Isabel Ostrander

“ Mrs. Ford bit her pouting underlip and for the merest second the round, childish, blue eyes narrowed with a shrewdness oddly foreign and incongruous to them.
"Not with us, and it wasn't an—an engagement exactly. My husband and I dined and spent the evening with Mr. Cutter and they are such inseparable friends that we rather thought he might drop in." ”

“ McCarty boarded a downtown Madison Avenue car, his thoughts still busied with the queries which that brief interview evoked. Mrs. Kip had protested against his interrogation, but she had not dared to turn him summarily from her door until she learned that suicide had been accepted by the police as the solution of the mystery. Did she believe that Creveling had killed himself and was notoriety all that she feared? ”

“ McCarty, was the reason for her unexplained absences at most—most unconventional hours. Usually I arrange a daily social program for my clients as though they were débutantes, but Mrs. Kip soon gave me to understand that she would exercise her own judgment in such matters. I do not pry into the affairs of other people, but when I am practically responsible for their presentation to the right society I must be sure that they do not jeopardize my reputation as well as theirs by indiscretions, however innocent."
"And Mrs. Kip was what you call indiscreet, ma'am?" ”

“ Her voice rose quaveringly. "I would never be able to obtain another client!"
"But this is just confidential, between you and me." McCarty smiled. "I know all about the Waverlys and O'Rourkes and Crevelings, but as far as I can make out Cutter is the only bachelor in their immediate set."
"Mr. Cutter has been attentive to Mrs. Kip, but not more so than to many another attractive widow or divorcée," Miss Frost observed. "No débutante has ever interested him although he would be a splendid catch. ”

“ Sports with the hors d'œuvres, art with the soup and fish, Maeterlinck with the entrée, opera with the roast—but all for nothing! He is the most difficult—"
"Ha-h'm!" McCarty looked somewhat dazed, but stuck doggedly to his point. "About the gentlemen who paid attention to Mrs. Kip. Who were the others, Miss Frost?" ”

“ This time it was a rug, I think, with some queer unpronounceable name. He'd been after it for months—"
"I see," McCarty interrupted dryly. "Do you remember, ma'am, whether him and Mr. Waverly had much talk together that night?"
"Why, no!" The blue eyes opened wide once more. "I don't remember that they even spoke, but I wasn't paying any attention to them. I know Mr. Creveling left early, very soon after Mr. Waverly came."
"Is it a habit of Mr. Cutter's to entertain so much in his own house?" ”

“ A sudden remembrance of Douglas Waverly's testimony flashed across McCarty's mind. The last time he admitted having seen Creveling had been on Tuesday evening also, at the house of Nicholas Cutter.
"'Twas at Mr. Cutter's that you saw him on Tuesday, then, wasn't it?" he asked. "Who else was there?"
"The O'Rourkes and Mr. Douglas Waverly and Mrs. Baillie Kip." Mrs. Ford spoke haltingly and the high treble had lowered. "Mr. Creveling seemed in the very best of spirits; he always was when he—"
"When he what, ma'am?" McCarty prompted quickly as she paused. ”

“ She has another set of sables, as well as all kinds of fur garments for every possible occasion, yet she must have these because they were reputed to have been made for the Czarina and smuggled out of Russia after the revolution. ”