Chapter XIV
The high excited chatter of a cocktail party under way was audible through the white door of Commander Dawson’s apartment. Stan stood outside for a few seconds before ringing the bell. He was late, but the delay was unavoidable. His exploration of the Sunset had necessitated a trip to Miami Beach to change his clothes, and Doris, firmly mothering, had refused to let him go until Dr. Carter had come and put a fresh dressing on his head.
He was admitted by a mulatto boy in a white coat, and immediately sensed that his arrival had not added to the gaiety, although Dawson, immaculate in gray, gave him a cordial greeting. He had met everyone present, with the exception of Durlyn Bessinger, and his wife, whom Dawson introduced.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive, Mr. Rite,” Bessinger boomed out, shaking hands too thoroughly. “My wife and I were on the Four Leaf Clover Sunday night. This is a terrible business—a terrible business—”
“Indeed it is,” Mrs. Bessinger chimed in. “Since dear Mr. Fowler was killed and you were brutally attacked I’ve been terrified—simply terrified.” Her opulent bosom heaved with emotion, radiating waves of perfume.
Stan accepted a Manhattan cocktail, sipped it, and took a canapé from a dish on the table. The Bessingers were most unpleasant people. The husband just escaped being porcine, and the wife was a scented pincushion given an added irritation of speech. But Stan refused to make the mistake of classing the Bessingers as stupid. He had a strong first impression that the bluff couple possessed minds which might work in intricate and devious patterns.
“It is rather upsetting,” Stan commiserated. “I didn’t know Fowler was a friend of yours. Had you known him long?”
Bessinger took his wife’s arm and patted her hand. “Just a short time, really. But we had both become very fond of him. He was a delightful chap—”
Lydia Staunton floated into their group and adroitly freed Stan of the Bessingers. Glen Neal and Dawson were talking near one of the windows. She led Stan past them to a far corner of the room. Eve and Tolliver Farraday were seated on a divan. Bruce Farraday, standing beside them, advanced a step and took Stan’s hand.
“I sent Lydia to your rescue.” He glanced worriedly at Stan’s bandage. “I didn’t know this was going to be dangerous tor you—”
“Neither did I,” Stan said, so restrainedly as to warn Farraday from the subject. “I think you’ll have to rescue this party. Since I came,” he continued more lightly, “everybody is standing around dying in knots.”
“Except the Bessingers,” pondered Eve. “Their type never dies.” She moved closer to her brother, nodding Stan to the seat beside her. Her father drew up a chair for Mrs. Staunton, and settled himself on one arm, his arm negligently across the back close to the widow’s shoulders.
It was then Stan felt so clearly the tension of relations in the Farraday family, that he was momentarily embarrassed. He was watching Tolliver, who had not condescended to greet him except by a perfunctory nod. He turned away quickly from the expression on the boy’s face—hatred blazing in brown eyes—lips tight drawn over firm teeth. Stan had the feeling one gets through blundering into the wrong bedroom. He was aware, too, that Tolliver Farraday had drunk too much to conceal his feelings.
Apparently no one else felt anything amiss. Lydia Staunton crossed her slim legs, and smiled with utter self-possession. Eve Farraday might have been a trifle too pale, but that could be easily accounted for by the stress of the past two days. Bruce Farraday was watching Stan with perceptible impatience, as though he wished Stan would hurry and remove the rabbit from the hat.
“Now,” began Mrs. Staunton, “that we have the famous Mr. Rice in a corner—maybe he will tell us about this eleven of diamonds, The afternoon papers say there is such a card. We were talking about it when you came in.”
Stan squirmed uneasily. One of those uncanny silences, which occasionally fall awkwardly on an assemblage, had occurred in the room. The Bessingers were standing with Commander Dawson and Glen Neal near the table of canapés. Motion was arrested, as though all present were straining to hear his reply.
“I hardly know what it is myself.” His laugh fell short of carrying conviction. “It came out of a pack which is used to play the game of Five Hundred, I believe.”
“I thought that game went out before bridge came in,” Glen Neal remarked from across the room.
“It did. I used to play it when I was a girl,” Mrs. Bessinger announced, and added kittenishly: “I’m not telling how many years ago that was.”
“Say ninety-nine,” Eve whispered in Stan’s ear.
He nearly did so, for Durlyn Bessinger had just remarked that any store should remember a request for such a pack for a long time after it was made—and Stan, above all things, wanted to remember that remark. It showed him where he and LeRoy had both slipped. He intended to remedy it without delay.
The Negro butler passed more cocktails. Stan saw Eve’s restraining touch on Tolliver’s arm, but the boy ignored it, gulping down his drink in two swallows, and setting his glass on the floor beside him.
“About enough, isn’t it, old boy?” Bruce Farraday remarked softly to his son.
Glen Neal was pointing out something in a blue-backed book to Dawson and the Bessingers. “Imagine,” he was saying, “the Navy Gazette says the Commander was graduated from Annapolis in 1900. Now speaking of ages, Mrs. Bessinger—”
“For God’s sake don’t bring that up!” Dawson protested laughingly. “A naval officer’s private life is akin to Leo in the zoo.”
“You make me feel like an old, old woman, Commander! I’d have sworn you weren’t a day over forty.”
Stan was politely trying to ignore Tolliver’s venomous, low-voiced reply to his father’s protest by listening to
