Puzzle of the Silver Persian Read Online Free PDF

brilliant table, laden with flowers, confetti, and favors. “How nice,” she remarked.
    A moment later—hardly long enough to show that they had not come down together—Tom Hammond arrived, in splendid dinner clothes but with a tie which drooped sadly. He glared at the heap of balloons which lay in front of his plate.
    Leslie Reverson sauntered in, supremely unconscious of the fact that he wore the best-cut trousers in the place. He sank into his chair and his face brightened as he saw the balloons. “How frightfully gay!” said young Reverson. He blew one to moderate proportions and sent it sailing.
    Loulu Hammond caught his mood of mild amusement, and joined him in balloonatics. They hardly noticed the advent of Miss Hildegarde Withers, who stared curiously around the table as she was shown to her chair. Dr. Waite had the usual congratulations to impart. “Knew you’d live!” he boomed.
    Then came Andy Todd, in a dinner jacket which it would seem that he had inherited from a great-uncle. It was shiny in the lapels, narrow in the badly pressed trousers, and Loulu Hammond knew at one glance that the black butterfly bow which graced his high collar had come ready-made, with a rubber band, to hold it in place.
    “Well!” said Andy Todd. He seemed extremely well satisfied with himself, for some reason or other. All his chagrin at the collapse of his pool on the hunted robin was gone, and he was internally bubbling.
    Miss Withers looked at him curiously. “There’s a young man who is up to something!” she instantly decided.
    At the other tables soup was being served, and the constant pop of bursting balloons was heard. “Shall we wait for Miss Noring, or start?” inquired the doctor. “All here but her.”
    “How about her friend Miss Fraser?” inquired Loulu calmly. “Surely she will be with us tonight?”
    Everyone looked at everyone else. Miss Withers realized that there was a secret here, or at least something which was a secret from her.
    “Will the poor girl come, do you think?” asked the Honorable Emily. No one answered her, for all were wondering. People at other tables were craning their necks to see. Candida Noring had been right. There was nothing for people on shipboard to do but gossip—and guess. Andy Todd’s peekaboo party on deck the second night of the trip had got around.
    Tom Hammond looked extremely casual as he placed a paper helmet on his sleek blond head. “Why shouldn’t she come?” he inquired. “The sea is calm as dishwater.”
    A woman pushed her way between the tables, almost brushing the wide shoulders of Captain Everett as she came. The captain was holding forth among his group of elderly somebodies on the dullness of seafaring and the joys, which he anticipated, of a duck farm on Long Island.
    The woman was Candida Noring, her tanned face strangely pale. Perhaps that was because for the first time tonight she wore lipstick, and a sleeveless dress of characterless beige.
    “You haven’t been waiting for me?” she said, as she sat down next the doctor. That told them what they wanted to know. Rosemary Fraser was not coming down to dinner, not even to the captain’s dinner.
    The soup was served, and a dry white wine was poured into the tall goblets in front of each place. Andy Todd was strangely restless…
    “We may as well open our gifts,” said the doctor. He took up the tissue-wrapped package which lay across his bread-and-butter plate. Swiftly he tore off the string—it was the “prop” cigarette box which he received as a gift every trip, and Dr. Waite had little interest in it. “Come on, everybody… see what the Shipping Board has brought you for Christmas!”
    Andy Todd was second in opening his present. It was another cigarette case, of japanned metal with a painted bridge on it. Miss Withers and the other women found powder boxes similarly decorated.
    “How perfectly perfect,” said the Honorable Emily. She was still worrying about Tobermory. Then