Rex Stout by Red Threads Page B

at him. Finally, she said quietly, “I begin to understand why some people are called Indian givers. I had always supposed it was slander.”
    “It is. It’s a detestable phrase. If I could only—”
    Jean’s sudden burst of laughter stopped him. “Excuse me,” she cried, “but it’s funny! Very funny! Less than an hour ago Mr. Barth hunted me up to tell me that his wife was crazy about it and he would like to buy it for her—of course, he said, knowing its history, he would expect to pay a stiff price for it, but he would expect me to authenticate the bayeta yarn—and now you want me to give it back to you—” Jean laughed again. Then she sobered, and continued in a tone of great friendliness, “It shows you have good judgment, anyway. Portia Tritt would look very nice in it.”
    “Portia! Good lord—wait a minute!”
    But Jean, who could move swiftly on occasion, kept going. She tossed back over her shoulder, “She would look nice in it, but she can’t have it!”
    She was twenty paces off when Guy, moving more swiftly still, overtook her, gripped her arm, and stopped her. She whirled to face him, and there was bite in her voice:
    “Mr. Carew! Really!”
    He released her arm, and stood. She moved again, off across the lawn—hearing his footsteps after her again—no, that was something else—he wasn’t coming—yes, he was—no—
    No.
    She went on, came to a gravelled drive and crossed it, detoured around a bank of rhododendrons ten feet high, and went on again. There was no sound of pursuit. She became aware that she was passing the cutting garden, where the year previously she had been taken by Ivy-Bernetta to gather gladioli. She left it behind. There was another stretch of lawn, or rather mowed meadow grass, and finally a thicket for mixed shrubbery beyond which she caught a glimpse of the fence which bounded the estate. Practical considerations arose. She might be able to climb the fence, but didn’t care to. Her car was parked far away, in the space on the other side of the house. There was no point in racing around the boundary of the grounds. She chose a grassy spot beside a luxuriant shrub with dark-green leaves, lay down flat on her back, and closed her eyes.
    She was furious; she had made a howling fool of herself. It was no mitigation that she could list the contributing causes; still she listed them. First chronologically, her moderately unpleasant surprise at the appearance of Guy Carew as the escort of Portia Tritt. Second, his stoical inattention to the presence of herself and what she was wearing. Third, the unfortunate coincidence that in the dressing tent she had heard two women discussing with gusto the affair which, according to gossip, hadtaken place some eight years previously, with Guy Carew and Portia Tritt as the principals. Fourth, the fact that when she had heard his voice as she stood against the tree, her heart had jumped. At that very moment she had been deciding that nothing could be sillier than her imagining she wanted a husband—and then merely at the sound of his voice her heart had jumped.
    She opened her eyes, looked for five minutes past the shrubbery’s edge at the sky growing dim for the evening, and closed them again. It was incredible that she had said that to him about Portia Tritt. Even if her intention to have him for a husband had been anything more than a joke, even if she had been half-way serious about it on account of some crazy impulse, it remained the sort of thing that Jean Farris would never stoop to. Even if she should again some time decide that he had desirable qualities as a—well, as a companion—which was of course out of the question and worth thinking of only as pure hypothesis—even so, she would never care to be with him again after making that exhibition of herself.
    For many minutes, lying there on the grass beneath the shrub, she let that pot of self-scorn simmer within her breast, and kept stirring it and poking at it, as the