RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK by Max Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page A

way, phone and all, so that his back was to her.
    "Hello, Grainger," he said.
    "Grainger?" the soprano jeered. "Since when? All right, you talk your way and I'll talk mine. And I'll be at the punch line afore you."
    If he hung up, that would be worse; Florence would wonder about his curtness.
    "I'm a little busy right now," he said.
    "This comes under the head of business. Haven't you forgotten something this month? You're a little overdue, aren't you? It's already past the fifteenth. I've waited as long as I can, but my expenses go on just the same, you know."
    "I told you about that," he said curtly. "You'll have to handle that yourself from now on, the best you can."
    "I'm not taking what you told me. You can't walk out of it that easy."
    "Look, call me at the office tomorrow."
    "Oh, no you don't. I tried that all this week. And all last. And all the week before. I don't get through down there. You've got it fixed. That's why I called you tonight, where you are now. Now I've got you where I want you, haven't I? I should have thought of it before."
    Florence had finally fixed the bracelet. She had risen, was leaving the room. At the door she turned, flung her arm out toward him with impatient disgust. "Oh, for heaven's sake, get rid of him, whoever he is, Hugh! I need you downstairs with me, they'll be arriving any minute now."
    The door closed. But it would be even worse now. She might pick up the main telephone below and accidentally cut in on the two of them.
    He hurried the conversation to a ruthless close.
    "Listen, you bitch," he said savagely, "I'm through with you. I've carried you long enough."
    "Oh, she left the room, hunh? You owe me fifteen hundred dollars for this month and another fifteen hundred you didn't give me last month. Are you coming down here with it?"
    "Go out and shake your tail on the streets."
    "Either you come here or I'll come up there. I'll walk right in, in front of your wife and all her guests, and let the whole world know about us. I'll give you until nine o'clock."
    "I'll kill you!" he vowed maniacally. "You show your face anywhere near here and I'll kill you with my own hands!"
    She cut short her own peal of derisive, silvery laughter by hanging up.
    The dancing began at about nine, after what had turned out to be one of Florence's more memorable and brilliant dinner parties. The second-string guests, invited only for the dancing, easily tripled or even quadrupled the number of people present. It was by any standard a full-fledged ball, complete even to hired name band and interspersed cabaret acts. When Florence entertained, she pulled out all the stops.
    He was doing his duty by one of Florence's more mature and less appealing women friends, the kind the good host deliberately singles out to be attentive to simply because they are in that category; not for their sake, but for the sake of his own party, to keep it from developing dead spots. And as she moved backward before him, overrouged, overjewelled and oversimpering, in a skippy little hop that was probably the last actively-surviving example of the 1905 two-step, the wide entryway to the ballroom slowly turntabled around into frontal perspective and came before him.
    Suddenly he saw her out there. Tall and lithe and coruscating in spangled white; knew her unmistakably, even at that distance. She was giving the butler her stonemarten wrap. The stone-marten wrap he had given her, once long ago when they were in love. He knew her way of posing, he'd seen her prepare to enter so many rooms. Turning gracefully half sideways, and drawing one knee slightly in toward the other. He knew her way of smiling complacently, eyelids half down, in a way that infuriated women, but wasn't meant for them anyway. She was doing it now. He knew that trick she had of upturning one forearm and gently stroking whatever bracelets she happened to be wearing down toward the elbow. She was doing that now too.
    She'd changed her way of doing her hair, in the