Chapter 8

"Let me fix it for you, Dana," said Corinne, marching into his room while Dana was struggling with his black tie.

It was Wednesday evening, and he was due at Irene Spillman's home in an hour. Oddly enough, he dreaded the evening. Yet he realized that it might be one of the most important evenings of his life. His cold was still bothering him. He would not be at his best, as he should be when he was invited to dine with a man as influential as Irene's grandfather. The strange thing was that he didn't seem to care. He was in a bad frame of mind. He was furious at Corinne for more reasons than one. He wished to heaven she'd stop babying him, fussing over him.

"I can fix my own tie," he snapped, a remark to which Corinne paid no attention.

After she'd finished the job, Corinne stood off, studying her brother admiringly. "You do look so distinguished in evening clothes, Dana dear. You'd cut a figure in any drawing room, anywhere in the world. You really would."

"Thanks," Dana said curtly, in the tone of a man who couldn't care less.

He longed to tell Corinne to stop fussing over him like a baby contestant who was sure to win first prize. He wanted to tell her to stop mixing in his affairs, to stop trying to run his life. Women like Corinne were a menace. They were born manipulators. They seemed without shame or conscience, once they made up their minds to a course of action. They suited their actions to their purposes. Considerations of fair play were out the window. That was the way Dana felt about the way Corinne had acted with Lena's parents.

While Lena was laid up, she had seized the opportunity to persuade Lena's parents to buy a house that Lena was dead set against their buying. Even he had been help-less to do anything about it, because by the time he understood what Corinne was up to it was too late.

Corinne had seated herself on his bed and was smoking. In her severely tailored suit, she looked more than ever like a drum major. Corinne should have been a man. There was little of the feminine about her, much that was tough and ruthless.

"Dana," she said thoughtfully, "I do hope you realize how very fortunate you are to have this golden opportunity to get in with the Spillman family, one of the wealthiest families in southern California. Make the most of it, Dana dear. If Irene has fallen in love with you, as I suspect she has, I trust you'll have sense enough to make the most of that, too. The man who marries Irene Spillman won't need to build his future. He will have married his future."

"That's right," Dana said, and walked into the adjoining bathroom to take a last gargle before leaving. His throat still felt scratchy.

He took a look in the mirror, then returned to the bedroom where Corinne was waiting to help him on with his coat. She said again how handsome he looked. She gave his arm an affectionate pat, then said in as soft a wheedling a voice as she was capable of: "Please don't be angry at me for selling that house to Lena's father, Dana. He liked it, he was eager to buy. So what was wrong with my selling it to him?"

Her words served to unleash the anger which had been coiling inside Dana for the past two days.

"Everything that you did was wrong," he snapped. "You had no business arranging that meeting with the Andersons. Lena was ill. She knew nothing about it. You high-pressured her old man into buying the confounded house. You lied outright about it."

"I did not lie."

"You did. You gave the Andersons the impression that Lena was crazy about the house. She detests it and you know it. What's more, you made me a party to what I consider a sly, underhanded piece of business. I haven't phoned Lena in three days. I'm ashamed to phone. I don't know what to say, how to tell her that my own sister used her accident as a convenient device to make a few fast bucks. "I'm ashamed for both of us," Dana said, and lit a cigarette to calm his jumpy nerves. He stood with his back to a chest of drawers, the corners of his mouth drawn down in scowling irritation.

"I'm ashamed of myself, chiefly because I didn't have the plain everyday honesty to tell Jim Anderson what was what. If you want to know the truth, I feel as if we were a pair of crooks."

Corinne stared at him as if he'd suddenly taken leave of his senses. There were times, she said, when a woman had to fight for what she'd set her heart on; otherwise she'd never get it. She'd set her heart on Dana having a successful life. An important part of this was marrying the right girl. She'd had her suspicions all along that Lena was not right for him, that she was a trashy nobody from a common family. That was why she'd jumped at the chance to get a good look at Lena's parents the minute the opportunity presented itself.

"She didn't want us to meet them," Corinne snapped. And it was easy enough to understand why, now that she'd seen them.

They struck her as illiterate hillbillies.

Dana pointed out quietly that Jim Anderson had been able to write a check in five figures as a down payment on the house. "You didn't waste much time grabbing it, either."

"That's enough of that kind of talk, Dana," Corinne said furiously. She walked close up to her brother, her plumpish cheeks shaking like so much angered jelly.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, standing there defending those people, those awful vulgar people; and insulting me, your own sister, who has worked for you, sacrificed for you, given up a personal life of my own so that you could have a good life. Now you put that cheap, common, designing girl before me."

It was too much for human endurance, Corinne said. She looked fairly beside herself with frustration, with impatience, with exasperation at being confronted with one of the facts of life about which she could do nothing: a man's obsession for a beautiful young girl.

"You'll rue the day you marry her, if you do marry her."

"She may not want to marry me when she learns what took place behind her back."

"Ha! How silly and deluded can you be, Dana?"

"Lena happens to have her own standards as to what's right, and what is not playing on the level. I'm not sure how she'll feel when she learns that her parents were tricked, that you worked out your little scheme and I didn't stop you."

Corinne straightened up, recovering her calm and dignity. "I have nothing further to say about Lena Anderson or her parents. I've warned you, I've done my best to help you see that you're being led into a trap. I can do no more-except to remind you of one thing, Dana. Irene Spillman is the kind of girl you should marry. If you play your cards right, there's not a doubt in my mind that you can marry her."

Dana smiled coldly. "It so happens that I have no desire to marry Irene."

"Why not? What's wrong with her?"

"There's nothing wrong with her, as far as I know. She's a stunning beauty; no doubt she would appeal to a lot of men. She doesn't happen to appeal to me, that's all."

Corinne smiled a trifle. It was hard to take such a nonsensical remark seriously. "Dana, dear," she said sympathetically, "I think this flu virus has eaten deeper into your system than you realize. You simply are not a well man, and for that reason I'll you've lost your perspective. A beautiful girl who will be worth millions in her own right one of these days doesn't happen to appeal! Dana, I do wish you'd see a doctor tomorrow."