And I discovered Joyce Nichols standing not two feet away from me. It was as though something had led me to her in the dark. She had chosen to run contrary to the fashion for once, and had on a wide, ankle-length skirt that made her look like a Dresden doll.
“Teddy!” she cried the moment she saw me, “what brought you here so late?”
I mumbled some excuse or other.
“I thought you were trying to renege. I’ve been saving the twelfth and the fourteenth for you,” she explained. “I didn’t want you to have the thirteenth because it brings bad luck.”
“I don’t want to dance with any one but you, Joyce,” I told her. “I’ll sit over there in the corner and watch you until it’s my turn.”
She came looking for me between the seventh and eighth dances and pressed a string of pearls into my hand.
“Put this in your pocket for me like a good boy, will you Teddy?” she said. “There’s something the matter with the catch and I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”
Between the tenth and eleventh the lights went out again. I wondered who was monkeying with the circuit this time. Possibly a fuse had blown out. The current went on again in about a minute’s time, and I expected every one to finish the dance. It was the one before my turn came to dance with Joyce and I wanted them to get it over with. But no one seemed to be dancing. Instead they had all gathered about a very excited old lady who was having hysterics about something. She was stout and rather overrouged, and in her excitement she kept flinging her arms about like two windmills. She ended by fainting away, and they carried her over to one side and laid her on a cane settee.
“She has lost her pearls,” I heard some one say.
The first thing I knew two men in street clothes, detectives I suppose, walked over to me and growled: “What are you doing here, young fellow?”
I looked at them thunderstruck. “I... I’m waiting for some one,” I faltered.
“Well trouble you to stand up for a minute.”
One of them went through my clothes and suddenly pulled out Joyce’s siring of pearls.
“Here it is!” he said.
His companion gripped my shoulder like iron.
“But those... those—” I tried to explain, and the words froze on my lips from sheer horror of the predicament I was in.
“Never mind that now,” they said brutally. “We got you with the goods.”
Every one had gathered about us, staring at me. I could read hatred and disgust in every eye.
Suddenly there was a rustle of silk and a flash of aquamarine blue, and Joyce had forced her way through the crowd.
“Those are my pearls!” she cried to the detectives. “What are you doing with them?”
“How does he come to have ’em in his pocket if they’re yours?” they grunted.
“The catch broke and I asked him to keep them for me while I danced,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “Is it any of your business?”
The man that had been taking tickets at the entrance earlier in the evening now stepped forward.
“Just a minute!” he said. “Ask him how he got in here anyway.”
Once to every gate-crasher comes the moment when he’s found out and no possible stall will save him. This was mine now. I guessed. Frankie had said it was bound to happen sooner or later and Frankie had been right: it had. I had crashed one gate too many.
“How about it?” sneered the committeeman. “Thought you’d put one over, didn’t you?”
Before I could answer Joyce stamped her foot. “He came with me, of course. Didn’t he, Mother?” She turned to her mother for corroboration.
“Why, Joyce—” stammered her mother, not knowing what to say.
“Mother, you know he did!” Joyce insisted, giving her a desperate look.
“I’m sorry, Miss Nichols,” said the committeeman humbly. “My mistake. I apologize.”
I could tell by the expression of her face that Joyce was terribly angry about the whole thing. She and her mother sent for their wraps and left immediately afterward without taking any notice of me. But I couldn’t let her go like that; it nearly killed me. I ran after her, and just as she was getting ready to follow her mother into the elevator and go downstairs I caught her by the hand.
“Before you go,” I murmured, “I want to tell you something. You may as well know it now as any other time. He was right. I don’t belong here. I crashed the gate.”
“Hurry, Joyce.” said her mother. “I’m waiting for you.” And the mirrored slide of the elevator shut in my face.
I went home that night, that morning rather, shaking my head.
“What’s the matter?” asked Frankie. “You look as though you’d come fresh from a funeral.”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost her,” I told him.
“Plenty more,” said Frankie. “Another one’ll be along soon enough.”
“It’s got to be her, or no one,” I answered.
“In that case,” he said, “it looks like it’s going to be no one.”
Four or five days passed and I couldn’t get Joyce out of my head. I was blue all day long, never smiled. Frankie said I was turning into an ouch — an ouch is his idea of a person terrible to get along with. Toward the end of the week he came home one night and asked:
“Think you’ll crash any more?”
“Never again.” I said. “I’ve lost the girl I cared for by doing that.”
“Because I see by the paper that the Artists’ and Models’ Ball is being given tonight,” he told me.
“What do I care?” I said. “Go away, don’t remind me.”
“I think I’ll tackle it,” he said.
He started in to dress, and when he had on his dinner jacket he straightened it out by pressing his hands down the sides of it, the way people have a habit of doing.
“What’ve you left in this pocket?” I heard him say. “Feels like candy or something.”
I turned around just in time to see him pull out Joyce’s pearls, which had been there since the night of the dance.
“There is a Santa Claus,” said Frankie, “and you must be his pet.” He held the string up to the light and admired it. “I think I’ll put my hand in the other pocket. I might find a twenty-dollar gold piece.”
I wrapped the necklace in some tissue paper that I pulled out of the cuff of one of Frankie’s starched shirts and reached for my hat without wasting any time.
“I’m going to take them back myself,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust a messenger boy.”
I looked up Joyce’s family in the telephone book and went straight over there. They lived in a private house just off Park Avenue, and when I rang a Jap opened the door for me.
“Miss Joyce at home?” I said.
“Your name, please?” he asked.
I was afraid she wouldn’t see me if I told who I was. “Just say that a friend wishes to speak to her for a moment,” I said.
He left me waiting in a little side-room with a polished floor that shone like lacquer. I could hear voices and laughter and music up-stairs, as though they were dancing. Then I heard some one running down the stairs, and Joyce came through the door in an orange party dress with little silver things dangling around it.
“I forgot to give you back your pearl-the other night,” I said, handing the package over to her.
She put it on a table behind her without even opening it.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.
“I looked in the telephone book, of course,” I told her.
She smiled. “Did it tell you I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately?”