"E" which Ken recognized as the signature of Ernie Emerson. "I'll be there," Ken said. "What's the idea? And who's Madame Richards?"
"Mr. Emerson is entertaining on Saturday evening, sir," the chauffeur replied. "I imagine he wants Madame Richards to help you choose a costume for the occasion."
The Madame Richards whom Ken visited the next afternoon had once been secretary to Gaston Darsec, a premier of the Haute Couture in Paris. Her atelier, just off Boylston Street, reflected the good taste acquired when she stood at Darsec's elbow, sketching designs that were later to find their way into style exhibitions in Paris, London and New York. In those days her name had been Juliette Chandeau and she was striking in appearance, a dark wisp of black hair over a keen olive-skinned face. Now, Juliette Chandeau, re-named Mme. Richards, was a fat, dominant woman of fifty, who wore a man's shirt, cravat, striped waistcoat, spats, and a severely cut gray skirt, the latter her only concession to her own sex. Unquestionably, Madame's styles pour les dames were an accurate reflection of the evolution of costume as decreed by the gods of the Rue de la Paix. Boston, that is to say, the Boston which clung to Back Bay and the Charles River backdrop—considered Madame a trifle extreme. Her modernistic drawing room was well patronized, however, by actresses, debutantes and the exotics, who desired that extraordinary recherché quality in dress which only Madame knew how to create.
A turbaned colored boy in the costume of a Moroccan sheik swung open the door of Madame Richards' establishment. Ken entered; his eye was attracted to the black spiral which, coiled against ivory, supplied a ceiling and floor, a dominant design to Madame's salon. The spiral
