XV
KEN was very calm, very self-possessed that night. He wafted a carefree greeting to Rosemary, a light kiss for Norah's cheek, a flippant word to Frankie Regan. When Howard appeared on the backstage stairs, Ken was powdering his face, his make-up complete.
"I couldn't wait to see you," Howard said. "You've really made me feel very bad."
"I'm sorry you misunderstood." Ken was contrite.
"Why be temperamental? I mean by moving out. I don't care about the drinking. Nor what happened last night. We'll keep out of night clubs, if you please. We'll have our parties at home."
"Old mother Vee and her brood," Ken mocked. "No."
The stage manager called, "Curtain! Curtain!" "I've got to go," Ken said. "See you after the show."
As he danced in front of the chorus line, he heard Frankie Regan whisper: "Look at A one hundred and seven. Get it, Ken."
Ken flung legs high. He balanced himself deftly. In the first row center, directly back of the orchestra leader, he saw steel blue eyes watching him. Later, from the wings, he noticed a full-faced, light-haired, monocled man of about forty. "Ernie Emerson," Frankie whispered. Above the roar of applause, Ken asked: "Who's he?" "Boston jeweler," Ray Leech said.
At intermission, an usher came to Ken's dressing-room. "A gentleman gave me this box for you, Mr. Gracey. A note's inside." He handed Ken an oblong package. Ken opened it. Within a purple velvet jewel box was a card, on the back of which was written in tiny script: "Thanks for a wonderful evening. Ernest Emerson." Ken opened the box. Beneath fine tissue paper lay a platinum wrist watch.
Ken called: "Frankie … come up!" The chubby-cheeked dancer, swathed in a heavy Turkish towel, appeared on the stair landing.
"Look what I got," Ken cried. He snapped the watch bracelet on his wrist.
"You are certainly luckier than I am," Frankie said.
"Do you know him?"
"We are the best of friends, almost sisters-in-sin, you might say."
Ken laughed.
While Ken dressed for the street, Howard appeared. "Let's go to Tony's for a Tom Collins," he suggested. "I want you to listen to a new lyric I wrote this afternoon."
"I'm tired," said Ken. "I'd rather go home."
"Stop acting like a baby. Check out of the Algonquin. Rutgers will call for your bags."
"We'll talk about that tomorrow," Ken replied.
Howard explained that he was planning a new show, an ultra-sophisticated European revue. He was writing a part in it for Ken, that of a debonair, worldly American who would possess a naive soul, "a timeless Casanova who can never grow up."
With breathless haste, Howard prattled on. He accompanied Ken downstairs where Ken saw Frankie waiting for him at the stage door. Ernie Emerson was talking to the chorus boy. "1 want you to meet Mr. Emerson, a friend of mine," Frankie said to Howard. Frankie was obviously impressed by the Bostonian. "This is Mr. Vee." He turned to Ken. "You know Ken Gracey."
Emerson spoke in a suave, cultured voice. He wore a monocle which fitted elegantly into his left eye socket. His hands were gloved. He carried an ivory-topped stick. The monocle dropped on a silk cord. Ken saw a glass eye.
"We meet at last," Emerson said to Ken. "And it's as if we were old friends."
The single good eye fixed Ken, who seemed to understand an unspoken command. He turned to Howard. "I had planned a chat with Mr. Emerson."
"That's too bad. And I planned to outline the show to you tonight," Howard spoke with sudden asperity. He faced Ken. "I need your advice … and help."
With firmness, Ken replied: "I'm sorry, Howard. Tomorrow must do."
"It's perfectly all right for you to join us, Mr. Vee, if you please to," Emerson said. "Although I am not an old friend of Mr. Gracey's, and I am in New York only for a few days, I have heard of you, of course. I should be honored to make you my guest." He removed a glove and Ken saw slender fingers, glittering with diamonds.
"I had arranged a small party," Emerson continued. "A charming party. Friends of mine. Dear friends." Then to Ken directly: "If you get what I mean …"
"This is all unimportant," said Howard. Vexation was written in his eyes.
Ken read his mood. He was apologetic. "Originally, I had planned to go home," Ken explained. "But Mr. Emerson is here only for a few days." Then to Emerson: "I prefer to go home … really I do. Call me tomorrow at the Algonquin."
Howard's confusion grew, "I don't want to stand between you and Mr. Emerson." He stopped. Norah was closing her dressing-room door. She approached.
"Evening, Ken," she said. "Howdy, Howard."
Howard tipped his hat. "I apologize," he said. His voice, usually mild and persuasive, now was underscored with anger.
"I have waited for Mr. Gracey so long." Emerson's single eye twinkled. "Still, I prefer not to intrude. I leave you to him this evening. Tomorrow we meet at my apartment for dinner, my boy?"
"Yes," Ken said.
"At the Balfour on Washington Square, then, six o'clock … informal. I'll send my car."
The man with the glass eye replaced his monocle, bowed low and disappeared into the deep shadows of the stage door alley.
"Howard, forgive me," Ken said. "I am tired. Tomorrow night. Please."
Nellie Nasmuth visited Ken in his dressing-room, during the Thursday matinee.
"My spies have been sending me reports that you are going over to the enemy," she said. "What's up?"
Ken was unprepared for Nellie's remark. She sat on his wardrobe trunk, her feet dangling over the side.
"I don't get you," he parried.
"I'll be explicit, Kennie. I hear you have not only walked out of Howard's apartment, but you aren't seen in public with him any more."
"That isn't true. Did Norah—"
"Yes, Norah told me. And she says you've been drinking fire water with your boiled eggs and toast for breakfast."
"So you've gone blue nose in your old age," he smiled. "Don't you want your Auntie Kinetta to enjoy a nip or two?"
"One or two is all right. But why did you move out on Howard?"
"It's a long, long story, Nellie, my girl."
"Tell it. And be quick about it."
"I'd rather live alone. That's all."
"What other reasons have you thought up, small brain?"
"To be frank—and to be serious, Nellie, I don't want people to talk about us."
"You don't really truly believe what you are saying, do you?"
"I do."
She lighted a gold-tipped cigarette. "I feel like a mother to you, son; that's why I'm here. The grapevine has it you quarrelled with Howie at Derek Bland's, screamed at him publicly at Lido, walked out of the Barrington and last night turned him down for one Ernie Emerson, whom I've heard tell plenty about in my days on the road."
"Meaning what?"
"You know who Ernie Emerson is, don't you?"
"I met him for the first time last night."
"And I suppose you returned the platinum wrist watch he gave you?"
"I forgot to thank him for it. I'm having dinner with him after the matinee. Nellie, dear, you are, you know, barking up the wrong tree."
A limousine was bearing him downtown to the apartment hotel in which Ernie Emerson was living.
"He's one of the best," Frankie Regan had said that afternoon. "Known all over the United States. Gives parties you can never forget. Be nice to him and he's your friend for life."
Ernie Emerson waited for Ken at the door of his penthouse apartment. He was dressed in evening clothes and Ken's first remark was one of excuse for the blue sack suit he was wearing. "You look splendid as you are," said Emerson. "Come in and let me show you my sky palace." Ken followed him through the entrance foyer to a door. They entered a balcony. The apartment was isolated—a complete dwelling, terraces facing the city on four sides, an island high above a sea of roofs. French door to the library, a stern room in 18th Century Spanish, curious setting for the Nordic Emerson, whose glass eye glittered in the light of its many candles. A deep red carpet warmed the library, where, in a corner, against a black velvet drape, hung an ivory crucifix; beneath it, many silver candelabra contained elegantly slim tapers.
"I am a mystic," Emerson said, as they stood before the bleeding Christ. "It pleases me to commune with my spiritual self when I am weary of my body. The crucifix is venerable—stolen, as they say, from the Cathedral of Valdepeñas in old Spain, by some blackamoor brigand. The candlesticks, of course, are genuinely by Cellini, the candles imported from the ancient stock of Pietro Quezon, near the market place in Madrid. As for me, I suppose I am quaint, too.
"This apartment is my refuge when I am in New York. In Boston I am merely Emerson, the jeweler. At that I cannot tell you why I became a jeweler. God's gift, perhaps. My father was a Back Bay banker; my grandfather was a seafaring merchant, who traded in spices, silks and Chinese ladies. I have learned to love diamonds and rubies and pearls. My true passion, however, is silver. I collect antique pieces. When I die, I shall fill a museum, the Emerson Museum of Argentry. And now, young man, who are you?"
Dinner, dinner alone with Ernie Emerson ended at seven-fifteen. "We have half an hour left to us," Emerson said. "Then you shall be taken to the theatre. The warm southern wine we have drunk and the rich food we've eaten should make your dance beautiful tonight. I shan't come to see you again. When you visit Boston, you will hear from me. I shall make you happy to be my friend."
"Thank you, Mr. Emerson," Ken said.
"Young man—I am just forty. How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"You are deeply attached to Howard Vee?"
"Not deeply."
"Say yes, Kenneth." The other spoke firmly. "I have been hearing about you for a long time. I know this Vee too. He has lived in Paris. He has spent several nights on the left bank with an Italian youth of my acquaintance. He was thick-skinned about it, considered himself above reproach, passed off our kind of association as an experience necessary to the complete sophisticate—then dropped us."
"You mean—?"
Emerson chuckled. "You see—I have trapped you neatly. I wanted to know if you have been more than his friend." The round, flushed face broadened in a grin. "I was afraid he held you. I witnessed the contretemps of last night with interest. You care a great deal for him, more than you dare believe. He is lucky! You are born to live gaily, you have all the potential graces—you could dress elegantly, if you knew how; I wish I could teach you. I know he worships you devotedly. I could see it in his eyes last night. Lucky, lucky man!"
"Howard and I have been good friends," Ken said. "I'm not so foolish as to believe in anything else—yet. I don't consider and reconsider everything I do or say. I like Howard. He likes me. But"
"But what?"
"I don't want him to know that I"
"He knows. He knows now. Already he has become your slave. You and only you do not know it."
At the door, Ernie Emerson handed Ken a tiny jewel case.
"Really," Ken said. "I don't want to accept another gift. The watch is swell but"
"You must," Emerson said earnestly. "I am very rich. Giving jewels away is one of my vices—not the most memorable vice, yet satisfying—just the same. When you visit Boston, you may, of course, reciprocate in your own fashion."
They shook hands. The limousine bore Ken to the Commodore Theatre. When he was in his dressing-room he opened the jewel case. It contained a sparkling blue white diamond. Beneath the gem was a card; in microscopic script were words Ken deciphered with difficulty. He read: "Wear if and when you come to me in Boston. E."
To Ken's surprise, Howard did not appear at the theatre that night. Not until the last scene of the second act was he aware that his friend was inexplicably absent. After the performance he dressed hurriedly. Howard's car was not in its usual place under the marquee. As Ken stood on the pavement, watching chorus girls meet their johns, he was seized with a vague apprehension. Norah suddenly stood at his side.
"Waiting for some one, Kennie?"
"No."
She slipped an arm into the crook of his elbow. In a low voice she said: "Howard, I hear, left for Montreal this morning."
"Montreal? Why? Who told you?"
"I heard it out front."
Ken hurried into the lobby. The box office light still glowed, but the shutter was closed. Ken banged on it with his fist. Harry Berg, the treasurer, grumbled, "Who's there?"
"It's Gracey," he replied. "Open up." The shutter rose slowly. "Did Mr. Vee go away?"
"He left on an afternoon train. Said it was too hot here. He couldn't sleep well last night."
"I see—" said Ken.
"Buy me cakes and coffee," Norah said. "There's a dear."
"It's funny he never told me he was going," Ken said, turning away. His heart contracted suddenly. The theatre became dead stone and mortar, the busy crosstown street a deserted cowpath, the girl at his side a lifeless doll.
"What could I have done?" he asked. "Oh, Norah, what could I have done?"