She met no one on the stairs, and at the side exit she chose there were only a few strange women tourists peering hungrily into the window of a closed and lighted shop. Not much over an hour after she had received the ultimatum, Celia was across the plaza, carefully avoiding the taxi rank at the hotel front, and in a cab on her way to The Priory.
In defiance of local tradition, the lodge was built not of adobe but of imported gray stone, unexpected and coolly soothing to the eye. By daylight, with colored pennons streaming from its heights against a background of pinon-clad foothills, it had an air at once cloistered and battlemented. By night, austerely eschewing any neon or other notice beyond a chaste and floodlit one at the foot of its upwinding drive, it was a collection of soft warm gold among folds of icy darkness. The most inexperienced of tourists, unless he had a very well-padded wallet, would have driven by the wrought-iron gates in search of the more familiar scarlet and green and blue twinkles prepared for any travelers at all.
When Celia’s cab deposited her at the huge, semicircular forecourt, she said fretfully to the driver as she paid him, “My luggage was sent on ahead from Colorado, and I do hope it’s here,” but that was the only compromise she made with Fate. A reluctant gambler who had been forced to a single throw, she mounted shallow stone steps and entered The Priory.
In her hotel room, the telephone which had begun to ring before she reached the street commenced again. From its discreetly muted warbling there might have been no urgency at all, no life hanging in the balance.
Nineteen
THE warmth of the lobby was almost dizzying after the penetrating cold outside, and although the lighting was as subdued as that of a private living room it was not a remarkable gesture for Celia to let her upswung dark glasses drop casually into place. She had been to The Priory on the morning of their arrival in Santa Fe, to inspect the small formal room in which the marriage ceremony would take place, but she stood for seconds just inside the heavy carved doors as though getting her bearings. With most of her pale hair concealed by the emerald side of the head scarf, she would be to all observers but one just another woman in well-cut ski clothes.
Oriental rugs on flagstone floors, islanded chairs and sofas, a pair of black Great Danes coming unhurriedly to their haunches before the flaming logs in a huge fireplace: at this hour there were only five people not occupied elsewhere with drinks or dinner. Celia wondered flashingly if the slender haunted-looking woman in gray tweed could be Susan Vestry—she was the kind who would have grown leaner rather than plump with the years—or the turning-away profile of a woman with a fall of very black hair concealed the yellow stare of Mrs. Cannon, or the heavy-set man all abulge with muscles and handknit red and green reindeer housed the old Willis Lambert. (It was the kind of thing Willis would wear.)
The other two people were an elegant old lady of perhaps eighty and a questionable one: a person who either hadn’t seen his barber in some time or liked her medium-colored hair very short. This one wore round tinted glasses which dazzled briefly at Celia and tipped downward again. And that was all—
No, it wasn’t. From over the back of the wing chair which had been slightly turned away from its intended grouping rose a wavering stream of cigarette smoke.
Celia walked to the desk at her right, with the conviction that she had pulled one gaze after her like a slipstream. She didn’t turn, because it was essential at this point to give the impression of being convinced that she had shaken off her enemy for the time being and was safe here. She took from her bag the envelope she had prepared in her room, and leaned forward a little to address the desk clerk in a low and confidential tone.
What she said was, “I found this outside in your courtyard just now. It isn’t stamped, so I imagine someone will be calling for it,” and what the clerk replied after a glance at the writing was, “Thank you very much. One of our guests must have dropped it,” but from a distance the interchange had a secret-keeping air. The clerk turned to the ranked boxes behind him and stowed the envelope under W.
W for the figmentary Mrs. Howard Wright, of course, but surely, to a single-minded observer, W for Wain?
It was inevitably more difficult for Celia than for most people to put herself in another’s place, but to her—as Jules Wain had not left The Priory, nor caused his and his sister-in-law’s luggage to be furiously assembled in the lobby—this would have the air of a plan. If it had been Celia’s intention to submit to the ultimatum so meekly, wouldn’t it have been more logical to send a messenger with the letter on this bitterly cold night, while she herself stayed at her hotel and arranged for departure the next day?
Instead of which she was here at The Priory, had just murmured to the desk clerk, was now pushing back the cuff of her jacket and checking her wrist watch with
