The Crimson Tide Part 22

"It's a wonderful sofa. It's here, now. It's an antique. But I can't make up my mind how to upholster it."

"Would you care for a suggestion?"

"Please!"

"Well, I'd have to see it----"

"I thought you'd say that. Really, Mr. Shotwell, I'd like most awfully to see you, but this place is too uncomfortable. I told you I'd ask you to tea some day."

"Won't you let me come down for a few moments this evening----"

"No!"

"--And pay you a formal little call----"

"No.... Would you really like to?"

"I would."

"You wouldn't after you got here. There's nothing for you to sit on."

"What about the floor?"

"It's dusty."

"What about that antique sofa?"

"It's not upholstered."

"What do I care! May I come?"

"Do you really wish to?"

"I do."

"How soon?"

"As fast as I can get there."

He heard her laughing. Then: "I'll be perfectly delighted to see you,"

she said. "I was actually thinking of taking to my bed out of sheer boredom. Are you coming in a taxi?"

"Why?"

He heard her laughing again.

"Nothing," she answered, "--only I thought that might be the quickest way--" Her laughter interrupted her, "--to bring me the evening papers. I haven't a thing to read."

"_That's_ why you want me to take a taxi!"

"It is. News is a necessity to me, and I'm famis.h.i.+ng.... What other reason could there be for a taxi? Did you suppose I was in a hurry to see you?"

He listened to her laughter for a moment:

"All right," he said, "I'll take a taxi and bring a book for myself."

"And please don't forget my evening papers or I shall have to requisition your book.... Or possibly share it with you on the upholstered sofa.... And I read very rapidly and don't like being kept waiting for slower people to turn the page.... Mr. Shotwell?"

"Yes."

"This is a wonderful floor. Could you bring some roller skates?"

"No," he said, "but I'll bring a music box and we'll dance."

"You're not serious----"

"I am. Wait and see."

"Don't do such a thing. My servants would think me crazy. I'm mortally afraid of them, too."

He found a toy-shop on Third Avenue still open, and purchased a solemn little music-box that played ting-a-ling tunes.

Then, in his taxi, he veered over to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, where he bought roses and a spray of orchids. Then, adding to his purchases a huge box of bon-bons, he set his course for the three story and bas.e.m.e.nt house which he had sold to Palla Dumont.

CHAPTER VII

Shotwell Senior and his wife were dining out that evening.

Shotwell Junior had no plans--or admitted none, even to himself. He got into a bath and later into a dinner jacket, in an absent-minded way, and finally sauntered into the library wearing a vague scowl.

The weather had turned colder, and there was an open fire there, and a convenient armchair and the evening papers.

Perhaps the young gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the inoffensive _Evening Post_.

Before any open fire any young man ought to be able to make up whatever mind he chances to possess. Yet, what to do with a winter evening all his own seemed to him a problem unfathomable.

Perhaps his difficulty lay only in selection--there are so many agreeable things for a young man to do in Gotham Town on a winter's evening.

But, oddly enough, young Shotwell was trying to persuade himself that he had no choice of occupation for the evening; that he really didn't care. Yet, always two intrusive alternatives continually presented themselves. The one was to change his coat for a spike-tail, his black tie for a white one, and go to the Metropolitan Opera. The other and more attractive alternative was _not_ to go.

Elorn Sharrow would be at the opera. To appear, now and then, in the Sharrow family's box was expected of him. He hadn't done it recently.