Linda Lee, Incorporated: A Novel

His hand was warm and moist and strong…

XXXVII

Harry Lontaine got home at a late hour for one who had it in mind to bathe, dress, and put in appearance for an eight o'clock dinner several miles away. So was the tempo of his gait unhurried as he left the blue-and-white car waiting at the curb and passed up the straight-ruled sidewalk of cement between the tutelary orange trees of the bungalow he rented furnished. And on its miniature veranda he delayed for several minutes, motionless, with his face lifted thoughtfully, even a shade wistfully to the sky in which the afterglow of sunset pulsed like dreams of youth reviewed across the desert years of middle-age…

Other than this shy colour of regret, however, nothing of the trend of his thoughts, nothing of their nature, escaped the eyes, steel-blue and dense, in that lean, hard mould of features, never more self-contained, never more British than in this moment.

And presently he roused, but without change of countenance, and went on into the combination living and dining-room to which the best part of the dwelling was given over.

Here, where the dusk held close and still, Lontaine, when he had made a light, wasted no more time than was required for a stop at the buffet to treat himself to a considerably stiffer drink of pseudo-Scotch than the law allowed, or – seeing that the law allowed none at all – his superficial necessities seemed to call for.

Before the door which gave upon the more private quarters of the house, however, he hung for some time in seeming reluctance to proceed, a suspicion of strained attentiveness in his deliberation. From beyond came never a sound. Eventually he pushed the door open.

Immediately he saw Fanny. Bathed in a great glare, she sat in her dressing-room facing a long mirror of three panels; decked out en grande toilette, wearing every jewel she possessed, groomed to the finest nuance of perfection; a brilliant and strangely immobile figurine of modern femininity, with bobbed hair like burnished brass, milk-white bosom and arms rising out of a calyx of peach-blow taffeta, jewels stung to iridescent life by that fierce wash of light.

As if hypnotized by so much bright loveliness, she continued steadfastly to gaze upon her reflected self; even when she heard Lontaine at the door and the mirror placed him behind her in the doorway, she did not move by so much as a trembling eyelash. Only when he spoke, her lips parted in answer, though still she neither turned nor ceased to contemplate the vision in the glass; as if this last were something precious but tricksy, something that might incontinently vanish forever from her ken did she but for a single instant turn her eyes away.

In a voice that strained without success to sound easy and natural, Lontaine said: "Ah, Fanny! dressed already, eh? Must be later than I thought."

"It's past half-past," Fanny replied without expression.

Lontaine glanced nervously at the back of his wrist. "Right you are. Never dreamed time was getting away from me like that."

"You have been … busy, yes?" his wife enquired with a distinctly satiric accent.

"Rather. Gassing with Zinn, you know – "

"To be sure." The satiric inflexion was now more marked. "The life-saver."

"Not a bad name for him, that." Lontaine chuckled with, however, an unconvincing brevity. "Daresay Linda looks on the little beast in that light, at all events. Had a thousand details to discuss with him … ah … naturally."

"Naturally." Fanny's tone had become again illegible.

"That's what – ah – delayed me. Have to rush for it now – what? – or Summerlad'll be vexed."

"You really think so? With Cindy there to console him?"

"Something in that, no doubt. Still" – Lontaine made as if to go to his own room, but lingered – "it's hardly the thing to be so much behind time. See here, old girl: you're all dressed… I say! but you've laid it on a bit thick tonight, haven't you?"

"Don't you like the way I look, Harry?"

"Never more ravishing in all your life – "

"That's good."

"Good? Afraid I don't follow. What's got into you tonight, Fanny? You've rigged yourself out for the opera instead of a simple little dinner…"

"I wanted something to remember myself by," Fanny mysteriously informed the mirror to which her attention continued constant.

"What do you mean by that?" Lontaine paused for answer, but Fanny was dumb. He essayed another short, confused laugh. "You know, Fan, sometimes you think of the damnedest things to say."

"Yes: don't I?"

He recognized one of her mulishly enigmatic moods.

"Mean to say," he harked back – "since you're quite ready – what's the matter with your cutting along and explaining I'll be delayed a bit? Tell them not to wait dinner for me…"

"And you?" The movement of enameled lips was imperceptible.

"I'll be along later, of course, as soon as I've dressed. You can send the car back for me. Why not?"

"Why not?"

But Lontaine took this inscrutable echo for assent, and with a grunt of relief disappeared into his dressing-room. A series of clicks sounded as he turned on lights. Still the woman seated before the mirror didn't move. But her interest centered no longer upon what she saw; though she did not avert her eyes from the glowing figure painted in those still, shallow depths, all her attention now was concentrated in another faculty: she was listening.

She heard Lontaine moving about, chair-legs scrape a hardwood floor, the snap of the bathroom light. A pause followed, then a clashing noise of bottles and toilet articles impatiently shifted upon their glass shelf. After that, Lontaine's returning footsteps. Then he reappeared in the doorway.

"Hello! Thought you were going on ahead."

"Presently," Fanny replied in brittle accents. "Plenty of time. Something the matter?"

"Can't find my razors."

"No." At last the woman broke her pose: her counterfeit in the glass nodded gravely to the man behind her. "No," she iterated – and he had the flying thought that her voice had never vibrated so sweetly – "and you won't find them, either, Harry. They're in a safe place, it's no good your hunting for them."

"What!" Lontaine advanced one single, sudden stride. "What's that for?"

"I thought it might save trouble. You see, Harry, I haven't forgotten that hideous scene we had in London, last time you decided it was all up with you, there wasn't anything to do but cut your throat. I didn't see any sense in going through all that again."

After a full minute of silence Lontaine uttered heavily: "I see you've guessed…"

"There have been so many of these crises in our life together, Harry, I ought to know the signs – don't you think?"

The man stumbled to a chair, and bent a louring countenance over hands savagely laced. "What else can I do?" he muttered. "I'm in a hole there's no other way out of…"

"There are steamers every so often from San Francisco, for Honolulu, China, Japan, the South Seas…"

"No use. They'd get me by wireless if they ever allowed me to go aboard. Zinn … I'm sure that Jew devil suspects … insists on getting at the books first thing tomorrow."

"How much have you got into Cindy for?"

Lontaine said stupidly: "Eh? What's that?"

"How much have you … borrowed, Harry?"

"Fifty thou – perhaps a bit more."

Following another little silence, Fanny gave a curt laugh, left her chair and, standing at the dressing-table, began slowly to strip off her jewels, her sunburst brooch, her flexible bracelets, the pearls that had been her mother's, all her rings, even that slender hoop of platinum and diamonds which she had never removed since the day of her marriage.