Chapter 9
It was perhaps an hour before the sheriff arrived and things had quieted down enough for him to make at least a motion towards an investigation. Gayle, looking on, amused and cynical, told herself that the burglar could have reached the next county and have stopped for a hamburger on the way before the sheriff swung into action.
Mary-Ellen, a perennial wallflower joying in this unaccustomed moment in the spotlight, being the center of attention, was brought in, pale and wan and with an elaborate bandage over her forehead. She was helped to a sofa, where she collapsed dramatically and put both shaking hands to her head, moaning. If she had been raped, Gayle told herself with disgust, Mary-Ellen would not have made more of a to-do-probably less, Gayle corrected herself, taking in Mary-Ellen's pudgy figure, her round, rather stupid face and her straw-colored hair.
"Now, Miss Mary-Ellen," said the comfortably fat and slow sheriff who had known all of these people for years. "You just kind of pull yourself together and try to tell me what you can about what happened."
Mary-Ellen gave a small, stricken moan and smiled at him weakly.
"Oh, it was awful, Sheriff-just awful!" she moaned. "I went up to the powder room to-to-" She broke off and turned scarlet and stammered wildly, "to wash my hands."
Her china blue gaze flicked modestly around the group and dropped.
"And there he was!" Mary-Ellen rushed on shakily. "He was going through the purses and bags that lay on the table beside our wraps-and when I came in, he turned-and-and said something that-that sounded like an animal growling-oh, it was terrible...."
She dissolved into easy tears and hysteria threatened her, but the sheriff and those about her soothed her anxiously, and at last she raised a tear-wet, reddened face and blinked wet eyelashes and apologized pathetically.
"I'm-so sorry," she stammered pathetically.
"Well, now, Miss Mary-Ellen, I reckon it was a right unpleasant experience and there's no reason why you shouldn't break down," he told her soothingly. "But did you get a good look at him? Could you identify him if you saw him again?"
"Oh, yes," moaned Mary-Ellen and shuddered dramatically. "That-that awful face-oh, I couldn't ever forget it!"
"Well, now, suppose you describe him to us," soothed the sheriff, already a little bored with her dramatics.
"He was-oh, he must have been six feet tall and big!" panted Mary-Ellen.
The sheriff nodded as though he had expected that.
Before she realized what she was doing, Gayle cried out sharply, "He wasn't by any means six feet tall-he was a little runt of a man-not over five-feet-six or seven and scared out of his life!"
Instantly the sheriff and the others turned sharply on her, and the sheriff narrowed his small eyes that were already so well encased with fat that to narrow them was almost equally to closing them.
"Who are you?" he demanded sharply.
"I'm Gayle Barker, from New York...."
"One o' the weddin' party, I reckon," said the sheriff briskly before anyone else could speak. "I didn't know anybody saw this feller except Miss Mary-Ellen here-where was you when you saw him?"
"I was in the garden," said Gayle, almost recklessly. "The man ran right straight towards us. He almost collided with us, he came so close. And I saw him full in the moonlight. And he didn't look anything like the description Mary-Ellen has given of him. He was a very small man."
She turned, before anyone else could speak, and looked, sweetly grave, at Clyde.
"You saw him, too, darl-I mean, Clyde," she corrected herself hastily, with a small, almost apologetic smile that was obviously meant for Clyde alone. "I'm sorry-but we couldn't let the sheriff go off on a wild goose chase after a six foot man when the man he really wants is such a little runt of a man, could we?"
The sheriff looked sharply at Clyde, his bushy brows drawn together.
"You saw this feller, too, Mr. Owens?" he demanded.
Clyde was dark with anger and confusion and insensibly, it seemed Sue had withdrawn a little from him and was looking at him, wide-eyed. Gayle was conscious of Don Randolph in the background, eying her with a dark anger that crisped her nerves a little, but that she met straightly and coolly.
"Well, no, Sheriff, I'm afraid I didn't," said Clyde awkwardly, "You weren't in the garden with this lady?"
"Well, yes, as a matter-of-fact I was," admitted Clyde and looked very much as though he wished he could deny it. "But my back was to the house. I only heard the sound of running footsteps and before I could turn or pay any attention, the man had gone into the shrubbery."
The sheriff eyed him severely for a moment, and then turned back to Gayle, and there was a slight edge in his voice as his eyes raked her, in the exquisitely simple, devilishly becoming frock, the bare expanse of shoulders and upper bosom.
"So you got a good look at him, did you, Miss Barker?" he demanded, while Mary-Ellen all but gnashed her teeth in helpless fury at having the spotlight wrested away from her.
"There is a moon," Gayle pointed out. "A-rather fabulous moon, such as we seldom see in New York. It was very bright, and the man was coming towards me. Yes, I had a good look at him. And he bore no smallest resemblance to the description Mary-Ellen has given you; he was most definitely not a tall man!"
"He was, too-he was!" bleated Mary-Ellen.
The sheriff turned back to her and it was obvious that he much preferred to accept the version of the incident given him by a local girl.
He turned and looked at the men who had gathered from their fruitless search of the garden, and said sternly, "Well, now, maybe you fellers better just get on with your partying and let me and my boys see what we can do about catching this feller. Anybody know what was missing?"
The flurried hostess, terribly embarrassed by this interruption to her carefully planned party, came forward to explain that a small amount of cash had been taken-"The girls' 'mad money,'" she explained with an unsteady attempt at gaiety. Nothing else had been disturbed.
The sheriff departed, and Gayle turned to Sue with a pretty air of impulsive apology.
"Sue, you mustn't think there was anything wrong about Clyde and me being alone in the garden," she said eagerly. "Honestly there' wasn't. Really. I mean-we weren't-flirting or-well, anything."
Sue's eyes were coldly brilliant but her smile was sweet and friendly, even though it was iced around the edges.
"Naturally I know there wasn't," she said coolly. "Clyde has a perfect right to sit out a dance at a party with anybody he chooses-I don't keep a ring in his nose and tie him up, you know."
Clyde beamed at her in huge relief and gratitude.
"It was such a lovely night, and it was so hot and stuffy in here and the moon was gorgeous and-well, I wanted a breath of air...." Gayle went on eagerly, a little flurried and very carefully avoiding Don's outraged bitter eyes.
"Don't try so hard, Gayle-I'm convinced that it was a perfectly harmless stroll, because I have implicit confidence in Clyde!" said Sue with cool sweetness and Clyde looked a little puzzled as though not quite sure he approved of such very perfect faith.
The musicians, who had been enjoying this totally unexpected break in their work, struck up a gay tune and the hostess moved anxiously about, trying to pull her party together.
Clyde took Sue in his arms and they danced, cheek to cheek.
Gayle stood for a moment alone, for the other men who had been all but fighting to dance with her now seemed, absurdly enough, to shy away from her a little. So it was when Don came to her, and with a smile that did not reach to his cold, dark eyes, gave her a little mocking bow.
"Well, shall we have another gander at the moonlight?" he murmured drily, and cupped her elbow in his hand.
"Thanks, I've had about all the brushes with burglars I care for tonight," she told him curtly.
But his hand only tightened on her elbow, and he dropped his head so that his lips were very near her ear when he spoke in what could only be described as a vicious whisper.
"You're going outside with me, where I can talk to you alone, even if I have to drag you by the hair!" he told her and she knew he meant exactly what he said and that he was quite capable of doing exactly that. "You're long overdue for a session back of the woodshed with a slipper in my good right hand, and from looking at you-as every man here has been doing, and drooling at what he saw-you were never more perfectly dressed for it."
Gayle flung up her head and her eyes were blazing. But Don met her eyes straightly, his own cold and dark.
"Want to come pretty and quiet-like the lady you never were from the day you were born-or want me to drag you out? I don't mind a bit-in fact it would be a pleasure!" he told her softly, savagely.
"I suppose you think I'm afraid of you!" she told him icily, as she let him guide her toward the door.
"No, I don't think you have sense enough to be afraid of me-though you damned well should be," Don told her in that low, savage whisper with his lips very near her ear that looked, to others, as though he whispered "sweet nothings."
Outside in the tender moonlight, at the foot of the garden path where she had stood with Clyde, so near to achieving a deep, dark purpose that had lain dormant in her mind for so long, she turned and faced Don, her head up, her lovely, wanton mouth a thin, twisted line, triumph riding high in her eyes.
"So now that you've done the 'cave man act'-so what?" she snapped at him, hating him and herself that her whole being should rise in urgent desire at his touch and his nearness.
"So you couldn't keep away from Clyde-not because you care a damn about him, but because you are a tramp, who can't see another woman happy without trying to louse things up," he said through his teeth.
She gave an insulting little laugh.
"Clyde's been out of diapers-I imagine-for quite a long time," she drawled insolently. "Who appointed you his nursemaid?"
Don studied her for a long moment, his eyes drawn nearly shut, the brows meeting above them.
"You're pretty cocky, aren't you?"
"I manage to get by!"
"Sure, as long as there are damned fools who want your body enough to put up with your foul mind."
"I didn't sleep with Clyde, you know...."
"Only because the opportunity was spoiled by the burglar...."
"Well, yes, I suppose so. I had him just about where I wanted him...."
"You-damned trollop!"
She laughed softly and it was as though she had struck him full in the face. But now he was a little puzzled, for obviously he had felt that he held a threat of betrayal over her that would keep her in line.
"Hard words break no bones!" she drawled, enjoying this moment to the full.
"Well, of course you know," he told her levelly, "what this means."
"Naturally. It means that Clyde is quite aware of me as a woman, and that he is going to wonder if, after all, Sue is quite-well, one never knows what may come of a situation like this!"
"Maybe one doesn't," he snapped harshly. "But you may as well get started packing. Sue will never stand for you in her home when she knows what you are."
"Of course, that's merely your opinion...." she mocked.
"All I have to do is tell Clyde, as man to man, what happened on the train coming down...."
"And of course he'll promptly remember that you came down by plane...."
"Only from Richmond...."
"So you say!"
He was silent for a moment, studying her curiously.
"Look, just what do you hope to get out of all this-aside, of course, from messing things up for Sue?" he demanded sharply. "And spoiling a friendship that means a lot to Sue!"
Gayle considered that thoughtfully, her lovely face touched with a small, mocking smile that disturbed Don because it hinted that she had managed somehow to blunt the weapons he had to use against her.
"Oh-I hadn't thought much about what I'd gain," she drawled. "Of course, I could marry Clyde...."
Don swore luridly.
"Like hell you could!"
"Like hell I could! Don't underestimate your enemy, pal! I can 'take' him as easy as snapping my fingers," she told him swiftly, and added more quietly, "And if you had ten cents worth of brains, you'd be all for it. Because you could grab Sue on the rebound and everything would be just ducky."
Don's eyes blazed.
"I don't want Sue on the rebound...."
She spat out a vulgar, unprintable epithet.
"You're a man-a male-a tomcat-you want her any damned way you can get her-and she's yours for the taking-and she'd be a damned sight more of a woman if somebody like you took her-ah the way! You're capable of opening her eyes to what it's all about-Clyde is a spineless, wishy-washy sap who would be gentle with her-and Sue is the kind of woman who needs to be shaken roughly out of some of those cockeyed ideas about sex that've been dinned into her for years."
"You don't know one damned thing about a woman like Sue-she's in another world. Your kind of woman ... "
"There are only two kinds of women," she shot back savagely. "The kind that wants to be loved-all the way; and the kind that's frigid. Which do you think Sue is?"
"Damn you!" grated Don through his teeth.
"Damning me will get you exactly nowhere at ah...."
"Don't be too sure of that-damning you is going to get you right back to New York just as fast as you can pack-back to whatever keeper has been providing for you-or are there a number of them?"
She laughed silkily.
"Oh, I'm not a two dollar street-walker," she drawled. "I'm much higher priced than that. And most of my-boy friends feel it's well worth the price. No one but you-ever got me for free! And that was because I was temporarily out of my mind! That doesn't happen often to me!"
She turned away from him and started back to the house, her head held high. For a moment she thought he called out to her angrily; but she went on and when she reached the gallery and found the party breaking up, she glanced back over her shoulder, and saw Don coming along the path, hands jammed into his pockets, his shoulders hunched a little and in the bright moonlight his face was dark with angry concentration. She smiled sweetly at him and vanished into the house to retrieve her wrap.