At the moment the explanation was aimed at Peter Putter. He was a shy looking, youngish fellow who seemed always to have both hands thrust deep in his pants pockets. Like Rusty, Peter was a member of the Pine Glen Drama Group. Now, with Rusty closing in on him, her bent knee moving against his calf, he looked very ill-at-ease.
“The origin of the name is really very interesting,” Rusty was saying in that deep, throaty voice of hers, green eyes locking Putter’s. “We’ve traced it back eight hundred years to the royal court of Spain where the Queen was so impressed by the dancing of one of Roger’s forebears that she knighted him. The name was bestowed as part of the title along with a substantial land grant. Of course the family Anglicized it when they came to America.”
Putter tried to look impressed and back away from Rusty at the same time. Her knee followed, maintaining contact, like the nose of a hunting dog which has hit on the scent.
“The selection of the name was a direct reference to his dancing agility, of course,” Rusty added.
Peter Putter struggled to jam his hands even deeper in his pockets. Rusty had him in a corner now. But he was saved by the bell — the opening bell of the fight.
It started very suddenly. The party had reached that point where the bubbly soaks in and the lights are lowered. The Mo-Town blare had given way to soft, slow music and then there was sudden, loud violence. The spark that lit the fury was the miniskirted teeny-hopper.
She’d been brought to the party by Sy Lenzio. A small, thin man of about thirty, Sy was, like myself, divorced. He’d been in Splitsville about five years longer than I had. During that time he’d developed an affinity for young chicks—the younger the better. As it turned out, his Lolita-lust was shared by Cass Novak.
Cass was the perennial leading man of the drama group. A ruggedly handsome type with unexpected dimples, he played the romantic lead offstage even more ardently than when he was in front of the footlights. Unromantically, Cass was a plumber by profession. But that didn’t turn off his leading ladies on either side of the curtain.
It was his dancing with the teeny-bopper that precipitated the brouhaha. With a plumber’s instincts for basics, Cass had maneuvered one of his hands against her un-bra’d bosom. It was a contact which would have inspired an impotent octogenarian. The plumber followed up by backing her into a corner and running his other hand up under what there was of her miniskirt. He had her flush against the wall when Sy Lenzio became aware of his date’s predicament.
When Sy attempted to interfere, the plumber told him to stick his head in the obvious plumbing fixture and followed up by swinging at the smaller man. Sy ducked. He was agile as hell. Cass was twice his size and had a left like a monkey-wrench, but Sy kept on ducking.
Known in the drama group for his ability as a mime, Sy was as light on his feet as a ballet dancer. There was an infuriating quality in the way he just managed to avoid the roundhouse punches Cass was throwing. Snarling, Cass charged with both fists swinging. Sy leaped gracefully to one side and his foot came straight up. It connected solidly with the plumber’s groin.
Cass doubled over. He bellowed with pure animal rage. He straightened up, still clutching at himself with one hand, and charged Sy, roaring.
At this point Will Leigh moved to break it up. Will was a fat, jolly type, a banker in private life who always grabbed off the comic character parts in the drama group productions. He was a lot stronger than he looked. He got a full nelson on Cass and dragged him away from Sy. Even so, he might not have been able to hold Cass if Mrs. Novak hadn’t popped up in front of her husband.
The plumber’s wife was a puzzle to those who knew Cass. She was a plain girl for such a handsome man to have married, And she had a constantly whiny expression on her face-—an expression he doubtless gave her good reason to wear. Still, her appearance now calmed down her husband. She announced that she was ready to go home and he followed her out lambily.
The tumult over, Will Leigh returned to the couch where he’d been chatting with Wanda Humphrey. His eyes were appreciative as they resumed their conversation. I didn’t blame him. Wanda was an attractive, very stylish girl who’d been a professional dancer in her native Austria before she married Tom Humphrey. She was flirtatious in a continental manner, but I guessed it was no more than automatic where Will Leigh was concerned. The way she garbled the English language was ultra-cute and I had a feeling she did it on purpose as part of the character she played to dazzle men. Wanda had directed the show the drama group had put on earlier in the evening.
Across the room her husband followed Will’s gaze to Wanda’s low-cut bodice. He smiled slightly, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Although I knew Tom Humphrey very slightly, I would have bet he wasn’t the jealous type.
Not so the man standing at the bar beside him. Nicholus Taurus had been following his own wife’s movements all night. He was staring at her now—squinting slightly in the dim light of the furnished cellar—and his face was dark with displeasure at what he saw.
Dr. Cleo Taurus was sitting in a corner with Phil Antlers. Phil had portrayed her lover in the drawing room comedy the group had done. From the way they were sitting so close together and whispering, the mood had carried over. Her dark eyes were smouldering on him intently and her ebony hair brushed his cheek just as it had when she’d been vamping him in the play. The lady physician was a small, well-built girl—a compact bundle of dynamite.
But her husband Nick was the one who looked like he might explode. I wondered if we might not be in for a repetition of the scene between Sy Lenzio and Cass Novak. I stopped wondering at the sound of a voice in my ear. It was a female voice, bell—like, a hint of upper class British in the inflection.
I turned around. “I’m Vance Powers.” I took her hand, squeezed it and released it.
“I’m Joy Boxx.”
I took a closer look at her as she went on talking. I liked what I saw. Joy was a slender blonde of about twenty-five. Her cool, ash-blondeness seemed to define her. Matching eyebrows labeled it genuine. Aquiline features and a delicate complexion were all part-and-parcel of it. It was that patrician sort of fairness carried so well by tall girls-—which Joy was—and which labels their origins as unmistakably Anglican. It showed in the sure, almost proud way she held herself, in the simplicity of the black dress and single strand of pearls she wore.
The style of the dress itself said a lot about her. It was high-necked—hers was the only covered bodice at the party—and there was just a touch of lace at the throat, a touch that was demure and stopped short of being frivolous. The hemline reached to the knee. Yet I knew without seeing them that her long legs would be sleek and tapered and attractive—just as the rest of her was.
“ . . . and so I don’t get to many parties with my husband away so much of the time,” she was saying.
So she was married. I was disappointed. Still, in this milieu it figured. “What line is your husband in?” I asked.
“Saving souls.” A small chuckle. “That’s his line.”
“Wait a minute!” It clicked. “You mean Billy Boxx? The evangelist? Is he your husband?”
“The Right Reverend Billy Boxx.” She nodded. “Yes. I’m his wife.”
“I see.”
“Now don’t look like that. Why do men always react that way when they find out I’m a minister’s wife?”
“What way?”
“Like my legs had just turned to stumps and my breasts dried up. It’s downright defeminizing!”