The ballrooms of the Splendor, peopled, as Mrs. Austen indulgently
noted, with Goodness knows who from Heaven knows where, received her and
her guests.
Not all of them, however. At the entrance, Verelst, pretexting a
pretext, sagely dropped out. Within, a young man with ginger hair and
laughing eyes, sprang from nowhere, pounced at Kate, floated her away.
Mrs. Austen, Margaret, Lennox and Paliser moved on.
In one room there was dancing; in another, a stage. It was in the first
room that Kate was abducted. On the stage in the room beyond, a fat
woman, dressed in green and gauze, was singing faded idiocies. Beyond,
at the other end of the room was a booth above which was a sign--The
Veiled Lady of Yucatan. Beneath the sign was a notice: All ye that enter
here leave five dollars at the door.
The booth, hung with black velvet, was additionally supplied with
hierograms in burnished steel. What they meant was not for the profane,
or even for the initiate. Champollion could not have deciphered them.
Fronting the door stood a young woman with a dark skin, a solemn look
and a costume which, at a pinch, might have been Maya.
In those accents which the Plaza shares with Mayfair, she hailed
Margaret. "Hello, dear! Your turn next."
For a moment, the dark skin, the solemn look, the costume puzzled
Margaret. Then at once she exclaimed: "Why, Poppet!" She paused and
added: "This is Mr. Paliser--Miss Bleecker. You know Mr. Lennox."
But now, from the booth, a large woman with high colour, grey hair and a
jewelled lorgnette rushed out and fastened herself on the sultry girl.
"Gimme back my money. Your veiled lady is a horror! Said I'd marry
again!"
She raised her glasses. "Mary Austen, as I'm a sinner! Go in and have
your misfortunes told. How do do Margaret? Marry again indeed! Oughtn't
I to have my money back?"
"Poppet ought to make you pay twice," Mrs. Austen heartlessly retorted
at this woman, the relict of Nicholas Amsterdam, concerning whom a story
had come out and who had died, his friends said, of exposure.
Mrs. Amsterdam turned on Paliser whom she had never seen before. "What
do you say?"
"I am appalled," he answered.