Eloise Mathews sat frozen in her chair, staring without comprehension at Opal.
Mathews was trembling, a shrunken grey-faced sick man whose lower lip and lower eyelids sagged.
Shad O'Rory was sitting forward in his chair, finely modeled long face pale and hard, eyes like blue-grey ice, hands gripping chair-arms, feet flat on the floor.
'Second,' Ned Beaumont said, his poise nowise disturbed by the agitation of the others, 'she—'
'Ned, don't!' Opal Madvig cried.
He screwed himself around on the floor then to look up at her.
She had taken her hand from her mouth. Her hands were knotted together against her chest. Her stricken eyes, her whole haggard face, begged mercy of him.
He studied her gravely awhile. Through window and wall came the sound of rain dashing against the building in wild gusts and between gusts the bustling of the near-by river. His eyes, studying her, were cool, deliberate. Presently he spoke to her in a voice kind enough but aloof: 'Isn't that why you're here?'
'Please don't,' she said hoarsely.
He moved his lips in a thin smile that his eyes had nothing to do with and asked: 'Nobody's supposed to go around talking about it except you and your father's other enemies?'
She put her hands—fists—down at her sides, raised her face angrily, and said in a hard ringing voice: 'He did murder Taylor.'
Ned Beaumont leaned back against his hand again and looked up at Eloise Mathews. 'That's what I was telling you,' he drawled. 'Thinking that, she went to your husband after she saw the junk he printed this morning. Of course he didn't think Paul had done any killing: he's just in a tough spot—with his mortgages held by the State Central, which is owned by Shad's candidate for the Senate—and he has to do what he's told. What she—'
Mathews interrupted him. The publisher's voice was thin and desperate. 'Now you stop that, Beaumont. You—'
O'Rory interrupted Mathews. O'Rory's voice was quiet, musical. 'Let him talk, Mathews,' he said. 'Let him say his say.'
'Thanks, Shad,' Ned Beaumont said carelessly, not looking around, and went on: 'She went to your husband to have him confirm her suspicion, but he couldn't give her anything that would do that unless he lied to her. He doesn't know anything. He's simply throwing mud wherever Shad tells him to throw it. But here's what he can do and does. He can print in tomorrow's paper the story about her coming in and telling him she believes her father killed her lover. That'll be a lovely wallop. 'Opal Madvig Accuses Father of Murder; Boss's Daughter Says He Killed Senator's Son!' Can't you see that in black ink all across the front of the Observer?'
Eloise Mathews, her eyes large, her face white, was listening breathlessly, bending forward, her face above his. Wind-flung rain beat walls and windows. Rusty filled and emptied his lungs with a long sighing breath.
Ned Beaumont put the tip of his tongue between smiling lips, withdrew it, and said: 'That's why he brought her up here, to keep her under cover till the story breaks. Maybe he knew Shad and the boys were here, maybe not. It doesn't make any difference. He's getting her off where nobody can find out what she's done till the papers are out. I don't mean that he'd've brought her here, or would hold her here, against her will— that wouldn't be very bright of him the way things stack up now—but none of that's necessary. She's willing to go to any lengths to ruin her father.'
Opal Madvig said, in a whisper, but distinctly: 'He did kill him.'
Ned Beaumont sat up straight and looked at her. He looked solemnly at her for a moment, then smiled, shook his head in a gesture of amused resignation, and leaned back on his elbows.
Eloise Mathews was staring with dark eyes wherein wonder was predominant at her husband. He had sat down. His head was bowed. His hands hid his face.
Shad O'Rory recrossed his legs and took out a cigarette. 'Through?' he asked mildly.
Ned Beaumont's back was to O'Rory. He did not turn to reply: 'You'd hardly believe how through I am.' His voice was level, but his face was suddenly tired, spent.
O'Rory lit his cigarette. 'Well,' he said when he had done that, 'what the hell does it all amount to? It's our turn to hang a big one on you and we're doing it. The girl came in with the story on her own hook. She came here because she wanted to. So did you. She and you and anybody else can go wherever they want to go whenever they want to.' He stood up. 'Personally, I'm wanting to go to bed. Where do I sleep, Mathews?'
Eloise Mathews spoke, to her husband: 'This is not true, Hal.' It was not a question.
He was slow taking his hands from his face. He achieved dignity saying: 'Darling, there is a dozen times enough evidence against Madvig to justify us in insisting that the police at least question him. That is all we have done.'
'I did not mean that,' his wife said.
'Well, darling, when Miss Madvig came—' He faltered, stopped, a grey-faced man who shivered before the look in his wife's eyes and put his hands over his face again.
Eloise Mathews and Ned Beaumont were alone in the large ground-floor room, sitting, in chairs a few feet apart, with the fireplace in front of them. She was bent forward, looking with tragic eyes at the last burning log. His legs were crossed. One of his arms was hooked over the back of his chair. He smoked a cigar and watched her surreptitiously.
The stairs creaked and her husband came half-way down them. He was fully clothed except that he had taken off his collar. His necktie, partially loosened, hung outside his vest. He said: 'Darling, won't you come to bed? It's midnight.'
She did not move.
He said: 'Mr. Beaumont, will you—?'
Ned Beaumont, when his name was spoken, turned his face towards the man on the stairs, a face cruelly placid. When Mathews's voice broke, Ned Beaumont returned his attention to his cigar and Mathews's wife.
After a little while Mathews went upstairs again.
Eloise Mathews spoke without taking her gaze from the fire. 'There is some whisky in the chest. Will you get it?'
'Surely.' He found the whisky and brought it to her, then found some glasses. 'Straight?' he asked.
She nodded. Her round breasts were moving the red silk of her dress irregularly with her breathing.
He poured two large drinks.
She did not look up from the fire until he had put one glass in her hand. When she looked up she smiled, crookedly, twisting her heavily rouged exquisite thin lips sidewise. Her eyes, reflecting red light from the fire, were too bright.
He smiled down at her.
She lifted her glass and said, cooing: 'To my husband!'
Ned Beaumont said, 'No,' casually and tossed the contents of his glass into the fireplace, where it spluttered and threw dancing flames up.
She laughed in delight and jumped to her feet. 'Pour another,' she ordered.
He picked the bottle up from the floor and refilled his glass.
She lifted hers high over her head. 'To you!'
They drank. She shuddered.
'Better take something with it or after it,' he suggested.
She shook her head. 'I want it that way.' She put a hand on his arm and turned her back to the fire, standing close beside him. 'Let's bring that bench over here.'
'That's an idea,' he agreed.
They moved the chairs from in front of the fireplace and brought the bench there, he carrying one end, she the other. The bench was broad, low, backless.
'Now turn off the lights,' she said.
He did so. When he returned to the bench she was sitting on it pouring whisky into their glasses.
'To you, this time,' he said and they drank and she shuddered.
He sat beside her. They were rosy in the glow from the fireplace.
The stairs creaked and her husband came down them. He halted on the bottom step and said: 'Please, darling!'
