Harry Lontaine got home at a late hour for one who had it in mind to
bathe, dress, and put in appearance for an eight o'clock dinner several
miles away. So was the tempo of his gait unhurried as he left the
blue-and-white car waiting at the curb and passed up the straight-ruled
sidewalk of cement between the tutelary orange trees of the bungalow he
rented furnished. And on its miniature veranda he delayed for several
minutes, motionless, with his face lifted thoughtfully, even a shade
wistfully to the sky in which the afterglow of sunset pulsed like dreams
of youth reviewed across the desert years of middle-age....
Other than this shy colour of regret, however, nothing of the trend of
his thoughts, nothing of their nature, escaped the eyes, steel-blue and
dense, in that lean, hard mould of features, never more self-contained,
never more British than in this moment.
And presently he roused, but without change of countenance, and went on
into the combination living and dining-room to which the best part of
the dwelling was given over.
Here, where the dusk held close and still, Lontaine, when he had made a
light, wasted no more time than was required for a stop at the buffet to
treat himself to a considerably stiffer drink of pseudo-Scotch than the
law allowed, or--seeing that the law allowed none at all--his
superficial necessities seemed to call for.
Before the door which gave upon the more private quarters of the house,
however, he hung for some time in seeming reluctance to proceed, a
suspicion of strained attentiveness in his deliberation. From beyond
came never a sound. Eventually he pushed the door open.
Immediately he saw Fanny. Bathed in a great glare, she sat in her
dressing-room facing a long mirror of three panels; decked out en grande
toilette, wearing every jewel she possessed, groomed to the finest
nuance of perfection; a brilliant and strangely immobile figurine of
modern femininity, with bobbed hair like burnished brass, milk-white
bosom and arms rising out of a calyx of peach-blow taffeta, jewels stung
to iridescent life by that fierce wash of light.
As if hypnotized by so much bright loveliness, she continued steadfastly
to gaze upon her reflected self; even when she heard Lontaine at the
door and the mirror placed him behind her in the doorway, she did not
move by so much as a trembling eyelash. Only when he spoke, her lips
parted in answer, though still she neither turned nor ceased to
contemplate the vision in the glass; as if this last were something
precious but tricksy, something that might incontinently vanish forever
from her ken did she but for a single instant turn her eyes away.
In a voice that strained without success to sound easy and natural,
Lontaine said: "Ah, Fanny! dressed already, eh? Must be later than I
thought."
"It's past half-past," Fanny replied without expression.
Lontaine glanced nervously at the back of his wrist. "Right you are.
Never dreamed time was getting away from me like that."
"You have been ... busy, yes?" his wife enquired with a distinctly
satiric accent.
"Rather. Gassing with Zinn, you know----"
"To be sure." The satiric inflexion was now more marked. "The
life-saver."
"Not a bad name for him, that." Lontaine chuckled with, however, an
unconvincing brevity. "Daresay Linda looks on the little beast in
that light, at all events. Had a thousand details to discuss with
him ... ah ... naturally."
"Naturally." Fanny's tone had become again illegible.
"That's what--ah--delayed me. Have to rush for it now--what?--or
Summerlad'll be vexed."
"You really think so? With Cindy there to console him?"
"Something in that, no doubt. Still"--Lontaine made as if to go to his
own room, but lingered--"it's hardly the thing to be so much behind
time. See here, old girl: you're all dressed.... I say! but you've laid
it on a bit thick tonight, haven't you?"
"Don't you like the way I look, Harry?"
"Never more ravishing in all your life----"
"That's good."
"Good? Afraid I don't follow. What's got into you tonight, Fanny? You've
rigged yourself out for the opera instead of a simple little dinner...."
"I wanted something to remember myself by," Fanny mysteriously informed
the mirror to which her attention continued constant.
"What do you mean by that?" Lontaine paused for answer, but Fanny was
dumb. He essayed another short, confused laugh. "You know, Fan,
sometimes you think of the damnedest things to say."
"Yes: don't I?"
He recognized one of her mulishly enigmatic moods.
"Mean to say," he harked back--"since you're quite ready--what's the
matter with your cutting along and explaining I'll be delayed a bit?
Tell them not to wait dinner for me...."
"And you?" The movement of enameled lips was imperceptible.
"I'll be along later, of course, as soon as I've dressed. You can send
the car back for me. Why not?"
"Why not?"
But Lontaine took this inscrutable echo for assent, and with a grunt of
relief disappeared into his dressing-room. A series of clicks sounded as
he turned on lights. Still the woman seated before the mirror didn't
move. But her interest centered no longer upon what she saw; though she
did not avert her eyes from the glowing figure painted in those still,
shallow depths, all her attention now was concentrated in another
faculty: she was listening.
She heard Lontaine moving about, chair-legs scrape a hardwood floor, the
snap of the bathroom light. A pause followed, then a clashing noise of
bottles and toilet articles impatiently shifted upon their glass shelf.
After that, Lontaine's returning footsteps. Then he reappeared in the
doorway.
"Hello! Thought you were going on ahead."
"Presently," Fanny replied in brittle accents. "Plenty of time.
Something the matter?"
"Can't find my razors."
"No." At last the woman broke her pose: her counterfeit in the glass
nodded gravely to the man behind her. "No," she iterated--and he had the
flying thought that her voice had never vibrated so sweetly--"and you
won't find them, either, Harry. They're in a safe place, it's no good
your hunting for them."
"What!" Lontaine advanced one single, sudden stride. "What's that for?"
"I thought it might save trouble. You see, Harry, I haven't forgotten
that hideous scene we had in London, last time you decided it was all up
with you, there wasn't anything to do but cut your throat. I didn't see
any sense in going through all that again."
After a full minute of silence Lontaine uttered heavily: "I see you've
guessed...."
"There have been so many of these crises in our life together, Harry, I
ought to know the signs--don't you think?"
The man stumbled to a chair, and bent a louring countenance over hands
savagely laced. "What else can I do?" he muttered. "I'm in a hole
there's no other way out of...."
"There are steamers every so often from San Francisco, for Honolulu,
China, Japan, the South Seas...."
"No use. They'd get me by wireless if they ever allowed me to go aboard.
Zinn ... I'm sure that Jew devil suspects ... insists on getting at the
books first thing tomorrow."
"How much have you got into Cindy for?"