Sparkling Cyanide

She said, ‘I’ve no sympathy with weakness!’

‘Who said I was weak? No, no, you’re wrong there, my dear. Wicked, perhaps. But there’s one thing to be said for me.’

Her lip curled a little. The inevitable excuse.

‘Yes?’

‘I enjoy myself. Yes,’ he nodded, ‘I enjoy myself immensely. I’ve seen a good deal of life, Ruth. I’ve done almost everything. I’ve been an actor and a storekeeper and a waiter and an odd job man, and a luggage porter, and a property man in a circus! I’ve sailed before the mast in a tramp steamer. I’ve been in the running for President in a South American Republic. I’ve been in prison! There are only two things I’ve never done, an honest day’s work, or paid my own way.’

He looked at her, laughing. She ought, she felt, to have been revolted. But the strength of Victor Drake was the strength of the devil. He could make evil seem amusing. He was looking at her now with that uncanny penetration.

‘You needn’t look so smug, Ruth! You haven’t as many morals as you think you have! Success is your fetish. You’re the kind of girl who ends up by marrying the boss. That’s what you ought to have done with George. George oughtn’t to have married that little ass Rosemary. He ought to have married you. He’d have done a damned sight better for himself if he had.’

‘I think you’re rather insulting.’

‘Rosemary’s a damned fool, always has been. Lovely as paradise and dumb as a rabbit. She’s the kind men fall for but never stick to. Now you—you’re different. My God, if a man fell in love with you—he’d never tire.’

He had reached the vulnerable spot. She said with sudden raw sincerity:

‘If! But he wouldn’t fall in love with me!’

‘You mean George didn’t? Don’t fool yourself, Ruth. If anything happened to Rosemary, George would marry you like a shot.’

(Yes, that was it. That was the beginning of it all.)

Victor said, watching her:

‘But you know that as well as I do.’

(George’s hand on hers, his voice affectionate, warm—Yes, surely it was true … He turned to her, depended on her …)

Victor said gently: ‘You ought to have more confidence in yourself, my dear girl. You could twist George round your little finger. Rosemary’s only a silly little fool.’

‘It’s true,’ Ruth thought. ‘If it weren’t for Rosemary, I could make George ask me to marry him. I’d be good to him. I’d look after him well.’

She felt a sudden blind anger, an uprushing of passionate resentment. Victor Drake was watching her with a good deal of amusement. He liked putting ideas into people’s heads. Or, as in this case, showing them the ideas that were already there …

Yes, that was how it started—that chance meeting with the man who was going to the other side of the globe on the following day. The Ruth who came back to the office was not quite the same Ruth who had left it, though no one could have noticed anything different in her manner or appearance.

Shortly after she had returned to the office Rosemary Barton rang up on the telephone.

‘Mr Barton has just gone out to lunch. Can I do anything?’

‘Oh, Ruth, would you? That tiresome Colonel Race has sent a telegram to say he won’t be back in time for my party. Ask George who he’d like to ask instead. We really ought to have another man. There are four women—Iris is coming as a treat and Sandra Farraday and—who on earth’s the other? I can’t remember.’

‘I’m the fourth, I think. You very kindly asked me.’

‘Oh, of course. I’d forgotten all about you!’

Rosemary’s laugh came light and tinkling. She could not see the sudden flush, the hard line of Ruth Lessing’s jaw.

Asked to Rosemary’s party as a favour—a concession to George! ‘Oh, yes, we’ll have your Ruth Lessing. After all she’ll be pleased to be asked, and she is awfully useful. She looks quite presentable too.’

In that moment Ruth Lessing knew that she hated Rosemary Barton.

Hated her for being rich and beautiful and careless and brainless. No routine hard work in an office for Rosemary—everything handed to her on a golden platter. Love affairs, a doting husband—no need to work or plan—

Hateful, condescending, stuck-up, frivolous beauty …

‘I wish you were dead,’ said Ruth Lessing in a low voice to the silent telephone.

Her own words startled her. They were so unlike her. She had never been passionate, never vehement, never been anything but cool and controlled and efficient.

She said to herself: ‘What’s happening to me?’

She had hated Rosemary Barton that afternoon. She still hated Rosemary Barton on this day a year later.

Some day, perhaps, she would be able to forget Rosemary Barton. But not yet.

She deliberately sent her mind back to those November days.

Sitting looking at the telephone—feeling hatred surge up in her heart …

Giving Rosemary’s message to George in her pleasant controlled voice. Suggesting that she herself should not come so as to leave the number even. George had quickly over-ridden that!

Coming in to report next morning on the sailing of the San Cristobal. George’s relief and gratitude.

‘So he’s sailed on her all right?’

‘Yes. I handed him the money just before the gang-way was taken up.’ She hesitated and said, ‘He waved his hand as the boat backed away from the quay and called out “Love and kisses to George and tell him I’ll drink his health tonight.”’

‘Impudence!’ said George. He asked curiously, ‘What did you think of him, Ruth?’

Her voice was deliberately colourless as she replied:

‘Oh—much as I expected. A weak type.’

And George saw nothing, noticed nothing! She felt like crying out: ‘Why did you send me to see him? Didn’t you know what he might do to me? Don’t you realize that I’m a different person since yesterday? Can’t you see that I’m dangerous? That there’s no knowing what I may do?’

Instead she said in her businesslike voice, ‘About that San Paulo letter—’

She was the competent efficient secretary …

Five more days.

Rosemary’s birthday.

A quiet day at the office—a visit to the hairdresser—the putting on of a new black frock, a touch of make-up skilfully applied. A face looking at her in the glass that was not quite her own face. A pale, determined, bitter face.