."

"Gosh, you're touchy tonight, aren't you? I was merely about to remark
that she couldn't have known when she came that you were to open this
house, because she and her brother had hired theirs before you thought
of coming."

"It's evident enough to anyone who sees Field at Lookout House that he
followed the gleam."

"The gleam being Brooke Reyburn? Sure, she's his heart-beat at present,
and was he sore about the flower and your invitation to dine and dance
in town tomorrow night? I'll say he was."

"I thought a bit of whoopee would pep up some of the actors and
actorines. They are stale from too much work."

"It's a grand idea. Field will be all for it when he thinks it over.
'Twill be easy for him to monopolize Brooke in a crowd. I felt as if I
were deserting the ship to come away and leave him there this evening
though. Having proclaimed the fact that her gardenia had been found on
your doorstep, I should have stood by. I wonder if he would be so keen
for her if she had no money?"

"What difference would money make to a man who loved her?"

"Nicely put. You've answered two questions in one, Mark."

"Two! I didn't hear but one."

"All right. Call it one. The little tongue must be slipping. I--Who's
phoning at this time of night?" Seated on a corner of the broad desk,
Mark answered the ring:

"Trent speaking.--Lola! What do you want?--Not interested. If you like
selling gas, sell it, only remember that the allowance stops.--Is she?
Mrs. Gregory's word goes, here. You should have made sure of that
before you set up shop.--What? What sort of paper?" Mark Trent looked at
Jed Stewart who had come close and was moving his lips without making a
sound. He nodded understanding. "I haven't rung off.--Yes, I heard what
you said. I can't imagine how any paper you may have will interest me,
but bring it here tomorrow at five.--Sure, I'll be alone.--Yes.
Good-bye."

Mark Trent cradled the telephone. He looked up at his friend.

"Lola has a 'paper' to sell me. She suggested that I have my cheque-book
in hand tomorrow. What do you make of it?"

"If it is the 'paper' Mrs. Gregory witnessed, how could she get hold of
it?"

"Henri?"

"She said he had written to her, didn't she? She's bringing it tomorrow
afternoon! There's a catch in it somewhere. It sounds too easy. You
don't think she'll back out at the last minute, do you, Mark?"

"Not if there is money in it. She said also that Mrs. Gregory was
putting the filling-station out of business. It was started without a
license. Started for the sole purpose of chiseling money off me, I
suspect."

"Right as usual. What say we call this an evening? I'm due in court in
the morning in my best Gentlemen of the Jury style; furthermore, we'll
need our brains running wide open when Lola comes at five. She has a
'paper' to sell! Won't we feel cheap about our suspicions of Brooke if
it proves to be the 'paper' we're after?"

"I stopped suspecting her some time ago. Shall we go up? We are getting
provincial. If we were in town we'd be just beginning to go places.
Toddle along. I'll put out the lights."

Mark banked the fire before he ran up the stairs. Jed Stewart yawned as
he stood at his door.

"In spite of the late excitement, I'm sleepy. Nightie-night, Mark. I'll
drop our problem into what the psychologists call the deep mind. Perhaps
it will float to the top in the morning all nicely solved." He was
whistling softly as he closed his bedroom door.

Mark crossed his dark room to the window. What a night! The sky was
powdered with stars. The sparks of gold were like the lights in Brooke
Reyburn's eyes when she was happy or thrilled, and she had been thrilled
when she had heard of his plan to dine and dance in town. A white
ruffled tide curled around the ledges. The ocean, dark and mysterious,
stretched on and on illimitably. The distant siren wailed monotonously.
It got on his nerves at the end of this hectic evening. He jerked the
long hangings across the windows to dull the haunting sound and snapped
on the lights.

What would Lola try to sell him tomorrow? He and Jed had jumped to the
conclusion that it was the will that Mrs. Gregory had witnessed, but how
could she get hold of it? Perhaps it was merely a paper she had trumped
up in regard to the divorce.

He drew the gardenia from his pocket. Nothing beautiful about it now but
the leaves. He didn't need a paper which Lola Hunt might produce to
clear his mind of suspicion that Brooke had influenced his aunt in any
way. Had she really meant that she wouldn't marry a divorced man, or had
she been furiously angry at his bungling attempt to assure her that he
had not come to live in this house with the idea of marrying her to keep
the Dane money in the family? He drew the flash light from his coat
pocket. Lucky he had thought of it when he had taken Brooke to see the
silver.

"Mark! Mark!"

Jed's voice? He laid the flower on the dresser before he opened the
door. There was no sound in the hall save the creak of a stair, the tick
of the old clock, the slight rattle of a shutter as if skeleton fingers
were tapping for admittance. Must have been his imagination. He turned
back into the room. Stopped. Queer things were happening. He'd better
make sure that Jed hadn't called. With the electric torch still in his
hand he crossed the hall and knocked at Jed Stewart's door. He knocked
again. Why didn't he answer? He flung open the door. A coat had been
hung over the back of a chair. A shoe lay on the floor. Cold air was
stirring the chintz hangings. Where did it come from?

The bath-room! Mark sprinted to the door and stopped in amazement. The
window was wide open, but the air was strongly scented with perfume. The
shower was dripping. Shaving materials were flung about as if hastily
dropped.

Jed hadn't had time since closing the door to do all that. Had he
surprised a man in the room? A man who had come for the silver?

In spite of his anxiety, Mark chuckled. Would a big, bad burglar stop
for a shower and shave? The idea was a riot. Not so funny if Jed were in
danger. Where was he?

There was no laughter in his eyes as he thrust his head out of the
window. There were two ways to escape from the little balcony under it.
Drop to the terrace, or through Lookout House. Had the two men crashed
in there? Brooke would be frightened. He'd follow them. He swung his leg
over the sill.

"Stop!"

He went rigid in obedience to the hoarse warning, but only for an
instant. Why was he perching like a dummy with the light from the room
behind making him a perfect target for the person who had grunted? He
moved his leg. No response to that from the balcony. Quickly he flashed
his powerful light in the direction from which the sound had come. That
would blind the person watching.

His eyes followed the light. In his amazement he lost his balance and
pitched forward. At one corner of the railing, blinking and shivering in
the glare, huddled the run-away green parrot.

Held up by a bird! He slid to the balcony. Reached for Mr. Micawber,
grabbed him, flung him into the room behind him. He could hear the
parrot squawking with fury as he closed the window.

"That seems to be that! Now, where's Jed?"

He peered over the railing. No uprights on this balcony to slide down.
The next one had iron trellises which connected it with the stone
terrace. Had Jed entered Lookout House by the window? Who occupied the
room of the next house which opened on it? He would investigate.

He tiptoed to the window, reduced the light in his torch before he
flashed it over the glass. The shade was closely drawn and the sash
locked. No one could have gone in there. Cracks of light were visible in
the two rooms beyond where French windows opened on another balcony. Had
Jed entered that lighted room? How could he get there? He was too stout
to swing across. Could he himself do it?

He appraised the distance, stepped over, and swung. As he gripped the
frosty railing of the other balcony, his foot slipped. He hung by his
hands, hands which seemed to freeze to the iron. He floundered for a
foothold. His heart stopped. Was he going down? He was not! He had
started out to find Jed. Was he a quitter?

For a second he hung relaxed. Then he lifted one foot to the edge of the
balcony. Dragged up the other. Cautiously stepped over the rail and
ripped his hands from the frosty iron.

With his heart drumming like an airplane motor he concentrated his
attention on the window. A crack of light showed between the hangings.
Whose room was it? Should he take a chance that it was Sam's or Brooke's
and tap lightly?

A window was being opened cautiously. Where? He flattened himself
against the house. Must be the end balcony outside the studio. He
visualized the interior as he had seen it the day he had helped Jerry
Field sketch in the tree trunks on the backdrop. Someone was crawling
out! A man! He was sliding down an iron trellis like a monkey! Now he
was running across the lawn bent double! He was entering the garage!

Mark Trent crammed the electric torch into his pocket and swung a leg
over the railing. He hitched along till his feet found an upright, went
down hand over hand, his palms sticking painfully to the iron as he
moved them.

From purple tree shadow to purple tree shadow he skulked. Near the
garage he hid behind shrubs. The click of a lock! He held his breath as
he listened. Who had been in the Lookout House garage at this time of
night? Whoever it was, was leaving. He could hear cautious footsteps. An
automobile starting! He strained his ears. It was speeding down the
street toward the causeway. That didn't prove anything, it would be easy
enough to turn into a side road and cut back. Was the man who had
sneaked from the house driving? Had he stolen the car? Even so, he
couldn't follow it, he must find out why he had entered the garage.

He crept to a window and peered in. Dark as pitch except for a white
blur. That must be the cover of Aunt Mary Amanda's old limousine. Why
was the unused car directly opposite the door? He remembered now. Jed
had told him that he had o. k.'d an offer Henri Jacques had reported for
the out-of-date machine. Probably the butler had planned to drive it off
in the morning.

The man who had just made his get-away had stopped here. Why? Had he
hidden loot? The silver? But the silver had been in the storeroom only a
few hours ago. A few hours! Much could happen in a few hours while the
occupants of the Other House had been at supper at the Reyburns'. He'd
better investigate. Lucky he still carried the key to his aunt's garage
on his ring. In the days when they had been friendly, she had insisted
upon his having a key to the house as well. Soundlessly he slid back the
door, squeezed in, closed and locked it.

With the light in his torch dimmed, he tiptoed carefully between the
automobiles. Brooke's long, sleek town car. Sam's convertible coupe. The
white cloth cover of the old limousine was awry as if it had been
hastily adjusted. Part of it lay on the floor. What was that mark? A
footprint! A footprint faint but bloody!




XI


With a childish impulse to clutch their coats and keep the men with her,
Brooke Reyburn had listened to the closing of the door behind Mark Trent
and Jed Stewart. They had pleaded an early morning start for the city,
but she was sure that they had gone because they resented Jerry Field's
sulky silence. She would have been glad to get away from his gloomy
presence herself. She glanced at him as he stood before the fire. From
the back of the house came the crash of dishes, a shout of laughter.

Brooke sprang to her feet. "I wonder what went then. I suspect that
Lucette and Sam started rough-housing and that Daphne was drawn into the
scuffle. I should have known better than to let them wash the dishes.
Come on, Jerry. Let's investigate. I'd rather know the worst at once."

Field straightened and thrust his hands hard into his pockets.

"Same here, Brooke. I want to know what you were doing in Mark Trent's
house while we were at rehearsal."

"Why should you think I had been in his house?"

"Didn't Stewart find a gardenia outside his front door?"

"So what? I suppose there couldn't be another woman in the world who
might call on Mr. Trent wearing a flower, or did you corner the gardenia
market today, Jerry?"

Field's expression changed from gloom to cheer.

"There's something in that. Trent certainly is a wow with the ladies. I
hear that he could dine out three times an evening if he'd accept the
invitations heaped on him. It gets me why he settled down in this burg.
Don't be sore at me, sweet thing. Wasn't it natural for me to think the
flower yours when Stewart produced the gardenia that he found at Trent's
front door when you weren't wearing any? Where are they?"

Brooke fought an impulse to glance at the wastebasket.

"Took them off. I had a letter to write to Mother, had a lot to tell
her, the room was hot, and the heavy fragrance of those flowers got on
my nerves."

"Sorry my gift annoyed you."

"Don't be silly. I adore gardenias."

She drew a breath of relief as Sam and the two girls entered. She didn't
like Jerry Field in the role of inquisitor, neither did she like the way
in which she had evaded his questions. She hadn't been quite honest, but
Mark Trent had asked her not to speak of what had happened in the Other
House. Did he think her a chatterer? Why had she thrust at him about his
divorce? It had been cruel, no matter if he had again assured her that
he didn't want to marry her. It wasn't like her to be cruel, she hated
to hurt anyone. Aloud she inquired:

"What smashed in the kitchen, Sam? I thought the chimney had fallen in."

"Nothing but a stack of those warranted unbreakable plates Clotilde
keeps things on in the ice-box. And did they crack up? The floor looked
as if there'd been a snowstorm."

"The sound brought Henri down the backstairs in a hurry. Ever seen him
in his _robe de nuit_, Brooke?"

"What a giggler you are, Lucette! Of course I haven't."

"You've missed the laugh of your life. He was something straight out of
a Cruikshank edition of Dickens. Night cap with tassel; night shirt, I
believe it was called back in the dark ages; thin bow legs, and flapping
slippers."

"Was he embarrassed?"

"He was not. He behaved more as if he were afraid we'd miss the appeal
of his costume. He ran around like this." She trotted across the floor.

Lucette frowned at Field. "Can't you smile for the lady, Jerry. I'll
tell you one thing. I'd rather be a giggler than a gob of gloom.
Good-night!" She dashed from the room and sang defiantly as she bolted
up the stairs:

    "'Take me where the daisies cover the country lane.
    We'll make hay while the sun shines,
    We'll make love when it rains.'"

Daphne ran into the hall.

"Lucette, don't forget that Mark Trent is giving us a party tomorrow
night at that swell new Supper Club."

Lucette hung over the mahogany rail. "Forget! Not a chance. Think I'll
forget a night off from rehearsing? Nothing short of an act of God will
keep me away. Sam, the old tyrant, is giving us a break. I'll be seeing
you."

Jerry Field picked up his sister's coat.

"Come on, Daph, let's go. If I'd known that we were to have a night off,
I would have taken you dining and dancing, Brooke."

"Nice of you, but I think that a party will be heaps more fun."

"You would think that. I don't know why but this whole evening has gone
haywire. Come on, Daph."

Daphne Field snuggled her hand into Sam Reyburn's.

"Good-night, Sammy. Don't love me much, do you, darling?"

Sam shook off her hand. "I'll love you when you learn your lines, and
what's more, if you don't learn 'em, you'll be tossed off the lot."

"You mean that I'll be fired?" Daphne opened her eyes at their widest.
"I, fired, after I've had gowns made to wear that will simply stop the
show? Come on, Jerry. Nobody likes us here."

From the threshold she threw a kiss to Sam.

He grinned.

"Why direct your talent for fascination at so unimportant a target, gal?
I'm a poor struggling playwright, and you belong to the
internationalyzed upperclass, so-called. Good-night."

As the front door closed, Brooke turned to her brother as he stood back
to the fire.

"What's wrong with Lucette, Sam? She seems always on the verge of tears.
Is the rehearsing too much for her on top of her day's work?"

"Rehearsing! She's fallen for Field and fallen hard, that's what's the
matter, and he doesn't know she's in the world when you are around."

"But, Sam, I don't care for him that way."

"Sure you don't, you don't have to tell me. He isn't big enough for you.
In a month you'd be fed up with his conversation, if you call it that,
which is geared to run on stock quotations and art with a capital A.
Don't get me wrong about that last, I believe in trying to make an art
of whatever profession one's in, it's just that I can't take Field's
enthusiasms seriously. He'll be all right some day, but you don't want a
boy to bring up, you want a full-grown man, Brooke."

"Sam, sometimes I think you're psychic. Do--do you like Daphne?"

"She's good fun. Swell looker, isn't she? She's got those big
you'll-look-after-me,-won't-you? eyes and all the time she knows her way
around. You're a kid beside her."

"A kid! This aged business-woman a kid! Why, I'm fairly bent with years
and care."

Sam grinned. "Oh yeah! Brooke, you're the star actress of the family.
Why wouldn't you play the woman lead in 'Islands Arise'?"

"Too much Reyburn. The townspeople would think we were putting on a
benefit for the family instead of for the town's pet charity, at which,
I understand, the gilt-edged subscribers will appear in their crown
jewels. I'm going up to finish a letter to Mother. She has had you and
Daphne on her mind."

"Tell her to take us off, pronto; tell her that there is no girl living
who means as much to me as this play--excepting herself and you and
Lucette."

"Thanks billions for including me in the preferred class, Sammy.
Mother will be relieved when she knows the exact state of the
light-of-her-life's affections."

"Doesn't she like Daphne?"

"Well enough, but apparently she thinks that her soul must do a powerful
lot of growing before she covets her for a daughter-in-law. Good-night.
I'm thrilled when I think of Mark Trent's party. I haven't dined and
danced in the bright lights since I came here to live. You're coming, of
course?"

"Yep. It's an awful waste of time, but it will pep me up to get the play
off my mind for a few hours. You do think it's good, don't you, Brooke?"

"I don't think; I know." She laid her cheek against his for an instant.
"Don't take it so hard, Sam; even if the critics do pan it--"

Sam straightened. "They won't! They can't!" He grinned sheepishly, "That
gives me away, doesn't it? Well, if I don't like what I write, who will?
Good-night."

In the room she had made her boudoir, Brooke slipped out of the lace
frock. If only she could shed with it the haunting sense of having said
the wrong thing. She had been bitterly unkind when she had reminded Mark
Trent of his divorce. If she could apologize to him and get it off her
mind, it would help. Well, she couldn't. Perhaps if she wore the hair
shirt of remorse for a while, it would teach her to guard her tongue.

In a heavily embroidered Chinese house-coat of vivid green, she pulled
forward the chair at her desk. She paused long enough to enjoy the
effect of the room, with its ivory panels painted with huge bunches of
leaves and flowers, blue, pink, pale yellow, and amethyst, with a touch
of crimson; pale, smooth ivory chairs cushioned in green; green chintz
at the windows; green rug edged with a lighter tint; of the glint of her
tawny hair against the ivory and silver of the bit of the bedroom
hanging reflected in the mirror above her. She thought:

"I'm mad about this gorgeous coat, this room, and for the first time in
my life I have all the flowers I want. I don't wonder people struggle
for money; it will buy such heavenly things for themselves and others.
It must be harder to get along without much after one has had it than
never to have had plenty. Suppose I were to lose the legacy? What would
I do? Take the Palm Beach job pronto, of course. How can I lose it?
Would Jed Stewart have allowed me to spend money on this house unless he
had been sure that it was mine to spend? Of course he wouldn't. The Hunt
woman's hint is responsible for this attack of imagination. Even if
those two men are here to prove 'undue influence,' they can't do it. Why
worry?"

She picked up the letter from her mother she had been answering before
dinner and skimmed the first few pages, which described the charm of
English country life, the superannuated sporting Earl at the head of the
family who grunted complaints from morning till night, the youthful
exuberance--in spite of her father-in-law--of Lady Jaffrey, the stiff
courtesy of her husband, the superfluity of servants and the meagre
supply of bath towels.

Brooke settled deeper into her chair to reread the paragraphs which had
set her questioning Sam in the living-room. Her mother had written:

     Your first long letter came yesterday and confirmed my judgment
     that it is better for my young people that their mother is away for
     a time. If I were there I would be watching Sam's every move,
     for--between you and me--I don't like Daphne Field. You wrote that
     she is in the play. You know what dramatics do to people. What
     sudden friendships, what swift intimacies develop between men and
     girls, which, under ordinary circumstances, wouldn't form at all.
     She is pretty, she has that you're-so-big-and-strong manner which
     is deadly to the male. My Sam is vulnerable to flattery about his
     work, and the girl's, 'I've heard that you are the coming
     playwright, Mr. Reyburn,' sent little creepy chills over me.

     Sam thinks now that he does not want a wife and children. He will,
     and when he does he'll want a girl who hasn't cheapened herself by
     a series of engagements. I hear that Daphne has experimented five
     times. Of course, it is better to break five engagements than to
     make one mistake in marriage, but at about the third break,
     wouldn't a girl with any ideals at all begin to look inside her
     mind and wonder what was wrong with her judgment? You know that I
     have a sympathetic understanding of the modern girl. She's
     gallant, and beneath the shellac of indifference I believe she is
     tender, but she's wrong in her belief that it hurts a woman no more
     to experiment in amorous adventure than a man. This is a decade of
     political experimentation, of radical ideas and impossible plans,
     but marriage won't bear much tinkering. In spite of the broad and
     shining target it offers to the cynics, it has brought out more
     nobility of character and selfless devotion than any other human
     institution. No amount of scrapping of old standards, of setting up
     new freedom, of half-baked arguments can alter the fact that woman
     is the mother of the race and will be to the end of time, that as
     she climbs, so will her children climb. Give me the girl who
     proclaims herself as something better than one of a herd by holding
     some of these dangerous trends in check; whose roots of integrity
     and honor and faithfulness to her man go too deep to be stirred by
     passing fancies after marriage.

Brooke dropped the letter and frowned at her reflection in the mirror
above her desk. Her mother had seen Daphne Field but once and she had
put into words an instinctive distrust she herself had felt without
being able to express it.

She drew her own unfinished letter forward on the desk. At least she
could set her anxiety about Sam at rest. She faithfully reported his
reaction to the probing of his sentiments in regard to Daphne Field.
That finished, she nibbled the end of her pen. Should she tell her
mother of the business offer? No, it might get back to Lucette, and
Lucette would be aggrieved. She was touchy enough now without adding
another irritant. She wrote:

     And so, Mother, you may close your eyes at night secure in the
     thought that the light-of-your-life is immune to the wiles of the
     fascinating Daphne--even if he were not, but I'm sure he is--she is
     after bigger fish. She has her net spread for Mark the Magnificent.

     Don't worry about us. You and Father taught us to hate cheapness.
     You put the best of your fine lives into your children. That must
     count. What a waste your love and care would be if it didn't. Have
     a grand time. If that sporting Earl grunts at you, flap the wings
     of the American Eagle in his face. Use those Express cheques I gave
     you for clothes for yourself when you get to Paris, every cent of
     them. As I said before, have a gorgeous time--but don't forget to
     come home, Celia Reyburn.

     Devotedly,
     BROOKE.

She reread the letter and nodded with satisfaction as she slipped it
into an envelope. That ought to set her mother's mind at rest about Sam.
Curious that even after her daughters and son had become financially
independent, they were children to her. Perhaps all good mothers were
like that. What had she seen in Daphne Field's face that made her
distrust the girl? Faces were masks anyway. Who could tell what she was
thinking if he saw her in the mirror as she was seeing herself now?
She--

Her heart mounted to her throat and stuck there, beating, beating.
Reflected in the looking-glass, the silver-shot hanging between bedroom
and boudoir filled and swung like the sail of a boat. What had set it in
motion? Had a window been opened? She was too far from the bell to ring.
Suppose she rang? Who would answer? Henri and Clotilde were locked in
their room probably. What should she do? She stared at the mirror. How
could a person get in? From the balcony under the bath-room window? That
meant that he had come through Mark Trent's house. Was it the
black-gloved man who had been in the attic this evening?

She swallowed her heart. She couldn't sit here forever. She must move.
How still the room was! The silence of fear enveloped her like a cold
mist and turned her finger-tips to ice. Perhaps she was in a nightmare
and could waken herself. Glorious thought. She'd scream.

Her mouth remained open as a hatless man in blue denim slipped past the
swaying hanging. His head was wet and sleek as a seal's; his face below
his eyes--bad eyes--was so thickly plastered with white as to be
unrecognizable. He gave one furtive glance over his shoulder before he
flitted in ghostly silence from the room.

Brooke pulled out the drawer of her desk. It crashed to the floor
spilling the contents. Maddening! It would do that when she was in a
hurry. On her knees she scrambled after an electric torch which had
rolled under a chair. She dashed to the hall. Who was the man? What was
the stuff on his face? She'd never forget those wicked eyes above a
smear of white. The house was dark and still. She ran toward Sam's room.
Stopped. Better not start him on a man hunt. He was so impetuous. How
did she know that the intruder hadn't a gun? She must go Scotland Yard
herself.

The hall clock told the hour. The sound echoed through the house. Only
twelve? It seemed hours since she had said good-night to Sam in the
living-room, and years since Mark Trent and Jed Stewart had gone home.
She tiptoed to the balustrade and listened. Had the man gone down the
stairs? The scent of roses and burning logs drifted up. Above the dull
beat and suck of the tide against the ledges she could hear the sizzle
and crack of a smoldering fire, the wind fumbling at the windows, the
faint, weird wail of the siren.

A squeak! She put her hand hard over her heart to stop its thumping. Was
a window being opened cautiously? If only the wind would stop for a
minute. The sound again! Lucette's room?

In a moment she was at her sister's door. She looked into the room and
guardedly flashed her light. Lucette was asleep; she could see the
glisten of cold cream with which she plastered her eyelids at night. The
salty air blowing through two wide-open windows gently stirred a wave of
her dark hair and the photographs of movie stars with which the mantel
was crowded.

Brooke soundlessly closed the door and leaned against it. The squeak had
not come from that room. Had it come from the next which had been used
for scenery? It had a small iron balcony like the one which connected
Lookout House and Mark Trent's. Why hadn't she thought of that before? A
person might easily slide down the trellis.

She tiptoed into the room and closed the door softly behind her. This
must be the window that had squeaked; it was wide open. It had been
closed this afternoon when she had come in to scatter green paint on the
flats and to give another splash of red to the peak of roof on the
backdrop. In spite of her anxiety, she chuckled. Sam was right. The
foliage of the trees on the canvas did look like an explosion of green
worms.

She flashed her light around the room then on the floor over which a
sheet had been spread. A can of red paint had been overturned! It was
sluggishly spreading.

Tipped over recently! Slowly Brooke's light traveled. A red footprint!
Uncannily like a bloody one. The man must have stepped into the thick
paint. Another! One beyond that under the window. Cautiously she
followed the trail. A smooch of red on the window sill. He had gone that
way. Was he on the balcony? What would she see if she looked out? She
must look out. She wouldn't close her eyes tonight unless she knew that
the man had gone--where, she wouldn't care, if he were gone.

She leaned out cautiously. There was nothing human in sight, only a
one-eyed moon was watching through a maze of branches. One of the four
hundred million meteors, drawn by gravity into the earth's atmosphere
daily, shot across the dark heavens leaving no trail. Stars twinkled.
Distant street lights shone steadily. Cold winter moonlight turned a
towering hemlock to purple, shadows to amethyst, and scattered a
shimmering trail of golden topaz on the dark water of the harbor. Had
one of the shadows moved down by the tree?

It had. That meant that the man was out of the house! She cautiously
closed and locked the window. Pulled the hangings across it. That was
that! She curtained the other window, turned to switch on the wall
light. Stopped. The door was opening! A glare of light. Had the man come
back? Had he a pal? Had her heart parked in her throat forever? She
couldn't see, but she could still hear:

"Well, for the love of Mike!"

The wall light snapped on.

Brooke's blood, which she had thought frozen, surged through her veins.
Sam was staring at her, Sam in pink and white pajamas which made him
look for all the world like an animated stick of striped candy. His
copper colored hair was on end; without his spectacles his eyes were big
and dark and vague. He shook her arm.

"Hey! Snap out of it, Brooke! Have you got that darn scenery so on your
mind that you're walking in your sleep to sling paint in here?"

Brooke swallowed the lump in her throat.

"I wasn't asleep, Sam, and I wasn't slinging paint. I heard something."
Her voice sounded hoarse to herself.

"A window being opened? That's what I heard. But how could you get here
so soon?"

Breathlessly she told him of the man who had slipped through her room,
of following him into the hall.

"You're kidding! No? Then why didn't you yell for me?"

"You're so reckless, Sam, I was afraid you might be hurt."

"That's the funniest thing I ever heard. How about yourself? Beat it
back to bed. Sam the boy sleuth is hot on the trail."

"You mustn't go downstairs."

"Who says I mustn't. I'll snoop around outside to be sure the guy has
gone. Beat it."

"If you go down, I go too."

"Oh all right, all right. I know better than to argue with you when you
use that tone, Brooke. Got a flash? We'll creep down the backstairs.
Follow me. We'll get into the front of the house that way."

He switched out the wall light, opened the door and stood motionless,
listening.

"Let's go!"

Brooke nodded in response to his whisper. The hall seemed miles long as
she tiptoed through the dark; the backstairs endless in number as she
stole down, stopping at every creak, holding her breath at every sound
which echoed as if amplified in the walls.

Sam stopped at the kitchen door to listen. Crept on to the front hall.
Brooke controlled an hysterical urge to laugh as she stole after him.

"The Reyburns go sleuthing," she thought, and chuckled.

She felt Sam's quick turn and glare, though she couldn't see it. The
turn was catastrophic. He lurched into a chair. His muttered, "Thunder!"
was submerged in a hoarse command:

"Don't move! I've got you covered!"




XII


The dusk about Mark in the garage went black. A bloody footprint! Had
the crime horror spread to this small point of land? Brooke! Had
anything happened to her? The possibility stopped his heart. He had been
so intent upon finding Jed, upon identifying the prowler that he had not
thought of danger to the occupants of Lookout House. Sam was there.
Nothing could happen to his sister with that boy near. Why was he
letting his imagination loose? Would a man who stopped for a shave and a
bath in the midst of house-entering be guilty of a bloody crime?
But--the footprint?

He dropped to his knees and touched it. Sticky! He flashed his light on
it. Sniffed. Turpentine? He sank down on his heels and choked back a
shout of laughter. He had been fooled by red paint.

How had it come here? What was that dark heap beyond it? Overalls! Blue
denim overalls still warm from the wearer's body. The driver of the car
he had heard a few moments ago must have shed them before he left the
garage. Why had he worn them?

Mark projected and rejected explanations with lightning speed. The man
who had shinnied from the balcony had come from the room where the
scenery was being painted. Wasn't the roof of the cottage on the
backdrop red? Why the shower? Why the shave? Was it he who had removed
the key from the door of the storeroom tonight? But that man had
disappeared via the connecting door, presumably into Lookout House.

He flashed a dim light over the white cover. More red! A clumsy X.

"Make X on cover when--"

The words on the scrap of paper in the storeroom were explained.

"X marks the spot where the body was found."

The sentence flashed into Mark's mind as if set in electric lights.
Body! Jed was missing! Perhaps his body had been dumped inside the
limousine!

He set his heel on the thought. He would imagine a horror like that.
That infernal cross probably meant nothing, but he'd take a look-see so
that he wouldn't ask himself later, "Why didn't I?"

Soundlessly he reached the other side of the limousine. The disarranged
cover which left the door exposed revealed also a license plate. All set
to go! He flashed his light inside. Something long, something rounded on
the rear seat was covered with an automobile robe.

Dread paralyzed Mark's hand for what seemed to him hours; then with a
muttered imprecation he thrust it under the robe. The silver! Nothing
but the silver! That X on the white cover was a sign that it had been
moved from his house. Who had moved it? That was easy. It had been
removed while he and Jed had been at the Reyburns by the man who had
driven away. Sure of plenty of time he had stopped for a shower and
shave. Moving the loot to the garage had been his share of the job.
Would a pal appear to drive the stuff off?

"He will, and here he is!" Mark muttered, as the frosty gravel outside
the garage crunched faintly.

What next? Find out who was prowling at this time of night, of course.
Had someone come to check up on the loot, to make sure that it was
inside when the limousine was driven off in the morning? Hadn't Jed
given Henri authority to drive the car away to be sold?

A key in the lock! Not a minute to waste. Where should he go? Inside
Brooke's town car! The breaks were with him. It wasn't locked.

The garage door was sliding back. Mark saw a patch of sky. He banged his
forehead as he plunged headfirst into the sedan, and saw a million
stars. His head spun as he crouched in the space left by the turned back
seat and drew the door shut without latching it. He held it in place as
barely breathing he listened.

"If only I had a piece of Alice's mushroom to nibble to make myself
shrink," he thought, as he tried to dispose of his elbows and knees with
a minimum of sound and maximum of effort. He put his hand to his aching
forehead. The bang had raised an ugly welt. Lucky the skin wasn't
broken.

Footsteps on the cement floor! Cautious footsteps. A light on the
ceiling! Suppose it should flash into the town car? It had stopped.
Whoever it was, was taking his time. Evidently giving the confederate a
chance to make a clean get-away. A door clicked! Someone checking up on
the loot in the limousine? What a title for a mystery story. "Loot In
the Limousine." He would pass that on to Sam. He'd better keep his mind
on the situation, he wasn't sitting any too pretty.

An engine turning over! Was some darn fool starting a car with the
garage door closed? Mark raised his head turtle-fashion. No, the door
was open. He might have known it. Was it likely that the bandit would
allow himself to be bumped off by carbon monoxide? Not that bad boy. He
had too much at stake.

He must follow. How? He couldn't trail in another car. He would be
heard. Could he hang on to the empty trunk-rack? That was an idea. He
would follow the limousine out of the garage, slip into the shadow of a
shrub when the man went back to close the door, then grab the trunk-rack
when the car started again. A stunt, but he'd make a stab at it. If he
were to hold the man now he would learn nothing of his destination.

He cautiously tiptoed after the limousine. He was safe behind the shrubs
when the driver returned and noiselessly closed the garage door. A soft
hat was drawn low over his eyes, but Mark knew him. Henri.

He was behind the wheel again! The limousine was coasting down the
incline! Mark crouched as he ran after it. As the engine started, he
drew himself carefully to the trunk-rack. He barely breathed. Had the
driver felt a jar? Evidently not. He was increasing speed. He was not
headed for the causeway. He was going in the opposite direction. What
did that mean?

Clinging to the rack with one hand, Mark turned up his coat collar. For
the first time he realized that he was off on this joy ride in dinner
clothes without hat or topcoat. The air had a crispness and cleanness
born of sea and frost and the smell of salt. He crouched close to the
body of the car, it kept the wind from his back and his head out of
sight of the man in front. What move should he make when the driver
stopped? Time enough to plan that when he knew what he was up against.

The landmarks he passed turned his thoughts back to his youth. There was
the old house in the cupola of which he and a boy pal had first
experimented with radio, then an intriguing puzzle of wires, coils and
sparks. The red and green lights of boats swinging in the harbor
conjured up the memory of the night he had met Lola at a dance on board
a yacht; he could see the decorative pattern made by strings of colored
lanterns, her face upturned to his. He thought of the tornado of
protests from family, friends, and neighbors that his engagement to her
had set in motion, and he thought of his stunned realization after their
marriage that the Count, whom he had thought her friend, was more than
that, much more; of his unbearable humiliation when he had literally
carried her home from parties because she had had too much to drink. He
remembered how he had icily given her the choice between her lover and
himself. She had taken it promptly and had gone to Europe; he had
secured the divorce; she had married the Frenchman, had been a countess
for a short time. The next he heard of her she had married Hunt. From
her appearance it was evident that she had started down the toboggan
slide of promiscuity. Would anything stop her from plunging into the
black pit at its base? Why had he never felt free since she had left
him? The divorce had been as legal and complete as the law of the state
could make it, no subterfuges, no placing himself in a compromising
situation to save her good name. She had had none to save. She had left
him for another man. And he was legally free. Free! For what? To ask a
girl to marry him who wouldn't marry a divorced man if there was not
another in the world? He was crazy to think of Brooke Reyburn.

He visualized her slim, vivid beauty, her brown eyes like deep pools
reflecting gold stars when she was eager or moved, the ruddy satin of
her hair; he could hear the lilt in her charming voice--a lilt when she
was not speaking to him. There was an edge to it then which set him on
the defensive.

He on the defensive with Brooke Reyburn! That was a joke. Sometime--not
until after the play; nothing must interfere with Sam's play--he would
tell her that Mrs. Gregory had witnessed a later will than the one
probated, and ask her to tell what she knew about it, if she knew
anything. Meanwhile the car was slowing down! It had stopped.

The white cottage. The filling-station. The Hunts had dared start it at
Lola's house without a license, and the old residents were after it like
a pack of hounds. No doubt but that it had been a plot to force twenty
thousand dollars from him. Had he fallen for it, what would have been
their next extortion scheme? He would know tomorrow--today, it must be
after midnight now. Wasn't Lola coming with a mysterious "paper" to
sell? He must not be seen here. Surely the driver would make contact
with someone inside before he left the limousine.

Henri stepped out of the car. He stopped as if to make sure he was not
observed. How still the night! Far, far away a hound was baying.
Sinister sound! Blood-chilling! It gave one the creeps.

Mark slipped off the trunk-rack. He was cramped and stiff. He hobbled
rather than walked into a deep purple shadow cast by a pine. He could
see the cottage. He held his breath as Henri gently turned the knob of
the front door and entered. What would he do next? Come back to the
limousine? What a chance to grab him.

What was he doing inside the house? He was taking his time. The door was
opening again! Mark hardly breathed. A man slipped out. His hat was
pulled down over his eyes. He slunk along in the shadows. Reached the
shore road. Ran on the dried grass which bordered it as if pursued by
furies.

Had that been Henri? Had he delivered his message? Had he been warned to
beat it? Couldn't have been a fight inside. No loud voices. Had the
limousine with the silver been left for someone else to drive away?

Someone else! What a break! What a break! He would drive it back and
park it in his garage--no, that wouldn't do, he would leave it with
Mike Cassidy. Mike was as dependable as the sun. It wouldn't be safe to
take it across the causeway tonight. Someone might be lying in wait to
relay the driver. In the morning he and Jed would transfer the silver to
his car and take it to the bank, and then have the laugh on Inspector
Bill Harrison.

He stole from the shadow of the pine. With every faint scrunch of his
feet on the frosty ground his blood stopped running. Could he reach the
limousine before someone came? Only a few feet more. He was behind the
wheel. With a hand stiff from cold he touched the self-starter. Hang it!
Wouldn't you know the motor would back-fire! A light! In the front
dormer! He had wakened someone! He hadn't a moment to lose.

With his ears strained to detect pursuit, with his eyes roaming from
side to side, Mark shot the car ahead. He went in an opposite direction
from that taken by Henri,--if the man who had burned up the road making
his get-away from the white cottage had been Henri--he wouldn't run the
chance of overtaking him. It seemed years before he reached Mike
Cassidy's garage at the entrance to the causeway, hours before he could
rouse the man, before he partially opened the door.

"Let me in quick, Mike," he whispered to the blinking, cursing
proprietor, who was gripping something that gleamed dark and blue and
ugly in a hairy, ham-bone fist.

"It's only you, Mr. Mark! Thought it might be a hold-up."

Cassidy's lower jaw swung like a gate on loose hinges. He slipped the
automatic into his pocket before he rolled back the garage door.

"Where can I hide this?"

Cassidy pointed.

Not until the limousine was stowed behind a motley collection of
broken-down cars did Mark Trent explain.

"I've just rescued the family silver, Mike. The yarn I have to tell you
will beat any of the thrillers you get over the radio. Not afraid to
keep the car here, are you?"

Cassidy's red-rimmed eyes grew moist. He wiped his nose on a shabby coat
sleeve.

"I ain't afraid to do nothing for you, Mr. Mark. You an' your family
give me my start; sometimes you've kept me goin' when I didn't know
where the next meal was comin' from. I felt mean when I let my Maggie go
to work for Mrs. Hunt who treated you so bad, but we needed the money
somethin' terrible, so she took the job, though it was at that new
fillin' station that's tryin' to put me out of business."

A telephone rang. The two men stared at one another. Mark's blood turned
to ice. Cassidy whispered:

"Holy mackerel! Who's callin' this time of night? Have they traced you
and the silver this quick? Perhaps there's a gang after you!"

Mark nodded toward the telephone. "Answer!" His muscles tensed as he
listened.

"Cassidy's garage.--You, Maggie! What t'h'll--Stop blubberin'.--What!
Who?--I can't hear, you're cryin' so.--Something terrible?--Never mind,
never mind. I'll call police headquarters.--You've got to stay there,
girl, till I get Bill Harrison. If anyone comes, don't talk. Don't
talk!--Sure, I'll come. Just as soon as I get the police."

"Mike! What's happened?"

Cassidy's face was ashen as he shook Mark's hand from his arm.

"Wait!"

He dialled. He spoke into the transmitter.

"Someone's hurt bad at the white cottage--that new filling station on
the Point.--Mike Cassidy talkin'--I got to go. You don't understand--my
daughter's there.--All right. I'll wait here."

He hung up and wiped a grimy hand across his sweat-beaded forehead.

"That was my girl, Maggie, who called."

"Talk, man, talk! What's happened?"

"Someone hurt bad."

"Who?"

"I couldn't make out."

"Someone hurt at the white cottage! But I was there not more than ten
minutes ago, Mike."

"If I was you I wouldn't say that, Mr. Mark. It wasn't just hurtin'. I
was breakin' it easy. Someone's dead."




XIII


"Don't move! I've got you covered!"

In obedience to the hoarse warning, Sam and Brooke Reyburn stood as if
turned to stone in the dark hall of Lookout House.

"What does a perfect lady do when she is 'covered'?" the girl asked
herself. "Will he shoot if I move?" Her thoughts raced on. "Tonight
can't be real, it's too much like a movie. Such things couldn't happen
in this little village. I'm in a nightmare--I--"

Lights flared. She stared incredulously. Was that Jed Stewart with his
hand on the switch glaring at them with wide dilated eyes, with his
mouth open as if he had just swallowed a salt wave? That was a
flashlight he was pointing at them, not a pistol. It was Jed Stewart
without his coat, with his black bow tie under one ear, with only one
shoe on. He was the funniest sight she ever had seen.

Her taut muscles relaxed. She flopped to her knees before Sam; her body
shook with nervous laughter as she held out supplicating hands:

"Please--pl-ease, Mr. Ban-dit, sp-spare my little brother in--in his
cun-ning little p-pink pajamas. Cut! Lights! Camera!"

Sam grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to her feet.

"Quit your ranting, Brooke. Think this is a joke, don't you? For the
love of Mike, Jed Stewart, perhaps you'll tell me why you're holding us
up in our own house? Why this Public Enemy No. 1 touch?"

Stewart swallowed.

"There goes his Adam's apple," Brooke thought, and giggled hysterically.

Stewart blinked.

"What are you two doing wandering round this house half dressed at this
time of night?"

Brooke tightened the cord of her green lounge coat.

"Stop shouting, Jed. You'll have Lucette down here. Don't you know a
perfectly g-orgeous mandarin coat when you see one? As for Sam's
pa-pajamas--he could walk across the causeway in them with perfect
propriety."

"Now you've got the giggles again. Stop laughing, Brooke."

"I can't--can't help it, Sammy. Jed's--Jed's--so fun-ny. All I can
th-think of is, 'Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John, went to bed with
one s-shoe on--'"

"You've got to stop, get me? Come into the living-room and tell us what
you're doing in this house, Jed."

"Let's go to the kitchen instead, more likely to stabilize our
emotions," Brooke suggested. "I'll make cocoa and we'll scramble eggs.
Jed must need food after the late ex-excitement--he's fairly twitching
with it--and I feel hollow to my toes. Come on, Sam."

"Sounds okay to me. I'm a growing boy, I need lots of nutriment. You'd
better eat or you'll go hysterical, Brooke; you didn't touch a thing
when we came back from rehearsal. I'll run up and get a couple of bath
robes. Take these, Jed." He kicked off his slippers. "I'll put on shoes
upstairs."

Jed Stewart gulped, nodded, and pulled off his shoe.

Brooke held laughter rigidly in check. It wouldn't take much to start it
ringing in peals. Jed's hold-up was the funniest thing she ever had
seen. Her brows contracted. Whom had he thought he was holding up? Why
was he in this house at midnight?

The questions were still chasing each other in her mind and never
getting anywhere, like the horses on a merry-go-round, when she reached
the kitchen, that white and green "step-saving" kitchen which she had
had more fun in remodeling than any other room in the house.

"Much as I dislike her, I'll hand it to Clotilde for keeping this place
spotless," she confided to Jed behind her. She thought of the man who
had dashed through her room. "Draw all the shades, quick!"

"Sam can be speedy when he wants to be," she admitted, as her brother
entered with a lurid bath robe over his pajamas and another all red and
green stripes which he flung at Stewart.

"There you are, m'lad."

"Bring the milk, eggs, butter and bacon from the ice-box, Sam. Toss me
that apron, Jed, the big white one--that's right. Toast some bread,
Sammy."

Brooke, enveloped in a capacious apron, measured and mixed at the white
porcelain table, brought plates and cups from the pantry, while Sam
sliced bread and cooked bacon, and Jed Stewart stirred the contents of a
double-boiler on the electric range.

Sam sniffed. "Doesn't the bacon smell dandy! Here you are, folks." He
arranged thin, crisp strips around a mound of fluffy scrambled eggs.
"You and Jed sit down, Brooke, and I'll bring the cocoa after I find the
marshmallows to drop into the cups. Where does Clotilde, our little ray
of sunshine, keep them?"

"She doesn't keep them, she eats 'em. You'll find a box I hid for
emergency under the buffet."

Brooke slipped off the apron and waited until Sam had served steaming
hot cocoa with a little melting white island floating in each cup and
helped himself lavishly to scrambled eggs and bacon, before, with elbows
on the porcelain table, chin on her clasped hands, she suggested:

"Now that the shock of discovering us roaming round in our own house has
somewhat worn off, perhaps you'll tell us how you got in and why, Jed?"

Stewart leaned back in his chair with the air of a man whose appetite
has been abundantly satisfied.

"Little Tommy Tucker, sing for your supper, stuff, what? You're a grand
cook, Brooke."

"What does that prove? I cooked that bacon," Sam reminded. "Get going,
stout fella, it's your cue to break down and confess All. How did you
get into the house?"

"Any chance that someone may be listening in?"

"Take a look-see into the back hall, Sam." Brooke's voice was a note
lower than Stewart's.

"All quiet on the Western Front," her brother reported. He straddled a
chair. "Shoot, Jed."

"Well, it was like this. I had said good-night to Mark and gone into my
room. I had pulled off my coat, had yanked off one shoe when I began to
sniff." He reddened. "Perhaps it's effeminate but I like a lot of 4711
in my tub, and I asked myself, 'Who's been using my bath crystals?'"

"'The Three Bears' gone modern. 'Who's been using my bath crystals?'
growled Father Bear."

"Stop interrupting with wisecracks, Brooke."

"I'm sorry, Sam, but when I think back over the last few hours, my
funny-bone tickles. Go on, Jed, I'll be good. You'd just sniffed 4711
crystals. What next?"

"Heard sounds in the bath-room. It sort of took my breath for a minute
and my brain whirled like a pin-wheel. Then I grabbed up my flash from
the table beside the bed and tiptoed to the door."

"Don't stop to swallow; keep on!" prodded Sam.

"I banged it open. Water was gurgling out of the tub, dripping from the
shower, my shaving things were scattered everywhere, and--a shoe was
going out of the window." Stewart pulled out a handkerchief and mopped
his red, moist face.

"A shoe!" Brooke and Sam exclaimed in unison.

"I presume there was a foot in it. For an instant amazement paralyzed
me. I made a strategic error. Instead of beating it after that shoe, I
poked around. The razor was gone. That fact gave me a nervous chill.
'Why would a man take that? Who could it have been? Kowa?' I asked
myself. 'But he has his own bath; why should he use mine?' Then I came
to and realized I was wasting time."

"I'll say you were and you're fairly spilling it now. Keep going! You
did go after him, didn't you?"

"I did, Sam, but first I shouted for Mark. I hadn't much hope that he
would hear me but I didn't dare wait to make sure. I squeezed my boyish
figure through that window and wriggled to the balcony. I listened. I
could hear only the pound of the surf and the crack of frost in the
trees. Cautiously I peered over. Nothing moving. A sound! After this
I'll never doubt that hair can rise. Mine felt like that green stuff you
see growing up straight on one of those terra cotta heads. I listened.
Sounded like a curtain flapping. Then I noticed that the window next to
mine was open. Had the man gone in instead of over?

"I knew that it was a Lookout House window, Brooke, but I didn't know
whose room. I couldn't be fussy about that. All the horrors I'd ever
heard rushed through my mind as I thought of the missing razor and of
what might be happening to you and Lucette and Sam."

He ran his fingers under his collar.

"It chokes me even to think of it. Where was I? Oh, yes, I squeezed
through and dropped softly to the floor. I stopped to lock the window
and draw the shade--my late visitor might have a pal, I reasoned--before
I tiptoed into the adjoining room. It was a bedroom unlighted. Behind a
hanging I reconnoitered. A mirror over a desk in the next room reflected
a boudoir with flower panels; then I knew that the room was Brooke's.
All the lights were on. No one there. I crept in. A desk drawer was on
the floor, its contents scattered in all directions. A chair was
overturned. I lived years crossing that room. What would I see? What
would I find on the other side of that door? The hall was dark. The
man--"

"Call him the Bath-Crystal Bandit and be done with it, but get him out
of this house, Brooke's eyes will pop out of her head in a minute."

"Don't interrupt, Sam. Go on, Jed. Did you see anyone?"

"Couldn't see anything. Didn't dare use my flash for fear I might be
spotted. I figured that the man had heard me enter my room, had beat it
to the balcony, had seen the open window of this house, had crawled in
planning to make his get-away from the lower floor. I gum-shoed down
holding my breath at every creak of a stair board, expecting every
minute that I'd be sniped at.

"In the hall I stopped to listen. Sounds upstairs. Faint sounds. I
hunted for the light switch. Found it. It seemed years that I waited in
the dark with my finger itching to press that button. The house was so
still I could hear my brain working. Stairs creaked! Back stairs! A door
swung! He was coming! A chair crashed! I had him! I shouted:

"'Don't move! I've got you covered!' Snapped on the hall light. When I
saw you two blinking and staring like owls, you could have knocked me
over with a toothpick. That's the end of my installment of the serial.
Now, perhaps you'll explain why you were prowling round this house?"

With her arms in the big green mandarin sleeves crossed on the white
porcelain table, her eyes deep shining pools of excitement, Brooke
leaned forward and told him. Stewart's lips and cheeks puffed and
deflated at second intervals as he listened. She concluded:

"I've brought my installment to a crashing finale with your line, 'Don't
move! I've got you covered!' Where do we go from here, Jed? Put your
master-mind at work on it, Sam."

"Are you sure that there was white on the Bath Crystal Bandit's face?"

"I'm sure that the face of the man who streaked through my rooms was
covered with something. Was it soap lather? I'll never forget his wicked
eyes, probably the whiteness below them intensified the effect. I can't
swear that he was the person whose shoe Jed saw vanish." A suspicion
gave her pause. Perhaps the man had moved the silver from Mark Trent's
attic! Perhaps he had felt hot and grimy. Silly, would he dare move it a
bright night like this? If he had, would he stop for a shower?

"It gives me the creeps to think what he might have done with that
razor," she said aloud.

Sam administered an affectionate pat. "Hey, cool off, gal. 'What the eye
doth not see the heart doth not grieve over.' If I had your imagination
I'd be the world's leading dramatist--and how! Jed, it looks to me as if
the guy had been there to lift something, but why the shower, why the
shave? Listen, folks! Footsteps! Stealthy! Outside! Who's coming?"

Jed Stewart sprang up. He caught his chair before it could crash, and
swung it experimentally as Sam pressed the light switch and plunged the
room into ghostly gloom.

The back door opened softly. Brooke held her throat tight in one hand to
stifle an exclamation. A blast of cold air swept in. Someone came with
it. She could see a dim shape, could hear labored breathing as if the
person had been running. Had the Bath Crystal Bandit returned?

The light flashed on. She closed her eyes. Opened them. Was that Henri,
Henri standing in the middle of the floor, with the blinking green
parrot making queer noises under his arm, or was this more nightmare?
She was awake. Sam was real, as he stood with his finger on the switch.
Jed Stewart was real, as he puffed his lips in time to the swing of the
chair he clutched. Henri's ghastly face, distended eyes, and the savage
invectives which gritted through his chattering teeth, were real.

"Cut that line!" Sam took a step toward the butler. "You should
appreciate this little surprise party instead of acting as if you'd
stepped into a nest of scorpions. It wasn't but a couple of hours ago I
saw you in this very kitchen dressed--or undressed--for bed. Why did you
go out? Go back to your entrance and take it over, Henri. Come in as if
you were pleased purple to see us. Why are you skulking into the house?
That's your cue."

Henri made a desperate attempt to steady his quivering mouth. He looked
like an innocent prisoner hailed before an accusing judge; his
expression was incredibly grieved as he huddled the parrot under his arm
and twisted his soft hat in one hand. He appealed to Brooke.

"I don't know why your brother should speak to me as if I was a
criminal, Miss. Haven't I the right to go out at night, even if I had
started for bed?" He attempted to inject the virus of defiance into his
uneven voice.

"Of course you have, Henri, but the papers are so full of burglaries and
hold-ups that when we heard you stealing in we didn't know but what it
was our turn. Where did you find Mr. Micawber?"

"That's why I went out, Miss. Couldn't go to sleep, had him on my mind.
Queer where I found him. Everything's queer tonight." Henri shuddered.
"Nothing strange has been happening in this house, has it?"

"Nothing at all, Henri, nothing at all," Sam assured quickly. "We sat up
talking and got hungry again."

"I'm glad of that, Mr. Sam, that nothing strange happened, I mean,
because I--I found things terrible wrong outside."

"Wrong!" Not until she felt Sam's foot on hers was Brooke conscious of
her explosive exclamation. She noticed that the butler's long cruel
fingers shook as he passed them over his slack mouth.

"I don't wonder you're upset, Miss; you'll be more so when you hear that
the old madame's limousine is gone."

"Gone where?" Sam demanded.

Henri shrugged thin sloping shoulders. "That's what I asked myself when
I opened the garage door and the big car wasn't there."

"Why did you go to the garage at this time of night?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Stewart, I couldn't settle down. I'd had the parrot
on my mind while I was at the movies. I kept thinking how worried the
old madame would be if she knew he was out in the cold. 'Twas my fault
he got away. And after I went upstairs I got more anxious, so I dressed
and went out. I ran around under the trees calling him. When I got to
our garage I had a hunch to look in. Then I saw that the limousine had
been taken. Queer, ever since the old madame left us, I've had a feeling
that something wasn't quite right, and when Mr. Mark came down and
opened the Other House, I was sure he felt so too." The man's voice was
steadier, his face was not so livid.

"Felt what? What are you insinuating?"

It was Brooke's turn, and she ground a heel into Sam's foot with a force
which made him flinch. Henri must be encouraged to talk, no matter what
he said. Had the man who had flitted through her rooms and gone out the
studio window, driven off the limousine? Had he been Henri's tool, had
he listened to the clink of the cadaverous-eyed butler's pieces of
silver, and was this Henri's method of dragging a red herring across his
own trail? Had the Bath Crystal Bandit double-crossed him? She prodded:

"Go on with your story, Henri. What did you do after you discovered that
Mrs. Dane's car was missing?"

"I ran to the Other House--you'll excuse me, Miss, for going to Mr.
Mark first; I've always thought of him as being the heir, you see."

"Don't apologize, Henri."

"I wasn't apologizing, Mr. Sam. I was just explaining."

Brooke bit back a smile. Henri had caught Lucette's very inflection when
she responded to her brother's teasing.

"Don't stop even to explain, Henri. Can't you see that we are
frightfully excited? Perhaps something more than the car has been
stolen. Did you find Mr. Trent?"

"No, Miss, and there's something queer there too. That Jap, Kowa, came
rushing to the door when I kept my finger on the bell, and he shouts:

"'Where's my boss? I been over house, one, two, t'ree time. Boss gone!
He been kidnaped, I t'ink! Loud noise, Mr. Jed's room. I run there
quick. Green parrot in bath-tub, swearing fine.'

"I ran upstairs for the parrot, thinking the Jap had a bad scare on and
I'd see Mr. Mark somewhere. But I didn't. The Jap and I looked
everywhere but he was not there."

Tense silence in the white and green kitchen. Chilled and exhausted by
his foray into the outside world, the parrot huddled within the curve of
Henri's arm making sounds in his throat like a tribal dialect. The faint
scent of bacon lingered in the stillness, a stillness haunted by tragic
conjectures and possibilities which turned Brooke's blood to ice. Sam
laughed from sheer nervous tension. Jed Stewart lashed at him furiously:

"You would do that! It's all theatre to you Reyburns, isn't it, and
side-splitting theatre at that. Where's Mark? That's the only thing I
want to know. Where's Mark?"

"Present."

Mark Trent answered from the doorway. Brooke's heart stopped, raced on.
What had made that deep welt across his forehead? His face was
colorless. Had a ghost appeared it couldn't have produced a more
paralyzing effect. Jed Stewart's face was darkly red as he stared at his
friend. Sam's brow was furrowed as if he were appraising the substance,
the color, the theatrical value of the situation; the green parrot
blinked lidless eyes; Henri's thin quavery voice broke the spell.

"Have you been hunting for the parrot too, Mr. Mark?"

Mark Trent's hand was unsteady as he held a lighter to his cigarette.
His eyes reflected the flame as he looked at the butler.

"Not for the parrot, Henri. I'm hunting now for the man who killed Mrs.
Hunt."




XIV


Mark Trent flinched as he approached the white cottage. It seemed days
since he had driven away from this very house in the limousine filled
with his aunt's silver; days since the message had come to Cassidy's
garage from the police that Mrs. Hunt was dead and he had left there in
a flivver with Mike at the wheel. They had stopped at Lookout House to
make sure that the Reyburns were safe before they had burned up the road
to get here. But it hadn't been days, not much more than an hour had
passed. No use waiting, he must go in.

With his hand on the knob of the door, his mind came to a jangling halt
as from somewhere near a blood-curdling howl rose to a piercing wail,
broke, quavered away.

He stood transfixed, powerless, too numbed by horror to move. In the
stillness which followed the frightful sound, he could hear the rustle
of unseen things in the shrubs, hear the thump of his heart. He looked
up at the stars. Silent, immutable, they shone steadily as they had
shone for thousands of years. What was a hound's howl to them? What was
the snuffing out of a woman's life?

He drew a long ragged breath, forced his motor nerves into action, and
with icy fingers turned the knob.

As he entered a small living-room, Inspector Harrison was kneeling by
the fireplace. His piercing eyes glittered as he looked up and nodded to
Mark.

"They got her all right."

Mark Trent stepped forward, blindly for an instant. He sunk his teeth
deep in his lips to steady them before he looked down.

Lola, the woman who had been his wife, lay on the floor. She was dressed
for the street--had she been about to drive away the limousine full of
silver? The question flashed through his mind only to be instantly
submerged in a flood of pity. She looked so young, so shabby, so
helpless. Her shabbiness hurt him most, she had been so exquisite. He
was glad that he had made her that allowance. Her hat had fallen off. A
current of air stirred a lock of her dark hair. Her hands were still
now. One gripped an open bag, the fingers of the other were bruised. He
dropped to his knee beside the Inspector.

"Can't something be done? Can't we move her to a couch?"

"No! No, not until the coroner comes."

"What happened?"

"They got her rings. She had rings, hadn't she?"

"She had when I saw her--a few days ago. Valuable rings. Other jewels
too."

"Then I guess we got the motive. She let you down, boy, but it's tough
for you just the same."

Motive! Had robbery been the motive, or had Lola been mixed up with the
crooked gang which had stolen the silver? Had he told Bill Harrison at
once of the loot in the limousine, would Lola be alive? As he knelt
beside her, Mark looked about the room in which she had been living. The
furniture was cheap. The linoleum rug on which she lay was blocked with
garish colors on a glaring shiny white ground. What a setting for a
woman who had loved luxury!

"Better come away, boy, you can't do anything," Inspector Harrison
suggested in his persuasive voice. He crossed the room. His solid,
resourceful personality steadied Mark. He got to his feet and stood
straight and tall and rigid. He frowned down at the still figure on the
rug as he acknowledged:

"Life hasn't seemed as smooth as a trotting park to me to date, Bill,
but tonight it seems a terrifying, horrible thing."

"I know, boy, I know. Bring her in, Tim." The Inspector spoke to the
policeman with ears like clinging bats, who appeared at the door.

"It's the Cassidy girl," he explained to Mark. "Kinder tough to bring
her into this room, but there don't seem to be any other place. We've
waited till her father got here before questioning her. Mike's a grand
fella and me friend since we were lads together. Here you are, Maggie!"

The hint of joviality in his soft voice missed its mark, for the sixteen
year old girl, who entered the room as if dragged by unseen hands,
regarded him with terrified Irish blue eyes. Her curly auburn hair made
her egg-shaped face seem bloodless in contrast. She was shivering
uncontrollably as she gripped her father's arm with one hand and
crushed the front of her blue and white print dress with the other.

The Inspector placed a chair with its back to the still figure on the
floor.

"Sit here, Maggie."

As she sat down, Mike Cassidy laid his heavy ham-bone hand on her
shoulder. The Inspector cleared his throat.

"Now, don't be frightened, Maggie. Ain't I just the same Bill Harrison
who's been chumming round with your dad ever since you was a little
girl, and ain't I got kids of my own? All you got to do is to tell me
what happened in this house tonight."

"I don't know what happened," the girl answered in a strained whisper.
She glanced furtively over her shoulder. The Inspector tapped her arm.

"Keep looking at me. Don't look behind you. Sure, I'm not handsome, but
you keep your eyes on me, Maggie. Tell us what you heard that brought
you downstairs tonight. You're not afraid of Bill Harrison, are you?
Ain't you stuck out your tongue at me plenty of times when I've told you
to quit hanging on trucks?"

The Inspector's soft persuasiveness warmed even Mark's cold heart as he
stood with hands thrust into his coat pockets. It reassured the girl for
her body stopped shaking and her lips parted in a trembly smile. Her
voice was almost normal as she agreed:

"Course, I ain't afraid of you, Inspector. I'll tell what I know. I
sleep in the attic, it's got a dormer back and front. I was dead beat
when I went to bed, what with the housework an' havin' to run out to
fill tanks. The boss was sick till afternoon an'--"

"Drunk, wasn't he? Tell it straight, Maggie."

"All right, Inspector, he was. I don't know what time it was when I was
woke up by a car stopping at the garage; sounded like a classy car. We
don't have much late trade--an' the boss told me today that the crowned
heads here, that's what he said, 'crowned heads,' had put him out of
business--so I got up and looked out to see what 'twas all about. I can
see into the garage from my back window."

"Check up on that, Tim."

"Yes, Inspector." The policeman with the ears vanished into the hall.

"Go on, Maggie. You looked down and then what?"

"I see a swell dressed fella talking to the boss. I couldn't see his
face 'cause his hat was pulled low; you know, the kind you see in the
classy ads."

"Could you hear what they were saying?"

"No. That window was closed. I open the front one in cold weather, an',
gee, has it been cold in that attic!"

"What did you do next?"

"Went back to bed, Inspector." The girl's voice had cleared. Rising
excitement was driving out fear. "I must have gone to sleep again for
the next thing I knew I was sittin' up straight in bed calling out:

"'Who's shootin'?'

"I switched on the light and ran to the front window, and I saw a big
car going lickety-split down the road."

The policeman appeared at the door.

"Okay 'bout the back window and garage, Inspector."

"All right, Tim. Stay where you are. What next, Maggie?"

"I stood looking out a minute, thinking that the big car must have
back-fired an' what a hick I was to think the sound was shootin' when
I'd grown up in a garage, an' then I had a kinder creepy feeling; you
know, the kind when they say a rabbit's walkin' over your grave--"

"Don't shiver, Maggie, there won't be nothing walking over your grave
for years yet; don't the papers say we're all going to live to be a
hundred--barring accidents? Then what?"

"Then I began to wonder what that big car was doing out here in the
middle of the night, and then I began to think of hi-jackers an'
kidnapers an' bandits till I thought I'd scream, an' then I remembered
Mrs. Hunt's rings an' jewelry--she had classy jewelry."

The girl's voice had risen till the last word was shrill with
excitement.

Mike Cassidy patted his daughter's shoulder.

"Take it easy, Maggie. Tell the Inspector the rest that happened; then
I'll take you home to your Ma. Won't I, Bill?"

"Sure, Mike, sure. What did you do after you thought of Mrs. Hunt's
di'monds, Maggie?"

"I stuck my feet in slippers an' pulled on my blanket wrapper. I beat it
downstairs an' come into this room. It was lighted an' she--she was
lying there--just like she is now an'--an'--oh, gee!"

The girl drew a long shuddering breath and covered her face with shaking
hands. Her father patted her shoulder; the policeman at the door shifted
his feet; the Inspector frowned at his fingers. Mark Trent felt as if
the hard throb of his heart must be audible, the room was so still. Bill
Harrison was shattering all his preconceived ideas of the police force,
he was showing infinite tact, infinite patience in getting the girl's
story.

"We're almost through, Maggie," the Inspector encouraged. "You liked
Mrs. Hunt, didn't you? You want us to find out who took her rings, don't
you?"

"Sure, I liked her all right, but not as much as I liked the boss.
Mister Hunt was one grand guy when he was sober, always kinder joshing
her an' friendly like when she was whiny--an' she was whiny most of the
time--an' saying awful sweet things to her an' what he'd do for her when
his ship come in. Sober or not, he always treated me as if I was a
lady."

"Glad to hear you liked your boss, Maggie. What did you do when you came
into this room and saw--"

"I guess I let out a yell first; then I just flopped to my knees beside
her. I didn't touch nothing though; I learned that in the movies. When I
saw she wasn't breathin' I beat it to the garage, an' I know I yelled
then for the boss was on the floor face down, his hands behind him, an'
his feet tied. I grabbed his shoulder an' turned him over. There was a
big bump on his forehead and his eyes were closed. I shook him. When he
didn't say nothing, I rushed to the phone and called Pop. I guess you
know the rest." Her lips quivered, and for the first time her eyes
filled with tears.

The Inspector patted her shoulder. "Good girl, Maggie, just one more
question and you can go. Did you hear any rowing between the boss and
herself lately?"

"He was awful nice to her."

"Sure, Maggie, but even folks who think a lot of each other--take your
Pa and Ma now--" he winked at Cassidy--"have a cat and parrot fight
sometimes, don't they? You know they do. So Mr. and Mrs. had had a
quarrel, had they? What about?"

The girl twisted her print dress in unsteady fingers.

"It was last evening, late--it's tomorrow now, isn't it? An' she'd been
phoning--I was in the kitchen, you can hear plain in this house--an' I
heard him say loud:

"'What's this about a paper?'

"I couldn't hear what she said, but he kinder shouted:

"'I didn't mind starting this joint to gouge money out of Trent, but
what you're planning now is different. It'll be jail for us if we--' The
door closed hard an' I didn't hear any more."

"All right, Maggie. Make a cup of strong tea for her in the kitchen,
Mike; then take her home." Mike Cassidy put his arm about his daughter
as they left the room. Mark Trent watched them out of sight.

"My hat's off to you, Inspector. That girl told you everything she knew
without being frightened into it."

The Inspector's eagle eyes retreated into bony caverns.

"My boy, 'bout two thousand years ago a Man laid down a rule for living
that I ain't never heard improved on. I've got a girl of my own, and
all the time I was questioning Maggie I was thinking how I would feel if
my daughter'd been mixed up in this mess. Has Hunt come to?" he demanded
of an officer who entered. The steel was back in his voice.

"Yes, Inspector, but he's groggy."

"I'll go to the garage. Will you come along, Mark? Cripes, I never can
remember to call you Mr. Trent."

"Why should you? Didn't you hand me my first and only summons for
speeding? I'll go with you, but you won't leave--" he glanced at the
still figure on the floor.

"Tim will stay. The coroner ought to be here any minute now. Come on.
I'd like to have you hear what Hunt has to say. According to my church,
you are the woman's husband."

The garage was lighted by one glaring bulb, littered with tools and
cans; the floor was patched with oil stains, and the air was strong of
gas. On a pile of old tires, a man was braced upright against the rough
cement wall. He was blond and must have been fine looking before life
and dissipation had done cruel things to his face. He opened his eyes as
the Inspector spoke to him. He tried to smile.

"Another dick? Maggie sure called out the whole police force. 'Twasn't
necessary. I'll be all right in a minute."

Didn't the man know what had happened in the house, or was he acting,
Mark asked himself. The Inspector rolled an empty gas can on its side
and sat down.

"Course you'll be all right. As for Maggie calling out the force, she
got an awful jolt coming out here an' finding you all tied up like a
bundle of old clothes."

Hunt put an unsteady hand to his head.

"Why did the girl come out here at this time of night? She's never done
it before." His eyes narrowed. He clenched his hand. "What are you doing
here, Trent? You can't get Lola back!"

"Take it easy, Hunt, take it easy. Mr. Trent was with me in Cassidy's
garage--I'm Inspector Harrison, in case you don't know--when his
daughter phoned that you were hurt. He came along to help. What happened
to you, Hunt?"

"Someone beat me up, you can see that, can't you? I was working late,
I--I hadn't been feeling well all day and I was making up time, when a
man drove up in a roadster and said he had a punctured tire and could I
put on a spare. I said, 'Sure, I guess there's no law against my doing
that if the old tabbies here won't let me sell gas.' I turned to get my
tools, and that's the last I knew until I looked up to see an officer
bending over me."

"Who was the man?"

"I don't know, Inspector."

"Ever see him before?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Go on," prodded the Inspector.

"Nothing to go on about. I was blackjacked. I thought the man took a
crack at my head, but my feet feel as if they were in iron casts."

"Probably those ropes stopped the circulation. Were you--"

Mark didn't hear the rest of the Inspector's question. His eyes were on
Hunt's right foot. Between the upper and sole of the unlaced shoe was a
faint line of red.




XV


From behind the tea-table in the living-room at Lookout House, Brooke
Reyburn watched the sun fling the earth a spectacular good-night. The
western sky was a field of crimson and gold glory. The water in the
land-locked harbor was a sheet of flame. The snowy roofs of distant
houses blushed rosily under the warm regard of the Orb of Day, and every
pane of glass within its radius gleamed like polished brass. Dusk was
spreading a silver-gray veil, fine as a bride's tulle, between her eyes
and the sunset. She said impulsively:

"Look out of the window, Mrs. Gregory! I had forgotten that there was so
much beauty in the world."

Mrs. Gregory, in a chair beside the crackling birch fire, set down her
cup.

"It would take an Inness to paint that sunset. I can't believe that you
would ever forget beauty. You've lost flesh in these last two weeks,
Brooke."

"Is it only two weeks since the tragedy at the filling station? When,
last October, I told Jerry Field that I was coming to Lookout House to
live, he said:

"'What will you do marooned on a rocky point of land in a place where
the residents dig in and nothing ever happens?'

"He can't say that nothing ever happens here now. The days have flown
and have left behind them hours smeared with police questioning; men
swarming over this house for finger-prints; newspaper front pages
shrieking clues which were corrected in the next issue; skating and lots
of it; poinsettias in place of chrysanthemums in the conservatory in
honor of Christmas. It was such a strange Christmas without Mother, and
with Sam absorbed in the production of the play. Now New Year's has
slipped into the limbo of yesterdays, and in forty-eight hours the
curtain will ring up on 'Islands Arise.'"

"I'll be glad when it's over. Your eyes seem tired, Brooke."

"Do you wonder? They have looked at the scum and dregs of the
underworld, at pictures in rogue galleries, at line-ups, at patients in
hospitals, trying to identify the man who ran through my room."

"I heard that the police were sure that Hunt was the man when red paint
was found on his shoe."

"The trouble with that clue was that it wasn't his shoe. When he first
regained consciousness in the garage, he complained that his feet felt
as if they were in iron casts. Then the police with their steam-shovel
methods hurried him into the living-room of the white cottage. When he
saw what lay on the floor he collapsed. After he was taken to the
hospital--he's still in a coma--his shoes had to be cut off. Then it was
found that they were a size smaller than his at the cottage. The man
whom the Cassidy girl saw in the garage must have changed and taken
Hunt's shoes. He was a quick worker."

"Bill Harrison may be smart, but what has he done toward clearing up
this tragedy? Nothing."

"He wants the case to drop out of the headlines. He says that the guilty
parties will then think that the hunt for them is cooling off."

"I wish they'd put me on the force, I'd show them a thing or two." The
brim of Mrs. Gregory's large hat flopped in unison with the thump of her
cane. "I'm not afraid of bandits. I've ordered some of my jewels from
the bank to wear to Sam's play."

"Oh, Mrs. Gregory! Is it safe?"

"Safe! Do you think I'll be frightened out of wearing what I like?
Besides, lightning never strikes in the same place twice. Lucky the
performance is coming off soon; everybody is getting edgy."

"We'll relax tonight. Mark Trent is giving the Fields and Reyburns a
party in town at that new Supper Club. It was planned for two weeks ago
but it was postponed. It seems a century since I have been to a real
party."

"Mark needs a change of thought too. It's an ill wind that blows nobody
good. Lola is out of his life, thank heaven. The way she went is one of
two logical conclusions to the rig she has run and perhaps this one is
the less tragic. I've always felt a twinge of guilty responsibility
about his marriage to her. If some of us older people hadn't banded
together to run her out of town, Mark wouldn't have rushed in to
champion her. He was young and chivalrous and hot-headed. I seem to be
in a chronic state of regret about that boy. Much as I love you,
Brooke, I'll never forgive myself for signing my name as witness to Mary
Amanda Dane's will which cut him off."

Brooke's mind whirled and steadied. Mrs. Gregory's signature was not on
the will which had been probated; she had made sure of that again
recently. Perhaps the one to which she referred had been drawn earlier.

"How could you know what you were signing? Witnesses are not supposed to
see the contents of a will, are they? When did you witness it?"

Brooke asked the question quickly. She must know and get the uncertainty
off her mind.

"Just a week before Mary Amanda died. Perhaps you remember the day. You
drove in just as I went out and--good heavens, I forgot! I promised Jed
Stewart that I wouldn't mention it. Forget I told you, Brooke. It wasn't
very tactful of me anyway, but when was I ever tactful? I like that
rust-color gown on you. Now I suppose every would-be smart woman in town
will appear with one like it. One Sunday at church you wore violets at
the neck of your dress and that week every female in the place wore
violets. You have a flair for clothes. It's a wonder you haven't tried
to make me over."

Even as Brooke answered that she didn't need making over, she was
wondering why Jed Stewart had asked Mrs. Gregory not to mention her
signature; wondering if he suspected dishonesty? Why wonder? Hadn't she
been sure for weeks that the two men in Mark Trent's house were there
for some other reason than sheer love of a New England village in
winter?

The thump of Mrs. Gregory's cane brought her mind to attention.

"I've asked you twice, Brooke, if you thought Sam liked Daphne Field."

"He likes her, Mrs. Gregory, but Sam won't allow himself to go
sentimental over anyone at present."

"Allow himself! Then he isn't in love. We may be living in a profoundly
changing society, but love hasn't changed. It still strikes like
lightning, burns, and if it's the real thing, settles into a steady
flame. But I'm glad he doesn't care for the Field girl."

"I'm sure he doesn't, Mrs. Gregory."

"I knew that boy had sense. She's no helpmeet. She's one of those moody
by day and twinkly by night creatures. They say that tomorrow is in the
hands of youth. Some of the hands--notably the Daphne Field type--seem
tragically inadequate. So many of the young talking the same rubbish, so
many of them incapable of enduring struggle and disillusion, so many of
them running to Reno at the first obstacle in the matrimonial path.
Well, whatever they do, I hope they'll cut out some of the rancor and
narrowness and animosities which inhibited my generation. They've begun
by turning under the silly idea of exclusiveness; it's what a person is
that counts now, not the family behind him, nor his money."

She rose and drew her sable cape about her shoulders. "If you are going
to town tonight you ought to be dressing. What are you wearing?"

"An adorable silver frock. It does things to my hair, brings out the
copper glints in it."

Mrs. Gregory lingered on the threshold. "Be nice to Mark, Brooke. He's a
wonderful boy, don't you think so?"

"I'd hardly call him a boy--he's too dictator-minded, but that's the
trend. _Chacun à son goût_--I've joined a French class--I prefer Jerry
Field's type."

Mrs. Gregory expressed her reaction by a denatured snort.

"You prefer Jerry Field! I'd like to take you over my knee and spank
sense into you! Good-night!"

Brooke laughed.

"Good-night, Mrs. Gregory. Even if you don't approve of me, I hope
you'll come again soon."

She was still smiling as she returned to the living-room window for a
last lingering look at the colorful west. The sun had left a rosy glow
on the horizon. Above it a wash of crocus yellow blended with the blue
sky to make a young leaf green. High up floated clouds of mauve and gold
and crimson, like tattered banners flung to the breeze. She crossed to
the window which faced the ocean. How she loved it, loved its
ever-changing values. Some days there were only blues, all tints and
shades; sometimes just green with nothing else but sparkle; and
sometimes it was a study in gray, sullen and menacing with not a
suggestion of color.

She pressed a wall button and set softly shaded lamps glowing like huge
illuminated flowers; the light turned to velvet the scarlet petals and
green leaves of the poinsettias in the conservatory. She poked the fire
till the logs stuck out saucy orange and blue and crimson tongues.

"It is unbelievable that all this comfort really is mine," she told
herself. "Only a year ago, Brooke Reyburn, you were driving a shabby
sedan and counting every penny and--"

Memory slashed into her self-congratulation. Mrs. Gregory had witnessed
a will a week before Mrs. Dane had died. Where was it? Should she go to
Jed Stewart at once and tell him what she had heard? But he knew. He had
asked Mrs. Gregory to say nothing about it. Why hadn't he told her? What
did it all mean? It gave her a panicky feeling, as if she were wandering
blindly in the dark on the edge of a precipice. She poked the fire
vigorously. It was a physical outlet to her turmoil of mind.

"Take care, Miss, or you'll set the chimney afire," Henri warned from
the threshold.

"I think not. It was thoroughly cleaned when I came here to live."

Why was he puttering? He was drawing the hangings over the windows,
pulling a rug in place, refolding the morning newspaper on the desk,
fussing about the parrot's cage, a parrot who had lost half of his tail
and all his self-assurance since his excursion into the outer world. Mr.
Micawber sulked and dozed most of the time, like an old person who had
lost the desire to live. Was Henri making an opportunity to ask a favor?
Except to give orders, she had not talked with him since the night the
police had removed him from Lookout House kitchen for questioning.

He cleared his throat and drew long bony fingers over his slack mouth.

"I--I've been wanting a chance to talk with you since--since we--we
found the parrot, Miss."

He was avoiding mention of the tragedy at the filling-station. Why?
Hadn't that occurred the night Mr. Micawber had taken an evening out?
Were Henri and Clotilde preparing to leave? She wouldn't cry over that.
They would have to give a week's notice and that would keep them here
until after the production of Sam's play. Nothing must stop that. It
would make a hit, it was bound to, there was not a dull moment in it, no
play with dull moments could survive. The foundation of his career as a
playwright would be laid. She pulled her thoughts, which had begun to
climb the ladder of golden possibilities, back to earth. Henri would
think she was wool gathering instead of play-royalty gathering. She
asked:

"What have you to say to me?"

He drew his fingers across his mouth. "It's about that--what happened at
the filling station. You know I went to the movies that evening, came
home and went to bed. Miss Lucette and the others saw me when I came
down to find out what the noise was I heard. You know that after that I
dressed and went out to hunt for the parrot, that I brought him in with
me, but the police want to check up on me every minute. You can help me
very much, Miss."

"How?"

"By swearing that I was in this house at the time of the--the robbery at
the filling station."

"But, as I remember it, you weren't, Henri. You said that you were
hunting for the parrot."

The butler emitted a sound like the snarl of a savage beast at bay.

"You'd better say I was, Miss, or--or I'll tell how I found this in your
desk." He drew a folded paper from his pocket.

Brooke felt as if all the blood in her body had crowded into her heart,
as if her head were lighter than air. She laid her hand on the back of a
gay chintz chair. She bit her lips hard. Why should that paper in the
man's hand seem an ugly, menacing thing? As if flashed on a screen, his
threat sprang into her mind:

"You'd better like Clotilde and me. We could put you out of this house
if we wanted to."

She said:

"Mr. Sam has overlooked grand dramatic material right here, Henri. You
would steal the show as the villain in his comedy. Just what is 'this'?"
Her voice was tinged with amused unbelief.

"Take it, Miss."

Brooke thought of the fangs of a wolf as he smiled his secretive smile.
She unfolded the paper and noticed that a tiny corner of the sheet was
missing. Mary Amanda Dane's writing! Mrs. Gregory's signature! Henri's.
Clotilde's. Was it the will of which Mrs. Gregory had spoken only a few
moments ago? How had it come in Henri's possession?

"You say you found this in my desk?"

The butler's greedy eyes glittered like black beads. "Yes, Miss. I'm
prepared to swear to that in court unless we can come to terms."

"Why didn't you take it directly to Mr. Trent or Mr. Stewart?" Was her
voice as icy as her body felt?

"I thought it was too bad to do that until I found out if you and I
couldn't work together. Mr. Mark tried to get me in wrong with the old
madame." Hatred flamed in his eyes and voice. "Why should I help him?"

"Will this--this--help him?"

"Read it, Miss."

"I'll wait until I'm alone. The paper is torn. Did you tear it when
you--pulled it from my desk?"

Henri's teeth showed between suddenly pallid lips.

"I--I--didn't pull it, Miss. I--I took it careful."

The last word was a whisper. What was there about a torn corner of a
sheet of paper to terrify him?

"I'll talk with you about it later, Henri; perhaps--perhaps, as you
suggest, we may be able to work together."

"I thought you might see it that way, Miss, but--don't take too long."
There was a threat in his smug voice.

"If it is so valuable, how do you dare leave it with me? Perhaps you
have a photostat copy?"

He made a Gallic gesture. Curious how the French came out in crises,
Brooke thought in the midst of her mental turmoil.

"I don't need a copy. With me and Clotilde testifying that we witnessed
a paper in this house a week before the old madame died--and with Mrs.
Gregory swearing she did too--and me telling where I saw it next, you
won't dare do much to it, will you, Miss?"




XVI


Brooke stood rigid, listening until she heard the door to the china
closet swing. Curious how she had come to know every sound in this house
which had been hers for so short a time. Hers! Was it hers? What was in
the paper which Henri would swear he had found in her desk? She had
pretended to consider his proposition that they work together merely to
get time to decide what she should do. When Inspector Harrison had
questioned her about the man who had slipped through her room, he had
impressed upon her also the necessity of making Henri and his wife feel
that they were not suspected of a hand in the filling station hold-up.

She raced up the stairs, switched on the light in her boudoir, locked
the door behind her. She leaned against it. If only her heart would stop
pounding. What a silly she was to be taken in for an instant by Henri's
lies. He never had liked her. The feeling had been mutual. Hadn't she
loathed his Uriah Heep personality and his fat wife? As if he could get
hold of Mrs. Dane's will! Wouldn't she have sent it to her lawyer? But
there had been another will. Mrs. Gregory had said so. She had said also
that Jed Stewart knew of it. Why, why was she backed against the door
thinking, fearing, instead of finding out what it was all about?

She spread out the paper on her desk, shut her eyes hard, drew a long
breath before she looked. There was not much on the page, but what there
was, was in Mrs. Dane's fine writing. The date was that of a week before
she died. The words burned into Brooke's mind as if written with a
red-hot poker:

"I don't know how to word a formal will, but I hereby give and bequeath
all my property real and personal,--which I left in a previous will to
Brooke Reyburn--except the amount as stated in said will to be given to
my faithful servants, Henri and Clotilde Jacques, to my nephew Mark
Trent, to have and to hold during his life and to dispose of as he
wishes. I know now that my ideas of right and wrong should not deprive
him of his rightful inheritance. He was a wonderful son. He has been a
devoted nephew. I make him sole executor without bonds of my estate. I
ask him to provide an income sufficient for frills and fun for my dear
young friend, Brooke Reyburn."

Brooke studied the signature. Mary Amanda Dane's without a doubt, unless
it was a clever forgery, Anne Gregory's name sprawling under it, and
Henri's and Clotilde's tight, foreign writing.

Elbows on the desk, chin in her palms, she stared down at the document.
Life was curious. A woman's signature had dropped a fortune into her
lap; another turn of her wrist, another writing of her name, and the
scene was shifted: Brooke Reyburn was given her cue for an exit; she and
Lucette and Sam would walk off stage together.

Suppose she destroyed this paper which would deprive her of a fortune?
A lighted match under it and it would go up in smoke. Who would know?
Who would believe Henri against her? Wasn't he already under suspicion
in the filling station hold-up? Suppose he did try blackmail? He
wouldn't get far with it.

What terrible thing was she thinking? The eyes of the white faced girl
who stared back at her from the mirror were big with horror. Was she two
persons? Had her other self turned craven? Had that thought changed her
face? For an instant she had been a criminal at heart. She, Brooke
Reyburn, who considered her personal standards of honor and decency of
the highest. After this she would understand temptation as she never had
understood it before.

A car! Lucette and Sam. She must hurry and dress. Sometime during the
evening she would give the paper to Mark Trent. That would be her answer
to Henri. Where could she put it meanwhile? She would tuck it inside her
frock.

She was fastening the corsage of green orchids Mark Trent had sent her
to the front of her gleaming silver frock when she met her brown eyes in
the mirror. She dropped the flowers as if they had burned her fingers.
She couldn't wear his gift until she was sure that he believed that she
had not known until this evening of his aunt's change of mind. Why
hadn't he come directly to her when he had heard Mrs. Gregory's story?
Because he believed she knew where the will was, that she was dishonest,
that was why. Perhaps he was right. What would he think of her if he
suspected that for a split second she had thought of burning it?

She would wear Jerry's gardenias; she had chosen Mark the Magnificent's
orchids first, simply because he was her host, she assured herself.

She added more color to her white cheeks, to her lips, dusted her face
with powder, anything to switch her mind from that nightmare instant of
terrifying suggestion.

She waited until she heard her brother's and her sister's doors close
before she opened hers. Sam popped his head out and called:

"White tie tonight, Brooke?"

"Of course, Sam. Our promising young playwright must be swanky. I've had
your top hat ironed and there's a gardenia in a box on your dresser."

She heard his groan of resignation as she started down the stairs.

She stopped on the threshold of the living-room she loved. Now it would
be torn up by the roots, all her father's treasures would go back to
storage. And her gorgeous flower-windows would be but a dream.

"What of it?" she asked herself. "You're not the only person whose
fortune has started down the toboggan slide these last few years."

She turned on the radio; that might help steady her mind which had gone
merry-go-round. A man's "golden voice" sang tenderly:

    "'Won't you come over to my house
    And play that you're my little girl?'"

A foolish little song but it quieted her throbbing pulses. She crossed
her arms on the mantel, rested her forehead on them, and gazed
unseeingly down at the flames, wondering what she would do when she left
Lookout House, resenting it that she had been given this fragment of
ease, luxury, and security from the menace of the big, bad wolf of
poverty. Now it would go.

"People are right, there is no Santa Claus," she confided to the fire.
"I feel as if I had pulled the works of a watch apart and hadn't an idea
how to put them together again."

All that she had which was really her own was five hundred dollars in
the bank she had saved while working. Would she be obliged to return the
money she had spent? That would mean dragging a ball and chain of debt
the rest of her life. Cheerful prospect. Could Mary Amanda Dane's
"little friend, Brooke Reyburn," see herself accepting from Mark the
Magnificent an income sufficient for "frills and fun"? Never. She would
have to hunt for a job. But she wouldn't have to hunt--she wouldn't! The
Palm Beach offer! Had the position been filled? She would send a night
letter. Better do it now before Sam and Lucette came down.

As she waited for the telephone call to go through, she told herself
that she had learned one inestimable lesson: she had learned that for
every person the gateway to success was in himself; that achievement was
a matter of keeping on keeping on, of giving one's best and trying,
everlastingly trying to make that best better. She was returning to
business equipped with that knowledge.

She gave her message and turned to the fire. She didn't really mind
going back to work, she had loved it, but she had planned to do so much
for her mother, for Lucette, for Sam.

Sam! Nothing must happen to distract his mind from the production of the
play. If she were to produce that will now, the neighborhood, to say
nothing of the cast, would palpitate with excitement, the Reyburns would
have to leave Lookout House at once. She knew nothing of law except that
it was as relentless as a juggernaut. What the Court decreed had to be
done. A producer from New York was coming to see Sam's comedy. The
Boston manager wouldn't bring him down unless he thought Sam had talent.
The performance was only forty-eight hours away. Could she keep Henri
quiet until then? If she couldn't she was the world's worst actress, and
Sam had said that she was good. After the play Mark Trent was to keep
open house for cast and audience. She would stay until the last guest
had departed, then she would give this will, burning against her skin,
to him and fade gracefully from the picture. Better lock it up in her
desk until then. It wouldn't be safe to carry it around with her.

As she ran up the stairs to her boudoir she planned. Stealthily, during
the next two days, she would pack up the personal belongings of the
family. She would engage the women who had helped her open the house to
come and clean it thoroughly and close it. She would ask Mark Trent if
the furnishings might stay where they were until her mother's return
from England. She hated to ask even that favor but she would have to
swallow her pride. She would know tomorrow if the Palm Beach position
were still open. Accepting it would mean leaving Lucette in town, but
Sam would look after her. She must begin to earn, pronto.

She locked the paper in an inside drawer of her desk and slipped the key
into her bag of silver sequins. Back in the living-room she looked at
the portrait above the mantel. Said very low:

"This all means that you and I will be on the move again. On the move,
but with banners, Duchess! With banners!" She threw a kiss to the woman
in green satin and emeralds who looked back at her gravely.

"Hey, Brooke, what are you mumbling about? This crime wave hasn't struck
in on your little brain, has it?" Sam demanded anxiously from the
threshold.

Brooke's laugh sent the elixir of courage surging through her veins. If
she could make that sound after the blow she had received, she could
impose on Henri for two days. Surprisingly she realized that as the
shock wore off, she began to feel as Christian in Pilgrim's Progress
must have felt when the load slipped from his shoulders. She knew now
that beneath the excitement and joy of using the unexpected fortune had
pricked the conviction that the money did not belong to her rightfully,
that it was Mark Trent's. The voice in which she answered Sam's question
held a tinge of buoyancy.

"My brain is all right. It is doing its sixteen hours a day without a
hitch. I was having a heart-to-heart with the Duchess. It's a habit. We
are great pals. Sam, you're a knock-out. I adore men in evening clothes.
I hope sometime I'll live where they always dress for dinner."

"You're not so grubby yourself in that silver thing. You'd better move
in next door, if you want to live with dinner clothes. Trent and Stewart
have the habit."

The reference to Mark Trent brought memory flooding back. Brooke quickly
changed the subject.

"Have you heard any more particulars about--about what you call the
crime wave?"

She perched on the arm of a big chair and looked up at Sam standing with
one elbow on the mantel.

"Nope, nothing except the usual lot of wild yarns which roll up like
snow-balls at a time like this. Have you ever thought that one of her
ex-lovers might have bumped off the fair Lola?"

"Sam! Where did you hear that?"

"Sit down! Sit down! Didn't hear it. That ex-lover motif is a plot, a
little thing of my own. It's my conception of what should have occurred
to put claws, tearing, digging, ravening claws into the Filling Station
Mystery. May use the idea sometime; that's why I asked you to clip all
the accounts of the police activities and confessions, if there were
any. Have you done it?"

"I have, from every paper I could get hold of. When you want them they
are in a Manilla envelope in the lower right-hand drawer of my desk. I
haven't said anything to you about it but I was afraid that after what
had happened, Mark Trent might feel that he could not go on with the
play."

"Afraid! That's putting it mildly. I nearly had heart failure till he
assured me that he would keep his part. He'll make 'Islands Arise.' He
does more than play the lead, he puts glamour into the comedy and warmth
and strength and vitality. I told him he was a fighting lover. He looked
queer for a minute; perhaps he was thinking that he didn't put up much
of a battle for that wife of his who walked off with the French Count.
Why should he change his plans for a woman like that? The shock of the
tragedy has practically worn off. Spirits are picking up and by day
after tomorrow everyone will be keen to make whoopee, to get the thing
out of their minds. Two days! Boy, but I get cold feet when I think of
all that night means to me."

He frowned at his younger sister who, in a diaphanous white evening
frock sprinkled with gold leaves, appeared in the doorway.

"Lucette, when Jerry Field quotes 'Islands Arise,' look as if he were
saying something serious, not as if he were inviting:

"'How about a little stepping, gal?'"

"I've followed exactly the business in my sides, Master Reyburn."

"Don't apologize."

"I'm not apologizing. I'm explaining."

Brooke laughed and linked her arm within her sister's.

"Attagirl! Sam has caught the dictator germ. We two must stand together
against the savage male."

Was that really Brooke Reyburn gaily defying her brother, she asked
herself, the same girl who not an hour before had felt her secure,
lovely world crashing about her ears?

"You're riding on the top of the world this minute, aren't you, Brooke?"
Sam grinned approval, but his brows knit as he looked at Lucette.

"Remember, kiddo, that tomorrow night will be the last rehearsal."

"For which blessing, praise be to Allah!"

"Stop wise-cracking and get this. You've got the habit when you go up
stage of stopping at the door and looking back at Trent. Don't hold up
your exit. You distract the attention of the people out front from the
lead. Just go."

"S'all right by me, Master Reyburn, I'll go. I'm glad you'll be behind
tomorrow night at rehearsal, Brooke. If Sam starts to put in a whole new
scene, strangle him. He has rewritten the play three times since we
began rehearsing."

Sam reddened.

"That isn't true, Lucette, and you know it. I changed one scene, and
didn't I make it tremendously more forceful, dramatic, and colorful?
Didn't it build to a surprise climax?"

"And how did you get your effect? By slashing at the leading woman till
she rushed from the stage in tears."

"Perhaps I was raw, but did you notice what she did with her lines the
next night? They were so furiously alive they gripped my throat."

"Treat 'em rough stuff! I'll tell you now, Sam Reyburn, you'll never get
me in another play of yours."

"Boy, I won't want you! 'Islands Arise' will be a smash hit! I'll have
the best actors in New York camping on my trail for a chance in it!
I'll--" He looked at his sisters watching him with fascinated eyes. Dark
color surged to his hair. "I suppose you two girls think I'm a darn
fool."

Lucette made a little dash toward him and patted his arm.

"Not a darn fool, but a best-seller, darling. I'll bet publishers will
be after you in droves for the printing rights, including the
Scandinavian."

"Don't let old inferiority complex get you, Sammy," Brooke warned.
"Lucette and I know that this play of yours will be box-office, that it
will set your name in lights on Broadway. Can't you just see Mother
flying across the ocean--if necessary--for the première? We'll all have
ravishing costumes and--"

Memory side-tracked her voice. She and Lucette couldn't go to New York
for the opening. Suppose she didn't get the Palm Beach job? She would
have no money. She shook herself mentally. To dwell on that was to admit
defeat, to mismanage her life. She wouldn't permit mismanagement in her
life any more than she would in business.

"What an emotional gal you are, Brooke. You've gone white with
excitement over what may never happen. 'Tisn't likely a break like that
will come my way," Sam prophesied gloomily.

Brooke swallowed the lump in her throat. Sam mustn't suspect why she
had gone white. She said in a voice drenched with mystery:

"Listen, you two, I'm getting fed-up with country life. The day after
the play we'll open the apartment."

"That'll make a big hit with me, but first, unless we want to be late
for Trent's party, folks, we'd better start with a hey-nonny-nonny for
the big city." Sam added, "You two certainly have the million-dollar
look, girls, if you are my sisters."




XVII


Mark Trent glanced at Brooke Reyburn seated at his right in the dim
Mirror Room of the recently opened Supper Club. Light from the
illuminated table-top brought out the copper glints in her hair, the
glow in her radiant eyes, and laid a pinkish sheen over the gleaming
silver of her frock. She was eager, young, appealing. He loved her
laugh, he loved everything about her, her devotion to her family and her
loyalty to inherited ideals, her gay spirit, her beauty, and above all,
her ardent mouth. One couldn't believe to look at her now that she had
carried the financial burden of a family. Why wasn't she wearing his
orchids? Doubtless the answer to that was that she preferred gardenias.
Had Field sent them?

What chance had he, a man whose life had been twisted and tangled by a
tragic marriage, against gay, debonair Jerry Field? None, he answered
promptly, and as promptly told himself that Brooke must love him. That
marriage was years behind him. Why allow the memory of it to creep back
tonight when for the first time in days his mind had been free of the
haunting vision of Lola as he had seen her last?

He forced his thoughts from the past to observe his guests. The
rhinestone straps of Daphne Field's blossom-pink satin frock
scintillated with rainbow sparks with every movement of her body.
Lucette was adorable in a fluffy white and gold thing which accentuated
her rich brunette coloring. Sam was observing the crowd through narrowed
eyes; Jerry Field was talking in a low voice to Lucette. Jed Stewart was
on the other side of Brooke.

Through the haze of smoke from countless cigarettes, Mark Trent could
see what seemed to be disembodied faces, faces dotted with two points of
light which were eyes, some of them beautiful, some of them brilliant,
many of them dull, a few pairs furtive, and a few pairs greedy. The air
was heavy with perfume. Corks were popping, women were laughing, and, in
the midst of a spot of light which gave a curiously white effect to her
face, a girl in a gown of sequins as golden as her hair was perched on a
piano, crooning in a husky voice which held no note of music. Aside, in
the dusk, the orchestra leader accompanied her song with the music of
his violin. His small black mustache and glittering dark eyes in a
swarthy skin contributed to a Spanish caballero effect.

The singer slipped from the piano. Her sweeping obeisance set every
sequin on her frock a-glitter. The audience applauded. The lights went
up. People stopped at tables to chat. The hum of conversation mounted.
Silver tinkled against china. The leader stepped to the microphone:

"We're on the air, lads," he reminded, and raised his baton.

The orchestra glided into a rhythmic invitation. The diners sprang to
their feet. Old men slipped an arm about women who snuggled. Young men
slipped an arm about women who laughed; tough men planted well-groomed
hands on the enameled backs of women who stumbled. One couple kissed
lingeringly as they passed. Lover's eyes sought lover's eyes; white
hands clung; hushed voices questioned.

Jerry Field and Lucette left the table. Sam groaned and held out his
hand to Daphne.

"Come on, let's get it over. I suppose you'd like to step?"

"Of course I would, martyr!" She slipped a white arm about his neck.

"Nothing unsteady about her tonight," Mark thought. He pushed into the
background the memory of the night he had had to steady her to the car.
He had liked her, she had been amusing, but he had not invited her out
after that. She had taken little wine tonight, Lucette had barely
touched hers, Brooke had refused it. Now her eyes were following her
brother. Was she worried about Daphne's influence on Sam?

He watched her, watched the throbbing pulse in her throat which made him
think of the beat of tiny wings against bars. Did she love Jerry Field?
When he had danced with her tonight he had felt as if he never could let
her go. Why should he? He was free, really free to tell her that he
loved her.

As if she felt his intense concentration on her, Brooke looked at him
with questioning eyes. Mark smiled in response.

"Did you know that I was thinking of you? I was hoping that you were not
worrying about Sam and Daphne. If you are, don't."

"Thanks, I'm not. If that were all I had on my mind, my heart would be
so light that it would be bumping against the ceiling like a run-away
balloon."

"What is troubling you? Can't I help?"

"No, thanks. No!"

"That was emphatic, almost as if you were afraid of me. Care to dance?"

Brooke motioned toward the couples packed in so close they could barely
move.

"You don't call that dancing, do you? But do dance yourself. You must
know every attractive girl here. You have risen to bow at two minute
intervals ever since we arrived at this table. Does he know every one in
the world, Jed?"

"I wouldn't go so far as that, but he has friends in every part of the
world. If Mark and I were to trek to Labrador, I'd bet someone would
step out of an igloo--if they have igloos in Labrador--clap him on the
shoulder and say:

"'How are you, Trent?'

"As for New York and points south, those regions swarm with his buddies.
Just caught a wireless from a girl I know. See you later."

As Jed Stewart left the table, Mark Trent took his chair.

"If I sit back to the dancers I shan't appear so like a jumping-jack."

"That jumping-jack idea is all yours. I was being noble, setting you
free to dance with someone else."

"Thanks for the consideration, but the only girl with whom I care to
dance is sitting at this table. You wouldn't encourage a host to leave
his guest of honor, would you?"

He glanced at the gardenias on her shoulder.

"Don't you care for orchids? I should have sent violets. I know you like
them. You wore them the first time we met; no, it was the second time."

"The orchids were beautiful." Brooke traced a pattern on the illuminated
table-top. "Sometime I'll tell you why I didn't wear them tonight."

"Are you engaged to Field?"

She shrugged lovely shoulders and glanced up provocatively.

"You fairly gnashed that question. You are miscast in 'Islands Arise';
Sam ought to write something for you in which you could play an ogre.
You've just the voice for it."

"All right. I'm an ogre. Meanwhile, how about answering that question?"

"I said that sometime I would tell you why I didn't wear the orchids;
that doesn't mean tonight; it means after the play and your party.
However, had I been a perfect lady, I would have said, 'Thank you
billions' for the flowers long before this. Curious how accustomed we
have become to thinking in billions, isn't it?"

"I don't want your thanks, I want--" Mark disciplined his stormy voice.
"Remember that afternoon in Jed's office?"

"The afternoon you refused to marry me?"

"Haven't you forgotten that?"

"There are some things one doesn't forget."

"Then here is something to put beside it in your memory book. Will you
marry me, Brooke?"

She looked up with startled eyes, then laughed.

"That proposal--if it is a proposal?"

"It is."

"Has all the fire and ardor of a silent policeman."

"Shall I give a demonstration of fire and ardor?"

"No! Of course not! Don't look at me as if you were trying to see the
wheels of my mind go round."

"I hadn't gone much deeper than your eyes. Have you never been told that
you have beautiful eyes? You haven't answered my question. Will you
marry me?"

The orchestra was playing a soft swaying accompaniment to a baritone
voice singing before the microphone:

    "I only love one and that one is you,
    And that one is you."

There was a burst of applause from the dancers.

Mark reminded:

"You haven't answered my question, Brooke."

Her eyes were brilliant with anger as they met his.

"I answered it the second time you refused to marry me. Perhaps you have
forgotten that. I haven't."

Mark crushed back a mad impulse to kiss her contemptuous lips until she
went limp in his arms. Repression sent the dark color to his face.

"No, I haven't forgotten that you said that you wouldn't marry me if I
were the only man in the world, that divorced men left you cold."

She laid her hand on his sleeve.

"I was sorry the moment I said that. Really I was. Please forget it."

"Do I seem such a cold fish that you don't realize that it is fuse to
dynamite when you look at me like that?"

She snatched her fingers from his arm. He laughed.

"Don't be frightened. You are safe. This is a changing world but my New
England sense of propriety still holds." He glanced at her hands. "Don't
you care for rings? You never wear them."

"I'm mad about rings, but I like them very choice, very big, very
gorgeous. Lucette has a carload of costume jewelry. Sometimes she
persuades me to put on one of the huge rings, but I don't really enjoy
wearing it."

"Why don't you make yourself a present of one that is very choice, very
big, very gorgeous?"

Her cool, laughing eyes met his. "That is another question I will answer
after the play and your party."

The _maitre d'hotel_ stopped at the table. He glistened from the top of
his sleek black head to his patent leather shoes. He looked Italian with
a streak of Turk; he spoke American with a French accent.

"Good evening, Mr. Trent. Glad to see you here, sir."

"How are you, Franchot? This crowd looks like prosperity back to stay."

"Business has been good ever since we opened. We had so many
reservations for this evening we had to reinforce the staff of waiters
and bus-boys. I don't like strange help in a jam like this, but what
else could we do?"

As he walked away, Mark Trent said to Brooke:

"We were talking about rings. Aunt Mary Amanda had several which were
quite gorgeous. They are yours, remember."

"Oh no! They are not! They--I'm terribly thirsty. Do you suppose this
Club would serve anything so small-townish as sparkling white grape
juice? I love it."

Mark Trent gave the hovering waiter an order.

"I noticed that you didn't touch the wine, Brooke. Why didn't you ask
for what you wanted?"

"Because it makes one so conspicuous in this age and generation to be a
total abstainer; isn't that the pre-war term for it? You see, alcohol
blurs one's skin, plays the dickens with the size sixteen figure. If I
lost that I might not be a hit as a model. I--"

What thought had sent that quick tide of color to her face?

"Is that the real reason?"

Sparks of laughter pricked through the gravity of her eyes.

"You have missed your vocation. Instead of going into insurance you
should have studied law. You could have specialized on wills. It would
be a cagey criminal who wouldn't crumple when you put him through the
third degree."

"Is it the real reason?" Mark persisted, even as he asked himself what
was back of her mocking reference to wills.

"Inquisitor! If you must know, there is another. A remote tribal reason.
Once upon a time, generations ago, a black sheep in Mother's family
drank himself to poverty and death. She was brought up on the 'lips that
touch liquor shall never touch mine,' code. To respect her prejudices
and convictions seems a very little thing for me to do for her after her
years of devotion to me. Mother! What wouldn't I give to talk with her
tonight!"

Mark noted the quick glitter of tears.

"You are troubled about something, Brooke. You have kept this party on
the crest of the wave with your gaiety and charm, but I've sensed an
undercurrent. Let me help."

Her eyes were on her rosy-nailed fingers as they adjusted a gardenia at
her shoulder. The violins sang, the saxophones wailed, the leader
crooned. She shook her head:

"Nothing you can do, thanks. I have a feeling that I'd like to talk with
my mother, that's all. Silly, isn't it?"

"Phone her."

Her radiant eyes flashed up to his.

"I could do that, couldn't I?" She shook her head. "No, no, I couldn't.
I had forgotten. I can't phone to England."

The lights in the room dimmed. The dancers returned to their tables. The
singer in her glittering sequins stepped to the stage. The orchestra
leader nestled his violin under his chin, laid his fingers on the
strings and drew his bow with a flourishing sweep. The spotlight
traveled about the room, whitening faces, setting rhinestones on a
shoulder-strap agleam, brightening already too bright eyes, striking
rainbow fire from the jewels on the breast of a _grande dame_. It
lingered at a table.

Brooke gripped Mark's arm. She leaned close, whispered:

"Quick! Where the light is! The waiter! He's the man who ran through my
room!"




XVIII


Behind the scenes in the Club House Theatre, Brooke, as property woman,
checked her list for the last time. Every article which the characters
would need to take to the stage was present and accounted for. It didn't
seem possible that the hour for which the Reyburns had been preparing
eagerly for weeks had arrived. In front the orchestra, violins,
piccolos, and a drum, was playing with rhythmic throb, with exuberant
verve. The music, what could be heard of it above the murmur of voices
in the hall, was stimulating; it should inspire the actors to do their
best, she thought. Almost time for the curtain. If only her heart
wouldn't pound so. It shook her body. But hadn't her body shaken with
excitement whenever she had seen Sam act? He was coming. He was almost
as white as the shirt-front of his evening clothes, his eyes were like
flames as he stopped beside her.

"Just had a cable from Mother wishing me luck. It's zero hour, Brooke.
Locate the producer and manager out front. Watch 'em. If they go out
after the first act and don't come back, the play's washed up; if they
sit through the second, it's got a chance; if they come back for the
third, boy!" He turned to Jerry Field who was like a stranger in his
make-up.

"Go on to that stage, Jerry, and whang the ball!"

Field nodded to Brooke before he disappeared into the wings. Should she
wish Sam luck, his sister wondered? Better not. The hand which gripped
his blue-covered, dog-eared script, lined and criss-crossed with cuts
and changes, was white-knuckled.

The stage was cleared. Lucette, Daphne and Jerry Field went on and took
their places. Sam was in the wings! Jed was at the switch-board! The
curtain man was waiting for his signal! Sam raised his hand. The house
dimmed. He wig-wagged with two fingers. Jed brought up his lights. The
orchestra stopped playing. Another motion of Sam's hand and the curtain
rose slowly. Brooke's heart parked in her throat, running on high.

Lucette waited for the greeting of applause to quiet before, without a
trace of nervousness, she spoke her first line. Sam nodded approval,
frowned as Daphne answered shakily. Brooke couldn't see the stage, but
she could hear the voices. Jed Stewart was red and perspiring under the
responsibility of getting the actors on and off. Once as he passed her
he whispered:

"Get a peek at Mrs. Gregory out front, third row, centre. She's blazing
with jools."

"Has the New York producer come?"

He nodded. "Second row, centre. Sleek blond fella, with a grand
marcelle." He caught Sam's eyes glaring at them and disappeared.

Every sentence moved the play forward, unfalteringly. Jerry Field had
been on and off before Mark Trent, in his blue lounge coat, appeared to
make his first entrance. As he approached the wings, his eyes, smiling,
disconcertingly intent, met and held Brooke's and set the blood
tingling in her cheeks.

The rehearsal last night had been so hectic that he had had time only to
tell her that Jed Stewart had left the Supper Club to report about the
waiter to Inspector Harrison. In the morning paper she had seen a
statement that the bandit in the Hunt filling station case was being
trailed to Canada. Of course she hoped that he would be caught, but it
was a relief to know that he was far away from what newspapers would
call the scene of his crime.

She handed Daphne Field a letter as she made her exit. She would go on
again in a few moments.

"Don't put it down or you may forget it," Brooke warned.

Her thought reverted to her own affairs. What had Mark really meant when
he had asked her to marry him? Of course he couldn't know that his
accomplished love making had opened her heart wide, had let the love for
him which she had refused to acknowledge, out into the sunlight. Love
making! That was funny. Not once had he mentioned the word. She had gone
gayly on her way, not knowing that she cared, knowing only that when she
forgot that he had called her a schemer, she loved being with him. He
was so companionable, life and ideas and the world seemed more vivid
when she was with him. Why hadn't she realized where she was drifting?
What had he meant by that look as he had taken his entrance? It was as
if he had flung a chain about her, had challenged her to escape. What
would he think when he knew of that paper concealed in her desk? She had
almost betrayed herself at the Club when she had so hastily retracted
about telephoning her mother. He couldn't know, of course, that her
old-time bogey, Expense, had wig-wagged the Stop signal.

She must keep her mind on her job. She held up her hand to stop
snapping-eyed Kowa who, with a dinner jacket dangling on a hanger, was
about to follow his employer on to the stage. She whispered:

"Wait! Wait! Mr. Trent will change here when he comes off."

"Thank you, much obliged, most made mistake," Kowa murmured.

She could hear Mark Trent's voice, faintly ironic. It was her cue to
start the phonograph which was to produce a song as if sung in the
street below.

    "'In the gloaming, oh my darling,
    Think not bitterly of me.'"

The sweetness and fervor of the man's voice brought a terrifying ache to
Brooke's throat, a burning beneath her eyelids, as with the small
machine in her hands she walked away to give the effect of music fading
in the distance.

    "'It was best to leave you thus, dear,
    Best for you and best for me.'"

The last word thinned into silence. Mark Trent's cue.

"That song is old stuff, but sure fire. Believe it, Madge?"

The laughing tenderness of his voice twisted Brooke's heart unbearably.
She tore her thoughts from him and watched her brother. She could see
his lips move in unison with the lines spoken on the stage.

The curtain fell slowly on the minor climax of the first act. The
setting and theme had been established and the characters presented. The
audience applauded enthusiastically. From a hole in the curtain Brooke
saw the New York producer go up the aisle. Would he return?

"Don't you dare go away, don't you dare!" she flung at his straight
back.

The orchestra swung into a fox trot. The leader had been instructed to
keep the music gay, to counteract the taint of tragedy which still
lingered in the community. Sam, white with excitement, had pulled off
collar, tie, and coat. Brooke could see the beat of the pulse in his
firm brown throat as she joined him in the small room in which the
members of the cast assembled to listen for their cues. They were
changing while the scene was being shifted to the forest backdrop.

"How did it go?" His voice was hoarse.

"It's wonderful, Sam. Not an unnecessary word; every line was 'Forward
march!' for your story. The acting is the best I've ever seen in an
amateur performance."

"So what? Does it prove anything? They're all good except Daphne; she
isn't getting her lines over. I hold my breath every time she opens her
mouth. Isn't Trent great? He's the spark-plug of the cast. Wait till you
see him in the crucial moment in the next act, when he thinks the girl
he loves has double-crossed him. Hi there! Not that way! Not that way!"

Brooke's eyes followed him as he dashed into the wings to direct the
setting of a flat. How deeply he felt this production of his play. He
was suffering the labor pains of creation. He would be exhausted when it
was over--no, not if it were a success--success didn't exhaust, it
revitalized--and it would be, the second act was stronger than the
first, the pace quickened, and the third mounted steadily to a smashing
climax.

For the first time she was conscious of the world outside the theatre.
She raised the shade and peered out. Snow fell like a Fifth Avenue
shower of confetti on the head of a returned hero, lightly splashed
against the glass, lazily swirled before the headlights of parked
automobiles. Not much of a storm yet. Lucky that even this had held off
until the New York producer and Boston manager had been personally
conducted to their seats. Had they come back? At the risk of being
caught on the stage as the curtain rose, she applied her eye to the
peep-hole. They were in their places. She offered a fervent little
prayer of thanks and dashed from the stage.

Jerry Field appeared beside her dressed in leather jacket and knickers,
with a gun in his hand.

"How's it going, Brooke?"

"I can't see the stage, but from the response of those out front I'd say
it was a hit. You're grand in that sports costume. You've made every
point, Jerry."

"Thanks. That's because when I say a word of love to Lucette I'm saying
it to you." He caught her hand and pressed his lips to it fervently.

"Please--don't, Jerry."

"You've said that too many times, sweet thing. After the play we'll have
a reckoning--get me?"

"After the play." Brooke repeated the words to herself. So much was to
happen that would change lives, after the play.

"Hey! Field! Field, come on!"

Sam's whisper. Sam's beckoning hand. Brooke followed Jerry as far as the
wings from which she could see him drop to a log on the stage, left
centre.

"Why don't you turn thumbs up and end the poor boy's torment?" asked a
low voice behind her.

She turned quickly. Something in Mark Trent's voice made her furiously
angry.

"That's quite a suggestion that I end 'the poor boy's torment.' I will.
Tonight."

"Don't do it until I change after the show. I want to drive you home,
Brooke. There is something I must say to you."

Brooke felt the blood rush to her face and recede. Had Henri
double-crossed her and told him about the will? Did Mark Trent think she
intended to hide it? She wouldn't give him a chance to accuse her before
she produced that paper locked in her desk. She said as steadily as she
could with his eyes boring into her soul:

"Sorry. The minute the curtain falls, I shall dash to Lookout House to
change into something snappy for the grand celebration. You wouldn't
have me come to your grand party in this green knit, would you? Quick!
Sam wants the wings cleared."

She backed out, conscious of Mark Trent's disturbing presence close
beside her.

"The music has stopped! There go the foots!" She caught his sleeve,
looked up and begged in an unsteady whisper:

"Do your best, Mark. This act will kill or make the play."

His lips were on hers so quickly that she had no chance to protest. He
kissed her passionately, thoroughly; said in a husky whisper:

"Credit that to the silent policeman. Now, I'll play that part to the
hilt."

Brooke tried to ignore her racing pulses. She mocked:

"I seem to be in the path of an emotional cyclone: first, Jerry Field;
now you. I suppose Jed will be the next. Your cue! Quick! Quick!"

In an instant he was on the stage. She heard his voice, jubilant, a
trifle unsteady, call out:

"You beat me to it, didn't you, stout fella? I stopped to help a
broken-down buckboard over the world's worst bit of corduroy road."

Brooke shut her eyes tight in an effort to steady a whirling world. Mark
Trent's lips on hers had been like an electric current through her body.
Every pulse, every nerve responded. Making allowance for the fact that
he was keyed to the nth pitch of excitement because of the play, why had
he done it? He didn't trust her. He thought her a schemer. Was it part
of his and Jed Stewart's espionage plan? Thank heaven, it was only a
matter of a few hours now before she would have that will out of her
desk and in the hands of the two men who had been on her trail for
weeks. She had been happy, even since she had known that Mary Amanda
Dane's fortune no longer belonged to her, she was not afraid to tackle
the business world again--hadn't Carston's Inc. talked with her for an
hour yesterday arranging details of her trip to Palm Beach? But since
Mark had kissed her, she was not unlike one of those meteors she had
seen the other night, torn from its orbit and flung into a new world.

She listened. It was very still in front, a sort of hypnotized
stillness. She could hear the voices on the stage, but she couldn't keep
her mind on what they were saying. Even as she supplied properties, even
as the actors made their entrances and exits she was thinking of Mark
Trent's eyes as he had looked down into hers, was wondering what he
wanted to tell her on the way home? She thought of her plan to hand the
paper to him after the last guest had left his house tonight, to
dramatically restore the fortune he had lost.

How Reyburnish! The incurable dramatic streak in the Reyburn temperament
had been in the saddle when she had planned that. As if Mark Trent and
Jed Stewart would be surprised. Hadn't they settled in the Other House
for the sole purpose of finding that missing will of Mary Amanda Dane's?
Would they believe her when she said that Henri had produced the paper
only two days ago? Henri would come back with the lie that he had found
it in her desk. Her desk! As if he could get into her desk. She hadn't
looked at it since she had put it away. She couldn't. It gave her a
sense of nausea every time she remembered that she was holding it back;
perhaps she would be put in jail for not producing the will at once.
That thought didn't help much.

Why was Sam leaving his post? He was stumbling toward her. His face was
chalky. His eyes were black with fury. There was a suspicion of froth
about his lips. She caught his arm, terrified. Whispered:

"What is it, Sam? Fire?"

"Fire! Fire! Nothing so simple! That darnfool Daphne has skipped two
pages of dialogue and they've gone on from there!"




XIX


Brooke felt as if she were turning to stone. Two pages of dialogue
dropped from the very heart of the play! It was cruel. She bit her lips
savagely to steady them. Whispered:

"Go back to your place, quick, Sam! Mark Trent is on, isn't he? He'll
put it back. He'll give them the right cue. Watch him; he'll put it
back."

She had no thought for her own problems after that; they were submerged
in concern for Sam's play. The part which had been dropped conveyed
implications upon which the denouement depended. She had braced Sam with
the assurance that Mark Trent would restore it. Could he? Two pages
lost. It was too much to expect.

The seemingly impossible was accomplished. The missing dialogue was
restored and expertly restored, Brooke realized, as she saw the color
creep slowly back to Sam's face, saw his hands unclinch. At the close of
the second act the deafening applause was punctuated by calls for the
author. But Sam was adamant.

"No! No! Keep that curtain down! I won't have the continuity of the
story broken by the actors bowing and scraping behind the footlights.
After the show, folks, after the show."

As the curtain fell with dramatic slowness for the last time, the
audience stood clapping and calling. As it rose again, Brooke saw the
blond marcelle, second row centre, make its way up the aisle followed by
a man with sleek black hair. The producer and the manager! She had seen
them go out after the second act. They had come back for the third. That
must mean something. Were they leaving before speaking to Sam? He was on
the stage now in the midst of the cast who had taken their bows; the
arms of the women were heaped with flowers. He had put on coat and
collar and tie but the white bow had gone rakish. He looked very young
as he stood grinning boyishly and waiting for a chance to speak. His
voice shook as he said:

"Thanks lots! Glad you liked it. Couldn't have put it across without
their help." He indicated the men and girls around him on the stage, and
the audience broke into thunderous applause. The curtain fell slowly.

Brooke's eyes were blinded by happy tears as she started for the
dressing-room. She must get back to Lookout House to change for the
party. The girls of the cast were going to Mark Trent's in the evening
frocks they had worn in the last act. Leaving the wings, she collided
with the marcelled blond. The New York producer! He was unaware of her
murmured apology as he gesticulated and talked to his sleek-haired
companion. She listened unashamedly and heard him say:

"It's got everything. Humor, suspense, moving simplicity, fidelity to
ideals, and unfaltering movement."

"But has it got box-office?"

"I'll gamble my last dollar on it. It's the old recipe for play-writing
carried to perfection:

"'Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait.' Where'd you say that
boy got his start?"

"He kicked off as playwright for his fraternity. You'll have to hand it
to that male lead for putting his part across. He's got magnetism. I'm
hard-boiled in this business, but when in the second act he accused that
girl of faithlessness, I could feel the air vibrate."

Brooke's cheeks were hot as she slipped away. She remembered Mark
Trent's eyes before he had gone on for that scene, his voice as he had
said:

"Credit that to the silent policeman."

Why think of herself now? She should be on her knees giving thanks for
Sam's success, for "Islands Arise" had been a success. No matter how
friendly its intention, an audience couldn't force such enthusiasm; it
had been spontaneous, genuine.

She dodged acquaintances and strangers in evening clothes who were
crowding on to the stage to greet the actors. In the dressing-room she
slipped into her fur coat and ran downstairs to her town car parked near
the rear entrance.

The snow was falling half-heartedly as if it had not quite decided if it
were worth while to come down at all. She drove swiftly toward home.
Mark Trent had asked her to plan his party, had told her to go the limit
in preparations to make it a success. That was a dangerous commission to
give Brooke Reyburn; once her imagination as to color and attractiveness
were given free rein, it was apt to take the bit in its teeth. She had
ordered gigantic pale yellow snapdragon for the library, it would be
perfect with the crimson hangings; masses of pink carnations for the
dining room, and poinsettias to be banked in the hall. She had selected
Templar roses for the print room under the stairs. She had given the
caterer orders. Mark Trent had said:

"Go as far as you like with everything, only be sure that there is
enough to eat and sufficient help. To have plenty is an obsession of
mine."

There would be plenty and then some. Just before she left Lookout House
for the Club Theatre, the caterer had arrived with his van and a horde
of waiters. They had sounded like an army making camp.

Not such a bad night. How lovely the lights were. They had the sheen and
iridescence of great opals. How quiet the streets under the spell of a
night-world buried in snow.

As she entered the drive she looked at the two rambling houses of
frost-bleached stones snuggled side by side. Their roofs sparkled with
snow. Every window was lighted, every window was broadcasting a welcome.
The convolutions of the iron balconies had been picked out in white till
they looked like marble railings. She blinked her lashes. Anyone would
think from the tightness of her throat and the wetness of her eyes that
she wasn't glad that that pesky will had been found before she had been
plunged deeper into debt to Mary Amanda Dane's estate.

Trent's Japanese cook came forward to open the door of the car. Snow
powdered his shoulders and cap. His eyes glittered in his swarthy face.
His teeth gleamed as he ducked his head in a funny little bow. Brooke
let down the window.

"I won't get out here, Taku. I'll run into our garage. All the space
outside will be needed for the cars of the guests."

"You right, Mees. Thank you. Much big party, Kowa say."

Would there be room for Sam's coupe? Brooke wondered, as she drove into
the garage. One corner had been filled with ice cream tubs. He could
leave it outside, she decided. She shut off her engine and partially
closed the door as she went out.

As she reached the dark hemlock behind the Other House, she lingered for
an instant in its deep shadow. How still the world was. Snow fell as
softly as if someone above had slit open a pillow and shaken down its
feathers. There was no near sound of surf tonight.

"This is the last time I shall see it like this." Brooke swallowed
something that was half laugh, half sob; then jeered at herself:

"Girl driven from home watching its windows through the driving snow.
You would dramatize this, wouldn't you, Brooke Reyburn? You--"

She shrank deeper into the purple gloom under the tree as two men came
down the back steps from the kitchen--waiters, she knew by their
clothing. Not more than five feet from her one of them stopped to light
a cigarette. He growled:

"The boss can wait for them ice cream tubs till I get a smoke."

"Sure he can. Light up again and take a look at this."

A hand held a scrap of paper within the light of a match. The same voice
said:

"It's the picture of the dame who said: 'He was a swell-dressed fella.'
Guess I'll have to date her up!"

The other man closed his hand over the match.

"You an' your dames! Forget 'em for tonight, or you'll crack up on this
job. Come on!"

As Brooke dressed in her room, the words and suggestive laugh of the man
who had produced the picture kept boiling up through her jubilation over
Sam's success, through the inescapable memory of Mark Trent's eyes and
voice as he had caught her in his arms.

Who was he? Her mind proposed and rejected possibilities as she dressed
to the faint rhythm of the orchestra from the Other House, to the beat
and throb of a Strauss waltz which was as natural, as unforced as the
music of a woodland brook dancing its sparkling way to the sea.

She was adjusting a rhinestone and synthetic emerald clip to the
shoulder of her white satin frock when a thought forked through her mind
like lightning. The amber and brown eyes of the looking-glass girl
frowning back at her widened with amazement; her red lips moved.

"He said--he said--'I'll have to date her up!'"

In an instant she was on the floor beside her desk with a big Manilla
envelope in her lap. She pulled out a bunch of clippings. She had it!
The picture of a girl, Maggie Cassidy, and under it the caption:

    "She said that the man she saw in
    the garage was a swell-dressed fella."

The waiter who had shown the other man the clipping was the Bath Crystal
Bandit, the man she had recognized at the Supper Club! He was the man
who had tied up Hunt in the garage! Was he also the murderer of Lola
Hunt?

The question turned her fingers to ice as she tucked the picture of the
girl inside her frock. Rigidly she disciplined a sense of panic which
set her pulses galloping. She must keep her head. She must think. She
forced herself to restore carefully the clippings to the Manilla
envelope, the envelope to the drawer. Was that really her colorless face
in the mirror, were those her eyes burning like flames?

Why was the man in Mark Trent's house tonight? His pal had said: "Forget
'em, or you'll crack up on this job." What job? Something big must have
tempted him to come so near the scene of his last hold-up, or had that
newspaper headline stating that he was being followed to Canada made him
feel secure? What was he after? More jewels?

"Get a peek at Mrs. Gregory out front, third row, centre. She's blazing
with jools."

Jed Stewart's words answered Brooke's question as clearly as if
whispered in her ear. The man had come for Mrs. Gregory's diamonds.

She must notify the police! The waiter who had lighted the cigarette
doubtless was an accomplice. Of course there would be more than one
working. They might escape! She snatched her hand from the telephone in
its cradle on the desk. Not that. Wires had ears. She would go herself.
Across the causeway. To Inspector Harrison at headquarters. She could go
and be back before she was missed. Suppose she were stopped on the way!
Where was Henri? Was he in on this? She must locate him before she left
the house.

She caught up a green velvet wrap, stuffed some bills into her emerald
satin bag. Pelted down the stairs, into the living-room toward the bell.
Stopped. Where was the parrot? He was not in his cage! Had he made
another break for freedom? She looked between the gilded bars. What
seemed to be merely a bunch of green feathers lay stiffly on the bottom.

"Well, if this isn't just one of those days!" she said aloud.

"Oh, Brooke!" Jerry Field called from the hall.

As she appeared in the doorway, he exclaimed:

"Of all the gorgeous creatures! You look like a million!"

"Jerry, drive me across the causeway, will you? Quick!"

"What's the matter?"

"I must go. Is your roadster here?"

"Left it by your garage."

"By the garage!"

Brooke's blood congealed. Suppose as they stepped into the car the two
crook waiters should appear for a tub of ice cream? Would the men
suspect her errand? Into her mind flashed her reply to Mark Trent:

"That's quite a suggestion that I end the poor boy's torment. I will.
Tonight."

What a thought for this crisis! What a thought!

"Wait a minute, Jerry! While I'm upstairs, set the parrot's cage in the
back hall, please. I--I can't bear to have it here. You'll see why."

She raced up the stairs, charged into her bedroom, pulled a suitcase
from the shelf. On the way down, she took the two lowest stairs in a
jump. She thrust the case into Field's hand.

"What's the big idea?"

"Don't--ask--questions! Let's go!"

"You can't walk in the snow in those white satin sandals, you'll ruin
the green heels."

She pushed him toward the door. "Get going! Get going!"

"Well, I'll be darned! Come on."

Brooke felt the dampness between the straps of her sandals. It seemed
miles to the garage. There was Jerry's roadster! A waiter was coming
down the back steps. It might be the Bath Crystal Bandit! She called in
a guarded voice to the Japanese who was directing parking, but loud
enough for the man on the steps to hear:

"Taku! Put this suitcase in the rumble. And, Taku, if you see my
brother, tell him--tell him," she raised her voice, "that Mr. Field and
I have run away to be married."




XX


"So we're off to be married! That's all right with me," Jerry Field
approved fervently.

Brooke, whose face was pressed against the back window of the roadster,
twisted round in her seat.

"Don't be foolish, Jerry. Of course we're not. That was a red herring
drawn across our trail."

"Just why the red herring?"

The ironic note in his voice gave her a chill tremor of dismay; she
didn't care for the way in which his eyes narrowed as they peered
through the wind shield. She protested:

"Don't speak like that, it makes me shivery, and goodness knows my teeth
are fairly chattering now." She turned to peer from the rear window. "No
car in sight yet. Can you go a little faster?"

"Not without a risk of skidding off the causeway and breaking our necks.
Can't you see how the snow is plastering the wind shield. The squeegee
barely moves. Why the haste?"

"While I'm telling you I'll keep watch. The excitement began upon my
return from the play."

She told him of leaving her town car in the garage, of stopping in the
purple gloom under the hemlock to look at the lighted windows of the
stone houses crouched on the ledge; her breath quickened as she
repeated the words of the man who had produced the newspaper clipping:

"'It's the picture of the dame who said: "He was a swell-dressed fella!"
I'll have to date her up.'"

"That was what the Cassidy girl said about the man they suspect robbed
Mrs. Hunt!"

Field's voice was sharp, his personal problem was submerged in a
mounting tide of excitement. The car shot ahead like a whippet
unleashed.

"I know that now. The certainty as to who he was flashed through my mind
while I was dressing, and the suspicion that he might be at the Other
House tonight to lift--that's the technical term, isn't it--Mrs.
Gregory's gorgeous diamonds."

"Why didn't you phone the police?"

"With Henri in the house? I may be a slow thinker but I'm not absolutely
dumb. I'm trying to do my part, in answer to those glaring headlines:

     "'WOMEN, WHAT ARE YOU, SITTING BEFORE YOUR FIRES, DOING ABOUT THE
     CRIMES BEING COMMITTED?'"

This is what I'm doing about it. I was going to headquarters alone, and
then you called to me and I knew it would be surer and safer if two
went."

"And the suitcase?"

"A touch of theatre. I thought if one of the gang saw us starting, he
might suspect he had been discovered, but if he heard what I told Taku
he would feel secure. Elopements happen every day."

"Not in my young life," Jerry Field retorted crisply.

The storm had settled into its stride. Visibility was about zero. The
northeast wind blew the snow in blinding sheets, shrieking and moaning
as it passed.

"So this is New England! What a night!" Brooke had her face pressed
against the back window. "We won't have much competition on the road."

"What's that roaring? Doesn't sound like the wind."

"It must be the surf on the distant ledges. A flare! I can barely see
it! Another! A ship in distress!"

"'God pity the poor sailor on a night like this,'" Field quoted grimly,
and bent forward to peer through the wind shield.

They maintained a breathless, alert silence until the roadster turned a
corner into a street which had an air of lonely spaciousness. Buildings
looked like the iced masterpieces of confectioners. Street lights paled
in contrast. Just ahead bulked the combination jail and police
headquarters, gloomy and ponderous. Above the roof a tower loomed
against a snow-filled sky; from it stretched aerials, frail as a
spider's thread, potent as a winged mercury on business of the gods.
Dark as a dungeon, silent as a tomb were the woods behind it.

"Shall I come in with you?" Field asked, as he stopped the roadster
before a heavy iron door and cut off his engine.

"Yes. I may need you to corroborate my story. When I burst in upon them
in this gown, they may think I'm crazy. Hurry! We don't know what is
going on at the Other House."

Field slipped his arm within hers as they mounted the snowy steps.

"I'll stick around and wait till you call me. Don't shiver, sweet thing.
You're not afraid of the Inspector, are you?"

"Afraid! No. Haven't I been cross-examined by him almost every day since
what Sam calls 'our late unpleasantness'? It's just the Reyburn
temperament."

Her satin sandals skidded treacherously in the corridor as she
confronted a policeman whose nose, criss-crossed with a network of fine
veins, had the effect of a red "stop" signal.

"Where's the Inspector? I must see him. Matter of life and death," she
confided breathlessly. In her excitement she caught the man's arm and
shook it. He scowled at her, looked beyond her at Jerry Field; his
expression mellowed.

"Inspector's just come in. He's in the Radio Division. Go through those
swinging doors up them stairs to the tower."

Brooke was through the doors before the man had finished speaking. Three
or four men leaning over a great U-shaped table looked up as she entered
the room. With a muttered exclamation, the Inspector left them and came
forward.

A man sitting at a telephone said something in a low voice to an officer
before a microphone. Tubes in the broadcasting apparatus crackled into
life. He said slowly and distinctly into the mike:

"Calling car 3131. Car 3131. Car 3131. Go to K and Tenth Street."

Brooke commanded breathlessly:

"Listen to me, Inspector. The man who robbed Lola Hunt is serving
sup-per at the Trent h-house on the Point!"

Maddening to have her voice break like that. How strangely he looked at
her, almost as if she were a criminal. He had always seemed friendly.
Didn't he believe her? Didn't one of the three men frowning at her
believe her?

Inspector Bill Harrison smiled, a curious smile.

"Wish I'd known this before, Miss Reyburn. I've just come from the
Point, following a tip I had. What's the dope on this bandit? Is it the
same guy you saw at the Supper Club?"

"It must be, Inspector. Tonight--" Before she had finished telling of
the alleged waiter's remark about Maggie Cassidy's picture, machinery
was crackling again and the man at the microphone was broadcasting
distinctly:

"Calling car 1942. Car 1942. Car 1942. Go to Trent house on Point.
Inspector will meet you. Calling car 6784. Car 6784. Car 6784. Go to
Trent house on Point. Inspector will meet you."

Inspector Bill Harrison was out of the room before the man at the
microphone had completed the call. One of the officers turned over two
discs on the U-table; the other frowned at her with the bluest, most
Irish eyes she ever had seen as he answered her unspoken question:

"We don't dare be more explicit over the mike, Miss. The thugs pick up
the messages."

"Will they--will they get there in time, Sergeant?"

"Time for what, Miss?"

"I think--I think he's there to get Mrs. Gregory's
diamonds--she's--she's simply plastered with them tonight."

With the last word the stiffening departed from Brooke's knees. She
clutched at the nearest woodwork. Said shakily:

"Do you know, I've just realized that I haven't eaten since breakfast.
Silly of me, isn't it?" She couldn't explain that she had been too busy
packing to leave Lookout House and with preparations for the play, to
eat.

She slipped into the chair the blue-eyed officer pushed behind her.

"Sit down, Miss. I'll bring you coffee. Like a hot dog?"

Brooke's stomach literally turned over at the suggestion. "No! No!
Please don't bother. I must go. Mr. Field is waiting for me downstairs.
I'll have something when we get home."

"Don't move. Stay where you are. Guess you don't like hot dogs. You
turned kinder green. I'll bring the coffee and some crackers and I'll
get Mr. Field, too."

As Brooke waited in the quiet room, snow beat a soft tattoo against the
windows of the tower. Would the police cars get to the Other House in
time? Would the storm delay them?

She looked down at her white satin sandals as she wriggled icy toes; the
green heels were stained beyond repair. Ruined, but in a good cause, she
told herself, they could be replaced. Replaced! She had forgotten! She
no longer had the Dane money to spend. This was the night she was to
give the will to Mark Trent and Jed Stewart. She hadn't thought of it
since she had looked at the picture of Maggie Cassidy. She must get
back! What time was it?

"Calling car 406. Car 406. Car 406. Watchman at First National Bank
reports three men in auto lingering at corner. Suspects hold-up."

Only for an instant did the voice at the microphone switch Brooke's
thoughts from the promise she had made to herself. She looked at the
clock. Twelve. Only midnight? She had thought it must be morning. She
wouldn't wait for the coffee. At the risk of upsetting the steaming
contents of the cup he carried, she caught the blue-eyed officer's arm
as he approached.

"I've just thought of something, Sergeant. I must get home. Mr. Field is
waiting downstairs--"

"He'll wait, Miss. Drink this, and here's some cake."

His cajoling voice brought a flash of laughter to Brooke's eyes.

"Thanks. The coffee smells marvelous."

The man at the telephone spoke to the man at the microphone. The man at
the mike called steadily, distinctly:

"Calling car 45. Car 45. Car 45. House behind Cassidy's garage on Point.
Woman's screams heard by motorist passing."

The man at the U-table turned down another disc.

"That's the last car we have to send. Trouble's on the loose in this
part of the U. S. tonight. I'll bet those big shots up at Trent's have
planted these other acts so they'd have the police scootin' round and
they could make their get-away."

"Will they make it? Can they make it?"

"Not unless they're smarter than I think they are, Miss Reyburn," the
sergeant reassured. "No guy burning up with brains would have showed
that girl's picture an' said what that one said, no matter if he was in
the midst of the Atlantic ocean alone on a raft. Two detective cars are
on the job and they've got machine guns, pistols, and tear-gas bombs."
He stopped speaking to listen. "Who's coming now? One of those press
boys poking his nose in, I'll bet."

"Don't let him see me, please."

"Go out that other door and downstairs. This guy won't stay long. We
don't allow visitors here."

In the moment that she waited to listen to the sound of approaching
feet, the room was indelibly stamped on Brooke's mind. The blue-suited
man at the U-table, with the overhead light turning his gray hair to
silver, was frowning at the door, one hand was on the holster hanging
from his belt; the uniformed man at the telephone, the man at the
microphone looked as if crouched to spring. The blue-eyed sergeant had
dropped the plate; it lay in halves on the floor at his feet. Except for
the spatting of snow against the window, the room was eerily still.

Jerry Field was pacing the lower corridor when she reached it.

"It's about time you appeared, Brooke! I was just coming up to look for
you. What do we do next?"

"Back to the party of course."

The wind swirled her short hair, clutched at her satin skirts, tugged at
her velvet wrap as they went down the jail steps. As Jerry Field tucked
the robe about her wet feet he looked up. Snow had settled in the brim
of his soft hat, whitened his shoulders.

"Let's make a break for town, sweet thing, and make that yarn you told
Taku the truth."

The expression in his eyes, the break in his voice hurt her. She said
unsteadily:

"Please, Jerry! I can't care for you that way. Take me back quickly,
will you? We mustn't miss Sam's party."

"Oh Sam! Sam is your white-haired boy. He's all that you Reyburn women
think of or care about. I believe you'd sell your soul for him!" Having
delivered which both definite and inferential statement, Jerry Field
jumped into the car and started the engine.

After one look at his grim mouth and gloomy eyes, Brooke snuggled into
her corner of the seat. There was something uncannily pertinent about
the last sentence he had flung at her, almost as if he had known that
she had mortgaged her conscience, if not her soul, by holding back Mary
Amanda Dane's last will until Sam's play was over. It wouldn't be long
now before she would have that haunting burden off her mind. Would the
guests have left Mark Trent's before she reached the Other House? Had
the officers seized the two waiters before they had stolen Mrs.
Gregory's jewels? Perhaps they had no intention of stealing them.
Perhaps that suspicion was a figment of her colorful imagination.

What had the after-the-play party meant to Sam? She had looked forward
to it for days as being a triumphant hour in his life, with heaps of
congratulations and perhaps an option. That was before she had known
what she would have to do at midnight. Her heart flew to her throat now
when she thought of it. What a mysteriously restless thing a heart was.
Always seeking, always starting off on an adventure in loving or living,
soaring with happiness and expectancy one minute, beating a tom-tom of
warning the next, perhaps dropping to the depths at a word or a look.

Even though Mary Amanda Dane's money never had been hers, what a
gorgeous time she had had spending it, all of which--cheering
reminder--in some way she must pay back. She thought of the mimosa,
acacia filled bay of the dining room at Lookout House, of the tiers of
poinsettias with the light bringing out their scarlet perfection in the
sun porch off the green living-room. And she thought, "No matter what
comes, nothing can rob me of the colorful memory." Merely visualizing
the beauty had braced her, warmed her.

Her thoughts raced on to the monotonous accompaniment of the purr of the
motor and the squeaky overtone of the windshield scraper. Why had Mark
kissed her? From his cool, cynical manner it was evident that he didn't
love her. Didn't he? She had not been kissed many times in her life, but
tonight a man's lips on hers had sent her blood surging through her
veins; the mere remembrance set red-hot slivers pricking in her pulses,
made her cheeks burn, and sent a tingle even to her icy toes.

She cleared her throat as if to rid her mind of the troublesome memory.
She would better keep her attention on what she would say to him when
she produced that will. Lucky she had this uninterrupted time in which
to think. Toward the east the drab, heavy clouds were thinning before a
spreading radiance.

"I believe the snow is letting up, Jerry. Look! The moon is trying to
break through! Drive faster. I can't wait to know what has happened."

"Don't worry, you'll get to the party all right."

Brooke ignored his gruffness. "Of course I want to get to the party.
Then I shan't feel guilty that I dragged you away from the fun and
congratulations. Leave me at Lookout House. I must change these soaked
sandals before I join the festivities. Here we are."

From the top of the steps she looked down at Field who was looking up at
her.

"I'm sorry, Jerry," she whispered softly, before she entered the house
and closed the door behind her.

"He doesn't really love me, he's a spoiled boy who wants what he can't
have," she reassured herself, as in her boudoir she changed her wet
stockings and sandals. The warmth and fragrance and color of the room
transported her to another world from the snowy world outside her
window.

She readjusted the rhinestone and emerald clip on her white frock,
sprayed perfume on her hair, powdered her nose, accented her lips. She
shook her head at the looking-glass girl.

"Stalling, aren't you, Brooke Reyburn? You dread to face Mark Trent with
that will you've kept back for two days, don't you? Get going!"

She crossed to the desk, found the key where she had hidden it.

"Zero hour," she said aloud, and unlocked the drawer in which she had
placed the will.

She looked down. Brushed her hand across her eyes and looked again.

The drawer was empty.




XXI


People coming, but not going; music never stopping. It was that kind of
a party.

To the accompaniment of the hum of voices, the stimulating beat and
throb of the orchestra, the distant faint tinkle of silver and glass,
Sam Reyburn made slow progress through the gay, colorful crowd on the
lower floor of the Other House, grinning at girls in lovely evening
frocks who cooed over him; frowning at men who tried to detain him;
shaking hands with attractive deference with elders who congratulated
him.

From where he stood on the lowest step of the circular stairway, Mark
Trent watched him. "All this praise is heady stuff for a boy," he
thought, and then reminded himself that Sam wasn't a boy. Why wasn't
Brooke with him to share the honors? She had been the first to leave the
hall, the man in charge of the parked cars had told him. Where was Jerry
Field? He hadn't appeared either.

A curious premonition turned him cold. Of course Brooke hadn't meant it
when in answer to his sarcastic suggestion she had said she would end
Field's torment. Hadn't she? There had been infinite determination in
her crisp retort:

"I will. Tonight."

"Seen Brooke, Mark?" Sam Reyburn inquired as he approached. "I want her
to be the first to know that I'm to get a contract; that I have an
option in my pocket and a cheque. She's been grand, always on hand to
help me keep my head above water when I thought I was sunk. We put the
play over, m'lad! Gosh, I can't believe it, but we sure put it over."

Mark Trent laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"Great stuff, Sam, great stuff. I was sure that the New York producer
was hooked when he spoke to me."

Sam grinned. "Offered you the lead in a Broadway production, didn't he?
He's a publicity hound. Think of the headlines:

     'LEADING INSURANCE EXECUTIVE LEAVES LUCRATIVE BUSINESS FOR THE
     STAGE.'

Will you do it?"

"What do you think? How's the party going, Mrs. Gregory?"

Mark Trent smiled at the woman whose blazing tiara on her marcelled
white hair, and plastron of diamonds on her purple velvet gown dimmed
what sparkle life had left in her tired eyes. She answered crisply:

"Listen to the hubbub and you won't ask the question. Your party has
brought out tails and white ties, Mark, that's a triumph in itself. I
always know what guests think of my parties by the way they dress for
them." She patted Sam's sleeve.

"My boy, your play is the sweetest, loveliest, most heart-wringing thing
I've seen on the stage for years. Where's your sister? I want to tell
her what I think of it."

"Lucette's dancing and--"

"I don't mean Lucette, though I'd like to tell her that she stole the
show--I read theatrical news so I know that's the correct term--from the
leading woman. There was a convincing touch of realism in young Field's
love-making and I didn't wonder. Where's Brooke?"

Sam Reyburn's grin diminished in size and quality. A hint of anxiety
clouded his eyes.

"That's what Mark and I were wondering. She left the hall before the
rest of us; she told me before the first curtain was rung up that she
would dash home to change for the party."

Mrs. Gregory's face grew a shade less colorful. "I don't like her not
being here, I don't like it. I've been uneasy about that girl every
moment since she testified at the inquest about the strange man who
passed through her room the night of the filling station hold-up. The
man hasn't been caught. She knows too much. They may try to put her out
of the way."

The strong lenses in Sam's horn-rimmed spectacles magnified the horror
in his eyes.

"What an awful suggestion, Mrs. Gregory! What a gosh-awful thought!"

It was an awful thought, but improbable, most improbable, Mark Trent
assured himself. With difficulty he cleared his voice of hoarseness
before he accused:

"You've been reading mystery stories, Empress, confess now, haven't you?
Just the same, we'll start on Brooke's trail at once. What is it, Kowa?"

He spoke sharply to the servant who had wormed his way through the
crowd of dancers who overflowed from the library to the hall.

"Much obliged. Madame Gregory's car here. Chauffeur say to tell her
storm bad, very bad. She better get home. He know she not like to be out
in storm."

"Tell him to wait. I won't go till I know where Brooke is," Mrs. Gregory
snapped.

"Did you see Miss Reyburn come in, Kowa," Mark Trent inquired. Of
course, the suggestion that she was in danger was absurd, but it was
getting under his skin.

The Jap's slanting eyes narrowed to mere slits. He put his lips close to
Mark Trent's ear and whispered:

"Miss Reyburn tell Taku she and Mr. Field go to marry, thank you. She
carry suitcase, sir."

"What!"

Had he shouted the word? Mark's eyes flashed from Mrs. Gregory to Sam
Reyburn. Both were regarding him anxiously, but apparently neither had
caught the content of Kowa's whisper.

"Has anything happened to Brooke?" Mrs. Gregory's lips twitched, tears
filled her eyes. Sam caught Trent's arm.

"What did Kowa say? What did he say?"

Mark Trent steadied his mind. He must reply to their questions. What
should he say? He couldn't blurt out the truth here. Perhaps Brooke had
flung that remark at Taku for dramatic effect. But the suitcase--

"Mark! Mark! Why don't you answer?"

He looked down into Mrs. Gregory's eyes, terrified now.

"Brooke is perfectly safe. She--There's Field! Ask him where she is. He
saw her last. Go get him, Sam! Go get him!"

"No need, he's coming as fast as he can push through the dancers, and
Jed Stewart is at his heels. They are white as sheets. What's all the
mystery? The air is full of it. My skin's turning to gooseflesh. For
Pete's sake, where's Brooke, Jerry?"

Jerry Field was breathless from the effort of shaking off congratulatory
hands which had tried to detain him.

"Changing her sandals at Lookout House. I've got to speak to you, Trent!
Quick!"

Relief stopped the thumping of Mark Trent's heart. Had Brooke married
Field, would he be here? He would not. He turned to Kowa still standing
beside him and asked in a voice he had difficulty in keeping steady:

"Is anyone in the print room?"

The Jap disappeared and returned with incredible speed.

"No person there, sir."

Mark spoke in a low tone to Jerry Field:

"Slip into the room back of the stairs. Sam, tell the musicians to play
something loud and gay; then join us. Now that we know Brooke is safe,
Mrs. Gregory--"

"Mrs. Gregory is coming with us," Jed Stewart interrupted, and slipped
his hand under her arm.

Even with the door of the room closed, the beat and rhythm of the music
outside set the air within vibrating. A cheery fire crackled on the
hearth. Incredibly long-stemmed Templar roses in a tall vase made a
splash of gorgeous crimson against the neutral tinted walls hung with
Japanese prints, scented the air with their spicy fragrance. Mrs.
Gregory resisted the seductive depth of a large chair and sat erect on
the edge.

"What's happened? What's happened?" she demanded testily.

"Wait a minute. Thought I heard something." Field pulled aside the
hangings at the window and peered out; Jed Stewart on his toes looked
over his shoulder. "Yep, there they go. Police are no respecters of
supper parties."

"Police! Who go? Where? What?"

"Keep your shirt on, Sam. Everything's going to be all right."

Jerry Field drew the hangings close and returned to the mantel. The
lighter he held to his cigarette was not quite steady. "Now, folks,
listen to my bedtime story."

For an instant there was no sound in the still room save the purr of the
fire and the tap of a snowy vine against a window. Then it seemed to
Mark Trent that the woman in the deep chair, Sam Reyburn with his elbow
resting on one corner of the low bookshelves, Jed Stewart backed against
the door as if to barricade it, stopped breathing as Field told how
Brooke had commandeered his roadster and himself to take her across the
causeway, of the reason she had given for her going, of her suspicion
that the man she called the Bath Crystal Bandit might be serving as
waiter at the party because of interest in the jewels of one of the
guests.

Mrs. Gregory instinctively put one hand to her tiara and one to the
blazing plastron at her breast. Her mouth quivered uncontrollably.

"I suppose you mean mine. W-when did they in-intend to take them?" she
quavered.

Mark Trent crossed the room. He sat on the arm of her chair and put his
hand on her shoulder.

"Steady, Empress, they can't get them now. Go on, Field. Then you and
Brooke are not married?"

"Married! No such luck. Didn't I make that clear? Brooke told that yarn
to avert suspicion from our get-away. Do you think I'd be here if we
were married?" There was a glint of steel in his eyes as they met Mark
Trent's.

"Where was I--oh yes. We made headquarters in record time. Brooke told
her story. Your kitchen, Trent, was the scene of the neatest, quickest
clean-up in the history of crime in this state, I'll bet. No, don't go.
Inspector Harrison sent special instructions to you to keep things
moving here so that the news of the arrests wouldn't get out until he
had the men safely in jail. Sorry to report that you've lost your
chauffeur, Mrs. Gregory."

"Dominique! Not Dominique? He's been with me for years. Why have I lost
him?"

"He's been taken along for questioning. The Inspector didn't have time
to go into it here. The Jacques at Lookout House also are being
personally conducted to headquarters. Quite a party, if you ask me. I
didn't hear much, but your man Dominique, Mrs. Gregory, was to have
engine trouble on the way home. While he tinkered, you were to be
relieved of your jewels."

Anne Gregory's face was gray; it dropped into sagging lines, her mouth
quivered childlishly. Suddenly she was an old defeated woman.

"Isn't there anyone in the world I can trust?" she whimpered.

Mark Trent tightened his arm about her shoulders.

"Of course there's someone you can trust, you have Brooke and Sam, Jed
and me, and--"

"Don't forget me," Jerry Field interrupted. "Now, who's come?" he
queried.

The low quick knocking at the door was repeated. Jed Stewart opened it
cautiously and let in a drift of dance music and Lucette.

Her lips were startlingly red in contrast to the whiteness of her face.
The rhinestone straps which held up what there was of the back of the
bodice of her pale blue frock sent out a million or two iridescent
sparks. She caught the lapel of Mark Trent's coat as he took a quick
step toward her.

"They're whispering outside that Brooke and Jerry Field have eloped. It
isn't so, is it? Brooke wouldn't--"

Mark Trent turned her by the shoulders that she might see Jerry Field
standing by the mantel. He saw the look in the girl's eyes, saw
something in the man's spring up to meet it. He felt the quiver that ran
through her body, felt the effort she made to overcome it as she said
flippantly:

"News flash! Eloping bridegroom returns without lovely bride. Where's
Brooke, Jerry?"

"Changing her wet sandals at Lookout House."

"Wet sandals! Where has she been?"

"She'll be here in a minute and tell you herself, Lucette. Better go
back to the party," Mark Trent suggested. "The New York producer and the
Boston manager are still here, aren't they? We're depending on you to
see that they have the time of their lives."

"Boy, when Brooke didn't appear, I forgot those bozos, forgot that we'd
had a play." With his hand on the knob of the door, Sam stopped. "Come
along, Lucette."

Lucette caught Field's arm.

"Come with us, Jerry, and stop the rumor that you and Brooke have
eloped; also we'll let people tell us what hits we were in 'Islands
Arise.' That producer told me that if I would come to New York at once
he'd give me a small part in a comedy he's putting on."

Jerry Field hooted.

"A kid like you on the real stage! He's spoofing. Come on out and I'll
tell him a thing or two, sister."

He put a proprietory hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged away from him.

"You're not my brother yet, Jerry Field, and I'll do my own telling. In
fact, I've about decided to accept his offer and sign on the dotted
line."

"Now listen to me, Lucette," Field commanded, as the door closed behind
them.

"Suppose we go back to the party," Mark Trent suggested, and offered his
arm to Mrs. Gregory. "Do you feel able?"

"Able!" The word was an absolute, contemptuous, sweeping denial of
weakness. Mrs. Gregory laid her hand, which trembled slightly, on his
arm; her faded eyes twinkled as she looked up at him.

"Don't try to make an old lady of me, Mark. I'm what is called nowadays
an 'older woman,' a generic term which may include any female of the
species over forty."

Jed Stewart held the door open.

"You're a grand sport, Mrs. Gregory," he acknowledged impulsively.

She stopped on the threshold. "A sport, Stewart, because I refuse to
shed tears over one more lost illusion? I haven't time to look back; I'm
going forward, 'with banners,' to borrow Brooke's favorite phrase. When
she says that in her buoyant voice, I hear a burst of martial music, the
tramp of feet marching forward, see Colors waving. Come to dinner
tomorrow evening, Stewart; I want to change my will. Let's go, Mark, I'd
like to meet that New York producer. Who knows, he might want me to sign
on the dotted line."

As Mark Trent stepped back that Mrs. Gregory might precede him into the
hall, Jed Stewart caught his arm.

"Just a minute, fella!" He lowered his voice. "The Inspector wants us to
wait up until he gets here, no matter if he doesn't come till daylight."

Mark nodded assent. The throb of a harp, the singing of the violins, the
quaver of the horns, the brooding of the oboe were muted to a caressing
minor, heart-breakingly sweet, as he piloted Mrs. Gregory to a
throne-like chair in the hall. He left her and went in search of the New
York producer. It required considerable finesse to evade clamorous
friends. Even as he acknowledged praise of his acting, congratulations
on the party, he was thinking what a queer, aching, vivid thing love
was, with its ecstasy, its inevitable misunderstandings, its quarrels,
and he wondered why he bruised his heart against Brooke's dislike,
wondered if she would ever forgive him for that kiss. At least he--

"Mark! Mark!"

Before he had a chance to evade her, Daphne Field flung a bare arm about
his neck.

"Dance with me, please! Mark! Mark! You must love me!" The girl's voice
caught in a sob as she pressed against him.

Too annoyed to answer, he put his arm about her to guide her out of the
room. As he turned he saw Brooke Reyburn standing directly behind her.
There was a curious light in her eyes, a mocking smile on her lips.




XXII


Even as Brooke smiled and accepted congratulations on the success of her
brother's play, did her best to entertain the New York producer who
attached himself to her from the moment Sam presented him, she was
asking herself impatiently:

"Will the party never end? Who stole that paper from my desk? Can I make
Mark Trent understand why I held it back? If it is lost, will he ever
forgive me?"

But all parties end. The last of the guests, with Mrs. Gregory carefully
tucked into their limousine, drove off in a flood of moonlight which
transformed the world into an enchanted land of dazzling purity. The
producer and manager left in a powerful car after hearty handshakes with
Sam and a backward look at Brooke as she stood between her brother and
Mark Trent in the hall. The musicians tenderly stowed away their
instruments, the leader pocketed a cheque before they coasted down the
drive in the bus whose wheels churned up fountains of snow as they
turned. The perturbed caterer packed up equipment and such waiters as
the police had left him and departed in his van.

Except for the Reyburns, the Fields were the last to go. Had they
lingered in the hope that they would be asked to stay and talk over the
party? Brooke wondered. Sam had treated Daphne with a brusqueness
bordering on brutality.

"It wasn't that dumbbell's fault that my play didn't bite the dust," he
had growled when Brooke begged him in a whisper not to show resentment,
to dance with the girl once. But he had stubbornly refused.

She drew an unsteady breath of relief when the front door had shut out
the brother and sister. They were out-landers in the present situation.
She couldn't have told her story before them, and she must tell it
quickly; that will must be found. She wanted Lucette and Sam to hear
what she had to tell Mark Trent and Jed Stewart; the sooner they knew of
the change in her fortune, the better. Perhaps at this very moment Mark
Trent was wishing that the Reyburns would leave and that Daphne was
staying. What response had he made to her impassioned:

"Mark! Mark! You must love me!"

He had caught her quickly in his arms. Had he suspected that the girl
standing behind her had overhead her wail? His face had gone dark red.
Well, after tonight he might devote the rest of his life to Daphne
Field. Who would care?

"I would. Horribly. Achingly." Brooke answered her own question and sunk
her teeth into her lips to steady them.

Mark Trent linked his arm in Sam's.

"Don't wig-wag the let's-go signal at the girls, maestro. Jed and I
can't let you off yet. Come into the library. Half the fun of a party is
talking it over. I told Kowa to bring in some eats. I don't believe you
Reyburns ate a mouthful of supper; you were too busy receiving
congratulations. I'm starving myself."

Sam grinned.

"Now that you call the matter to my attention, I could toy with a little
food. Come on, Brooke."

Lucette was curled up against the pillows in a corner of the library
couch hugging her knees, when they entered. Stewart was backed up to the
mantel. The girl's eyes were brilliant, her cheeks were pink, the voice
in which she greeted them was bumpy from excitement:

"Come in, folks, and hear Jed tell me how good I was. He predicts that I
would be an overnight sensation on Broadway."

"Snap out of that idea and snap out of it quick."

"Don't growl, Master Reyburn; he has been handing bouquets to the play
too. I done you wrong, Sammy, when I crabbed about the last minute
changes you made in the script; they were the highlights. Where's
Jerry?"

The swift change from laughter to gravity in Lucette's eyes hurt Brooke.
Why, why didn't Jerry Field love her instead of wasting his affection on
a girl who cared for him as a friend only?

Mark Trent answered Lucette's question.

"He and Daphne have gone home. You put it all over the other women in
the cast of 'Islands Arise,' Lucette."

"She was a knock-out and so was the leading woman," Sam agreed, "but, if
you want to know who had the New York producer eating out of her hand,
it was our little sister Brooke. After she arrived--trust a Reyburn to
realize the dramatic value of a late entrance--I couldn't pry him away
from her; lucky I got my option before she appeared. What were you
saying to him, Brooke?"

"We talked theatre fast and furiously. It was a wonder that I could
think of anything but the near escape the party had from a hold-up."

Kowa entered with his quick cat-like tread. His eyes sparkled like black
diamonds as he set a Chinese teapoy of red and gold lacquer beside each
chair.

"Thanks lots for helping out tonight, Kowa," Sam said, as the Jap
stopped before him.

"No thanks need. I too, much obliged, Mr. Sam. You very nice young man.
Write great show. Make the eyes to sting and the throat to laugh.
Perhaps if boss go to act in big city, he take me along. I like it great
to help back big stage."

"Something tells me that Kowa has picked up the theatre bug. I cabled
Mother the news, Brooke. Won't she be pleased purple?" Sam rested his
head against the chair back and closed his eyes.

"Boy, I'm tired! I feel all in."

"It's reaction, and I'll bet you haven't eaten for hours and hours."
Mark Trent spoke to Kowa as he returned with a laden tray.

"Serve Mr. Sam first. Here you are, maestro. Chicken salad, escalloped
oysters--who thought of those? I haven't seen that dish since I went to
my last church supper. Try some of this hot coffee."

Sam's grin was swift and a trifle sheepish.

"I'm all right, m'lad; slumped for a minute, that's all."

"Don't apologize," Lucette mimicked.

"I'm not apologizing. I'm explain--" Sam broke off with a grimace at his
sister. "Humorous, aren't you, kiddo? Fuss over Brooke, Mark, she needs
it more than I. What with bracing me every time I got cold feet about
'Islands Arise' and getting dragged into the crime wave, she's had a
hectic time since she came to Lookout House to live--I'll take another
shot at those rolls, Kowa--I don't wonder she has decided to trek back
to the town apartment. What will we do with the parrot when we go,
Brooke?"

Brooke felt her color rise in response to the flash in Mark Trent's eyes
as they met hers reflected in the great mirror. This was as good an
opening as any she could bring about to tell the story of the paper
Henri had produced. She rose and stood behind her chair. With her arms
folded on the top, she had a sense of being entrenched, out of danger
for a while.

"We won't have to consider the parrot, Sam. Mr. Micawber has gone."

"Gone!" Sam and Lucette chorused.

"Did he make another get-away, or has Henri kidnaped him?"

"Neither, Sam. He's in his cage, just a heap of green feathers."

"Poor old duffer. He hasn't had any pep since the night he took off in a
hop for freedom. I liked that bird. Something's always taking the joy
out of life."

"Cheerio, Master Reyburn, you still have your option," Lucette reminded.
"Why can't we move to town tomorrow? No more commuting! What a break! I
suppose you'll close Lookout House, Brooke?"

Her cue! It couldn't have been more neatly timed had Sam written the
lines for her, nor could the stage setting have been improved upon,
Brooke told herself. What could be better than this story-book library
with firelight turning Lucette's frock to violet and casting a
shimmering pattern of claret on the yellow snapdragons in a copper bowl
on a couch-end table; with the great mirror reflecting Sam, still a
trifle colorless, and Jed Stewart with a forkful of salad from the plate
on the mantel poised half way to his mouth as he regarded her with
startled attention? It reflected also Mark Trent's lean dark face, his
intent gray eyes, his repressed sensitive mouth, and even the waxy
perfection of the gardenia in his coat lapel; it gave back her own eyes
big and brown and a little, just a little, frightened.

Frightened! Why should she be frightened? Wasn't she about to hand over
a fortune to Mark Trent? She forced a gay note into her voice:

"I'll close Lookout House, Lucette, because I have accepted an offer--"

The sentence trailed off as Inspector Bill Harrison strode into the
room. His eyes seemed to pierce to Brooke's brain. Why was the man
looking at her like that? She felt as if her heart had been released
from a steel trap when he turned to Mark Trent and Jed Stewart, now
standing side by side before the mantel. When he spoke she couldn't
believe that the eagle eyes and soft voice belonged to the same person.

"Well, Mark, I got it!"

"Got 'it'! You're too modest, Inspector, you got the whole gang, I
understand."

"Cripes, I'm not talking about those dirty thugs, Mark. That isn't what
I came for. I got the will you was telling me about."

Brooke's blood chilled at his quick change of voice, his sharp look at
her. Lately she had had jubilant moments when she forgot her doubts and
believed that Mark Trent had come to live in his house because he,
perhaps, because he rather liked her. Now she had proof that he had
suspected her of knowing where his aunt's last will was, had even hired
Inspector Harrison to watch her. Suspicion had been bad enough, but
certainty was squeezing her heart to pulp.

The Inspector pulled a paper from his pocket. Mark Trent glowered at it
as if it were a rattler with head raised to strike.

"Here it is. The real thing. Signatures and everything o. k. I found
it--"

"You found it in my desk, didn't you, Inspector?" Brooke interrupted
icily.

Mark Trent's eyes were stormy, his lips were white.

"That's enough. Don't go on with this, Brooke."

"But I am going on with it."

"Let her tell her story, Mark. It's only fair to her."

Sam joined the two men before the fire.

"Jed's right, m'lad. The Inspector found the paper in your desk. That's
your cue, Brooke. Go on from there."

Brooke went on. Through the steady sound of her own voice her ear noted
the purr of the fire, the ghostly tap of a vine against the window, the
faint shudder of shutters as the wind trailed through them, and her eyes
saw Lucette, a grave, breathless Lucette perched on the arm of the
couch; saw also the three men standing before the fire, the fire itself
a mass of blinking, smoldering coals, and the Inspector motionless as a
man of stone with the folded paper in his hand.

She told of her suspicion the first time she had come into this very
library that there was a reason other than a passion for the sea in
winter which had brought two men from the city to live in Mark Trent's
house; and she told of Mrs. Gregory's admission, the afternoon before
the Supper Club party, that she had witnessed a will of Mary Amanda
Dane's and that she had been warned by Jed Stewart not to speak of it.
And how, almost before Mrs. Gregory's car was out of the drive, Henri
Jacques had confronted her with a paper and the lie that he had found it
in her desk.

"Don't speak! Don't!" She interrupted her story sharply as Mark Trent
opened his lips. "Let me finish!

"I took it with the idea that if I didn't, he might make more trouble
with it. I let him think that I was considering his proposition that I
pay him for keeping quiet. Of course I wasn't, but I can't expect you
two men who have been suspicious of me from the moment you learned of my
friendship with Mrs. Dane, to believe that. I was coming directly to
this house with it. First, locked in my room, I looked at it to be sure
it wasn't a blackmailing scheme of Henri's. It wasn't. It was Mary
Amanda Dane's will leaving all her property, except legacies to the
Jacques, to her nephew, Mark Trent."

She looked at Mark. "This is what I had on my mind the other night at
the Supper Club. I told you then that I would answer some questions you
asked after the play and this party, didn't I? They are answered,
aren't they?"

"Stop and get your breath, Brooke; you'll crack-up if you don't," Sam
warned.

"I won't crack-up and I won't stop till I get this thing off my mind. It
has been a hideous nightmare, holding back that paper, I mean. Of course
the contents of that will were a shock for a minute; but I knew that
Mrs. Dane had been just. Then I thought of the play, that the sudden
appearance of a missing will--there's drama for you, Sam--might upset
the performance; so I locked the thing in my desk. I had planned to
bring it here this evening. When I got back from headquarters tonight, I
went to my desk to get it. The drawer was empty. Now I know that
Inspector Bill Harrison, your sleuth, had found it, Mr. Trent. I suppose
nothing I can say will make you and Jed Stewart believe that I have not
had that paper from the moment Mary Amanda Dane signed it."

"That's enough, Brooke." Mark Trent's voice was low and authoritative.
"I don't believe that you have had that will. I know--"

"Wait a minute!" Inspector Bill Harrison cut in. "Come over here."

He spread out the paper on the desk. He drew a flat leather case from
his breast pocket and removed from it a white scrap.

"Exhibit A. Watch!"

The scrap fitted into the torn corner. There was a glint in his eyes as
they passed from face to face of the three men bending over to read the
finely written lines.

"I don't know what the rest of you folks think," his voice was as soft
as velvet, "but, in spite of the fact I found it in her desk, I'm sure
Miss Reyburn hasn't had the will in her possession ever since it was
signed, because--"

He laid the tip of a square-topped finger on the torn-off corner:

"Because I found this scrap caught in Mrs. Hunt's bag the night her
diamonds were snitched."




XXIII


For the length of time it took the old clock in the hall to chime the
quarter hour, there was silence in the library, a silence as tense as if
the still body of a black-haired woman with the open bag gripped in one
bruised hand lay in their midst. Inspector Harrison broke the spell.

"And that ain't all I've got to show you. Bring him in, Tim!"

Brooke's breath stopped as a tall policeman with huge ears pushed a
cowering figure into the room. Henri! Henri here! Would he dare persist
in the lie that he had found that will in her desk?

"Sit down, Brooke."

With hands on her shoulders Mark Trent drew her from behind the chair
and forced her gently into the seat. She felt his presence behind her as
he said sharply:

"It's your move, Inspector. Let's get this thing over with."

"It ain't my move, Mark. It's Henri Jacques'. He's going to tell you
what's kept him the busiest butler in the U. S. You're on the air,
Jacques. Spill it!"

The command held the crack of a lion-tamer's whip. Henri drew his
fingers over his slack lips. He made two attempts to speak before he
produced a voice.

"I'll tell the whole story, Mr. Mark, and it isn't so bad as the
Inspector's trying to make out, I swear it isn't. I didn't kill--"

"Start at the beginning!"

"I will, Inspector, I will."

Brooke looked down at her clenched fingers. She couldn't keep her eyes
on Henri. Once she had seen a dog being beaten who groveled as he
groveled now. His voice shook as he went on:

"It was like this, Mr. Mark. Madame Dane sent for Clotilde and me to
come to the living-room one afternoon. It was the nurse's day off. She
was in the wheel chair and Madame Gregory was there. Your aunt said as
how we were all to sign a paper in her presence and then she was to sign
in our presence. She laughed kind of shaky and said:

"'I don't know much law, Anne--Anne was Madame Gregory--but I've learned
how a will has to be signed to make it legal.'"

"Did Mrs. Gregory say anything?"

"Yes, Mr. Mark. She said, 'Do you think you should do this without
consulting your lawyer?' and your aunt said that Mr. Stewart was away
and she didn't dare wait till he came home because she hadn't been
feeling well. We wrote our names. Mrs. Gregory left, Clotilde went back
to the kitchen, and then the old madame handed the paper to me and said:

"'Put that in my safe upstairs, Henri. I'll give it to Mr. Stewart when
he gets back, but first bring me a glass of sherry. I'm tired.'

"She looked so white I thought she was going to faint. I jammed the
paper in my pocket and ran. When I came back with the wine, Miss
Reyburn was standing by the mantel laughing; you remember that
afternoon, don't you, Miss?"

"Yes."

Brooke contrasted his beseeching tone with the voice in which he had
told her that he could put her out of Lookout House.

"Direct your questions to me, not to Miss Reyburn, Henri. What did you
do with that paper?"

"I was coming to that, Mr. Mark. The old madame was taken very sick that
night. Not until after she'd been gone a week or two did I think of it."

"Then of course you read it?"

"Yes, sir."

"You showed it to Clotilde?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did you and she decide to fasten the theft of it on Miss Reyburn?"

The voice which came from behind Brooke's chair set her a-shiver. A
steadying hand rested on her shoulder.

"We--we didn't think of it, Mr. Mark. Mrs. Hunt suggested that."

"How did she know about it?"

Henri passed shaking fingers across his lips.

"Some way she found out that we were going to sell your aunt's silver.
Clotilde and I thought we might as well have it as the strange girl
she'd left it to. You were in South America and Miss Reyburn would never
know the difference--might as well come clean, he's third-degreed it out
of me."

The glance Henri Jacques cast at the Inspector was green with venom.

"Mrs. Hunt said, if I'd get the silver to the white cottage, she'd
dispose of it; that it was rare and worth lots of money, that a dealer
would believe that it was hers, that he might suspect me. That seemed
reasonable. Mrs. Hunt knew of a man to help. She said she'd take care of
that will, too, she'd get money out of you for it and we'd go
fifty-fifty."

The fingers on Brooke's bare shoulder bit into the flesh.

"Go on, Henri!" Mark Trent's voice was hoarse.

"I gave it to her. The afternoon before the filling station
mur--hold-up, I showed the man she sent where the silver was, forgot the
keys and left them in the doors. I remembered them in the middle of a
movie, came home, went upstairs very quiet and got them. The man who was
to move the silver to the old limousine was waiting in my room. While
you were all laughing and eating downstairs I let him through into the
Other House by the upper connecting door. He took the stuff through your
house--the Japs were out, and I pretended to go to bed. He was to make a
cross on the white cover when he had it in the car. I drove it to the
cottage. I went in to tell Mrs. Hunt the silver was outside, ready to
take to the city. She--she was on the floor. I swear she was. I swear I
didn't touch her." Henri steadied his twitching lips with his fingers.

"But you took that paper over there on the desk out of her bag, didn't
you?"

"I told you once I did, Inspector. I felt it belonged to me. But I swear
I never touched her."

"After that you tried to get money from Miss Reyburn, didn't you?"

"I didn't intend to ask for much, Mr. Mark."

"Take him out, Tim."

Henri stopped to hurl defiance at Inspector Bill Harrison.

"You think you're smart, but you wouldn't have known anything about this
till we were safe out of the country, Inspector, if that expert thief
Mrs. Hunt brought into the game hadn't stopped to wash and shave in Mr.
Stewart's bath-room. Pretty snappy guy he was. I suppose he had to dress
up fine before he called on her. She paid for pulling him in. He got her
jewels all right, and he was out to get Mrs. Gregory's tonight. I wasn't
in on that deal, Mr. Mark."

"Take him away, Tim." Inspector Harrison's eagle eyes followed the two
men from the room before they came back to Brooke.

"Sorry I had to touch your desk, Miss Reyburn, but a high falsetto voice
phoned me you had the will--I know now that it was Henri Jacques--so I
went through your room while you were all at the play. I guess you're
glad the truth is out. The minute I heard of that bath stunt I knew who
to look for. That guy has made a specialty of breaking into houses
week-ends where the folks were away, of making himself at home in the
tub and carrying off what he wanted when he left, mostly men's clothes.
Maggie Cassidy was right when she said he was a swell dresser. He ought
to be. He's had his pick of the best. It's kind of funny when you think
of it, ain't it? When I accused him of killing Mrs. Hunt, he crumpled
and spilled the whole story. He had seen her rings when she engaged him
to move the silver. Wanted them. Knocked Hunt out first. He's a quick
worker. He and his pals aren't killers. There wasn't a gun in the
gangload. There's a joke to it, they don't one of them know yet that the
coroner's verdict was 'heart failure from fright.' I've kept that under
my hat so I could scare the truth out of them. Well, Mark, your silver's
safe and you've got your aunt's money."

"Thanks, Inspector, I'll tell you how much I appreciate what you've
done, later. Sam, get Brooke's wrap. I'll take her home. You and Lucette
stay here and get the Inspector something to eat. Wait for me, Bill,
there are a few points that need clearing up. I have something to talk
over with Miss Reyburn, then I'll come back."

"You are not going home with me and we have nothing to talk over." Did
he think that he could wipe out the memory of his suspicion of her in
this lordly manner? Brooke asked herself.

"Oh yes, we have."

Sam chuckled.

"One of the thirty-six dramatic situations. Snap into it, Brooke. It is
apparent even to this boyish intelligence that Mark wants to talk to you
alone. Fair enough. Why make him go on the air? Be kind to him, he
deserves well of his countrymen. Here's your wrap. Get going, folks. I
want another shot at the chicken salad."

"If all you care about is eating, Sam Reyburn, I'll go."

Tears menaced Brooke's voice and eyes. At the door she held up her
dignified exit.

"Better come with me, Lucette. You have to make an early start for town,
remember."

Lucette curled up against the couch cushions.

"Don't worry about me, darling. I'll be on hand to punch the time-clock.
I'll stick around with Jed and Sam and the exciting Inspector. I'm
hungry too."

She added with an impish laugh:

"Better play ball Mark's way. If you don't, something tells me he'll go
completely cave-man and drag you off by your hair."

"Just wait until you and Sam want me to help you out!"

Brooke flung the threat over her shoulder. As she crossed the threshold
she heard Sam's voice, very grave, very grown-up now:

"Jed, does that paper the Inspector found mean that Brooke loses the
money?"

Lose it! It never had been hers, Brooke thought, as she stepped from the
warmth and fragrance of the house into the outdoor pageantry of a cold
winter dawn, with Mark Trent beside her. The world glinted with
splinters of crystal where a slanting moon sifted its light through snow
laden branches; the indigo velvet of the sky was stencilled with starry
patterns; cedar hedges were blanched to marble balustrades.

They crossed the terrace in silence. The snow had not been cleared from
before the door of Lookout House. Mark Trent swept Brooke from her feet
and carried her into the vestibule. He kept an arm about her as he
opened the door. Something turning like the wings of an autogiro in her
throat, cut off her protest. The green living-room awaited them, softly
lighted, faintly fragrant. Above the mantel the Duchess looked down with
grave eyes; below, coals, murmurous as purring kittens, gave out a
gentle glow.

"Take off your wrap."

Brooke slipped from beneath the velvet and the hands tightening on her
shoulders. She barricaded herself behind a high-back chair. With one arm
on the mantel, Mark Trent faced her. His eyes, smiling a little,
maddeningly cool, filled her with rage. She challenged:

"You would come. Why? Didn't you want to tell me before the others that
you had known about that will all the time?"

"But I hadn't known."

"You suspected that there was one, didn't you? You and Jed Stewart came
to live in the Other House to watch me, didn't you? Do you think I have
forgotten that you called me a schemer?"

"This seems to be turning into a question and answer period. Suppose you
let me tell my side of the story. Sit down, please."

She shook her head.

"I prefer to stay here. Go on. I hope it doesn't take long. I have a lot
to do before I leave in the morning--sorry to have to ask to let the
furnishings stay here until Mother gets back, but--"

"Don't be so breathless, dearest."

"I'm not breathless, and I'm not your dearest. I wish you would say what
you forced your way in here to say and--and go."

"All right, remember, you asked for it. I came to say that after I knew
who you were that day in Jed's office, I didn't believe that you had
used 'undue influence' with my aunt. I admit that for a while I tried to
fool myself, but I couldn't keep it up. I didn't open my house because I
wanted to 'watch' you. I decided to do it on Thanksgiving day, because
I--liked you and your 'whole darn family.' As the weeks passed, Jed and
I were sure that if the second will had not been destroyed, Henri knew
where it was. Not knowing its contents hampered us."

"But you know now?"

"Yes. And it hurts infernally to think that you should have been drawn
into this sordid mix-up."

"Why shouldn't I be? It's what might be called poetic justice, isn't it?
Didn't I start the trouble when I went to Lookout House to see your aunt
for the first time? I'd been warned that business and friendship won't
mix any better than oil and water. Now I know it. You had suspected for
weeks that I had no right to your aunt's money, and yet you and Jed
Stewart let me keep on spending and spending. When I think of those two
cars I bought I almost lose my mind. How can I ever pay it back?"

"Pay it back! Don't be foolish. There is no question of paying it back.
Have you forgotten that Mary Amanda Dane left an income to you?"

Brooke came from behind the chair to perch nonchalantly on the arm. For
an instant she watched the flame-color pattern the firelight cast on her
white satin frock. She was quite steady now, she assured herself, quite
self-possessed. She managed a smile as she looked up.

"You don't think for an instant, do you, that I would accept a cent of
that money? Would you take any from me when I tried to divide with you?
I'm surprised, I'm really surprised that you don't play the martyr and
ask me to marry you."

"No. I shan't ask you to marry me. I've made a lot of mistakes in my
life, but, believe me, I've learned enough not to make that one."

His cool denial hurt Brooke intolerably. He hated her, she told herself.
Why shouldn't he?

"In the library a while ago you told Lucette you were leaving here
because you had accepted an offer. Are you engaged to Jerry Field?"

A gate in the wall! A way out without letting him know that she cared,
how desperately she cared for him. She laughed.

"I--Here come Sam and Lucette. They are stamping snow from their feet
outside as a warning that they are about to interrupt our conference.
Amusing, isn't it?"

"Amusing to you, perhaps. It isn't to me."

Sam's face was as red as the fire as he and Lucette entered the room.

"Sorry to interrupt, but--"

"Don't apologize."

"I'm not apologizing." His face went from red to crimson. "I'm only
trying to explain, Brooke, that the Inspector's walking the floor and
gnashing his teeth and muttering something about keeping the Law
waiting. Jed tried to start him on 'Sweet Adeline,' but it wouldn't
work. He wants you, Mark, and he wants you quick."

"I'm going." Mark Trent paused on the threshold. "Good-night, Brooke.
We'll finish our talk tomorrow."




XXIV


"We'll finish our talk tomorrow."

A month had passed since Mark Trent had flung those words at her, since
she had left Lookout House. They had echoed to the accompaniment of the
whir of the wings of the great plane in which she had flown south at the
urgency and the expense of Carston's Inc.; they had intruded in business
hours; they had flitted like wraiths through her dreams. She had not
seen him, he hadn't even written, Brooke told herself bitterly. Hadn't
he said that he had made a lot of mistakes, but that he had learned
enough not to make the mistake of asking her to marry him? After that,
why couldn't she forget? Why did his voice everlastingly echo through
her memory? Easily answered. Had anyone reason to know better than she
that he was a superb actor? Hadn't he made Sam's play? Hadn't those
lines provided a perfect exit?

For days after her arrival at Palm Beach she had thought that he might
come, had imagined him striding forward to meet her as she stepped into
the patio of the house where she lived, had even visualized his
wonderful smile; or perhaps she would meet him on the street and greet
him with cool, sophisticated surprise while all the time her heart would
be suffocating her with its beat.

The days had slid by with the rapidity of telegraph poles past an
express train window. She was conscious of a sort of breathless urge to
keep up with something which was escaping her.

Keep up with what, she asked herself, as in the flower scented dressing
room of Carston's Inc. she slipped out of the green organza number she
had been modeling and into a frock of cool yellow linen. She was looking
out unseeingly at the palm bordered white street when Madame Céleste
entered. Her thin white frock rested Brooke's eyes after the rainbow
collection she had put on and off for the last two hours.

"You done noble, _cherie_," the woman approved heartily.

There was something in her nasal twang as refreshing as a breeze from a
thousand New England hills blowing through this tropical paradise.

"That last customer is one of the richest girls in the country. She
ordered all the gowns you modeled. You look kind of tired, you've a
right to, _cherie_, after landing that whale of an order. Get some lunch
here, go home and rest until four, then come back. You will dress here,
the society models will dress at the Shaw's sports house. Sidoné will be
there to help them. You'll be the only professional mannequin, but I
wouldn't trust an amateur to show that wedding gown. The charity fête
begins at five. The wedding party will be the last feature of the style
show. Look your best. We expect that some prospective bride will snap up
the whole outfit when she sees you walk up the ribbon and flower
bordered aisle in that heavenly white satin veiled in a mist of tulle.
You'll make a ravishing bride, _cherie_; it will be your last
appearance, so knock their eyes out."

The words "last appearance" penetrated the turmoil in Brooke's mind.

"Last appearance! What do you mean?"

Madame Céleste twisted her amethyst beads. "_Cherie_, don't go white on
me. You know business hasn't been too good, and I have my orders. After
the fashion show I'm to hand you a cheque for your commissions and a
month's pay and you're through."

"But--but I thought I had sold a lot of frocks since I came."

"You have, and you can search me for the boss's reasons. Never knew him
to turn a trick like this before--but, I ask you, is any business being
run as it ever was run before? I'll tell the world it isn't. I'm
terribly sorry to lose you."

For an instant, emotion threatened damage to the enameled calm of the
woman's face.

"And I'm sorry to leave you, Madame Céleste. You've been more than kind
to me from the day I started to model sports clothes, that seems
centuries ago instead of years, and I've loved working for you. I'll be
on hand promptly this afternoon. If this is to be my Palm Beach
swan-song, of course I want to knock their eyes out. _Au revoir_,
madame!"

Brooke was still puzzling over her dismissal when she reached the small
Bermuda-type house, with its white-washed roof and walls built around
two sides of a patio, in which she had been living since she had come to
Palm Beach, and entered her room. It was a narrow room, cool and
shadowy, with delicate green hangings. Green toile de jouey covered the
chairs, draped the dressing table. Two long windows shaded with dark
jalousies opened on a gallery floored with tiles.

She changed from the yellow cotton frock to white shantung pajamas. She
picked up letters from a desk, pushed open a window, stepped out on the
gallery and breathed deeply of the light thin air. The scent of drying
tiles, wet earth, and orange blossoms rose from below; above, fluffs of
cloud skittered across a limpidly azure sky. Far away, broad as a
giant's sash, indigo as the heavens at midnight, the gulf stream girdled
the horizon; on the sparkling blue sea between it and the shore a
mammoth yacht swung at anchor.

She glanced down into the patio with its freshly scrubbed tiles, its one
royal palm, its clump of coconut trees. Red and purple bougainvillea, a
mass of barbaric color, swayed from slender trellises. An orange-color
table and lemon chairs repeated to a tint the crest of a white cockatoo
which blinked and preened in a gilded cage.

Brooke promptly shut out the flood of memories loosed by the sight of
the bird. "Poor old Mr. Micawber," she said under her breath, and slit
open a letter from Mrs. Gregory.

Reclining in a chaise longue, she began to read:

     DEAR BROOKE--

     I suppose you are fanning yourself in the shade of a palm in one of
     the garden spots of the world, while I am looking out on a driving
     snow storm and at the town plow piling up unscalable mountains of
     white at the sides of the road. The worst storm of the winter, and
     what a winter!

     I drove by the Dane-Trent place yesterday. It didn't help my sense
     of isolation to see both houses shut tight as a drum. I've seen
     Mark several times. He's been conferring with Bill Harrison about
     our bandits. For the first time in its history this old Point has
     made the headlines. Hunt has been cleared of any connection with
     the crimes; he didn't know what Lola was doing. Mark has given him
     money and sent him to South America. He would do a thing like that.
     We'll never know how Lola came in touch with the man you call the
     Bath Crystal Bandit. He won't talk now. He and the Jacques have
     been sentenced. The Commonwealth is to have the privilege of
     housing and feeding them for several years. Pity it can't be for
     life.

     This district will send Mark Trent's name to the primaries in June
     as its candidate for senator to the Great and General Court. We've
     wanted him for years, but he wouldn't listen; probably thought that
     a political campaign would bring details of his domestic fiasco to
     the surface. Now that that's behind him, he's a different person,
     seems in high spirits. Hope that it isn't because he's in love with
     Daphne Field with whom he's everlastingly playing round.

     Jed Stewart was here yesterday to make some changes in my will. My
     diamonds are to go to you. Didn't you save them? He sent his love.
     He said he missed you. So do I. He and I are going to New York for
     the première of Sam's play. I'm taking Lucette. Jerry Field is
     tagging along. He has a prejudice against letting her out of his
     sight.

     Affectionately yours,
     ANNE GREGORY.

Birds twittered in the vines; the fronds of the royal palm in the corner
of the patio grated against each other. Brooke's eyes were on the indigo
horizon, her mind busy with the words:

"Seems in high spirits. Hope that it isn't because he's in love with
Daphne Field with whom he's everlastingly playing round."

"Oh, forget Mark Trent!" she said impatiently, and opened Lucette's
letter.

For the first two pages the word "Jerry" monopolized space; to even a
feeble-minded person it would be evident that Jerry Field was leading in
a long stag line.

Brooke was glad of that, but how did Lucette manage to take on all the
festivities and be fit for her work in the morning? As if she had
anticipated the question, Lucette wrote, with words heavily underlined
for emphasis:

     After this evening I'll cut out the night spots. There's _nothing_
     in them for me. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. If you
     hadn't lost the Dane money you would still be hovering over me like
     a hen with one chicken. You and Mother were so afraid to let me be
     on my own; _I_ know what you've been thinking from your letters.
     Trouble with you two is, you don't trust me enough. Did you think
     I would _like_ having men make passes at me? That I would _want_ to
     look and act like a silly fool from too many cocktails? That I
     would drive around the country after midnight with a man who was so
     _tight_ that I'd find myself at dawn messed up round a telegraph
     pole? I've tried them all--except the pole; that night I told my
     muddled escort that I had never driven a car like his, would he let
     me try it? I asked sweetly. He would. Of course I drove with the
     dumbbell's head parked on my shoulder, but, in the words of our old
     friend Henry W. L.,

     "Into each life some rain must fall,
     Some days must be dark and dreary."

     You know that I've always loathed cheapness, and if the pastimes
     above listed aren't cheap--cheap--_cheap_, I don't know what is.

     So _stop_ worrying about little sister, darling, and get _this_: I
     want to be like you, Brooke. _You_ don't smoke, you don't drink,
     and yet I've never seen a man who, when introduced to you, didn't
     stand a little straighter, fuss with his tie, and get that
     I've-found-her-at-last look in his eyes; and you're grand fun and
     the life of the party.

     _There_, you have the Inside Story of my life, so what? Never
     thought I would let you know how I _adored_ you--bad for you--but
     here it is.

     LUCETTE.

     P. S. News flash! Sam's play may be produced any day. Its
     predecessor is folding up; it was a terrible flop.

Brooke shut her eyes to keep back tears. She had known that Lucette
loved her, but that she set her on a pedestal was unbelievable. As to
that "I've-found-her-at-last" look in a man's eyes, she should have seen
Mark Trent's when he had called her a "schemer" in Jed Stewart's office.

Why think of it? Hadn't she plenty of happier things to think of? She
glanced at the clock. Sam's play might be produced any day. She had lost
her job. She was free to go to New York! Could she afford it? Why did
that grubby question have to pop up to take the joy out of life? Of
course she would go. She had flown to Palm Beach at the expense of
Carston's Inc. She would take a bus in return on her own. She would go
tonight, go on to a new adventure in living.

Tingling with excitement, she telephoned for a reservation on the night
bus; packed a small trunk to be sent by express; folded her silver
evening frock and accessories into the air luggage suitcase which
Carston's Inc. had provided. She would want the gala clothes for the
première--thrilling thought. She laid out an amethyst tweed suit with
crimson scarf and beret, to wear on the journey. It would be cold when
she reached New York.

All ready and somewhere to go! She glanced at the clock. There was time
for a swim before she started for the style-show. It would set her up
and refresh her. She must look her best for her positively last Palm
Beach appearance.

She slipped into a white water-frock and caught up a beach coat. Life
was gloriously worth while even if the man one loved did think one a
"schemer," she told herself, as she ran down the steps which led to the
patio.

She was humming a snatch of gay song as she crossed the strip of yellow
sand steeping in golden sunlight which the march of fashion had left
behind. Arms extended, she slid into the sparkling water. It parted.
Buoyant, foamy, it closed over her. Marvelous feeling. This would
stabilize her mind, drown haunting memories. She swam with quick
strokes, turned, floated, came back arm over arm, and, dripping with
coolness, waded out to the shore.

A man rose from the shadow of the dark hibiscus hedge outside the patio.
Its scarlet flowers seemed to nod at her in amused derision as she
stopped in surprise. Mark Trent! This was the cue for cool
sophistication.

He held out the beach coat she had dropped on the sand.

"Put this on, Brooke. Let's sit here. I want to talk to you and we may
be interrupted inside."

So, casually did he bridge the month since he had said in Lookout House
living-room:

"We'll finish our talk tomorrow."

The memory contracted her throat. Resting on one elbow, she glanced
surreptitiously at him as he sat with arms around his gray flannel
knees. Why had he come? She feigned interest in a line of surf breaking
against a distant coral reef as she sifted shining particles of sand.
She broke the silence which threatened to become permanent.

"How did you know where I was?"

"I've been playing round with Lucette, more or less. Saw Sam when I came
through New York."

"Sam! How was he?"

"Nerves taut as violin strings, otherwise in great shape."

"When does his play open?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"So soon!"

"Why that sudden look of horror?"

"It wasn't horror, it was--I've lost my job and I had planned to leave
here tonight by bus, but traveling that way I can't possibly make New
York in time for the première of 'Islands Arise.'"

"I know that you've lost your job. I had a talk with your boss before I
left the city. He agreed with me that you shouldn't miss the opening of
Sam's play."

"You mean that you told him to fire me? What right have you to interfere
in my life?"

"The right of a sort of guardian; didn't Aunt Mary Amanda so request in
that last will?" Eyes on a pelican fishing in shallow water, he accused:

"You haven't answered Jed's letters notifying you that the amount of
income you had been receiving from my aunt's estate would be deposited
monthly to your account as usual. I had to come to find out if you had
received them."

Brooke sprang to her feet. Her beach coat slipped off. Slim and
golden-skinned in her white water-frock, she dug pink toes into the hot
sand.

"I didn't answer because you both know without being told that I won't
touch that money."

Mark Trent loomed over her.

"Put this on again," he commanded grimly. "Why won't you touch that
money?"

Brooke thrust her arms into the beach coat he held and stuck her
unsteady hands into the pockets.

"Would you take a cent of Mary Amanda Dane's when I thought it mine?
Didn't you say in that snobby voice of yours the afternoon we met in Jed
Stewart's office:

"'Hope you'll enjoy the house and fortune, Miss Reyburn.' Now it's my
turn:

"'I hope you'll enjoy the house and fortune,' Mr. Trent. I'm sure Daphne
Field will be crazy about it."

"Daphne!" He caught her wrist in a grip which hurt. "Where did you get
that crazy idea?"

How crude, how unbelievably crude she had been to mention Daphne's name,
Brooke accused herself hotly. But, having blundered, she'd better see it
through with the light touch.

"From Mrs. Gregory's letter. It was full of news, all about the new
candidate for senator to the Great and General Court and--and the
current lady of his heart. She's a grand gossip."

Mark Trent's eyes drew Brooke's like a magnet. Was the light in his
laughter?

"Anne Gregory is more than a gossip; she's a strategist. I haven't
spoken to Daphne Field since the night of the play and she knows it." He
loosened his hold on her wrist. "What are you doing this afternoon?"

"I'm--I'm modeling--for the last time."

"Can't you get out of it?"

"No."

"That's decisive. I have a present for you, but this doesn't seem to be
just the moment to produce it. You seem to dislike me more than ever. I
thought we might play round together. If you can't, or won't, I'll join
a bunch of friends who wanted to date me up for some sort of fête this
afternoon. They were all excited about a plan to surprise somebody about
something. I didn't listen; I was anxious to locate you. I'll see you
tonight before I leave, Brooke."

"Are you leaving tonight?"

"Yes. By plane. Come with me?"

"Certainly not." She imitated his voice and inflection to a note as she
stopped at the gate of the patio.

"Hope you'll enjoy the trip, Mr. Trent. Happy landings!"




XXV


The sky was like a huge sapphire; the sunshine was rose-tinted; the
ocean a tumbling mass of emeralds. A fragrant breeze, a mere suggestion
of a breeze, ruffled the bright orange flame-vine on top of the high
Spanish wall which enclosed three sides of a garden open to the sea, a
garden filled with tables set in gay borders which were filmy frocks;
there were faces above the tables, faces under large hats and men's
faces with no hats at all.

From a Moorish gallery drifted male voices singing to the accompaniment
of guitars as Brooke stepped from the automobile which had brought her
to the charity fête. Carston's Inc. had staged the wedding party of the
style show with meticulous attention to detail, even to sleek shining
cars to bring the bride and bridesmaids to the ornate grilles which were
the garden gates. Reporters were there and camera men, hordes of them,
all the frills and appurtenances of a wedding except groom and ushers.

Madame Céleste, chic in black and pearls, was flushed with excitement
under her make-up; her French accent was noticeable for its absence as
she whispered last instructions:

"Wait until the singers stop, girls. The moment the orchestra strikes
the first note of the wedding march, start. Don't get flustered. Don't
get out of step. You're all lovely, your floppy hats are divine, and
your bouquets of Transvaal daisies combining the shades of your frocks
are perfect. Remember to smile when you turn in the space where the
altar should be and isn't, to come down the three stairs to the aisle.
Brooke, you are almost too white under that tulle; perhaps I should have
put on more rouge. Too late now. Remember that you're giving an
imitation of a radiantly happy bride, _cherie_. They've stopped. Ready!
Listen!"

A violin sighed a soft note. Others joined until strings and harps and
woodwinds swelled into the wedding march from Lohengrin.

Bridesmaids, their lips scarlet, their eyes shining between dark
mascared lashes, passed between the iron grilles and moved slowly up the
ribbon-outlined aisle, dragging their gold slippers a little in time to
the rhythm of the music, and the swish of their taffeta slips. The first
two were dressed in billowy rose-orange net; behind them at a short
distance came two more in a lighter tint, then two in soft yellow, then
a fourth pair in ivory, and then the bride in snowy satin so soft in
texture that it trailed in ravishing folds. Slowly she came with head
slightly bent, eyes presumably on the mass of white Transvaal daisies
and stevia she carried, hair shining like burnished copper beneath the
mist of her veil, but she could see, could feel the people who crowded
the garden, people distinguished, powerful, chic: what the papers would
headline as the cream of society.

Brooke felt the surge of motion as everyone stood up--a tribute to
Madame Céleste's stagecraft--the wedding procession was so perfect that
habit had brought the audience to its feet. She must keep her attention
on the girls in front--why had Mark Trent come to Palm Beach--this
heavenly music made one all trembly inside--drag her foot--she almost
forgot it that time--did Mark love Daphne Field--would Mrs. Gregory
write that if it were not true--would she never reach the spot where she
was to turn--three stairs to mount before she reached it--this ought to
be great fun, why was she taking it so seriously--a mass of faces--they
seemed to be closing in--even out of doors the scent of exotic perfume
and flowers was suffocating--almost there--step--drag--the vivid colors,
the people seemed unreal--she might be standing in the wings looking on
at a play--why couldn't she keep Mark Trent out of her mind--what had he
brought her--why had she said such frantic and bitter things to him--was
it love to be tormented with longing for the touch of his hand, the
sight of his smile--why did love seem so simple for a man, why did it
complicate life so for a woman--the orange-color bridesmaids were
mounting the steps.

Something pulled at her eyes like a magnet. She looked up. A group of
men was standing near the steps. All wore white suits with blue shirts
and identical ties of Java print; each one had a boutonnière of deep
blue bachelor buttons in the lapel of his coat; all were smiling
broadly, she could feel their repressed excitement. Mark Trent was with
them. His face went colorless with surprise as his eyes met hers in the
instant before she bent her head again. Why was he here? Was this the
fête a bunch of friends had urged him to attend? He hadn't expected to
see her, that was evident. Why should he? Weren't all the other models
girls whom Madame Céleste called socialites?

The stairs. One! Two! Three! She was up. The bridesmaids had deployed to
face the audience--she had almost thought "congregation"--the
orange-color frocks were at the ends of the semi-circle, the tints paled
till they came to the snow-white bride. Her veil had been thrown back.
Time for her to turn. The music swelled into a paean of triumph. It
looked miles to the iron grilles beyond which stood Madame Céleste. She
was safely down the steps! She must smile.

"Ready!"

She heard the whispered word, saw the men in white who had been standing
beside the stairs hurdle the guarding ribbon. One offered his arm to
her. Urged huskily:

"Quick! Let's put it through."

She looked up. Mark Trent! All the bitterness and pain went out of her
heart. It was as if a great wall she had built between them had crumbled
to a heap which she could cross. In a flare of gorgeous happiness she
slipped her hand under his arm.

"It would be you," she said, and smiled in the second before they were
in step with the music. Behind her she heard peals of laughter, girls'
voices, men's voices. Then applause. A woman called:

"How priceless! The men are coming out with the bridesmaids!"

Brooke stopped at the intricate iron grille. She withdrew her hand from
Trent's arm, walked back a step or two, tossed her bouquet among the
bridesmaids, waited to see it scatter in four parts, turned, and ran
out through the gateway to the limousine.

Reporters and camera men flocked after her. Machines clicked. Mark Trent
fairly lifted her into the car. He blocked the door from curious eyes as
he bent forward and kissed her on the lips. It was a tender kiss. There
was reverence in it, there was a promise in his eyes, but laughter in
his voice.

"That's an important part of the ceremony, isn't it? Hold out your left
hand, Brooke." He pressed a ring on her finger. "This is what I had for
you."

He turned away as Madame Céleste hurried up.

"Back to the salon!" She gave the order to the chauffeur with the air of
a queen on location. She pushed aside billows of tulle, and sank into
the seat beside Brooke who hid her left hand in the satin folds.

"Will our fashion show crash the front page, _cherie_? I'll say it will.
I had a feeling something was in the air when I saw that bunch of swell
men by the steps looking like a lot of kids with mischief sticking out
all over them. They rate a thousand dollar bonus from Carston's Inc.
What publicity! Handed to us on a silver platter! You should have seen
the bridesmaids coming down the aisle. Each one with an escort who
looked as if he had stepped off a fashion page of Vanity Fair. It was a
riot. The man who played groom was the top-notch of a bunch of
top-notchers. Hollywood is his home. He looks like a stout-hearted lad
who'll get what he goes after every time. If I'm a judge of a man's
eyes--believe it or not, _cherie_, I've seen 'em flame when they looked
at me--you'll see friend groom again."

As she drove home from Carston's Inc. dressed in the tweeds in which she
was to travel, Brooke kept looking at the ring on the third finger of
her left hand. The cabochon emerald blinked back at her like a great,
green eye, the diamond setting sent out innumerable sparks of light.
Gorgeous thing. She wore it only because she was afraid that it might be
lost if she took it off, she assured herself.

The soft flush of a tropical evening was stealing forward when she
entered the patio, the glamour of night was settling over the dark
mystery of the sea. The afterglow turned the masts of the distant yacht
to red gold. Birds twittered sleepily. The fronds of the royal palm
stirred gently. A man who was pacing back and forth came toward her
quickly. Brooke's pulses which had been none too steady broke into a
quickstep.

"I thought you would be flying through the air by this time, Mark," she
tried to say indifferently.

"Did you think I would leave my bride?"

She avoided his disturbing eyes.

"Bride! The wedding party turned into a riot, didn't it? It was fun.
Great theatre. Madame Céleste thinks that those men were divinely
inspired to advertise Carston's Inc. They--"

"Just a minute, dearest. Stop and get your breath while I explain my
part of it. I told you that I met some men I knew this morning. They
were all excited over a plan to surprise a wedding party at a fashion
show with groom and ushers; they were a lot of boys all set for a lark;
made me feel young just to listen to their fooling. When I found you
wouldn't play round with me I joined them. I didn't know till the last
minute that they'd picked me for the groom--not a tactful selection, and
I refused the honor. But when I saw you coming up that aisle--well, they
would have had to battle over my dead body to take my place. Forgive me,
will you?" His caressing voice sent a ripple along Brooke's veins.

"There's nothing to forgive. I thought it was fun."

"Then we'll let that ride for the present. We've got to hustle. I have a
message for you from your mother."

"From Mother! Where did you get it? How? I'm--I'm so surprised I feel as
if my mouth were puckering up like a child's." Brooke blinked back a
sudden rush of tears.

"You dear! I phoned her ten days ago."

"Phoned! Not to England."

"To England. It's being done some, you know."

"Of course I know. Don't, don't be so wooden."

"Wooden!" His laugh sent Brooke's hands behind her to clasp each other.
"First I was a silent policeman, now I'm wooden. That also we will take
up later. I didn't know what you had written your mother about the new
will. I thought she should understand that your income was the same as
when she left; otherwise she might not dare spend money to rush home for
the première of Sam's play this week."

"It is not the same as when she went away."

"Your mistake. It is. She arrives in New York tomorrow."

"Tomorrow! I don't care what it costs. I'll fly."

"I thought you'd feel that way. I have reservations for us for the night
plane." He glanced at his watch. "Throw some things into a suitcase,
air-weight, remember. I have a car outside. We have just time to make
the flying field."

Was she real, was anything real, Brooke asked herself, as the automobile
burned up miles and the broad road flowed away from it. It was alive
enough now; the Palm Beach world was hastening to eat, drink, and be
merry. Above, through the warm black velvet dome, dripped a million or
two stars. A magic night. Shining automobiles, gracefully long and low;
others, silent, powerful, fast, provided glimpses of gay wraps, films of
chiffon, glints of lamé, smooth heads, waved coiffures, sparkling
jewels, the sombre black of evening clothes. Chairs propelled by boys
with faces dark as chunks of obsidian held gayly appareled occupants.
She glanced at Mark Trent beside her. Was he real? As if he had divined
her question, he touched the ring on her left hand.

"Like it? Is it big enough, gorgeous enough?"

"It's perfect."

"Then you'll wear it always, won't you? You know that I love you, have
loved you from the moment I caught you up from in front of that
roadster, that I want you to marry me, don't you? You didn't think for a
minute that I would leave you behind here, did you?" His hand tightened
on hers.

"But you said--that last night at Lookout House--that you had made a lot
of mistakes in your life but that you had learned enough not to make the
mistake of asking me to marry you."

"Wouldn't it have been a mistake--then? You were so angry that you would
have turned me down, wouldn't you? I couldn't afford to risk that.
You're not angry now, are you, beautiful?"

His husky voice, his demanding eyes, the grip of his hand on hers rushed
through Brooke like a tide of crystal water, sweeping away doubt and
fear and heartbreak. He hadn't asked her to marry him because she had
lost the fortune. He cared. She would never fail him, never. She tried
to keep her voice light as she asked:

"Do you realize that this is the first time you've mentioned love,
Mr.--"

"Come here!"

He caught her close. His eager, ardent lips on hers stopped her unsteady
voice.

The car drew up with a jerk. The driver pulled open the door.

"We made it, boss--" He stopped. Put his full-moon face into reverse.
Reminded over his shoulder:

"You've got three minutes. Boy waiting for your bags. If you've decided
not to go--"

Mark Trent jumped out. Turned to Brooke.

"Coming?"

She put her hand in his, avoided his eyes as she stepped to the ground.
Great twin motors purred beyond an open gate at the starting apron. A
giant torchlight swept the sky. From a passing car drifted a man's voice
singing:

    "'You may not be an angel
    But angels are so few,
    That until the day one comes along
    I'll trail along with you.'"

Brooke said breathlessly:

"Is it real? Will you trail along with me? Do you love me, Mark?"

His hand tightened on hers. Something in his eyes took hold of something
deep in her soul.

"Love you! That's a slight understatement, but we'll let it pass--for
the present. Are we going to New York in that plane?"

"I'm sorry. I--"

Mark Trent's laugh was young and buoyant.

"Don't apologize."

"I'm not apologizing. I'm just explaining," Brooke retorted gayly, as
hand in hand they raced toward the great winged gray monster already
quivering into life.


       *       *       *       *       *


_Other Books by_

EMILIE LORING

WE RIDE THE GALE!

HILLTOPS CLEAR

UNCHARTED SEAS

FAIR TOMORROW

LIGHTED WINDOWS

SWIFT WATER

GAY COURAGE

THE SOLITARY HORSEMAN

A CERTAIN CROSSROAD

HERE COMES THE SUN!

THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT


[The end of _With Banners_ by Emilie Loring]