Vic looked up and saw Horace Meller standing beside him. "Hi there, Horace. Looking for a seat?"
"No, thanks." Horace was a slight, graying man of middle height with a narrow sensitive face and a somewhat bushy black mustache. His mouth under the mustache wore the polite smile of a nervous host. Horace was always nervous, though the party was going as well as any host could have wished. "What's happening at the plant, Vic?"
"Getting Xenophon ready," Vic replied. In the din they could not talk very well. "Why don't you drop around some evening?" Vic meant at the printing plant. He was always there until seven, and by himself after five, because Stephen and Carlyle went home at five.
"All right, I will," Horace said. "Is your drink all right?" Vic nodded that it was.
"I'll be seeing you," Horace said, moving off.
Vic felt a void as soon as he had left. An awkwardness. Something unsaid, and Vic knew what it was: Horace had tactfully refrained from mentioning Mr. Joel Nash. Hadn't said Joel was nice, or welcome, or asked anything about him, or bothered with any of the banalities. Melinda had maneuvered Joel's invitation to the party. Vic had heard her on the telephone with Mary Meller the day before yesterday: "... Well, not exactly a guest of ours, but we feel responsible for him because he doesn't know many people in town ... Oh, thanks, Mary! I didn't think you'd mind having an extra man, and such a handsome one, too ..." As if anyone could pry Melinda away from him with a crowbar. One more week, Vic thought. Seven more nights exactly. Mr. Nash was leaving on the first, a Sunday.
Joel Nash materialized, looming unsteadily in his broadshouldered white jacket, bringing his glass. "Good evening, Mr. Van Allen," Joel said with a mock formality and plopped himself down where Mrs. Podnansky had been sitting. "How're you tonight?"
"Oh, as usual," Vic said, smiling.
"There's two things I wanted to say to you," Joel said with sudden enthusiasm, as if he had at that very moment thought of them. "One is I've been asked to stay a couple of weeks longer here—by my company—so I hope I can repay 'both' of you for the abundant hospitality you've shown me in the last few weeks and—" Joel laughed in a boyish way, ducking his head.
Melinda had a genius for finding people like Joel Nash, Vic thought. Little marriages of true minds. "And the second?"
"The second—Well, the second is, I want to say what a brick I think you are for being so nice about my seeing your wife. Not that I have seen her very much, you understand, lunch a couple of times and a drive in the country, but—"
"But what?" Vic prompted, feeling suddenly stone sober and disgusted with Nash's bland intoxication.
"Well, a lot of men would have knocked my block off for less—thinking it was more, of course. I can easily understand why you might be a little annoyed, but you're not. I can see that. I suppose I want to say that I'm grateful to you for not punching my nose. Not that there's been anything to punch it for, of course. You can ask Melinda, in case you're in any doubt."
Just the person to ask, of course. Vic stared at him with a calm indifference. The proper reply, Vic thought, was nothing.
"At any rate, I wanted to say I think you're awfully sporting," Nash added.
Joel Nash's third affected Anglicism grated on Vic in an unpleasant way. "I appreciate your sentiments," Vic said, with a small smile, "but I don't waste my time punching people on the nose. If I really don't like somebody, I kill him."
"Kill him?" Mr. Nash smiled his merry smile.
"Yes. You remember Malcolm McRae, don't you?" Vic knew that he knew about Malcolm McRae because Melinda had said that she had told Joel all about the "McRae mystery," and that Joel had been very interested because he had seen McRae once or twice in New York on business matters.
"Yes," Joel Nash said attentively.
Joel Nash's smile had grown smaller. It was now a mere protective device. Melinda had undoubtedly told Joel that Mal had had quite a crush on her. That always added spice to the story.
"You're kidding me," Joel said.
In that instant, from his words and his face, Vic knew two things: that Joel Nash had already made love to his wife, and that his own dead-calm attitude in the presence of Melinda and Joel had made quite an impression. Vic had frightened him—not only now, but on certain evenings at the house. Vic had never shown a sign of conventional jealousy. People who do not behave in an orthodox manner, Vic thought, are by definition frightening. "No, I'm not kidding," Vic said with a sigh, taking a cigarette from his pack, then offering the pack to Joel.
Joel Nash shook his head.
"He got a bit forward, as they say—with Melinda. She may have told you. But it wasn't that so much as his entire personality that irked me. His cocksureness and his eternally passing out somewhere, so people'd had to put him up. And his revolting parsimony" Vic fixed his cigarette in his holder and clamped it between his teeth.
"I don't believe you."
"I think you do. Not that it matters."
"You 'really' killed Malcolm McRae?"
"Who else do you think did?" Vic waited,
