There is always love (3 page)

Linda ran her finger down a page.

"Merton. Albert. Donald. Here it is. Gregory. Real estate. Lives at his Club, apparently. It isn't a woman. It's rivalry in business. And I thought for one crazy minute that each man really wanted me because I was I. Lucky I found out, else I might have had an acute attack of swelled head. Anyway, we know now that the feud isn't about a woman."

"Do we? I'm not so sure. I begin to smell smoke. I warned you that there would be fire if you came. Even if the quarrel is about business many an able-bodied blaze has been started over that, my child."

Linda crossed to the window and stepped out on the terrace. There was light enough to see the swaying trees in the Park below. Beyond the Park tall towers pierced by tier upon tier of lighted windows drew an uregular line against a sweep of star-sprinkled sky. Orange, green, blue and yellow lights flashed and faded. Rows of street lamps glowed like opaline quartz. The hum of motors rose from the Avenue. An airplane hummed overhead. Somewhere a man's voice was singing "With All My Heart." 12

She listened till the last caressing note was lost in the hum below. Her eyes swept over the lighted skyline.

"What an amazing world!'* she said aloud. "And I*m part of it."

Her breath caught from sheer excitement as she entered the room and closed the terrace window behind her.

"I never tire of our view at night, Ruth. It's blazingly, unbelievably beautiful. It twinkles and sparkles and glows like a fabulous city. It is hard to realize that across the ocean cities are being blacked-out through fear of an attack from the air."

"And that even here, under the enchantment, lie secret depths of uncertainty as to what may come to dim its glow. Come in, Libby."

The tall, angular woman in the gun-metal mohair dress came within the light of the fire. Her long, narrow bony face with its high-bridged nose, its fold of loosened skin under the sharp chin, was redeemed from ugliness by brilliant black eyes set in a fan-work of lines at the comers. Her mouth with its mobility, its tilt of humor was as sxu--prising in her otherwise austere face as would be a rose found tucked above the granite ear of the Old Man of the Mountain. Her pepper-and-salt hair was strained back and bunched m a tight twist at the nape of her neck. She held out a letter.

"Thought you'd like to read this, Ruthetta. It's from Lucy Lane at home. What with one thing an' another there's lots goin' on there. She writes that Hester Bourne raised such a rumpus' cause Lindy was in the city for the winter and she was left in the country that her Ma has leased the house an' them two are goin' somewhere for the winter. Skid Grant has told his Ma and Pa that he ain't goin' to Florida with them this year, he's goin' to live in New York." She sniffed and looked accusingly at Linda. "An' the whole town's talking 'bout the reason why."

Ill

LINDA rose from her office desk and stretched her arms above her head. She had been typing steadily since she had returned from an early luncheon. Keith Sanders was a fascinating person, agreeable, friendly; but he exacted his business pound of flesh. His salesmen were on the jump every minute. If one lingered in the office after his report was made he had to tell the reason why. He kept her after hours to take dictation. Both Saturday afternoons since she had been in his employ he had sent her to inspect houses which he

had been commissioned to sell or rent, had even casually suggested that she might turn a Sunday to advantage to him, a suggestion which she had forthrightly declined to consider. He had left her to keep office today while he took Miss Dowse with him to take notes on an estate in the country.

Not that she was complaining, she told herself. She loved the work, liked the type of customers with whom she talked when Sanders was out, liked the stimulating give and take of business. The experience was doing a lot for her. She felt a growing confidence and courage. It was as if her blood flowed more warmly and redly through her veins and gave a rosy cast to life. She met people more easily and by their response knew that she gave out something of the glow within her and—she glanced at herself in the mirror— she was acquiring that intangible patina which, for want of a better word, is called style.

She crossed the cool quiet room to the great window and looked down upon roof gardens gay with the scarlet, orange, lemon, bronze and purple of zinnias. She watched men at work on the steel skeleton of a skyscraper. Held her breath till the red-hot rivet tossed into space was caught in a bucket by a steel-helmeted workman; relaxed as it was set in a shower of golden sparks. Whichever way one turned in this miraculous city one saw something stimulating, exciting, inspiring. Suppose she hadn't taken Ruth's advice, to "do something" about the life she didn't like? She would have missed all this.

The low roar of traffic came up to her like the sound of the ebb and flood of a mighty tide, with an obbligato of the tap, tap of rivets. Mid-September in New York with bulletins of air raids, bombed ships, cities reduced to shambles broadcast constantly from one radio station or another; with theaters opening, with enchanting places to dance to music caressingly sweet, or blatantly saxophonic, and not a man to ask her to step out with him. Not even Skiddy Grant had appeared. Lucy Lane must have been misinformed about his decision to come to New York. She would have seen him long before this were he in the city.

Why be sorry for herself that there was no one to invite her out? What had she expected? Of the two New Yorkers whom she had met before she came, one was her boss. Cross him off. Hadn't office flirtations always seemed to her the lowest form of business life? They had and of course he wouldn't ask her. The other, Greg Merton, had been turned down with such chilly disdain when he offered her a position that it was no wonder he had never again appeared within her orbit. She didn't want him to. He was Hester's friend and as such taboo for her. 14

Was there someone in the city who was even now moving toward her? Someone to whom she would say one day, "I knew you were coming. I waited for you"?

Perhaps he would come from one of those buildings which loomed tall and great against the skyline; divided into floors and those floors into offices, each one a hive of industry where men planned and schemed, trusted and failed, worked out transactions essential to their existence, fought fierce burning competition while passionately believing that fortune if not fame awaited them just aroimd the comer,

"Mr. Sanders not back yet?"

Linda turned from the window. A girl entered the room with the assured, languorous grace of a professional model, swinging a little at the hips, smiling—^white teeth gleaming between vivid lips; hard green eyes appraising under delicately darkened lids—shedding the faint sweetness of expensive perfume as she moved. She appeared to be quite aware that the hair which showed below her ultra-smart black hat had the sheen of minted gold, that her purple orchids were costly, that her slim black frock accentuated the barbaric heaviness of her gold necklace and that the secretary regarding her was taking the measure of her ensemble and finding it flawless.

"Mr. Sanders is not in. May I take a message for him?" Linda inquired in her best office manner at the same time wondering if this were the night-club singer who, she had heard last summer, wanted Keith Sanders to finance her in a Broadway show?

The girl sank into a deep chair, crossed her knees, produced a vanity and began, unnecessarily, to restore her make-up.

"Ill wait."

"He has an important engagement when he returns and .. »"

"He will see me. I am Miss Crane, Alix Crane. You're new here or you would know. It may save you a heartache later to understand that he is never sentimentally interested in hired help. It's a scream the way the girls in his office have fallen for him."

Linda was acutely conscious of the hint of taimting patronage in a voice which was out of character with the exquisite appearance of its owner, that in quality, cadence and diction was commonplace.

"In that case, doubtless he will see you. You'd better wait in the reception room. I have work to finish and my typewriter is not so silent as it is advertised to be."

"Invitation to leave, what? I'll go, but not to the reception room. I'll wait in Keith's office. I always see him there. I

will find plenty to amuse me. Mr. Sanders is careless about his correspondence."

She threw a mocking glance over her shoulder before she closed the door behind her. Of course, the spectacular Miss Crane shouldn't have gone into Mr. Sanders' private office, but equally, of course, could she have been stopped without staging a scene? "She could not," Linda answered her own question. When the girl had come in she had indexed her as beautiful but dumb. Was she as dumb as she appeared or so shrewd as to be dangerous? Whatever she was, it was not a secretary's business.

"Sst! Where's the boss?"

Linda looked up with a start. She had been so immersed in a column of figures, which refused to add to the correct total, that she had not heard the door open. She was a fearless person, but there was something about the slender, medium-height man, with the cadaverous dead-pan face that sent her heart to her throat. It wasn't that he was shabby; he was exceedingly well-dressed.

"If you mean Mr. Sanders he won't be back for half an hour. He went out of town. He may not return to the office tonight. You'd better leave your name and call again."

"Out of town, is he?" Something crafty came into the man's eyes, it was as if a hunted animal were looking for a way of escape. "I can't wait. Important date. I won't leave my name. I'll be back tomorrow,"

As the door of the corridor closed behind him Linda returned to her figures. If Mr. Sanders had not come in by the time she finished this piece of work, she would lock up and go home. Miss Crane flung open the door.

"Was that Keith talking? Did you let him go without telling him I was waiting?"

"It was not Mr. Sanders."

"You needn't get mad about it. If it wasn't Keith, who was it?" There was a hint of suspicion in the question.

"I haven't the slightest idea." Linda looked at her wrist watch. "It will be useless for you to wait. Mr. Sanders said that if he were not back by this time he wouldn't be in until morning." She closed the typewriter into her desk. "As soon as I file these papers I shall call it a day and lock up the office."

"Terribly keen to get me out of the place, aren't you? I'm going. Tell Mr. Sanders in the morning that I was here. Tell him also that I can't spend my life waiting for him. There are other men eager to back me."

She crossed the outer office, swinging a little at the hips, trailing expensive scent; and banged the door to the corridor behind her. 16

Temperamental party—^plus, Linda reflected. That was that. Now if she could have a half hour uninterrupted by jack-in-the-box appearances she could clear her desk and start from scratch tomorrow. She hated being faced with yesterday's unfinished work when she came into the office in the morning. She would rather remain, no matter how late, and finish.

She was slipping into the amethyst-wool jacket when Keith Sanders entered. He frowned at her.

"Going? So early? Any callers?** He entered his office. She followed to answer his question.

"One didn't leave his name, the other— **

"It's up to a secretary to get names." He had a way of tugging at his blond mustache when annoyed.

"I realize that, Mr. Sanders. The man was in a hurry and didn't answer when I asked him. The young lady, Miss Crane, waited for a while—"

"Miss Crane! Alix! I've told her that there is nothing doing. Miss Dowse would have known that I wouldn't have seen her had I been here."

"But you took Miss Dowse with yoiu She plays Cerberus as a rule you may remember."

He laughed, became the smooth, charming person she had first met.

"I don't like your simile. Cerberus was the dog who guarded the entrance to the infernal regions, unless I have forgotten my mythology. Is it so bad, here?"

"There are days when the atmosphere is slightly sulphurous, but on the whole it's not too bad."

The mischievous daring in her response brought him a step nearer. His bold blue eyes smiled possessively into hers.

"I say, you've got a gay little devil inside that lovely prim shell, haven't you. Miss New England?" He stuffed the paper into his pocket and glanced at the clock on his desk.

"Wait till I phone, then we'll go somewhere for a drink and no nonsense about having another date. You've earned a party."

"But perhaps I have a date and perhaps it isn't nonsense." linda pulled on a glove. "The young man who called seemed anxious to see you. He couldn't wait, said he would be back tomorrow."

"A young man! What was he like?"

"Cadaverous with a crafty smile." Linda wished she hadn't been so quick with her answer as his eyes bored into hers like steel pomts. The caller might be a relative. Positions had been lost for less reason that her curt description and she didn't want to lose hers, she liked it. It was easy to understand that a person as successful as Keith Sanders would

have needy hangers-on, though the man in question had been smartly clothed.

"All right. That's all. You may go." He frowned dismissal, dropped into a chair at his desk and drew his private telephone toward him.

Already he had forgotten that he had invited her out, Linda realized as she stepped into the corridor. So much the better. She wouldn't have gone with him and if he had persisted, and if she had steadfastly said "No," she might have lost her job. Besides, he wouldn't have believed her if she had said she didn't drink. She didn't and didn't intend to.

As she went through the bronze revolving doors of the great building she wondered again why the cadaverous man with the furtive eyes had the power to disturb Keith Sanders. He had been disturbed, she hadn't imagined it.

Why think of that unpleasant person when the setting sun was gilding the lofty tops of buildings? When lights were snapping on behind millions of windows? When this amazing city was beginning to dress in incandescence for the evening? It was the time of day she loved best.