Part 5

"I leave you in better company, David," said Mrs. Carey. "No, my dear boy; I wouldn't be so cruel as to make you take me to the door. The car is outside. You stay here and improve upon the introduction that I, without a jealous bone in my body--well, without jealousy I have acquainted myself with Miss Deane, and then passed on the acquaintance to you." She lifted her slim hand. "No; I insist that you remain here." She smiled once more at Clancy. "Did you notice that I used the word 'insist'?" She leaned over and whispered. "To save my pride, my harsh and bitter pride, Miss Deane, don't forget to come to tea."

And then Clancy was left alone with Randall.

VII

For a moment, embarrassed silence fell upon them. At least, Clancy knew that she was embarrassed, and she felt, from the slowly rising color on Randall's face, that he was also what the girls in Zenith--and other places--term "fussed." And when he spoke, it was haltingly.

"I hope--of course, Miss Deane--Mrs. Carey was joking. She didn't mean that I--" He paused helplessly.

"She didn't mean that you were so--fatally attractive?" asked Clancy, with wicked innocence. After all, she was beautiful, twenty, and talking to a young man whom she had met under circumstances that to a Zenither filled many of the requirements of romance. She forgot, with the adaptable memory of youth, her troubles. Flirtation was not a habit with Clancy Deane. It was an art.

"Oh, now, Miss Deane!" protested Randall.

"Then you haven't beguiled as many girls as Mrs. Carey says?" persisted Clancy.

"Why, I don't know any girls!" blurted Randall.

"Not any? Impossible!" said Clancy. "Is there anything the matter with you?"

"Matter with me?" Randall stared at her.

"I mean, your eyesight is perfectly good?"

"I saw _you_," he said bluntly. It was Clancy's turn to color, and she did so magnificently. Randall saw his advantage. "The very minute I saw you," he said, "I knew--" He stopped. Clancy's chin had lifted a trifle.

"Yes," she said gently. "You knew?"

"That we'd meet again," he said bravely.

"I didn't know that brokers were romantic," she said.

"I'm not," he retorted.

She eyed him carefully.

"No; I don't think you are. Still, not to know any girls--and it isn't because you haven't seen any, either. Well, there must be something else wrong with you. What is it?"

Randall fumbled in his pocket and produced a leather cigarette-case. He opened it, looking at Clancy.

"Will you have one?" he asked.

She shook her head. He lighted the cigarette; the smoke seemed to restore his self-possession.

"I've been too busy to meet girls," he declared.

Clancy shrugged.

"You weren't busy night before last."

She was enjoying herself hugely. The night before last, when she had met men at Zenda's party at the Château de la Reine, and, later, at Zenda's home, she had been too awed by New York, too overcome by the reputations of the people that she had met to think of any of the men as men. But now she was talking to a young man whose eyes, almost from the moment that she had accosted him on Park Avenue, had shown a definite interest in her. Not the interest of any normal man in a pretty girl, but a personal interest, and interest in _her_, Clancy Deane, not merely in the face or figure of Clancy Deane.

Randall was the sort of man, Clancy felt (still without knowing that she felt it), in whom one could repose confidences without fear of betrayal or, what is worse, misunderstanding. All of which unconscious, or subconscious, analysis on Clancy's part accounted for her own feeling of superiority toward him. For she had that feeling. A friendly enough feeling, but one that inclined her toward poking fun at him.

"No," admitted Randall; "I was kind of lonesome, and--I saw you, and----"

Clancy took the wheel and steered the bark of conversation deftly away from herself.

"Mrs. Carey must know many girls," she said. "And she seemed _quite_ an intimate friend of yours." Clancy had in her make-up the due proportion of cattishness.

"She is," answered Randall promptly. "That is, she's been extremely kind to me. But I haven't known her long. She returned from Europe last month and was interested in French securities. She bought them through my office, because an uncle of mine, who'd been on the boat with her, had mentioned my name. That's all."

The mention of Europe wakened some memory in Clancy.

"She's not _the_ Mrs. Carey, is she? Not the artist who was decorated for bravery----"

Randall nodded.

"I guess she is, but you'd never think it from her talk. She never mentions it, or refers to her work----"

"Have you seen it?" asked Clancy.

"Her paintings? Oh, yes; I've been in her studio. The fact is"--and he colored--"I happened to be the right size, or shape, or something, for a male figure she wanted, and--well," he finished sheepishly, "I posed for her."

Clancy grinned.

"You've never been in the chorus of a musical comedy, have you?"

"No." Randall laughed. "And I won't unless you're in it."

It was a perfectly innocent remark, as vapid as the remarks made by young people in the process of getting acquainted always are. Yet, for a second, Clancy felt a cold chill round her heart. A glance at Randall assured her that there'd been no hidden meaning in the statement. Her own remark had inspired his response. But the mere casual connection of herself with any matter theatrical brought back the events of the past two days.

She beckoned to her waiter and asked for her check. Randall made an involuntary movement toward his pocket, then thought better of it. Clancy liked him for the perfectly natural movement, but liked him better because he halted it.

"You--I don't suppose--you'd care to go to the theater--or anything?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I must go home," she declared.

"Well, I can, at least, take you up-town," he said,

"I don't live up-town. I live----"

"You've moved?"

"Yes," she answered. All the fears that for ten minutes had been shoved into the background now came back to her. To-morrow's papers might contain the statement that the supposed murderess of Morris Beiner had been traced to the Napoli, whence she had vanished. It wouldn't take a very keen brain to draw a connection between that vanished girl and the girl now talking with Randall.

"Well, I can take you to wherever you've moved," he announced cheerfully.

"I--I'd rather you wouldn't," said Clancy.

Randall's face reddened. He colored, Clancy thought, more easily and frequently than any man she'd known.

The waiter brought her change. She gave him fifteen cents, an exact ten per cent. of her bill, and rose. Then she bent over to pick up her evening paper. Randall forestalled her. He handed it to her, and his eyes lighted on the "want ad" columns.

"You aren't looking for work, are you?" he asked. "I mean--I don't want to be rude, but----"

"Well?" said Clancy coldly.

"I--if you happened to know stenography--do you?"

"Well?" she said again.

"I need a--stenographer," he blurted.

She eyed him.

"You move rapidly, don't you?"

"I'm fresh, you think? Well, I suppose it seems that way, but--I don't mean to be, Miss Deane. Only--well, my name and address are in the telephone-book. If you ever happened--to want to see me again--you could reach me easily."

"Thank you," said Clancy. "Good-night." For a moment, her fingers rested in his huge hand; then, with a little nod, she left the restaurant.

She did not look behind her as she walked down Fifth Avenue and across Washington Square. Randall was not the sort to spy upon her, no matter how anxious he was to know where she lived. And he was anxious--Clancy felt sure of that. She didn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed over that surety.

She felt annoyed with herself that she was even interested in Randall's attitude toward her. She had come to New York with a very definite purpose, and that purpose contemplated no man in its foreground. Entering Mrs. Gerand's lodging-house, she passed the telephone fastened against the wall in the front hall. It was the idlest curiosity, still--it wouldn't do any harm to know Randall's address. She looked it up in the telephone directory. He had offices in the Guaranty Building and lived in the Monarch apartment-house on Park Avenue.

She was more exhausted than she realized. Not even fear could keep her awake to-night, and fear did its utmost. For, alone in her room, she felt her helplessness. She had avoided the police for a day--but how much longer could she hope to do so?

In the morning, courage came to her again. She asked Mrs. Gerand for permission to look at the morning paper before she left the house. The Beiner mystery was given less space this morning than yesterday afternoon. The paper reported no new discoveries.

And there were no suspicious police-looking persons loitering outside Mrs. Gerand's house. Three rods from the front door and Clancy's confidence in her own ability to thwart the whole New York detective force had returned.

Mrs. Gerand had recommended that she breakfast in a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, praising the coffee and boiled eggs highly. Clancy found it without difficulty. It was a sort of bakery, lunch-room, and pastry shop.

Blown by a brisk wind, Clancy stopped before a mirror to readjust her hat and hair. In the mirror, she saw a friendly face smiling at her. She turned. At a marble-topped table sat Mrs. Carey. She beckoned for Clancy. Short of actual rudeness, there was nothing for Clancy to do but to accept the invitation.

"You look," Mrs. Carey greeted her, "as though you'd been out in your catboat already. Sit down with me. Jennie!" she called to a waitress. "Take Miss Deane's order."

Clancy let Mrs. Carey order for her. She envied the older woman's air of authority, her easiness of manner.

"New York hasn't corrupted you as yet, Miss Deane, has it? You keep Maine hours. Fancy meeting any one breakfasting at seven-thirty."

"But I've met you, and you're a New Yorker," said Clancy.

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"I have to work."

"So do I," said Clancy.

"Whereabouts? At what?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"I don't know," Clancy confessed. "I've made a list of firms that advertise for stenographers."

"'Stenographer?' With that skin? And those eyes? And your hair? Bless your heart, Miss Deane, you ought to go on the stage--or into the movies."

Clancy lowered her eyes to the grapefruit which the waitress had brought.

"I--don't think I'd care for either of those," she answered.

"Hm. Wouldn't care to do a little posing? Oh, of course not. No future in that--" Mrs. Carey's brows wrinkled. She broke a roll and buttered it. "Nothing," she said, "happens without good reason. I was alarmed about my cook this morning. Laid up in bed. I think it's--'flu,' though I hope not. Anyway, the doctor says it's not serious; she'll be well in a day or so. But I hated to go out for my breakfast instead of eating in bed. And I can't cook a thing!"

"No?" said Clancy. Into her tones crept frigidity. Mrs. Carey laughed suddenly.

"Bless your sweet heart, did you think I was offering you a place as cook? No; in my roundabout, verbose way, Miss Deane, I was explaining that my cook's illness was a matter for congratulation. It sent me outdoors, enabled me to meet you, and--after breakfast come over to my studio. Sally Henderson needs an assistant, and spoke to me the other day. You'll do."

"What sort of work is it?" asked Clancy timidly.

"Interior decorating--and renting apartments."

"But I--don't know anything about that sort of thing."

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"Neither does Sally. Her father died five years ago. He was a doctor. Lots of money, but spent it all. Sally had to do _something_. So she became an interior decorator. Don't argue with me, my dear. I intend to play Destiny for you. How are the buckwheat cakes?"

"Fine!" Clancy murmured from a full mouth.

VIII

Clancy's ideas of studios had been gained from the perusal of fiction. So the workmanlike appearance of the room on the top floor of Sophie Carey's house on Waverly Place was somewhat of a surprise to her.

Its roof was of glass, but curtains, cunningly manipulated by not too sightly cords, barred or invited the overhead light as the artist desired. The front was a series of huge windows, which were also protected by curtains. It faced the north.

About the room, faces to wall, were easels. Mrs. Carey turned one round until the light fell upon it.

It was a large canvas, which Clancy supposed was allegorical. Three figures stood out against a background of rolling smoke above a scene of desolation--a man, a woman, and a child, their garments torn and stained, but their faces smiling.

"Like it?" asked Mrs. Carey.

"Why--it's wonderful!" cried Clancy.

"I call it 'Hope,'" said Mrs. Carey.

Clancy stared at it. She got the painter's idea. The man and his wife and their child, looking smilingly forward into a future that-- She turned to Mrs. Carey. She pointed to the foreground.

"Isn't there more--smoke--trouble--there?"

"There is--but they refuse to look at it. That, after all, is hope, isn't it, Miss Deane? Hope founded on sheer blindness never has seemed to me a particularly admirable quality. But hope founded on courage is worth while. You really like it?"

Clancy turned again to the picture. Suddenly she pointed to the figure of the man.

"Why, that's Mr. Randall!" she exclaimed.

"Yes. Of course, it isn't really a likeness. I didn't want that. I merely wanted the magnificence of his body. It is magnificent, isn't it? Such a splendid waist-line above such slender but strong thighs. Remarkable, in these days, when, outside of professional athletes, the man with a strong upper body usually has huge, ungraceful hips."

Mrs. Carey picked up a telephone as she spoke, and so did not observe the blush that stole over Clancy's face. Of course, artists, even women artists, spoke unconventionally, but to discuss in such detail the body of a man, known to both of them was not mere unconventionality--it was shocking. That is, it was shocking according to the standards of Zenith.

Clancy listened while her hostess spoke to some one whom she called "Sally," and who must be Miss Henderson.

"You said you wanted some one, Sally. Well, I have the some one. Prettiest thing you ever looked at.... The business? As much as you do, probably. What difference does it make? She's pretty. She's lovely. No man could refuse to rent an apartment or have his place done over if she asked him.... Right away. Miss Deane, her name is.... Not at all, old thing."

She hung up and turned beamingly to Clancy.

"Simple, isn't it? You are now, Miss Deane, an interior decorator. At least, within an hour you will be." She wrote rapidly upon the pad by the telephone. "Here's the address. You don't need a letter of introduction."

Dazed, Clancy took the slip of paper. She noted that the address written down was a number on East Forty-seventh Street. Little as she yet knew of the town's geography, she knew that Fifth Avenue was the great dividing-line. Therefore, any place east of it must be quite a distance from Times Square, which was two long blocks west of Fifth Avenue. She would be safe from recognition at Miss Sally Henderson's--probably. But she refused to think of probabilities.

"I don't know how to thank you, Mrs. Carey," she said.

Sophie Carey laughed carelessly.

"Don't try, my dear. Don't ever learn. The really successful person--and you're going to be a great success--never expresses gratitude. He--or she--accepts whatever comes along."

She crossed her knees and lighted a cigarette.

"I couldn't follow that philosophy," said Clancy. "I wouldn't want to."

"Why not?" demanded Sophie Carey.

"It doesn't seem--right," said Clancy. "Besides," she added hastily, "I'm not sure that I'll be a success."

Mrs. Carey stared at her.

"Why not?" she asked sharply. "God gives us brains; we use them. God gives us strength; we use it. God gives us good looks; why shouldn't we use them? As long as this is a man-ruled world, feminine good looks will assay higher than feminine brains. If you don't believe it, compare the incomes received by the greatest women novelists, artists, doctors, lawyers, with the incomes received by women who have no brains at all, but whose beauty makes them attractive in moving pictures or upon the stage. Beauty is an asset that mustn't be ignored, my dear Miss Deane. And you have it. Have it? Indeed you have! Didn't our hitherto immune David become infected with the virus of love the moment he saw you?"

Clancy looked prim.

"I'm sure," she said, almost rebukingly, "that Mr. Randall couldn't have done anything like that--so soon."

Mrs. Carey laughed.

"I'll forgive you because of your last two words, my dear. They prove that you're not the little prig that you sound. Why, you _know_ that David is extremely interested. And you are interested yourself. Otherwise, you would not be jealous of me."

"Jealous?" Clancy was indignant.

Mrs. Carey smiled.

"That's what I said. When you recognized him in the painting-- My dear, I'm too old for David. I'm thirty-one. Besides, I have a husband living. You need not worry."

She rose, and before Clancy could frame any reply, threw an arm about the girl's shoulders and led her from the studio. Descending the two flights of stairs to the street door, Clancy caught a glimpse of a lovely boudoir, and a drawing-room whose huge grand piano and subdued coloring of decoration lived up to her ideals of what society knew as correct. The studio on the top floor might be a workroom, but the rest of the house was a place that, merely to own, thought Clancy, was to be assured of happiness.

Indeed, after having left Mrs. Carey and boarding a cross-town car at Eighth Street, Clancy wondered that Mrs. Carey did not give the impression of complete happiness. She was famous, rich, sought-after, yet she seemed, to Clancy, dissatisfied. Probably, thought Clancy, some trouble with her husband. Surely it must be the fault of Mr. Carey, for no woman so sweet and generous as Sophie Carey could possibly be at fault.

For a moment, she had been indignant at Mrs. Carey's charge of jealousy. But the one salient characteristic of Clancy Deane was honesty. It was a characteristic that would bring to her unhappiness and happiness both. Just now, that honesty hurt her pride. For she had felt a certain restlessness, uneasiness, that had been indefinable until Mrs. Carey had named it. It had been jealousy. She had resented that this rich, beautiful, and famous woman should assume a slightly proprietary air toward David Randall. Clairvoyantly, Clancy knew that she would never _really_ love Sophie Carey. Still, she would try to.

At Astor Place, she took the subway, riding, according to instructions that Mrs. Carey had given her, to the Grand Central Station. Here she alighted and, a block west, turned up Madison Avenue.

If it had not occurred to her before that one found one's way about most easily in New York, she would have learned it now. With its avenues running north and south, and its cross-streets running east and west, and with practically all of both, save in the far-down-town district, numbered, it was almost impossible for any one who could read Arabic numerals to become lost in this, the greatest city of the Western hemisphere.

She found the establishment of "Sally Henderson, Interior Decorator--Apartments," a few doors east of Madison Avenue.

A young gentleman, soft-voiced, cow-eyed, moved gracefully forward to greet her. The cut of his sleeves, as narrow as a woman's, and fitting at the shoulder with the same pucker, the appearance of the waist-line as snug as her own, made Clancy realize that the art of dressing men has reappeared in the world as pronouncedly as in the days when they wore gorgeous laces and silken breeches, and bejeweled-buckled shoes.

The young gentleman--Clancy later learned that he was named Guernsey, and pronounced it "Garnsey"--ushered her into an inner office. This room was furnished less primly than the outer office. The first room she had entered seemed, with its filing-cases and busy stenographer pounding away at a typewriter and its adding machine and maps upon the wall, a place of business. But this inner room seemed like a boudoir. Clancy discovered that the outer room was where persons who desired to rent apartments were taken care of; this inner room was the spot where those desirous of the services of an interior decorator were received.

Miss Sally Henderson sat at a table upon which were samples of wall-paper. She was tall, Clancy could tell, had what in Zenith would be termed a "skinny" figure, and her hair, of a stringy mud-color, was almost plastered, man-fashion, upon a narrow, high forehead. Upon her nose were perched a pair of glasses. Her lips, surprisingly, were well-formed, full, and red. It was the mouth of a sensuous, beauty-loving, passionate woman, and the rest of her was the masculinity of an old maid.

She smiled as Clancy approached.

"So Sophie sent you to my matrimonial bureau, eh?" she said. Clancy stared. "Oh, yes," Miss Henderson went on; "three girls have been married from this business in the last eight months. I think there's a curse on the place. Tell me--are you engaged, in love, or anything?" Clancy shook her head. "That's too bad," sighed Miss Henderson.

"Why?" asked Clancy.

"Oh, if you were already engaged, you'd not be husband-hunting the men who come apartment-hunting."

"I assure you that I'm not husband-hunting," said Clancy indignantly.

Miss Henderson shrugged.

"Of course you are, my dear. All of us are. Even myself. Though I've given it up lately. My peculiar style of beauty doesn't lure the men, I'm beginning to understand. Well, you can't help it if you're beautiful, can you? And I can't help it if one of my clients runs away with you. Just stay three months, and I'll give you, to start with, fifty dollars a week."

Clancy stared at her.

"You'll give me fifty a week--right now?"

"My dear, any musical-comedy manager would give you forty to stand in the front row. You could earn a trifle more than that by not being particular. I take it that you are particular. Should a particular girl earn less than the other kind? Is it common justice? It is not. Therefore, I will pay you fifty dollars a week. You ought to rent a hundred per cent. of the apartments you show. Also, every third client you deal with ought to be wheedled into having some interior decorating done. I can afford to pay you that."

Clancy gasped. Fifty dollars a week was not, of course, a tithe of what she'd expect to earn in the moving pictures, but it was a big salary to one who possessed about five dollars in the world.

"But you'll have to buy yourself some decent clothes," continued Miss Henderson. "That suit, if you'll pardon me, my dear, looks like the very devil. I have a dressmaker, unique thing-- Oh, don't stare at the clothes I have on; I have to dress this way during office-hours. It makes me look business-like. But outside of business--it's different. You may trust my dressmaker. Cheaper--much cheaper, too. What do you know about interior decorating?" she asked suddenly.

"Nothing," Clancy confessed frankly.

"Excellent!" said Miss Henderson. "Interior decorators can design theatrically beautiful rooms, but not homes. How can they? Home is the expression of its owner. So the less you know the better."

Clancy drew in a long breath. Feebly, she comprehended that she was in the presence of a "character," a person unique in her experience. She was glad that she did not have to talk, that her new employer's verbosity covered up her own silence. She was grateful when, as Miss Henderson paused, the young man, Guernsey, entered.

"Mr. Grannis to see you, Miss Henderson," he said.

Miss Henderson shrugged petulantly. She looked at Clancy.