The noise, the stir, the incessant merriment began to get on her nerves. They were raw and taut and the discord was like the rasping of a giant file. Her longing to see Steven, to know that he was all right, to know that everything was all right, was like thirst. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes were tired from the colored lights.
She evaded two partners, young friends of Margot’s, went out on the terrace and around to the far side. It was quieter there and cool and dim. She was leaning against the railing at the southern end with her back to the city below when she saw Sara Hazard enter Margot’s bedroom.
Sara Hazard went to Margot’s dressing table, put her purse down, took off the tight-fitting gold jacket, powdered her face, neck and arms and applied fresh lipstick. She scrutinized her face carefully in the mirror, retrieved the jacket and purse. It was a big, black velvet purse with gold corners and her monogram in gold on the front. Cristie thought she was going to leave the room but she didn’t.
The raised bed was loaded with wraps. Sara Hazard’s wasn’t among them. Her cape of summer ermine was thrown over a chair in a recess beyond the bed. She crossed to the recess, paused beside the chair and opened her purse.
Cristie stared. She straightened. The blood drained out of her face and from her heart.
Sara Hazard’s movements were swift. There was no mistaking them or the thing, the object, she removed from the purse and dropped into a capacious pocket of the ermine cape. Light from the lamp glinted on it as it disappeared from sight. It was a small, squat, black pistol.
Sara Hazard had a gun with her, a gun that she was shifting around, a gun that she didn’t want anyone to know about.
Chapter Three
NO LONGER THERE
CRISTIE DIDN’T know what to do. Margot was her first thought, but Margot was in the dining room with Euen’s father and mother. She couldn’t very well interrupt them with a bald announcement that one of the guests had a gun. If only Steven would come! She sat down on a chair in a deserted row in the living room. She was glad to be back where there were lights and laughter and people. The darkness had been terrifying.
A man hurrying past paused in front of her. It was Johnny. Cristie tried to smile up at him but the presence of that ugly black weapon hidden in the silk-lined pocket of the ermine cape in the bedroom beyond was a weight, a question, dragging her down, putting pallor into her cheeks, stiffness into her vocal cords.
Johnny didn’t notice her condition. He said, “Seen anything of Sara Hazard, Cristie? I’m looking for her.”
He didn’t say why. Cristie looked at him dumbly. Why was Johnny so anxious as to Sara’s whereabouts when he had announced his dislike of her only a few hours ago? Cristie felt as though she were treading a slow measure of nightmare with the golden figure of Sara Hazard appearing and disappearing in its coils. She was the object of a peculiar attention on the part of Margot, Johnny, Euen, and Kit Blaketon, an attention all the more striking because none of them seemed to care for her. Johnny appeared to sense her unspoken query. He said vaguely that someone wanted Sara Hazard on the phone.
Cristie told him that Sara was or had been in Margot’s bedroom a few minutes earlier.
“That’s funny,” Johnny said, “I looked there before.”
Cristie said coldly, “Mrs. Hazard left here, went out somewhere a while ago. But she’s back.”
“Sure, Cristie?”
“Quite sure.” If only she weren’t so sure of what she had seen from the darkness of the terrace!
Johnny left her without another word. He made for the study and the telephone there. Cristie’s perplexity thickened. Why didn’t Johnny find Sara Hazard and take her to the telephone instead of going back to it himself? She brushed the cobwebby incongruities aside only to have them crop out in another place.
Sara Hazard wasn’t the only person being sought in that maze of people at Margot’s engagement party. Mary Dodd was hunting for her niece. She looked worried. Cristie heard her inquiring about the lithe, red-haired girl with the green eyes. She got out of her chair, went to Miss Dodd and told her about Kit Blaketon’s departure.
Cristie said, “She left some time ago. She may have returned, though. Can I help?”
Before Mary Dodd could reply a man joined them. Mary murmured his name. He was Clifford Somers, Assemblyman Clifford Somers, the man Kit Blaketon was engaged to. He was a well-set-up young fellow of twenty-eight or so with a pleasant, likeable face, a good jaw, and straight-forward blue eyes. Cristie knew who he was then. She had heard Margot speak of him.
Clifford Somers had made a name for himself in politics. He was talked of for bigger things than the Assembly. Part of his success was the result of his own ability, but part of it was due to the influence of his brother Pat.
Steven and Margot had both talked to Pat Somers. He was one of the most powerful men in New York. He never figured in the news but he was one of the real behind-the-scenes big shots. Pat knew everybody and went every place. Cristie had met him. He had been at the penthouse for dinner when she first came.
Clifford Somers was talking to Mary Dodd. He said, “I hope she’s not sore, Mary. Where is she? It was hard breaking away from the Penobscott Club. I thought the speeches would never end. But I had to sit through it. I’m running this year, you know, and I’ve got to mind my p’s and q’s.”
His face fell when Mary Dodd told him that Kit wasn’t there. “I hoped she was with you, Cliff. Miss Lansing saw her go out a while ago. Was she alone, Miss Lansing?”
Cristie hesitated. The Penobscott Club. Queer. That was the place Sara Hazard was calling when Kit Blaketon was listening to her outside the door. Ought she to tell Mary Dodd privately what she had seen and heard? She decided against it. She might be making a mountain out of a molehill and, anyhow, it wasn’t any of her business.
She said aloud, “Yes, Miss Blaketon was alone, but she had her coat with her.”
Mary Dodd said hopefully, “She may have run over to the Turners for a few minutes, Cliff. They live near here. She’ll probably turn up. She wouldn’t go for good without letting me know. Where’s Pat, Cliff? I thought he was coming tonight.”
Cliff Somers’s eyes were roaming the crowd absently. “Pat? No, Pat couldn’t make it. He meant to, but he had to go to Albany to have a talk with the Governor and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”
Mary Dodd and the young Assemblyman moved toward the supper room. The party was at its peak. It was a decided success, but then it would be with Margot running it. In spite of her temporary absence, Sara Hazard was very much in evidence. She seemed to be everywhere. She was very gay. Other people besides Cristie watched her that night.
Sara chatted with Margot, rumbaed with Euen Firth, had champagne with Johnny. Toward twelve o’clock she did a solo with Gorkin, the dancer. The rest of the room was darkened and a spotlight played over them. Sara’s black-sheathed figure with its small golden head swayed and twisted in perfect time with the musical comedy star’s.
Watching from the sidelines, Cristie kept telling herself that it wasn’t really very late, not much after midnight. There was plenty of time. Steven would be there soon. And then she saw him.
It was as the applause broke out and the lights flashed on again that Steven arrived. The width of the room and sixty or seventy people separated him from Cristie. She had only a glimpse of him beyond the door into the hall, wide-shouldered, lean, dark head high. The glimpse was too swift to tell her anything as she started across