Each respected the other's Art, which is recognized as being the firmest foundation for a happy marriage. If Soapy Molloy made a killing, nobody could be more eager to celebrate than Dolly, and he was the first to applaud when she returned from an afternoon at the stores with objects that would come in useful about the home.
Dolly's face was now free of cream. Its absence revealed her as a young woman of striking beauty, her eyes sparkling, her lips ruddier than the cherry, her whole appearance calculated to make a strong appeal to the discriminating male, though it is doubtful if somebody like the late John Knox would have approved of her much. She was smiling, as if at some secret thought, and when she spoke there was a triumphant lilt in her voice.
'Well, here we are, honey. We're in.'
'I can't wait to get action.'
'You won't have to wait long. Mrs. Llewellyn was telling me the neighbourhood is lousy with rich men you can sell oil stock to. Lord This, Lord That, dozens of them and all suckers. She doesn't know them at present, but if she's the woman I take her for she soon will.'
'Bring them on. I'm ready. I've been polishing up my sales talk.'
'Which was pretty good before. But it isn't only the neighbours.'
Loath though he was to say anything that would dampen her enthusiasm, Soapy felt compelled to point something out.
'If you're thinking of Llewellyn, forget it. I won't get a contribution from him.'
'I'd have thought he was just the sort you could have used in your business. Crawling with dough. He's the boss of a Hollywood studio, and what bosses of Hollywood studios pay themselves per annum ain't hay.'
'Sure. They get plenty. But he and his wife have a joint account. No, he didn't tell me so, but I can detect it with my sixth sense. There's a kind of man that always has a joint account with his wife. They have a sort of special look. Interesting Llewellyn in Silver River would be pie, but I'd also have to interest her, and she's not the right woman for that. She wouldn't take a chance, and there's no denying that investing in Silver River shares entails a certain risk.'
'I guess you could call it that.’
'It isn't as though there really was a Silver River oil well.’
'Perhaps there is. Somewhere.'
'Maybe. You never know.’
'Be quite a coincidence if there was.'
'It certainly would.'
'But actually I wasn't thinking of Llewellyn when I said that about our being in. What I had in mind were the fringe benefits.’
'I don't get you, sweetness.’
'Remember that rope of pearls of Mrs. Llewellyn's? You saw it often enough at the Casino. It must be worth fifty thousand dollars at least. Fifty thousand smackers, honey, and no income tax to pay on it.'
A man of Soapy's dignity does not gape or goggle, no matter what the provocation, but as Dolly concluded her speech there came into his face the sort of look sometimes seen in that of a Senator who has just been astounded, nay stunned, by some statement on the part of a political opponent.
'You're planning to snitch it?' he gasped.
'That's right. I'm biding my time, that's the sort of girl I am. Any questions?'
‘I don't like it, baby.’
'Why not?'
'You're going out of your line. It never pays.'
'Says who?'
'Says everybody who's studied the thing. Look at that time you got away with Mrs. Prosser's ice. That didn't work out so well.'
Dolly winced. The episode to which he referred was one of which she did not care to be reminded. It had started out so promisingly and finished so deplorably. And she knew where to place the blame.
'And why didn't it work out well? Because you let that little weasel Chimp Twist get mixed up in it. You went and told him where the stuff was. You told him the house it was in and the room it was in and whereabouts to look.'
Soapy had the grace to blush.
'I thought he would help.’ he said weakly.
'He did. He helped himself.'
There was a momentary silence.
'J. Sheringham Adair!' said Dolly bitterly.
'I've often wondered about that.’ said Soapy, glad to divert the conversation from his own follies. 'Is Chimp really a private eye?'
'I suppose he has a licence, or he couldn't operate, but of course it's just a front. It gives him the chance of getting into people's houses and getting away with everything that isn't nailed down. Blackmail, too, I shouldn't wonder.'
'Well, there's one good thing,' said Soapy. 'We haven't got him breathing down our necks here.’
'No, there's that. So we go ahead about those pearls?'
'Sure, honey, sure. I'm still not too sold on the idea, but you're the boss.'
'That's the way to talk, sweetie. Trust to me. I know what I'm doing.'
A perfect harmony reigned in the room. It was still reigning when the door opened cautiously and Chimp Twist slid in, rather in the manner of one of Nature's more repulsive creatures wriggling under a flat stone.
3
'When gentlefolk meet,' says the Victorian book of etiquette, 'compliments are exchanged', and the absence of these on the present occasion was due to the fact that Soapy and Dolly had lost the breath with which to make them, while Chimp was busy closing the door in order to ensure the privacy which is so essential at a time like this. He had come to place a business proposition before these old associates of his and the negotiations would be delicate enough without outside interference.
His initial emotion, on discovering that Mellingham Hall, in addition to containing fifty thousand dollars worth of pearls, was housing a couple whom he knew to be as crooked as a pair of spiral staircases and as fond of pearls as he was, had been dismay. He feared their competition, or rather that of Dolly. Of Soapy's abilities, apart from a gift for selling worthless oil stock, he had the poorest opinion, but Dolly was a different matter. Dolly was a girl of sagacity and resource, and one who, if the circumstances called for physical action, looked upon the sky as the limit. The lump on his head had long since subsided, but he could still recall the sensation of being hit by that pistol of hers.
Dismay, however, never lasted long with Chimp. There was no suggestion of uneasiness in his manner as he opened the conversation. He was calm, cool and collected.
'Hello there, Soapy. Hello there, Dolly.’ he said. 'Well, here we are again, all three of us, just like old times.' Disregarding the opprobrious name which Dolly, recovering her breath, had called him, he continued.
'I must say it surprised me finding you here. I caught a glimpse of you as you were going into dinner, and I thought for a moment I was seeing things. Then I remembered that you had been at Cannes and the Llewellyns were there too, and you would naturally have made friends with anyone as rich as they are. It was Dolly who worked it, I suppose. I can just see her giving Llewellyn the eye. You're looking fine, Dolly. You always do. We may have had our little differences in the past, but I've never changed my opinion that you're the prettiest girl that ever swiped a silk camisole from the lingerie department when the store detective wasn't noticing. Soapy seems to have got a bit thin on the top since I saw him last. You want to watch that, Soapy, because if you go bald you'll look like nothing on earth. Not that you look like much even now. If you've ever been mistaken for a movie star, it can't have been lately.'
Soapy, too, had recovered his breath.
'What,’ he asked tensely, 'are you doing here?'
'You rat,' added Dolly, seeming to find the sentence incomplete.
'I was coming: to that.' said Chimp. 'I'm Mr. Llewellyn's valet. Professional job. I've been engaged by Mrs. Llewellyn to guard her pearl necklace. And you are here, I suppose, to try to pinch it.'
'And you're going to try to pinch it first,' said Dolly, eyeing him with dislike.
'The idea did occur to me.'
Dolly uttered a passionate cry.
'It's like some sort of fate. Every time I and Soapy get a chance to do a bit of business you come
along and gum things up.'
Chimp seemed pained by her choice of words. His air was that of one who has been wounded by a friend.
I'm not gumming things up. I'm here to help. I looked in to suggest that what we ought to do is pool our resources. Three heads are better than one, even if one of them's Soapy's.'
'What's wrong with my head?' Soapy demanded with some heat.
'Solid ivory.’ said Chimp. 'And it doesn't even look nice.'
Normally such a critique would have caused Dolly to express herself with vigour and vehemence in defence of her mate, making full use of an extensive vocabulary, but she was a business woman. Chimp's proposition had given her the impression that he had some scheme or plan to put forward, and she did not want the conference to be diverted to side issues. Chimp was not a man she could ever be fond of., but she respected his ingenuity.
'How do you mean, pool our resources?'
'Go into partnership. Form a syndicate.'
'Work together, in other words.'
It's the sensible thing to do.'
'And split the gross receipts?'
'Exactly.'
'And the divvying up would be?'
'Thirty per cent to you and Soapy, seventy to me.'
It was simply the thought that such a sound breaking the quiet hush of a house which had turned in for the night might cause comment that restrained the junior partners in the proposed enterprise from howling like indignant timber wolves. They had to content themselves with howling in an undertone.
'Seventy per to you?' Dolly hissed, and Soapy, who was given to homely phrases, begged the speaker not to make him laugh, as he had a sore lip. Each made -it plain that he had not got the sympathy of his audience, Dolly going so far as to compare him to one of those unpleasant South American bats which devote so much of their time to sucking blood.
Chimp had expected some such reaction from his colleagues on the Board. He remained calm.
'Work it out for yourselves. Or, rather, you work it out, Dolly, and then you can explain it to Soapy in words of one syllable. If you'll stop Soapy making noises like a sick dog. I'll explain. You're visitors here, aren't you?'
'So what?'
'I'll tell you what. Come and stay in our little country home, these Llewellyns said to you. Right?'
'Well?'
'Well, they don't expect you to stay for ever, do they? It won't be long before they're leaving railway guides around in your room with the early trains marked in red ink and telling you at breakfast how good the service to London is. And off you'll have to go. But me I'm a permanent official. No question of me having to leave. Long after you've said goodbye and thanks for a delightful visit I'll still be on the spot, waiting my chance to clean up. And I'll be bound to get a chance sooner or later. I'm a soft-hearted fool, really, giving you as much as thirty per cent. I wouldn't do it if we weren't old friends. So on second thoughts how about it?'
His eloquence was wasted. The glare Dolly cast at him might have been that of a basilisk at the top of its form.
'Nothing doing.’ she said.
'You won't sit in?'
‘For thirty per cent I wouldn't sit in on the theft of the Crown jewels.'
'You'll be sorry. So will Soapy.'
'Don't worry about us. Get out of here. The door's behind you.'
'All right, all right, I'm going. But you're doing yourself a great disservice. We might have made a good team.'
So saying, Chimp passed into the night, and Dolly suddenly remembered three more things she would have liked to call him.
Chapter Five
Monty had finished his letter, licked the gum and sealed the envelope, and he leaned back in his chair, a spent force. The communique has been set down as if it had been an uninterrupted effort with the golden words pouring out like syrup, but actually it had involved not a few false starts and revisions. It had always been so when he wrote to Gertrude because there was the backlash when she replied to be taken into consideration. She had a tendency to regard his letters as if she were a literary critic and they so many books sent to her for review, and this necessitated frequent pauses for thought. P's had to be minded and also Q's.
It was now quite late, but he did not go to bed. Instead, he continued to sit, and as he sat he found his thoughts turning to Gertrude. This would, of course, have been perfectly normal had they been tender loving thoughts, but such was far from being the case. A year ago loyalty would not have permitted him to question her claim to rank among the top ten angels in human form, but twelve months in Hollywood seemed to have done something to him, leaving him more captious, more censorious.
Her meek acceptance of her father's absurd stipulations with regard to their marriage had never pleased him. It now irritated him every time he thought of it. Would Juliet have behaved so to Romeo, he asked himself, or for the matter of that Cleopatra to Mark Antony? Of course not. Each would have given her nose a dab with the powder puff and been off to the nearest office with the man she loved, and if Daddy didn't like it, he could eat cake.
He smoked a pipe, and under the soothing influence of tobacco his thoughts became more charitable. Neither Juliet nor Cleopatra, he reminded himself, had had a father like J. B. Butterwick. Crushed beneath the iron heel of a J. B. Butterwick, a daughter might excusably be converted into a mere automaton with no will of her own. Essentially fairminded, he recalled how he himself had grovelled to the man on the rare occasions when he had been invited to Sunday supper. It had been 'Yes, Mr. Butterwick', 'You're quite right, Mr. Butterwick' and 'How very true, Mr. Butterwick' from start to finish. He could not have been less authoritative if he had been one of Mr. Llewellyns peons.
He had just decided that in consenting to this earn-your-living-for-a-year caper she was more to be pitied than censured, when his reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside the door, the sudden flinging open of the door and the unexpected incursion of Ivor Llewellyn in a purple dressing-gown.
'Hey, Bodkin.’ said Ivor Llewellyn. 'You got any candy?'
Somewhat surprised by the question, Monty replied that he had not.
'Cake?'
'Sorry. No cake.'
'Even a cheese cracker would help.’ said Mr. Llewellyn wistfully, but here, too, Monty was obliged to fail him, and Mr. Llewellyn sank on to the bed with the sort of sigh he might have heaved at the studio when signing the contract of a star whose agent had put her terms up.
'I thought it was too much to hope for,' he said. 'I was explaining my position to that little Miller girl who works for my wife, and she hadn't any candy either. And I'm a man who requires lots of nourishing food, Bodkin.' Said Mr. Llewellyn, the gravity of his manner deepening. 'Do you remember me warning you against marrying anyone who had a blasted daughter? Well, I repeat that warning . . . in spades. Do you know what that step-daughter of mine has pulled on me? She's talked her mother into making me go on a diet.'
'You don't mean it!'
'What do you mean I don't mean it? Of course I mean it. She says I'm too fat. Would you call me fat?'
'Certainly not. Well-covered, perhaps.'
'My step-daughter says I'm obese.'
'She wants smacking.'
'Of course she does, but who's to smack her?'
'You have a point there. It would be difficult.'
'Very difficult. You ever tried to smack a Vassar girl?'
'Never.'
'Well, take it from me it can't be done. No, I’ll just have to suffer. Do you recall that Bavarian cream at dinner?'
'Delicious.'
‘I wasn't allowed to touch it. And those hot rolls. I wasn't allowed to touch them. I got diet bread. You ever eaten diet bread?'
'Not that I remember.'
'You'd remember all right if you had. Tastes like blotting paper.'
'Couldn't you have asserted yourself?'
'Married men don't assert themselves, not if they know what's good for them. I think I'll be going to bed, Bodkin. Doubt if I'll sleep, t
hough, feeling all hollow the way I do. Good night, Bodkin.'
It was perhaps three minutes after his under-nourished visitor had left him that Monty was surprised to see the door opening again. He had not anticipated that his bedroom would become a sort of journey's end for all and sundry.
This time it was Sandy. She was carrying on its dish the remains of the Bavarian cream which had spoken so eloquently to Mr. Llewellyn's soul at the dinner table.
2
When gentlefolks meet, as was stated earlier, compliments are exchanged, and Monty would have experienced no difficulty in finding one, for this second visitor, unlike her predecessor, was looking extremely attractive, but his whole attention was riveted on the Bavarian cream. And lie was about to comment on this when she forestalled him with a pleased 'So you haven't gone to bed. Good', adding 'Come along' and motioning him to the door.
'Come along?' he said.
'Yes.'
'Where?'
'To Mr. Llewellyn's room. To give him this.'
'That?'
'Yes. He wasn't allowed any at dinner.'
'So he was telling me.'
'You've seen him?'
'He's just left.'
'Social visit?'
'He came to ask if I'd got any candy.’
'Poor lamb. You hadn't, I suppose?'
'No.'
'Then this will be all the more welcome. Come along.’
'But what do you want me to do?'
'Lend me moral support and back up my story if we meet anyone.'
'Are we likely to meet anyone?'
'It's always possible.’
'What do we do if we do?'
'I tell them there was a mouse in my room and I drafted you to help me find a cat. Or would it be better to say I heard the nightingale and brought you along to listen to it?'
'Not so good.’
'No?'
'Definitely the mouse, if you ask me. But how will you explain the Bavarian cream?'
'Let's hope it won't be noticed.'
Monty was in thoughtful mood as they made their way down the stairs. A short while before he had been musing on Gertrude. He now mused on Sandy, and the new side of her character which she was showing him surprised him considerably. He had not suspected her of such versatility. It is one thing to take down letters in shorthand, with her skill at which he had long been familiar, and quite another to raid your employer's frigidaire for Bavarian cream after dark. He frankly admitted to himself that if he had been called upon to undertake such a task, his nerve would have failed him. And she had done it, not for self, not for advancement, but simply from sheer womanly goodness of heart in order to oblige an unfortunate fellow-creature who needed Bavarian cream to ward off night-starvation.