Romance Classics (115 page)

Cherry hesitated for a moment, and then she turned in the seat to face him.

“Job darling, you are my very dearest friend,” she told him with deep earnestness. “I don’t know what I’d ever do without you. I’m terribly fond of you. But I don’t know if that’s being in love. I’d rather be with you than with anybody else in the whole world. But I don’t know if I’m ready to marry you or anybody else yet. Couldn’t we just go on being very dearest friends for a little while longer? I’ll make up my mind, Job darling, one of these days. Honestly I will!”

Job’s face was taut now, his hands clenched on the wheel of the car, his eyes straight ahead.

“I suppose that’s as much as I can hope for, isn’t it?” he said at last. “But it’s not an awful lot, honey, for a man who loves you as much as I do. Will you tell me one thing, Cherry?”

“If I can,” she answered warily.

“Is there anybody else?”

Cherry caught her breath, and her eyes widened. In the faint light from the instrument panel, she felt her cheeks grow warm with color and was glad that he could not see the blush.

‘Is there, Cherry?” he insisted when she was slow to answer.

“Why, Job, how could there be?” she asked. “I don’t know anybody else.”

“There’s Jonathan,” he said grimly.

“Jonny? Oh, but, Job — why, my goodness! Gracious, Job, you surely don’t think I’d fall in love with him!” she stammered wildly.

“Why not?” demanded Job. “He’s a darned good-looking guy; and he has the added novelty of being somebody new; somebody you haven’t known since you were a kid. It would be easy for a young, impressionable girl to fall for a fellow like that.”

“Well, for goodness sake, I haven’t,” cried Cherry, and wondered if her voice sounded overly emphatic. “And I’m lucky at that. Can you imagine having to fight Sandra Elliott for him? I’d be outclassed from the very first moment. She’s determined to have him, and I’d feel sorry for any woman who got between them.”

“You keep that in mind, my girl!” Job warned her. “That one could be plenty dangerous; but you outclass her from beginning to end. Oh, sure, she’s a good-looking gal and alluring and glamorous. But if Jonathan had wanted her, he’d never have run off down here and left her to follow him. You can be quite sure of that.”

“I wonder,” said Cherry under her breath.

Sandra rose gracefully from her deep chair and smiled enchantingly at the Judge, ignoring Jonathan, who was watching her with a dark, angry scowl.

“I’m going to run along to bed,” she announced sweetly. “It’s been a very tiring trip, and there were weeks of suspense and anxiety after Jonny left before my detectives could find out where he had gone. So I’ll say good night.”

Jonathan said savagely, “Oh, no you won’t. We’re going to talk.”

“Oh, not tonight, Jonny darling, please,” she whimpered like a weary child. “I’m so terribly tired, and I have one of my dreadful headaches. You know how they torture me. We’ll talk tomorrow after I’ve had a good rest.”

She smiled sweetly, came close and brushed his cheek with her lips before he could guess her intention and evade her. She chuckled wickedly as she saw his instinctive recoil, twinkled demurely at the Judge and went up the stairs.

The two men were quite silent until they heard the sound of her closing door, and then Jonathan said awkwardly, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this mess, sir.”

“What does she want?” asked the Judge quietly.

Jonathan hesitated, and the Judge added, “Aside from her expressed determination to marry you, I mean.”

“Oh, there was never any question of marriage between us, Judge,” Jonathan protested with an almost desperate earnestness. “I hope you will believe that, sir. I never asked her to marry me. I never did anything that would lead her to believe that I had any such intention. I dated her now and then. She came to me when she was named in a rather unpleasant divorce action. She managed to convince me that she was completely innocent, that she had had nothing to do with the divorce. And I still believe that. The woman who was the real co-respondent was of the same social position as the woman who was seeking a divorce. I was quite sure it was collusion; and I proved that Sandra was innocent and got her a settlement for libel. She was, or seemed to be, quite grateful. I saw her around now and then; but there was never the smallest suggestion of mariage. I don’t believe she really wants to get married. She has a very good career as a fashion model, and I’m sure she wouldn’t want to give it up.”

The Judge had listened quietly, and when Jonathan finished, he asked, “So what
does
she want?”

And Jonathan said starkly, “Money.”

The Judge’s eyebrows drew together in a scowl.

“Blackmail?” he asked, puzzled.

“It’s a form of that, sir, I suppose,” Jonathan answered bitterly. “She seems to feel that if she can worry and harass me enough, I’ll decide it’s worth a sizable check to make sure she stops being a nuisance. Does that sound logical to you, sir?”

“Painfully so.” The Judge nodded. “If you are convinced she isn’t in love with you, I can’t see what else it could be.”

“Well, she’s not in love with me, believe me, sir, any more than I am with her,” Jonathan answered.

The Judge was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head.

“An astounding woman!” He sighed.

“Judge, should I try to buy her off?” asked Jonathan.

The Judge stared at him as though shocked.

“Pay her off? My dear boy, haven’t you been in the legal profession long enough to realize that paying off blackmail is an endless business, especially the kind this woman wants? You’ll be paying off her nuisance value; and the minute the money is gone, what’s to stop her from coming back for more? She has no guilty secret of your past to threaten to reveal; all she needs do, to become a nuisance once more, is to be in your immediate vicinity. Should you marry, she could, if she were so disposed, harass your wife into a nervous breakdown. You can’t have her jailed, because she’s doing nothing except placing herself in your vicinity. No, Jonathan, I doubt if you could buy her off and make it stick.”

Jonathan nodded grimly.

“That’s about the way I had it figured out,” he admitted. “I
did
think this time I’d managed to cover my tracks sufficiently to get away from her. Judge, how can any woman be so lacking in pride and self-respect as to hound a man she knows doesn’t even
like
her?”

“She would have to want money, a great deal of it, so badly that nothing else would be important,” the Judge answered heavily.

The two men were silent for a long time, and then the Judge asked curiously, “Was this the real reason you gave up your work in Chicago and came down here — just to get away from her?”

Jonathan colored. “Sounds pretty cowardly, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Yes, it was partly to get away from her. I was pretty disillusioned with some of the aspects of my profession as it was being practiced in the firm of which I was a junior partner. But I may as well admit that I’d also grown pretty fed up with having her turn up everywhere I happened to be, with her eternal ‘Jonny, darling!’ and her air of owning me body and soul.”

The Judge’s eyes twinkled. “I can imagine that could get pretty tiresome, even though she
is
a beautiful woman.”

Jonathan eyed him sharply.

“You think she’s beautiful, Judge? I think she’s completely hideous,” he burst out.

“Under similar circumstances I’d probably think the same,” the Judge agreed. “Well, Jonny, we may as well get a good night’s sleep on it; tomorrow maybe we can view the problem more objectively. At least she will be leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, she won’t, Judge!” Jonathan burst out. “She’s here to stay until I either leave or pay her off. So I’d better go up and start packing.”

“Let’s wait and see what sort of wisdom the morning brings, Jonny,” the Judge told him gently. “Good night, my boy.”

Jonathan walked with the Judge to the door of his own room, where Eben was waiting. And then he walked out of the Lodge and to the wide front verandah.

He filled his pipe, lit it and stood for a long moment, scowling as he looked out over the rolling sweep of mountains. The late-rising moon was not yet visible, but the sky was so clear that the millions of stars looked like blazing diamonds caught in a dark web.

He was so lost in his unhappy thoughts that he was not aware of Loyce until she spoke, from the shadows at the corner of the verandah where she sat curled up in the big old swing.

Jonathan turned, startled.

“Did she really hire private detectives to find you, Jonathan?”

Jonathan walked toward the end of the verandah where she sat. He could not see her in the shadows. She was just a dim blur, her face a pallid oval in the dusk.

“I suppose she did,” he responded. “I can’t think how else.”

“She must love you very much,” said Loyce quietly.

“That’s nonsense. She doesn’t love me at all.”

“Then why would she pursue you so shamelessly?”

“If she were really in love with me,
would
she pursue me?”

She sat very still for a moment as though his words had surprised her.

“Why, no,” she said softly at last on a note of wonder. “No, of course she wouldn’t. She would have waited and hoped and maybe prayed that you loved her enough to come back or to send for her.”

“Of course,” said Jonathan grimly.

“Then why did she hire private detectives to find you if she was not in love with you? She must know she can’t force you to marry her if you don’t want to.”

“She wants,” stated Jonathan wearily, “to make so much of a nuisance of herself by following me, forcing herself on me, that I’ll be willing to pay her a handsome sum to be rid of her.”

He heard the swift, startled movement with which Loyce sat erect.

“Oh, no, Jonathan, no woman could be that shameless,” she protested.

“I’m afraid you don’t know women like Sandra,” Jonathan told her. “I don’t really think there are a great many of them. I surely hope not.”

There was silence while Loyce digested that thought, and then she burst out, “But I don’t understand. She’s so beautiful I’d think any man she wanted would want to marry her.”

Jonathan’s mouth was a thin taut line.

“You might think so, at that,” he agreed without expression.

“Jonathan,” asked Loyce at last, and her voice was touched with embarrassment, “could I ask you a favor?”

“Well, of course, Loyce. You know you don’t even have to ask,” Jonathan answered swiftly. “What is it, Loyce?”

She hesitated for a long moment, and then she asked, “Will you help me find a private detective who will do a
very
confidential job for me?”

“You want the services of a private detective, Loyce?”

“There’s something I
have
to know, Jonathan. And I don’t know any other way to learn than to hire a private detective to find out for me,” she told him. “I don’t suppose there’d be one down at the county seat. And anyway, I’d need one from Atlanta or maybe even Washington.”

Jonathan was very still for a moment, and then he asked quietly, “Do you want to tell me about it, Loyce?”

“I think perhaps I would. I have to talk to somebody about it, and I can’t talk to Gran’sir or Cherry. They’d think I was out of my mind.”

Jonathan waited, and after a moment she said shakily, “I want to know if Weldon really
was
on that plane that crashed.”

Jonathan sat erect.

“But, Loyce, if he hadn’t been — ” he began, and broke off for an instant before he went on more vigorously, “Loyce, it’s been over a year since the crash. If Weldon had missed the plane, if he were still alive, he’d have come back. You’d have heard from him.”

“Would I?” It was a thin thread of sound that came faintly to him from the swing.

“Loyce, I don’t understand,” Jonathan admitted his confusion. “You were within a few days of marrying the man; you were deeply in love with each other. Are you trying to say you think he was not killed in the crash and that he has deliberately failed to let you know? You don’t have much faith in the man, do you?”

“I just
have
to know if he took advantage of the crash to walk out on me.” Her voice came faintly to him out of the shadows.

Jonathan gave an exclamation and set his teeth hard against the protest that rose to his lips. After an instant she went on speaking her unhappy thoughts aloud.

“You see, Jonathan, Weldon has been accustomed to beautiful women like Sandra; women who were knowledgeable about diplomatic affairs; parties and dinners and protocol and — oh, a million things I had never even heard of. So when the plane crashed, if he
wasn’t
on it, mightn’t he have seen that as a way of escape?”

“A way of escape?” Jonathan repeated.

“A way of escape from an unsuitable marriage,” said Loyce. “Weldon was very ambitious. He wanted a real career in the diplomatic corps, and he had a wonderful opportunity. His family was rich and socially prominent in England. He had connections; knew the right people. I’m sure his family would have been very distressed if he had married a girl like me. I’m sure they had an entirely suitable girl picked out for him at home.”

“But he fell in love with you,” Jonathan reminded her.

He could see the lowering of the pallid oval that was her face, and when her voice came out of the shadows it was caught with the threat of tears.

“But when he went back to Washington and looked about him and saw how badly I’d have fitted into the picture as his wife, maybe he just decided that it wouldn’t work out,” she said softly. “So maybe he missed the plane deliberately; or else by accident. And when it crashed and there were no survivors, perhaps it seemed to him a perfect way out of what was rapidly becoming a mess. Maybe he is still in Washington, though I don’t think so. I think maybe he asked for a transfer out of the country, to some other embassy.”

“Loyce, you are building the most absurd fantasy,” Jonathan told her. “After all, what right have you to dishonor his memory this way? Did he seem, before he left the last time, to be getting tired of the thought of your marriage?”