government.”
Sylvia was looking at him with her blank, almost childish stare. She glanced at me.
“You ought even now to have blackouts in your great cities!” Kurt Hofmann exclaimed. “Prepare! Be ready!”
“Oh, we couldn’t do that!” Sylvia said flatly. “We couldn’t have blackouts!”
“Why not?”
“Because!”
Her voice couldn’t have been more innocent.
“It would disrupt everything. It would stop all the electric clocks, and the refrigerators. I was an hour late to dinner the other night, because the current had gone off and nobody had set the clock.”
An abrupt and I think I may say appalled silence for an instant galvanized, and then deflated, the whole group. All of them, that is, except Sam Wharton, Pete Hamilton and myself who knew her. I saw a sharp flicker of amusement that passed between the two men.
In the silence that had all the varying qualities of the people who were part of it, Sylvia said, “Well, it would, I mean. Wouldn’t it?”
Kurt Hofmann’s affirmative was all sibilants. “Yes!” he said. His voice was stinging with scorn. “It would, Miss Peele. I’m afraid it would. I’m afraid the refrigerators would be off a few hours. And America would be without its ice cubes.”
The atmosphere was so charged with electricity that if a blackout could have isolated it I’m sure our hostess would have ordered one. She was sitting there, obviously distressed, her head bent forward a little, waiting to interrupt them. As she started to speak the butler came into the room with a telegram on a tray.
“I hope that’s not from Bliss Thatcher,” Corliss said. He took his watch out of his pocket.
Mrs. Sherwood smiled. “Perhaps I’d better read it at once, if you’ll forgive me,” she said. The rebuke, if that’s what it was intended to be, was lost on Corliss Marshall—accustomed to being rude if he liked and to never being rebuked.
She tore open the envelope and glanced at the telegram.
“It’s not from Mr. Thatcher,” she said, smiling. She folded it and put it in her pocket. I wouldn’t have guessed from the tone of her voice that there was anything important in that wire. I wasn’t watching her read it, but I was looking at Sylvia Peele who was watching her… and I saw something flicker behind her eyes before she looked away and started talking to Mrs. Wharton.
“Mr. Thatcher said he would be a little late,” Mrs. Sherwood said. “He had to attend a meeting, so I put dinner back a little. He’s bringing Lady Alicia Wrenn. I knew you’d all want to wait for them. Perhaps I’d better call her and explain.”
She got up.
“Have you seen this apartment?” she said to me. “Do come and see my upstairs. Do you mind if I call you Grace?”
It was a little surprising—not the Grace part so much as wandering off to look at her apartment with my cocktail scarcely touched. I got up nevertheless, of course.
“I’d love to,” I said.
Sylvia moved her feet for me to pass and looked up at me with blank expressionless eyes. Mr. Hofmann stood aside and bowed. I could feel Larry Villiers’ eyes following us out the door.
“They’ve done a frightfully nice job,” Mrs. Sherwood said. “My name’s Ruth, by the way—I forgot you didn’t know it. They took out the ceiling and put in these stairs.”
We’d got to the top of the landing. She stopped abruptly, glancing back down the stairs, her hand tightening on my arm.
3
I suppose I looked as completely staggered as I felt at the extraordinary change that had come over her. Her face was the most perfect mask of tragedy I’ve ever seen—tragedy, and fear so total that it was almost appalling.
“—Forgive me, please!” she whispered urgently. “You have a child, haven’t you?”
“Two,” I said.
Her hand gripped my arm tightly.
“Then will you for God’s sake do something for me?”
For a moment I thought either she’d lost her mind or I’d lost mine.
“Of course,” I said.