Chapter 1
It was, of course, taking a big chance. A gamble. But either way was a gamble, and she might as well move boldly. She was about to lose Harlan and knew it; he was becoming bored with her. Six months as his mistress, when he had lavished all sorts of expensive luxuries on her, including the apartment and charge accounts and a maid; six months in which his demands on her had been almost too much. And then a gradual lessening of his interest until now he spent only an occasional night with her. And, being wise in the ways of men with women who had only the claims of passion upon them, Gayle knew that it would be but a short time before he would drop her entirely.
Her lovely mouth hardened a little and she crushed out her cigarette as she read the letter again. The expensively heavy square cream-colored envelope, mixed in with her usual mail that was made up usually of bills and a few circulars, had startled her when she had first discovered it. The postmark of the small Southern city where she had been born and had lived until she was fifteen startled her even more.
With a flick of her long, beautifully kept scarlet nails, she had ripped open the envelope and read the letter with eyes that had widened incredulously.
"Well, I'll be damned!" she said softly.
Sue Leslie, who had been her "best friend" in Claresville, was writing to ask her to be maid of honor at her wedding! Sue, who was the daughter of Claresville's wealthiest and most important citizen, wanted her, Gayle Randolph, to be a part of Claresville's most fashionable wedding!
Of course, Gayle, I know how busy and important you are, Sue had written in her eager, splashing handwriting. Being one of New York's busiest and most successful models. ... Golly, what a glamorous and exciting life you must live! But after all, remember when we were kids, we always promised, each other we'd always be friends? And that no matter where you went (I knew, even then, I'd always be a small town "stick-in-the-mud" just as I always knew a girl as beautiful as you are would be somebody important and maybe travel to all sorts of exciting places) you would be my maid of honor; and I'd be yours! Well, darling, this is it! Clyde is just the grandest, the most wonderful person-you'll simply love him, I know. And oh, darling, I do so want you! Please, please say you'll come-at least two weeks before THE date, so you can "get in" on all the festivities being planned for us! We'll have such fun, darling-I promise not to let you get bored....
Gayle chuckled drily, her mouth a thin, contemptuous twist.
Bored! To go back to Claresville, with the aura of being a famous and successful model in New York! An authentic glamour-gal! To be able to kick in the teeth some of the old biddies who had always foretold that she would come to some bad end because she was the prettiest girl in town and most definitely from the wrong side of the tracks!
She got up suddenly and went to the telephone.
"Mr. Kramer, please," she told the receptionist in Harlan's office. "It's a personal call."
And when Harlan said curtly, "Yes?" Gayle said quietly, "Sorry I had to call you at the office....
"I've warned you not to...."
"I know, but I just wanted you to know that I'm going out of town for two or three weeks."
There was the briefest moment of silence and then he spoke again and this time there was a faint edge of curiosity, almost of interest in his curt voice.
"So?"
"So I thought you just possibly might like to know, in case you cared to drop in or to call me, and I wasn't here," she told him coolly.
"I'll try to make it by five o'clock," he told her shortly.
"Suit yourself. My train leaves at nine-five," she answered just as shortly and dropped the telephone receiver into its cradle.
She stood for a moment, her hand still on the phone, looking down at it, her mouth twisted. The louse had some other dame on the hook, of course; he was about to drop Gayle. If she went out of town for awhile, he might just possibly discover that he preferred her to the newcomer. On the other hand, she admitted to herself, it was just as likely that he might find he was glad to be rid of her. That was the chance she had to take. But it wasn't really much of a chance, after all; for if she didn't go, she would lose him anyway.
So what the hell if she did? There were plenty of other men who liked luscious redheads with an almost masculine capacity for passion; redheads who had used their brains to make themselves alluring and satisfying in every way. Oh, it might be hard to find one who was as well-heeled financially as Harlan. As his mistress she enjoyed many luxuries that other men lacking his inherited wealth couldn't supply so casually; but that was the hell about this life of so-called "easy virtue." You could easily go down in the scale, but it was hard to go up. You could descend from a man like Harlan into the eagerly receptive arms of a man a step farther down the ladder, and from him a step, farther down until you could easily wind up in a house down on the docks somewhere. The thought brought a sick, brackish taste to her mouth and she shuddered away from it. That was the hell of having brains enough to see where you were going; if you took things easy, hit the bottle when the going got tough, never looked beyond the immediate present-well, it was gals like that that wound up on the docks, available to any drunken roustabout with two bucks to spend! But she was being smart; she was working Harlan for every dime she could get her hands on and salting it away; when she could no longer count on being a well and carefully "kept woman" she would have a small nest-egg-and that, too, wasn't anything too pleasant to count on. A small nest-egg was pretty small potatoes compared to the ease and luxury and extravagance she had known as Harlan's mistress; and, before him, the old dodo whose memory made her flesh creep; the old man so rich, so debased that he no longer was capable of enjoying the normal pleasures-but he had been good for a nice little bunch of stocks and bonds tucked carefully away in a safety deposit vault before the evils of age and his manner of living had caught up with him and he had been carted off by his avid-eyed, fortune hungry relatives to the family plot in the cemetery.
Going carefully through her extensive and elaborate wardrobe, selecting the things she would take with her to Claresville, her busy mind worked with its accustomed machine-like precision.
The thought of marriage had not crossed her mind, or been given any serious consideration since the new night clerk at Claresville Hotel had seduced her, a few days after her fifteenth birthday, with the promise of marriage. She had grown up painfully and with ugly sadness then; and she had displayed, even then, the beginning of her presently acute mind, by blackmailing him into financing her departure from Claresville. And she had, of course, never been back.
But perhaps it was the thought-one that made her mouth twist with wry mirth-of being "maid of honor" at a fashionable wedding that brought the thought of marriage to her mind. Folding very carefully an exquisitely sheer and becoming nile-green chiffon negligee, her busy hands paused, and for a moment she stared straight ahead of her, thinking hard.
It was just barely possible, she told herself, that if she were very prim and proper, very much on her good behavior, and careful to make the most of her undeniable looks and allure, that she could put it over. The romantic atmosphere that surrounds a wedding-especially in a town like Claresville-might breed enough glamour for her to snag herself a man on an at least a semi-permanent basis. That old-fashioned stuff about marriage being a life sentence was not for her. But it might be fun, if she could manage to snatch herself a man young, good-looking, virile-she gave herself a slightly modified horse laugh. Who the hefi was she to believe in fairy tales? A young, good-looking man? Hell, if he were ninety and had one foot in the grave, and had enough money she'd leap at the idea of marrying him. The older the better, if he were rich enough, because she'd have to endure him for a much shorter time; and then as a rich and lovely widow-wow!
When, at five-thirty she heard Harlan's key in the lock, she was dressed and waiting for him, looking cool and lovely and very composed in a crisply tailored black suit with a blouse of cream-colored crepe, a jewelled pin in the lapel of the suit her only adornment. Above the suit, her skin was camellia-like, her hair a ruddy cap of red-gold brushed sleekly to her head, and tucked into a big knot at the back.
Harlan stared at her, a little startled. He was more accustomed to her in the frilly, frothy extravagances of lace and chiffon, her hair loose in its soft, deep natural waves, than in this crisply tailored, business-like garb.
His favorite cocktails were ready.
The apartment was shining and tidy, although two weeks ago when her very efficient and cynically wise-eyed maid had quit, Harlan suggested that she might get along very nicely without a maid for awhile, and she had known that it was the first sign of his lessening interest in her and her hands had clenched a little but she had offered no protest.
"Well, so you're really going on a little trip-you look ready to leap into a taxi at the drop of a hat!" he said not too agreeably.
Gayle poured herself a cocktail and sipped it slowly.
"I have to attend to a few little things before train time," she told him casually.
He eyed her sharply.
"Going with anybody I know?" he asked casually, though the look in his eyes was far from casual.
Gayle widened her eyes and laughed a little.
"Oh, for Pete's sake," she laughed in airy dismissal.
Harlan's dark, muddy-looking eyes half-hidden in his long, over-plump face narrowed a little.
"Don't try to tell me you're not walking out on me for some other guy," he growled and swallowed his cocktail at a gulp.
There were storm signals in her smoky, almost silver-gray eyes.
"I'm not trying to tell you a damned thing, except that I am going back to my old home town to be maid of honor at a wedding," she snapped.
Harlan stared at her as though he could not quite believe his ears.
"Maid of honor?" he repeated incredulously, and gave a bark of unpleasant, derisive laughter. "You? A shameless hussy like you-maid of honor?"
She set her teeth hard against the rising tide of her anger.
"Go ahead and laugh, damn you-" she said through her teeth.
"Thanks, I will," said Harlan mockingly. "You've given me a hell of a lot, I admit, for which I am grateful-naturally! But a good hearty laugh is not among the other things, so thanks!"
But despite his obvious and unpleasant amusement, she saw that there was just a faint spark of renewed interest in his eyes. He did not look nearly so bored, and her heart gave a tiny leap. Maybe, after all, the gamble was going to pay off!
"How long will you be gone?" he asked after a moment.
"I-don't quite know," she admitted deliberately and obviously evasive. "I'm-not quite sure that I will be back."
His eyes narrowed again and the dark circles beneath them seemed to deepen their muddy gleam.
"Oh-you think there may be some good pickin's back in the old home town?" he drawled, and glanced about the apartment "I suppose, then, you won't want me to renew the lease on this place."
Her hands tightened a little, and she made her voice steady.
"Oh-it's not a bad little dump-maybe your next girl friend might like it," she suggested drily. He looked at her sharply.
"I-hardly think so," he told her grimly. "No, I'd better just let the lease go-if you're not back by the end of the month. So-keep that in mind, won't you?"
"I'll try to," she told him coolly, and stood up, her eyes cold.
He stood up, too, measuring her with a long, calculating glance.
"You're a damned good-looking gal, Gayle-damned shame you have brains, as well. Brains are bad for a woman in your-shall we call it profession?"
"Yes, why don't we?" she flashed.
"Could be," he agreed and moved his fat shoulders impatiently. "Well-have fun, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. Maid of honor! If that isn't the damnedest thing!"
He went out, his fat shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and Gayle stood for a long, tense moment, drawn to her full height, her hands clenched tightly at her sides, her teeth sunk hard in her lower hp to control her blind fury, and keep back the screaming rage that she wanted to hurl at him as though the words had been stones.