An Officer and a Lady by Rex Stout Read Free Book Online

would be, crowded. The soft carpets caressed his feet; a Viennese waltz sounded in his ears; the second glances at Betty Blair filled his heart with pride and his chest with wind. He motioned the waiter aside and himself adjusted her chair and arranged her cape. Then, after giving their order, he sat and regarded her expectantly, still scenting vaguely the delicious perfume that had arisen from her crown of golden brown hair.
    “I’m not going to ask why you’re so kind to me,” he said. Betty Blair sat silent, pulling off her gloves.
    “What do reasons amount to at a time like this?” continued Stafford. “It’s enough to know that we are here. Outside is the world, with its sorrows and its pain, its cold logic and its stubborn facts. No one knows better than I how full it is of shams and lies and hypocrisy. It is only when his heart speaks that a man tells the truth.”
    “And you?”
    “Mine is speaking now. It has been—ever since I first saw you. If I could only tell you all that I have felt—all that these few days have meant to me! I have thought of nothing else, I have cared for nothing else, but this.” His tone was full of earnestness, his eyes looked into hers with a sincere and real appeal.
    “But you don’t expect me to believe you?”
    “Try me,” Stafford leaned forward and spoke eagerly. “I know what you would say: that I do not know you. Ah! Do I not? Who could look into your eyes without seeing the kindness of your heart? Nothing could make me happier than that you should ask me for proof. Anything—I would do anything.”
    A smile, charming and earnest, appeared on the face of Betty Blair. She stretched a hand across the table toward Stafford. Her eyes looked into his with confidence and satisfaction.
    “I believe you,” she said, “because I want to. But I’m going to demand your proof.”
    “I would do anything, go anywhere for you,” repeated Stafford, as gravely as his intoxication would permit. “A demand from you is a favor. Try me.”
    Betty Blair opened a large silk bag which she had carried on her arm, and from it took a long slip of paper, a leather bound tablet and a fountain pen. She turned a cool, calculating eye on Stafford, unsheathed the fountain pen, and cleared her throat in a businesslike manner.
    “Your address is 25 Broad Street?”
    Stafford, guessing wildly as to the meaning of these deliberate preparations, nodded.
    Betty Blair turned to a page in the leather bound book and wrote on it. Then:
    “You are a Republican, I believe?”
    “Unless you’re a Democrat.”
    “Mr. Stafford, this is no joke. You are a Republican?”
    “I am,” seriously. “Is it a crime?”
    For reply Betty Blair pushed the slip of paper across the table and handed him the fountain pen. “Sign on the twenty-fourth line, please,” she said.
    As Stafford caught up the paper and read the printed paragraph at the top his jaw became firmly set and his hand trembled. Then he looked across at Betty Blair with a cold and cheerless eye.
    “Miss Blair,” he said, “I congratulate you. But you’ve missed your mark. I refuse to keep a promise obtained by fraud and misrepresentation.”
    “Mr. Stafford!”
    “O piffle!” said the exasperated Stafford inelegantly. “You’ve deceived me. You’ve destroyed my illusions. But you’re up against the wrong man. Take it from me, the best thing you can do is to put a marble bust of Sappho on your mantelpiece, read carefully the life of Peg Woffington and hang Susan B. Anthony on a sour apple tree. If you’ve finished supper I’m ready to go.”
    “Mr. Stafford,” Betty Blair’s voice was cold and stern, “this is no time for personalities. Can you deny that ‘Votes for Women’ is the universal password in the intellectual world of today? I’m not surprised that you wouldn’t sign that pledge, even after you’d promised. It’s just like a man. But I warn you—” she choked with indignation—“I warn you—”
    “You have