Mary Dodd and Margot were talking. Cristie took a stout woman in pink velvet in tow, showed her where to put her wraps, abandoned her. Why didn’t Steven come? It was almost eleven. Her throat was tight. Could he have come in when she wasn’t watching? She kept looking anxiously through the throngs on the terrace. He was nowhere in sight. What could be keeping him? The prospect of his arrival made her feel light-headed. At the same time there was a cold little core of fear at the heart of her expectation that wouldn’t dissolve.
She had almost forgotten about Sara Hazard. And suddenly she saw her. Cristie stood where she was in the partial shelter of a tall sheaf of gladiolas. Her hands, hanging at her sides, were hidden in folds of white chiffon. The fingers were tightly clenched.
Sara Hazard’s entrance into the party at the penthouse that night was, as always, spectacular. Three steps led down from the hall above. She paused on the top step and looked around. Cristie wasn’t the only one who stared.
Sara Hazard had a picture sense where her extremely attractive body was concerned, managed to make you aware of it, in some subtle fashion, even when she was standing still. Perhaps her own concentration with it had something to do with the effect she contrived to produce.
The word slim covers a lot of territory. Sara was slim enough but there were curves, the right curves in the right places. She wore a daringly brief evening gown of black and gold that left practically nothing unsaid. Her upthrust breast had the pout of invitation to it and the gently swelling hips under the gold corselet that defined the small waist seemed, in spite of her immobility, to sway a little.
Her golden hair, hair that was really golden, was turned back from her long narrow white face in a soft roll. Everything about her was narrow, velvet-brown eyes, straight nose, hands and feet, everything except her mouth. Her mouth was a full scarlet bow. The lower lip, a Hapsburg, was inclined to protrude a little. You didn’t notice it at first. The general effect was too good.
Sara Hazard was alone.
Cristie’s eyes absorbed the emptiness beside and behind her as Sara descended to the floor, located Margot and strolled in Margot’s direction. Heads turned as she passed and people stared, women with a touch of envy, men with admiration and here and there something rather more intense.
Cristie stayed where she was, conflicting emotions driving to and fro inside of her. How could Steven care for her when he had such a beautiful wife—because Sara Hazard was very, very beautiful; there could be no two opinions about that. But Cristie’s critical faculties hadn’t deserted her. There was something self-centered, ruthless, beneath that smooth golden exterior, that lift of long-lashed white lids, the poise of the small gold head. The implication of cruelty was there. She must have made Steven suffer. Cristie understood now why he had spoken of her as he had that afternoon.
Sara was in the middle of a knot of men. There was ferment around her, the stir of raised voices, laughter. There would be. There were other women like that, women who were insatiably vain, who knew the conventions of decent living thoroughly and who used them or cast them aside as it suited their purpose. They were women with the morality of emotional Al Capones. Danger was their natural orbit. Sara Hazard vanished in the crowd. Still no Steven. What could be keeping him?
Cristie was standing in the shadowy embrasure of a window trying to reassure herself, telling herself not to be an idiot, when two women halted on the terrace just outside.
“—but I’ve only got one life to live. What a woman’s husband doesn’t know is her own business.”
Cristie turned her head. The light metallic voice was Sara Hazard’s. Mary Dodd was with her. The latter’s recoil was thinly veiled. Her tall figure was drawn up and she was gazing with displeasure at the lovely, narrow, closed white face looking intently into her own.
Cristie wanted to move, to get away from that voice. She didn’t. The next moment she wished she had. Sara Hazard paused, then it came out with a rush. Fingers busy with a gold cigarette case, smooth head bent, she said abruptly, “Mary, can you loan me some money?”
Mary Dodd didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said a little wearily, “Same old thing, I suppose, Sara. Bills again?”
Sara Hazard struck a match. “Rather—and then some. A man from Prince and Consort’s actually had the impudence to force his way into the apartment this morning and demand a thousand dollars on account immediately—or else. Can you imagine the nerve? There was nothing I could do with him. Heaven knows I tried.” She put the match to the tip of a cigarette. Her thin sinuous lips were curved in a smile. “Anyhow, Mary, the long and short of it is, I’ve got to produce right away or I’m sunk, irrevocably and irretrievably sunk.”
Mary Dodd said slowly, not looking at her companion, “And Steven doesn’t know, I presume. How much do you really have to have, Sara?”
Sara Hazard flicked ash from the gold embroidery clasping her white breast. “I’ve got to have the whole thousand, Mary.”
Mary Dodd said firmly, “It’s impossible, Sara. I haven’t got more than a few hundred in the bank and it will be a couple of weeks before my regular checks come in.”
Sara Hazard turned so that her face was fully illuminated by shafting brightness from a battery of lamps over the piano. Her nostrils were flaring. “Sweetness and light, aren’t you, Mary,” she drawled, “except when it comes to the draw. You can’t give me anything but love, baby.”
Miss Dodd flinched. She was white. She was about to make an angry rejoinder when a couple ambled in her direction followed by a tall man with a beard and a paper cap on. Cristie was glad she didn’t have to listen to any more. Bills, mountains of them apparently, and Steven didn’t know. What else was there that Steven didn’t know? But perhaps he did. Perhaps that was what he had meant when he said there were things he couldn’t tell her. Cristie shook out folds of white chiffon. Over and above the trouble Sara could still cause Steven, she didn’t like the complications that were cropping up, tangled threads whose ends she couldn’t see.
She turned instinctively in a movement toward escape. Two people blocked her way. As she edged around them, the voices of the two women outside followed her. Sara Hazard asked a question about “Cliff.” Cliff was the name of the man Miss Dodd’s niece, Kit Blaketon, was engaged to. Mary Dodd said something about the “Penobscott Club” and “eleven or twelve.”
Cristie was to recall that later. She danced with Euen and then with Johnny, spoke to Margot who looked rather pale in spite of fresh lipstick and rouge. Margot was tired.
Then she ran into Sara Hazard again, or rather didn’t run into her, because her place, the place of unseen observer, had been taken by someone else. Cristie was crossing the hall in the direction of her own bedroom for fresh powder when she turned the corner and stood still. Her bedroom door was open. Sara Hazard was seated at her desk. She was at the telephone. Her voice was low but the desk was close to the door and Cristie heard her say, “Penobscott Club?” And then she didn’t hear any more. Her attention changed its focus.
There was a girl standing between herself and Sara Hazard, a girl in green with flaming red hair. The girl was Kit Blaketon, Miss Dodd’s niece. Kit Blaketon’s face was hidden but there was no mistaking the tension, the stress in the slim body pressed against wall and door jamb. She was invisible from inside the room. She was listening to what Sara Hazard was saying over the telephone.
Cristie drew back, walked away, returned to the living room. She had only just reached it when she saw Sara Hazard leave the hall and go out into the foyer. She was wearing the gold jacket that was part of her gown but she had no wrap on. She had scarcely disappeared from view when the red-haired Kit Blaketon went through the foyer doors in turn. She was carrying a green velvet coat over her arm. Something about the girl’s swift progress suggested a stalking. Was she—could she possibly be trailing the other woman? Cristie watched the doors for some time. Neither of