Passing Strange by Richard Sale

Author:Richard Sale [Sale, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1942-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

There was a knock on the door and I opened it. Coxie’s army came in. Evelyn and Bill first. Evelyn looked gaudy. “You look awful,” I said.

“Petey, now don’t you go picking on me,” she said.

“I’m not picking on you,” I said quietly, keeping it between us, “but for heaven’s sake, dear, you ought to wear a decent evening dress instead of that thing.”

She had on a lurid purple dress which made her look like a juke joint hostess.

“You’re just old-fashioned,” she said.

“Bill,” I said, “can’t you instil a modicum of good taste in your wife?”

“I regret to report, Petah,” Bill said diffidently, “that since her pregnancy, Eve has regarded me as a stranger and an interloper. She thinks that my presence may affect the fine little fellow, and that he will grow up to be a rogue and a dipsomaniac. She claims to be neurotic. She just dispenses with my entire company during this period, and if that is the way you go about having babies, I’ll take vanilla.”

Behind them came Al Roche in his exotic midnight blue, and Roberta DuPrés — of all people! — in a lush and form-fitting scarlet-satin item which not only revealed the declivity of her umbilicus, but also announced the fact that she had a fine scar in the middle of her faint puff of tummy. Believe me, the gown was that tight. She had not been poured into it; it had been zippered around her. But the scar fascinated me. You could see its lips plainly, the satin dipping into the brief valley where the wound had healed. I doubt if anyone else would have noticed it, for it resembled a dress seam. But there was no seam there. It was the same kind of scar that Faith Normandy was going to find when she looked at herself in a mirror. A Caesarean-section scar.

Feeling smug in my new-found knowledge, I instantly applied it to the Hollister-Kane-MacArthur case, only to have it subordinated to my naive inability to understand the conglomerate gathering which Bill had arranged. Here was Sylvia who had just broken clear of Al Roche , smiling pleasantly with him, and he with her, as though nothing had ever happened. Here was Roberta DuPrés shaking hands warmly with me, the sweet rosebud smile on her very luscious lips, just as if it were perfectly natural for her to be in New York, although the last I’d heard she had signed a contract with Darryl Zanuck to make cinemas in Hollywood.

“Dr. Merritt.” Roberta DuPrés said sweetly, “how awfully awfully nice to see you again! A most pleasant surprise!”

“Oh, thanks!” I said dryly. “I thought you were going to stay in Hollywood for a picture.”

“Everything went wrong,” she said. “Just everything.” But she could smile through it all, couldn’t she? “Bill’s working right now.” She smiled in Al’s direction.

My silly brother beamed paternally.

Al came over then and shook hands and flourished his cigar under my nose. “Well, Doc, by God, you never expected to see good old Al again, did you?”

“No,” I said.

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