Ned Beaumont said: “He ought to know.” His eyes became narrower. “Did Paul say anything at all to him that night about Taylor and Opal?”
She raised her head, astonished. “Don’t you know what happened that night?” she asked.
“No.”
“It hadn’t anything to do with Taylor and Opal,” she said, word tumbling over word in her eagerness to get them spoken. “It–” She jerked her face towards the door and shut her mouth with a click. Deep-chested rumbling laughter had come through the door, an( the sound of approaching steps. She faced Ned Beaumont again, hastily, lifting her hands in an appealing gesture. “I’ve got to tell you,” she whispered, desperately earnest. “Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“My place?” he suggested.
She nodded quickly. He had time to mutter his address, she to whisper, “After ten?” and he to nod before Senator Henry and Paul Madvig came into the room.
2
Paul Madvig and Ned Beaumont said good-night to the Henrys at half past ten o’clock and got into a brown sedan which Madvig drove down Charles Street. When they had ridden a block and a half Madvig blew his breath out in a satisfied gust and said: “Jesus, Ned, you don’t know how tickled I am that you and Janet are hitting it off so nice.”
Ned Beaumont, looking obliquely at the blond man’s profile, said: “I can get along with anybody.”
Madvig chuckled. “Yes you can,” he said indulgently, “like hell.”
Ned Beaumont’s lips curved in a thin secretive smile. He said: “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about tomorrow. Where’ll you be, say, in the middle of the afternoon?”
Madvig turned the sedan into China Street. “At the office,” he said. “It’s the first of the month. Why don’t you do your talking now? There’s a lot of night left yet.”
“I don’t know it all now. How’s Opal?”
“She’s all right,” Madvig said gloomily, then exclaimed: “Christ! I wish I could be sore at the kid. It’d make it a lot easier.” They passed a street-light. He blurted out: “She’s not pregnant.”
Ned Beaumont did not say anything. His face was expressionless.
Madvig reduced the sedan’s speed as they approached the Log Cabin Club. His face was red. He asked huskily: “What do you think, Ned? Was she”–he cleared his throat noisily–“his mistress? Or was it just boy and girl stuff?”
Ned Beaumont said: “I don’t know. I don’t care. Don’t ask her, Paul.”
Madvig stopped the sedan and sat for a moment at the wheel staring straight ahead. Then he cleared his throat again and spoke in a low hoarse voice: “You’re not the worst guy in the world, Ned.”
“Uh-uh,” Ned Beaumont agreed as they got out of the sedan.
They entered the Club, separating casually under the Governor’s portrait at the head of the stairs on the second floor.
Ned Beaumont went into a rather small room in the rear where five men were playing stud poker and three were watching them play. The players made a place for him at the table and by three o’clock, when the game broke up, he had won some four hundred dollars.
3
It was nearly noon when Janet Henry arrived at Ned Beaumont’s rooms. He had been pacing the floor, alternately biting his finger-nails and puffing at cigars, for more than an hour. He went without haste to the door when she rang, opened it, and, smiling with an air of slight but pleasant surprise, said: “Good morning.”
“I’m awfully sorry to be late,” she began, “but–”
“But you’re not,” he assured her. “It was to have been any time after ten.”
He ushered her into his living-room.
“I like this,” she said, turning around slowly, examining the old-fashioned room, the height of its ceiling, the width of its windows, the tremendous mirror over the fireplace, the red plush of the furniture. “It’s delightful.” She turned her brown eyes towards a half-open door. “Is that your bedroom?”
“Yes. Would you like to see it?”
“I’d love to.”
He showed her the bedroom, then the kitchen and bathroom.
“It’s perfect,” she said as they returned to the living-room. “I didn’t know there could be any more of these left in a city as horribly up to date as ours has become.”