The Murder of a Fifth Columnist Read Online Free PDF

table, but I knew that in passing she’d seen the telegram lying on the floor. There wasn’t much that those blank vaguely nontracking eyes of her missed.
    “And Kurt Hofmann came because Corliss was coming. He doesn’t know our hostess either. Your Latin admirer Se-nor Delvalle got mixed up—he thought it was somebody else when he accepted. He doesn’t know her.”
    “And Larry?” I asked.
    “Oh, Larry. She’s probably paying him space rates.”
    “There’s still Mr. Thatcher.”
    “She met him on the ship coming up from South America two months ago. She told me that herself just now. I asked her.”
    “Maybe that’s the reason,” I said. “He’s a widower, isn’t he?”
    “It might be at that,” Sylvia said. “But that doesn’t explain the atmosphere down there. I tell you I can smell it, Grace. And there’s something wrong with Corliss—something’s happened to him. When you and Mrs. Sherwood left he went oil the deep end completely. It wasn’t pretty. He and Pete have been quarrelling a long time, but…”
    “But what?” I asked when she didn’t go on. “What happened?”
    “I don’t quite know. I was doing a little prying into Effie Wharton’s plans for poor Sam when it blew up at the other end of the room. Delvalle apparently brought up ‘Truth Not Fiction’ again. The first thing I knew they were practically tearing Pete and Corliss from each other’s throats. I wish to Heaven you hadn’t dragged that thing up.”
    “I wish to Heaven you’d tell me why!” I demanded.
    She looked oddly at me.
    “Grace,” she said—more serious than I’d ever seen her. “Drop it, will you? It’s just plain dynamite. Take my word for it, this once. I’m sorry to go enigmatical on you, but—I haven’t got time to go into it. That’s really why I came to find you.”
    She shrugged and turned to the mirror, looking at herself critically. The insistent seriousness faded from her face. She looked almost poignantly lovely for an instant as her eyes went blank and young. No one would have thought she had a brain in her head. She turned back to me.
    “Let’s go, if you’re through. I want to see Bliss Thatcher and Lady Alicia make their entrance. I’ll bet anything her ladyship doesn’t know our hostess either.”
    She took my arm. “You know, darling, it’s really wonderful. It couldn’t happen anywhere in the world but in Washington. Just think: four columnists, and a lady—that’s you, dear—and a great industrialist in a key position, a famous anti-Totalitarian author, a defeated House Leader with an ambitious disgruntled wife, a big shot in the Good Neighbor racket, and an English peeress trying to skim off a little top-milk while the skimming’s good… all together in the same place. And what for?”
    “Well,” I said, “our hostess conceivably might have the quaint idea that we’re all nice people.”
    She nodded slowly.
    “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I’ve lost my innocence and have a bad case of spiritual jaundice. Maybe Corliss just needs a good night’s sleep, and my nose is betraying me at last.”
    “Well, I hope so,” I said. If it hadn’t been for that telegram lying back there on the floor I’d have said it with greater confidence.
    Having Corliss Marshall and Pete Hamilton together anywhere was bad enough, I thought, but with Larry Villiers ready to slit both their throats neatly with his typewriter, and Sylvia Peele quietly reconnoitering in the interest of “Peelings” and acting like Cassandra on the walls of Troy, all we really needed to finish it off in grand style was to have Ruth Sherwood’s problem child barge in. I felt that even more strongly when we’d joined the rest of them again in the library. The atmosphere was not what you’d call relaxed. Corliss Marshall’s fleshy face was apoplectic and mottled with gray. Pete was like a dog with the hair still standing up along his spine, though he was at least trying to be polite. Delvalle was