He was hung over when the telephone rang on his desk. The shrilling made him wince. It was all of a piece with his general outlook on life this morning, for his cogitations had led him into a cul-de-sac, and he had not yet worked his way out of it.
In sober determination to act boldly, he had composed imaginary dialogue for their opening conversation:
Miss Grey, I’m working on another novel — I don’t know if you’ve seen my earlier ones...?
I’m afraid not, Mr. McKell, although I’ve heard about them. (That seemed a reasonable preconstruction. The elder McKell could hardly have avoided mentioning his son’s literary achievements, such as they were, and Sheila Grey, a VIP in her own right, could hardly be construed as caring a damn.)
My books haven’t raised anything yet but a slight stench, I’m afraid. But I have high hopes for this one — if you’ll help me.
If I’ll help you, Mr. McKell? (That would be the raised-eyebrow department. Perhaps a shade interested.)
You see, Miss Grey, one of my leading characters is that of a famous dress designer. If I wanted to research a cab driver, all I’d have to do is ride around in cabs. But a great fashion figure — I’m afraid you’re the only accessible one I’ve heard of. Or am I presuming?
Ordinarily what she would say was You certainly are, but under the circumstances he foresaw a Well... just how can I help you?
The secret of making people interested in you, Dane had learned, lay not in helping them but in getting them to help you. By letting me watch you at work would be the irresistible response. She was bound, no matter how jaded fame had made her, to be flattered.
Or was she?
Here was where Dane’s hangover had ached.
Sheila Grey might be flattered if he were Tom Brown or Harry Schnitzelbach. But he was Ashton McKell’s son. His head throbbed with caution. To achieve an appointment he would have to give her his name. And no matter how little time elapsed between his request for an appointment and his plea for her help, it would be more than long enough to set her to wondering.
And to becoming forewarned and, therefore, forearmed.
It wouldn’t do.
So he had been prowling his apartment, chewing on his thoughts, trying to crack the problem. If you can’t go through, go around kept running about in his head. But he could not think of how to go around.
That was when the telephone rang, and he winced and answered it.
It was Sarah Vernier.
“You’re annoyed, Dane,” she said. “I can tell. I’ve interrupted your work.”
“No, Aunt Sarah, it’s just that—”
“Dear, I simply wanted to know if you’d come up to Twenty Deer for the weekend.”
Mrs. Vernier was not his aunt, she was his godmother; and it was not spiritual consanguinity that drew them together but a mutual fondness of long standing. Twenty Deer had been one of his favorite places as a boy; and Sarah Vernier’s charm, plus the excellence of her table and her French husband’s cellar, preserved its attractions for him as an adult. It was the estate near Rhinebeck which — before his mother’s revelation — had been one of his possible choices for the weekend he had sworn not to spend in the city.
“I’m afraid it’s impossible, Aunt Sarah,” Dane said.
“Shoot!” she said. “What is it with everyone? Somebody must be spreading the rumor that we have the plague up here.”
“I wish I could come, I really do.”
“I’ll bet you do. It’s a new girl, isn’t it, you devil?” Mrs. Vernier sounded pleased. “Tell me about her.”
“It’s worse. A new book, Aunt Sarah.”
“Oh, dear, that obsession of yours.” The weekend was ruined, no one was coming to Twenty Deer, she would be alone with Jacques — sweet man, wasn’t he? but one of those infernal enthusiasts. Two years ago it was organic farming, last year orchids, now it’s falcons.
“Messy, smelly, savage things,” said Mrs. Vernier. “Fortunately, he keeps them in the barn, so I’m spared the sight of them. As a result, of course, I never see Jacques, either. I’ve half a mind to come into town, just to teach him a lesson.”
And, “Why don’t you?” said Dane strongly.
It was as easy as that. In a moment he would be astonished at the speed of his inspiration; now he had time for nothing but following it up.
“But everyone’s away, dear,” Sarah Vernier said. “No one at all is left in New York.”
“You can always,” Dane said, “do some shopping.”
“But with whom? You’re aware, my dear, that your mother is no fun, bless her — she might as well get her things from the Salvation Army. And you’re too busy. Or,” she asked suddenly, “are you?”
“For you, Aunt Sarah? Never!”
So easy. Sarah Vernier and her shopping were proverbial in and about their circle. It was one of the few subjects on which she could be a bore. So Dane knew all about her favorite shopping places.
As usual, she began with trivia and worked her way up. She visited Tiffany’s and ordered — for her husband — cuff links with falcons on them. Then she picked up two cut-glass toothpick holders at the Carriage House for her collection. At a “new little place” in the East 80s she (eventually) came away with a “darling” hat. At Leo Ottmiller’s bookshop, since the falcon-ridden Jacques’s happiness was still on her conscience, Mrs. Vernier purchased The Boke of the Hawke.
They lunched at the Colony.
She attacked her vichyssoise and cold chicken with good appetite. “Where shall we go next?” she asked. “Oh, Dane, this was an inspiration. I’m having such fun!”
“Macy’s?”
“Don’t be wicked. I know!” she cried. “Sheila Grey’s.”
And Dane said — as if he had not brought Sarah Vernier half the length of the Hudson Valley for this sole purpose without her slightest suspicion of it — “Sheila Grey’s? Of course,” with just the right touch of vagueness. He must have heard her say it a hundred times: I always get my things at Sheila Grey’s.
On the sidewalk outside the Colony, she said, “You look like a porter on safari. Why don’t we leave the packages somewhere?”
“They’re light as air.” It was an important part of his plan to arrive at his goal looking the very picture of Gentleman Helping Lady on Extended Shopping Tour. He handed her into the taxicab before she could insist.
So here they were.
Sheila Grey’s Fifth Avenue salon.
While Mrs. Vernier was exchanging greetings with the sharply tailored, gray-haired chief of saleswomen, Dane artfully wandered off, still holding his godmother’s packages. He did not want to set them down. Not just yet.
He had become genuinely interested in the reproduction of a Pieter de Hooch — whoever selected the pictures in the salon had evidently not learned his trade at the feet of those who decorated American hotel rooms with thousands of mock-Utrillos and pseudo-Georgia O’Keefes — when a voice behind him said, “Let me take those from you, Mr. McKell.”
Wheeling, he looked into the face of a woman his own age, chic, a little abstracted, the tidiest bit untidy. Dane was about to decline when she simply took the packages from him.
“My name is Sheila Grey, Mr. McKell.”
It could not have been more beautifully executed if he had prepared two weeks for this moment. He had not seen her approach, he had not recognized her, and his reaction was therefore genuine.
“Thanks, Miss Grey. How stupid of me not to recognize you.”
She handed the packages to a young woman who had materialized from somewhere and just as promptly snuffed herself out; and she smiled.