Part 50 (1/2)

She's no stenographer, and she wouldn't be here playin' tunes on a typewriter unless she had some good business reason. Well, her business is--she's a s.h.i.+p-wrecker.”

The charge was ridiculous, yet there were confirmations or seeming confirmations of it. The mere name of Nicky Easton was a thorn in Davidge's soul. He remembered Easton in London at Mamise's elbow, and in Was.h.i.+ngton pursuing her car and calling her ”Mees Vapelink.”

Davidge promised Larrey that he would look into the matter, and bade him good night with mingled respect and fear.

When he set out at length to call on Mamise he was grievously troubled lest he had lost his heart to a clever adventuress. He despised his suspicions, and yet--somebody had destroyed his s.h.i.+p. He remembered how shocked she had been by the news. Yet what else could the worst spy do but pretend to be deeply worried? Davidge had never liked Jake Nuddle; Mamise's alleged relations.h.i.+p by marriage did not gain plausibility on reconsideration. The whim to live in a workman's cottage was even less convincing.

Mr. Larrey had spoiled Davidge's blissful mood and his lover's program for the evening. Davidge moved slowly toward Mamise's cottage, not as a suitor, but as a student.

Larrey shadowed him from force of habit, and saw him going with reluctant feet, pausing now and then, irresolute. Davidge was thinking hard, calling himself a fool, now for trusting Mamise and now for listening to Larrey. To suspect Mamise was to be a traitor to his love: not to suspect her was to be a traitor to his common sense and to his beloved career.

And the Mamise that awaited the belated Davidge was also in a state of tangled wits. She, too, had dressed with a finikin care, as Davidge had, neither of them stopping to think how quaint a custom it is for people who know each other well and see each other in plain clothes every day to get themselves up with meticulous skill in the evening like Christmas parcels for each other's examination. Nature dresses the birds in the mating season. Mankind with the aid of the dressmaker and the haberdasher plumes up at will.

But as Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and Davidge his Larrey, so Mamise had her sister Abbie.

Abbie came in unexpectedly and regarded Mamise's costume with no illusions except her own cynical ones:

”What you all diked up about?”

Mamise shrugged her eyebrows, her lips, and her shoulders.

Abbie guessed. ”That man comin'?”

Mamise repeated her previous business.

”Kind of low neck, don't you think? And your arms nekked.”

Mamise drew over her arms a scarf that gave them color rather than concealment. Abbie scorned the subterfuge.

”Do you think it's proper to dress like that for a man to come callin'?”

”I did think so till you spoke,” snapped Mamise in all the bitterness of the ancient feud between loveliness unashamed and unlovely shame.

Abbie felt unwelcome. ”Well, I just dropped over because Jake's went out to some kind of meetin'.”

”With whom? Where?”

”Oh, some of the workmen--a lot of soreheads lookin' for more wages.”

Mamise was indignant: ”The soldiers get thirty dollars a month on a twenty-four-hour, seven-day s.h.i.+ft. Jake gets more than that a week for loafing round the shop about seven hours a day. How on earth did you ever tie yourself up to such a rotten bounder?”

Abbie longed for a hot retort, but was merely peevish:

”Well, I ain't seen you marryin' anything better. I guess I'll go home. I don't seem to be wanted here.”

This was one of those exact truths that decent people must immediately deny. Mamise put her arms about Abbie and said:

”Forgive me, dear--I'm a beast. But Jake is such a--” She felt Abbie wriggling ominously and changed to: ”He's so unworthy of you. These are such terrible times, and the world is in such horrible need of everybody's help and especially of s.h.i.+ps. It breaks my heart to see anybody wasting his time and strength interfering with the builders instead of joining them. It's like interfering with the soldiers.