Her face hardened. "I despise pity."
"In spite of your name? Ruth is your name, isn't it? Piquant that. Ruth the ruthless."
She said, "I've no sympathy with weakness!"
"Who said I was weak? No, no, you're wrong there, my dear. Wicked, perhaps. But there's one thing to be said for me."
Her lip curled. The inevitable excuse. "Yes?"
"I enjoy myself. Yes," he nodded, "I enjoy myself immensely. I've seen a good deal of life, Ruth. I've done almost everything. I've been an actor and a storekeeper and a waiter and an odd job man, and a luggage porter, and a property man in a circus! I've sailed before the mast in a tramp steamer. I've been in the running for President in a South American Republic. I've been in prison! There are only two things I've never done, an honest day's work, or paid my own way."
He looked at her, laughing. She ought, she felt, to have been revolted. But the strength of Victor Drake was the strength of the devil. He could make evil seem amusing. He was looking at her now with that uncanny penetration.
"You needn't look so smug, Ruth! You haven't as many morals as you think you have! Success is your fetish. You're the kind of girl who ends up by marrying the boss. That's what you ought to have done with George. George oughtn't to have married that little ass Rosemary. He ought to have married you. He'd have done a damned sight better for himself if he had."
"I think you're rather insulting."
"Rosemary's a damned fool, always has been. Lovely as paradise and dumb as a rabbit. She's the kind men fall for but never stick to. Now you - you're different. My God, if a man fell in love with you - he'd never tire."
He had reached the vulnerable spot. She said with sudden raw sincerity: "If! But he wouldn't fall in love with me!"
"You mean George didn't? Don't fool yourself, Ruth. If anything happened to Rosemary, George would marry you like a shot."
(Yes, that was it. That was the beginning of it all.)
Victor said, watching her: "But you know that as well as I do."
(George's hand on hers, his voice affectionate, warm - Yes, surely it was true... He turned to her, depended on her...)
Victor said gently: "You ought to have more confidence in yourself, my dear girl. You could twist George round your little finger. Rosemary's only a silly little fool."
"It's true," Ruth thought. "If it weren't for Rosemary, I could make George ask me to marry him. I'd be good to him. I'd look after him well."
She felt a sudden blind anger, an uprushing of passionate resentment. Victor Drake was watching her with a good deal of amusement. He liked putting ideas into people's heads. Or, as in this case, showing them the ideas that were already there...
Yes, that was how it started - that chance meeting with a man who was going to the other side of the globe on the following day.
The Ruth who came back to the office was not quite the same Ruth who had left it, though no one could have noticed anything different in her manner or appearance.
Shortly after she had returned to the office Rosemary Barton rang up on the telephone.
"Mr Barton has just gone out to lunch. Can I do anything?"
"Oh, Ruth, would you? That tiresome Colonel Race has sent a telegram to say he won't be back in time for my party. Ask George who he'd like to ask instead. We really ought to have another man. There are four women - Iris is coming as a treat and Sandra Farraday and - who on earth's the other? I can't remember."
"I'm the fourth, I think. You very kindly asked me."
"Oh, of course. I'd forgotten all about you!"
Rosemary's laugh came light and tinkling. She could not see the sudden flush, the hard line of Ruth Lessing's jaw.
Asked to Rosemary's party as a favour - a concession to George! "Oh yes, we'll have your Ruth Lessing. After all she'll be pleased to be asked, and she is awfully useful. She looks quite presentable too."
In that moment Ruth Lessing knew that she hated Rosemary Barton. Hated her for being rich and beautiful and careless and brainless. No routine hard work in a dreary office for Rosemary - everything handed to her on a golden platter. Love affairs, a doting husband - no need to work or plan -
Hateful, nasty, condescending, stuck-up, frivolous beauty...
"I wish you were dead," said Ruth Lessing in a low voice to the silent telephone.
Her own words startled her. They were so unlike her. She had never been passionate, never vehement, never been anything but cool and controlled and efficient.
She said to herself: "What's happening to me?"
She had hated Rosemary Barton that afternoon. She still hated Rosemary Barton on this day a year later.
Some day, perhaps, she would be able to forget Rosemary Barton. But not yet.
She deliberately sent her mind back to those November days. Sitting looking at the telephone - feeling hatred surge up in her heart...
Giving Rosemary's message to George in her pleasant controlled voice. Suggesting that she herself should not come so as to leave the number even. George had quickly overridden that!
Coming in to report next morning on the sailing of the San Cristobal, George's relief and gratitude.
"So he's sailed on her all right?"
"Yes. I handed him the money just before the gangway was taken up." She hesitated and said, "He waved his hand as the boat backed away from the quay and called out 'Love and kisses to George and tell him I'll drink his health tonight.'"
"Cheek!" said George. He asked curiously, "What did you think of him, Ruth?"
Her voice was deliberately colourless as she replied: "Oh - much as I expected. A weak type."
And George saw nothing, noticed nothing!
She felt like crying out: "Why did you send me to see him? Didn't you know what he might do to me? Don't you realise that I'm a different person since yesterday? Can't you see that I'm dangerous? That there's no knowing what I may do?"
Instead she said in her businesslike voice, "About that S?o Paulo letter -"
She was the competent efficient secretary...
Five more days.
Rosemary's birthday.
A quiet day at the office - a visit to the hairdresser - the putting on of a new black frock, a touch of make-up skilfully applied. A face looking at her in the glass that was not quite her own face. A pale, determined, bitter face.
It was true what Victor Drake had said. There was no pity in her.
Later, when she was staring across the table at Rosemary Barton's blue convulsed face, she still felt no pity.
Now, eleven months later, thinking of Rosemary Barton, she felt suddenly afraid...
Chapter 3
ANTHONY BROWNE
Anthony Browne was frowning into the middle distance as he thought about Rosemary Barton.
A damned fool he had been ever to get mixed up with her. Though a man might be excused for that! Certainly she was easy upon the eyes. That evening at the Dorchester he'd been able to look at nothing else. As beautiful as a houri - and probably just about as intelligent!
Still he'd fallen for her rather badly. Used up a lot of energy trying to find someone who would introduce him. Quite unforgivable really when he ought to have been attending strictly to business. After all, he wasn't idling his days away at Claridge's for pleasure.
But Rosemary Barton was lovely enough in all conscience to excuse any momentary lapse from duty. All very well to kick himself now and wonder why he'd been such a fool.
Fortunately there was nothing to regret.
Almost as soon as he spoke to her the charm had faded a little. Things resumed their normal proportions. This wasn't love - not yet infatuation. A good time was to be had by all, no more, no less.
Well, he'd enjoyed it. And Rosemary had enjoyed it too. She danced like an angel and wherever he took her men turned round to stare at her. It gave a fellow a pleasant feeling. So long as you didn't expect her to talk. He thanked his stars he wasn't married to her. Once you got used to all that perfection of face and form where would you be? She couldn't even listen intelligently. The sort of girl who would expect you to tell her every morning at the breakfast table that you loved her passionately!
Oh, all very well to think those things now. He'd fallen for her all right, hadn't he?
Danced attendance on her. Rung her up, taken her out, danced with her, kissed her in the taxi. Been in a fair way to making rather a fool of himself over her until that startling, that incredible day.
He could remember just how she had looked, the piece of chestnut hair that had fallen loose over one ear, the lowered lashes and the gleam of her dark blue eyes through them. The pout of the soft red lips.
"Anthony Browne. It's a nice name!"
He said lightly: "Eminently well established and respectable. There was a chamberlain to Henry the Eighth called Anthony Browne."
"An ancestor, I suppose?"
"I wouldn't swear to that."
"You'd better not!"
He raised his eyebrows. "I'm the Colonial branch."
"Not the Italian one?"
"Oh," he laughed. "My olive complexion? I had a Spanish mother."
"That explains it."
"Explains what?"
"A great deal, Mr Anthony Browne."
"You're very fond of my name."
"I said so. It's a nice name."
And then quickly like a bolt from the blue: "Nicer than Tony Morelli."
For a moment he could hardly believe his ears! It was incredible! Impossible! He caught her by the arm. In the harshness of his grip she winced away.
"Oh, you're hurting me!"
"Where did you get hold of that name?" His voice was harsh, menacing.
She laughed, delighted with the effect she had produced. The incredible little fool!
"Who told you?"
"Someone who recognised you."
"Who was it? This is serious, Rosemary. I've got to know."
She shot a sideways glance at him.
"A disreputable cousin of mine, Victor Drake."
"I've never met anyone of that name."
"I imagine he wasn't using that name at the time you knew him. Saving the family feelings."
Anthony said slowly, "I see. It was - in prison?"
"Yes. I was reading Victor the riot act - telling him he was a disgrace to us all. He didn't care, of course. Then he grinned and said, 'You aren't always so particular yourself, sweetheart. I saw you the other night dancing with an ex-gaol-bird - one of your best boy friends, in fact. Calls himself Anthony Browne, I hear, but in stir he was Tony Morelli'."
Anthony said in a light voice: "I must renew my acquaintance with this friend of my youth. We old prison ties must stick together."
Rosemary shook her head. "Too late. He's been shipped off to South America. He sailed yesterday."
"I see." Anthony drew a deep breath. "So you're the only person who knows my guilty secret?"
She nodded. "I won't tell on you."
"You'd better not." His voice grew stern. "Look here, Rosemary, this is dangerous. You don't want your lovely face carved up, do you? There are people who don't stick at a little thing like ruining a girl's beauty. And there's such a thing as being bumped off. It doesn't only happen in books and films. It happens in real life, too."
"Are you threatening me, Tony?"
"Warning you."
Would she take the warning? Did she realise that he was in deadly earnest? Silly little fool. No sense in that lovely empty head. You couldn't rely on her to keep her mouth shut. All the same he'd have to try and ram his meaning home.
"Forget you've ever heard the name of Tony Morelli? Do you understand?"
"But I don't mind a bit, Tony. I'm broadminded. It's quite a thrill for me to meet a criminal. You needn't feel ashamed of it."
The absurd little idiot. He looked at her coldly. He wondered in that moment how he could ever have fancied he cared. He'd never been able to suffer fools gladly - not even fools with pretty faces.
"Forget about Tony Morelli," he said grimly. "I mean it. Never mention that name again."
He'd have to get out. That was the only thing to do. There was no relying on this girl's silence. She'd talk whenever she felt inclined.
She was smiling at him - an enchanting smile, but it left him unmoved.
"Don't be so fierce. Take me to the Jarrows' dance next week."
"I shan't be here. I'm going away."
"Not before my birthday party. You can't let me down. I'm counting on you. Now don't say no. I've been miserably ill with that horrid 'flu and I'm still feeling terribly weak. I mustn't be crossed. You've got to come."
He might have stood firm. He might have chucked it all - gone right away.
Instead, through an open door, he saw Iris coming down the stairs. Iris, very straight and slim, with her pale face and black hair and grey eyes. Iris with much less than Rosemary's beauty and with all the character that Rosemary would never have.
In that moment he hated himself for having fallen a victim, in however small a degree, to Rosemary's facile charm. He felt as Romeo felt remembering Rosaline when he had first seen Juliet.
Anthony Browne changed his mind.
In the flash of a second he committed himself to a totally different course of action.
Chapter 4
STEPHEN FARRADAY
Stephen Farraday was thinking of Rosemary - thinking of her with that incredulous amazement that her image always aroused in him. Usually he banished all thoughts of her from his mind as promptly as they arose - but there were times when, persistent in death as she had been in life, she refused to be thus arbitrarily dismissed.
His first reaction was always the same, a quick irresponsible shudder as he remembered the scene in the restaurant. At least he need not think again of that. His thoughts turned further back, to Rosemary alive, Rosemary smiling, breathing, gazing into his eyes...
