For an enormous bribe, the head waiter at the Quartier Latin removed
the "Reserved" sign from a cozy table very near the dance floor and
assisted the two ladies in draping their cloaks about their chairs.
The "club" was crowded with the usual midnight-to-dawn
merry-makers--brokers, theatrical celebrities, society juveniles of
both sexes, sweet sugar daddies and other grades of daddies, bored
girls, chattering girls, and plain flappers.
The Quartier Latin, Bill Terhune, awake, loudly proclaimed, was
Broadway's latest night club rage. Well protected by the police.
Powdered white cheeks matched laundered white shirt-fronts as their
owners "charlestoned" in each other's arms to the nervous, shuffling,
muffled rhythm of the world's greatest jazz band. The air was full
of talk, laughing, smoke, the discreet popping of corks and the
resultant gurgle. The walls of the Quartier Latin were splashed with
futurist paintings of stage and screen stars. The Frenchy waitresses
wore short velvety black skirts, shiny silk stockings and artists'
tams. They carried trays shaped like palettes. The tables were
jammed so close together that one little false move would land one in
one's neighbor's lap. Which would probably not have annoyed one's
neighbor in the least, such was the spirit of the place. Everybody
seemed to be working at top speed to have a good time as quickly as
possible. It was rowdy, upsetting, exciting.
With the orchestra in action, one had to almost shout across the
table to be heard above the din. Bill Terhune shouted at once to the
waitress for glasses and the non-spiritous ingredients of highballs.
They arrived, were flavored with libations from Bill's hip, and were
consumed with approval. Then they danced, Rodrigo with Sophie and
Bill with Betty Brewster. The latter was older than Sophie and much
less vivacious and attractive. There were suggestions of hollows in
her neck, her hair was that dead blond that comes from an excessive
use of artificial coloring, and her eyes had a lack-lustre gleam.
She was a typical show-girl who is nearing the declining period of
her career. Next year one would find her on the variety stage, the
following in a small-time burlesque production, then God knows where.
To Rodrigo, there was, at first glance, something a little pathetic
about her. He had expected that Sophie would invite a girl somewhat
less radiant than herself. It is the habit with beauties to
eliminate as much competition as possible of their own sex in their
engagements with men.
But Rodrigo had little time to think about Betty. The highball, the
disarmingly close presence of Sophie, and the general hilarious
laxity of his surroundings were lulling his feelings. Sophie
snuggled more closely to him. He breathed the faint, sweet perfume
of her hair. The throbbing jungle music beat. The close atmosphere
scented with cigarettes and cosmetics, the faces of dancing couples
near him smothered thoughts of Dorning and Son. For the time being,
he was the old Rodrigo.
"Boy, you can dance," breathed Sophie, slowly disengaging herself
from his embrace as the music stopped.
He looked at her. "You're a witch, Sophie, a soft, white witch," he
whispered.
They had another round of highballs. Bill Terhune, fast attaining a
fighting edge, began abusing the waitress. In his growing
quarrelsomeness, he noticed that Betty Brewster was not to be
compared in pulchritude to Sophie. He breathed alcoholically upon
the latter and demanded with unnecessary peremptoriness that she
dance next with him. With a little grimace of annoyance at Rodrigo,
she turned smilingly to Bill and acquiesced.
After the next dance, Terhune again produced his enormous flask,
whose contents seemed capable of flowing endlessly, like Tennyson's
brook. Rodrigo suggested mildly that they had all had enough. But
the motion was overruled, three to one. Bill's watery and roving eye
caught the equally itinerant optics of a sleek, dark girl two feet
from him, at the next table. She smiled veiledly, and he elaborately
offered her a drink. Rodrigo was not pleased with this by-play. He
had been watching the girl's escort, a florid chubby stock-broker
type who had also been drinking copiously and who now eyed Bill
Terhune with a decidedly disapproving frown. With a defiant toss of
her shiny bobbed head at her middle-aged table-mate, the dark girl
accepted the glass and bent her ear to hear Bill's blurred invitation
to dance that accompanied it. The tom-toms and saxophones commenced
their lilting cadence, and Bill's new conquest and Bill arose
simultaneously to dance. So did the fat man. He seized Bill's
wrist, which was around the girl.
Rodrigo was to his feet in a flash. He knew Bill Terhune. He caught
the Dakotan's wrist as, eluding the jealous sugar daddy's grip, it
was whipped back and started on its swift devastating journey to the
corpulent one's jaw. "No rough stuff, Bill," Rodrigo cautioned
rapidly in a low voice. Bill turned angrily upon his friend, but the
Italian held his wrist like a vise. The eyes of all three girls were
popping with excitement. They were in the mood to enjoy the sight of
embattled males.
"Come on outside and I'll show you how much of a sheik you are,"
snarled Bill's red-faced antagonist.
Bill was keen to comply, and Rodrigo, welcoming the chance at least
to transfer the impending brawl to a less conspicuous battleground,
loosed him. The two champions set off for the lobby, picking their
way unsteadily through the staring dancers, Rodrigo by Bill's side,
endeavoring to talk him into a less belligerent mood, hopeless as the
task was. Once in the wide open spaces of the lobby, Bill suddenly
eluded Rodrigo's arm upon his shoulder, leaped toward his adversary,
and smote him cleanly upon the jaw. The fat man crashed against a
fantastic wall painting of Gilda Grey and remained huddled quietly
where he had landed. All the fight had been knocked out of him by
this one sledge-hammer blow. Bill, his honor vindicated, was
contented also. All that remained was for Rodrigo to soothe the
feelings of the worried manager, who arrived on the run, and two
husky bouncers, now standing by to toss the embroiled patrons out
upon the sidewalk.
Rodrigo did his task of diplomacy very nicely. The manager
cooperated, being anxious to avoid trouble. Cold water was
administered to the fallen gladiator. The girl who had caused all
the trouble was summoned. Contrite at the sight of her escort's
damaged countenance, she readily agreed to take him home, and the two
were bundled into a taxicab.
Then the manager turned to Rodrigo and insisted firmly that the other
brawler should leave also. He could not afford further disturbances,
which might involve the police, however loathe the bluecoats might be
to interfere with the licensed Quartier Latin. Bill began to see red
all over again at this edict. But there were two husky bouncers at
his elbow, and Rodrigo supported the manager. Betty Brewster was
paged, and Bill, muttering and defiant to the last, followed in
another taxi in the wake of his enemy.
Having banished Bill Terhune to the cool night air, Rodrigo turned to
hasten back to Sophie, who, he was afraid, would be furious at him
for leaving her sitting alone for such a long time.
"Good evening, Count Torriani," said a melting feminine voice at his
elbow. He stopped and turned to confront Mrs. Porter Palmer, who
seemed gushingly delighted to see him. He bowed and saw that,
accompanying Mrs. Palmer, was a young woman of such striking
appearance as to arrest his eye at once and hold it. Jet black hair
caught tight to the head set off the waxen pallor of her face. Her
dark eyes were slightly almond-shaped and singularly bright. She was
dressed in a shimmering black satin evening gown that displayed the
graceful lines of her slim, svelte body and the creamy whiteness of
her shoulders. She was American, but not in appearance. In Paris
and Monte Carlo, Rodrigo had met beauties like this, but never in
America. She looked exactly like the type of woman who, in the old
days, had been irresistible to him. But that first swift impression,
he told himself, was nonsense. She was probably the soul of modesty.
"I want you to meet my niece, Elise Van Zile," said Mrs. Palmer.
He bent and kissed the glamorous lady's hand and was aware of her
languid eyes upon him. A moment later, he was introduced to Mr.
Porter Palmer, the twittering bald-headed little man who had been
disposing of his ladies' wraps.
"Elise has just come on from San Francisco for a few weeks, and we
are showing her the sights," explained Mrs. Palmer, and then to her
husband. "It seems terribly crowded and noisy in there, Edward. Do
you think it's quite respectable?" Mr. Palmer waved his hands in the
air, deprecating his wife's fastidiousness. She turned to Rodrigo,
"Won't you join us at our table, Count Torriani?"
"Thanks, really, but the lady I am with and I are just leaving," he
made haste to reply, immediately afterward wondering why he had
invented this falsehood. He glanced at the coolly beautiful Miss Van
Zile, on whom his refusal had apparently made no impression. Was he
foolish in sensing, at his very first glimpse of this girl from the
West, something that warned him?
"But you will come to the tea I am giving for Elise next Saturday
afternoon at the Plaza, will you not, Count Torriani?" Mrs Palmer
insisted.
He hesitated, then accepted. He again kissed the hand of Elise Van
Zile, and he raised his eyes to find her looking enigmatically at
him. Somehow he was reminded of the Mona Lisa, in whose dark eyes
are painted all the wisdom and intrigues of the world.
Rodrigo returned to a petulant Sophie. Both her white elbows were on
the table, and she was impatiently fingering the blazing diamond
pendant at her throat. It was a magnificent bauble, set in clusters
of sapphires and platinum. Her position revealed also her gorgeous
diamond bracelets and the large dazzling assortment of rings upon her
fingers. Sophie was an assiduous collector of jewelry, and, in the
absence of something more interesting to do, she was offering an
exhibition of her arsenal to the crowd about her.
"Where have you been, Rodrigo?" she fretted as he sat down. "At
least you might have come back as soon as you made Betty leave me. I
have felt a perfect fool--sitting here alone, with everybody in the
place staring at me."
He apologized profusely. She was right. People were staring at her.
He stared back so intently at the two young men with too-slicked hair
and ill-fitting evening clothes who had taken the table vacated by
Bill Terhune's antagonist, that they dropped their bold eyes.
"In that case," he answered her complaint, "let's leave. We can go
to some other place."
"I've a very pretty little apartment on the Drive," she suggested
demurely.
In the shadowy depths of the taxi tonneau a few moments later, she
made herself comfortable against his shoulder. It was long after
midnight. Save for machines bound on errands similar to theirs, the
streets were deserted. The car sped westward toward the river.
Sophie broke a long silence by murmuring, "You write the most
wonderful letters, Rodrigo. I've saved them all. Though I don't
suppose you mean a word you say in them."
Rodrigo laughed contentedly. Close to him thus, Sophie was again
stirring his senses.
"Do you love me, Rodrigo--more than you ever did in London?" she
asked suddenly.
"You are lovelier than you ever were in London, Sophie," he quibbled.
"You are the loveliest girl I have ever known." But the image of
Elise Van Zile obtruded itself and rather spoiled this bit of
flattery.
The cab drew up to the curb in front of a huge marble vault of an
apartment house. He paid the driver, helped her out of the taxi, and
then held open the massive outer door of the apartment house, which
was unlocked. Inside the ornate hall, with its fresco work and
potted palms, he made a half-hearted movement to bid her good-night,
but she insisted that he come up to her apartment. In a chair behind
the private telephone switchboard a thin negro youth slept
peacefully, his woolly head resting in his arms in the space in front
of the plugs. Sophie explained that he was also the night elevator
boy, and Rodrigo walked over and started to arouse him. At almost
the same instant the front door swung gently open, and a voice said
sharply, "Stick 'em up!"
Sophie choked a scream. Rodrigo whirled around to face a thin barrel
of cold steel. He slowly raised his hands aloft and looked beyond
the revolver into a pair of ratty eyes showing above a somewhat
soiled white handkerchief concealing nose and mouth. The man with
the gun wore a dinner jacket and a much crumpled gray fedora.
Rodrigo thought he recognized him as one of the sinister-looking
young men who had been eyeing Sophie's jewels in the night club. He
heard faintly the purring of an automobile at the curb outside. No
doubt the fellow's accomplice was waiting there. Rodrigo's eyes
shifted rapidly around for a possible solution of his uncomfortable
situation. He stealthily lowered his hands.
"Stick 'em up and keep 'em there!" snarled the intruder more sharply
than before. Behind the telephone switchboard there was a sudden
commotion. The burglar's words had aroused the sleeping negro. The
latter took one horrified look, his face turned ashen, and he dropped
abruptly and clumsily at full length on the floor out of range of the
pistol. The stick-up man's head made the mistake of jerking for a
flash toward this unexpected noise. Seizing his chance, Rodrigo
leaped at the bandit with all his force, sent him reeling to the
floor, and grabbed at the gun. The weapon bounded crazily to the
marble-inlaid floor. Both men dived for the gun at once, Rodrigo
ahead by the fraction of a second. He sprang to his feet, followed
by his assailant. But before Rodrigo could get a commanding hold
upon the trigger, the fellow had bounded out of the open door. A
roaring motor, a sharp grinding of gears, and the car sped away.
Rodrigo bare-headed, upon the sidewalk, deemed it wise to withhold
his shot.
Sophie was white and trembling as if with a chill when he came back
to her. The negro elevator boy was standing beside his switchboard
like a man who has seen ghosts.
Rodrigo clasped an arm about Sophie's shoulder and asked, "Are you
all right?"
"Yes," she answered, and he wondered if she were really as frightened
as she pretended, "but you mustn't leave me. Take me up to my
apartment."
He motioned the negro into the elevator and, after some hesitation,
the latter slid the mahogany gate open and stood at the lever of the
car. At the door of her apartment, Sophie had recovered sufficiently
to rummage a key from her handbag. They stepped inside. She
switched on the light.
He at once offered a tentative, "Well, my dear, I guess everything is
all right now. And I'll say good-night."
She came closer to him and protested, "No--I am still frightened to
death. You mustn't leave me here. Those awful men will come back, I
know they will."
"Nonsense," he said promptly, "they're more frightened than you are.
What we should do is to notify the police."
"Oh, no," she cried. "Christy detests that sort of publicity for
anyone in his shows. And it would be bad for you too as a business
man."
"Perhaps you're right," he agreed. Then after some hesitation, "I
really am going now."
He had anticipated her next move. As she came to him and started to
put her arms about him, he gently disengaged them. She stepped back,
stared at him and cried, "Oh, you are impossible! You have treated
me positively shamefully to-night--leaving me to fight and now
refusing to protect me. I think you are contemptible." Flashes of
the well-known Binnerian temper were showing themselves.
Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "That's nonsense, my dear.
Go to bed and forget it."
And before she could either protest or berate him further, he opened
the door, stepped swiftly out, and closed it behind him. He rang for
the elevator. When, after five minutes of waiting, there was no sign
of response, he walked down the stairs to the street. The negro
elevator boy was not on duty at his post, and Rodrigo wondered idly
if the Ethiopian had fled from the place in fear of a repetition of
the hold-up.
Walking out to Broadway, Rodrigo hailed a taxi and was soon being
whirled swiftly in the gray awakening dawn down-town toward his own
apartment. His first adventure upon Broadway since his arrival in
America had not been a success, he told himself. It had resulted in
Bill Terhune making a fool of himself and in Sophie becoming enraged
at him again. However, it was just as well another break had come
with Sophie. The sort of thing she represented had no thrill for him
any more, he was now quite sure. He was quite contented to be a
staid partner in Dorning and Son. Already business problems,
speculations as to the success of John in his Philadelphia
negotiations and what it meant to the firm, were filling his drowsy
head. There was a momentary flash into his brain of the exotic face
of Elise Van Zile, and then he slumped in the tobacco-smelling taxi
seat. His chin drooped, and he was quite asleep.
The driver had to shake him lustily in order to awaken him when the
car drew up in front of the Park Avenue apartment house.