Ellery went to a sideboard and produced a bottle. It was a brown old bottle with a nice wink and gleam to it; he spoke in a low voice to Djuna and that priceless supernumerary bustled into his kitchen, to return shortly with siphon and soda and other implements of the bibulous art. “A Scotch-and-soda, Miss Brett?” asked Ellery gaily.
“Oh, no!”
“Perhaps a cocktail?”
“You’re very kind, but I don’t indulge, Mr. Queen.” Confusion had been superseded; Miss Brett was her old frosty self again, for no logical reason apparent to the less subtle male eye.
Alan Cheney was regarding the bottle thirstily. Ellery busied himself with glasses and things. Soon he had an amber effervescent fluid bubbling in a tall glass; and he offered it to Alan with the air of one man of the world to another.
“Really excellent,” murmured Ellery. “I know you have a fancy for these things . . . What, you―?” Ellery managed to exhibit an enormous astonishment.
For Mr. Alan Cheney, under the judiciously stern eye of Miss Joan Brett―Mr. Alan Cheney, the confirmed toper―was actually refusing this aromatic concoction! “No,” he muttered doggedly. “No, thanks, Queen. I’ve quit the stuff. Can’t tempt me.”
A ray of warm light seemed to touch the features of Miss Joan Brett; one with a poor sense of word-values might say that she was beaming; the truth was that the frost melted magically away, and again for no logical reason she blushed, and looked down at the floor, and her toe too began a scuffing movement; and the Leonardo, which was catalogued at one million dollars, began to slip from under her arm, ignored as completely as if it had been a gaudy calendar.
“Pshaw!” said Ellery. “And I thought―Well!” He shrugged with unconvincing disappointment. “You know, Miss Brett,” he said, ‘this is quite like one of those old stock-company melodramas. Hero leaps to the upper deck of the water-wagon―turns over a new leaf at the end of the third act, and all that sort of thing. In fact, I hear that Mr. Cheney has consented to supervise the business end of his mother’s now considerable estate―eh, Cheney?” Alan nodded breathlessly. “And he’ll probably manage the Khalkis Galleries too when this legal flurry blows over.”
He babbled on. And then he stopped, because neither of his guests was listening. Joan had turned on shocking impulse to Alan; intelligence―or whatever it is called―bridged the gap between their eyes, and Joan blushed again and turned to Ellery, who was regarding them ruefully. “I don’t think,” said Joan, ‘that I shall be going back to London after all. It’s―It was nice of you . . . .”
And Ellery, when the door had closed upon them, surveyed the prostrate canvas on his floor―to which it had slipped from Miss Joan Brett’s soft underarm―and sighed, and under the slightly disapproving gaze of young Djuna, who even at that tender age exhibited stern evidences of teetotalism, sipped his Scotch-and-soda all by himself . . . a not unpleasant ritual, if one should judge by the oxlike contentment which spread over his lean face.
The End