The Riddle in Red

The reception desk of a high-powered advertising agency

is a wonderful spot to see everything that goes on, as Connie

Blair soon discovers. Nor is she at Reid and Renshaw’s long

before she senses big doings afoot.

“Cosmetics by Cleo,” Reid and Renshaw’s biggest

account, is about to bring out a new revolutionary product

made from a closely guarded secret formula. Everyone at

the agency is keyed to high pitch as the huge advertising

campaign finally gets under way.

From the day the glamorous Cleo herself sweeps into the

reception room, Connie is caught up in the general

excitement. But soon mysterious developments threaten not

only the success of the campaign but Cleo Marville herself.

The climax comes when Cleo—and the secret formula—

suddenly disappear. How Connie’s lively intelligence and

ingenuity rise to the challenge of one unanswerable question

after another will keep the reader spellbound to the very last

page of this gripping mystery story.

The CONNIE BLAIR Mystery Stories

The Clue in Blue

The Riddle in Red

Puzzle in Purple

The Secret of Black Cat Gulch

The Green Island Mystery

The Ghost Wore White

The Yellow Warning

The Gray Menace

The Brown Satchel Mystery

Peril in Pink

The Silver Secret

The Mystery of the Ruby Queens

A CONNIE BLAIR MYSTERY

The Riddle in Red

By

BETSY ALLEN

Grosset & Dunlap

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

© 1948 BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1. Gardenias for Luck 1

2. Connie Takes Over a Job 14

3. Enter Cleo 26

4. A Quarrel and a Secret 37

5. Murray Versus Marville 51

6. Week-end Interlude 60

7. Hush, Hush! 70

8. The Woman’s Angle 81

9. Angel on a Letterhead 93

10. Who’s Who? 103

11. Temperament! 115

12. Missing—One Client 125

13. Thin Air 137

14. Night Tour 148

15. The Police Stand By 159

16. Connie Calls for Help 172

17. The Riddle Is Answered 180

18. Bright Tomorrow 193

1

CHAPTER 1

Gardenias for Luck!

“Isn’t it simply wonderful, Kit!”

Connie Blair looked up from the note typewritten

below the advertising agency’s letterhead, her dark

eyes already sparkling with anticipation. “Reid and

Renshaw. Even the name sounds important. Isn’t it

the most marvelous luck? And just now, when we

especially need it!”

Connie’s twin sister, on the other side of the

hardware store counter, stopped weighing moth

flakes and stretched out a hand for the letter.

“After one interview,” she murmured. “It seems

almost too good to be true.”

“Maybe they liked my picture!” Connie laughed

impudently, wrinkling her short, straight nose. She

was thinking of the snapshot the agency had asked

her to send on to them for their files. It had looked

rather more glamorous than businesslike, and she

2

had mailed it with more than one qualm.

“They’re engaging you as a receptionist, not as a

model,” reminded Kit, but she thought as she looked

at her twin that Connie’s picture could have been an

inducement. She was so erect and slim and vital,

with her fair hair falling thick and almost straight to

her shoulders, with her brown eyes and lashes in

such dusky contrast to the smooth creaminess of her

skin.

Actually, the twins were enough alike to cause

the customers of Blair’s Hardware Store

considerable confusion, but in personality they were

as opposite as they were similar in appearance.

Connie was the impetuous one. She had personality

and imagination, backed by a healthy, driving

ambition that in her sister was toned down to a

competent ability to make a good job of anything

she tackled. It was Kit who had received the better

grades in high school, but it was Connie who had

walked off with two English prizes and the Senior

Art Award under the very noses of students with

much higher averages than she could boast.

Connie was constantly seeking new worlds to

conquer—rushing off to Philadelphia with Aunt Bet

to model college clothes in Campion’s fashionable

shop, she had landed right in the middle of a major

mystery—while Kit stayed contentedly home in

Meadowbrook, where the family store was an

3

institution and where everyone knew her and she

knew everyone.

When Connie, on her return, had confessed to her

twin that she had, through her new friend Larry

Stewart, been interviewed for an advertising agency

job, Kit had been rather shocked.

“But, Connie, you don’t mean you’d give up

college? Dad would never let you!”

And Connie had agreed regretfully, “I don’t

suppose he would.”

Then, overnight, everything in the Blair

household was turned topsy-turvy by an unexpected

disaster. Mr. Blair, who had never been ill in his life,

had a heart attack without any warning at all. For

two days he was in great pain, with everybody

tiptoeing past his door, a nurse in the house, and the

doctor coming at odd hours and muttering

frightening things like “thrombosis—complete rest

the only cure.” Then the immediate danger passed,

and the household settled down to a new routine,

with Mr. Blair ordered to bed for a prolonged

period; but the twins’ plans for going away to

college were interrupted by this sudden drain on the

family finances.

It was natural that Kit should be the one to take

over the management of the store, stifling her

disappointment and getting to work with earnest

determination to carry on. It was equally natural that

4

Connie, though she was deeply concerned for her

dad, should have looked again toward the city, glad

now that she had allowed Larry to persuade her to

apply for the job at Reid and Renshaw. Every day

she had met the mailman at the corner, hoping

against hope—

And now the letter had actually come!

“Isn’t it wonderful!” Connie breathed again. “I

was so afraid they’d think I didn’t have enough

experience—just working in the high school office

afternoons—”

“But where will you live?” Kit broke in, always

practical.

“Oh, I don’t know. In the Y.W.C.A., maybe, until

I can find a place to board. What does it matter,

anyway?”

“It’ll matter to Mother,” Kit said doggedly.

“Maybe Aunt Bet would let you move in with her.”

“Maybe she would!” Connie cried. “I could ask,

anyway.” After spending close to a fortnight in her

aunt’s snug, center-city apartment, she could think

of no more pleasant spot to spend the winter which

lay ahead.

Wriggling up to sit on the counter, Connie

hugged her arms in sheer delight. “But what really

counts is that I have a job!” she said with a sigh of

anticipation. “Think of it, Kit. A receptionist meets

everybody who comes through the door, all the copy

5

writers and artists and production men and clients

and—oh, just everybody!”

Kit shivered. “I’d be scared.”

“Scared?” Connie sounded incredulous. “I’ll be

too busy to be scared. I’m going to work terribly

hard, and maybe someday I’ll have a chance to get a

job in the art department or even learn to write

copy—” She rocked slowly to and fro, dreaming

aloud.

“Hey, what’s this?” A masculine voice cut

through her thoughts and Don Fitzgerald, who had

been the boy-next-door to Connie and Kit ever since

the twins had worn sun suits, strolled from the

September sunshine into the dim interior of the

store. “You sound as though you’re mapping out a

movie plot,” he teased.

“I’m mapping out my future,” Connie told him,

and held out the letter with a smile.

Don read it and whistled appreciatively. “Big-

town stuff, eh?” But his gray eyes, as he looked at

Connie, held a hint of concern. Meadowbrook just

wouldn’t seem like Meadowbrook if either of the

Blair girls moved away.

Connie, accurately reading his thoughts, told him,

“Philadelphia isn’t so far. It isn’t like going to New

York.”

“Don’t you dare go to New York!” Kit said with

sudden earnestness. “Then I’d never get a chance to

6

see you. As it is, I’ll at least get to Philly once a

month on a buying trip for dad.”

“And I’ll get home about as often for week ends,”

Connie planned happily. “Oh, I do hope they like

me, and that I can do a good job.”

Don, glancing at the letterhead again, said, “And I

hope you like them. Reid and Renshaw. Know

anything about them?”

Connie nodded. “A lot. Larry Stewart, a boy who

works in the display department at Campion’s, says

they’re very, very reputable.”

Don was frowning. “And what do you know

about Larry Stewart?”

Connie tossed her head, annoyed at Don’s

probing though she recognized it for natural

jealousy. “He’s a friend of Aunt Bet’s—and mine!”

She had to admit to herself that one of the things

she looked forward to with anticipation in taking a

permanent job in Philadelphia was seeing Larry

Stewart again. She had missed him, since she had

come home, and his hastily scribbled notes were a

poor substitute for his own infectious grin.

Later, when she was telling her father about her

wonderful opportunity, sitting by his bed and

holding his big, work-hardened hand, she told him

that it was Larry who had introduced her to the

agency. “He says it’s one of the best, Dad. So does

Aunt Bet. And they ought to know.”

7

Mr. Blair agreed that they should. He looked at

his vivid daughter with great affection, and turned

her hand in his own. “It’s the next best thing to a

college education,” he told her. “A chance to start at

the bottom and work up. But I had planned it

differently for you two girls.”

For the few days that preceded her departure

Connie sailed around the big, comfortable clapboard

house in which the Blairs lived with her head in her

own private cluster of clouds. She washed and

ironed and mended and pressed and packed

automatically, while all the time her thoughts were

winging ahead to Philadelphia, to life in an

advertising agency, a question mark sort of life at

which she could only guess. Only one thing in it was

assured. Arrangements had been made for Connie to

live, on a semi-permanent basis, with Aunt Bet. And

as the time for leave-taking approached, Connie’s

sadness over leaving home contended with the

exciting thought that she would be going back to the

apartment of her chic young aunt. It would give her

a real anchor in the city, a second home.

On the Sunday morning of her departure there

was a family conclave, after church, in Mr. Blair’s

sunny bedroom. Mrs. Blair, who was as fair as her

daughters, but who had grown plump and rosy with

the years, was sitting on the cushioned seat of the

bay window beside Kit. Connie was perched on the

8

footboard of the bed and ten-year-old Toby, the

baby of the family, was stretched full length on the

floor with the comic section of the Sunday paper

under his elbows. Ruggles, the red cocker spaniel,

was snuggled close against Toby’s side.

“In the funnies,” Toby announced without

preliminaries, interrupting Kit in the middle of a

sentence, “there’s a girl who gets a job in New York

and lands kerplunk in the middle of a big mystery.

Wouldn’t it be swell if something like that could

happen to you?”

Mrs. Blair leaned forward to ruffle her son’s

cowlick affectionately while the rest of the family

hooted.

“See you in the funnies, Connie.” Kit made a

mock salute.

“Just because Connie got involved in a mystery at

Campion’s doesn’t mean she’s going to make a

practice of it,” Mr. Blair teased Toby. “You leave

your sister alone. She’ll be busy enough. If you need

a mystery to make you happy, Kit’s got one you can

have.”

Toby sat up eagerly. “What?”

Kit exchanged a glance with her dad, then turned

to her brother. “I’ll tell you,” she hissed like the

villain of a comic opera, “Mehitable has a new litter

of kittens and nobody in the store can find them. We

can hear them mewing, but we can’t locate them.

9

Come down tomorrow after school and help me

unravel that!”

Aggrieved, Toby fell back on his elbows. “I mean

an honest-to-Pete mystery,” he muttered with a look

of supreme disdain, “not any old kitten stuff.”

“Like something that might happen to the atomic

engineers,” Connie murmured reminiscently.

“Exactly,” Toby agreed, then realized that he was

still being kidded and lapsed into silence again.

Kit and Mrs. Blair escorted Connie to the station

in the family car while Toby stayed home with his

dad. At the last moment Connie was swept by a

qualm of reluctance at leaving the people and the

place she knew and loved so well, but she shook it

off as the train came curving into the Meadowbrook

station.

“ ’Bye! Take good care of Dad. I’ll write!”

She was already on the steps of the coach when

Don Fitzgerald came dashing down the platform, his

long legs flying, a chunky cardboard box clutched

under one arm.

“Here.” He thrust it at her. “For luck!”

Then, before Connie had time to thank him

adequately, the trainman called “All aboard!” and

with groaning precision the wheels began to move.

Connie settled herself in the green plush seat and

watched the houses and shops of Meadowbrook drift

past before she opened the box. A florist’s name was

10

printed in elegant purple script across the lid, yet it

felt too heavy for flowers. But as soon as the top

slipped off, the scent of gardenias wafted up to her

and she laid back the tissue to take out a fragrant

corsage. Pinning it on the shoulder of her suit she

rummaged still further and found a book and a card.

The book was a typical choice of Don’s—a

whodunit—and Connie laughed as she read the title.

Everyone appeared to be mystery-minded these

days.

Connie opened it idly to Chapter One, but she

certainly didn’t need the help of a book to make the

two-hour trip to the city pass quickly. There was so

much to anticipate, so much to think about! She

wondered whether any of the other passengers

traveling in the same car were half as excited as she.

It seemed rather doubtful. An elderly lady sitting

in front of Connie, with wisps of gray hair escaping

from an old-fashioned comb, seemed tired and

anxious only to get home. A fat man opposite dozed

behind a newspaper. Only a boy and girl, holding

hands in the reversed seat at the end of the coach,

seemed imbued with the same youthful expectancy

as she.

Connie noticed a shining new engagement ring on

the girl’s hand and it made her think of Don. She

dropped her head and breathed in the sweet, heavy

odor of the gardenias. Maybe, someday, she’d be

11

wearing a diamond like that, but would it be Don’s

ring, or Larry Stewart’s, or some boy’s she was yet

to meet? A thrill traced its way up her spine and she

frowned and shook herself. There would be plenty

of time ahead to consider such things. Now a career,

not a romance, was on her mind. Tomorrow she

would be a businesswoman!

The phrase, turned over in her mind, made her

smile. She felt so young, with high school just three

short months behind her, scarcely anything of a

woman yet. “A white-collar girl.” Whispering the

words, she decided they sounded better. Her hands,

in her lap, were clasped so tensely that they ached.

Row houses and factories succeeded farm land

and suburbs before Connie had time to become

bored with her own thoughts. She caught a glimpse

of the sluggish Schuylkill and of the great art

museum on the bluff above the river. Then many of

the passengers began collecting their luggage and

the conductor bawled “Thirtieth Street.”

Connie followed the crowd from the train into the

huge station, which made her feel suddenly very

small and alone. She almost envied Kit the

contentment which made her willing to stay safely

in Meadowbrook. She wondered if, after all,

seventeen weren’t a trifle young to seek a career in a

big city. Then she saw a pretty girl no older than

herself walking confidently along with a portable

12

typewriter and she decided she was being foolish.

She made her way to the doors, succumbed to the

rare extravagance of a taxi and gave Aunt Bet’s

address as she settled back in the seat.

Now, as the cab pulled away from the station,

Connie again felt secure. Over one block and down

Chestnut. Across town for another block. Past a

familiar eating place. Past Campion’s great store,

scene of so many breathless moments for Connie.

Into the quiet little street where Aunt Bet lived.

Then Aunt Bet herself was running down the steps

of the apartment house to welcome her, and Larry

Stewart, who had just dropped in, was grinning and

saying, “Here! I’ll take your bags.”

“It’s just as though I never went home at all,”

Connie cried a few minutes later as she tossed her

hat on the water bench which lent Pennsylvania

Dutch flavor to Aunt Bet’s gay living room.

“It’s such fun to have you here!” her young aunt

said sincerely. “I missed you, Connie. You spoiled

me. I hated to go back to living alone.”

“You’ve got me for good now—I hope,” Connie

told her.

“For better or worse,” added Larry, then

pretended to dodge.

Between parrying Larry’s good-natured thrusts

and unpacking, the evening passed quickly, and

Connie fell asleep with a sense of warm expectancy.

13

Tomorrow would be the start of the career of her

dreams.

Refreshed and alert, Connie dressed with care the

next morning, and set out with an easy, swinging

stride, for the tall office building where Reid and

Renshaw were housed.

In a square, marble lobby Connie waited with a

throng of business men and girls for the silent

elevator which swept them upward. At the sixteenth

floor she stepped out directly into Reid and

Renshaw’s reception room, two walls of which were

painted oyster white, with the third an Empire green.

Against the green wall were hung proofs of

advertisements mounted behind clear glass which

was boldly fastened to the wall by big glass-headed

screws. Against the nearer white wall was a curving

reception desk, behind which sat a girl not much

older than Connie. The elevator door clanged shut

and the girl looked up with a start.

“You—you’re the new receptionist?”

Connie nodded. “Yes,” she began, walking

forward with a smile. Then, to her complete

confusion, she saw the girl’s blue eyes fill with

tears.

14

CHAPTER 2

Connie Takes Over a Job

“I—why—whatever’s the matter?”

Connie hurried forward impulsively. The

receptionist was so pretty, with her cloud of soft,

dark hair and her fragile, heart-shaped face, that

Connie wanted to try to comfort her. But suddenly

she saw an expression in the girl’s eyes that made

her stop halfway across the floor. They were filled

with chagrin, supplanting the grief Connie had first

surprised there.

“I’ll tell Miss Cameron you’re here.” The girl

whisked the back of one hand across her eyes,

forced a polite smile and got abruptly to her feet.

Connie waited uncomfortably in the lobby, both

concerned and puzzled by the emotion she had

surprised in the receptionist. What could be wrong?

For a few seconds she sat on the crescent-shaped

leather couch, then got up to roam restlessly about,

15

scanning the posted advertisements, several of

which were full-color pages illustrating “Cosmetics

by Cleo,” which Connie recognized as a name of

increasing prominence in the fashion world.

Connie particularly noticed the art work, which

impressed her as colorful and exciting. At another

time she would have studied it with care, thrilling to

the thought that only in an advertising agency like

this could such things be conceived, but now her

smooth forehead was creased with uneasiness. A

dismaying query had presented itself. Could that girl

have been crying because she—Connie Blair—was

taking away her job?

“Nonsense.” Connie gave her shoulders a shake.

To imagine such a contretemps was just looking for

trouble. Perhaps the young woman was pinch-hitting

at the desk until her arrival. Probably the tears were

the aftermath of some unfortunate quarrel. Yet when

she remembered the expression in the girl’s eyes

Connie mistrusted her own rationalizing. Something

connected with the situation right here and now was

wrong.

“Miss Blair.”

The crisp voice of Miss Cameron, who had

interviewed her on her previous visit to the agency,

made Connie turn with a start. Miss Cameron

beckoned, and as Connie crossed the lobby to follow

her into a small, sunny office opening from a long

16

corridor, she was filled with the same feeling of

admiration of which she had been conscious on their

first encounter. Here was her dream of a woman

advertising executive come to life, a woman poised

and graceful and alert. Mentally, Connie formulated

a hope. “Someday I’d like to look like that.”

“Won’t you sit down?”

Miss Cameron indicated a chair and Connie

slipped into it with a murmured “thank you.” The

older woman picked up a pencil and twisted it

absently in her hand as she continued, “Miss

Randolph, whom you just met in the reception room,

will show you your duties. She’ll be with us in just a

moment now.”

For a split second Connie thought she saw a

shadow cross Miss Cameron’s eyes, as though

behind her cool courtesy there were a flash of

resentment. It was there for a moment, then gone.

Before she could credit her own suspicion Miss

Cameron started to chat, easily and naturally, about

Connie’s job. She asked her, in time, about her trip

to the city, and inquired about her living

arrangements with polite solicitude.

As Connie answered Miss Cameron’s questions

the excitement of all that lay ahead of her made her

dark eyes sparkle and color leap to her cheeks. Her

youthful enthusiasm was contagious. When she

admitted that she was simply overjoyed to get the

17

job, the older woman smiled.

“I hope you can keep it,” she said, looking

straight into Connie’s eyes.

“Oh, but I will! I’ll work very hard.”

“I’m sure you will. And I may as well tell you it

is also necessary to be very tactful,” Miss Cameron

said just as the dark girl Connie had met in the lobby

came through the half-opened door.

“Oh, Ellen.” Miss Cameron looked up with an

expression of kindly concern, which told Connie

plainly that she knew the cause of the girl’s distress.

“This is Constance Blair.”

Connie rose and held out her hand with a smile,

but she couldn’t fail to notice that though the girl’s

nose was freshly powdered, her eyes were still red-

rimmed.

“Ellen Randolph,” Miss Cameron murmured,

completing the introduction. “Will you show Miss

Blair her locker, Ellen, and introduce her around?”

Then she picked up the receiver of her desk

telephone, and Connie knew they were dismissed.

The morning hours passed with whirlwind speed.

Connie was first conducted on a tour of the offices

which housed the art, production and copy

departments, and led past doors engraved with the

names of account executives who were the contact

men between the agency and the advertisers. She

met several men and an assortment of secretaries

18

and file clerks. All of the younger girls seemed

friendly and almost possessive toward Ellen, while

to Connie they showed a trace of the same curious

resentment Miss Cameron had displayed. Finally,

when Connie was seated with her sponsor behind

the curved reception desk, she asked a point-blank

question.

“Miss Randolph, tell me something. Am I taking

your job?”

Ellen’s eyes dropped, and she twisted a

handkerchief nervously in her fingers. Then she

looked up and said staunchly, “Somebody had to

take it. I’m glad it’s you.”

“But why—” Connie started, then was interrupted

as the elevator let out several passengers. There was

a messenger carrying a bulky drawing, a printer to

see Mr. Sanderson in Production, an artist’s

representative with a portfolio of samples, and a boy

from Western Union with a pencil tucked behind his

ear.

Ellen handled the newcomers with courtesy and

dispatch, plugging in calls on the switchboard

through which she established connection with the

various offices, and directing the callers to wait or to

proceed to the proper departments.

To Connie she seemed a marvel of efficiency.

The switchboard, with its multiple wires and

blinking lights, fascinated and rather frightened her.

19

It was so much larger than the small monitor board

she had learned to handle during her part-time

employment at Meadowbrook High! To master this

alone looked like a big job. But to keep names and

faces and facts in mind with Ellen’s apparent ease

seemed nothing short of miraculous. As the clock

crept on toward twelve her admiration grew.

“Are—are you leaving to be married?” Connie

asked timidly when the reception room was clear

again for a while.

Ellen had taken a chased gold compact and

lipstick from her handbag and was checking her

faultless make-up. She looked at Connie curiously

for a second and a flush mounted from her throat to

her face.

“No,” she said with unexpected bluntness.

“Didn’t Miss Cameron tell you? I’ve been fired.”

“Fired?” Connie couldn’t conceal her shocked

surprise. “But why?” she asked again, and this time

there was a rising inflection in her voice, so full of

sincerity and warmth that Ellen actually grinned.

She snapped the compact shut and held it out to

Connie, along with the lipstick.

“Because I was caught using these,” she said.

“You mean—because you were making up in

public?”

Now Ellen really laughed. “Heavens, no! You’d

be allowed to make up in Wanamaker’s show

20

window at high noon if you used ‘Cosmetics by

Cleo.’ That, my dear girl, happens to be the big

house account.”

“Oh,” Connie said, frankly baffled.

“These,” Ellen continued, indicating the compact

and lipstick, “were a birthday present from my boy

friend, who made the mistake of selecting the

products of Cleo’s big rival—without, of course,

dreaming that it would cost me my job.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“You will.” Ellen gave a slight shrug. “The

fabulous Cleo Marville came one day when I was

powdering my nose. She can spot an Angela Murray

compact from sixty yards, and like the Queen in

‘Alice in Wonderland,’ she popped right into the

boss’s office screaming ‘Off with her head!’ ”

“Not really?” Connie was incredulous.

“I’m giving you a fair facsimile of what actually

happened,” Ellen said ruefully. “When the agency’s

most important client kicks about an employee, the

chief listens. He has to.”

“But it’s so unfair!” With typical warm-

heartedness Connie forgot her own interests in her

dismay over injustice. “I’m such a greenhorn. And

you’re so good!”

“Thank you.” Ellen nodded. “I’ll remember you

paid me that compliment when I’m looking for a

new job. It’ll bolster my morale.”

21

There was no further opportunity for conversation

before lunch. Connie went out first, and sat at a

cafeteria table feeling uncomfortable about Ellen’s

predicament. To discharge a girl on such a trifling

excuse seemed unpardonable. Connie considered

talking to Miss Cameron. No wonder the other

office workers were resentful and looked askance at

the receptionist’s successor. Well they might!

Connie had selected lemon meringue pie, one of

her favorite desserts, but it was tasteless in her

mouth. A dozen questions were confusing her. Was

this the real reason—the only reason—that Ellen had

been fired? And if so, did she want to work for an

agency that would discharge a girl so summarily?

Connie felt that she had to get at the root of the

matter before she could step into Miss Randolph’s

shoes.

The same questions were still ringing in Connie’s

head as she was once more whisked up to Reid and

Renshaw’s offices. She was to relieve Ellen behind

the desk during the latter’s lunch hour, and though

she had listened carefully to her instructor’s

explanation of the workings of the switchboard,

Connie was a little concerned at being left alone

with it. Suppose she were to get the lines tangled

up?

She said as much to Ellen, but the dark girl

smiled reassuringly. “You won’t have any trouble.

22

Nothing much happens in the agency business

between twelve and two.” She left Connie to get her

hat, then was joined at the elevators by a tall, red-

haired lad whom Connie had seen earlier in the art

department.

“This lunch is on me,” Connie heard him say.

“Where shall we go?”

Then, for the next hour, Connie was completely

absorbed by her new job. As Ellen had predicted,

business slowed up at midday, but still there were

sufficient comings and goings to keep the new

receptionist on her toes.

Inevitably, she felt a little lost, and realized how

much she had to learn before she could handle this

job with Ellen’s confidence. But fortunately Connie

was both ambitious and sufficiently aggressive to

ask questions of any agency employee who

happened to be handy. She didn’t make as many

mistakes as she had feared.

The lines to both Mr. Reid’s and Mr. Renshaw’s

offices were fortunately quiet. Neither of the chief

executives had yet made his appearance that day.

Connie counted this as a stroke of luck, because she

wanted her first impression on the agency heads to

be good.

It was not five minutes later, however, that she

met Carter Reid, whom his familiars called Chip. He

got off the elevator behind Miss Cameron, a dark,

23

thickset man in his late thirties, with an

unmistakable air of assurance and a pleasant smile.

Miss Cameron introduced him to Connie and he

nodded and said something gracious and casual

before he went on to his office. Then, from the

corridor, he called back to Miss Cameron.

“Better fix her up with some of Cleo’s kit,

Georgia, before we have any more fireworks around

here.”

“Right.” Georgia Cameron nodded, left the lobby

and reappeared almost at once with a tray of

cosmetics, powder, lipstick, eyebrow pencil, rouge,

nail polish, and an assortment of creams.

“What of this stuff do you use?” she asked

Connie.

“Just powder and lipstick—and sometimes nail

polish.”

“Better use polish regularly from now on—as part

of the job,” Miss Cameron said. “We represent Cleo

Marville, as you probably know, and it’s

customary—even obligatory—for Reid and

Renshaw girls to use her cosmetics. She’s—well, to

put it mildly, she’s fussy about such things.”

“From what Ellen Randolph tells me,” Connie

said with typical forthrightness, “she’s more than

fussy. She’s downright unreasonable.”

Miss Cameron looked at Connie sharply, and her

eyebrows lifted. “You might call it that,” she

24

admitted. “Miss Marville is apt to be a bit of a prima

donna, but after all, Ellen, like the rest of our

employees, was instructed to use cosmetics by Cleo

during office hours. Ellen is a fine girl and I’m sorry

that this—this upset—had to happen, but on the

other hand you must remember that with Mr. Reid

and Mr. Renshaw, the client necessarily comes

first.”

Connie was sufficiently businesslike to see Miss

Cameron’s point. Her sympathy for Ellen did not

obscure the fact that there was justice in the

agency’s action. But she was prepared to dislike the

famous Cleo Marville on sight.

“Perfectly silly,” she muttered as she sat at the

silent switchboard after she had made a selection

from Miss Cameron’s tray. This cosmetic queen

must be insufferably arrogant and vain, a

combination of characteristics which Connie

despised.

There was an incoming call for Mr. Reid, and

immediately thereafter the switchboard came alive,

lighting up like a Christmas tree. Mr. Reid had brief

conversations with various members of his staff,

then asked Connie to try to reach Mr. Renshaw,

either at his home, at the Racquet Club, or at the

Downtown Club, where he might be lunching with

friends.

Soon incoming and outgoing calls were jostling

25

one another. Connie felt as though she were working

in a maze of crossed wires. Something big must be

happening, she decided. The first call to Mr. Reid

must have brought important news.

With natural curiosity, she wondered what this

sudden activity was all about.

26

CHAPTER 3

Enter Cleo

Within a few minutes, despite her most determined

efforts, Connie became hopelessly entangled in the

switchboard’s multiple wires. Then, luckily, just as

several voices started shouting in her ear at once,

Ellen Randolph appeared like a good fairy to slip

into the seat beside Connie and help unravel the

snarl.

“Whew!” Connie pushed the hair back from her

forehead and sighed in relief.

“Mr. Reid must be in,” murmured Ellen under-

standingly.

“And how!” Connie replied inelegantly. “I got

these lines in an awful mess.”

Ellen chuckled with such kindliness that Connie

had to laugh too. Then, with careful patience, the

dark-haired girl pointed out the errors which had

caused Connie’s confusion.

27

“I think I understand,” said Connie finally.

“I’m sure you do.”

But Connie was not as certain as Ellen that, on

her own, she would be able to pass a test of her

newfound confidence. She still eyed the switchboard

warily, as though it might stretch forth its tentacles

and grab her. And she was dismayed at the thought

of losing Ellen’s comforting presence by her side.

An hour later Mr. George Renshaw stepped off

the elevator and with an absent-minded nod in the

direction of the receptionist’s desk walked down the

corridor to his office, adjoining Mr. Reid’s.

He was one of the handsomest middle-aged men

Connie had ever seen, but he didn’t walk as though

he owned the earth, as Mr. Reid did. He stooped a

little, as though he were perpetually walking through

a doorway too low for his six-feet-three, and he

seemed unaware that his dark hair and black-brown

eyes drew more than passing attention.

Ellen followed Connie’s glance. “Smooth-

looking, isn’t he?”

Connie nodded eloquently.

“He’s nice, too. Sort of slow and drawly. But

very brilliant, they say.”

Connie had an opportunity to hear his voice a

minute later, and it was deep and deliberate, with a

hint of amusement in it. He stood in the door of his

partner’s office and said, “Well, Chip, what’s all the

28

uproar about?”

“We’ll get Jim Brinton and I’ll tell you,” Connie

heard Mr. Reid reply. Then the door closed behind

him and she turned to Ellen inquiringly.

“Mr. Brinton is the account executive who

handles Marville—when she isn’t too hot to

handle,” Ellen said.

“I’d like to see this—this creature,” Connie

replied.

“You will,” Ellen answered with a partially

concealed yawn. “If anything big is about to break,

she’ll be around.”

Ellen’s assumed indifference didn’t fool Connie.

She now understood the girl well enough to know

that the mere mention of Cleo Marville’s name

made her seethe. Without having been told in so

many words, Connie guessed that Ellen liked her job

here, regretted being forced to leave it, and dreaded

the necessity of making new contacts and beginning

all over again. The tears of the morning had been a

sudden welling-over of emotion that, at the sight of

her successor, she couldn’t control.

The fact that everyone in the agency was being

especially kind and considerate didn’t help very

much. During the next two days, when a coming

conference with Miss Marville and her associates

seemed to dominate the conversations Connie

overheard in the reception room, she felt more and

29

more sorry for Ellen.

“Go see my Aunt Bet,” she urged her. “She can

introduce you to the head of personnel at

Campion’s, and there might be some sort of job in

the store that you’d like.”

Ellen made a note of Elizabeth Easton’s name

and business address appreciatively, and that

evening she left Reid and Renshaw for good, turning

over her switchboard key to Connie.

“With my dubious blessings,” she said, managing

a rueful grin.

The next morning Connie sat behind the curving

receptionist’s desk alone, feeling newly important,

and hoping that, in her navy dress with its frilly

starched organdy collar, she looked as correctly

businesslike as she felt.

Already Connie was making friends. Several of

the stenographers called her by her first name, and a

couple of the younger copy writers always stopped

to chat when they passed her desk. Through Ellen

she had come to know Dick Travis, the red-haired

boy from the art department, and his friend Ken

Cooper, a stocky, solid chap with a disarming

naïveté of manner and candid blue eyes.

Ken did layouts, which Connie discovered were

the rough, unfinished designs for the placement of

both art work and copy in assigned advertising

space. He worked very rapidly on a big pad of

30

lightweight paper, and there was frequently a

smudge from the soft pencils he used on either his

shirt front or his chin.

Coming back from lunch, Connie couldn’t resist

the impulse to pop her head into the art department,

and if either Ken or Dick were around they would

invite her in. She asked questions, because she was

interested in every phase of this fascinating

business, and quickly learned that finished art work

on most of the agency’s big accounts was done on

what the boys called “the outside.” Freelance artists,

many of whom were represented by their own

agents, did the sort of drawings which Connie saw

reproduced on the walls of the lobby. The boys at

Reid and Renshaw were simply the lettering and

idea men.

“I’d love to go to art school,” Connie confessed

to Ken as she watched him work for a few minutes

on the day after Ellen left.

“Why don’t you?” he asked without turning his

head.

Connie, not wanting to explain her family’s

circumstances to a mere acquaintance, shrugged.

“You could, you know. At night.”

“At night?” Connie had never thought of that

possibility.

“Sure. Lots of people do.”

“It would be fun,” Connie said, and considered

31

the idea as she walked back to her desk. Aunt Bet

was often engaged in the evening. It would give her

an interest—a purpose aside from her job. And it

might provide the first rung up the ladder she was

firmly determined to climb.

There was only one thing that bothered Connie.

She didn’t know which she wanted to do most, learn

to write copy or learn to draw. Artistic in inclination,

she still had a fondness for words and a flare for

combining them. On the high school yearbook she

had been Literary Editor, then had pinch-hit for the

Art Editor when her unfortunate classmate had been

taken to the hospital with appendicitis. Ever since

grammar school days Connie had possessed what

her dad always called “a double-track mind.”

This noon, during what Connie had already come

to think of as the “twelve-to-two doldrums,” there

was plenty of time to dream. The office seemed

especially quiet, and Connie suspected that it was

the lull before a storm, because it was for this

afternoon that the conference with Cleo Marville

was scheduled.

Connie tried to imagine what it would be like to

be an executive like Georgia Cameron, who was a

copy writer and a consultant on styling for women’s

accounts. She didn’t know whether she’d rather be

Miss Cameron, who would surely have a place at the

conference table this afternoon, or whether she

32

would rather be in Ken Cooper’s shoes. Ken, in his

own quiet way, got a lot of fun out of his job, and he

missed all the complications that contact with clients

entailed.

Connie was leaning on her elbow—dreaming

with her eyes wide open—when the elevator door

slid back silently and out of it stepped one of the

most glamorous-looking women Connie had ever

seen.

She was talking to her escorts, immediately

behind her, and for a moment she had her head

turned so that Connie could see only her profile,

which had a Grecian firmness to nose and chin. Her

auburn hair was coiled in a knot on her neck, a style

that might have looked old-fashioned on another

woman, but which on her seemed appropriate and

smart. She wore a tissue wool dress of honey beige,

almost identically the color of her skin, and over her

arm were looped deep-pelted sables, the loveliest

Connie had ever seen.

Even before the woman turned Connie knew that

this must be the fabulous Cleo, because the men

accompanying her were the agency heads.

Instinctively she stiffened, prepared to dislike her

for Ellen’s sake, but then Miss Marville’s green eyes

swept the reception room, paused when they fell on

Connie, and she smiled.

In the instant before she smiled Connie caught an

33

impression of ruthlessness in Miss Marville’s

expression, and the sort of shrewdness which so

frequently accompanies success. But her smile was

so unexpectedly sweet that it was completely

disarming. She swept across the lobby with regality

which would have done credit to a Barrymore and,

while Connie stared entranced, she touched the

girl’s cheek with a gloved hand.

“You’re a very pretty child,” she said, in a

throaty, laughing voice, “but you shouldn’t use my

Red Duchess lipstick. Try Pink Magic or

Rendezvous. They’d suit you better.” She stood

back for a moment, appraising Connie with her sea-

green eyes. “Yes.” She confirmed her own judgment

with the single word.

Then she turned back to the men. “Well—” The

slightest of gestures indicated that she was ready to

proceed, and Mr. Reid, with a smiling inclination of

his head, indicated that Miss Marville was to

precede him to the conference room.

Mr. Renshaw brought up the rear of the

procession, and he looked at Connie, who was still

under the spell of Cleo Marville’s conquering

personality. Then, very solemnly, he nodded and

winked.

Connie knew that only Mr. George Renshaw, of

all the agency executives, could have told her in

such an informal and humorous manner that she had

34

passed inspection. She chuckled to herself after his

footsteps had died away in the corridor and decided

that Reid and Renshaw would probably prove a

pleasant as well as an exciting place to work.

That evening, sitting in front of Aunt Bet’s

cheerful little fireplace, with her feet on the fender

and wood crackling on the hearth, she described her

afternoon’s encounter to the best of her ability.

“You should have seen her, Aunt Bet! She must

be forty, but she’s still beautiful. She has very long

legs and she walks like an actress, if you know what

I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” Connie’s aunt, curled

up in a wing chair, with her own slim legs, in black

velveteen slacks, tucked under her, smiled into her

niece’s sparkling eyes. “She probably talks like an

actress too, because she was on the stage, you know,

before she went into the beauty business.”

“I didn’t know.”

Elizabeth Easton nodded. “That must have been

years ago. I never saw her in the theater. Ever since

I’ve worked in Philadelphia she has been head of

Cleo Marville, Incorporated. She must be doing a

big business now.”

“I guess she is,” Connie agreed. “I wonder why

she ever got out of the theater and into cosmetics.

One seems like a far cry from the other.”

It was Aunt Bet’s turn to nod. “I understand she

35

acted with her husband, and when he died she quit

the stage for good. She lives alone, with a staff of

servants, in a big house out Bryn Mawr way, and

gossip has it that she keeps very much to herself,

except for her business associates. She’s supposed to

have very few friends and no family at all.”

Connie listened, interested. “How do you happen

to know so much about her?” she asked.

Elizabeth Easton raised her shoulders in the

slightest of shrugs. “There’s always a tie-in between

cosmetic colors and fashions at the store. Besides,

I’ve been a guest at luncheons Marville gives for

department-store buyers and stylists and the press.”

She yawned, and stretched her arms sleepily in a

V above her head. “Every businesswoman in town

knows of Cleo Marville, and most of them envy her.

She’s apt—if I don’t miss my guess—to achieve the

distinction of becoming a legend in her own time.”

A legend in her own time. There was romance in

the words, and Connie repeated them to herself,

leaning on her elbows and staring into the fire. Then,

as though to shake off an unwilling admiration for

this paragon, she said, “She’s awfully arrogant

though, and what she did to Ellen Randolph was the

silliest thing I ever heard of. I’ve made up my mind

not to like her a bit.”

Miss Easton sat back with her hands on the arms

of her chair. She smiled, but she said nothing. After

36

a few minutes Connie got up restlessly.

“I’m going to call the family and check up on

Dad,” she said as she went to the telephone. Then, as

she waited for the number, she sighed and

murmured, “I do wish I knew what that conference

was all about this afternoon.”

Her aunt laughed. “Connie, you’re incorrigible!”

she said affectionately. “Remember what curiosity

did to the cat!”

“It’ll never kill me,” Connie told her, wrinkling

her short nose. “And besides, I’ll find out what’s

cooking at Reid and Renshaw tomorrow. How much

do you bet?”

“Bet against Connie Blair? Never!”

“Hello, Mother!” Connie said into the receiver.

“How are you and how’s Dad and everybody else? .

. . Good? Wonderful! . . . Oh, I adore my job and

I’m having the most thrilling time!”

37

CHAPTER 4

A Quarrel and a Secret

All through the agency, the next morning, Connie

sensed a restrained excitement, as though big doings

were afoot. The art department men had their heads

together with a couple of the top copy writers, and

the Marville account executive’s office was a

beehive of activity, indicating clearly to Connie that

the cause of all this liveliness stemmed from there.

Until noon Connie restrained her curiosity, but

when Ken Cooper paused at her desk on his way to

lunch she couldn’t resist asking a point-blank

question.

“What’s the excitement all about—or is it a

secret?”

“It is, and it isn’t,” young Mr. Cooper said,

answering the second part of Connie’s question

before he tackled the first. “Cleo Marville’s going to

launch a new product in a big way, but I understand

38

that the details are to be kept very hush-hush—at

least from the trade.”

“I’m not the trade,” Connie wanted to say, but she

bit her lip, feeling that it would be unseemly. No

doubt she would learn some of the details in time,

but at the moment she was too new in her job to take

liberties, even with as candid and pleasant a chap as

Ken Cooper. She simply sat back in her chair and

looked interested, hoping that he would go on.

But the elevator stopped, just then, and Ken

joined a friend from the production department who

came hurrying down the corridor. Together the two

stepped into the lift, leaving Connie’s curiosity only

partly assuaged.

For nearly an hour there was a lull in the

reception room. Then, just before one o’clock, the

light from Mr. George Renshaw’s telephone flashed

on.

Connie picked up the receiver and said, “Yes.”

“Miss Blair, I wonder if you’d be willing to give

up part of your lunch hour and do a favor for me?”

“Of course.” Connie even sounded pleased.

“Good. I have an envelope in here that is to go to

Miss Marville. I’d like you to take it down to the

factory, not to her office. And you’re to wait for an

answer, please.”

“Do you want me to leave right away?” Connie

asked.

39

“That might be an idea, if you can arrange to have

one of the girls relieve you on the desk.”

Ten minutes later Connie was riding the Broad

Street subway north to the factory section of the

city. Here the Marville Laboratories were located in

a square, businesslike structure with great sealed

windows of glass brick.

It had never before occurred to her to wonder

how or where the various creams and lotions and

powders which occupied whole sections of counter

space in such stores as Campion’s were

manufactured, but now she found herself very much

interested in seeing the inside of the Marville plant.

She turned the large, sealed envelope in her hand,

wondering what it contained, and approached the

unpretentious entrance to the building with a quick

and expectant step.

A small, empty, brick-floored lobby was backed

by a large elevator shaft, and Connie had to wait

nearly five minutes for the car to descend from one

of the upper floors. Then there was freight to unload,

big cardboard boxes containing the distinctive

“Cosmetics by Cleo” seal, and finally Connie

explained her errand to the operator, who told her,

without expression, that she’d “likely find Miss

Marville on third.”

“Third,” when Connie was let off there, proved to

be the floor where lipsticks were made. It was

40

several minutes before Connie discovered this,

however. Her first impression was only one of

color—color on the floors, which were stained with

every shade in the rainbow, color in great lakes on

every side—blue, red, orange, the basic colors

which were used to make up the various lipstick

shades. Connie paused and blinked, as the door of

the freight elevator clanged shut behind her. She had

a fleeting illusion that even the air was red!

Then, as her eyes accustomed themselves to the

strangeness of the new world she had entered,

Connie became aware that a conveyor belt, manned

by girls in pink uniforms and turbans, ran down one

side of the big, square room. At the far end she

could see a glass partition that indicated the

possibility of an office, and she followed the

conveyor belt along until she came to a closed glass

door.

Through it she could see Cleo Marville leaning

over a laboratory table and arguing with a thin,

bespectacled man with pepper-and-salt-colored hair.

It was a vastly different Miss Marville than the

glamorous creature who had swept into the Reid and

Renshaw Agency on the previous afternoon. Today

the fabulous Cleo had pulled on a smock over her

simple black street dress and her hands were

encased in rubber gloves. A wisp of brilliant hair

had escaped her coiffure to brush her forehead, and

41

only the cobwebby sheerness of her nylons and the

glovelike fit of her narrow black pumps indicated

that she was a woman of wealth.

Connie stood for a minute, astonished at the

transformation and rather impressed that the woman

of fashion could become the working woman she

saw before her. In those few seconds Miss Marville

was raised a thousandfold in her estimation. Then,

just as Connie was about to stretch out her hand to

knock at the closed door, the scene inside the small

laboratory changed.

Miss Marville suddenly stiffened, and her hands,

which had been gripping the edge of the table,

dropped to her sides. But the man opposite her

leaned forward and pounded with his clenched fist

as though he were pressing home a point. Connie

couldn’t hear his words, but she could see his

expression change from indignation to fury. His

eyes were narrow behind the glasses and his teeth

seemed to bite at the words he spoke.

Connie’s glance shifted with alarm to Miss

Marville, but the beauty executive seemed far from

intimidated by the emotional display. She stood her

ground, cold and aloof, one eyebrow raised slightly

in what Connie could only construe as scornful

reproach.

The man opposite her, who also wore a laboratory

smock over his business suit, apparently couldn’t

42

stand such taunting. Infuriated to the breaking point,

he suddenly swept his hand across the table in an

impulsive, violent gesture, and sent a rack of test

tubes, a retort, and several instruments crashing to

the floor.

Cleo Marville didn’t move, but she smiled, and

her smile was as cold as ice. Connie, wavering

between fascination and repulsion, watched the man

start around the edge of the table, and suddenly she

was afraid for Miss Marville, even though the

executive seemed to have no fear for herself.

She turned the knob and opened the door

abruptly, bursting in on the scene impetuously, as

though her interruption might avert disaster. “I beg

your pardon,” she said.

Connie was usually far from meek, but she

sounded meek just then. Cleo Marville turned and

looked at her and the man stopped in his tracks, the

taut muscles on his neck settling back under the

skin.

“I—I have a package from Reid and Renshaw.”

Connie held out the envelope. “Mr. Renshaw said I

should wait for an answer.”

Miss Marville ignored the debris on the floor as

completely as she ignored, for the moment, the irate

man. “Yes,” she said with restraint at which Connie

marveled. She accepted the envelope and tore at the

sealed flap. “I’ll be a few minutes,” she said. “I

43

wonder if you wouldn’t like to look around the plant

while you are waiting, Miss—Miss—?”

“Blair,” Connie supplied. “Connie Blair.”

She was surprised that her own voice sounded so

normal, because the tableau she had just witnessed

had been unnerving to say the least. The man had

looked almost murderous, his rage had been so

intense. She wondered who he could be.

Miss Marville supplied the answer a second later

when she said, almost negligently, “Miss Blair, this

is my chief chemist, Mr. Paul. Perhaps, Mr. Paul,

you will be good enough to show Miss Blair

around?”

It was at once a question and a veiled threat.

Connie felt, somehow, that if Mr. Paul acquiesced,

he would have lost the battle she had interrupted. If

he refused, she didn’t know what might happen

next!

For a few seconds there was silence in the little

room, while the decision hung in the balance. Then,

making an obvious fight for self-control, Mr. Paul

crossed the room, opened the door, and with the

briefest of bows to Connie, signaled that she should

go through.

Connie let out her breath in a long, inaudible sigh

of relief as she walked ahead of Mr. Paul through

the door. Over her shoulder she could see Miss

Marville nod with a certain satisfaction, then pull

44

out a stool and direct her attention to the papers

enclosed in the envelope. Then she found the

chemist at her side, and together they walked back

to the manufacturing department through which

Connie had already passed.

In a curiously dead voice, as though, after his

recent outburst, he were now drained of emotion,

Mr. Paul began to explain the processing of the

lipsticks, leading Connie from the enormous copper

vats where the ingredients were mixed to the

endlessly moving conveyor belt.

At another time Connie would have been very

much interested in seeing the hot red liquid poured,

through small mechanical funnels, into molds that

looked for all the world like ice cube trays. But

today her mind was alive with questions. What was

the meaning of the quarrel she had interrupted? Was

the man at her side, who now seemed so subdued, as

villainous as he had looked?

She watched the trays move into freezing units

and emerge with the liquid hardened into lipstick

shape. She saw one group of operators fit the

hardened lipsticks into cases, another group run the

sticks through a flame to give them shine, a third

group apply the metal case tops, and a fourth pack,

all with neat proficiency.

In an attempt to make normal conversation,

Connie said to Mr. Paul, “I’ve never seen a

45

conveyor belt before.”

The chemist replied politely, “You can tell your

friends you’ve seen what is probably the only pink

conveyor belt in the world.”

Connie managed a fairly convincing laugh. “And

the only one that smells of perfume, I’ll bet.”

Together they started back toward the office door.

Through the glass partition Connie could see Miss

Marville just tucking the papers back into the

envelope. Mr. Paul saw her too, and the sight

appeared to be too much for him. Abruptly, he

excused himself and walked off hastily in the

opposite direction as his employer beckoned to

Connie.

“Here you are,” she said, holding out the

envelope. “You may tell Mr. Renshaw I’ll call him

later. Her glance shifted to Mr. Paul’s retreating

back and she smiled wryly, her shoulders lifting in

an almost imperceptible shrug.

Connie went back across the third floor the way

she had come, past the busy girls and past the great

copper vats with their spiderlike arms. She wished

she could know what quarrel Mr. Paul had with

Miss Marville, and wondered whether it had

anything to do with the launching of Cleo’s new

product, or whether it was a personal feud. No

matter what the cause, it astonished Connie that

Miss Marville had been so calm in the face of such

46

unbridled anger. A shudder raced up her spine and

she murmured as she stood waiting for the elevator,

“I’d be scared to death if any man ever looked at me

like that.”

The elevator was slow in ascending, and the

cumbersome door creaked back to exhibit a car

empty of freight.

“Where is the nail polish made?” Connie asked

the operator in idle curiosity, as he took her down to

the street floor.

The man looked at her almost suspiciously.

“Five,” he muttered, “but you ain’t allowed up

there.”

Connie rather resented his tone. Discourtesy

seemed the norm around here. “I was just curious,”

she said.

“Lots is.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lots of people would like to see the polish

made, but it’s kept a secret. I been working here

seven years, and I never set foot on Five.”

“Really?” Connie was astonished, and wondered

whether the man weren’t perhaps exaggerating.

“Yup.” He opened the heavy door and let her out.

On the subway, riding back to the center of the

city, Connie mulled over the strange conversation.

Secret formulas, in this day and age, seemed a little

on the quaint and storybookish side. When she

47

delivered the envelope to Mr. Renshaw she tried to

make an opportunity to ask him if the operator’s tale

were true, but the agency head seemed abstracted

and she didn’t quite dare interrupt his probably-

important thoughts.

In the reception room, when Connie got back to

her desk, a tall girl with a thick portfolio tucked

under her arm was waiting.

Connie smiled courteously. “May I help you?”

The girl nodded. “I’d like to see Mr. Canfield, the

art director, please.” Her gray eyes, fringed with

dark lashes, met Connie’s directly and her voice was

low and sweet.

Connie reached for her pad. “Have you an

appointment?”

“No.”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“My name is Celine Bevan, but he won’t know

me.”

“Are you an artist?” Connie had learned quickly

that the agency executives wanted to know

everything possible about people who called without

appointments.

“No. I’m an agent. I represent a group of New

York artists,” the girl said.

There was an easy confidence in her manner

which impressed Connie. In a few days she had

come to recognize the professional touch through

48

which she could separate the wheat from the chaff.

“If you’ll have a seat I’ll see whether Mr.

Canfield can see you,” she told the tall girl, and

picked up her telephone.

Mr. Canfield, apparently interrupted in the midst

of a conversation, groaned, asked Connie to repeat

the agent’s name, then said briskly, “Ask her to

wait. I’ll see her out there in a few minutes.”

Connie repeated the message and Miss Bevan

nodded and thanked her briefly, then settled down

on the long sofa and picked up a copy of Advertising

Age, in which she apparently became engrossed.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Connie, who had

been busy in the interim at the switchboard, glanced

across the room. Miss Bevan was sitting with her

head against the back of the upholstered couch, and

the magazine lay idle in her lap.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Connie said,

because the girl looked rather weary and alone.

Immediately Miss Bevan straightened and smiled.

“That’s all right. I’m used to waiting. It’s part of my

job.”

“It sounds like an interesting business,” Connie

said because she wanted to be pleasant. Actually she

thought that selling the work of other artists

wouldn’t be half as much fun as doing art work

herself.

But Celine Bevan said at once, “It is! That is, if

49

you like to sell. And I do. You meet all kinds of

people and get into all kinds of situations. It’s lots of

fun.”

“But isn’t it often discouraging?” Connie

wondered out loud.

“Once in a while, but isn’t everything?”

The girl smiled at Connie’s artlessness, then

turned and was suddenly alert and businesslike as

Mr. Canfield strode into the room.

A succession of calls claimed Connie’s attention

for several minutes. When she looked up again Miss

Bevan had her portfolio opened on the low table and

Mr. Canfield was turning over her samples with

apparent interest, asking questions and making

quick, knowing comments here and there.

“I was thinking of Meredith for your cosmetic

account,” Connie heard Miss Bevan say. “You know

he did such a nice job when Murray introduced

‘Angel Skin’ a couple of years ago.”

Connie could almost feel the atmosphere of the

room change. Mr. Canfield dropped the drawing he

was fingering as though it had stung him and

slapped the portfolio shut.

“Meredith would be quite out of the question,” he

said shortly. “He has a distinctly British flavor and

we’re interested in an artist for the Marville account

who has a delicate and sophisticated French style to

his drawing.”

50

“Perhaps—” Miss Bevan started, but the art

director cut her off. “I’m sorry if I seem

discourteous, but I have a very important

appointment in just two minutes,” he said, glancing

at his watch. Then, with what Connie recognized as

a dissembling smile, he held out his hand. “Perhaps,

if you are in town again—”

The interview at an end, the girl from New York

packed up her drawings and prepared to depart.

Though she didn’t seem particularly disturbed by the

art director’s rebuff, Connie felt sorry for her, and

with spontaneous friendliness wished she could

make amends.

“I understand Marville and Murray aren’t very

good friends,” she ventured as Miss Bevan stood by

her desk, waiting for the elevator.

The tall girl’s shoulders rose in just a suggestion

of a shrug. “You never know,” she said with a smile

which told Connie she hadn’t particularly minded

the brush-off.

The car stopped, and the girl from New York

nodded a good-bye just before the door closed. From

the corridor behind Connie’s desk Ken Cooper’s

boyish voice said, with a tinge of concern, “Miss

Blair, here’s a little tip. I wouldn’t discuss the

Marville account much outside the office, if I were

you. Reid and Renshaw seem pretty touchy about it

these days.”

51

CHAPTER 5

Murray Versus Marville

Connie had a date with Larry Stewart on Saturday

night.

She was feeling a little homesick, because on

Saturday evenings in Meadowbrook the Blair family

always had oven-baked beans and brown bread for

supper. It was a tradition in the house. Here in

Philadelphia, just by chance, Aunt Bet served the

same dish, and it made Connie think of the big

square table at home, of Toby running in from some

ball game, happy and disheveled, and of Ruggles

sitting by Kit’s chair, begging soundlessly with his

soft spaniel eyes.

Aunt Bet was a darling but very busy with her

own affairs, and Connie missed Kit’s ready ear, and

the companionship that she had shared with her twin

all through the years.

“I think I’ll go home, maybe, next week end,” she

52

said.

“Why don’t you?” Elizabeth Easton agreed with

quick understanding. “Your dad probably gets

awfully bored, just lying in bed. It would do him

good to see you.” She didn’t mention that it would

probably mean a lot to Connie to see her family, too.

“I had a letter from Kit today,” Connie said after

a while, “and she says the hardware business is

thriving. I dropped her a post card from the office

and told her she’d be elected president of the State

Hardware Association in Dad’s place, probably.”

Aunt Bet chuckled at the fantastic idea. “

‘Hardware Men Led by Beautiful Blonde’ would

make a lovely headline. Kit might even land on the

cover of Life.”

Connie hugged her elbows and chortled. “I miss

Kit,” she confessed. “Having a twin is a little like

being half a person. Kit has always been so close to

me I never realized how I depended on her.” With a

sudden change of mood her eyes grew dreamy.

Practical Miss Easton said, “Being separated for a

while will probably do you both good. Have some

more salad, Connie? Or are you afraid of the garlic

in the dressing?” Her eyes twinkled shrewdly,

though she didn’t mention Larry’s name.

Connie obliged her by blushing. “Of course not!”

She stretched out her hand for the wooden bowl in

which Aunt Bet always tossed her marvelous salads,

53

but just then the buzzer sounded. “That must be

Larry now.”

So it was Larry, not Connie, who finished the

salad. Carrying the bowl in her hand, Connie went to

open the door of the apartment, and Larry took the

bowl from her, bowing low to sniff the tantalizing

aroma of the dressing.

“Hi, Bet!” he called over Connie’s shoulder. “I

hoped I’d be in time.”

“He’s a rabbit,” Aunt Bet told her niece. “He can

eat a whole bowl of salad all by himself.”

“And I have!” added Larry without apology.

“Tell her the worst!”

Connie’s momentary homesickness fled before

the boy’s infectious gaiety. She felt very lucky to

have two such firm friends in the city, and thought

with pity of girls like herself who came to town to

take jobs, knowing no one, utterly alone.

Her mind flashed to Ellen Randolph. “By the

way,” she asked her aunt, “did a Miss Randolph ever

come to see you?”

“Just yesterday,” her aunt replied. “I forgot to tell

you. I introduced her to Miss Gordon in personnel,

and I believe there’s a chance there may be

something for her at the store.”

“Oh, I hope so!” Connie clasped her hands. The

promising news lifted her spirits still further, and by

the time Larry announced that he had been given

54

two seats for the Orchestra, Connie again felt that

she was sitting on top of her particular world.

“That’s wonderful!” she told her escort. “I’ve

never heard a big orchestra play, except over the

radio.”

She had discovered, in her brief sojourn in the

city, that everybody called the Philadelphia

Orchestra simply “the Orchestra,” as though there

were no other in the world. She knew that it was

housed in the dingy old Academy of Music, because

she passed the building frequently, and she was

delighted that she would have a chance to see the

inside.

It was a short walk from Aunt Bet’s apartment,

and Connie and Larry strolled down Locust Street

with other orchestra- and theatergoers, idling along

in the soft September night. Larry, who had been

instrumental in finding it for her, wanted to hear all

about Connie’s new job, and Connie told him about

Cleo Marville and the incident at the cosmetic

factory and the mystery surrounding the new

product Reid and Renshaw were helping to launch.

“I’m simply seething with curiosity!” Connie

admitted. “I bet my aunt that I’d discover all about it

a couple of days ago,” she added ruefully. “But to

date—nothing.”

Larry kidded her, shaking his head in mock

sorrow. “Connie, you’re slipping.”

55

Connie didn’t contradict him. “Woe is me,” she

sighed. “However, Monday is another day.”

And Monday proved to be the day when Cleo

Marville’s secret was unveiled, formally, to all Reid

and Renshaw employees. A memo went to the entire

office staff, over Mr. Reid’s signature, calling a

meeting. And at the meeting Mr. Reid, with great

solemnity, announced that the agency was fortunate

enough to be handling a campaign running into

hundreds of thousands of dollars for “Cosmetics by

Cleo,” to advertise a new product which they hoped

to keep cloaked in secrecy until it was actually put

on sale.

He stood with his hands behind his back,

silhouetted against the wide window of his big

corner office, and rocked on his heels. “We’re going

to let you in on the secret, but we’re going to ask

you to help us try to keep it from the general public

until the first ads appear. Do you think you can do

that?”

From most of the office staff there was mute

acquiescence, with a few scattered nods and an

occasional muttered “Yes.” Connie herself bobbed

her head up and down vigorously. Her eyes were

bright with interest and her lips, touched with

Marville’s Rendezvous, were parted. Ken Cooper,

across the room from her, watched the new

receptionist with a smile that was almost tender, but

56

Connie didn’t realize that anyone was looking her

way.

“Miss Marville,” said Mr. Reid, “is bringing out a

completely revolutionary nail polish. She has

purchased a secret, Viennese formula, and she is

prepared to manufacture within two months, or as

quickly as national advertising can be prepared and

placed.”

Connie was so full of anticipation that the actual

announcement came as an anticlimax. Just a new

nail polish, she thought—is that what all the

excitement’s about?

But when Mr. Reid described its qualities, finer

than anything ever developed, and painted in

glowing terms the advertising possibilities inherent

in such a new and different product, she began to

understand the scope of the project outlined.

“Say,” she whispered to Ken Cooper as they

walked back down the corridor together, “sounds as

if this is going to be a busy place.”

“Busy? The one-armed paper hanger will have

nothing on Reid and Renshaw,” Ken retorted. “Gal,

you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Sworn to secrecy as she was, Connie felt that she

had no right to discuss the new product even with

her aunt. She was beginning to understand that the

cosmetic business was highly competitive, even

cutthroat, and that there was real justification for

57

Cleo Marville’s desire to lie low until her marvelous

polish actually went on sale.

Miss Cameron explained her attitude further to

Connie. “Marville had a bad break a few years

back,” she said. “It was when pancake make-up was

very new, and Angela Murray and Cleo came out

with almost identical products under similar names.

That’s how we happened to get the Marville

account. She blamed the agency who was handling

her advertising at the time for letting the cat out of

the bag.”

“You mean that as reputable a house as Angela

Murray would actually steal an idea?” Connie was

aghast.

“Could be,” Miss Cameron said rather slangily.

She smiled at Connie’s wide-eyed incredulity and

added, “It might have been just a freak of luck, on

the other hand. It’s hard to say.”

Even with her growing background of

information about the beauty business, Connie

couldn’t quite understand the bitter rivalry between

“Cosmetics by Cleo” and the Angela Murray

products. It apparently antedated the unfortunate

coincidence of duplicating the pancake make-up

kits, and apparently nobody else questioned it. They

seemed to accept it as a natural and established fact.

But Connie, turning the pages of the fashionable

women’s magazines that were always scattered

58

around Aunt Bet’s attractive apartment, was

increasingly puzzled. A couple of evenings later she

showed two full-page ads to her aunt.

The first, over Angela Murray’s popular

trademark, contained the full-color photograph of a

famous model, with brunette coloring and a

complexion like country cream. “Angel Skin” was

the name of the face cream advertised. Connie had

seen it a dozen times on the counters of Campion’s

cosmetic department. A pink-and-white angel,

featured on all Angela Murray products, decorated

the label, and the price was advertised.

The second ad, for “Cosmetics by Cleo,” had the

sort of distinction Connie had always associated

with the advertisements of fine perfumes. The

selling angle was different, the copy was more

restrained and the illustration of a beautiful woman

was reproduced from a sophisticated pastel drawing.

It was the kind of drawing Connie couldn’t decide

about—the kind she neither liked nor disliked, but

which was definitely very smart and expensive-

looking indeed.

Sitting on the arm of Aunt Bet’s chair, Connie

scrutinized the ads again. “Just for fun,” she

suggested, “tell me what you think of these.”

Elizabeth Easton cocked her head thoughtfully.

“You want me to compare them?”

“That’s it!”

59

“There really isn’t a very close comparison,”

Aunt Bet said. “Angela Murray does a volume

business and Cleo Marville is after the luxury trade.

You can see that.”

Connie nodded, but her puzzlement remained.

“That’s what I’d have said. But Marville and Murray

are supposed to be arch rivals. I can’t understand

why.”

Miss Easton let the pages of the magazine fall

shut and handed it back to her niece. “I can’t either.

They shouldn’t step on each other’s toes at all,

unless there’s a personal animosity we wouldn’t

know about. As a matter of fact,” she added,

stretching her slender arms like a lazy kitten, “it

seems to me each of those houses has what the other

one needs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marville has class with a capital C and Murray

has the middle-class market sewed up and tucked

away,” said Connie’s aunt. Then she turned and

looked up at her niece with a smile. “You’re really

interested in the advertising business, aren’t you?”

“Terribly,” Connie admitted. “I always have been

But what she didn’t acknowledge was that she was

also getting more and more intrigued by the

complex personality and the business machinations

or the fabulous Cleo Marville.

60

CHAPTER 6

Week-end Interlude

The dogwoods fled by the train windows, sharp

flashes of gold and crimson against the dulled

greens, and browns of the trees.

“Frost in the suburbs,” the radio weatherman had

predicted the night before, and Connie could still see

traces of it cobwebbing the grass as the early-

morning train raced past the fields and farms and

villages which lay between the city and her home.

October had come in like a young lion, and the air

was crisp and clean, with a north wind blowing and

the sun playing hide-and-seek with racing clouds.

Connie loved the excitement of fall weather, and she

could scarcely wait to get to Meadowbrook. She

knew just what she’d do. She’d change into old

clothes, as soon as she’d spent half an hour with

Dad, and get out with Ruggles and Kit for a walk in

the woods.

61

It was fun to be coming home for the week end,

wearing a new hat that had a distinctly career-girl

flavor and carrying a box of candy for the family

and a book for Dad. She felt as though she had been

away a long time, yet at the same moment she felt

that the weeks had passed quickly, because so much

was happening at Reid and Renshaw that everyone

was a little breathless these days.

On the board platform of Meadowbrook station

Kit, in a sage-green corduroy suit, waited with

Ruggles, straining and panting on the end of an

unaccustomed leash. At her first glimpse of Connie

she waved, and ran alongside the train as it slowed

down. Then she hugged her twin exuberantly the

moment she descended the steps.

“Connie! It’s been forever. You look marvelous!

And what a yummy hat!”

Connie, trying to keep the candy and book from

slipping, while she also held on to her overnight bag

and her purse, grinned back at her. “You look pretty

marvelous yourself, Kit. How’s Dad? How’s

everything? I didn’t know I’d miss you all so

much!”

Ruggles, equally anxious to express his

felicitations, at this point got Connie hopelessly

entangled in his leash. Kit unwound it from

Connie’s ankles, took over the management of the

suitcase, and together the twins walked over to the

62

family car.

“Dad’s better,” Kit said as she let out the clutch.

“If he keeps on improving he’s to be propped up in

bed for an hour each day and after a month more rest

he’ll be able to sit up.”

“Wonderful!” Connie was relieved. She had

worried about her father more than she would admit,

even to herself. “And Mother?”

“Carrying on like a Spartan,” Kit said. “She’s full

of fun and the best kind of medicine for Dad.”

Turning into the main street, Kit chattered on

about the family until the familiar front of Blair’s

Hardware Store came into sight. Then she pulled

into the nearest parking space, but without turning

off the ignition. “You’ll have to take over from

here,” she said. “I’ve got to go back to work. You

know Saturday’s our busy day!”

Connie did know, of course, but she had

temporarily forgotten that Kit was a working woman

too. She thought regretfully of the walk in the woods

she had been planning, with Kit as her companion.

“Do you need an extra hand?” she asked

promptly. “I could come back as soon as I’ve seen

the family. Just say the word.”

Kit shook her head firmly. “We’re getting along

splendidly,” she said. “I’m having lots of fun.” She

slid out of the driver’s seat and closed the door,

pausing to rumple Ruggles’ ears as she said good-

63

bye.

Connie watched her walk away, then, on an

impulse, switched off the ignition and ran after her.

“Wait a minute, Kit,” she called. “I can at least take

time out to say hello to the old store.”

Kit turned, obviously pleased, and the girls

walked on along the familiar business street

together. Townspeople, passing them, nodded or

spoke. Almost everyone in Meadowbrook knew the

Blair twins, at least by sight.

Before Wilson’s Drugstore Connie paused,

grabbing Kit’s arm. “Look!” she said, leading her

twin over to examine a display of “Cosmetics by

Cleo.” “That’s one of our accounts!”

“Our accounts?” Kit teased her.

“Well, Reid and Renshaw’s.” Connie laughed.

“And Kit, I’ve actually met Cleo Marville. She’s

perfectly amazing. Oh, I’ve got so much to tell you!

I’ll be keeping you awake all night.”

“Not me,” Kit protested. “Since I’ve been in the

hardware business nothing could keep me awake.

But I’m dying to hear about everything. I’ll promise

to prop my eyes open, for a couple of hours at least.”

Arm in arm, the girls walked on to the hardware

store. It looked little different to Connie than when

she had left home, neater perhaps, as though a

feminine hand had tried to reduce the effect of

clutter, but otherwise much the same. There was the

64

usual Saturday morning flurry of business, men

buying paint and carpentry equipment, housewives

hurrying in and out for floor polish or shelf paper.

“We’ve been especially busy this week,” Kit said.

“House-cleaning time.”

Connie walked over and fingered a new line of

baking casseroles. “Pretty,” she murmured. “Aren’t

these attractive, Kit?”

“We have lots of new kitchen items,” Kit said.

“Dad ordered them just before he was taken ill. But

they don’t seem to be moving very fast.” A trace of

a frown appeared between her dark eyebrows.

“No?” Connie was surprised. She wandered to the

windows at the front of the store while Kit answered

a customer’s question. Then she snapped her fingers,

as an idea suddenly occurred to her, and turned back

to make a more thorough perusal of the stock. When

she finally said good-bye to Kit and went back to the

car and a decidedly impatient Ruggles, Connie

looked thoughtful, as though she were planning

great plans.

She was so absent-minded, as a matter of fact,

that she never even saw Don Fitzgerald, who waved

to her from the corner of High Street and Brook

Road, then stood looking after the car in aggrieved

surprise. Forgotten was her desire to walk in the

woods. After she had spent an hour with her father,

who did indeed look better, and after she had

65

lunched in leisurely comfort with her mother and

Toby, she went up to her room and got out an old

drawing board, some big sheets of paper and a box

of crayons. Connie had an idea.

By five-thirty, when the short October day had

ended and Kit came home, Connie had turned on the

bedroom lights and was sitting on the floor, her back

against the window seat, with a drawing board still

propped against her knees. She was surrounded by a

litter of paper, some of it crumpled, a few big sheets

propped against chair legs so that they could be

considered from a more satisfactory angle.

Kit stopped in the doorway. “For Pete’s sake—”

Connie looked up and laughed at her twin’s

puzzled expression. “Genius at work!” she

announced. “Come on over here. I’ve had a

thought.”

“It looks like more than a thought,” Kit replied.

“It looks like a brain storm.”

“Sure!” Connie spread her arms. “I’m surrounded

by ideas.”

Kit tossed her suit coat on the bed and crossed the

room to drop to her knees beside Connie. What she

saw surprised her into momentary silence. Then she

picked up the sketch nearest her hand and

murmured, “Why—why, Connie—whatever made

you think of this?”

She was looking at a rough sketch of a window

66

display, scaled to approximately the size of the

windows of Blair’s Hardware Store. On a ribbonlike

banner were the words A HARVEST OF COLOR

and under them, more discreetly, appeared “For

Your Kitchen.” From an overturned basket in one

corner of the window spilled a riot of pumpkins,

squash, husked corn, and bright red apples, indicated

roughly by Connie’s facile hand, holding the gayest

crayons she could find. The rest of the space was

given over to an artistic, eye-catching display of

kitchen items—paints, shelf edging, mixing bowls,

and the new line of baking casseroles Connie had

discovered that morning, along with other bright

new merchandise designed to make a housewife’s

mouth water.

“Gather a glorious bounty of color to bring new

life and beauty to your home!” said Connie, waving

a crayon like a wand. “Say, that’s not bad, is it? I

ought to write that down.”

“Bad? Connie, you’re wonderful!” Kit laid down

the sketch she was holding and turned to another

one, a merry-go-round drawing of Christmas toys, as

intriguing as a candy cane.

Connie knelt and looked over her twin’s shoulder.

“I thought Dad might even be able to figure out

some way we could make the merry-go-round spin.

Or maybe you could rent one, at one of those display

places in Philadelphia. The kids would love it,

67

wouldn’t they?”

“They would indeed!” Kit looked at Connie in

admiration. “How did you ever get these ideas?

They’re good!”

Connie sat back and hugged her knees, pleased at

the praise but anxious to be modest. “After all, I’m

in the advertising business, you know,” she said.

Then she confessed, “And you know Larry Stewart

is a display man at Campion’s. I’ve watched him

work dozens of times.”

Kit was considering still another drawing. “I

think you’re wasting your time as a receptionist,”

she said.

“Don’t worry,” Connie replied with sudden

boldness. “I won’t be a receptionist long.”

Kit looked at her sister confidently. “I believe

that,” she said. Then she jumped to her feet. “Come

on! Let’s show these to Dad.”

Mr. Blair was as excited as his new store manager

about Connie’s ideas. “There’s no reason why these

couldn’t be worked out, Kit,” he said promptly. “Do

you think you could build the windows from

Connie’s sketches?”

And Kit replied, “I’m sure I can.”

Because Connie’s homecoming called for a

celebration, Mrs. Blair laid a supper table in Mr.

Blair’s bedroom that night.

“Mm!” Connie sighed as she took her first taste

68

of the baked beans and brown bread for which her

mother was famous. “These are better than

anybody’s. It’s so good to be home!”

“It’s good to have you,” Mrs. Blair said with

quiet affection.

“And stimulating!” Connie’s father winked at Kit.

Connie put down her fork. “It’s rest, not

stimulation, that you need,” she told her dad

severely. “If that’s the way you feel about me I’ll

have to stay away.”

“Don’t you dare!” Kit said like a little girl, her

heart in her voice.

Toby, uncomfortable at any hint of sentiment,

said abruptly, “That’s swell candy you brought

home, Sis.”

Everybody laughed, and Connie struck a pose.

“Loved for myself alone,” she cried.

The telephone rang, downstairs, and Mrs. Blair

looked at Toby. “You go, Toby,” she said.

Toby pounded down the steps and a minute later

called stridently, “It’s for you, Kit.”

When Kit came back, after a short conversation,

she was chuckling. Looking at Connie, she shook

her head. “You’re incorrigible,” she told her twin.

“Don Fitzgerald says you drove right past without

even speaking to him today.”

“Don? I never saw him!”

Mrs. Blair smiled. “Dreaming with her eyes wide

69

open.”

“I was thinking about the store windows,” Connie

said slowly. “I’ll call him back and apologize.”

“You can apologize in person,” Kit said. “He’s

coming over in half an hour with Bob Anderson, and

he’s bringing a new album of records that he says

we simply must hear.”

The evening passed quickly, and it was midnight

when Connie finally snuggled down in the bed next

to Kit’s. Far from being tired, she leaned on her

elbow and said enthusiastically, “Now let me tell

you about Cleo Marville. She really is the most

amazing character you’ve ever seen.”

Kit stifled a yawn, turned on her stomach, and

propped her head on her folded arms. “I’m sure she

is,” she said politely. “Begin to commence.”

Connie could be eloquent, but Kit was very

sleepy. It wasn’t ten minutes later that Connie, now

sitting cross-legged in bed, asked a question to

which she got no reply.

“What I’d like to know,” she was saying, “is why

Miss Marville is so temperamental about Angela

Murray. Otherwise, she can be quite businesslike,

but when Murray is mentioned she flies off the

handle. I’ve heard her myself. Do you suppose it

could be something personal that we don’t know

anything about?”

70

CHAPTER 7

Hush, Hush!

On the Monday after her return from Meadowbrook,

in the corridor which led to Mr. George Renshaw’s

office, Connie could hear Mr. Reid and Mr. Brinton

having an argument. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop,

but it was impossible not to catch their words.

“She wants copy that will make the Angel Skin

copy look pale by comparison. Cleo herself puts it

this way: ‘I want copy that will sing.’ ” Mr. Reid

was speaking, very authoritatively, Connie thought.

“If this goes on much longer, we’ll all be

warbling in a neat set of strait jackets,” the Marville

account executive replied grumpily. “I’ve pushed

our copy writers just about as far as I dare.”

“Maybe the approach is wrong. Maybe men can’t

write selling copy for a woman like Cleo. Maybe we

ought to start all over again and hire some glamour

magazine gals.”

71

Jim Brinton said, “Aw nuts.”

Connie, alone in the outer room, smiled to

herself. She was getting used to the informal,

colorful conversation of the agency executives. To

the clients they could be very suave, but off guard

they were like a bunch of schoolboys, violent,

opinionated, even a little rough.

A minute later Mr. Brinton strode out to the

reception room and stamped up and down, his brows

pulled together, his eyes stormy.

Suddenly he whirled on Connie. “What kind of

lipstick do you wear?”

“Rendezvous,” Connie replied promptly.

“What makes you use it? How did you decide on

that particular color?”

Connie’s eyes twinkled roguishly and she clasped

her hands like an obedient schoolgirl. “Miss

Marville said I should.”

Mr. Brinton looked as though he’d like to

explode. He started to say something that sounded

suspiciously like a repetition of his former expletive,

then thought better of it, shot Connie a withering

glance and stamped back to his own office,

deliberately slamming the door.

Miss Cameron appeared from the direction of the

art department, glanced first at the door through

which the account executive had disappeared, then

at Connie, and very gently said, “Whee!”

72

Connie smiled up at her. “Mr. Brinton appears a

little disturbed.”

Georgia Cameron nodded. “Our Cleo is kicking

over the traces again,” she said as she went past the

receptionist’s desk.

Ten minutes later Mr. Brinton telephoned

formally to Miss Cameron, putting the call through

Connie, and asked her to step into his office. A little

later Miss Marville herself swept through the

reception room and through the same door. She was

joined by Mr. Reid. Whatever was happening,

Connie decided, must be of serious moment indeed.

Dick Travis, Ellen’s redheaded friend from the art

department, came through the reception room on his

way to the production department, glanced at the

closed door of Mr. Reid’s office, and graphically

turned up the collar of his coat.

“There’s a chill in the air,” he told Connie. “I’m

glad I don’t write copy.”

“Your turn will probably come,” Connie retorted,

and Dick raised his eyebrows.

“You’re really beginning to know your way

around,” he said with a grin.

On his way back to his own office he leaned on

Connie’s desk and said, “By the way, I’m having

dinner with Ellen Randolph tonight, and Ken and I

were just cooking up an idea that you and he might

come along. We’re going to do a movie afterward.”

73

“I think that would be fun,” Connie replied. “But

why doesn’t Ken ask me himself?”

“He’s a very shy guy,” Dick said firmly, “and it

seems he saw you with a tall and handsome lad on

Chestnut Street one night. He’s been afraid you’d

turn him down.”

Connie thought a minute, then said, “Oh, that was

Larry Stewart. He’s a display man for Campion’s,

and he helped get me this job.”

“But there’s no one-and-only deal?”

“None at all.” Connie laughed. “Going steady is

so final,” she quipped. “And I’m a career gal. Didn’t

you know?”

“I was beginning to suspect,” Dick shot back. “I

bet you even have an angle on this Cleo Marville

affair.”

Connie’s chin shot up. “If you mean the difficulty

they’re having over copy for the new nail polish, I

have.”

Dick grinned. “Really? What is it?”

“I don’t see how anybody can write good copy

about a completely revolutionary product unless

they know how women are going to react to it. I

think it’s a research department job. They make

surveys and market analyses about everything else

around here. Why not this new nail polish of Miss

Marville’s?”

“Because, my child,” said Dick, speaking with

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weary condescension and a trace of scorn for Miss

Marville, “it’s a Secret, spelled with a capital ‘S.’ ”

“Then it’s her own fault if the copy’s no good.

She ought to be willing to make up some test

samples. I bet she’s never even been asked.”

Dick raised a finger. “I’ll see!” Without another

word he walked down the corridor toward the

research department door.

Connie didn’t learn the result of the ensuing

consultation until that evening, when she and Ken,

obviously pleased that she had consented to go out

with him, sat opposite Ellen and Dick in a small

Italian restaurant, eating spaghetti with marinara

sauce and a green salad dressed with oil and wine

vinegar.

“It was a breeze,” Dick told her then. “Research

wouldn’t stick the old neck out, so little Richard

trotted right in to Mr. Renshaw himself.”

Connie looked at Ken slyly. “There’s nothing shy

about Dick,” she said with a grin.

Dick silenced her with an uplifted hand, index

finger pointed toward the ceiling. “Then Mr.

Renshaw got in on the conference, came forth with

Connie’s suggestion, and presto—the survey is

about to be made.”

Connie knew it couldn’t have been quite as

simple as it sounded, but she was glad that she had

made a workable suggestion. As she had said to Kit

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over the week end, she didn’t intend to be a

receptionist forever. Connie had her eye on a star.

Ellen asked, “Did you tell Mr. Renshaw it was

Connie’s idea, Dick?”

“Of course I did.” Dick sounded momentarily

insulted. “What do you think I am, a heel?”

Since, quite obviously, no one in the group

considered him a heel, nobody bothered to reply.

Dick turned to Connie again. “Mr. Renshaw will

say a kind word about it too. You’ll see.”

Connie’s eyes were warm as she thanked the

young artist. “After all, there’s no reason why you

should have my interests especially at heart,” she

added.

“Turn about is fair play,” Dick said breezily.

“After all, you did a good deal for Ellen.” He

smiled, meeting the eyes of the quiet, dark girl

beside him. “And doing something for Ellen is doing

something for me.”

Ellen dropped her eyes, and Connie saw that she

flushed slightly, but a smile crept into the corners of

her mouth and she didn’t deny Dick’s words.

“Your aunt was terribly nice to me,” she said to

Connie after a moment.

“Aunt Bet’s a lamb,” Connie nodded. “She told

me there might be a job for you, but I never actually

heard—”

“Oh, yes!” Ellen cut in. “I got the job. In the

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Baby Bazaar. Selling. And I just love it. It’s twice as

much fun—” Then she stopped and bit her lip.

Connie laughed, not in the least offended. “Go

on. Say it. Twice as much fun as being a

receptionist?”

Ellen, blushing, met her eyes. “Well, maybe I had

an unfortunate experience.”

“With Miss Marville, you mean? She if a

character. She’s everything you said she was.

Imperious. Arrogant. Difficult.”

“Difficult is putting it mildly,” said Dick.

“But, somehow,” Connie continued, leaning

forward intently on one elbow, “I like her. I like her

because I know she’s more than—than a fashion

plate. I’ve seen her in a smock down at her factory. I

think she’s a worker and there’s something about a

person’s ability to work and accomplish things that

I’ll always respect.”

Ken, who had been listening carefully, nodded in

agreement. “Good girl,” he murmured under his

breath.

But Ellen had suffered too much at the hands of

the fabulous Cleo to be as generous as Connie in her

estimate of the lady’s character. “I still think she’s

pretty silly,” she said. “That feud with Angela

Murray—”

Connie conceded the point, frowning slightly. “I

know. But I feel there must be something behind it.

77

Maybe,” she suggested, putting her imagination to

work, “Angela Murray and Cleo Marville grew up in

the same town or something. Maybe they’ve always

been rivals. Who knows?”

“I don’t,” Dick said, pushing back his chair and

reaching for the check, “but you can easily find out.”

“How?”

“Look them up in Women of America,” he said.

“It’s sort of a businesswoman’s Who’s Who. They’re

certain to be listed, with bells on.” Then he changed

the subject abruptly. “Come on now, or we’ll miss

the beginning of the feature, and I’m a strictly from-

the-beginning guy.”

The motion picture was a current and choice one,

and Connie promptly lost herself in the plot,

forgetting all about the office and the complications

attending the launching of the new nail polish. Dick

took Ellen to her home in Overbrook, and Ken

walked across town with Connie to her aunt’s

apartment, chatting casually.

After Connie had left him on the doorstep she

realized that she had learned a great deal about him,

during the short time they were alone. He lived in a

rooming house on Spruce Street, he had gone to art

school in New York, and he hoped someday to be a

book illustrator. For Ken the advertising business

was merely a starting point.

Dick Travis, Connie knew, felt differently about

78

advertising. For him it was a career job. She was

beginning to believe that the same held true for her.

She had a feeling for the business. It had color and

excitement. Turning her own reactions to it over in

her mind, she undressed and climbed into bed.

In the morning, true to Dick’s promise, Mr.

George Renshaw called Connie into his office and

told her, in an offhand manner which was almost

boyish, that the agency intended to make a test

survey of women’s reactions to the new nail polish,

the trade name of which was to be “Permon.” He

didn’t thank her in so many words for her help in

making the suggestion, but he did something else

which Connie appreciated more.

“How would you like to get away from your desk

for a couple of days and distribute the samples?” he

asked her. “We could put one of the stenographers

on in your place.”

“I think that would be fun,” Connie said at once,

delighted at the prospect of a change of pace. “If I

could do what you need.”

Mr. Renshaw smiled. “I’m sure you could,” he

said. “People instinctively like and trust you, Miss

Blair. I think you’ll find them quite ready to listen to

your proposition.”

He then explained that Miss Marville was making

up just twenty-four bottles of her new polish, and

that she was anxious to get reactions to its alleged

79

superiority from girls and women in various walks

of life and in various jobs and professions.

Connie nodded. “A sort of cross section.”

“That’s right.”

“When do I start?” Connie asked.

“As soon as Miss Marville makes up the

necessary samples. She is to call when they are

ready, and I think it would be well for you to take

your specific directions from her. Then there will be

no possibility of mishandling.”

It was three days later that the Marville laboratory

called to say that the samples were bottled. Connie

herself took the message, and therefore wasn’t

surprised when Mr. Renshaw arranged to have her

relieved on the reception desk so that she could

make the trip downtown to call for them.

It was a Friday afternoon, and the Reid and

Renshaw offices were closed, like most agencies, on

Saturday, so Connie was told that she could

postpone distribution until Monday, when she would

work under Miss Marville’s direction, reporting at

the office first.

Connie approached the factory with anticipation,

hoping that she would get her instructions from the

head of the cosmetic house direct. But it was Mr.

Paul, not Miss Marville, who interviewed her, and

the head chemist still seemed to be in a black mood.

He was short with Connie, and when she asked for

80

specific instructions on how to proceed he threw up

his hands.

“Nobody tells me anything. Don’t ask me.”

Connie felt a trifle abashed. “Well, what—” she

began.

But Mr. Paul peered at her irately over his

spectacles, his thin mustache nervous. “I do not run

this business,” he said. “I am nothing—nothing but a

paid mill hand. Ask Miss Marville what you are to

do. She is the one who holds the great secret. Hush,

hush, hush! That is all I hear.” He spread his hands

in a gesture of disgust. “When I know nothing to

hush about.”

“Where is Miss Marville?” Connie asked when

she could interrupt the tirade.

“Miss Marville? How should I know?” Mr. Paul

glared at Connie again, and ran his fingers through

his graying hair. “Maybe she will be in Monday,

maybe not.” Suddenly he sank wearily into an office

chair as though his temper had spent itself. “And

now, if you please,” he said with a complete change

of tone, “go away.”

81

CHAPTER 8

The Woman’s Angle

Over the week end Connie guarded the little box of

nail polish bottles, innocent of label, as though they

were the crown jewels. She did not know what she

feared, but as a result of Mr. Paul’s outburst she

locked the box in her suitcase and shoved the bag far

back under Aunt Bet’s luggage in the bedroom

closet.

On Saturday night Larry Stewart came to the

apartment for supper, and on Sunday Connie and her

aunt went out to the Art Museum to an exhibition of

paintings, stopped in at a restaurant for a light meal,

then came home and indulged in the feminine

pastime of snuggling in bed surrounded by

magazines and the Sunday paper.

Connie was settling comfortably into this city

life. She noticed that the pangs of homesickness

were less sharp. They practically disappeared when

82

she remembered—and reminded herself—that she

could jump on a train any Saturday and be whisked

back to Meadowbrook in two hours.

Conscious that she would be meeting strangers if

she distributed the nail polish samples, Connie

dressed with particular care on Monday morning,

wearing a blue tweed suit bought at a sale at

Campion’s. With low-heeled brown calf walking

shoes, a felt hat and a matching bag, she looked

appropriately dressed for either town or country, as

her aunt told her with a nod of approval.

“Hope you have fun,” she added, knowing her

niece’s plans.

“I will.” Connie smiled back. “I always do.”

“I know you do. That’s why you’re so

refreshing,” Aunt Bet said honestly.

She walked down to the corner with Connie, who

had the small box of samples tucked safely under

one arm, then turned toward the store while Connie

walked in the opposite direction toward her own

office.

Connie thought she would never get over the

thrill of just being in business. She liked to ride up

in the crowded elevator with the neat, smart girls

and freshly shaven men, who always looked so

spruce and well pressed at the beginning of the

working day. She liked the feeling that she was part

of some vast and interesting pattern, that she was a

83

cog in an enormous wheel of enterprise. She even

liked the feeling of being anonymous in the throng.

Instead of taking her usual place behind the desk,

Connie went at once to Mr. Renshaw’s office.

“Good morning,” she said politely. “I have the

nail polish samples here.”

“Oh, yes. Have you talked to Miss Marville?”

“She wasn’t in on Friday, but Mr. Paul said she

might come down to the factory today.”

“I’ll call.” Mr. Renshaw pulled the phone toward

him and gave the laboratory number. Connie waited

during a brief, monosyllabic conversation. Then Mr.

Renshaw hung up and said, “Miss Marville is at

home with a light case of grippe. She asked Mr. Paul

to send you out to her house to talk with her. Are

you afraid of catching cold?”

“Oh, no!” Connie would have risked anything

short of pneumonia to see Cleo Marville’s

establishment, which office gossip described as very

luxurious.

Mr. Renshaw took out his wallet and extracted a

ten-dollar bill, handing it across the desk to Connie.

“For expenses,” he said. “Take a Main Line train to

Haverford and get a taxi at the station.” He scribbled

Miss Marville’s address on a memo pad. “She lives

a couple of miles back in the country. Think you’ll

be all right?”

Connie realized that he was looking at her

84

suddenly as though he considered her very young.

She straightened, trying to look dignified, and said,

“Of course.”

George Renshaw smiled in his slow, easy

manner. “All right. Go to it,” he said.

It was a short walk from the agency offices to

Suburban Station, and Connie reveled in the

prospect of being outside for the better part of this

crisp October day. She made a nine-thirty train and

soon saw the smoke-stained city houses give way to

neat suburban dwellings and apartments. Every two

minutes the conductor seemed to shout out a

familiar town name.

Haverford was a mere twenty-minute ride from

the center of the city, and Connie took one of the

several available taxis, and wasn’t surprised that the

driver nodded knowingly when she mentioned Miss

Marville’s name. They rolled, at a leisurely pace,

down a winding suburban road, under oaks and

maples still wearing the fancy dress of fall.

Halloween would soon be here, Connie thought with

nostalgia, remembering the days when she and Kit

had dressed as boys and called, masked, at the

homes of neighbors, to beg “coal pieces” in the

traditional country way. Now Toby and his young

friends would be making the same rounds, and there

would be gingersnaps at the Shaws, and nuts and

candy at the Andersons, and bright new pennies at

85

the Trotters, as always. And Mr. Trotter would

pretend he simply couldn’t guess who Toby was,

knowing all the time—

“Fine weather we’re having,” said the taxi driver,

interrupting Connie’s reminiscences.

“Beautiful!” Connie agreed. The road was

winding downward now, through estate country,

following a creek which tumbled over rocks to its

bed in the valley below. Leaves whirled across the

road, crackling under the wheels of the cab, and

other leaves drifted down soundlessly from the

canopy of trees.

Connie leaned forward to peer at the houses they

were passing, some quite visible from the road,

others set far back beyond border plantings. At an

iron gate the cab turned in to a curving, crushed-

stone drive and stopped at the broad steps of a house

designed in the New Orleans manner. Connie

alighted, fumbling for the cab driver’s fee

impatiently, because all she really wanted to do was

to step back in delight.

It was one of the most unusual houses Connie had

ever seen, perfect for Cleo Marville. Of pink

plaster—a pink with a lot of gray in it—the house

had long gray shutters and wrought-iron balconies

painted the same pearly shade.

Soundlessly, Connie’s lips formed the words

“Isn’t it lovely?” The low shrubbery complemented

86

the lines of the house, and a half moon of grass

swept down from the broad steps like a carpet. The

place was spacious but not overwhelming. It looked

as though a person who lived here should be both

happy and gracious. It was a welcoming, serene sort

of house.

But Cleo Marville was far from being either

happy or particularly gracious this Monday morning.

A houseman answered Connie’s ring, and she was

shown up a broad, winding stairway to a large

bedroom.

“Miss Blair,” the man announced.

Miss Marville, who lay on a chaise longue at the

far end of the room, was just pulling a fresh tissue

from the box beside her. In a voice that was more

than theatrically husky she said, “Cub id.”

Connie couldn’t help smiling to herself. Rich or

poor, people the country over talked the same when

they caught cold.

“Good morning, Miss Marville,” she said with all

the brightness and courtesy she could command.

But Connie’s very freshness seemed to affect

Miss Marville adversely. She was almost petulant as

she waved a languid hand toward a chair. “Sit down.

No, not here! Over there.” Then she seemed to

realize that her tone was far from welcoming.

“There’s no point to your catching this fiendish

cold.”

87

Then Miss Marville blew her nose vigorously,

and managed a thin smile. “I loathe being ill,” she

said, “even for a day. Particularly when there’s so

much to be done.”

The businesswoman was speaking again, and

Connie wasn’t surprised that her next remark was

directed at the proposition at hand. “Let me see.

Suppose I explain the kind of survey I have in mind,

and you take notes.”

Connie explained, rather apologetically, that she

had no paper or pencil, and Miss Marville directed

her to a French provincial desk in another part of the

room. “Pull open that drawer at the left. That’s the

one. In back of the monogrammed notepaper there

should be some scratch pads.”

Connie did as she was instructed, noting briefly

that the monogrammed paper was heavy and

handsome, with the “CM.” worked out in maroon on

stock of the same grayed-pink of Miss Marville’s

imaginative house. She came back to the chair with

the scratch pad, balanced it on her knee, and looked

up expectantly.

The beauty counselor’s eyes were narrowed. “I

have a feeling,” she said as though she were

thinking aloud, “that the copy writers at Reid and

Renshaw are having a hard time getting the

woman’s angle on this thing. Because most of them

are men, I think they tend to belittle the importance

88

of a revolutionary nail polish. They don’t realize its

potentialities—and they must!”

Connie listened as Miss Marville suggested that

she try to get specific reactions from women in

various walks of life, in professions and in business,

in homes of different types.

“I think I see what you mean,” she said after a

while.

“We have two dozen samples, haven’t we?” Miss

Marville asked.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s make a list.” She waved a hand

imperiously toward the pad.

Connie’s pencil was poised. She nodded.

“Let’s see if we can get an opinion—just an

opinion, not necessarily an endorsement—from a

department store salesclerk, a stenographer, a

housewife who does her own washing, a college

girl—” Ticking the possibilities off on her fingers,

Miss Marville compiled a list so quickly that

Connie’s pencil raced across the sheet.

“You see,” she explained as she went along, “I

want to include women who use their hands a lot, in

various ways, and women whose hands get no rough

treatment at all.”

Again Connie nodded and Miss Marville went on.

“Take a woman in a house with servants—like one

of my neighbors, for instance. She should be

89

included too. Take a pianist or an artist, either one.

How many do I have now?”

Connie counted. “Twenty-three.”

“All right. Take a factory girl. From my own

factory, if you like. Ask them to test the nail polish

and give them a fortnight, then check up. Do you

think you can do that?”

“I’m sure I can. But will they all cooperate?”

Miss Marville, who had been sitting erect as she

talked, lay back against her pillows and shrugged.

“Some won’t,” she admitted. “But it’s your job to

see that the majority do. You’re young and

attractive, and you’re not trying to sell anything.

You should get an audience at least.”

Connie left the house determined to do her best

with the assignment. On an impulse she didn’t call a

cab, deciding to walk the mile or so to the station.

She had an excellent bump of location and little fear

of getting lost.

As she walked briskly along, she thought about

the job she had to do. To get reactions from most of

the list would be easy, but who did she know in

Miss Marville’s income bracket? Nobody at all. It

was apparent that she would have to tackle a

complete stranger here.

Connie consulted her notes again. “Woman of

wealth—one of my neighbors, for instance,” Miss

Marville had said.

90

Connie replaced the pad in her pigskin purse.

Why not follow the letter as well as the spirit of the

remark? She considered the big homes she was

passing, any one of which must be staffed by several

servants, and wondered whether she dared turn into

one of the driveways.

She might be snubbed by the lady of the house, If

she succeeded in getting past the maid. Connie

chuckled at the thought, not in the least dismayed.

Wisely she decided that she would have to treat this

assignment as a sort of game.

Playfully she examined each house she passed.

This great pile of stone looked too gloomy to house

a woman who would use “Cosmetics by Cleo.” The

next looked empty, the following one had a corps of

tree trimmers working in the garden, with heaped

branches barring the drive. Another was set so far

back from the road that she couldn’t even glimpse it

through the trees. This one on the other side, though,

was quite attractive, a colonial residence set close to

the road, with a small car pulled up before the door.

The car itself, which looked very sporty, and was

of an unrecognizable but obviously foreign make,

decided Connie. Squaring her shoulders she quoted

a line from a childhood game. “Here I come, ready

or not!” Then she turned into the short, curving

drive.

An interesting woman should own a car like this,

91

she decided as she approached the steps. But

heavens, what shall I do if she doesn’t speak

English? The thought halted her for a moment with

her hand on the door knocker. Then, shrugging, she

clacked the brass arm down in two sharp raps.

She waited a decent interval. Then, when there

was no answer, she lifted the elaborate brass

knocker again.

Inside the house she heard footsteps, heavy ones,

approaching, and at the same time the telephone

rang. A squat, rather ugly man in a starched white

coat opened the door. Then, apparently obeying a

command from upstairs, he called, “Yes, sir,” and

went to answer the phone, telling Connie over his

shoulder to “Come in.”

Connie entered the house rather reluctantly. In the

first place she was astonished at the informality in

such an elegant establishment, and in the second she

didn’t particularly like the houseman’s looks.

Still, she shut the door behind her and stood in a

square, central hall of imposing proportions until the

servant gesticulated toward a small reception room

or library on the left. Nodding, Connie entered an

octagonal chamber wainscoted in antique green,

with hand-painted scenic wallpaper and furniture

upholstered in quilted velvet in shades of taupe and

rosy brown.

Connie heard the houseman’s voice say, “Yes.

92

Yes, I’ll tell him.” Then the receiver clicked and

steps ascended the uncarpeted, polished stairs. For

the next ten minutes the girl was left, apparently,

completely alone on the first floor.

93

CHAPTER 9

Angel on a Letterhead

For the first several minutes Connie simply sat still,

trying to formulate in her mind the words with

which she would introduce her request. The

exquisite detail of the small reception room

delighted her, and kept tempting her away from

strict business thoughts, but she knew she must not

be utterly unprepared when the lady of the house

descended the stairs.

After the square glass clock on the mantel had

ticked away five minutes Connie began to get

restless. She felt rather uncomfortable—even

brazen—the minute she began to analyze her own

temerity, and in order to forestall a desire to bolt she

got up and wandered idly around the colorful little

room. Two of the octagonal walls were filled with

long windows, opening to the terrace, a third

contained the fireplace, a fourth a sofa, a fifth a

94

beautiful inlaid Sheraton secretary desk.

At the desk Connie paused, running her hand

appreciatively over the satiny wood. Then, suddenly,

she stopped.

A stack of opened mail lay on one side of the

desk, held in place by an antique glass paperweight.

Across the upper left hand corner of the top sheet a

blithe little angel capered, holding a streamer

bearing the name of—

“Well?”

Staccato, a man’s voice cut across the gap of

silence and Connie whirled around, her handbag,

slung over her arm by its strap, knocking the

paperweight to the floor with a heavy thud and

brushing the pile of correspondence off the desk.

Papers fluttered down like fall leaves, and she

said, “Oh, I’m sorry!” and bent to pick them up.

“Let them be!”

Again the sharp deep voice cut the air, and

Connie straightened as to a command, no longer

startled, seeing clearly the slender man who stood in

the doorway.

From the tips of his polished black shoes to his

carefully trimmed goatee the man was impeccably

groomed. Perhaps it was the beard, perhaps the

particular stripe of his black-and-gray suit, perhaps

the trace of accent in his speech, but Connie knew

instantly that he was as continental as the car outside

95

the door. His eyes were gray, the color of polished

steel. They were sharp and penetrating as they met

Connie’s.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Connie drew herself up, not liking his tone. “I am

waiting for the lady of the house,” she said, meeting

his eyes directly.

“And meanwhile you take the liberty of

examining the papers on my writing desk?” There

was a suggestion of a curl to the man’s lips.

“Oh, no!” Connie replied, shocked. “I was

admiring the wood in the secretary. My bag caught

the paperweight. You startled me.”

“Ah,” said the gentleman ambiguously, one

eyebrow lifting ever so slightly. “So!”

Indignation flamed in Connie’s eyes. She

stiffened. “I think you are being extremely

discourteous. You don’t even know who I am.”

“Exactly.” The man bowed impudently from the

waist. He was old enough to be Connie’s father, but

he had a way of looking at her that she disliked.

“Just who are you?”

“My name is Constance Blair,” said Connie

firmly, even proudly. But at the same time she was

wishing that she had never obeyed the haphazard

impulse to come in here. “I am representing a

cosmetic house and I called to see—”

“Ah, a cosmetic house!” Did the foreigner’s eyes

96

glance to the letters scattered on the floor?

“Whose?”

The question was so direct—and somehow so

unexpected—that it never occurred to Connie to

dodge it or to dissemble.

“Cosmetics by Cleo,” she said, glad that Miss

Marville was known for an exclusive line, for which

she need not apologize, even indirectly.

Both of the man’s eyebrows shot up briefly.

“So!” he said again, and it occurred to Connie that

he did not seem surprised at the connection but,

rather, astonished that she had made such an

admission. Her own brows knit. This conversation

was getting beyond her, fast.

Now, leaving a silence between them so awkward

that it was almost ridiculous, the man moved to pick

up the scattered correspondence. This time Connie

didn’t offer to help him, but stepped to one side,

trying to collect her wits.

Yet, instinctively, she watched him, and she

would have welcomed a second look at the letter

which had intrigued her. That angel— But he was

bundling the letters together so hastily that she

didn’t glimpse it again. What she did see, however,

was a square of powder-pink notepaper which had

settled to the deep carpet almost directly under her

feet.

It was a folded sheet, a personal note in a

97

woman’s angular handwriting, and in the corner,

unmistakably familiar, was a maroon monogram.

Whether by intention or chance, Connie could not

tell, the bearded gentleman picked up this note last

of all, and anchored it with the retrieved

paperweight on top of the pile of correspondence.

Then he turned and said smoothly, “I happen to

know Miss Marville quite well. I should have

thought, had she wanted anything from me, that she

would have come to me direct.”

“Oh, but she didn’t know I was coming here,”

Connie hastened to tell him. “You see, it’s like this.

I work for the advertising agency she uses—Reid

and Renshaw—and we’re just making a test survey

on a new nail polish she’s bringing out.”

To another man this might have meant little, but

the eyes of Connie’s host were comprehending.

There was a subtle change in his attitude toward the

girl as he said, “I see. Won’t you sit down?”

In the face of his former discourtesy, this

invitation was surprising, but Connie found herself

taking one of the high-backed Chippendale chairs

near the door.

“So I’m to understand that you just happened in

here?”

“That’s it!” Honesty shone in Connie’s brown

eyes. “I’m giving out test samples, and I have to get

reactions from people of different types—salesclerks

98

and stenographers and business executives and

housewives, rich people and people without much

money—all kinds.”

“I see.”

“So I thought perhaps your wife—”

The man opened a silver cigarette case, offered it

to Connie, and when she refused said, “Do you

mind?” Tapping a cigarette against his forefinger, he

remarked coolly, “I have no wife.”

“Oh.” Connie was abashed. “But why didn’t you

tell me?”

“You didn’t ask me,” said the man, and there was

amusement in his eyes.

She made a movement to rise, but he raised a

detaining hand. “I know something of this nail

polish,” he said, still looking amused. “Tell me, is it

as good as Miss Marville thinks it is?”

Connie realized that she had only hearsay to go

on, but she wanted to support her sponsor.

“Everybody at the agency thinks it’s wonderful,”

she said.

Polite interest was registered in her host’s

expression. “And when is it to be put on the

market?” he asked casually.

“I’m not quite sure of the date,” Connie

confessed, “but quite soon, I believe. Everybody’s

working like mad on the advertising.”

“Really? That’s very interesting.”

99

With the back of his hand the foreigner delicately

stifled a yawn. His tone and his gesture said that he

was becoming a trifle bored, and that now he would

like to see the interview terminated, but his eyes

were as bright as cut steel buttons, and Connie

wriggled uncomfortably. She felt, without

understanding her feeling, that all was not well.

Three minutes later Connie found herself again

walking along the tree-lined suburban road. She

looked back once at the house she had just left,

puzzled and a little disturbed. From behind the

Venetian blinds which shuttered the long terrace

windows she felt that someone was watching her,

but she couldn’t imagine why. She couldn’t imagine,

either, why she felt that there had been something

strange and unpleasant about the interview, except

that the man’s attitude had changed so abruptly. But

that, in a way, was natural. He had greeted her first

as an interloper, a stranger, and then, when he had

discovered that she represented Miss Marville,

everything had been all right.

Or had it?

Suddenly it occurred to Connie that she didn’t

even know the man’s name. She glanced back again

and noticed that on the stone gatepost was engraved

the word “Wonderley.” She couldn’t tell whether it

was the name of the house or the owner. Certainly it

didn’t seem, however, to belong to the man she had

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just left.

So absorbed was she in thought that Connie

didn’t remember, until she had boarded a local train

and was being borne back toward Philadelphia, that

she had left her original mission unaccomplished.

“A fine businesswoman I turned out to be!” she

chided herself. “Now what am I going to do?”

The thing she did was to confess the whole

absurd experience to Mr. Renshaw, after she had

distributed several of the samples with ease.

“Never mind,” he said unconcernedly. “I think

Miss Marville should handle that particular

assignment herself anyway. She can’t expect you to

go barging into a big house unintroduced.”

The next morning Connie presented a couple of

her friends with bottles of the sample polish. She

sent one vial to Marcia Shaw, a girl from her old

Meadowbrook crowd who was now at State College,

and she personally induced Ellen Randolph to

experiment with another.

Ellen snorted, then shrugged and agreed. “For

you I’ll do it, Connie, but only for you. ‘On account

of you got me this job.”

Connie and Ellen lunched together, and then

Connie went down to the display department in

Campion’s basement to see whether Larry could

recommend an artist who might cooperate. Larry

could, and she spent a pleasant afternoon calling at

101

the artist’s studio and later going down to the

Marville factory to enlist the aid of one of the girls

on the assembly line.

All in all, it was a successful day, and only one

bottle of nail polish remained to be given out at its

end. This bottle Connie had tagged “Rich Woman”

in her own mind.

Maybe Aunt Bet knew of a wealthy customer at

the shop whom she could approach, or perhaps by

now Mr. Renshaw would have contacted Miss

Marville and settled the matter.

Back at the office, Connie had barely dropped her

coat and hat in the locker and gone out to relieve the

girl at the desk when the agency head himself

sauntered out into the reception room.

He nodded and smiled. “Good day?”

“Fine!” Connie told him cheerfully. “Except for

the one I flubbed yesterday, I think we’re all set “

George Renshaw nodded again. “You’re

reporting to Miss Cameron on this?”

“Yes, I am.”

Georgia Cameron herself stepped off the elevator

at that moment, returning from an errand. She, too,

paused at Connie’s desk. The executives, this

afternoon, seemed unusually ready to stand and chat.

“Mr. Renshaw was telling me about your

experience with one of Miss Marville’s neighbors,”

Miss Cameron said. “I don’t suppose you know the

102

man’s name, Connie?”

“No, I don’t,” Connie confessed, still a little

uneasy over that strange interview. “But I did notice

a name on the gatepost.”

“What was it?” Mr. Renshaw asked.

Connie was trying to think. She hadn’t known

whether it was the name of the house or of the

owner, at the time. Suddenly she remembered, and

snapped her fingers boyishly.

“Wonderley. That was it!”

Miss Cameron and Mr. Renshaw looked at each

other and suddenly burst into laughter.

“Wonderley! Can you beat that?” George

Renshaw slapped his knee in amusement and

Georgia Cameron leaned against the side of the

reception desk and laughed until tears came to her

eyes.

“What’s so funny?” Connie asked, completely at

sea, but for another minute neither of the two

executives could tell her. They were laughing too

hard.

103

CHAPTER 10

Who’s Who?

By the next morning it was all over the advertising

agency that Connie Blair had inadvertently stumbled

into the house rented from the Wonderleys by Baron

von Gletkin.

“Who’s he?” Connie had wanted to know, and

Mr. Renshaw and Miss Cameron had told her. “He’s

the scientist who developed and sold Miss Marville

her new secret formula. No wonder he was both

amazed and amused at your errand. It is pretty funny

that you happened in there, you’ll admit.”

Connie nodded, and laughed with the rest of

them, but in the morning, when she met Dick Travis

outside the media department door, she asked “How

was I to know?” She was taking her teasing good-

naturedly, but at the same time she was standing up

for herself.

Dick shook his head. “You couldn’t.” Then he

asked with frank curiosity. “What was the old boy

104

like?”

“He wasn’t so old,” Connie said. “Not doddering,

I mean. Maybe pushing fifty. He’s the kind of man

you’d call dapper, I suppose. Awfully well-pressed

looking.”

Dick glanced down at his own baggy tweeds. “He

should be. He must have made a pile of dough from

‘la belle Marville.’ ”

“I suppose,” Connie said, without admitting that

it would never have occurred to her that a man with

a title tacked before his name might be in straitened

circumstances.

“Rumor has it,” Dick told her, lowering his voice,

“that the Baron has been giving our Cleo a bit of a

play.”

“Play?”

Dick nodded. “The bended knee stuff. It wouldn’t

be a bad thing, probably, to take home a wealthy

American bride.”

“Oh, but Miss Marville would never—never give

up her business,” Connie finished lamely.

Dick was too shrewd for her. “You were going to

say she’d never be interested in von Gletkin, weren’t

you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why not? Isn’t he as smooth as they say?”

Connie’s brow wrinkled. “Smooth? Maybe, in a

foreign sort of way. What nationality is he, by the

105

way?”

Dick shrugged and waved the hand in which he

was carrying some proofs of magazine ads.

“German, Austrian—I don’t know. Cleo met him in

Vienna, Georgia Cameron says.”

Connie went back to trying to answer Dick’s

original question. “He’s almost the type you’d call

distinguished,” she said. “He has a beard trimmed in

a tuft like a goat’s and he has long, thin hands and

high cheekbones. You know.”

“I’m learning.”

“But he has eyes like ice.” Connie frowned and

an impulsive shudder ran through her at the

memory.

“Maybe that’s characteristic of successful

businessmen,” Dick quipped.

“But not of successful suitors,” Connie shot back,

glancing up at the artist from under her curling

lashes and grinning impishly. “Anyway, he’s too

short for Miss Marville,” she added decisively.

Dick laughed and turned the knob that opened the

door of his own office. “So that’s that!” he said with

equal firmness. “And now that we have Miss

Marville’s affair of the heart whipped to a standstill,

I suppose I should get to work.”

“And I should go rest on my switchboard,”

Connie chuckled over her shoulder as she walked

away.

106

Dick knew, as well as she, that there wasn’t much

resting around Reid and Renshaw these days. From

the top executives right down to the receptionist,

everybody was busy with a dozen jobs at once.

Connie, in her spare moments, was clipping ads

relating to various R. and R. accounts from

newspapers and magazines. She enjoyed this

immensely, because it enabled her to get a bird’s-

eye view of the agency business, at least in so far as

it concerned the actual use of publication space.

About the publicity and public relations end of

the business, as well as radio advertising, she knew

little, but she was beginning to understand the

manner in which a magazine ad was born and grew.

Someday she wanted to be intimately associated

with that growth. She wanted to work in the art

department or she wanted to write copy. When she

allowed herself to really daydream, she wanted to do

both!

About the middle of the afternoon Miss Cameron

put through a call to Cleo Marville at her home.

Connie noticed, as the beauty executive’s voice

came over the line in a monosyllabic “Yes,” that it

was less husky than on Monday. Much of the former

imperious quality was back.

Connie was busy with some callers and

messengers a few minutes later when Miss Cameron

came out of the office. “Miss Marville has arranged

107

for a friend of hers who lives just down the road to

test that remaining sample of Permon,” she said.

“But you’ll have to take it out to her. Can you leave

right away?”

Connie nodded, and as soon as a girl could take

her place behind the switchboard she set forth over

the now familiar route. The cab driver happened to

be the same as on the previous morning, and,

recognizing his fare, he was very chatty, all the way

along Castle Creek Road.

Knowing that it would take only a minute or so to

deliver the small package, Connie asked him to wait,

and, with her errand accomplished, climbed

companionably into the front seat beside the elderly

man instead of sitting stiffly in the back.

“At home I always ride in front when I take a cab

from the station,” she told him. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all. A pleasure, a pleasure,” murmured the

old fellow gallantly. “Where’s home?”

“Meadowbrook,” Connie told him. “It’s a little

place—little enough so that there we know

everybody and everybody knows us.”

“Here it’s not much different,” said the driver,

defending his own locality against even

unintentionally implied criticism. “Not many people

I don’t know in these parts.”

“Do you know Miss Cleo Marville?” Connie

asked.

108

“Miss Cleo? Sure! Knowed Miss Cleo and her

sister, ever since they was girls goin’ to the Camelot

School. Nice as pie, too, the both of them. Pity they

ever had that falling-out.”

“What falling-out?” Connie asked quickly.

Apparently her tone was considered discourteously

curious, because the driver became suddenly deaf.

“Knowed the Lyttons too. You know them?” He

pointed to a big house on a hill, turreted like a

French chateau.

“Goodness, no!” Connie told him. “I only know

Miss Marville because the advertising agency I work

for handles her business.”

But the taxi driver was still concentrating on the

Lyttons. “It’s from their place Castle Creek Road

gets its name.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Connie said, peering

upward, but she wasn’t really very much interested

in discussing someone of whom she had never even

heard. Now Cleo Marville’s sister interested her.

She wished she could get the driver’s attention back

to the original theme.

She attempted to by a devious route. “Do you

know the Wonderleys?” she asked, since the fellow

apparently liked to play this kind of game.

The old man nodded. “Yes, indeedy. Finest that

come, ’cept that they go gallivantin’ off too much.

Take now. Where are they? Mexico!” He positively

109

snorted over the word. “While they rent that house

of theirs to a Baron von Thingumajig they don’t

know from a hole in the ground.”

“Baron von Gletkin,” Connie told him with a

smile. “I’m sure he’s perfectly respectable. He’s a

friend of Miss Marville’s.”

But even as she said the words Connie wondered

whether she really believed them. She hadn’t liked

the man with the goatee, though she could

understand why it might have tickled a rather

sophisticated sense of humor to keep his identity a

secret from her.

The old taxi driver’s only reply was a snort. He

drove along in silence until he came abreast of the

Wonderley gate. “Puttin’ on airs,” he mumbled then.

Connie, on the side nearest the house, peered

through the early October dusk at the flat colonial

facade. It didn’t look, at the moment, as though

anyone were putting on airs, or even putting on

lights, about the place. The blinds were drawn, the

massive door shut. Not a car nor a cat—nor even a

food-gathering squirrel, disturbed the peace.

Yet was it peace? As Connie looked at the big,

remote house, she felt that it had a sinister look, and

she was swept again by the same sensation of

disquiet that she had experienced during her

interview with the Baron. She felt, though she

couldn’t have told even Kit why, that all was not

110

well within those walls.

It was after dark when Connie reached the

apartment, and Aunt Bet already had a cheese

soufflé in the oven and tomatoes stewing with

aromatic vigor in a pot on the stove.

“I stopped at the French bakery for bread,” said

Miss Easton, extracting from its wrappings a loaf a

yard long and no bigger around than a demitasse

cup. “Let’s slice it part way through and put it in the

oven with garlic butter, the way we do when we

have spaghetti.”

“Mmm! Sounds good.” Connie was hungry. She

went into the bathroom to wash her hands before

starting the job. “Larry should be here. You know

the way he loves anything that smacks of garlic.”

“You can ask him, any time,” her aunt called

back from the living room, where she was putting

heavy, woven place mats of cherry red on the old

pine table.

“There’s another boy I ought to entertain first.

Ken Cooper.”

“The one who took you to dinner the other

night?”

“That’s the one. The artist. You’d like him, Aunt

Bet. He’s awfully nice.”

“I’m sure he is. I’d enjoy meeting him. How

about a Sunday night? For supper. I have some

entertaining I should do too, and we could make a

111

party of it.”

“That would be fun,” Connie agreed, and the two

of them discussed plans as they got their simple

meal on the table.

“You know, living with you, Aunt Bet, is just like

living with another girl,” Connie said shyly after a

while. “I love it.”

“I’m glad you do,” her aunt smiled back,

“because I love having you.” Then, to avoid

seeming overly sentimental, she added, “And I just

love having help with the dishes. Particularly

tonight. Because I have to go to the library and if I

don’t get started soon the place will be closed up as

tight as a drum.”

“I’ll walk along, if I may,” Connie said when her

aunt was ready to leave. “There’s something I’d like

to look up.” Because it sounded so nosy, she didn’t

confess her precise errand, namely, to see whether

she could find a record of Cleo Marville’s past. This

sister angle interested her, and she had what her dad

always called a “hunch.”

Together Elizabeth Easton and Connie walked

along the dim streets. They looked like two girls of

equal age under the lamplight, and since Connie was

wearing low heels and Aunt Bet high ones they even

seemed to be the same height.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Miss Easton after

they had covered a block in almost complete silence.

112

Connie chuckled. “They’re worth a nickel since

I’ve been working for Reid and Renshaw,” she

insisted.

“Tch! Tch! The high cost of thinking!” Aunt Bet

always had a comeback ready.

“As a matter of fact,” Connie told her, “I was

thinking about Miss Marville.”

“She seems to be on your mind a lot these days.”

“She is,” Connie admitted. “She’s an odd sort of

person. For all her enormous success, I have a

feeling that she’s both lonely and unhappy, and I’d

like to know why.”

“Connie, Connie! You can’t be a little mother to

all the world.”

Connie agreed. “I suppose not. Maybe I’m just

trying to excuse idle curiosity.”

But she knew she was not. She had a sharp,

personal interest in anyone whose life she touched.

It was a warmhearted interest, not a prying one, but

it led her into some unusual places and situations,

nevertheless.

Tonight it took her into the reference room of the

Philadelphia Free Library, a calm and beautiful

building on Logan Square. While her aunt went on

upstairs to return some books she had borrowed,

Connie went to the desk and asked to see a copy of

Who’s Who.

“Any special year?” asked the librarian.

113

Connie hesitated a minute. “The latest one,” she

decided.

Disappearing into the racks, the librarian went for

the book after Connie had filled out the proper card,

and a few minutes later she returned and handed it

over the counter.

Connie took the heavy volume to a lighted table,

and turned immediately to the M’s.

Marcus, Marks, Marshall, Martin. Her finger ran

down the page. Marville, Cleo. She stopped.

“actress; b. Headlee, Ind., Feb. 13, 19—; d. Alfred

Walter and Margaret (Conway) Murray—”

Connie snapped her fingers. “Just what I

thought,” she murmured aloud. Then, scarcely

crediting the evidence of her own eyes, she went

back and read the beginning of the biography again.

This time she read on through to the end.

“Ed. Camelot School, Rosemont, Pa., Bryn Mawr

College. . . . Made debut with Washington Square Players,

New York City—”

There followed a list of productions in which

Cleo had appeared subsequent to her marriage to

Gregory John Marville. Connie discovered that the

former actress belonged to the Colony Club in New

York and to the Art Alliance in Philadelphia, and

114

that after ten years on the stage she had retired and

gone into the business of manufacturing cosmetics, a

fact she already knew. Nothing else of special

interest was included in the sketch.

But the appearance of the name Murray was all-

important. Connie turned a few pages of the book, to

see whether Angela Murray might also be included

in its roster of prominent names. But while there

seemed to be actresses and writers galore,

apparently a purely commercial success, such as that

of Marville’s chief rival, was not deemed worthy of

inclusion. There would be no way to double-check

her findings—at least not tonight.

Elizabeth Easton stood at Connie’s shoulder. “I

find you doing the most amazing things!” Her

amused whisper was at a library level.

“Look at this!” Connie turned back to the

Marville biography and pointed out her discovery.

“It’s pretty conclusive proof that Marville and

Murray are sisters, Aunt Bet.”

Miss Easton drew the book toward her and read

the notation carefully. “Sisters? It doesn’t seem

possible.”

“I’ll bet it is, though. That would explain a lot.”

Connie told her aunt about the conversation she had

had with the taxi driver. “There must have been a

very bitter quarrel,” she concluded. “I wonder what

it could possibly have been about?”

115

CHAPTER 11

Temperament!

Mr. Paul, his face like a thundercloud, sat on the

long couch opposite Connie’s reception desk and

tapped his stick impatiently against the floor.

It was unusual to see a man with a cane these

days, but Mr. Paul carried one. Connie looked down

at his shoes. No spats. Too bad.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” she said after

another fifteen minutes. “But as I told you, I haven’t

the slightest idea what time Mr. Renshaw will be

in.”

Mr. Paul waved his hand brusquely. “No matter. I

will wait.” He tried to settle back, but in a minute his

spine was straight again, his eyes flashing. Connie

even thought, in the intervals when she wasn’t busy

with the switchboard, that she could detect him

mumbling to himself.

Clearly, something was very wrong, and Connie,

116

much as she loved excitement, was sorry. For the

past three weeks everyone, as she put it in a letter to

Kit, had been “in a pink dither” about the Marville

account, but now that Thanksgiving was

approaching, there had come a welcome lull.

A lot had happened since the evening when

Connie had looked up Cleo Marville’s record in

Who’s Who. Based on reactions gleaned from trial

users of the new nail polish, the copy department

had finally managed to please Reid and Renshaw’s

exacting client. Now ads for Permon were

completed and approved, contracts for magazine and

newspaper space signed, and plates had been rushed

off to the various publications with early closing

dates.

January would not only introduce a new year but

a new Marville product, and which seemed to be

more important Connie found herself unable to

decide.

In the meantime, Connie had seen the fabulous

Cleo only twice. Once she had passed the Hotel

Warwick just as the former actress, draped in mink,

stepped out of a chauffeur-driven car pulled up

under the sheltering marquee. On the other occasion

Miss Marville, severe in a black business suit, had

come to the office for a conference on radio

promotion, but at neither time did she appear to

remember that she had ever before laid eyes on

117

Connie. Such, Connie decided astutely, is the

complete self-absorption of the near-great.

As a result, Connie’s awakened sense of pity for

Miss Marville as a lonely and unhappy woman had

been taking a cat nap. She was still intrigued by the

relationship between Marville and Murray, which

certainly did much to explain the bitter rivalry

between the two houses, but she was trying to adopt

the urban attitude that it is best not to delve too

deeply into an individual’s private affairs.

Furthermore, what could she—Connie Blair—

possibly do to improve the lot of anyone as remote

and as independent as Miss Marville? Ellen

Randolph had probably been right in her judgment;

it could well be that Cleo’s quarrel with her sister

was as silly as her indignation that any employee of

Reid and Renshaw should use cosmetics from the

rival house.

Mr. Paul groaned. It could only be called a groan,

and Connie looked at him sharply. But he was

wrapped in his own thoughts, which certainly

seemed disturbing. Connie wished Mr. Renshaw,

who seemed to be the most successful mediator in

all things connected with the Marville account,

would come.

As though in response to her very wish, George

Renshaw stepped off the elevator. He turned at once

toward his own office, but Mr. Paul was across the

118

carpeted floor as fast as a squirrel. Connie couldn’t

have sworn that he actually tugged at the big man’s

coattails, but Mr. Paul certainly gave that effect.

“It is over,” he shrilled. “She has insulted me

once too often. I have quit!”

George Renshaw turned and looked down at the

slight, fiery-eyed chemist with weariness mixed with

compassion. He dropped a big hand on the smaller

man’s shoulders and a slow smile touched his lips.

Very calmly, very deliberately, leading the

Marville chief chemist back to the couch from

which he had bounced, he said, “You can’t quit,

Paul. Not now.”

“I have! I will!” Mr. Paul looked like a ruffled

fighting cock. “I mean I will, I have! Oh, what does

it matter—that woman, she is impossible!”

“Tell me about it,” Mr. Renshaw said.

Connie had been trying to think of whom Mr.

Paul reminded her. Now she knew. He looked, as he

had on the day she had surprised him quarreling

with Miss Marville at the factory, exactly like a

picture of Mephistopheles in a book at home.

“I have taken insult upon insult,” he was saying

in a voice pitched to the level of a stock company

villain’s. “First I may not know the formula, oh, no!

Yet I must order the materials. I must have

everything in readiness. I must be set to—what do

you call it?—shoot!”

119

Mr. Renshaw nodded.

“I am the plant manager, yes?” Mr. Paul shook

his head faster than a speeding metronome. “Indeed,

no! I am a lackey, an errand boy. I may not be

trusted with the formula for the polish I myself will

manufacture.” He beat his chest and his voice rose

to a thin scream.

Mr. Renshaw’s frown was not without sympathy.

“But you know how anxious Miss Marville is to

forestall any possibility of—of duplication or theft.”

“You think I am a thief, eh?”

“No, no. Now, Paul—”

“Ah, but I could be! It is such suspicion that

breeds thievery,” Mr. Paul hissed, and Connie

thought that he looked positively evil, with his eyes

narrowed and his mustache twitching as he mouthed

the words.

Mr. Renshaw shot a glance at the receptionist,

saw that she was staring in fascination at the

chemist, and stood up. “Come on back to my

office,” he said, to Connie’s disappointment. “Let’s

talk some more about this. I promise you it is not as

important as you make is seem.”

“Not important, eh? Not important?” Mr. Paul, on

the point of being led away with comparative

docility, stopped dead in his tracks and brandished

his cane like a sword. “How am I to know she

doesn’t send this man down to the factory? How am

120

I to know the date is such a secret still? The

advertising has been placed. The display pieces and

counter cards have been delivered. Dozens of people

know that the launching is set for January—”

But Mr. Renshaw had successfully propelled the

chemist down the hall to his own office. Connie lost

the rest of the sentence as the door slammed behind

them. At a brief distance from her shoulder a voice

asked in amusement, “Mr. Paul has let what cat out

of what bag?”

Connie looked up into Ken Cooper’s smiling

eyes. “Mr. Paul is really upset!” she told him.

“So I gather. Did he seem to be breathing fire?”

“Silly!”

“What seems to be wrong?”

“I can only guess,” Connie said.

“Guess Number One?”

“That Mr. Paul spilled the date of the new nail

polish launching to a visitor at the factory who

represented himself as coming from Miss Marville.”

Ken whistled. “Boy, I’ll bet he is in the

doghouse!”

“The worm has apparently turned,” Connie said.

“Mr. Paul is furious at Miss Marville.”

“Oh?”

“And I don’t really blame him too much,” Connie

said pugnaciously. “After all, just as he said, dozens

of people already know the date set for the

121

launching. What can one more matter? Everything’s

set—the ads are all placed—”

“Right,” Ken agreed. “But isn’t the interesting

thing something else again?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who would go to such lengths to discover the

launching date?” Ken asked, leaning on the

reception desk. “And why?”

Though the question was only rhetorical, Connie

answered it. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said.

But for the rest of the afternoon she was troubled.

Could the old feud between Marville and Murray be

breaking out again? And what was the feud? She

wished she knew. Aunt Bet had shrugged and said,

“What do women usually fight about?” but that

didn’t solve anything. Connie wished there were

someone with whom she could talk the whole

situation over. She felt that everyone was sitting on

a highly explosive tinderbox, that perhaps Mr.

Paul’s quarrel might be the spark that would set the

whole thing off. Yet why she felt this alarm—and

what could possibly be about to happen—she hadn’t

the foggiest notion.

“Not the foggiest,” she said to herself with a

frown.

It was a good hour before Mr. Paul was ushered

out. He still seemed irate, but Connie decided that he

no longer looked dangerous. She was a little

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relieved.

Still, when she went home, she asked her aunt,

“Do you ever have a sort of premonition?”

Aunt Bet smiled. “Often. In the pit of my

stomach. A premonition of disaster. As though

something terrible were about to happen. But

nothing ever does.”

“Not ever?”

“Never!” Aunt Bet said firmly. “It’s probably just

something to do with the moon.”

Connie wandered over to the window and looked

out. “There isn’t any moon,” she said.

There was a moon the next night, though, when

Connie and her aunt drove to Meadowbrook to

spend Thanksgiving Day with the Blairs. It was a

thin sliver of red in the sky and somehow, to

Connie, it looked ominous.

“Like a bloody fingernail,” she said.

“Connie! You give me the creeps. What’s been

the matter with you this last couple of days?”

“I don’t know,” Connie confessed. “I feel uneasy,

but I don’t know why.”

This sense of restlessness, just bordering on

anxiety, persisted throughout the holiday. Kit teased

her twin about it, when they were setting the white

damask cloth with silver and Mrs. Blair’s prized

Wedgwood.

“Get your mind off your work, Connie. This is a

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day for thanksgiving and celebration. Dad’s coming

downstairs, remember?”

Of course Connie remembered. It would make

Thanksgiving dinner just about perfect, to have Dad

sitting behind the twenty-pound turkey, as he always

had in former years. Don Fitzgerald and Corky

Adams, a boy from just up the street, were coming

over to carry him back up again, because the doctor

had said this would be best.

“Don’t pay any attention to me,” Connie said to

Kit, grinning to assure her sister that everything was

all right. “Mmm! Smell!” she added, as her mother

opened the oven door to baste the roasting fowl.

“Doesn’t that smell good?”

The turkey tasted as good as its aroma promised,

and dinner was a very gay affair. Connie had two

pieces of pumpkin pie but Toby outdid her.

Unabashed, he downed a third and then looked

inquiringly at his mother, who ignored him.

“Mom—”

“The answer is no.”

“But, Mom—”

“Toby Blair, I think you have a tapeworm. I can’t

even bear to think about what you’ve eaten. Now

suppose you just sit back and relax.”

Connie grinned at her brother, remembering her

own capacity at his age. “I’ll bet you could start all

over again, couldn’t you?” she asked roguishly.

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“Sure!” Toby boasted. “I could.”

The rest of the family groaned, and Kit pushed

back her chair. “As an antidote to that remark,” she

announced, “coffee will be served in the living

room.”

Toby snorted. “What’s coffee?” he asked

disapprovingly, and prepared to depart.

All too quickly, it seemed to Connie, the time

came when she and her young aunt had to say their

good-byes. “There’s so much we haven’t talked

about,” Connie told Kit, clinging to her for a minute.

“I especially wanted to ask about the window

displays at the store.”

“We’ve been doing beautifully with them!” Kit

said. “Thanks to you!” She added, “Dad says you

have a genius for that sort of thing. Connie, why

don’t you try to go to art school at night?”

“Oddly enough, I’ve been thinking about it,”

Connie replied, and because the subject had come

up, she did some more thinking about it during the

ride back to town. She decided to talk to Ken or

Dick Travis further about such a possibility in the

morning. But in the morning something happened to

put the idea temporarily out of her mind.

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CHAPTER 12

Missing—One Client

The day started innocently enough.

Reid and Renshaw employees, replete with

feasting and football games, if not with the full spirit

of thanksgiving which had distinguished their

forefathers, straggled in to work on Friday morning

approximately on time.

Connie made sure the table in the conference

room was cleared and neat. She dutifully sharpened

pencils and straightened chairs, because Miss

Marville was due for a conference on radio and

newspaper advertising at ten.

Mr. Reid beat the gun by nine minutes, Mr.

Renshaw by five. Miss Marville, no matter what her

other faults, was proverbially on time, and expected

equal promptness from others. Along with junior

executives called in for the occasion, the agency

heads were assembled around the long table on the

very dot of the hour. But fifteen minutes later their

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client still had not shown up.

Mr. Reid, slightly irritated, came out to the

reception desk. “Call Miss Marville’s office, will

you, Connie, and see whether there has been any

slip-up in our mutual understanding of the time.”

“Certainly,” Connie said, and started to dial.

She got a busy signal and had no sooner hung up

when a call came through on another trunk from

Miss Marville’s secretary. There was just a

suspicion of concern in her voice, Connie thought,

when she asked, “Is Miss Marville there? This is

Miss Lathrop speaking.”

“No, she isn’t,” Connie said. “We were just trying

to reach you.”

“Yes?”

“She was due here for a conference at ten. Would

she be at the factory, d’you think?”

“I just called the lab.” Miss Lathrop sounded

definitely puzzled. “She isn’t there and she isn’t at

home. In fact—” The young woman hesitated, as

though she were saying too much to the Reid and

Renshaw operator. “You’d better let me speak to

Mr. Reid or Mr. Renshaw, please.”

“Just a minute.”

Tactfully, Connie turned to Mr. Reid. “Perhaps

you’d like to take this call in your own office,” she

suggested pointedly. Then she smiled and added

facetiously, “Miss Marville seems to have

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disappeared.”

Mr. Reid groaned, and as he passed the

conference room he stuck his head in the door.

Connie heard him say, “I guess we’ll have to

postpone this confab. Our client seems to have been

detained.” Then he went on to his own office and

Connie transferred Miss Lathrop to his wire.

Five minutes later he came back to Connie’s

desk, looking definitely perplexed. “You took the

message from Miss Marville asking that the time of

this conference to be changed from eleven to ten,

didn’t you?”

Connie nodded. “Yes, I did.”

“When did that call come through?”

Connie thought. “Wednesday afternoon about

three o’clock.”

“And Miss Marville seemed—perfectly all

right?”

“Perfectly.” It was Connie’s turn to be puzzled,

and she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking,

“Why?”

Mr. Reid scratched his head behind his ear, where

the dark hair was peppered with gray. “Darnedest

thing,” he said. “She hasn’t been home since

yesterday afternoon.” He frowned. “Better get me

the house.”

Connie called the out-of-town number, was

answered by one of the servants, and gave Mr. Reid

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the call on the reception-room phone. It was a little

unsatisfactory to hear only one end of the

conversation, yet it was better than nothing.

“This is Mr. Reid of Reid and Renshaw speaking.

Is this Mary? Miss Lathrop tells me you’re a little

concerned about Miss Marville, that—er—that you

had expected her home after dinner last night.”

There was a high-pitched, squeaking noise in the

mouthpiece, which was apparently Mary making her

explanations. “Yes,” said Mr. Reid occasionally.

Yes—”

Connie pretended to be indifferent, but she was

all ears.

“Now, Mary,” Mr. Reid said after a while, his

voice calm although he was still frowning, “I don’t

think there’s any real need to be disturbed. You’ll

probably hear from Miss Marville later in the

morning. She probably stopped in somewhere after

the football game and her friends persuaded her to

stay on. Maybe she just overslept this morning. You

never can tell.”

But his effort to be jocular, and at the same time

comforting, apparently fell flat with the maid. The

wire squeaked again, and Connie was almost certain

the voice on the other end said, “Not Miss

Marville.” In a few seconds Mr. Reid hung up.

“She went to the Penn-Cornell game,” he said

slowly, his hand still on the telephone receiver. He

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seemed to have forgotten Connie’s presence and to

be talking aloud to himself. “With friends. Mary

doesn’t know with whom. She hadn’t planned to be

home for dinner, said she might be late, but that

she’d want breakfast this morning at eight as usual.”

He shrugged.

“Just as you said, she’ll probably call later in the

day,” Connie said encouragingly.

“Eh? Oh, yes.” Mr. Reid looked at Connie

sharply. “I wouldn’t mention any of this, if I were

you,” he added before he again turned away.

“Of course not.”

If Connie had learned one thing at Reid and

Renshaw, it was to keep quiet concerning anything

connected with a house account.

Yet she couldn’t help wondering about the

whereabouts of Miss Marville as the morning

dragged along, as post-holiday mornings so often

do. It would be rather fun, she decided, to be as

famous as the fabulous Cleo, and have all sorts of

people worry about you if you happened to change

your plans.

By noon, when the agency heads went out to

lunch together, no phone call had yet come through

from Miss Marville. Connie heard Mr. Renshaw

talking to Mr. Reid as they waited for the elevator.

“Keep your shirt on, old man,” he said, clapping his

partner on the back in considerable amusement.

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“She’ll show up soon enough.” Then he laughed

when Chip Reid looked at him sourly and added,

“Every woman’s got a right to change her mind.”

“But Cleo’s a businesswoman. She’s no party

girl.” Mr. Reid turned his soft felt hat in his hands.

“No, George, I don’t think that’s the answer.” The

elevator, stopping just then, cut off the rest of his

retort.

Connie went to lunch at one, and when she

returned at two Georgia Cameron came up on the

very next car. “Have they heard from Miss Marville

yet?” she asked Connie immediately, and when

Connie shook her head she drew her eyebrows

together and said, “That’s strange.”

“Very strange,” Connie was beginning to think.

When five o’clock came and there was still no word

from either Miss Marville’s home or her office, a

thrill of alarm crept up her spine. A person didn’t

just walk out of a football game and out of the

picture. Connie felt that someone should try to

discover the names of the friends with whom the

cosmetic executive had gone to the game and dined.

Apparently Mr. Reid had the same idea, because

he asked Connie to keep the switchboard open for an

extra fifteen minutes, and he put in one call after

another to Main Line numbers, apparently trying to

trace Miss Marville’s whereabouts through some of

her social connections, when other efforts had failed.

131

Finally he put through a call to the house again,

and Connie got Mary on the phone. By now the

maid seemed a little distracted. “Did they find her?”

she asked as soon as Connie announced that Mr.

Reid was calling. “Oh, I pray the good Lord she

hasn’t been run over and killed.”

“Hello. Hello, Mary?” cut in Mr. Reid’s brisk

voice. “Now listen, there’s no need to get

hysterical—” were the last words Connie heard.

A few minutes later George Renshaw strolled into

the lobby with his hat on the back of his head. He

nodded to Connie and smiled. “I think you can go

now.”

While Connie was getting her hat and coat he

stood in the center of the empty room rocking on his

heels and whistling thoughtfully. He was joined by

Mr. Reid just as Connie reappeared.

“She must have kept some sort of engagement

book. My wife does,” he drawled.

Mr. Reid snapped his fingers. “Of course!”

“But I’ll bet Mary’ll never be able to find it,” he

added mischievously.

Mr. Reid looked at his watch. “You’re probably

right about that. I’d go out there myself if I had the

time, but we have a dinner engagement in Chestnut

Hill—” His voice trailed off.

George Renshaw regarded him thoughtfully.

“You mean you’re about to pass the buck?” he asked

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with his usual geniality.

“Now, George, you know it isn’t that.”

“Skip it, Chip.” Mr. Renshaw grinned. “I’ve got

my car in town. I’ll go. If I can ever find the

confounded place. I’ve never been there, you know,

and it’s dark as the ace of spades on those country

roads at night.”

Mr. Reid reached again for the elevator signal

button, while Connie stood behind the two men and

wondered whether she should obey a sudden

impulse. Yes, she decided, it’s worth it!

“Excuse me,” she interrupted gently, “but if you

could get to the Haverford station, Mr. Renshaw, I

think I could find the Marville house in the dark.

I’ve been out there twice now.”

Mr. Renshaw turned and looked down into

Connie’s ingenuous face. “Good girl. You mean

you’d be willing to ride along? It might save me

considerable time.”

Connie nodded. “If I may call my aunt first, so

she won’t worry about me.”

“By all means!” Mr. Renshaw said. “One lost

lady is enough!”

Half an hour later, Connie proved as good as her

word. Following Connie’s directions, Mr. Renshaw

pulled up his long, black convertible in front of the

broad steps before Cleo Marville’s powder-pink

house.

133

The place looked a little forlorn in the headlight

beams, Connie thought. Only a hall light showed

from the front.

“Come along in?” Mr. Renshaw invited.

“Thanks, I’d like to.” Connie wasn’t hesitant at

all.

It wasn’t a maid who opened the door to Mr.

Renshaw’s ring; it was Miss Marville’s secretary, a

plain girl in her early twenties. She had kind eyes

and a competent manner, and she introduced herself

at once as Ruth Lathrop.

“The servants seemed so upset I thought I’d

better come out,” she said at once. “I can’t

understand Miss Marville not letting them know

when she changed her plans.”

Connie noted that she said not “if” but “when.”

With the exception of Mary, all of Miss Marville’s

associates seemed to hold her perfectly accountable

for her own actions. All except Mary and Mr. Reid;

Connie revised her opinion to include the agency

head. Then she added reluctantly, in her own

mind—all except Mary, Mr. Reid and myself.

Ever since Miss Lathrop’s telephone call to the

office Connie had been conscious that she no longer

felt the sense of trepidation that had been haunting

her. It was as though the thing she had feared had

been accomplished.

Yet why did she fear for Miss Marville? Connie

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couldn’t have explained. It wasn’t any one thing that

had happened; it was a succession of unrelated

incidents which were like an intricate web.

Standing in the lighted hall and listening to Miss

Lathrop and Mr. Renshaw while they explored,

conversationally, the possibilities of Miss Marville’s

whereabouts, Connie wanted to tell them that they

were blind. This was no time to stand and chat!

Connie was convinced, with a sort of hypersensitive

insight, that Miss Marville was absent through no

volition of her own.

“Frankly,” George Renshaw was saying, “we

came out to do a bit of snooping. It occurred to us

that Miss Marville probably kept an engagement

book, and that maybe through that we could find the

names of the people who took her to the game.”

“Or whom she took,” put in Miss Lathrop,

apparently knowing that her employer was more

often on the giving rather than the receiving end.

“That’s a good idea. We might look in the library.”

“Or in Miss Marville’s bedroom,” suggested

Connie. “There’s a little night table by her chaise

longue that has a telephone and—I think—some sort

of a notebook.”

George Renshaw looked at the girl beside him in

some surprise. “You’re an observing child,” he told

Connie in a tone that half-teased, half-praised her. “I

vote we look there first.”

135

Connie was right. The book was there, filled with

jottings in Miss Marville’s distinctive handwriting.

Under Thanksgiving Day, afternoon, she had,

“Game with Stewarts. Dinner in town.”

“Oh, I know who they are! The J. Gordon

Stewarts from Merion,” Ruth Lathrop said at once.

“I’ll call them right away.”

“Wait a minute,” George Renshaw said more

briskly than usual as Miss Marville’s secretary

picked up the telephone. “I’d suggest that you be

especially tactful in your inquiries. I wouldn’t want

them to be alarmed.”

Miss Lathrop’s candid eyes met Mr. Renshaw’s.

“You mean—?”

“Any unfortunate publicity concerning Miss

Marville right now might have a bad effect on the

forthcoming campaign,” he said frankly.

“I see. I’ll be careful.”

Three minutes later Ruth turned away from the

telephone with the information that the Stewarts had

indeed dined as well as attended the game with Miss

Marville, but that she had excused herself

immediately afterward on the plea of an

appointment. To the secretary’s dismay she could

not discover the name of the person Miss Marville

had intended to meet. Nor did she learn whether it

was an engagement in the city or out of town.

“It sounded as though it might have been a

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business appointment,” was the most Mrs. Stewart

could offer.

Instantly Connie’s mind flashed to Mr. Paul, and

she remembered his angry storming of the Reid and

Renshaw offices. Apparently Mr. Renshaw was

disturbed by the same thought, because he turned to

Miss Lathrop and asked at once, “Have you talked

with Mr. Paul?”

“Of course,” the secretary said. “I asked him

whether he had seen Miss Marville since

Wednesday and he said, ‘I have not!’ and slammed

the receiver on the cradle so hard that it hurt my

ears.”

Mr. Renshaw grinned. “Well, if he’s done away

with the body, he isn’t going to much trouble to

dissemble, is he?”

“Don’t joke about it!” Connie forgot for a

moment that she was talking to one of her two big

bosses. She remembered Mr. Paul’s fury on a

previous occasion and an involuntary shudder made

her shoulders twitch.

“Do you think we ought to call the police?” asked

Miss Lathrop.

“Police?” George Renshaw looked alarmed.

“Great Scott, no!” he said, then qualified his

outburst with the most disturbing remark Connie had

heard thus far.

“At least, not yet.”

137

CHAPTER 13

Thin Air

Mr. Renshaw sat in the wing chair beside the un-

lighted fireplace in Miss Marville’s book-lined

library and bit into a ham sandwich hungrily.

Connie, beside Ruth Lathrop on the couch, was

too absorbed in thought to realize that hers lay

untouched on the Duncan Phyfe end table.

“Mary,” Mr. Renshaw was saying between bites,

“tell me everything you can remember of what Miss

Marville said to you before she left for the stadium

yesterday afternoon.”

Mary, who had just put down a tray of coffee and

fruit, to round out the snack she had offered to “fix”

for her unexpected guests, stood twisting the hem of

her apron.

“She didn’t say much of anything,” the maid said

nervously. “Just, ‘Mary, I may be late. I’m having

dinner in town.’ Then she went out the back way to

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the garage.”

“Oh, she drove her car?” Mr. Renshaw spoke as

though he considered this interesting.

“Yes, sir. The Buick. And she was wearin’ her

mink coat.”

“I see. And the car hasn’t been returned to the

garage, has it?”

“I don’t think so, sir. I never thought to look.”

“You might look now, Mary,” Mr. Renshaw

suggested, and Mary departed a little fearfully in the

direction of the side door. After she had left the

room, the agency head turned to the girls. “You

know it’s just possible,” he said, “that Miss Marville

just decided to run away from it all for a few days.

She knew she was due to go into production on

Permon next week, and from then on for a couple of

months it would be a push—” He stopped, as though

he had been unsuccessfully trying to convince

himself.

Miss Lathrop shook her head. “Miss Marville is

temperamental—but not that way.”

Mr. Renshaw grinned wryly. “Check.”

Mary popped her head in the door. “No, sir, the

car’s not there.”

“Thank you, Mary.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Not just now.”

The three sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping

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their coffee. Connie considered the ramifications of

Miss Marville’s strange disappearance. Cleo alone

held the secret formula for the new nail polish. It

was too late to cancel ads, which would appear in

every woman’s magazine of national importance in

January. Production, in order to meet the launching

date, had to be started the first of December. If the

leading lady couldn’t be found by that date, Reid

and Renshaw stood to lose a small fortune, as did

Miss Marville’s own company. The situation was

very complicated indeed.

“When was Mr. Paul to be given the formula so

that he could go into production?” Mr. Renshaw

asked Ruth. “Do you know?”

As Miss Marville’s private secretary, Miss

Lathrop usually knew a good deal. “Monday,” she

said unhesitatingly.

Mr. Renshaw groaned. “That’s what I thought.”

Then he seemed to rally. “Probably we’re all making

a mountain out of a molehill,” he said with

considerable jauntiness. “I think we’d better get

along home and let nature take its course over the

week end. If Miss Marville hasn’t returned by then,

of course we’ll have to take steps, but in the

meantime, I think we should all act as though

nothing had happened. And, as a matter of fact,

nothing really has.”

“How about Mary? She might talk.”

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“I’ll take care of Mary,” Mr. Renshaw said.

“Matter of fact, I’ll go have a chat with her right

now.” He got up and strode off toward the kitchen

wing of the house.

An hour later, home in Aunt Bet’s apartment,

Connie sat down with a magazine, but she couldn’t

keep her attention focused on the printed page. She

was glad that her aunt had gone out for the evening,

because it would have been a difficult thing not to

tell her the whole confusing story. People just didn’t

disappear into thin air, not people like Miss

Marville, not in Philadelphia. She got up and walked

around the room nervously, and after a while she

picked up a pencil and a pad of paper from the desk.

Then she sat down again, swinging her legs

childishly over the arm of the lounge chair. After

several minutes she wrote down three names.

Mr. Paul

Angela Murray

Ellen Randolph

Above them she wrote, “People who dislike Miss

Marville.” Then she made another list headed

“Business associates Miss Marville might have

met.” Here she wrote:

Mr. Paul

Baron von Gletkin

Anybody from Reid and Renshaw

She knew it to be a very incomplete list, but they

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were simply the only business associates of Miss

Marville’s that she knew.

From that point on Connie simply sat and made

doodles. She made doodles all over the sheet of

paper, even over her suspects’ names. Perhaps it was

significant that Mr. Paul’s name appeared on both

lists, she thought. Perhaps Mr. Paul had spilled the

story of the new nail polish to Cleo’s big rival and

Angela Murray had kidnaped her own sister. Connie

wadded the sheet of paper into the fireplace and said

“Pooh!” out loud.

She wished she knew more about Baron von

Gletkin. She wished she had someone with whom

she could discuss this whole affair. She wished it

were Monday, not Friday night. She wished she

weren’t actually worried about Miss Marville, afraid

that she was in some kind of unknown danger. She

wished she could keep her mind from going around

like a squirrel in a cage.

By nine o’clock Monday morning her thoughts

had led her to only one new and possible conclusion.

Perhaps Cleo and the Baron had eloped! Little as

Connie liked the Baron, there was some comfort in

deciding that this might well be the case. She could

scarcely wait to ask Mr. Renshaw if he’d considered

such a possibility.

The more she thought about it, the more Connie

thought this was a clever hunch. Miss Marville and

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the Baron had simply driven off to Maryland, or

wherever one went to get married in a hurry. This

would explain the absence of both Cleo and her

Buick. Connie decided she was really quite a bright

girl!

But she didn’t feel very bright when Mr.

Renshaw told her that the Buick had been picked up

by the police at the Paoli station of the Pennsylvania

Railroad, the keys still in the ignition. This knocked

Connie’s new theory into a cocked hat.

Even supposing the Baron and Miss Marville had

taken a train either to the west or to New York—

both were logical possibilities—they wouldn’t be

likely to leave the keys in the car so that any prowler

could get in and ride away with an expensive

automobile.

No, the very fact that the car had turned up in

such a fashion was frightening. Even Mr. Renshaw

could no longer dodge the fact that Miss Marville’s

disappearance was alarming. An aura of gloom

overhung the agency like a pall.

It was not decreased by the fact that everyone “in

the know” tried to act especially normal. Miss

Cameron took the time and trouble to introduce

Connie to a new duty. From now on it had been

decided to make the capable new receptionist

responsible for opening and distributing the mail.

Connie accepted the added responsibility with

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something like pleasure. It meant that the agency

executives had confidence in her, and it also meant

that she’d be busier than ever—a welcome boon.

All morning the switchboard kept lighting up like

a jittery juke box. Mr. Reid and Mr. Renshaw were

closeted together with Jim Brinton, account

executive for “Cosmetics by Cleo,” in Mr. Reid’s

office, and when they weren’t putting through

outside calls they were receiving them—from Miss

Marville’s house, from her office, from the factory.

Apparently they were trying to reach some decision

on what to do next.

Connie knew that to call in the police was the

very last thing they desired, but she could also see,

by now, that it was inevitable. The Reid and

Renshaw executives had waited as long as they

dared. Conceivably, Miss Marville might have made

a hasty decision to go away for the week end and

failed to let the servants know. But to fail to return

on Monday morning—on the day when the entire

factory was geared to go into production on her new

nail polish—that was unimaginable—unless she

were being forcibly detained!

At two o’clock, just after Connie returned from a

hasty lunch at the cafeteria across the street, Mr.

Paul arrived at the office. At two-thirty Mr. Reid put

in his call to the police. By four the entire office had

the incredible story of Miss Marville’s

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disappearance, and in the evening papers the

cosmetic manufacturer’s most theatrical picture,

taken some five years before, was spread over every

front page.

CLEO MARVILLE MISSING

Beauty Baroness Kidnaped?

The tabloids were positively lurid in their

interpretation of the news. Here was a beautiful,

wealthy, prominent Philadelphian who had

apparently disappeared into thin air. They played it

up for all it was worth and a little more.

By morning even the New York dailies were

interested in the story, which had been confined to

an inch or two of type the night before. Cleo

Marville’s name was too well known to ignore, even

if any real mystery concerning her disappearance

had yet to be established.

At Reid and Renshaw disorganization trembled

beneath the surface of an ordinary business day. All

morning Connie tried to put through a call to Baron

von Gletkin for Mr. Reid, who hoped he might be

able to find a legal loophole through which the

inventor might be persuaded to turn over to Mr. Paul

a second copy of the nail polish formula. With every

twenty-four hours that ticked away several thousand

bottles went unfilled and disaster crept nearer. The

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agency was ready to clutch at any straw.

But the telephone at the Wonderley house

apparently rang into a vacuum. Though she kept

trying at ten-minute intervals, Connie met with no

success.

“I’m sorry,” she told Mr. Reid for the eleventh

time. “Baron von Gletkin doesn’t seem to be at

home.”

The police, who were investigating every angle of

the Marville disappearance, questioned Connie

along with everyone else in the agency and in Miss

Marville’s organization who had been in recent

contact with the missing woman. It was rumored

that they had kept Mr. Paul on the carpet for a full

two hours, because he seemed so full of malice

toward his employer. It was also rumored that they

were as anxious to reach Baron von Gletkin as was

Mr. Reid.

Evening papers, on Tuesday, had caught on to the

fact that Cleo Marville’s disappearance might be

directly concerned with her plans to introduce a

revolutionary new nail polish.

SECRET FORMULA DISAPPEARS

WITH CLEO MARVILLE

ran one daring head. No one actually knew whether

this was correct, but it made excellent copy for an

146

unscrupulous reporter, whose yellow journal treated

it as a scoop.

Connie, in the midst of the uproar, did her best to

keep a level head. All Reid and Renshaw employees

had been cautioned to conduct themselves with quiet

discretion, but to avoid gossiping about the

sensational turn of affairs was hard.

The police, in their efforts to track down every

clue that might help to explain Miss Marville’s

disappearance, had even called at Campion’s and

questioned Ellen Randolph. They were bound to

leave no stone unturned. Aunt Bet thought this was

going too far, and said as much to Connie, who

agreed.

“I can’t see why Ellen should be dragged into it at

all.”

“She wouldn’t have been, I suppose,” Connie

replied, “except that she was so outspoken about her

dislike for Miss Marville.”

“Apparently a good many people dislike Miss

Marville,” Elizabeth Easton said.

Connie was forced to agree. Little love seemed to

be lost between the lonely, imperious woman and

her own staff. Only Mary, the maid, and Miss

Lathrop, her secretary, seemed to show a genuine

concern. Connie shuddered at the thought of leading

such a life as Cleo’s—a life where nobody really

cared very much whether one lived or died.

147

Died. The very word struck a chill to Connie’s

heart, but she resolutely turned away from that final,

awful contingency.

“Oh, Aunt Bet!” she cried. “I wish I could do

something! I feel as though I ought to be able to

help, if I could only think how!”

148

CHAPTER 14

Night Tour

With a paper cutter shaped like a stiletto, Connie slit

the advertising agency’s business mail. Personal

letters she laid aside, to be delivered unopened, but

the sheaf of other communications which poured in

each morning she sorted into stacks for the

production, media, accounting, research, copy, art,

and publicity departments and delivered them

herself.

Another day had passed since the strange

disappearance of Cleo Marville, a day filled with

anxiety and apprehension, but with singularly little

eventfulness. Down at the Marville lab, Mr. Paul

was probably still tearing his hair, while in the

offices of the police department, the officers detailed

to the investigation conceivably were tearing theirs

also. But in Reid and Renshaw a sort of stupor

seemed to have settled down, bred of too much

149

excitement. The chief executives came and went

without saying much, and of all their assistants only

Ken Cooper seemed to feel called upon to make a

jocular remark.

He leaned upon Connie’s desk, turning the pages

of his morning newspaper, as she automatically slit

one envelope after another. “The thing that gets

me,” he said after a while, “is why nobody sends out

the bloodhounds after the elusive Baron von

Gletkin. Nobody seems to have gotten wise to the

angle that he’s faded out of the picture too.”

“They’ve checked,” Connie said, “and found that

he’s quite in the habit of going away for a few days

every now and then.”

“Leaving no address?”

Connie shrugged. “He apparently lives alone.”

Ken frowned. “There’s something screwy about

this whole setup.”

Connie said calmly, “I agree.”

Ken leaned his cheek on his doubled fist. “Got a

date tonight, sis?”

Without answering Connie said, “Next thing you

know you’ll be calling me ‘girlie!’ “

“Got a date tonight, Miss Blair?”

Very innocently Connie dropped her eyes and

said, “What did you have in mind, Mr. Cooper?”

Ken chuckled. “Dinner at the General Wayne. It’s

an old inn out in the suburbs. Very good food.

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Music. Dancing.”

“It wouldn’t be near Haverford, by any chance?”

Ken snapped his fingers. “Now what made yow

think of that?” he asked with assumed artlessness.

“It occurred to me that you might be interested in

visiting the scene of the crime.”

Ken nodded. “It occurred to me, too.”

“What do you expect to find?”

The young artist shrugged. “Just a curiosity-

monger.”

But Connie shook her head. She knew him better

than that.

Ken folded his paper, after a few minutes, and

reached out to pick up a proof of a full-page ad for

Permon. It was a four-color process proof, as

expensive as it looked, and Ken whistled softly.

“When I think of all the money that’s being poured

down the drain, oh my!”

“Every morning,” Connie told him, “you can

count the new lines in Mr. Renshaw’s face.”

“Have you no pity for poor Mr. Reid?” bantered

Ken.

“Oh, of course!” Connie wouldn’t let him make a

joke of it. Then suddenly, in the act of unfolding

another advertising proof, she stopped and stared.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes grew large

with surprise.

“What’s the matter, Connie?”

151

But Connie was so intent she didn’t hear the boy.

“Connie! What gives?”

Now she looked up, and in unconcealed

amazement passed Ken the proof. “Look! One of the

magazines must have shipped us this Angela Murray

proof by mistake, and no wonder! Here’s an ad for a

new Murray polish that sounds exactly like

Permon.”

Ken took the oblong of slick paper from Connie’s

hands. In equal astonishment he read the copy:

“ ‘Sensational new polish. Goes on without an

undercoat! . . . and stays! A smoothing “cling”

ingredient is pressure-fused right into this wonderful

new product. That’s why it goes on so evenly . . .

stays on so angelically . . .’ ”

“My gosh!” ejaculated Ken.

“She couldn’t have—” Connie stopped, frowning.

No, of course not. The time element was all wrong.

There was no conceivable way that Angela Murray

could have kidnaped her own sister and stolen the

secret formula, even supposing Cleo Marville was

foolhardy enough to be carrying the all-important

paper around in her purse. The Murray ad must have

been placed at least a month ago to be in proof by

now. What a hopeless tangle! Connie looked at Ken,

who was rereading the ad, feeling utterly at sea.

After a minute Ken looked up. “This,” he said

decisively, “Mr. Reid and Mr. Renshaw must see.”

152

Practically, Connie replied, “They aren’t in yet.”

But a couple of minutes later Mr. Renshaw stepped

off the elevator, wearing the harried expression that

was becoming characteristic these days.

“Mr. Renshaw, got a minute?” Ken held out the

proof.

Both Connie and Ken watched him as he glanced

at the trade name and read the copy. His baffled

wonder indicated clearly that he drew the same

inference from the ad as had his employees.

“But this is impossible!” he said.

“Something, somewhere,” murmured Ken, “is

certainly very, very queer.”

Mr. Renshaw glanced from one to the other of the

young people. “Has anyone else seen this?”

Connie said, “Oh, no.”

“Then you forget you ever ran across it. Don’t

mention it to anybody, understand?”

Mr. Renshaw was seldom so peremptory.

“Yes, sir,” said Connie.

“Yes, sir,” echoed Ken.

“Get me the Lower Merion Township Police

Department,” said Mr. Renshaw to the receptionist,

“and tell them I want to talk to the chief.” Then, still

carrying the astonishing proof, he walked off toward

his own office, leaving Connie and Ken staring after

him.

Ken shook his head, as Connie started to put

153

through the call. “I wonder what the police will

make of that little tidbit of information,” he said.

“Two to one they’re just as much in the dark as you

and I.”

He started back toward the art department, then

looked over his shoulder. “What about tonight? Is it

a date?”

“It’s a date,” Connie told him; then, into the

telephone, she said, “Mr. George Renshaw would

like to speak to the police chief, please.”

For the rest of the day Connie’s mind was only

half on her job. She went through the necessary

motions. She looked efficient and trim and neat and

calm. But her thoughts were primarily concerned

with this new complication in an already involved

puzzle. Somehow she felt that she had in her hands

the key to the whole problem. But she couldn’t seem

to unlock any doors with it. Time after time she tried

it in a new lock, but every door remained

persistently shut.

It was rather comforting to be going out with

Ken, and Connie told him so. “I don’t think I could

bear to spend this evening with someone I couldn’t

talk to,” she said. “Ken, I’m seriously worried about

Miss Marville.”

“So’s everybody,” said Ken.

“I mean about her—safety,” Connie replied.

“You mean you think she’s met with foul play?

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Isn’t that the police expression?”

Involuntarily, Connie shuddered. “I don’t know,”

she murmured. “I just don’t know.”

Ken helped her into his little maroon car, and she

huddled back against the upholstery as though she

were cold. “Ken, it must be awful to be hated by

people,” she said as he turned out of the parking lot

and headed toward the parkway. She was

remembering the expression in Mr. Paul’s eyes the

first day she had visited the factory. She was

remembering the stormy dislike in Ellen Randolph’s

expression whenever Cleo Marville’s name came

up. She was remembering other things—the cold,

shrewd, calculating look in the eyes of another

person, a person who professed to be a friend to the

missing woman—a person for whom Connie felt a

purely instinctive distrust.

“Not even to know your friends from your

enemies,” Connie wanted to say, but something bade

her keep quiet. An idea was beginning to form in her

mind, an idea cloudlike and improbable as yet, an

idea fantastic and alarming—

“Ken,” Connie said abruptly, “I hope you meant

what you said about driving out to Haverford. Let’s

do.”

“Let’s eat first, though,” Ken suggested. “Hunger

gnaws. And anyway, it’s dark as pitch now. It can’t

be any darker at nine o’clock.”

155

Ken was wrong. By nine o’clock, when Connie

and he came out of the inn, a storm was brewing,

and a cloud had quenched the meager light from the

moon.

“Should we perhaps skip the sleuthing and go

back to town?” He looked up at the wind-whipped

branches of the naked trees.

“We’re so close—” Connie said, trying not to

sound too persistent.

“Okay,” Ken acquiesced. “Lead on!”

“Get me to the Haverford station,” Connie told

him. “That’s always the starting point of my

conducted tours.”

She tried to keep her mood light as they set forth,

but the sudden wildness of the night was disturbing.

The shrouded moon, the low moaning of the wind in

the bare trees, the yellow glare of headlights,

blinding for an instant, then lost on the dark road, all

had a disquieting effect on Connie—and her mood

reacted on Ken.

“I feel as though I were going to a wake,” he

muttered after a while.

“Don’t say that!” Then she laughed nervously and

tried to apologize. “Don’t mind me. I have the jitters

tonight.”

“Connie Blair with the jitters?” Ken teased her.

“Oh, now—”

“Yes I have,” Connie insisted. “I really liked

156

Miss Marville, even if nobody else did.”

“Stop talking in the past tense,” Ken retorted. “I

didn’t—I mean I don’t have a thing against her.

Maybe if we put an ad in the personal column of the

Bulletin—‘Dear Cleo, All is well. Please come

home’—it might have some effect.”

Connie couldn’t help but giggle. “Signed

‘George’?”

“Oh, now! Don’t involve poor Mr. Renshaw.

Signed ‘The Baron’ would be more to the point.”

“When the Baron comes home we might talk him

into it,” Connie said, keeping up the joke. Then she

directed him. “You turn here.”

In the darkness, however, she missed the

Wonderley place as they drove down Castle Creek

Road. The Marville house she found easily enough,

but when they got there, there wasn’t much to see.

“The color is its chief charm,” Connie told Ken.

“It’s a lovely pink, and all the iron work is gray.”

“Very fetching, for a cosmetic queen.” Ken

admitted. He parked the car for a moment just off

the road. “Light in the servants’ wing, light in the

hall. Everything very regular.”

“What did you expect?” Connie asked.

Ken bit his upper lip. “I don’t quite know.”

Again a shiver chased its way up Connie’s spine.

“Let’s go back and pay that call on the Baron,” she

suggested hastily.

157

To divert her escort, Connie told Ken the details

of her first, impromptu call on Baron von Gletkin.

“He had the most repulsive houseman,” she said. “I

never felt so much like an intruder. Then, of course,

the Baron had to walk in just at the wrong moment. I

was standing by the desk, and it looked for all the

World as though I’d been going through his mail—”

Suddenly Connie stopped and snapped her

fingers.

“What’s the matter?” Ken asked.

“I just remembered something,” Connie said

slowly, but she didn’t tell Ken what she

remembered. She had a feeling that it might be very

important, too important to share with anyone! A

wave of elation swept her with the force of the wind

sweeping through the hedges and the trees.

Precipitately, the closed doors in her mind had flown

open. All along she had overlooked one clue, one

small but important—oh, immensely important!—

clue that could solve the entire mystery of Miss

Marville’s disappearance.

“Except that nobody would believe me,” Connie

murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” Connie strained forward, her eyes

piercing the night. “The Wonderley place should be

near here, on the left. The next—no, the next—”

Abruptly, Ken pulled on the brakes. “Let’s get

158

out and walk,” he suggested. “I’d like to stretch my

legs.” Taking the key from the ignition, he reached

across Connie and opened the car door.

Together Connie and Ken walked along the

deserted road. “Here’s the gate,” Connie said finally.

“And there’s the house, right there.”

While Ken squinted through the darkness, Connie

stared at the bars of the gate so close to her hand.

She stood as though she were rooted to the spot,

though beyond the bars stretched the short, curving

drive, inviting, beckoning, and at the head of the

drive lay the house.

A car, sweeping around the curve of the road, lit

up the sheer facade for a moment, and the bars of

the gate lay black and sinister across the crushed-

stone drive. Connie shuddered, and her hand sought

the reassurance of Ken’s arm. “Unfriendly looking

place, isn’t it?” she whispered, just so she could hear

his voice in reply.

But before he could speak, in the still darkness

broken only by the sound of the retreating motor, a

light glanced past one of the upper windows of the

Baron’s house.

159

CHAPTER 15

The Police Stand By

“Ken, did you see that?”

“What?”

Ken could feel Connie’s fingers biting into his

arm. Then, quick as a cat, she slipped through the

gate into the shelter of the line of trees that edged

the drive.

“That light!” Pulling Ken after her, Connie

pointed. “There!”

Her voice was the merest whisper, but her finger

was imperative, and this time Ken saw, from a

window on the third floor, the flickering beam that

was making Connie’s heart pound. His reaction to it,

however, was far different from hers.

“The old boy must have come home,” he said.

But Connie shook her head. The light had gone as

quickly as it had come. It could have been a

flashlight held in a person’s hand, but it was no

160

ordinary hall or lamp light, switched on and then off.

She said as much to the boy, in a whisper, and Ken

whispered back, “Maybe the police are casing the

joint.”

“There’s no police car around.”

“That’s true,” Ken admitted reluctantly.

“Let’s go around toward the back.”

“Who, us?”

“Of course!”

“All right, but I think you’re just looking for

trouble. Be a good girl, Connie. Let’s go home.”

Connie managed a thin smile to reward Ken for

his effort to be jocular, but her mouth was as dry as

parchment and she was feeling strangely ill at ease

in her stomach, without recognizing this as a

symptom of fear. Each advance to the next tree

trunk increased her trepidation, yet she wanted to get

a good rear view of the house, to see whether any

illicit lights showed there.

Dried leaves crackled under her feet and Ken’s,

no matter how hard they tried to walk quietly. Yet

now that they had started, it never occurred to

Connie to turn back. “Sh!” she warned her escort,

but she sprinted across the one open stretch of lawn

without hesitation. And Ken stayed at her heels.

The view they got from the shelter of the next

dark clump of trees was unrewarding. The house

looked quiet and undisturbed, its dim outlines

161

blurred by sheltering shrubbery.

“No soap,” said Ken.

Back in the car, Connie talked as though she were

trying to convince herself. “There was a light.”

“Sure.”

“You saw it too, didn’t you?”

“Sure, sure,” said Ken, as though he were

humoring a child.

“You’d swear to it?”

“Well—” Ken was reluctant. “It could have been

a reflection against the windows, maybe.”

“From what?”

“From a car.”

“But there wasn’t any car.” Connie twisted

around on the seat and faced her escort. “Ken, I’m

going to tell Mr. Renshaw about this in the morning

and I want you to back me up!”

Connie’s interview with Mr. Renshaw the next

day was brief and to the point. “We were frankly

snooping,” she admitted. “Probably it was a childish

thing to do. But I’m certain there was a light in the

Wonderley house, upstairs, and I think the police

ought to investigate. Right away.”

She looked like an avenging angel, standing

straight before Mr. Renshaw’s mahogany desk, her

fair hair shining on her shoulders, her eyes flashing,

her manner controlled but indignant.

Mr. Renshaw couldn’t stifle a smile. “I can report

162

to them, Connie,” he promised, “but I’m afraid the

most they’ll agree to do is set a watch. They’ll have

to see for themselves.”

The wheels of the law moved entirely too slowly

for Connie. She fumed all day. Every tick of the

clock meant a second lost, every numbered chime an

hour that could never be regained. She thought of

the idle assembly line in the nail polish department

of the factory. If only someone would do something,

there might still be time!

But who was she—Connie Blair—to prod them

into action? A nice child, that’s what they thought

her. Ambitious, sometimes discerning, but not to be

taken too seriously.

Aloud Connie said, “Oh, phooey! I wish I were

twenty-seven instead of seventeen.”

Georgia Cameron, passing through the reception

room with some original art work in her arms,

turned and smiled. “And I wish I were twenty-seven

instead of thirty-seven,” she said gaily. “That’s the

trouble with women—never satisfied!”

Connie didn’t see Mr. Renshaw again until five

o’clock, when he came through the reception room

just as she was preparing to leave.

“Did you get in touch with the police?” She

couldn’t resist the question.

“Yes. They said they’d let the man on the beat

know. He’ll keep an eye out.”

163

The agency head seemed preoccupied with a

layout he held in his hand, and Connie didn’t dare to

prod him further. She had to pretend to be satisfied

with what had been done.

But all evening she was silent and anxious. She

could hardly hope that the light would appear

obligingly just when the policeman on duty

happened to be passing the Wonderley house.

Suddenly an idea occurred to her. If it had appeared

at about nine-fifteen last night might it not possibly

appear at the same time tonight? It was at least a

chance—and on the slim strength of it she called

police headquarters herself.

The desk sergeant accorded her a sort of amused

tolerance, because her voice was so breathless and

her manner so anxious. “I’ll see what I can do,

young lady,” was the best he could promise her.

Connie, longing for action, clenched her teeth in

exasperation. She felt as she had often felt during

hockey games at school, when the coach had pulled

her out of the forward line during the third quarter

and she had been forced to sit on the bench when

she longed to be in there fighting to make a goal.

The next day was Friday, and Connie was well

aware, as she walked to the office in the morning,

that nearly a whole working week had gone by since

Cleo Marville’s disappearance. She hoped against

hope that Mr. Renshaw would have heard from the

164

police, but she was prepared for disappointment.

On every side the shops were full of Christmas

trappings. Salvation Army workers rattled their

tambourines on street corners, and along Chestnut

Street the lampposts were festooned with laurel and

colored lights.

Connie wished she could feel as festive and full

of anticipation as the season warranted, but her

expectations were of quite a different nature. As she

entered the lobby of the office building she noticed

that her fingers, inside her pigskin gloves, were icy

cold although the early December day was

surprisingly mild.

In the Reid and Renshaw reception room, when

Connie stepped off the elevator, were Georgia

Cameron, Jim Brinton, and Ken Cooper, huddled in

a conversational group. They turned and beckoned

to Connie, who asked, abruptly, the one question

that was on her mind.

“Did they find anything?”

Apparently word of Connie and Ken’s escapade

had spread, so that the query wasn’t entirely

meaningless. Ken said, “They didn’t see any lights,

Connie, but the cop on the beat went by about dawn

and saw a queer-looking character cutting across the

kitchen garden behind the Wonderley place. He

ducked in the back door, the cop said, so he went

around front and knocked. Darned if this fellow

165

didn’t answer! Said he was part-time caretaker for

the Baron, paid to tend the fires and see to the house.

But when this cop got back to headquarters he

reported to the chief that the man was an ugly-

looking customer and that he thought it might be a

good idea to search the place. Just as part of routine

investigation in the Marville affair.”

“And are they going to?” Connie asked.

“Yep. This morning. Mr. Renshaw’s going out

immediately.”

Connie said, “I’d know if this man was the same

one who let me into the house the day I met Baron

von Gletkin. I wish I could go too.”

The response was a general laugh, at Connie’s

expense. There wasn’t a person in the group who

didn’t recognize her keen interest in the mystery of

Cleo Marville’s disappearance.

But Connie grinned back at them and then

without hesitation walked straight to Mr. Renshaw’s

office. “I’m here to give you a sales talk,” she said

the minute she was inside the door.

Mr. Renshaw looked up. “Selling is our

business.”

Connie turned on every bit of charm she

possessed. “I want to go along with you out to the

Wonderley place.”

The executive’s brows knit and he started to

shake his head, but Connie came forward, talking

166

rapidly and with considerable logic. Ten minutes

later she was beside him when he hailed a cab and

directed the driver to the house near Haverford. And

she was beside him still when the police, armed with

a search warrant, stepped back so that the Reid and

Renshaw duet could precede them through the door

into the entrance hall Connie remembered so well.

She knew the instant she saw him that the

caretaker was the houseman who had opened the

door for her the day she had called on the Baron,

and she didn’t like his looks any better now than she

had then. But he was far from surly today; he was

almost ingratiating. And if he objected to being

served with a search warrant he didn’t show it.

“Would you like to start with the cellars first?” he

asked.

The two policemen glanced at Mr. Renshaw, and

he nodded briefly. Connie knew from the way he

ducked his head that he was embarrassed. No

wonder! Now that she was on the spot she felt like

an interloper herself.

Yet her eyes were sharp to pierce the gloom of

the big cellars which ran under the long house. She

trotted along at Mr. Renshaw’s heels curiously, and

when the caretaker would have walked by the door

of a padlocked room she stopped abruptly.

“What’s in here?”

“That is Mr. Wonderley’s wine cellar. We were

167

not given the keys to it.”

“By ‘we’ I assume you mean the Baron von

Gletkin?” Mr. Renshaw rapped out. Connie had the

feeling that he liked this fellow no better than she

did.

The man bowed correctly. “Yes, sir.”

From the cellar they climbed back upstairs to

inspect the first floor—the kitchens and pantry, the

dining room, drawing room and the small library

where Connie had waited for her interview with the

gentleman with the goatee. On the second floor they

walked through several bedrooms and baths, all of

them quietly luxurious, then climbed still another

pair of stairs to the servants’ quarters and the

storerooms.

Connie was beginning to feel a little letdown.

Everything was in such perfect order, in spite of the

film of dust which had accumulated on the polished

tables and chests in the tenant’s absence. That one

thing gave her pause. Wouldn’t it be logical to

expect that in an establishment of this class a

cleaning woman would be regularly employed?

Whether or not the Baron happened to be in

residence, it seemed to Connie that the house should

be kept spick-and-span. Her mother would certainly

raise an eyebrow at the fact that Connie could have

written her name on the dining-room sideboard.

“When are you expecting the Baron home?”

168

Connie asked the caretaker in her clear young voice.

For an instant the eyes of the servant were hard

and cold. Then he replied with elaborate politeness,

“I really couldn’t say, miss.” Immediately afterward

he turned to the policemen. “This is the servants’

wing, off to the left.”

The police, followed by the rest of the party,

tramped systematically through the rooms, none of

which showed any signs of recent occupancy.

“Don’t any of the servants live in?” Connie

asked. “In a house this big—”

“Not at the moment, miss,” the caretaker cut her

off. Then again he spoke to the policemen. “Over

here are just storerooms and such.”

What did he mean “and such,” Connie wondered,

but this time she kept quiet. The storerooms were

very neat, much neater than the attic at home, with

cupboards and chests of drawers and boxes all

systematically labeled. The Wonderleys, certainly,

must be very careful people. They surely would

have checked on their tenant before they rented the

place.

Connie walked to the storeroom window and

looked down. This could have been the location

from which the eerie night light had shone. But there

was nothing suspicious here, nothing suspicious at

all.

Then she noticed another padlocked door.

169

This was the door to a large cedar closet, which

jutted out into the room, obviously an addition some

time after the house was built. The caretaker was

standing in front of the door at the moment, but

Connie could see that it had a Yale lock, a good deal

shinier than the one on the wine-cellar door in the

basement.

She slipped over to Mr. Renshaw’s side

unobtrusively and whispered, “Could we look in

there?”

But by now George Renshaw was feeling that he

had been led on a wild-goose chase and that he was

looking all kinds of a fool. “I think we’ve seen

enough,” he said shortly, and turned away.

Connie couldn’t be insistent, but she would have

given a great deal to have been in possession of the

ring of keys that jingled on the caretaker’s index

finger. She felt that his manner, as he led them back

downstairs, was somehow more relaxed.

Inconspicuously, she dropped a glove on the third-

floor stairs, and was relieved when nobody noticed

her ruse.

The entire group had descended to the entrance

hall when she appeared to discover the loss.

“Oh, goodness! I dropped a glove!” She hoped

her voice sounded fairly convincing. “I’ll be right

back.”

“I’ll get it for you!” Was there a trace of anxiety

170

in the houseman’s tone? He took a step or two after

her, but already Connie was running lightly,

noiselessly up the first flight of steps.

Downstairs, Mr. Renshaw was engaging the

group in desultory conversation. “I used to know the

Wonderleys. Old Bradshaw Wonderley was a very

able man.” But Connie heard no more. She reached

for her glove as she sped up the stairs to the

storeroom and in another few seconds she had her

ear glued to the cedar closet’s door.

She could only listen. She didn’t dare to speak for

fear they would hear her in the lower hall. She was

afraid her voice would fall into one of those

unexpected pools of silence that suddenly occur in

the noisiest of places. The stair well was completely

open. Sound carried clearly up or down.

She waited an instant more, listening intently, but

she was unrewarded. Connie frowned, feeling

frustrated and anxious. Downstairs they would be

expecting her return.

Tiptoeing, she crossed the attic floor again, and

then ran quickly down the steps.

“I dropped it in the very darkest spot on the

stairs,” Connie apologized as she rejoined the group

in the hall. As evidence she held forth the planted

glove.

“No matter.” Mr. Renshaw was still being

brusque. “He’s annoyed with me,” Connie thought.

171

The policemen were treating her like a meddling

child, a pretty one, but still meddling. Mr. Renshaw,

unlike himself, was being formal and superior. All

of a sudden Connie felt overwhelmingly foolish.

The judgment of a man as astute as the head of Reid

and Renshaw’s was, after all, apt to be more sound

than that of a seventeen-year-old receptionist.

Connie realized that her fantastic suspicions had

caused her to act brashly indeed, and she sat meekly

beside Mr. Renshaw, in a chilly silence, all the way

home.

She went to bed that night determined to get a

good sleep and not worry about Mr. Renshaw’s

attitude toward her when she encountered him on

Monday. But sleep, which generally claimed Connie

the instant her head hit the pillow, deserted her

tonight.

Connie sat up in bed. “If I could only be sure—”

she found herself thinking, and realized that,

subconsciously, she must have been reviewing her

suspicions all night long. This urge that propelled

her now was more than a suspicion. It was a firmly

fixed belief that withstood all the reassurances she

had received from Mr. Renshaw and the police.

Doggedly, she began to plan.

172

CHAPTER 16

Connie Calls for Help

“Ken, you’ve got to help me!”

Connie’s voice came over the telephone wire,

breathless and insistent.

“You bet,” said Ken. “I mean, why?”

“Ken, can you come over to the apartment? Aunt

Bet’s at the store, and we can talk here.”

“Saturday’s a free day,” Ken acquiesced. “Get

your lipstick straight. I’ll be there in fifteen

minutes.”

It had been hard for Connie to wait for daylight,

to carry out her plans. Now she paced up and down

Aunt Bet’s living room until Ken Cooper knocked

on the door.

“How good are you at housebreaking?” she asked

as soon as she had let the boy in.

Ken, startled, held up both hands as though to

ward Connie off. “I’m terrible!” he cried.

173

Connie laughed at his dismayed expression.

“Then you’d better just come along for moral

support,” she told him, and picked up her bag and

hat.

“Now, Connie!”

“Don’t ‘now Connie!’ me.”

“But—”

“I need your help very much,” Connie said

firmly, “but if you’re not going to be cooperative—”

“I didn’t say that!” Ken shouted. “Just for Pete’s

sake tell me what this is all about.”

When she had told him, he looked more alarmed

than ever. The project she outlined completely failed

to tempt him. “Playing a hunch in a case like this is

a pretty risky business,” he said with a shake of his

head. “Maybe you’ve got something. I don’t say you

haven’t. But don’t you think it would be wiser to go

to the police?”

“We’ve got to work fast!” Connie said, as though

this were explanation enough.

The argument ended as she had been sure it

would. Protesting every step of the way, Ken

followed her downstairs, out the door and up the

street to the spot where he had parked his car.

Entirely against his better judgment, he drove

Connie out the parkway, up the West River Drive

and out to Haverford, where he parked on Castle

Creek Road just out of sight of the Wonderley

174

house.

Connie looked at her wrist watch. “It’s ten-

thirty,” she said. “That ought to be a pretty safe

time, if the caretaker is accustomed to making his

rounds at dawn.”

Ken groaned. “No time’s a safe time, let alone the

middle of the morning. Think of the people who will

see us—the Bond Bread man, the milkman, the

garbage collector—” He started ticking the awful

possibilities off on his fingers.

But Connie was already getting out of the car.

“What of it? We look respectable. Nobody would

ever suspect us of illegal entry, Ken.”

The artist groaned more loudly than before. “

‘Kenneth Cooper Jailed for Housebreaking.’ My

poor dear mother!”

“How are you at climbing?” Connie asked.

Ken shot her a look of utter scorn. “I used to

work in a circus—or maybe I do now.”

“I don’t think we’ll need to pick any outside

locks. That’s something.” Connie ignored his

tomfoolery.

Ken gulped. “If we did, no doubt you’d shoot

them open?”

Connie couldn’t help giggling at that one, but

they were so near the Wonderley place now that she

was beginning to feel the need of caution. “There’s a

trellis at the back of the house, for clematis. It

175

looked fairly strong, from what I could see.” She

spoke barely above a whisper and glanced around to

see whether any cars or pedestrians were in sight.

But only a roaming beagle pup, high-tailing it

down the road, met her eye. She gave a little sigh of

consternation, as though the full import of what she

intended to do had suddenly burst upon her, then

shrugged her shoulders. “We’re simply going to

have to take a chance.”

Ken stopped in the road and struck an attitude.

“We who are about to die salute you!” he said.

Again Connie ignored him. “I’m going straight

up the drive and knock at the door,” she said.

Ken gallantly offered his arm.

“And if nobody answers we’re going to wander

around back as though we’re friends of the family.”

“We won’t be friends of anybody after this,” Ken

muttered under his breath. But he waited while

Connie rapped with the big brass knocker, stood for

a decent interval until she had decided there would

be no answer, then followed her around to the rear

of the house.

True to her promise, there stood the trellis, the

brown stalks of dead clematis still clinging to it.

“Pretty rickety ladder,” Ken said.

“I think it will hold me,” Connie admitted, “but

I’m not sure about you. Maybe you’d better stand

guard down here and whistle if anything goes

176

wrong.”

“One if by land and two if by sea?” asked Ken

innocently.

“You idiot!” Connie whispered. “You just won’t

take this seriously, will you?”

“Egad, I’m taking it very seriously,” Ken insisted.

“My very freedom is at stake.”

Connie took something long and metallic out of

her handbag, then parked her handbag behind the

trellis.

“What’s that?” Ken asked.

“A file,” Connie said matter-of-factly. “I

borrowed it from the superintendent this morning.”

“Golly, Ned!” exploded her companion

graphically.

Connie shook the trellis, testing its strength. “This

ought to be easy,” she said as she started to climb.

“Kit and I used to play we were monkeys when we

were kids.”

Halfway up she looked back. “I think this will

hold you, after all.”

Ken gulped, apparently incapable of retort.

Connie was high above him now. She braced herself

to try the window, praying it wasn’t locked. Angrily,

she pounded at it.

“You’re making an awful racket,” he hissed.

A second later Connie said, “I’ve got it now!”

and flung one slender leg over the sill. With easy

177

agility she twisted around and let herself down to the

floor inside the attic room.

“Come on!” she called to Ken in a stage whisper.

Then, when he looked reluctant, she smilingly

taunted him. “Scaredy cat!”

It was too much for the boy on the ground. He

followed her as quickly as he could, but less

gracefully, and minutes later stood beside her on the

third floor of the house.

“I hope this file does the trick,” Connie said,

starting across the room as Ken closed the window,

to preserve the illusion that the house was

undisturbed. She went at once to the cedar closet

and said tentatively—but distinctly, “Don’t be

alarmed. This is Connie Blair from Reid and

Renshaw. We’re going to try to file away the

padlock and get you out.”

Ken, still disbelieving in spite of Connie’s

explanation back at the apartment, put his ear to the

door. He was rewarded by a very faint but definite

tapping, as though someone were pounding their

elbow against the wall.

“Holy crow!” he said.

Connie was already examining the hinged strap

on the padlock, a sturdy piece of metal. She looked a

little distrustfully at her file.

“Here! Give me that.” Like lightning, Ken’s

attitude changed. He almost snatched the file from

178

her hands and started sawing away at the hasp, using

far more strength than she could have exerted, no

matter how hard she tried.

Even so it was slow going. The squeaking of the

file against the metal was distressingly loud, and two

or three times, as Ken worked without stopping,

Connie walked over to the window and looked

down. Relieved of the necessity for personal action,

she was as nervous as a squirrel, and she found that

her position and Ken’s were suddenly reversed. It

was her hands that were clammy now, not his.

“Hurry!” she urged the boy in a whisper. “Hurry,

hurry, Ken!”

Beads of perspiration were standing on Ken’s

forehead. “I am hurrying,” he told her. Yet it seemed

an hour, instead of an actual twenty minutes, before

the upper part of the hasp gave way.

Then there was the whole job to do over again, on

the lower rod, because the padlock was not made of

metal that could be twisted or bent. Connie glanced

at her watch from time to time. Eleven. Eleven-ten.

Eleven-eighteen.

Time, it seemed to Connie, was running out.

Suppose the caretaker came back at lunchtime?

Suppose he should find them there, catch them in

the very act? Connie shuddered to think of what

might happen. She realized now that she had left no

clue to her destination. No one would know where

179

to look for her—or for Ken.

But it was too late to worry about her negligence

now. She watched Ken work with anxious eyes. It

seemed that the metal would never be cut through.

“Maybe the file isn’t very good?”

“The file’s all right. It just takes time, that’s all.”

“Time,” murmured Connie, and sighed. There

was never enough time, never enough time for

anything, anymore.

“It’s coming,” said Ken encouragingly, calm now

that he was working, more calm than Connie by far.

Finally, when Connie felt that she couldn’t stand

the suspense another minute, he said, “I’ve almost

got it.” Then, “There!”

Half of the hasp fell to the bare floor with a heavy

thud, and an instant later Ken flung open the storage

closet door.

On a rumpled cot, gagged, bound, and disheveled,

in clothes she had worn for more than a week, lay

Cleo Marville.

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CHAPTER 17

The Riddle Is Answered

Connie, with a cluck of dismay and solicitude, was

across the room in an instant, working at the gag, a

really ingenious affair, providing a maximum

amount of comfort along with restraint.

Miss Marville, undaunted even in bondage,

encouraged her with expressive eyes. Ken,

meanwhile, started to wrestle with the thongs that

bound her wrists.

It was the work of only a minute or two to effect

her release. The first words she said were,

characteristically, not words of thanks but of

command.

“Get to the second-floor phone,” she ordered

Connie, “and call the police. The three of us don’t

want to get caught here like rats in a trap.”

Connie could see her wisdom. They were

unarmed. The watchdog set to guard Miss Marville

181

might yet spoil the show. She raced down the stairs

on feet that stumbled from tension and excitement,

trying to remember where she had seen a telephone

on the second floor.

Time was everything now, everything! Connie

ran through two bedrooms before she found the

phone, closeted in a French night table. Suppose it

had been disconnected? For a second her throat felt

thick with alarm.

But there was a comforting buzz on the wire and

in a few seconds a calm voice asked, “Number

please?”

“Get me the police, quickly!”

Connie’s voice was peremptory enough to get

speedy action from the operator. The ring came

almost immediately and the desk sergeant answered

as usual, “Lower Merion Police.”

“Listen carefully,” Connie said without preamble,

taking pains to make her voice distinct and

understandable on the other end of the wire. “Miss

Cleo Marville has been kept prisoner in the

Wonderley house. This is Connie Blair speaking.

We are with her now. Get out here quickly and if

I’m not at the door, break in. Do you understand?”

“Wait a minute!” gasped the astonished

policeman. “Do you mean to say—?”

But Connie didn’t answer. She replaced the

receiver in its cradle with the faintest of clicks,

182

because somewhere below her, just as the

policeman’s voice had reached her, a door had been

opened, then shut.

Connie froze to the spot, scarcely daring to

breathe. Heavy steps were coming through the hall,

then turning off, probably through the kitchen door,

which was under the stairs. Yes, it was the kitchen,

because the swinging door was creaking slowly back

and forth, back and forth, with easy regularity. For

the moment she was unsuspected. But a moment

was soon gone!

Connie listened for the sound of voices above, but

apparently Miss Marville and Ken had heard the

door slam too. The house was as quiet as an empty

church.

Then the ordinary sound of water gushing from a

faucet floated up the stairs with alarming

distinctness. She knew beyond a doubt who had

turned the spigot. A shudder raced up her spine.

Now she began to wonder whether the policeman

had heard her clearly, whether she could count on

him to act. Perhaps she should not have cut off the

sergeant so instinctively. Perhaps she should have

run the risk of being overheard and made sure her

message was understood.

For a second or two more she stood quite still

beside the telephone, trying to decide on her next

move. Every passing minute was important now.

183

The fellow downstairs was presumably preparing

food for his charge. How long, Connie wondered,

might this take?

A thud from below made her start. Then she

realized it was only the closing of the refrigerator

door. How soon, she wondered, could she count on

the arrival of the police? Ten minutes? Fifteen? No

longer, surely! Connie realized that she was standing

with her hands clasped before her, and that her

fingers were like ice.

Trying to think calmly, Connie tried to persuade

herself that nothing too serious could happen in the

interval before the arrival of the police. But that the

caretaker would be an ugly customer she had no

doubt. She remembered what his hands were like,

and she shuddered again.

Crossing the floor on silent feet Connie slipped

behind the bedroom door. She was determined to

avoid any further strain for Miss Marville if it was

within her power. The poor woman had been

through enough.

From her new vantage point Connie had a view of

the hall through the crack in the door. I must plan a

delaying action, she thought as she waited. That’s

the best I can do now, provide a little distraction.

But she trembled in spite of herself, and tried not to

imagine what might happen if the police didn’t

arrive soon.

184

Crockery rattled in the kitchen, and Connie

strained her ears to catch the first sound of an

approaching police car, but to no avail. Every

passing minute seemed an hour, and she began to

yearn for the comfort of a ticking clock, but again

the house was utterly still.

Then feet shuffled in the hall below, the swinging

door creaked again, and Connie knew that her period

of vigil was coming to a climax. The feet started

slowly up the stairs.

Carrying a tray. Carrying it carefully. Connie

could picture the caretaker before she could see him.

Now, through the crack in the door, she had a

glimpse of a dirty hand on the edge of a round tin

tray.

Then she saw the man himself, the heavy face,

the coarse features. He was passing within a few feet

of her, making the turn to the open stairway that led

to the third floor. Connie tried to still the beating of

her heart, sure that it was loud enough to be heard.

She stood perfectly rigid, her back pressed against

the wall, scarcely daring to breathe.

When the fellow had passed out of sight she

counted his mounting footsteps.

“One, two, three, four, five.” Then, casting

discretion to the winds, she dodged out from behind

the door and clattered down the polished stairs.

The tray crashed to the steps behind her and z.

185

rough voice shouted an unintelligible curse as the

caretaker started down in pursuit. But Connie was

across the entrance hall before he had reached the

second floor. She tugged at the heavy door, frantic

for a moment because it wouldn’t give. Then she

saw the dead latch, snapped it over, and tugged

again.

The door swung back to let in the light of the gray

December day just as the police car rolled into the

short drive.

Two hours later Connie, Ken Cooper, Mr. Reid,

Mr. Renshaw, and Mr. Paul were assembled in front

of a log fire in Miss Marville’s drawing room. Only

their hostess was absent, and they were awaiting her

anxiously.

Miss Marville was not dilatory. Within five

minutes she swept into the room in a maroon-velvet

hostess coat that was positively regal. Connie could

see that Ken’s eyes were full of admiration, and no

wonder! With that auburn hair, she looked like a

portrait by Titian.

Another woman might have been bordering on

collapse, after such an ordeal, but not Cleo Marville.

After a bath and a change of clothing she was quite

her autocratic self. If the skin under her eyes was

smudged with weariness and tension, it only

increased the dramatic effect.

186

The men were on their feet in an instant. Mr. Reid

and Mr. Renshaw almost took Miss Marville into

their arms when they greeted her. But it was Mr.

Paul who surprised everyone. In the most exuberant

French manner, he kissed her on both cheeks.

“Let’s get to the root of this thing,” Miss Marville

said when the felicitations were over. “I think we

have some serious talking to do.”

“I’d like to hear your story first. I’m sure it will

be the most enlightening,” suggested Mr. Reid.

“I’m not so sure,” replied Miss Marville with a

glance at Connie. “But for what it’s worth, here it is.

“As you all probably know, I saw the

Thanksgiving game with the Stewarts, dined with

them in town, and excused myself afterward because

of a rather irregular business appointment. Von

Gletkin had phoned in the morning, saying that it

was imperative that he see me, and I had agreed to

stop in at his place on my way home.”

Miss Marville paused and made a quick little

gesture with her hand. “I’m not in the habit of going,

unattended, to a man’s house in the evening, so quite

naturally I didn’t mention any details of my errand

to my friends.”

Cleo smiled ruefully and went on. “Actually, I

rather hoped that the Baron had some new idea as

spectacular as his nail polish to present. I’m not a

woman to turn down an opportunity like that.”

187

This, however, as Miss Marville went on to

explain, was far from the case. “From the moment I

arrived,” she said, “the Baron seemed extremely

nervous. He had apparently called me there to plead

with me to postpone the launching date for Permon.

He gave me some perfectly fantastic reasons for

urging me to take this step, and I just laughed at

him. I told him it would be suicide for me even to

consider postponement, and I meant it.

“The most sinister expression came into his eyes.

He looked past me at his houseman, who was just

coming into the room with a tray, gave a short nod,

and a second later I remember feeling a blow on the

back of my head. Then—black-out.

“I woke up trussed like a turkey to that cot in the

storage closet,” she said with a gesture of

repugnance. “I remembered then that I had admitted

to von Gletkin that the formula was still my personal

secret. He apparently intended to keep it so.”

During the week that followed Miss Marville had

had plenty of time to think. Aside from the brief,

carefully supervised exercise periods allowed her

three times a day by her surly jailer, she had been

confined to the cot in the close little room.

“The day you came through with the police was

my low point,” she said, turning to George

Renshaw. “Any sound I could make in my throat

was completely ineffectual in the face of shuffling

188

feet and general conversation. I could hear

everything, but I couldn’t make myself heard.” She

smiled sardonically and added, “I felt no love in my

heart for you, George.”

Mr. Renshaw flushed to the roots of his dark hair.

“Can’t say I blame you,” he muttered. “I guess I

owe an apology to Connie. I was pretty brusque.”

“That’s all right.” Connie smiled back at her boss.

“What I still can’t understand,” broke in Cleo

Marville, “is why von Gletkin went to such lengths

to gain his point. He had already sold me the

formula and had been paid for it. Why should he

care when we brought out the new polish? I should

think next week or next year would be the same to

him. There must be something more.”

“I think,” said Connie hesitantly, “that there’s a

great deal more,” and every eye turned toward her.

“A lot of little things began to add up,” she began

slowly, “until finally I was certain that Miss

Marville was being held captive in the Wonderley

house.”

“Go on,” said Mr. Reid encouragingly.

But Connie couldn’t find words that were as

direct as Miss Marville’s. “For a long time,” she told

them, “I was completely at sea. I even suspected

you, Mr. Paul.”

The chemist looked embarrassed and confused,

and Connie could no longer find in him any

189

resemblance to Mephistopheles. He touched the

lapel of his coat nervously and said, “Me?”

Connie nodded. “The first day I ever saw you,

down at the factory, you and Miss Marville were

having an argument, and you were in a frightful

temper. You swept all the test tubes off the

laboratory table. Don’t you remember? Then later,

up at the office—”

But Cleo Marville and her chemist were looking

at each other and, astonishingly enough, both of

them began to laugh.

When she recovered herself, Miss Marville turned

to Connie. “Mr. Paul I have known for so many

years, and so very well!” she cried. “But he is very

excitable. He walks out on me about every six

months, gives up the job, leaves! But,” she added

with a touch of tenderness in her tone, “he always

comes back. He knows I couldn’t get along without

him, really. Isn’t that right?”

She had turned to Mr. Paul, and the chemist

nodded and made a little shrug of admission. “That’s

right. I was annoyed at Cleo because she insisted on

keeping her precious formula a secret, even from

me.”

“It was to protect you, really,” murmured Miss

Marville gently. Then she turned back to Connie.

“But go on, child.”

“It was the day the Angela Murray proof came

190

in,” Connie continued, “that I began to have an

inkling of the truth.”

Miss Marville stiffened. She looked at Mr. Reid

sharply. “Angela—?” she burst out, and Connie

suspected that it had been years since that name had

passed her lips.

Mr. Reid glanced at his partner. “We got a

Murray proof from one of the magazines by

mistake,” he explained, apparently not knowing

whether to dodge the issue or make a clean breast of

it. “I suppose now is as bad a time as any to tell you

that Murray is apparently bringing out a new nail

polish—but not until February.”

Connie added, “A new nail polish with properties

apparently identical to Permon’s,” she said.

“At least close,” soft-pedaled Mr. Reid.

Suddenly Connie leaned forward, speaking

directly to Miss Marville. “I knew that you were

Angela Murray’s sister, and that you had quarreled

and were estranged,” she said quickly. “I knew that

not you, but some other person, must have dropped

your car at the Paoli station. You would never have

left your keys in it, even if you were in great haste.

You’re too businesslike.”

“But what—” started Mr. Reid, confused by these

seemingly unrelated facts.

Connie, however, didn’t hear him. Still talking

directly to Miss Marville she continued. “The

191

Murray proof was the clue I needed to make these

things make sense. When I saw it I remembered

something I had thought curious at the time. The day

I called at the Wonderley house with your nail

polish samples, I had seen a letter with an Angela

Murray letterhead on Baron von Gletkin’s desk.”

“So?” Mr. Paul pressed her, frankly puzzled. On

the other faces surrounding her Connie saw interest,

indignation and concern.

“No!” Cleo Marville breathed, and Connie knew

that at last she was drawing the proper conclusion.

“Yes. The Baron must have sold the formula

twice, to you and to your sister. He never dreamed

that you could get into production so quickly, and

when I inadvertently let the cat out of the bag he got

scared. He had counted on another month to make

his getaway. At least that’s the way I see it,” Connie

said. Then, hesitantly, she added, “I suppose you

could call Angela Murray and make sure.”

Cleo Marville got up and paced up and down the

room like a lioness. “The villain,” she muttered.

“The cheat!”

Only Mr. Renshaw looked vaguely amused. “A

get-rich-quick Charlie,” he said. “Well, fancy that.”

“But why wouldn’t he leave at once?” asked Miss

Marville, whirling about suddenly. “Why did he

hang around?”

“I can guess,” said Mr. Renshaw. “I’ll bet Angela

192

hadn’t paid for the formula in full.”

It made Miss Murray appear more shrewd than

her sister, and Mr. Reid half rose from his chair to

intercede in his client’s behalf, but Cleo Marville

snapped her fingers. “I’ll wager that’s it!”

“We could find out.” Connie looked directly at

Mr. Renshaw and made a timid suggestion. “We

could get in touch with Angela Murray, couldn’t

we?”

“We already have,” said George Renshaw to

everyone’s surprise. “I wired yesterday and asked if

she could come over to Philadelphia on Monday

morning. Her secretary telephoned me at home last

night and said she would be in our offices at ten

o’clock.”

“Ten o’clock,” murmured Connie, turning to

Miss Marville. “That was the time set for the

appointment you weren’t able to keep.”

“I’ll keep this one,” Cleo said to everyone’s

surprise.

193

CHAPTER 18

Bright Tomorrow

The police spent the week end trying to trace Baron

von Gletkin through Angela Murray and other

sources.

They found out a good many things. They found

that he wasn’t a Baron and that he wasn’t a von and

that he wasn’t even a Gletkin. They found that he

had booked passage to South America on a Grace

Line ship for December fifteenth, and that a year

ago he had pulled a neat swindle on a New York

jeweler of minor reputation, but they didn’t find the

rogue himself.

Connie, over Sunday, lived in a state of

suspended exaltation. In the afternoon, at Miss

Marville’s express invitation, she went down to the

laboratories to visit the department where the new

nail polish would be made. Mr. Paul was there, and

one or two trusted helpers. Plans were being made to

194

start production at midnight, and by working both

day and night shifts Cleo was convinced that she

could have the polish on the market by the necessary

date.

Miss Marville drove Connie back to her aunt’s

apartment in her own car. “This is the first time I’ve

had a chance to thank you, properly, for everything

you’ve done for me,” she said.

Connie dropped her eyes. “I’m glad almost

everything has worked out all right.”

Cleo’s laugh was spontaneous. “What do you

mean—almost everything.”

“Well, they haven’t caught the Baron,” Connie

said. She couldn’t help calling him the Baron, even

though she now knew he had no more right to the

title than Ken Cooper.

“They will,” said Miss Marville confidently.

“They’ll watch every port, now that they know he’s

trying to leave the country.”

“I suppose so,” Connie said. There was another

thing that was troubling her, but she didn’t quite

dare approach Miss Marville on the second score.

She was almost glad when Cleo changed the subject,

and suggested, “Tell me something about yourself,

Connie. Have you always lived in Philadelphia? Do

you come from a big family? What do you want to

do with your life?”

Connie laughed. “That’s a big order,” she said,

195

but she began to tell Miss Marville a little about her

home.

“I have a twin sister,” she said after a while. “Her

name is Catherine—Kit—and she looks exactly like

me. At home, in Meadowbrook, we’ve shared the

same room and the same fun and the same friends

all our lives. When I came to the city, to take this

job, it was like leaving part of myself behind.”

Connie’s eyes grew dreamy, and she was

unaware that the woman beside her had become

remote and withdrawn. She told her things about Kit

she hadn’t thought of in years, little things that made

their childhood together a precious thing to

remember. “You’d love Kit,” she murmured, her

hands clasped in her lap. “She’s a wonderful girl!”

Then Connie realized that the car was drawn up at

the curb before Aunt Bet’s apartment. “My

goodness!” she cried, “I didn’t realize we were

home.”

As she turned to Miss Marville she saw that the

older woman’s eyes were fixed on distance too great

to grasp. She had a sudden urge to bring her back to

the present. She decided to say—even though she

said it badly—what she had been wanting to say.

“Miss Marville, will you do something for me?

Something very important? Something I’d like very

much?”

Cleo looked down into Connie’s earnest face.

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“I’ll try.

“Will you—” Connie looked full into the older

woman’s eyes as she asked it—“will you, when you

see your sister tomorrow, give her the opportunity to

be friends?”

She could feel the woman beside her stiffen, and

Connie fully expected to be cut off with a brusque

remark. But she didn’t drop her eyes. She was

pleading for herself and for Kit and for Angela

Murray and for all sisters everywhere. Impulsively

she covered Cleo’s hand with her own. “Please!” she

said.

Miss Marville looked down at Connie’s small,

gloved hand, and unexpectedly she relaxed. After a

minute she started to speak, almost haltingly, with

none of her usual assurance.

“I know how you feel about Kit,” she said. “I had

a chance to do a good deal of thinking during the

week I was strapped to that cot. Hours can be long,

but a lifetime is short. I found that out. I kept

remembering things Angela and I used to do

together, back in Indiana, when we were kids. We

were very close—as close, I think, as you and Kit.”

Understandingly, Connie nodded. “But why—?”

she wanted to ask, but she was silent, knowing she

would have to let Miss Marville tell as much of the

story—or withhold as much—as she chose.

“I’m not sure any man in the world is worth

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spoiling a relationship like that, yet we let one spoil

it,” Cleo said after a pause. “My sister married a

man I thought I was in love with. It wasn’t many

years before I found he wouldn’t have been right for

me. He wasn’t right for her either. They were

divorced.”

“Oh, how sad,” Connie murmured.

“I was jealous,” Cleo hurried on, as though now

she wanted to confess the worst. “Jealousy is an

ugly emotion, Connie. It destroys a person. I know.

It destroyed our friendship, our closeness. It made us

into rivals. It made us cold and hard.”

Connie let the woman beside her talk until she

was spent, giving her sympathy and understanding

by her very silence. As suddenly as she had started,

Miss Marville stopped. She was herself again, and

she shrugged with an actress’s ability to endow the

gesture with particular meaning. “I’m going to see if

we can patch things up,” she told Connie with a

rueful smile. “And you’re responsible,” she added.

“You and your Kit!”

Connie was so exultant she could have whooped

for joy, but she had no way of expressing her

delight. She could only murmur, “I’m so glad,” and

make her escape before tears of unaffected

sentiment over, flowed her eyes.

Brushing at them as she ran up the stairs, she was

able to laugh at herself. “I’m so silly,” she told her

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aunt, who was stretched out on the hearthrug in a

pair of plaid wool slacks, turning the pages of the

Sunday paper. “I haven’t a thing in the world to cry

about. I haven’t been happier in months!”

Connie dropped down beside her, and Elizabeth

Easton put out her hand and patted Connie’s clasped

ones. “Little Miss Fixit,” she teased her, when

Connie told her the story. “I suppose next you’ll be

persuading Marville and Murray to join forces and

go into business together.”

“I never thought of that,” said Connie with wide

eyes, “but it’s a wonderful idea!”

The more Connie thought about it, the better she

liked it. When she announced Miss Murray at the

agency the next morning, it was all she could do not

to drop some hint that this might be a brilliant move.

Angela Murray had the same red hair that

distinguished her sister, but she was smaller and less

impressive, and her eyes, Connie thought, were very

tired and sad.

She looked ill at ease when she walked into the

conference room, as though she were dreading this

interview. But Connie could see Cleo Marville get

up from the table, where she was seated, and walk

around to greet her sister with hands outstretched.

Then the door closed, and for the rest of the

morning she could only guess at what was taking

place inside. It wasn’t until twelve o’clock that

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George Renshaw came out of the room and strolled

over to Connie’s desk.

“Miss Marville has invited us to have lunch with

her,” he said, and named a hotel. “She has reserved a

private dining room and she wants you and Ken

Cooper to join the party. Do you think you could

arrange that?”

“Do I!” Connie grinned. “I don’t get a chance to

do something like that every day, you know.”

An hour later quite a little company was seated at

table. Besides Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Reid, Connie

and Ken, there were Mr. Brinton, Mr. Paul and

Georgia Cameron. Angela Murray was directly

opposite Connie, who was given the place of honor

on Miss Marville’s right, and everything was very

festive and gay.

Before the party was seated, Miss Marville had

pulled Ken Cooper aside and asked him a question,

and they had whispered together like a couple of

conspirators, but Connie hadn’t noticed. Her

attention was turned to Mr. Reid, who was just being

paged by a bellboy.

“Telephone, sir.”

Connie didn’t know what made her heart leap, but

she felt that this was no ordinary business call, and

the expression on Mr. Reid’s face, when he hurried

back into the room, confirmed her premonition.

“They’ve got von Gletkin!” he called at once.

200

“Nabbed him just as you thought they would, Cleo,

right at a New York pier.”

“With the money on him?” Angela Murray asked

practically.

“With the money on him,” repeated Mr. Reid.

“That’s fine,” drawled George Renshaw. “Now,

more than ever, there’s cause for rejoicing.” He

pulled out Cleo Marville’s chair.

During lunch it seemed to Connie that everybody

talked at once. They talked about the Baron, and

about Permon, and about all the angles to the

attempted swindle. Only Connie sat quiet, feeling

happy inside, but not feeling talkative today. She

looked from Cleo to her sister and thought that they

were rather alike, aggressive on the surface but as

vulnerable as anyone else underneath. She hoped

they were going to be friends.

Immediately after dessert was served Miss

Marville got to her feet. “There are just one or two

things,” she said in a voice that was full of feeling,

“that I’d very much like to say to all of you.”

With the rest, Connie turned toward Cleo and

waited.

“I think I owe my present good fortune,” said the

former actress, “very largely to one person.” She

smiled down directly at Connie. “And by good

fortune I mean two things. Permon will definitely be

ready on time.” There was a murmur of applause

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while Connie waited, breathless.

“And my sister and I will, in the near future, take

steps to combine our individual companies into a

joint enterprise.”

Connie clasped her hands ecstatically in her lap.

This was everything for which she had hoped,

everything and more. It was the climax to her most

daring dreams!

She looked from Miss Marville to Miss Murray,

her eyes shining. Then she happened to glance at

Mr. Reid, and she thought she saw a flicker of

concern in his expression.

“And will Reid and Renshaw have the joint

account?” she asked impulsively, because she

wanted everyone to be as joyous as she felt, today.

For a moment there was shocked silence. One

didn’t solicit big business in such an unorthodox

manner! Then George Renshaw caught his partner’s

eye and chuckled, and as though he had released a

spring a wave of hearty laughter swept the table.

No one was more amused than Cleo herself. “I

guess we’ve been sold a bill of goods,” she smiled at

her sister. “Unless you have reasons—”

Angela Murray shook her head and smiled. “If

everybody at Reid and Renshaw is as enterprising as

this young lady,” she said, “we should triple our

business next year.”

With a sigh of relief, Connie relaxed.

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“It’s to this same young lady,” Cleo Marville

continued, “that I want to express my public thanks.

I’ve already thanked her personally.”

Connie, now genuinely embarrassed, blushed

very becomingly.

Now, speaking directly to the girl on her right,

Miss Marville continued, “You asked me to do you

a favor yesterday. Today I’m going to ask you to do

me one more service.”

Connie looked up. “But of course!”

“I’d like you to accept, as a token of my

appreciation, a course of art lessons at night. Will

you do that for me?”

Connie’s eyes had never shone so brightly. For a

few seconds she was speechless. She looked from

Miss Marville to Ken Cooper, and back to Miss

Marville again.

“I think it’s the very nicest gift I’ve ever

received,” she said just above a whisper. “There’s

nothing I’d like better—nothing in the world.”

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