Steven stood beside and a little behind Cristie. He was rigid as though part of him were somewhere else. He didn’t attempt to touch her. He stared straight in front of him into blackness as he said in a hard cold voice, a voice without cadences, without inflection, “She won’t do it, Cristie. Sara won’t give me a divorce. She won’t let me go.”
Cristie took it standing up, gripping the railing with her hands. She looked down at them. Her fingers were curled around the iron spikes. There was no sensation in them. The nail of her left forefinger had broken. The broken piece was folded back on the nail itself. That was all, her hands gripping emptiness. The city below had vanished. The only thing she was conscious of was her own pain and Steven’s. It was over, their brief delusion of happiness, of joy, of fulfillment, and completion.
She tried to speak, finally succeeded. She said slowly, “It wasn’t in the cards, Steven. It wasn’t meant to be that way. It was too good to be true.”
She groped for stability, acceptance. Steven was married. His wife refused to release him. The choice had to be Sara’s. Acceptance wouldn’t come. Instead, flame swept through her, a burning. She clenched her teeth under the drive of a dreadful blind resentment, against herself and Steven for their initial blunder, the way they had wrecked their lives at the start, against Sara Hazard’s clinging and the way the cards were stacked. She wanted to fight, to protest, to hurl defiance at the woman with the narrow white face and the sleek, golden head who held Steven in escrow, retarding and defeating him and making his existence meaningless, empty, a vacuum.
She wasn’t aware that she spoke until she heard her own voice with its forlorn attempt at steadiness.
“What did she say, Steve?”
Steven said in that same harsh monotone, “I put it up to her as soon as I left you this afternoon. I offered her practically everything. She refused. She laughed. She told me not only that she wouldn’t give me a divorce, but that she was going to South America with me.”
Cristie’s grip on the iron railing tightened. “And you, Steven? Are you going through with it? Are you going away?”
“Yes.”
His voice changed, thickened. He put his hand on her shoulder fumblingly. She shivered, didn’t move as he continued, “There’s nothing else to do. I’ve got to get away, Cristie. If I stay in New York and you’re here—I wouldn’t be able to stand it. No. Unless . . .”
Every instinct within Cristie cried out to her to complete that sentence, to throw Sara aside, treat her as though she didn’t exist, fling her out of the way. The temptation was there, an almost overwhelming temptation. She couldn’t do it. Something deep, elemental, held her back.
“No,” she whispered. “No, Steve.”
Steven’s hand fell from her shoulder. He said quietly, “Then this is good-bye.”
Good-bye! The night rocketed into a thousand pieces. Cristie was alone in the middle of a spinning darkness. Anguish shook her, immense, unbearable. She tried to call out. Her throat was sealed.
Steven’s voice came to her dimly, from a long distance off. He was saying, “If it’s got to be, Cristie, let it be fast.” He went on talking. There was something about a ship, a ship that sailed on Monday. Monday—and this was Saturday. All that Cristie knew was that Steven mustn’t leave her like this. He mustn’t! She wrenched herself clear of chaos, turned.
Steven was no longer there. He was crossing the terrace with quick strides. He went through the glass doors. Had he misinterpreted her silence? She had to see him again, if only for a moment, to tell him the truth, tell him she loved him and would always love him, no matter what happened or how much distance separated them.
She started after him. The hall was crowded. She collided with people. They kept getting in her way. She was forced to a halt near the entrance to the dining room. Steven was standing less than twenty feet away. He was talking to someone. Who was it? Oh, Mary Dodd and Johnny. Johnny left them. Steven looked dreadful. Mary Dodd’s face wore a frown of concern. He went on talking to her. Mary Dodd looked frightened. She laid a hand on his arm, interrupting him. Steven shook her hand off. He swung, strode round a bank of azaleas and went into the living room.
Was he looking for his wife? At the thought of them together, weakness swam up around Cristie. She leaned against the door frame.
Then she saw Steven again. He was going into Margot’s bedroom. He was only there for a moment, came out with his hat in his hand. Had he left his hat in Margot’s room? Most of the men had put their things in the study. Cristie’s heart took a queer little sideways slip.
When she reached the spot where she had last seen him, Steven was gone. The fear was there in her then, vague, formless, unacknowledged. It steadied into deadly close-pressing certainty when she paused beside the chair in the recess beyond the bed on the far side of Margot’s room and lifted Sara Hazard’s cape of summer ermine. Again and again she sent her fingers exploring. She shook out the snowy folds. She looked on the seat of the chair, under the chair, on the gray felting, all around.
Steven had been in the room. He had no business there. Sara Hazard had dropped a gun into the pocket of her cape earlier that night. The gun was gone. And so was Steven.
Chapter Four
THROUGH THE RAILING
IT WAS A LITTLE after one when Steven Hazard left the St. Vrain penthouse. It was almost a quarter of two before Cristie went to the telephone.
She made herself face facts coldly. The square, black automatic that Sara Hazard had parked in her cape was no longer there. Steven was gone and Steven was in a dangerous frame of mind. His coolness, his detachment, his judgment had been scattered to the four winds by the events of the afternoon and evening. Anything might happen now. Anything. Cristie had to do something. The time for inaction was past. She had to locate Steven, get the pistol away from him and make him listen to reason.
Violence wasn’t an answer to anything. The idea of it, and of what it would mean, was unthinkable. In spite of the dark shadow hanging over her, her clarity had returned. She saw things again in focus, objectively. She knew there was only one course to pursue.
Give Steven time to get home, if he was going home, and try there first. Don’t think any further than that yet, one step at a time. It would take him anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to get to the apartment in Franklin Place. As long as Sara Hazard was in the penthouse there was no real cause for worry.
When she reached her bedroom the telephone was in use. A large, dark, masterful woman was talking endlessly to someone named Mabel about a baby’s bottle and a two o’clock feeding. It was just before two when Cristie slipped into the place the large, dark woman had vacated after closing the door behind her. Cristie looked around, then took the receiver off the hook.
She dialed the number of Steven’s Franklin Place apartment. A voice answered. It wasn’t Steven. It was the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice.
Cristie said, “Is Mr. Hazard there? Has he arrived yet?”
And the maid answered, “No, Mr. Hazard isn’t here. Who is this calling? Is there any message?”
Cristie couldn’t see the emotion evoked by the sound of her round young voice, but a little stab of terror went through her when the maid continued smoothly, “Would this be Miss Lansing?” How did the woman know her name? She had never been at the Franklin Place apartment. But Steven might have called her from there after their first meeting. Cristie had an inkling then that the Hazard maid, Eva Prentice, knew about herself and Steven. She wasn’t to realize until later how much the maid knew about everything. She hung