 
was the way they sat at dinner. Belknap regretted Miss Video on his left. He was one of the few who had never been properly infatuated with the Romany patteran, as he privately named her for her continuous flow of inconsequential chatter, and had therefore never liked her. It was one thing or the other with Romany. She was a sylph-like creature with enormous eyes, an auburn Viennese bob, and a disingenuous manner. She ‘needed’ them, was the way men put it, Belknap, always irritated by willowy natures, now wished her in Kingdom Come. He wanted to renew the dangerous but charming intimacies that had swiftly and strangely sprung up between himself and Nadia Mdevani; and here would have been his opportunity, with Nadia beside him sending odd disturbing currents up the arm that almost brushed hers. He felt her mind being restive and wild, puzzled and angry, and above all keenly intent on a loophole of escape. If anyone else should succeed in silencing Whittaker forever it would not be because Nadia had yielded her designs but because she had delayed long enough to be cunning and intricate in their workmanship. She even seemed, now that the die was cast, rather to relish the added risk of having Belknap in the arena with “Hush, dear, people are listening.” “Then darling, more darling, most darling.” “Don’t, please!” “I want to see your amber eyes, not the back of a leaf-brown head.” “Don’t say things like that at the table. Speak when you are spoken to.” “Can’t you say something nice to me?” She looked around at him, half tearful, half laughing, under her lashes. “Oh, my dearest one, is it as bad as all that?” “Worse, Joel, much worse.” Of course it must be a dream, and a very bad one, that Whittaker had been saying things about cancer and murder and murderers. The more so when one looked at Whittaker himself, sitting genially, though perhaps with an extra dash of grey pallor, at the head of his board, lifting his champagne to touch glasses with Sydney Crawford: “To the lips, to the eyes.” The Stein song again! Would its revival never die? Yet it quite applied at Whittaker’s table tonight. Every woman in her way was as fair, as vital, as more than willing to play up, as any man could ask. Even Sydney, with a flash of challenging laughter at her husband, was returning Hartley Blake’s sallies in kind. Sydney was obviously fey tonight, with a heightened Blake was in his usual excellent form; and it was plain to see thought his wit of too good a flavor to be entirely spent on a woman, even the excited Sydney. So he was tossing it by means of a slightly lifted voice up over his right shoulder at Dorn. Dorn however looked darkly unresponsive, and, being a man of few words, it seemed probable Blake would never know whether his delightful flippancies and exaggerations were being appreciated. Then, suddenly, he knew: “As for myself,” Dorn remarked to his side-partners in particular, and to the table tangentially, “I have recently resolved to remain silent unless I feel that I can definitely contribute something worth while to the conversation. Time and energy are indiscriminately wasted in the futile, the repetitive, and the platitudinous. If we could hold our tongues until they were loosed by the real idea, the absolute necessity of speech, there would at least be a deal less noise, and quite possibly a return to the art of thinking which at present is a lost one.” It was an insulting and uncalled for remark “I should not only hold it, Dorn, I should bite it if I were you.” The silence that fell in the room was deep and ominous. But in it was Whittaker’s opportunity, not only to distract Dorn and Blake, but to call attention to himself. Here, like Jason, he could cast his stone among the dragon’s teeth. “I believe I have a contribution to make to the conversation, to the evening’s pastime, and I hope to posterity.” Belknap, without looking her way, knew that Nadia stiffened and straightened at the words. As for the others, their eyes turned to Whittaker expectantly, but with no premonitory awakening. “I had planned letting you learn of what I intend when it had ceased to be an intention and become an actuality. In other words, you were only to know of the publication of my memoirs when you saw them in print. But I really can’t resist a “Oh, how wonderful of you, Uncle Bertrand,” Joel exclaimed, eager to help him, as she thought, tide over the embarrassing moment. “I didn’t know you were writing. You have so many irons in the fire, how did you find time to do a book? But it must have been pretty good fun, so much has happened to you.” “It isn’t recent, Joel; it’s been written at odd moments over a period of twenty years. In other words, it’s my Diary. But it is packed full of material, and all sorts of things. Everybody’s in it. Oh yes, you are all there, my dears.” “You talk like Red Riding Hood’s wolf, Bertrand,” Nadia said with cold acidity, and at her tone the first chill, like the first autumn frost, fell on them all. “Just what do you mean when you say we are in it?” “Exactly that, Nadia darling. I hope you are in it to the life, as I’m sure I am.” “You mean it is a character portrayal of your friends and foes as well as a revelation of your own “You express it in a nutshell.” Blake spoke. “By what right does one betray one’s friends—even in the cause of literature; and you will excuse me, Whittaker, if I doubt the literary merits of your pen.” “By the modern right of giving the public what it craves and pays for: the revelation of evil, the worse the merrier. It used to be how I found the true light; now it is how I went plumb to Hell.” “How you did perhaps, but not how I did.” “In most instances one touches close upon the other, I’m afraid. It is a platitude of course (I ask your pardon, Dorn) to remark that we none of us can sin alone, but it is true nevertheless. Even the person that hears the tale of a crime is somehow affected. I feel the need of clearing my decks, of things heard and committed.” “I doubt it would earn you a free pass through the pearly gates, supposing your proposed act comes off. Mark I say proposed.” “Is that your glove, Blake? You must be able to get gloves at a discount.” “My glove, yes, but not concealing the dagger beneath.” “I’ll meet you where and when you please.” “With Ordway Belknap as your second, I suppose? No, thank you; there are safer ways.” “Then make it fast, man,” Whittaker cried in a suddenly broken voice as the dew of intense pain stood out on his forehead and he drooped a little forward over the table. “The time is short for both of us.” “Quick, Mr. Belknap,” Nadia exclaimed, “Romany is fainting.” It would be Romany who took things the hardest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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