"Well, we live in this place at Maralarch. It isn't very big or pretentious. I—I suppose Dad's well-off, but not rich. I—I never thought much about it."
"If you never had to think about it, my wench, he's well-to-do. Uh-huh. Go on."
Jean puzzled to know what to say, groped in her mind.
"But there's a lot of ground round the house," she went on. "Dad built us a swimming pool at the back. Then there are some woods, and then Bob's baseball diamond—that's the end of our property—and then an abandoned graveyard that nobody can touch because of laws or something.''
Cy Norton, out of the corner of his eyes, watched Jean's short nose and broad mouth and the curve of her yellow hair.
"My sister," Jean rattled on, "is twenty-four.' Crystal's just got her third divorce. She's very pretty, not like me, and terribly clever. And she's very socially minded, which none of the rest of us are." Despite herself and her brimming eyes, Jean started to laugh. "Sir Henry, I can't wait to see her face when she meets you!"
H.M. somewhat misunderstood this.
"Well... now!" he disclaimed, with a modesty which would not have deceived a baby. "I got a natural dignity, d'ye see, which sort of overawes people until they know me. You were saying?"
"Bob, that's my brother, is the middle one," said Jean. "Bob is twenty-two. He's awfully nice. But he's not clever like Crystal. He's not interested in much except baseball and automobiles. He doesn't know what to do now he's left college. Sometimes Dad is in such a quiet fury with him that I—I could murder him!"
H.M. looked at her curiously.
"Which one could you murder?" he asked. "Your brother or your old man?"
"I—I meant Dad. Not really, of course."
"I see. Anybody else about the place?"
"No. Wait, except for old Stuffy! He's one of the three servants. He's supposed to be houseman, but he does everything from running the vacuum cleaner to massaging Dad's knee. Ages and ages ago he was supposed to be a great baseball player"—here H.M. gave a slight start—"but you'd have to ask Bob about that." Jean paused. Then her voice grew almost hysterical.
"What else can I tell you?" she cried. "We're just an ordinary family!"
H.M.'s gaze, which can be as disconcerting as the evil eye, was turned steadily on her.
"You can tell me this," he answered. "What are you afraid is goin' to happen?"
"I don't understand!"
"You do understand." H.M. spoke patiently. "After that row in your father's office, what are you afraid is going to happen?"
Jean smoothed her skirt over her knees. She looked upwards, as though for help from the sky, and then down again. Cy Norton was intensely conscious of the touch of her arm. Then Jean spoke.
"When Dave and I went to Dad's office this afternoon..."
"Dave," interposed H.M., "being this feller Huntington Davis? Your fiancé?"
"Yes. He's wonderful! He looks just like..." About to quote a film comparison again, Jean glanced at Cy Norton and gritted her teeth.
"Anyway," she went on, "I spoke to Miss Engels, Dad's secretary. She said he'd gone to the Token Bank and Trust Company, and wouldn't be at his office until after lunch. When he did get back, he was carrying a brief case that positively bulged."
"Well?"
Jean swallowed.
"Suppose he is in trouble?" she asked. "Suppose he's going to disappear with a lot of money, and take this dreadful woman with him?"
"But where would be the miracle?" demanded Cy.
"Miracle?"
"He's promised to show H.M. a miracle and challenged him to explain it. There'd be no miracle about running away. Unless," said Cy thoughtfully, "he means to turn into smoke and vanish before your eyes."
"Stop it!" cried Jean.
Cy begged her pardon. He could not imagine what had put that grisly image into his head. Yet it was so vivid that it lingered, like a phantom in the windshield, before three pairs of eyes.
"You take it easy, my wench," H.M. assured her. "I've seen a lot of rummy things in my time, but I've never seen that and I don't expect to see it."
"I'm not worrying about that," retorted Jean, "because it's silly. But tonight..." She turned to Cy. "You'll stay overnight with us, won't you?"
"Great Scott, no. I can't. I haven't got any clothes with me!"
"Neither has Sir Henry," the girl pointed out. "But Dad's always got plenty of spare toothbrushes and razors for guests." She silenced his protests with an appealing look he could not resist
"Because, as I told you," continued a half-hysterical Jean, "Dad's gathering us together for some kind of announcement he says will shock us. And if he makes a remark like that, he's not joking. He means it!"
"Uh-huh," said H.M. "And when is the shockin' due to take place?"
"Tonight!" said Jean. "At dinner!"
Cy Norton hunched up his shoulders. Westwards, the clouds faintly darkened with coming storm.
4
As another peal of thunder exploded over the house, some five minutes before a dinner arranged for eight o'clock, Crystal Manning paced up and down the drawing room.
Outside the rain was a deluge. The long, low frame house, painted white with green window trimmings, comfortable yet unpretentious, might scarcely have been visible through that rain to anyone who walked up Elm Road from the station. Maralarch, commuters may have noted, is the station between Larchmont and Mamaroneck on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad.
Lightning threw a ghostly shimmer at the windows of the drawing room where Crystal Manning paced. All the lights were on here, as in the rest of the house.
"Now, really!" Crystal murmured impatiently.
She was shapely and not too tall, understanding well how to use the maturity of body which accompanied a maturity of veiled dark blue eyes. Her hair was dark brown; under light it seemed black. The great Adolphe said he had created a hair style for her—though the average person, seeing the broad parting and hair drawn down almost past the cheekbones, would have said it was the style of our female ancestors a hundred years ago.
With the names of her three husbands we need not trouble. But we may follow some, if not perhaps all, of Crystal's thoughts.
"Oh, hell!" murmured Crystal.
She hoped, in this storm, that the lights wouldn't go out With a sense of humiliation she wished they had a butler. Admittedly there wouldn't be anything for a butler to do here; but it looked so well.
It was all Dad's fault, of course. Dad could have bought one of those estates which lay eastwards behind the house—beyond the swimming pool and the woods and the baseball field and the old graveyard—one of those estates facing out over the waters of the Sound.
Why not? Dad could afford it! Instead he had even cheated her out of seeing the guest of honour. She remembered meeting Dad on the staircase less than two hours ago.
"Of course," Crystal had murmured, as though mentioning an obvious fact, "we're dressing for dinner tonight?"
"No, my dear. Why should we? We don't dress ordinarily."
Crystal could have screamed.
"You may not remember' she said, half veiling the dark blue eyes, "that we're entertaining rather a distinguished guest?"
"Sir Henry? He can't dress for dinner anyway. I understand he lost all his clothes in a riot at Grand Central."
Crystal wished her father wouldn't make these tedious jokes. She remembered him standing on the stairs a little way up, his face lobster pink from the sun, a twinkle in his eye, his white suit outlined against the panelling.
"He's taking a nap, Crystal, and snoring like a lion full of luminal. Don't disturb him, please. I gave you your instructions over the phone."