“Go away.” Her voice came muffled.
“Please, Vi.”
“Go away. There’s nothing you can say. Nothing.”
His face was grim and he was trying to frame a phrase that would tip her off to enough of the truth to intrigue her. There was a soft step in the hall behind him. Mildred Harney was standing there with her hands on her hips, a hard smile on her full lips.
“What’s the matter, kid? Won’t the girl friend talk to you?” she said mockingly.
He looked at her with unfriendly eyes. “You came up those stairs pretty softly,” he said.
Her eyes met his and there was none of the melting sweetness in her that the senator saw. “Should I tramp?” she said.
“Tramp is an apt word.”
“Oh!”
They stared at each other with undisguised hostility. Dislike had been mutual from the moment of their first meeting, but the buttons were frankly off the foils now. Cooper rammed his hands in his pockets and moved toward the stairs. He no longer wanted to talk to Vi Dawson unless Vi Dawson came downstairs. This blonde woman was too soft-footed.
“Remind me to tell you some time why you flopped as an actress,” he said.
“Did I flop?” There was ice in the inquiry.
“You did — and you made the same mistake tonight.”
He was moving down the stairs. She stamped her foot. “Maybe you’ll be working for me, too,” she said, “and then I—”
“Guess again.”
He didn’t look back. He was angry but he hoped that Vi had heard the conversation. It might make her curious. He could feel the flush still in his face. He wasn’t normally unchivalrous, but he disliked hypocrites intensely. He particularly did not like young women hypocrites who pretended to be in love with dizzy old men.
Hito was coming out of the senator’s study and the little Japanese had a nod and a white-toothed grin for him. Worlds might fall but as long as Hito still had jobs to do, he would meet his responsibilities grinning — and with a bow thrown in for good measure if there was anyone around who rated a bow.
“I’ll be using the little study for a while, Hito,” he said.
“Yess, Sar.”
Cooper went down the hall. There was a phone in Emily Weller’s study and he dialed Hannigan’s number. Hannigan himself answered.
“This is Cooper, Hannigan. Is Beau Bridwell there?”
“Bridwell? Nope. He left a while ago in a taxi, Mr. Cooper. He wasn’t drinking a thing so I don’t figger he’ll be back.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Cooper hung up with a frown. Things got more and more complicated and this was something that he couldn’t figure. It was only a few minutes after eleven and Bridwell wasn’t due out here until three. Leaving Hannigan’s in a taxi, particularly when he wasn’t drinking, was an illogical play. There was a rent-a-car place within easy walking distance of Hannigan’s.
“I’m letting little things worry me,” he growled. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
He heard the senator close the study door and mount the stairs. Hito was putting out lights in the rear of the house. In a few minutes, Hito would be through and then the Japanese would go out to his own room over the garage behind the house and everything would be quiet. Cooper rubbed his eyes.
“And I have to stay awake until three. Nice going.”
Already he could feel the tomblike silence settling upon the old house. It would be no cinch to stay awake, even with all that he had to think about. He smoked a cigarette and heard Hito putting out lights in the big study.
Cooper gave the man fifteen minutes to clean up whatever odd chores he might have to do in the rear of the house, then rose and went back through the kitchen. There was no sign of Hito and the rear door was locked. Cooper was on the point of unlocking it, but he stopped with his hand on the catch, withdrew it and snapped his fingers. “It will be time enough to do that when I come down at three o’clock.”
He went back through the house, turned out the light in the little study and ascended the stairs. His room was in the rear of the house, just across the hall from Tim Weller’s. The doors of all the rooms were closed but there was a line of light under Vivian’s door and he stopped. He was about to knock softly when he became aware of the fact that Vivian was speaking to someone. He stopped with his hand raised and then the other voice answered.
He could not distinguish words but the second voice was the voice of the blonde, Mildred Harney.
He let his hand drop arid went slowly up the hall. It was natural enough that two girls who occupied connecting rooms should be having a goodnight conversation, but he wasn’t quite happy about it. Under present circumstances, Mildred Harney would not be talking to Vi out of any feeling of affection. She was the kind of a person who had axes to grind. And she was likely to be in a mood for knifing Greg Cooper in the back with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“And I can’t help that.” He went into his room and snapped on the light. A shower would, he reflected, be a help. He slipped out of the dinner clothes. He could not, however, dismiss from his mind the thought of Vivian Dawson.
“If she had only talked to me instead of the blonde,” he thought.
Vivian Dawson herself was unhappy. She left her uncle’s study with the feeling that she had been let down, that Greg Cooper had failed her when she needed him most. The shock of her uncle’s bitter speech and of his destruction of the money had been hard enough to bear, but Greg Cooper’s failure to make a fight on the issue had been disillusioning.
“He was so weak, so helpless. And after promising me so much.”
She entered her room blindly and threw herself down upon the bed. “I never want to talk to him again. Never.”
She was still crying into her pillow when he knocked. She ignored him at first, then she rose slowly. Two instincts were at war within her. She wanted to ignore him completely — and she wanted to tell him what she thought of him. As she stood in the middle of the room with her fists clenched, she saw her own reflection in the mirror. There were two streaks down her cheeks where the tears had flowed and her fists had rubbed the tears.
She crossed to the mirror and lifted her powder-puff from the bureau top. She heard the voices in the hall and the patting motion of the powder-puff slowed. She could not distinguish the words but she knew that Mildred Harney was out there with Greg and curiosity got the better of her. She walked softly to the door. She recognized Greg’s voice and was able to distinguish the tail end of a sentence.
“... and you made the same mistake tonight.”
The blonde girl’s voice replied, “Maybe you’ll be working for me, too.”
Vivian flushed and turned away from the door. She didn’t want to be an eavesdropper and hadn’t intended to be one.
She walked back to the mirror, but when she picked up the powder-puff, she stopped with it in her hand and forgot that she had it. Her eyes were staring at her own reflection and she was looking beyond it, her mind running in desperate circles.
“He hasn’t been friendly with her and fooling me. He couldn’t.”
The fact that Greg Cooper had been talking to the blonde girl about a mistake that she had made, however, did not make sense. And she couldn’t explain satisfactorily to herself the girl’s allusion to work.
Mildred Harney had entered the adjoining room. Vivian heard her moving around. Her chin came up and she headed for the connecting bathroom.
“I’m going to talk to her. I’ve got to know what she plans to do.”
She reached the door just as the blonde girl entered the bathroom from the other door. Mildred Harney stepped swiftly into the bathroom and closed her own door behind her.