Kay, as far as I was concerned, was just what the doctor ordered. She was blond with deep sea-blue eyes that sparkled like Long Island Sound in yachting season. Unaffected by a too close association with an almost criminal amount of wealth, she actively disliked the social whirl that was supposed to go with it. Horses, café society, Philadelphia weddings bored her. She much preferred maneuvering an Atlantic-class sailboat with an expert touch that had netted her a shiny collection of racing cups. She was also a pushover for anything that went on behind footlights.
Her father had discovered these variations from the norm when he had tried to apply the customary coat of finishing-school education at the Misses Taylor’s Select School for Girls. Kay, allergic to anything resembling a pink tea, had nearly finished the Taylor sisters instead. The breaking point came during a rehearsal for the Dramatic Society’s year-end show when, for the private amusement of the cast, she substituted for her scheduled Ruth Draper sketch, “Bon Voyage,” an original impersonation of her own titled “It Takes Nine Taylors to Make a Man.” This Thespian broadside, directed at a couple of stuffed shirtwaists, with an utter lack of Daisy Chain decorum and all the subtlety of a custard pie, landed in the midst of a hush like the one that comes just before an executioner throws the switch. The Taylor sisters themselves had unexpectedly entered, as they so often did, at precisely the wrong moment.
Kay, who recognized a climax when she saw it, beat her victims to the draw by catching the next train out of town. It was two weeks before her father’s private detectives found her up to her neck in grease paint at a Connecticut summer theater. Dudley, on that occasion, had for once given in and permitted her enrollment at a dramatic school. But she still didn’t have him tamed quite as thoroughly as we could have wished. The subject of marriage was one on which he had decided to stand no nonsense — meaning me.
As we went out and down the wide steps toward the Drive-It-Yourself jalopy I had waiting, a long gleaming Rolls floated up the drive. We didn’t notice until too late.
When Kay saw it, her hand tightened on mine and her voice had a faintly hollow sound. “Hold your hat, darling. Here it comes!”
I saw the car’s occupant get out. I groaned. “I thought it was in Washington!”
“He was,” Kay replied. “But the Inquisition recessed for the week-end. I thought we’d get away before he came.”
“He’ll be in a lovely mood after the going over Senator Budge gave him this morning. Do you have a bomb shelter?”
Mood was no word for it. Why the snow did not melt for a radius of thirty feet around when Wolff saw me don’t know. I halt expected jonquils and tulips to pop up at any moment. It was just as well that they stayed put. They were safer underground.
Wolff’s scowl as he moved toward us was sulphurous. He was short, stocky, as dynamic as high-voltage current and harder to handle. What he lacked in stature he made up in thunder. He started talking ten feet away, rather like the first act of Aïda, elephants and all.
“I thought I told you, Kathryn, that I did not want to see this — this young man again?”
Kay’s small square chin stuck out defiantly. She wasn’t walking out on him this time. It was the pay-off.
“No.” She shook her head. “That wasn’t what you said. You didn’t want to hear any more about him. You haven’t.”
“And I don’t intend to!” The glance Wolff turned on me felt as if it had been reflected, en route, from an iceberg. His voice had dropped to fifty or sixty below zero too. “I want to see you a moment, Mr. Harte. In my study. Now!”
It was an imperial command issued with just as much assurance as though there were an official executioner on duty to compel obedience. Wolff turned and started up the steps.
Kay’s voice, taut and just as determined, stopped him. “Ross is taking me to the theater. We’re late. It will be much more convenient if you ask him for an appointment tomorrow.”
This was a frank declaration of war. The thought of Dudley T. Wolff requesting an appointment of anyone short of a Supreme Court justice was so fantastic as to be heretical. From now on no quarter would be asked, or expected. Hell was going to pop.
Wolff gave his daughter a long steady look. The bulldog line of his jaw was grim. His black, jutting eyebrows bristled ominously.
“You sound serious about this,” he said.
Kay stood her ground. “I am.”
Wolff turned to me. “Unfortunately she’s of age. She thinks she knows what she wants. She’s wrong, and if I have anything to say about it—”
“But, since I am of age,” Kay cut in, “do you have anything to say about it?”
He ignored that. “Are you stubborn too, Harte?”
I nodded. “I can be.”
“All right. We know where we stand. In those articles of yours, you said I was stubborn. I’ll show you what the word means. Kathryn inherits a few million dollars at my death. Tomorrow morning I’ll change that. She’ll get it only provided she sees nothing more of you. Still stubborn?”
When Dudley Wolff rolled up his sleeves, he didn’t fool. I tried to throw a little oil on the waters.
“It’s Kay I happen to be interested in, Mr. Wolff. Not her inheritance.”
He wasn’t having any. “You’d say that, of course. But with your salary and prospects you can’t avoid being interested in—”
Kay was mad now. “Father,” she said quickly. “You might as well face it. You’re stopped this time — cold. You can leave the money to Anne, or to a home for cats. But I’ve taken all the orders I can stand. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t wear pigtails and short dresses now. Come on, Ross. We’ll miss the first curtain.”
This did stop Wolff — for nearly two seconds. He realized now, for the first time I think, that Kay really was serious. Then he led trumps.
“Kathryn, if you leave here now, with him, you won’t be coming back.”
It was a line straight out of a bad play. But it sounded real enough when he said it. I really think he meant it.
Kay’s eyes, even in that dim light, flashed. Her white face, framed by the bright scarf tied around her blond hair and the high collar of the mink coat, was as grimly determined in its own way as her father’s had ever been. Bluff or not she called it.
“That’s plain enough, Ross,” she said. “I seem to be on my own from here. Does your offer still hold?”
“License in the morning at nine,” I said, “if you’re quite sure—”
“I’m sure,” she smiled, taking my hand.
But Dudley Wolff wouldn’t admit he was licked. “And then what?” he asked. “Perhaps I had better tell you something you don’t know about yourself, Harte. That salary I mentioned a moment ago. You don’t have it any more. You’ve been fired!”
This was so unexpected that I blinked at him for a moment, uncomprehending. Then, suddenly, a mental skyrocket zoomed up and burst in my head. The lights it made were not pretty ones.
“So that’s it,” I said. “You’re J. H. Wilson?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Kay, bewildered, asked, “Ross, what—”
I told her. “Your father does things in a big way. The editorial policy of the Press seems to have got under his skin. A mysterious Mr. Wilson, the little man nobody seems to know, has been busy as a bee the last week or so buying up stock in the Press Publishing Company. He’s been trying hard to get control, money no object. Apparently he has succeeded.”
Wolff’s reply was twice as confident as an old time oil stock prospectus. “I always succeed,” he said.
“You mean you nearly always have,” Kay contradicted. “But this time — Come on, Ross. We’re going to be busy.” She started for the car.