She was obeyed instantly. The circle opened to make room, and Susan crossed to us. “Yes, Trella?”
“I want to present Mr. Green. Alan. He has taken Jim’s place. He has met everyone but you, and that didn’t seem fair.”
I took the offered hand and felt it warm and firm for the fifth of a second she let me have it. Her face
“Welcome to our aerie, Mr. Green,” she said. Her voice was low, and was shy or coy or wary or demure, depending on your attitude. I had no attitude, and didn’t intend to have one until I could give reasons. All I would have conceded on the spot was that she didn’t hiss like a cobra or rattle like a rattler. As for her being the only one of the bunch to bid me welcome, that was sociable and kindhearted, but it would seem that she might have left that to the lady of the house. I thanked her for it anyway. She glanced at Trella, apparently uncertain whether to let it go at that or stay for a chat, murmured something polite, and moved away.
“I think it’s in her bones,” Trella said. “Or maybe her blood. Anyhow it’s nothing you can see or hear. Some kind of hypnotism, but I think she can turn it on and off. Did you feel anything?”
“I’m a secretary,” Mrs. Jarrell. Secretaries don’t feel.”
“The hell they don’t. Jim Eber did. Of course you’ve barely met her and you may be immune.”
Trella was telling me about a book on hypnotism she had read when Steck came to tell her dinner was ready.
It was uneven, five women and six men, and I was put between Lois and Roger Foote. There were several features deserving comment. The stenographer not only ate with the family, she sat next to Jarrell. The housekeeper, Mrs. Latham, helped serve. I had always thought a housekeeper was above it. Roger Foote, who had had enough to drink, ate like a truck driver-no, cut that-like a panhandler. The talk was spotty, mostly neighbor-to- neighbor, except when Corey Brigham sounded off about the Eisenhower budget. The leg of lamb was first-rate, not up to Fritz’s, but good. I noticed Trella noticing me the second time around. The salad was soggy. I’m not an expert on wine, but I doubted if it deserved the remarks it got from Herman Dietz.
As we were passing through the Moorish arch-half-Moorish, anyway-to return to the lounge for coffee, Trella asked me if I played bridge, and Jarrell heard her.
“Not tonight,” he said. “I need him. I won’t be here tomorrow. You’ve got enough.”
“Not without Nora. You know Susan doesn’t play.”
“I don’t need Nora. You can have her.”
If Susan had played, and if I could have swung it to be at her table, I would have been sorry to miss it. Perhaps you don’t know all there is to know about a woman after watching her at an evening of bridge, but you should know more than when you sat down. By the time we were through with coffee they had chosen partners and Steck had the tables ready. I had wondered if Susan would go off to her pit, but apparently not. When Jarrell and I left she was out on the terrace.
He led the way through the reception hall, across a Kirman twice as big as my room at home-I have a Kirman there, paid for by me, 8’4” x 3’2”-down the corridor, and around a couple of corners, to the door of the library. Taking a key fold from a pocket, he selected one, used it, and pushed the door open; and light came at us, so sudden and so strong that it made me blink. I may also have jumped.
He laughed, closing the key fold. “That’s my idea.” He pointed above the door. “See the clock? Anyone coming in, his picture is taken, and the clock shows the time. Not only that, it goes by closed circuit to the Horland Protective Agency, only three blocks away. A man there saw us come in just now. There’s a switch at my desk and when we’re in here we turn it off-Nora or I. I’ve got them at the doors of the apartment too, front and back. By the way, I’ll give you keys. With this I don’t have to wonder about keys-for instance, Jim Eber could have had duplicates made. I don’t give a damn if he did. What do you think of it?”
“Very neat. Expensive, but neat. I ought to mention, if someone at Horland’s saw me come in with you, he may know me, by sight anyway. A lot of them do. Does that matter?”
“I doubt it.” He had turned on lights and gone to his desk. “I’ll call them. Damn it, I could have come in first and switched it off. I’ll call them. Sit down. Have a cigar?”
It was the cigar he had lit in the lounge after dinner that had warned me to keep my eyes on the road. I don’t smoke them myself, but I admit that the finest tobacco smell you can get is a whiff from the lit end of a fine Havana, and when the box had been passed I had noticed that they were Portanagas. But I had not enjoyed the whiff I had got from the one Jarrell had lit. In fact, I had snorted it out. That was bad. When you can’t stand the smell of a Portanaga because a client is smoking it, watch out or you’ll be giving him the short end of the stick, which is unethical. Anyway, I saved him three bucks by not taking one.
He leaned back, let smoke float out of his mouth, and inquired, “What impression did you get?”
I looked judicious. “Not much of any. I only spoke a few words with her. Your suggestion that I get the others talking about her, especially your wife and your wife’s brother-there has been no opportunity for that, and there won’t be while they’re playing cards. I think I ought to cultivate Corey Brigham.”
He nodded. “You saw how it was there before dinner.”
“Sure. Also Foote and Dietz, not to mention your son. Your wife thinks she hypnotizes them.”
“You don’t know what my wife thinks. You only know what she says she thinks. Then you discussed her with my wife?”
“Not at any length. I don’t quite see when I’m going to discuss her at length with any of them. I don’t see how this is going to work. As your secretary I should be spending my day in here with you and Miss Kent, and if they spend the evening at bridge?”
“I know.” He tapped ash off in a tray. “You won’t have to spend tomorrow in here. I’m taking a morning plane to Toledo, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Actually my secretary has damn little to do when I’m not here. Nora knows everything, and I’ll tell her to forget about you until I return. As I told you this afternoon, I’m
