McKenna

“ John G. Slade, at the goal of her ambitions, over what perilous paths only she herself knew. The knowledge of what she had won suffocated her, for the nature of dramatic and adventurous spirits is such that they must seek relief in confidence. More, they crave the admiration that only another can bring to complete their moments of self-intoxication. At this moment, when her rôle had been played, she craved applause. McKenna was not a friend—he was a machine, a rock that would give back an echo. ”

“ She turned toward the detective, who waited like a statue. "Mr. McKenna, I know you are a busy man. I won't keep you. Mr. Beecher has come to assist me on a very painful errand, one on which I would trust no other man that I know in New York." She held out her hand. "I do not often make mistakes in men, or I should not have told you what I did. ”

“ It exposes without mercy the squalid little soul of a person who is or has been [Pg 179] of importance in society, and if her self-revelations make her seem abhorrent it is because she herself seems so abhorrently alive and so minutely true to certain morbid, unlovely sides of human nature.
You would not guess from the abounding vitality he puts into his novels that McKenna was by no means of the robust kind. In winter he generally escapes from our unsatisfactory climate, and you hear of him voyaging to remote parts of Asia or South America, or somewhere where the sun shines. ”

“ The walls were advancing and retiring, the banisters swayed and the floor of the landing heaved gently like a pitching boat.
When she felt steadier, she knocked at the door and waited patiently until she heard feet shuffling in the distance. A pink-faced elderly man informed her that Mr. Waring had gone away for the Long Vacation; he spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and Barbara decided that he must be the clerk with whom she had contended by telephone and whom she had imagined to be obsequious and yet sinister, with red eyes, short hair and bitten nails, a second Uriah Heep. ”

“ McKenna was married in Chicago to Miss Laura Linebaugh, a daughter of Noah and Sarah (McCaslin) Linebaugh, a granddaughter of Jonas Linebaugh and a great-granddaughter of Susana Wise, of the Wise family of Rockingham county, Virginia, who were important factors in the Revolutionary war for the freedom of America. Mrs. McKenna's mother was a daughter of Cunningham and Mary Ann (Allen) McCaslin and a granddaughter of James Allen, also of Revolutionary war fame. ”

“ The more stories you tell me, the more I'm tempted to wonder whether you don't set the fashion. Some one's frightfully to blame for not pulling you up, though I know Jim did his best. Does it make no difference to you when a man like that refuses to have you inside his house?"
Lady Barbara walked slowly to the table.
"You must apologize for that, Mr. Waring."
She imagined that she was contending with one man over a single hasty sentence; but behind Jack stood his father, his father's regiment and his father's club, all honestly conservative and gently self-approving. ”

“ Beginning in the decadent world of the late ’nineties and the dawn of the century, the story comes down, or goes up, into the miraculously new world that the war made, and glances optimistically into the future. Most of its characters are drawn from the higher classes of society, and the love romance of Sonia and David O’Rane, the most charming and glowingly human hero McKenna has ever given us, has the social and political history of the period for its setting. ”

“ Aren’t you dreadfully tired?”
The cloak and scarf kept him for a moment from recognizing her as the woman who had sat opposite him at dinner.
“I am, rather,” he answered, leaning against the arm of a chair. “But it’s the last speech I shall ever make.”
“In America, you mean? It’s so glorious to feel that I’ve actually met you! You’re crossing on the Lithuania, aren’t you? So are we. I shall hope to see you on board. And I shall make a thorough nuisance of myself by asking you to write in my autograph book. Now I mustn’t keep you; I expect you’ve all sorts of packing to do.” ”

“ The babble of voices rose and swelled until the chairman wound his way back to Eric’s side and led him into the dining-room. Detachment changed for a moment to antagonism as he walked between the long whispering rows: warm waves of scent beat upon his cheeks; before, behind and on either side he felt the magnetism of a thousand eyes drawing him out of his self-sufficiency and assailing his frozen reserve. As quickly as his companion would allow, he walked on, looking stiffly ahead, to the seat of honour. ”

“ The Seraph shook his head at me.
"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or any one but your own self."
I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.
"No emotional crises have come my way," I protested.
[109] "Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this afternoon."
I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.
"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will you...? No! sorry." ”

“ The woman Davenant's in London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow morning. [213] Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant will have to."
"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.
"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."
Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.
"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. ”

“ Garraboy turned his back and walked slowly back and forth, evidently in distressed conjecture, occasionally raising his head to shoot a glance at the three, half in rage, half in fear.
All at once he stopped by the desk as though his mind had come to a certain decision, and, bearing heavily on it, said:
"I do not know that I care, under the circumstances, to enter into any discussion. You, Mr. McKenna, represent my client, Mrs. Alva White; your claim against me is for forty-five thousand eight hundred and forty-six dollars." He drew out his pocketbook. "I have here a check made to your order." ”

“ In a crisis I am only too well aware that I am always left to find a way out, but that night I felt hardly adequate even to ordinary conversation; and, when this Sir Appleton began to shew the cloven hoof, I knew that only a man could deal with him.
We were taken utterly off our guard. He came into the room, shook hands with me, bowed to Will, waited until Norden was out of the room and then said:
“There’s a lady downstairs who wants to see one of you for a moment. She was on the doorstep, when I arrived, and your servants didn’t want to admit her. ”

“ She jabbed at the fire in reflective silence, and Eric, watching her through half-closed eyes, seemed to see rippling waves of unhappiness, disappointment, loneliness and discomfort rising until they submerged her and she ceased to struggle. She was white and tired; her arms were thin and her shoulder-blades sharply outlined under the green gauze of her dress, as she stolidly poked the fire and refused to look at him. The air of assured efficiency which she had worn in New York never seemed more than the assertive protest of extreme youth against patronage ”

“ If you don't come back at once, impulse will land you in double pneumonia."
She slipped her arm through his and began to walk, with a slight limp, back to the hotel.
"We had a gipsy in the family, though no one's ever allowed to mention her," she announced abruptly. "D'you call me pretty? I think you would, rather. Val Arden says I'm the 'haggard Venus.' Well, any looks we've got come from her."
"With a dash of temperament thrown in. Suppose we go a bit faster and then look for a fire? You're quite well enough to dance now." ”

“ He crossed the hall with a smile and held out his hand without fear of a rebuff. She looked at him and had to confess herself at fault. His heavy overcoat was hanging open, and in his knee-breeches and pink coat he looked slim and boyish; he was a booby at dinner and a clod at the ball; outside his own profession he had no more knowledge or ideas than a schoolboy. Yet she submitted to his criticism almost in silence.
"Won't you part friends?" he repeated.
Lady Barbara could not let him ride off so complacently. She pressed one hand to her side and groped her way to the table ”

“ I left my walnut-tree, pushed [241] open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck of bright red froth.
"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.
She looked at me in surprise.
"That is my name."
"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your name. We have called...."
"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous finger at the Seraph.
"He is. We have called for Miss Roden." ”

“ Their tastes harmonized; every one would say that it was a most suitable alliance. And some would whisper that she had come very near to throwing herself away on Jack Waring. People ought not to be allowed to be so rich....
He strode bare-headed on to the pavement, feeling helpless and trying to persuade himself that he was only nervous. As they drove to Ross House, he watched and listened to Lancing and Barbara, envying them their ease and wondering whether it was fair for two people to exclude the third from conversation by choosing an impossible subject. ”

“ Slade."
"Have you informed Mr. Beecher of the fact?"
"It has just come to my knowledge," said McKenna; "I shall, naturally, inform him."
Mrs. Kildair looked at him a moment with an appearance of reflection.
"The question was quite unnecessary," she said. "Of course, you have told him, and you have every right to deny it." Then she continued with more decision: "This is exactly my danger—you see, I won't mince words. It is a situation which constantly occurs, and which is inexplicable except by one construction in the eyes of society. Now—"
"I warn you," again objected the detective. ”

“ Savage lighted a cigarette and shewed cavernous dark eyes and an aquiline nose set in a curiously narrow face which looked as if the cheek-bones had been crushed together.
"Madame Hilary!"
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
She held out a case, and Barbara took one to gain time. So much had happened since the meeting in Webster's room that it no longer troubled her. The woman was certainly a blackmailer, as she had almost proved when she went to Lord Crawleigh and asked for "temporary assistance." ”

“ And there, in the peace and wonderful sunshine, one had an opportunity of recovering one's perspective. I had tided Arthur through his great crisis; and there was nothing, I felt, to fear in the future. But we could not let it rest at that. There had been an intolerable amount of malicious gossip—how wide-spread I could not believe until the proof was thrust before me—; men jesting in their clubs, women gloating... And you may be sure that the Brackenbury and Spenworth broods were only too delighted to think that yet another had been dragged down to their level ”

“ Omitting his personal observations of Miss Charters and their conversation in the cab, he recounted his return to Mrs. Kildair's, his meeting with Garraboy, the discovery of the detective, the strangeness of Mrs. Kildair's attitude, and her concealment of the identity of the next visitor. He concluded, and both young men looked at the detective as if they expected him to solve the problem on the instant—an attitude that was not lost on McKenna.
"I suppose you young men believe every word that has been written on deduction," he said, grinning and biting off the end of another cigar. ”

“ I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.
"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."
I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having to submit to examination by an old K.C.
"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the police on a most serious charge...."
"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an impatient glance at Nigel. ”

“ The engagement to Slade, following so dramatically his triumphant rise from threatened disaster, had made him realize that whatever methods she had dared to employ, Mrs. Kildair was one of those whom society would never scorn for her failure. Intrigued as he was over the details of the theft of the ring, what absorbed him most was the woman. And determined at all hazards to force the defenses of her reserve, he rang the bell.
Mrs. Kildair was at the piano, the riotous movements of an Hungarian Czardas filling the apartment. She broke off suddenly, rising as McKenna entered the studio. ”

“ The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. ”