Читать книгу A Variety of Weapons - Rufus King - Страница 5

CHAPTER III

Ann inspected herself in panel mirrors as the elevator carried her down. The full-skirted bengaline rag with its leaf-splashed blouse looked pretty good. Monkey trick, if you wish, but in no sense tin cup.

Marlow’s organ playing had stopped, and even before it had stopped the initial soul-in-agony effect had calmed down into a fretful Bach. She hoped the week would not be overlaid with a querulous neuroticism. Danning had been fulsome. Mr. Marlow’s “pain,” she said, was not so much of the body as it was of memory, a dark memory which overshadowed his mind.

There were physiological aspects too: a heart condition, neuritis, and an anemia which during the past couple of months had become pernicious. Ann added all these up together and was confident that when she met Marlow she would come face to face with a palsied wraith.

The lounge, when Ann stood in its doorway, struck her as Hollywood size and splendidly done, in the sense that its furnishings were impressive but were happily lacking in any unlived-in or museum-like rigor mortis. The man who stood up from a chair near the fireplace and walked toward her carried an immediate sense of welcoming friendliness.

He was not nearly so gaunt as Ann had expected from Danning’s catalogue of ailments. Certainly he was opaque. He bore his age well, and there was a simplicity and general kindliness about him which made Ann instantly forget that the hand which he offered controlled one of the great fortunes of the country.

“Good evening, Miss Ledrick. I am Justin Marlow. Come over and meet my cousin Estelle.” He went on as he led Ann toward the hearth: “You’ll find that her bombazine exterior really shelters the soul of a femme fatale. For the past ten or fifteen years Estelle has been posing as the mystery woman of Paris, but nobody would take her seriously. People put up with her solely because of her chef, who was a cordon bleu and who had the distinction of committing suicide, as we’ve heard, when the black market ran short of mushrooms.”

A woman rose from a sofa and smiled agreeably and said, “Miss Ledrick, Justin is a complete liar. My role in Paris was that of a Cassandra. I told the benighted fossils exactly what they were heading for. They preferred to consider me mad and would have locked me up a hundred times if they hadn’t thought me so filthily rich. The instant that gendarme look would come into their eyes I’d just put on another emerald. Do you like sidecars?”

“Very much, Miss Marlow.”

“So sensible. I’m as American as they come, but this national fetish for dry martinis convinces me that the country is still in the thrall of barbarianism.”

Ann sat on the sofa beside Estelle Marlow and tried to readjust the portrait she had formed of the woman with its reality. The exterior was not the bombazine one which Justin Marlow had advertised, but the effect was close: a variety of velvet purples over plumpness and a serene apple of a face under a cap of softly graying hair most simply arranged. The hands were dimpled and beautifully shaped. As a girl, Ann thought, she must have been a beauty of the milk-and-honey type.

Washburn served cocktails and canapés while a drugging amiability in the general conversation began to make Ann feel hypnotically at home. She caught herself considering that she had known these two pleasant people always and that this room was one with which she had been familiar not for a brief moment but for many years.

This sensation was so strong that Ann thought: There’s something funny about this. Isn’t it a little overdone? I’m a photographer brought up here to do some ocelots and yet all this warmth, this instantaneous acceptance into intimacy. Ann felt it genuine enough, but there it was. Perhaps they both were parched for a stranger. That could be. Living as they did. But if she could be flown in, why couldn’t friends be? Why isolation, with the obvious effect of turning her presence into an oasis?

It was during Ann’s second cocktail when Washburn came in and said to Marlow: “The field has just telephoned that Mr. Ludwig Appleby has landed in a chartered plane, sir. Shall I give instructions that he be driven to the house?”

It became simpler later for Ann to dissect the reaction which Washburn’s statement caused. At the moment her impression was of a thunderbolt in miniature cracking the serenity of a clear sky, in miniature because both Justin and Estelle Marlow instantly recovered their poise.

But there had been that moment during which Marlow’s emaciated and sensitive face had frozen into an expression of intense hatred, while Estelle Marlow’s kind eyes had contracted and her lips had thinned, fashioning the homely apple look of her features into something close to virulence.

The moment flashed and was gone, and Marlow said quietly, “Yes, Washburn, do. Mr. Appleby will join us at dinner, and if we can persuade him to stay over please place him in the rooms next to mine.”

“Very good, sir.”

Washburn left, and the conversation resumed its casual course; that is, so far as Estelle was concerned. Justin said little, and though outwardly calm and attentively agreeable Ann saw that his thin, veined hands were gripping rather than resting on the arms of his chair.

Estelle, who was on France, continued placidly listing the destruction of her continental possessions. The chateau at Noilly which she had leased to a European embassy had been deserted by the ambassador, and of course when the Germans had occupied it its treasures were either stolen or destroyed. Fortunately her flat in Paris had failed to bemuse them, and as for money, they had let her keep one half of such sums as she had received through Justin’s influence from the States.

“As for my jewels,” Estelle said complacently, “I was rather clever about them. You see, my dear, they put me down as a harmless eccentric whom it paid them to pamper while they used me as a mint. They’re terribly practical, you know. Have you ever met one?”

“Not while in action, Miss Marlow. Possibly some of our local brood.”

“Oh, those. Well, they thought my ocelots just another lunatic foible and were completely indifferent to my taking them with me when I left. I had had special collars made for them with large studs, the tops of which unscrewed and under which I put the genuine stones from my jewelry. I had very good paste ones replaced in the settings. I permitted General von Heinmann to steal the imitations, and he was very happy about it all, and so was I.”

“So the ocelots brought the jewels home?”

“Yes. You have no idea, Miss Ledrick, how frequently it pays to be considered odd. That is, if you have the bank balance to back you up. Otherwise they put you in an institution.”

Ann listened and was conscious of the undercurrent of unease. She felt this undercurrent increasing through the passing minutes and more especially so with Marlow, whose knuckles were white when Washburn announced from the doorway: “Mr. Ludwig Appleby.”

Ann saw Appleby unclearly at first as he stood at the room’s distant end. He approached them slowly and became a tall, middle-aged man of heavy build with a shock of ink-black hair and bold features of the stamp, Ann felt, which practiced matrons would consider both informative and alluring. The lips, on closer view, were lushly thick.

Marlow had stood up. He did not offer his hand. He said, “Good evening, Ludwig. This pleasure is becoming increasingly frequent.”

Appleby’s voice was rich with assurance and with glutted good living.

“You’re looking a bit better tonight, Justin,” he said. “Not a day over your age.” Then he turned his eyes thoughtfully on Estelle. “And you too, Estelle. Somewhat plumper, perhaps? I ought to chase you around the block.”

Estelle said calmly, “After dinner if you wish, Ludwig. This is Miss Ledrick—Mr. Appleby.”

Ann said, “How do you do?” and found that Appleby said nothing whatever.

He stood looking down at her with his prominent dark eyes during a pause that ended in a puzzled frown. He said, “This is most extraordinary.”

Estelle said sharply, “Miss Ledrick has come up from Fanny Mistral’s to photograph the ocelots.”

“Oh?” Ludwig said.

Then he smiled.