x.x.xV

The rest of the party has scattered to the gardens or the porch--Oliver has wandered into the library alone to wait for Peter who is bringing around the two-seater himself. It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall beside him makes him jump.

Then he remembers--that must be Mr. Piper's office through the closed door there. He remembers, as well, Peter joking with his father once about his never getting away from business even in the country and pointing at the half dozen telephones on top of the big flat desk with a derisive gesture while detailing to Oliver the fondness that Sargent Piper has for secretive private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. "Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke--the cryptic old person!"

Peter had said with mocking affection.

The telephone chirrups again and Oliver gets up and goes toward the door of the office with a vague idea of answering it since there seem to be no servants about. Then he remembers something else--Peter's telling him that nothing irritates his father more than having anyone else answer one of his private wires--and stops with his hand on the door that has swung inward an inch or so already under his casual pressure. It doesn't matter anyhow--there--somebody has answered it--Mr. Piper probably, as there is another door to the office and both of them are generally kept locked. Mr. Piper like all great business men has his petty idiosyncrasies.

Oliver is just starting to turn away when a whisper of sound that seems oddly like "Mrs. Severance" comes to his ear by some trick of acoustics through the door. He hesitates--and stays where he is, wondering all the time why he is doing anything so silly and unguest-like--and also what on earth he could say if Mr. Piper suddenly flung open the door. But Ted has told him a good deal at various times of the more mysterious aspects of Mrs. Severance, and her name jumping out at him this way from the middle of Mr. Piper's private office makes it rather hard to act like a copybook gentleman--especially with his last conversation with Ted still plain in his mind.

The voices are too low for him to hear anything distinctly but again one of the speakers says "Mrs. Severance"--of that he is entirely sure. The receiver clicks back and Oliver regains the lounge in three long soft strides, thanking his carelessness that he is still wearing rubber-soled sport-shoes. He is very much absorbed in an article on "Fishing for Tuna" when Peter comes in.

"Well, Oliver, everything ready for you. Awfully sorry you have to rush in this way--"

"Yes, nuisance all right, but it's my one best editor and that may mean something real--terribly cheeky thing for me to do, Pete--b.u.mming your car like this--"

"Oh rats, you know you're welcome--and anyhow I'm lending it to you because you'll have to bring it back, and that means you'll come back yourself--"

"Well look, Pete, _please_ make all the excuses you can for me to your mother. And I'll run back here and change and then go over to the Rackstraws', as soon as I can--Elinor told you about Ted?"

"Yes. Sounds sort of simple to me asking him back tonight for that beach picnic tomorrow when he absolutely had to leave this morning--but I never could keep all Elinor's social arrangements straight. Certainly hope he can get off."

"So do I," says Oliver non-committally and then the door of Mr. Piper's office opens and Mr. Piper comes out looking as well-brushed and courteous as usual but with a face that seems as if it had been touched all over lightly with a grey painful stain.

"h.e.l.lo, Father? Anything up from Secret Headquarters?"

"No, boy," and Oliver is surprised at the effort with which Mr. Piper smiles. "Winthrop called up a few minutes ago about those Hungarian bonds but it wasn't anything important--" and again Oliver is very much surprised indeed, though he does not show it.

"Is your mother here, Peter?"

"Upstairs dressing, I think, Father."

Mr. Piper hesitates.

"Well, you might tell her--it's nothing of consequence but I must go in to town for a few hours--I shall have them give me a sandwich or so now and catch the 7.03, I think."

"But look, Father, Oliver has to go in too, for dinner--he's taking the two-seater now. Why don't you let him take you too--that would save time--" "Perfectly delighted to, Mr. Piper, of course, and--"

Mr. Piper looks full at Oliver--a little strangely, Oliver thinks.

"That would be--" Mr. Piper begins, and then seems to change his mind for no apparent reason. "No, I think the train would be better, I do not wish to get in too early, though I thank you, Oliver," he says with an old-fashioned bob of his head. "And now I must really--a little food perhaps"--and he escapes before either Oliver or Peter has time to argue the question. Oliver turns to Peter.

"Look here, Pete, if I'm--"

"You're not. Oh _I'd_ think it'd be a lot more sensible of Father to let you take him in, but you never can tell about Father. Something must be up, though, in spite of what he says--he's supposed to be on a vacation and I haven't seen him look the way he does tonight since some of the tight squeezes in the war."

x.x.xVI

It all started by having too much Mrs. Winters at a time, Nancy decided later. Mrs. Winters went down with comparative painlessness in homeopathic doses but Mrs. Winters day in and day out was too much like being forcibly fed with thick raspberry syrup. And then there had been walking up the Avenue from the Library alone the evening before--and remembering walks with Oliver--and coming across that copy of the "Shropshire Lad" in Mrs. Winters' bookcase and thinking just how Oliver's voice had sounded when he read it aloud to her--a process of some difficulty, she recalled, because he had tried to read with an arm around her. And then all the next day as she tried to work nothing but Oliver, Oliver, running through her mind softshoed like a light and tireless runner, crumbling all proper dignity and good resolutions away from her, little hard pebble by little hard pebble, till she had finally given up altogether, called up Vanamee and Company on the telephone and asked, with her heart in her mouth, if Mr. Oliver Crowe were there. The reply that came seemed unreal somehow--she had been so sure he would be and every nerve in her body had been so strung to wonder at what she was going to say or do when he finally answered, that the news that he had left three weeks before brought her down to earth as suddenly as if she had been tripped. All she could think of was that it must be because of her that Oliver had left the company--and illogically picture a starving Oliver painfully wandering the streets of New York and gazing at the food displayed in restaurant windows with lost and hopeless eyes.

Then she shook herself--what nonsense--he must be at Melgrove. She couldn't call him up at Melgrove, though, he mightn't be there when she 'phoned and then his family would answer and what his family must think of her now, when they'd been so perfectly lovely when she and Oliver were first engaged--she shivered a little--no, that wouldn't do. And letters never really said things--it mustn't be letters--besides, she thought, humbly, it would be so awful to have Oliver send letters back unopened. Two weeks of pure Mrs. Winters had chastened Nancy to an unusual degree.

For all that though, it was not until Mrs. Winters had left her alone for the evening after offering her an invitation to attend a little discussion group that met Wednesday evenings and read literary papers at each other, an invitation which Nancy somewhat stubbornly declined, that she finally made up her mind. Then she sighed and went to the telephone again.

"Mr. Oliver Crowe? He is away on a visit just at present but we expect him back tomorrow afternoon." Margaret is pretending for her own satisfaction over the wire that the Crowes have a maid. "Who is calling, please?"

Rather shakily, "A f-friend."

Briskly. "I understand. Well, he will be back tomorrow. Is that all that you wished to inquire? No message?"

"Good-by then," and again Nancy thinks that things simply will not be dramatic no matter how hard she tries.

She decides to take a small walk however--small because she simply must get to bed before Mrs. Winters comes back and starts talking at her improvingly. The walk seems to take her directly to the nearest Subway--and so to the Pennsylvania Station, where, after she has acquired a timetable of trains to Melgrove, she seems to be a good deal happier than she has been for some time. At least as she is going up the cake-colored stairs to the Arcade again she cannot help taking the last one with an irrepressible skip.

x.x.xVII

Oliver had quite a little time to think things over as the two-seater purred along smooth roads toward New York. The longer he thought them over, the less amiable some few of the things appeared. He formed and rejected a dozen more or less incredible hypotheses as to what possible connection there could be between Mrs. Severance and Sargent Piper--none of them seemed to fit entirely and yet there must be something perfectly simple, perfectly easy to explain--only what on earth could it be?

He went looking through his mind for any sc.r.a.ps that might possibly piece together--of course he hadn't known Peter since College without finding out that in spite of their extreme politeness toward each other, Peter's mother and father really didn't get on. Club-stories came to him that he had tried to get away from--the kind of stories that were told about any prominent man, he supposed--a little leering paragraph in "Town Gossip"--a dozen words dropped with the easy a.s.suredness of tone that meant the speakers were alluding to something that everyone knew by people who hadn't realized that he was Peter's friend. A caustically frank discussion of Mrs. Severance with Ted in one of Ted's bitter moods--a discussion that had given Oliver a bad half-hour later with Louise.

But things like that didn't _happen_--people whose houses you stayed at--people your sister brought home over the week-end--the fathers of your own friends. And then Oliver winced as he remembered the afternoon when all the New Haven evening papers had screamed with headlines over the Witterly divorce suit--and Bob Witterly's leaving College because he couldn't stand it--that had been people you knew all right--and everyone had always had such a good time at the Witterlys' too.

It was all perfectly incredible of course--but he would have to find Ted just as soon as possible, no matter where he had to go to find him--and as the little reel of the speedometer began to hitch toward the left and into higher figures, Oliver felt very relieved indeed that he had the two-seater and that Mr. Piper wasn't coming into town till the 7.03.

He got into New York to find he hadn't made as good time as he'd thought--a couple of traffic blocks had kept him back for valuable minutes--though of course the minutes couldn't be valuable exactly when it was all bosh about his having to get in so quickly after all. He went first to 252A Madison Avenue, hoping most heartily that Ted would be there on the fifth floor with his eyeshade over his eyes and large law-books crowding his desk, but the door was locked and knockings brought no response except a peevish voice from the other side of the narrow hall requesting any gentleman that was a gentleman to shut up for Gawd's sake. The Yale Club next--there was just a chance that Ted might be there--

Oliver went through the Yale Club a good deal more thoroughly than most pages, from the lobby to the upstairs dining-room. He even invaded the library to the suspicious annoyance of some old uncle who was pretending to read a book held upside down in his lap in order to camouflage his pre-prandial nap. No Ted--though half-a-dozen acquaintances who insisted on saying h.e.l.lo and taking up time. Back to the street and a slight dispute with a policeman as regarded the place where Oliver had parked his car. He looked at his watch just before poking the self-starter--Mr.

Piper's train must be halfway to New York by now. He set his lips and turned down 44th Street toward the Avenue.

Fourth floor Ted had said. The elevator went much too quickly for Oliver--he was standing in front of a most non-committal door-bell before he had arranged the racing tumult of thought in his mind enough to be in any measure sure of just what the devil he was going to say.

Moreover he was oppressed by a familiar and stomachless sensation--the sensation he always had when he tried to high-dive and stood looking gingerly down from a shaky platform at water that seemed a thousand miles away and as flat and hard as a blue steel plate. There wasn't any guide in any Manual of Etiquette he had ever heard of on What to Say When Interrupting a Tete-a-Tete between Your Best Friend and a Dangerous And Beautiful Woman. He wondered idly if Ted would ever speak to him again--Mrs. Severance certainly wouldn't--and he rather imagined that even if Ted and Elinor did get married he would hardly be the welcome guest he had always expected to be there.

Well, that was what you get for trying to pull a Jonathan when the Saul in question was behaving a good deal more like David in the affair with Uriah the Hitt.i.te's spouse--and it wasn't safe and Biblical and all done with a couple of thousand years ago but abashingly real and now happening directly under your own astonished eyes. He licked his lips a little nervously--they seemed to be rather dry. No use standing outside the door like a wooden statue of Unwelcome Propriety anyhow--the thing had to be done, that was all--and he pushed the bell-b.u.t.ton with all the decision he could force into his finger.

The fact that it was not answered at once helped him a good deal by giving him a certain strength of annoyance. He pushed again.

It was Mrs. Severance who answered it finally--and the moment he saw her face he knew with an immense invisible shock of relief how right he had been, for it was composed as an idol's but under the composure there was emotion, and, the moment she saw him, anger, as strong and steady and impa.s.sive as the color of a metal that is only white because it has been possessed to extremity already with all the burning heat that its substance can bear. She was dressed in some stuff that moved with her and was part of her as wholly as if it and her body had been made together out of light and gilded cloud--he had somehow never imagined that she could be as--l.u.s.trous--as that--it gave him the sensation that he had only seen her before when she was unlighted like an empty lantern, and that now there was such fire of light in her that the very gla.s.s that contained it seemed to be burning of itself. And then he realized that she had given him good-evening with an exquisite politeness, shaken hands and now was obviously waiting, with a little tired look of surprise around her mouth, to find out exactly why he was there at all.

He gathered his wits--it wasn't fair, somehow, for her to be wearing that air of delicate astonishment at an unexpected call at dinner-time when he hadn't been invited--it forced him into being so casually polite.

"Sorry to break in on you like this, Mrs. Severance," he said with a ghastly feeling that after all he might be entirely wrong, and another that it was queer to have to be so formal, in the afternoon tea sense, with his words when his whole mind was boiling with pictures of everything from Ted as a modern Tannhauser in a New York Venusberg to triangular murder. "I hope I'm not--disturbing you?"