The haunting hand
till she could have one of her rooms done over. I can’t throw the darn
thing out the window. It makes me _so_ mad!”
“Sorry I mentioned it, dearest. Don’t bother about it. That screen
hides it and the room’s so huge you can forget that corner.”
“Anyway,” she smiled cheerfully, “I’ve managed to cover her hideous
old Wilton, except in spots, especially that torn place near the bed.
Dad sent the Orientals from home. Worn a bit, but the coloring’s
lovely. She wouldn’t take up her old carpet. Says the paint’s off the
floor and the boards cracked and rough. I don’t believe she’s had that
carpet up for years.”
“By the way,” said Gene irrelevantly, “Stoner coming to-night?”
“Why, of course he is!”
“Precisely--_why_--‘of course’?”
“How silly of you, Gene! I can’t snub Stoner, and it would have been
worse than a snub not to ask him to-night. Why, _he_ gave me the job
I’m celebrating! How _could_ I leave him out?”
“Suppose you’re right.” Gene’s agreement was sulky. “But I don’t like
Stoner and I hate to see him hanging around you.”
She went up to him and gave him a light, swift kiss on the end of his
chin, then ran back before he could seize her.
“Be a good sport, Gene, dear. A man of Stoner’s type couldn’t possibly
hurt me in anyway, for I’d never want him as a friend, let alone as a
lover. But it’s policy to be decent to him, and I’m not a fool.”
“All the same I hate to see his familiar manner with you. All the
logic in the universe isn’t going to change that.”
“And I can’t help _that_! If you _will_ be jealous of an inferior,
then you just prove an inferiority complex.” Her smile sweetened the
words, then she added with a laugh: “The same kind of complex that
made Corinne Delamar decline my invitation for to-night.”
Before Gene could reply, the door-bell rang. To Margot’s relief, the
first arrivals were May Cheshire and Lulu Leinster, with several other
girls and men from _A Toreador’s Love_. She was glad that Stoner had
not come in time to make an embarrassing trio with Gene and herself.
Amid the chatter and laughter and admiring exclamations regarding
Margot’s room and the tiny roof-garden, the bell rang again. This time
it would be Stoner, she knew. She ran to the door to admit him,
standing with her back to the room.
Stoner was tall and heavily built, with thick eyebrows that gave him a
fierce expression when he frowned. He was handsome, of a crude,
slightly brutal type. He possessed, at least, that illusive quality,
personality. He smiled down at Margot and extended a large,
well-groomed hand.
Her cordial but impersonal greeting of: “Why, hello, Mr. Stoner!
Awfully glad to see you!” sounded innocent enough, which was for
Gene’s benefit, but only Stoner saw the roguish, upturned corners of
her mouth, and the smile of challenge in her lovely eyes. After all,
one must play a game with finesse. If she didn’t coquette a _little_
with Stoner, just to keep the ball rolling, either she’d antagonize
him, or run the risk of bringing on a crisis by goading him to a less
oblique attack.
Before she turned and sauntered with him across the room, the color
had deepened in her cheeks. Whenever Stoner looked at her with his
critical, predatory eyes, Margot always grew uncomfortably conscious
of her physical assets: of the long, gently curved lines of her body;
of the clearness of her white skin, with its pink shadings; of the
golden auburn of her bobbed hair; of her nose, straight, except for a
slight uptilt at the end, which harmonized with the way her lips
deepened and lifted at the corners of her mobile mouth. She had no
unwarranted conceit, but the trained appraisal of Stoner’s glance had
brought to her to-night, as on previous occasions, the conviction that
she was more beautiful than she had supposed.
An hour later, Margot, sitting Turk-fashion on her divan, and flashing
a smile over the rim of her cocktail glass at the girls and men
standing or lolling about the room, answered their toast to her
success, with one of her own.
“If Shakespeare were alive to-day, he’d be writing scenarios, and
instead of saying: ‘The play’s the thing!’ he’d say: ‘The movies are
the _only_ thing!’ Drink to the drama of the screen! May it live long
and prosper, and have lots of--of offspring!”
“Taking liberties with the famous old toast of Rip Van Winkle. Very
clever of you, Margot, I’ll tell the world!” It was Stoner speaking.
Surprising, Margot thought, that Stoner, with all his crudities,
should have recognized her paraphrasing of the toast of Rip Van
Winkle. She was sure that no one else but Gene in that room had
education enough for that. She studied Stoner through lowered eyes. He
was standing by the table, compounding bright-colored cocktails with
much orange juice and not much gin. The bottles were emptying rather
early in the evening.
Stoner, liking to be in evidence wherever there were pretty women
about, had insisted upon presiding over the mixing of drinks. He swung
the big shaker with a loud tinkling of ice, and boisterous jests
thrown carelessly to one or another. He smiled, it seemed to Gene’s
watchful and jealous eyes, a little possessively at Margot, as he
said, with a laugh:
“I’ll hand it to you, Margot, for knowing how to maneuver the drinks
so that we’ll stay sober and yet enjoy ourselves. Most women, when
they entertain, can’t strike that happy medium. They’re either stingy
with the booze, or they turn on the hose and send you home wall-eyed.
You’re the perfect little entertainer, I’ll tell the world.”
“And why on earth, Margot, did you think you had to apologize for this
room of yours?” Lulu glanced about with wondering admiration. “I call
it a swell room, and fine for a party!”
Margot smiled, and her gray eyes twinkled.
“It’s really just a bedroom, Lulu, as I warned you. I can’t pretend
it’s anything else, while that monstrous brass bed stands over in that
corner.”
“Well, you’ve got it screened, haven’t you?” Lulu argued.
“That’s a weak camouflage. And when I go to bed, of course I remove
the screen, and then, when I look around the room, I feel as if I were
in a regular movie bedroom. They’re always so funny, you know. Aren’t
they, Mr. Stoner?”
For a second his expression showed that he thought she might be making
fun of him.
“We have to rig up those fancy bedrooms, to please the fans who’ve
never seen a really swell bedroom in their lives. They think they’re
getting the real dope when we show them beds all covered with lace and
satin and the Lord knows what not.”
“Beds don’t scare _me_,” laughed May Cheshire, shaking her little
blond, bobbed head. “Ain’t they among our best little props? Ain’t we
jumpin’ in and out of ’em in half the scenes?”
Margot laughed with the others. Hers was too human a sense of humor to
resent the obviousness of such an exhibition of another girl’s wit. It
was spontaneous at least.
“As to beds,” Stoner evidently thought the subject not yet exhausted;
“you aren’t the only young actress, Margot, who’s living in one room.
Lots of them in the ‘Roaring Forties.’ I’ve seen rooms that weren’t a
patch on this one for looks and comfort, and I’ve sat on more beds
than I could count, when there weren’t enough chairs to go round.”
“At least you won’t be put to that trouble in my room.”
Gene exulted at the slight coolness in her tone. Damn cheeky Stoner,
with his remarks about sitting on beds. Stoner gave her a sharp look,
then stared across the room to where the brass bed peeked around a
corner of the screen.
“Wouldn’t be any trouble, I assure you.” What was it, in his voice?
Irony, ridicule, effrontery or just plain nerve?
For the first time in weeks, Margot had a vivid memory of the look in
Stoner’s eyes when she had first given him her address, and the
following day, when he first suggested calling on her. The impression
of something vaguely sinister, had faded with more familiar knowledge
of the man, and his amiable crudities of mind and manner.
“Guess you’ll soon be movin’ up town into some big swell flat on
Riverside Drive. You’ll be a star I bet, in the next picture they
shoot.” There was faint envy in Lulu’s big blue eyes.
“If I move up town,” said Margot, with a laugh, “it certainly won’t be
to Riverside Drive. Too many murders of young actresses and dancers in
that neighborhood. And I’m in no hurry to move away from here. This
house has atmosphere, hasn’t it, Gene?” She turned her head to smile
directly into Gene’s watchful eyes. “It was built in the sixties, you
know, Mr. Stoner.” Her glance shifted to the director, who was sitting
on the arm of an old chair, and imperiling its usefulness.
“Picturesque old moldings, high ceilings and all that sort of thing.
Don’t you like these brownstone relics, Mr. Stoner?”
“Gene, there, knows more about them than I do. He has to shoot them
every now and then. But the inside dope on architecture and periods is
the bluff of the art director. ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ Valery?”
Gene disdained to attempt the sort of repartee which Stoner could have
understood. He got up, and poured himself a drink, and drank it
unsociably, except for a glance over his glass at Margot. She decided
hastily to make conversation of a kind that would entertain the crowd,
and avoid personalities, and danger of sword crossing between Gene and
Stoner. She would strike the note of mystery. That would intrigue them
all, at a minimum of effort.
“Listen, people,” she began, her mouth widening in a smile which
included everyone. “The best thing about this house is that it makes
good on its appearance. Mysterious lodgers have lived here. Strange
things have happened here.”
In her roving glance from one guest to the other, her eyes met
Stoner’s. Their pale blue looked dark in the shaded lighting of the
room. He sat quite still, staring intently at her. Certainly the man
had strange eyes. One moment colorless and without expression, even
when his mouth suggested significant things when he smiled or spoke to
her; the next moment taking on depth and color and a vague suggestion
of mystery. She was conscious of a slight effort in withdrawing her
glance from his arresting gaze.
Lulu dragged her chair closer, and May sprang to the divan, and
cuddled close to Margot.
“Do go on!” May’s voice shrilled excitedly. “_What_ strange things
have happened here?”
“I only heard about it yesterday.” Margot determined to keep her
glance carefully away from Stoner’s direction. He made her nervous for
some reason. “I was talking to the landlady--trying to get her to take
away her old brass bed. She told me that a girl who was living in this
very room, disappeared in the funniest way, about three months ago.
She didn’t just walk out, bag and baggage. She disappeared--literally.
Left all her belongings, even her comb and tooth brush. _And_--she’s
never come back!”
“That’s interesting!” Stoner’s comment came as he walked to the table
and poured a drink. His back was turned to Margot. “What sort of a
girl was she?” He stood now facing the others, and looking at Margot.
He frowned as if mentally groping with an abstract problem. “Anybody
have a drink?” he added genially.
Cries from the girls, begging for silence, and telling the men to pour
drinks, if they must, without talking about it or interrupting
Margot’s story; then silence and absorbed attention as Margot
continued:
“The girl’s name was Stella Ball. She was supposed to be working at
Macy’s, half time, in the afternoons. But Mrs. Bellew communicated
with the manager at Macy’s, after the girl left here, and they’d never
even heard of her!”
Stoner leisurely blew rings of smoke from his cigarette, and said
lazily:
“She may have been run over in the street. Obscure people often
disappear that way. Sudden accident, and no identification possible.