One morning, after a peculiarly exasperating night of thought concerning her, he said to young Kennedy:
“I have a suggestion for you. I wish you would get this elevator man you are working with down there to get you a duplicate key to this studio, and see if there is a bolt on the inside. Let me know when you do.
Bring me the key.
The next time she is there of an evening with Mr. Gurney step out and telephone me.”
The climax came one night several weeks after this discouraging investigation began.
There was a heavy yellow moon in the sky, and a warm, sweet summer wind was blowing.
Stephanie had called on Cowperwood at his office about four to say that instead of staying down-town with him, as they had casually planned, she was going to her home on the West Side to attend a garden-party of some kind at Georgia Timberlake’s.
Cowperwood looked at her with—for him—a morbid eye.
He was all cheer, geniality, pleasant badinage; but he was thinking all the while what a shameless enigma she was, how well she played her part, what a fool she must take him to be.
He gave her youth, her passion, her attractiveness, her natural promiscuity of soul due credit; but he could not forgive her for not loving him perfectly, as had so many others.
She had on a summery black-and-white frock and a fetching brown Leghorn hat, which, with a rich-red poppy ornamenting a flare over her left ear and a peculiar ruching of white-and-black silk about the crown, made her seem strangely young, debonair, a study in Hebraic and American origins.
“Going to have a nice time, are you?” he asked, genially, politically, eying her in his enigmatic and inscrutable way.
“Going to shine among that charming company you keep!
I suppose all the standbys will be there—Bliss Bridge, Mr. Knowles, Mr. Cross—dancing attendance on you?”
He failed to mention Mr. Gurney.
Stephanie nodded cheerfully.
She seemed in an innocent outing mood.
Cowperwood smiled, thinking how one of these days—very shortly, perhaps—he was certain to take a signal revenge.
He would catch her in a lie, in a compromising position somewhere—in this studio, perhaps—and dismiss her with contempt.
In an elder day, if they had lived in Turkey, he would have had her strangled, sewn in a sack, and thrown into the Bosporus.
As it was, he could only dismiss her.
He smiled and smiled, smoothing her hand.
“Have a good time,” he called, as she left.
Later, at his own home—it was nearly midnight—Mr. Kennedy called him up.
“Mr. Cowperwood?”
“Yes.”
“You know the studio in the New Arts Building?”
“Yes.”
“It is occupied now.”
Cowperwood called a servant to bring him his runabout.
He had had a down-town locksmith make a round keystem with a bored clutch at the end of it—a hollow which would fit over the end of such a key as he had to the studio and turn it easily from the outside.
He felt in his pocket for it, jumped in his runabout, and hurried away.
When he reached the New Arts Building he found Kennedy in the hall and dismissed him.
“Thanks,” he observed, brusquely.
“I will take care of this.”
He hurried up the stairs, avoiding the elevator, to the vacant room opposite, and thence reconnoitered the studio door.
It was as Kennedy had reported. Stephanie was there, and with Gurney.
The pale poet had been brought there to furnish her an evening of delight.
Because of the stillness of the building at this hour he could hear their muffled voices speaking alternately, and once Stephanie singing the refrain of a song.
He was angry and yet grateful that she had, in her genial way, taken the trouble to call and assure him that she was going to a summer lawn-party and dance.
He smiled grimly, sarcastically, as he thought of her surprise.
Softly he extracted the clutch-key and inserted it, covering the end of the key on the inside and turning it.
It gave solidly without sound.
He next tried the knob and turned it, feeling the door spring slightly as he did so.
Then inaudibly, because of a gurgled laugh with which he was thoroughly familiar, he opened it and stepped in.
At his rough, firm cough they sprang up—Gurney to a hiding position behind a curtain, Stephanie to one of concealment behind draperies on the couch.
She could not speak, and could scarcely believe that her eyes did not deceive her.
Gurney, masculine and defiant, but by no means well composed, demanded:
“Who are you?
What do you want here?”