The Murder of a Fifth Columnist Read Online Free PDF Page B

watching them with bright shrewd eyes. Ruth Sherwood, talking to Sam Wharton and Larry, looked up suddenly.
    “Oh, there they are. I hope you aren’t all starved.”
    She went out into the hall.
    “Bliss—how nice!” I could hear her through the doorway. “How do you do, Lady Alicia. I’m Ruth Sherwood. It’s so nice of you to come.”
    Sylvia glanced at me with nothing in her face at all. I was listening to Senor Delvalle, but watching Kurt Hofmann. He was wandering about the room, rather as if he wanted to be au fait with each object when the auction began. He stopped at a desk in front of the side windows, and picked up a photograph in a tooled-leather frame that was lying— face down, I had an idea—on top of it. He made an odd sort of face, squinting his glass out of his eye.
    “What an unattractive person!” he said, holding it up for everybody to see. He was right. It was a photograph of a girl about fifteen, and not very… oh, well, after all, all people can’t be magazine covers. I felt a little sick. I had no doubt now why Ruth Sherwood didn’t want Betty to come just then. It was rather distressing—and infinitely more when we were all suddenly aware that Ruth Sherwood was standing there in the doorway, Bliss Thatcher by her side, and that her face was as white as the exquisitely cut dinner gown she wore.

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    She steadied herself against the door-frame for an instant, then came forward with all the ease and dignity in the world and took the picture out of Kurt Hofmann’s hands.
    “This is my daughter, Mr. Hofmann,” she said. “I’m sorry you won’t have the pleasure of meeting her. She’s away at school.”
    She put the picture in the desk drawer and closed it.
    Hofmann bowed. “I am sorry, Mrs. Sherwood. I’m… sure the child has a beautiful soul.”
    “—The swine,” Senor Delvalle said under his breath.
    “She has indeed,” Ruth Sherwood said coolly. She turned back to Mr. Thatcher, standing there massive and good-looking, his crisp curly black hair just touched with gray. He’d stopped short, and I thought for an instant he looked as if he was shocked by something. I wondered if he hadn’t known she had a child, or what difference any of it made in any case. It was all very puzzling to me—the more so as it was also obvious that Ruth Sherwood felt whatever it was that he was thinking. The effort with which she forced herself to smile, introducing him, was a painful contrast with the casual air she’d managed when she got the telegram.
    Only one thing was plain to me, and that was that I couldn’t possibly sit there and let the child burst in on her without some kind of warning. It wasn’t for any one of us to judge her, in any case—and certainly, I thought just then, it wasn’t something for anyone to make gossip fodder out of for the consumption of the public. I glanced at Larry Villiers. I didn’t think of Sylvia, because Sylvia has a heart in her body. I don’t think Larry Villiers has. He was watching Mrs. Sherwood, his eyes as bright as a copperhead’s spying a day-old thrust.
    I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed him. Pete Hamilton bent down by him to pick up a cigarette.
    “—Not for publication, pal—see?” he said under his breath.
    Larry picked up his glass and set it down again, a shadow of a smile on his lips. If only Lady Alicia Wrenn would come down and we could get into the dining room, I thought. If it hadn’t been for the rhythmic beat of the current in the clock on the desk I’d have been sure it had stopped. I tried desperately to remember what time the New York trains got into Washington, and then how long it would take her to get a taxi and get out to the Randolph-Lee. Maybe they’d call from the desk, I thought.
    I tried again to catch Ruth Sherwood’s eye, and couldn’t. Then there was a momentary respite. Lady Alicia Wrenn came in, and Larry, who adores a title, was on his feet and at her side in an instant.
    “How charming you look