Chapter 17
She reached New York in the late afternoon, just as dusk was being dispersed by street lights. She sniffed delightedly of the air that seemed to her completely delightful after almost three weeks of Claresville. She debated for a moment whether she would telephone Harlan at his club and let him know she was back. But he would not have had his dinner yet, he might even be taking his "work-out" with the masseuse and she knew that he would not allow that hour to be disturbed. She felt a growing fondness for the thought of Harlan, and promised herself as she followed a redcap, laden with her bags, to a taxi that she would be so damned sweet to Harlan that he would be mad about her all over again. She had grown careless before she went away; she had let a little of her boredom with him slip into their relations. But all that was over; she would be again the woman he had so loved and cherished at the very beginning of their relationship.
She'd shower and get herself all cleaned up from travel stains and into one of the frilly, frothy "feminine" webs of chiffon and lace that he liked and then she would call him and he would come straight to her. She smiled a little, cynically, at the thought of how she would go about binding him to her with the chains of passionate desire fulfilled and made perfect by a glorious cooperation.
The taxi driver helped her into the small, discreet lobby, accepted the handsome tip with almost a touch of gratitude and departed. The elevator operator looked a little startled when he saw her, and hesitated at sight of her luggage, and said hurriedly, "I'll bring that up in the service elevator, Miss Barker-later."
"I'm in no hurry for it, Arthur-it's good to be back," said Gayle happily, as the elevator bore her smoothly and swiftly aloft.
As she got out at her floor and went along the corridor wards the door of her apartment, Arthur lingered a moment, watching her, but she was not aware of that and a moment later someone signalled the elevator and reluctantly he slid the door noiselessly shut and answered the signal.
Gayle found her keys and fitted one into the lock. Or tried to. But, oddly enough, it would not fit. Puzzled, she took it out, examined it, saw that it was the key to the apartment door and tried once more to slip it into the lock. But still it would not go in.
A feather of uneasiness touched her for a moment but before she had time to do more than make a final effort with the key, the door swung open to her and she walked in, puzzled, stiffening a little as she saw the girl who stood with her hand on the doorknob.
The girl was small and plump and blonde. Very blonde indeed, with a round doll face, and big China blue eyes, and a wealth of soft golden curls framing her face. She wore a wisp of a chiffon and lace negligee, and beneath it, her body was plump and rosy-ivory and except for the chiffon and lace, completely nude.
"What are you doing here?" cried Gayle hotly.
The pretty blonde chuckled.
"I five here," she said coolly. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Gayle caught her breath as at a blow and the blonde's eyes traveled over her, taking in the smart, conservatively cut dark suit, the small, gay hat and then she nodded.
"Of course," she said gently. "You're the new maid. Come on in and show me your references."
She turned and swung across the small foyer, and into the living room, a long, rather narrow room with french doors opening on to a small but expensive terrace.
Gayle stopped at the top of the first of two steps that led down into the living room and looked sharply about, in growing wrath. For the place had been changed entirely. She recognized none of her own possessions.
"What the hell's going on here?" she demanded wrath-fully. "Where are my things?"
The pretty, doll-like blonde paused and turned to face her, her airy eyebrows going up a little. "Your things?" she repeated and then she laughed and dropped into a chair and curled her pretty dimpled knees beneath her. "Oh, then you must be that Barker woman-I thought you were the new maid Daddy was going to send me."
Gayle stared at the pretty, malicious face, the dancing eyes that marked the girl's enjoyment of this moment.
"I'm Gayle Barker," she said thinly after a moment. "And this is my apartment."
The blonde reached for a cigarette, lifted a fat silver table lighter and snapped it, inhaling deeply before she put the lighter down, her eyes brimming with malicious amusement.
"You mean this was your apartment, Honey," she said with venomous sweetness. "It's mine now."
Gayle studied her for a long moment, cold with shock and dismay that she tried hard to hide.
"And who the hell are you?" she managed at last.
"I'm Bonnie-Grace...." began the blonde.
"Bonnie-Grace?" Gayle's tone made an epithet of the name.
The blonde shrugged carelessly.
"Oh, it's a hell of a name, I admit, but Daddy likes it, and women in our business have to do the things Daddy likes-or else we are out of business-although you know that-now-don't you, sweetie?" said Bonnie-Grace with such malicious enjoyment that Gayle yearned to pummel her pretty, plump face with both of her tightly clenched fists.
Gayle drew a long hard breath, her hands clenched. This was the one thing she had not expected. To come back home after only a short absence, not quite three weeks, and find another woman installed in her apartment! It had thrown her for a loop and she had to fight hard to get hold of herself before she could face it.
"Daddy was tickled silly when you decided to take a trip," Bonnie-Grace went on blandly. "I'd been dancing, in a night club and Daddy liked what I had to offer; but he wasn't quite sure just how he'd get you out of here. So when you said you were going away-well, you see...." She spread plump, dimpled hands in a gay little gesture and leaned her golden head back against a chair that had been covered in jade-green damask when Gayle went away but that was now covered in powder blue.
"He-can't do this to me," Gayle breathed huskily at last.
"Oh, hell-is that the best you can think of? Baby, he's done it and what the blazes you're going to do-except find yourself another red-hot Papa, I don't know," Bonnie-Grace derided her mockingly. "You'd better 'blow' now, because Daddy'll be along any minute and he can be pretty nasty when he wants to be. Although maybe you already know that."
"I'm not afraid of the old bastard...."
"Oh, well, it's no skin off my teeth if he takes the toe of his boot to you and heaves you out-if you want the bum's rush, I know he will be glad to give it to you," Bonnie-Grace shrugged in dismissal.
Gayle said through her teeth, "What did you do with my things?"
Bonnie-Grace's eyebrows went up a little.
"You mean that junk you left cluttering up the place? Daddy gave it away-Salvation Army, I suppose or some other charitable institution. The place was like this when I moved in. Nice, ain't it?"
"Why, you little...." Gayle said it through her teeth and took a step towards the triumphantly mocking blonde.
Bonnie-Grace did not so much as move but the laughter went out of her eyes, and she looked mean and cold, instead of soft and young and delectable.
"You move one finger towards me, and you'll wish you'd never been born," said Bonnie-Grace savagely. "I told you I danced in a night club; I can fight as dirty as anybody you ever met. But why don't you use your head, and get out while the getting is good? Remember, pal, little Gayle doesn't live here any more-Bonnie-Grace does, and Bonnie-Grace can take care of herself in the clinches."
Behind Gayle, there had been the whisper of a key in the lock and the door opened. It was Harlan and for a moment he stood, startled, looking from Bonnie-Grace to Gayle, and then his eyes went cold and his face hardened.
"Well, well-so you're back," he said unpleasantly.
"And being very nasty to me, Daddy," Bonnie-Grace whimpered piteously.
If anything had been needed to convince Gayle beyond all possibility of a doubt that she had lost, for all time, her place with Harlan, it was the look of fatuous adoration he gave the simpering Bonnie-Grace, that cooled into active hostility as he looked at Gayle.
"That's something we won't stand for, Precious," he spoke to Bonnie-Grace, but his cold, bleak eyes were on Gayle. "You'd better run back to whoever went on your Vacation' with you, Barker. You're all washed up here."
Gayle stared at him, for a long moment, and then at Bonnie-Grace.
"This whole thing was a put-up job between you two...." she began furiously.
Harlan said grimly, "You went away-I didn't."
"But I told you-it was to a friend's wedding...." she pleaded, and despised herself for such humiliation.
"Whatever it was-and I don't for the least moment believe a wedding had anything to do with it-" Harlan turned back and swung open the door and motioned to her. "Out!" he said as though she had been a disobedient animal.
Gayle looked back at Bonnie-Grace, who was almost purring in her delight of the situation, and then at Harlan.
"I'll go-as soon as I have my things," said Gayle savagely.
"What you left here was bought with my money and I disposed of it as I saw fit," snapped Harlan. "You brought nothing here but a few rags; whatever you took away with you, you can keep. The rest has been disposed of. Now get out."
And there was nothing to do but to go.
Gayle leaned against the elevator cage, shaking to the bottoms of her feet in their expensive handmade shoes. She was dazed and bewildered by the unexpectedness of finding the loathesome little Bonnie-Grace occupying the apartment she had called hers. She had not realized until this moment how much she had counted on returning to Harlan, on having him again devoted to her; of being kept lavishly by his money. And now-panic brushed her with a chill finger as she realized that in her purse there was less than twenty dollars; all that she possessed was in the luggage downstairs. And it was a bitter thought indeed to recall that she had taken with her to Claresville only the simplest and most "lady-like" clothes she had owned!
Arthur, the elevator operator, said gently, "Down, Miss Barker?"
Gayle straightened and set her jaw.
"Where else?" she asked through her teeth and stepped into the car.
Arthur had known-that was why he had not brought her baggage up. Arthur knew that Bonnie-Grace had moved in and Gayle had been thrown out. Arthur, wise-eyed, close-tongued, whose eyes missed nothing that went on but whose discretion and silence could be counted on as long as he was well-tipped-Arthur had known. And that was a thought that laid another bitter straw on the load of humiliation against which she struggled to stand erect as she walked along to the lobby, and Arthur helped her out to a taxi with her luggage.
The taxi-driver waited, and at last she thought of the name of a cheap, side-street hotel, all that she could afford now until she could line up another sucker, who would take up where Harlan had dropped her. She would not be so well-kept; she would not be provided with expensive luxuries; she would have to work very hard to hold the sucker; and she would not be able to hold him as long as she had held Harlan; and then she would pass on to another, still less well-heeled than Harlan or his successor. Gradually-maybe not so gradually, either!-she would go down another step and another step)-and at the end of that ladder, when she was no longer fresh and lovely looking, there would be the two-dollar "houses"....
"This the place, lady?" asked the taxi-driver, eying her cynically as he looked from her to the dingy hotel front.
Gayle fought back the panic, fought back the easy, weakening tears, and followed a bellhop into the hotel, where she registered for a room, and was shown to it, and found it as drab and dingy as she had feared it would be.
For a long moment after she had tipped the bellboy as frugally as she dared, and he had left the room, she stood very still in the middle of it, looking about her, yet not seeing the room at all. Seeing, instead the apartment as it had been when she had gone recklessly, rashly off and left it; the beautifully luxurious, tasteful room with bath she had had at the Leslie's. And then her mouth hardened for she could no more afford such memories than she could afford weakening tears.
With her mouth a thin, grim line she sat down at the desk and took up the telephone book. Carefully she traced down a number, and called it.
A man's voice, cheerful and casual said, "Mart Richards speaking." I
"Oh, hello, Mart," Gayle's voice was warm and sweet and eager. "This is Gayle."
The man's voice took on a faint caution.
"Who?"
"Gayle Barker-don't you dare say you've forgotten me....
"Oh, Barker," he repeated heartily and she sensed that he was being very wary, probably because someone else was in the room and he was pretending that his caller was a man. "How have you been? How are you?"
Gayle threw every bit of allure into her voice that she could muster up and said coaxingly, "I'm lonely! I just got back in town and I thought perhaps you might like to take me to dinner...."
"Golly, Barker, I wish I could," said Mart heartily, with a heartiness that did not ring true. "But I'm all tied up tonight...."
"Oh, well, perhaps another night...."
She heard Mart laugh.
"Hi, whatever happened to Harlan Kramer?" he wanted to know.
For a moment she ground her teeth in helpless rage before she could summon up the alluring, enchanting voice again.
"Oh, poor old Harlan-I got terribly bored with him...."
"That's too bad-he's quite a guy," said Mart. "My wife and I like him very much."
Gayle caught her breath in a soundless gasp and steadied her voice to say with a pretense of bright gaiety, "Oh, but I didn't know you were married...."
Mart's voice dropped low.
"Well, I sure as hell am, Gayle, for almost a month now-so don't call here again, will you? My bride would give me hell if she knew I'd ever met a gal like you," he said and the receiver clicked down.
Gayle sat very still, her mouth hard and set. And then she breathed deeply, blinked hard and once more turned to the telephone book, carefully tracing a number with her finger.
After all, there were a hell of a lot of telephone numbers in the book and among them there was bound to be a sucker. And sooner or later she would find him....