The Silver Leopard Read online

  When she said that to Nicky, when he saw that she was annoyed, he had laughed and agreed, throwing an arm around her and saying, “Don’t be so serious. I was only fooling.”

  Sometimes the ease with which he followed her moods roused a question in her as to whether such facile changes of pace could have either depth or permanence. She told herself irritably that she was being captious, small-minded. She put a log on the fire with unnecessary violence and straightened. The downstairs bell was ringing.

  Catherine frowned as she dusted her hands. It couldn’t be Nicky, so soon, and she wasn’t expecting anyone else. She pressed the buzzer, went to the door, opened it a few inches, and waited.

  A man was coming up the stairs. He emerged from dimness and started up the last low flight. Catherine stared incredulously. There was a ringing in her ears and the solid floor boards under her feet took a heave, as though she had been transplanted to the deck of a ship in the midst of a raging storm.

  Her visitor was Stephen Darrell.

  Stephen—

  He had been a lieutenant commander in the Navy. He was out of uniform. A tweed topcoat swung from his shoulders, a soft hat was crushed under one arm. He always did things to his hats. His eyes under dark brows looked extraordinarily light against his deeply tanned skin. Boldly modeled forehead with the dark hair growing from it in a small peak in the middle, definite jaw line, wide, firm-lipped mouth indented a little at the corners—he hadn’t changed.

  She would have closed the door if she could. It was too late. He paused for a moment, looking up at her where she stood in the doorway, a girl in a cherry wool robe belted at her waist and falling in long folds to her feet, her slender face very white, except for her lips, and the liquid gray of her eyes, wide and still between black lashes.

  He raised a hand in salute. “Catherine, how are you? I was afraid you might be out,” There was no laughter in him. He started up the stairs.

  Long ago, Catherine had gone over in her own mind what she should say and do when she and Stephen Darrell met again, because it was inevitable that they should meet some time, if they were both alive. Stephen was a friend of the Wardwells and of Nicky’s. She had never imagined a meeting like this.

  There was no air in her lungs. It was the shock of seeing him again like this, suddenly, without warning. Confusion filled her—and anger? No. There was no reason why she should be angry. The wound that this man had dealt her had healed long ago.

  There should, she thought, be a handbook for such occasions: What to say when the man who has jilted you comes calling. He mustn’t see that she was even momentarily upset. Certainly not. She gathered her scattered forces, pulled the door wider, smiled.

  “Why, Stephen—” Her voice came out just as she wanted it to, lightly casual, indifferently friendly. “What are you doing in New York? I thought you were thousands of miles away, occupying Japan.”

  He was close to her now. She could see the dark specks in the luminous hazel of his eyes. “I was, until recently. We flew in this morning.”

  “You did? How exciting!” She stepped back and he followed her through the hall and into the living-room.

  Catherine crossed to the hearth, putting distance between them. She turned to face him.

  There was a smell of singeing wool. She was too near the fire. Her robe hadn’t caught. She examined a fold, let it fall, stepped farther away from the hearth. “How do you like my place?” she asked brightly.

  Stephen glanced around perfunctorily. “Nice.” He was taking off his coat, threw it over a chair near the door, He was evidently going to stay awhile. Why had he come?

  Catherine chattered on. “I was awfully lucky, really. Apartments are still frightfully hard to get.”

  “I heard they were as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

  He lighted a cigarette, looked at her intently over it. There was a searching quality to his steady gaze.

  She felt herself coloring. “Yes, I was thinking of pitching a tent in Washington Square when I found this.” Banal words, stupid, meaningless—but you had to say something. She went about switching on more lamps and feeling that she was in a singularly unpleasant dream. Why had Stephen come? He must have a reason. He gave her no immediate indication of what it was.

  She said, “Cocktail?” and he said, “Why not? An excellent idea at all times,” and went with her into the big red and white and blue kitchen where even the bright paint and new linoleum couldn’t banish the shadows, and helped her mix Martinis.

  In the living-room once more, in chairs in front of the fire, nursing his glass in long-fingered hands, he said rather abruptly, “Tell me about yourself, Catherine. How’s Nicky?”

  He pronounced Nicky’s name almost challengingly, Catherine thought, drawing on her cigarette. Why should he? Her engagement to another man was no concern of his. Long before she had become interested in Nicky, she and Stephen were finished, washed up. She told herself that she was attributing emotions to him that weren’t there. He was simply inquiring about his successor, who was also his friend.

  Keep cool—She swung a slippered foot and sipped her drink. “You heard Nicky was wounded?”

  “Yes, Tom La Mott wrote me. What do the doctors say?”

  Tom, not Hat, Catherine thought, and told him. “There’s nothing now to worry us but the skull fracture—and that will heal of itself. I’m walking on air. It could have been so much worse.”

  Stephen agreed. He had turned away, was sideways to her, gazing at the flaming logs. “Still, it was rotten bad luck all the same, after what he went through safely.”

  Was it for news of Nicky that he had sought her out? If so, why hadn’t he gone to Tom La Mott?

  He had seen Tom, or Hat. He knew that Angela was back from the West. He began to talk of her. “John Wardwell’s death must have hit your aunt pretty hard. They’d been married a long while, more than twenty years, hadn’t they? I understand it was heart.”

  Catherine nodded bleakly. She was relieved that the talk had moved away from her. She wished it had taken another direction. She didn’t like to think about that December night almost two years ago. In spite of the time that had elapsed, the memory was still vividly nightmarish. Her uncle’s lifeless body sprawled at the foot of the marble staircase, a trickle of blood coming from a cut on his forehead, his eyes open, staring blankly. “Yes, it was heart. I was with Aunt Angela when she found him. It was pretty terrible. Luckily, Mike was there.”

  “Mike—? Oh, Mike Nye.” Stephen got up, propped an elbow on the mantel, and looked down into the fire.

  Catherine’s face grew hot. Mike Nye, a dozen years older than Stephen, a friend of her mother’s and father’s and of her own, was the only person who knew what had happened between Stephen and herself two years ago—not all, but some of it.

  She had run into Mike on the morning of her headlong flight from Stephen’s shack. At the foot of the hill; beyond the clumped birches, she had collided with Mike, tramping along the road, pipe in mouth, swinging a stick. He had stopped short when he saw her. “Good God, Catherine, what—?” Indiscreet words had been startled out of her. She had been asleep, she was awake—It was her own fault. Ladies shouldn’t go barging into bachelor’s domiciles, uninvited.

  Mike had sworn like a trooper, his face black. “That two-timing so and so, wait until I get my hands on him.” She had left Mike there, staring up at the shack. Had he said anything to Stephen? Had they met that day, quarreled?

  She could tell nothing from Stephen’s expression, nor what he said now, after so long, prodding a log end with the toe of a polished black oxford. “Mike Nye was John Wardwell’s closest friend, wasn’t he, Catherine? And isn’t he a relative of yours?”

  She said stiffly, “He’s not a relative, lie’s my godfather. Did you know he’d won the National Award last year for work he did for the government in Italy? I’m crazy about Mike and terrifically proud of him.”

  Stephen’s profile was expressionless. “Really?”


  Catherine didn’t like his tone. She didn’t, in fact, like anything about him, and she wished passionately that he’d stop making conversation and go. With every moment the strain of keeping up this polite chitchat was becoming greater.

  He showed no sign of going. Lean length propped indolently against the mantel, he was looking past her, with sudden interest, at something on the other side of the room.

  Catherine turned her head. It was the gleaming figure of the leopard on which Stephen Darrell’s gaze was fastened.

  “Isn’t that—? Didn’t John Wardwell use to have that thing on his desk in the Sixty-fourth Street house—or is it a twin?” he asked.

  “It isn’t—and it did—come from Uncle’s desk. He sent it to me for Christmas the year he died.”

  She spoke shortly, her irritation and restlessness mounting. Stephen Darrell was certainly making himself at home, she reflected with a savage flash of humor. He left the hearth, picked up the cocktail beaker, and started to pour her a second drink. “Tom La Mott told me Nicky had left the hospital. I thought he might be here.” So that was why he had come. She was the one he used to come to see. That was over. It had been over for a long while.

  “No,” she said, watching the pale amber liquid falling in a thin stream. “Nicky and I were going to have dinner together, but Nicky ran into an old crewmate of his, a man named Blanchard, and they’re, Blanchard and some other flyers, foregathering at Soldi’s.”

  Ice tinkled sharply and the beaker stood still in midair. Catherine looked up. Blanchard’s name seemed to have had an unpleasant effect on Stephen Darrell. His face wore a closed look. His likes and dislikes weren’t of the slightest consequence as far as she was concerned, but she was curious. “What is it,” she asked, “don’t you like Blanchard?”

  “I never knew him very well.” Stephen put the beaker down and strolled toward the windows. He stood there with his back to her, gazing out at the edge of the terrace, the tangled pattern of the leafless wisteria vine. After a moment, he turned and looked at her. It was a long look. The searching quality was in it again. His eyes fastened steadily on hers. He said: “You and Nicky are going to be married, aren’t you? Wait—I’m well aware that it’s none of my business, and you can tell me so if you want to. But there’s one thing I’d like to know: are you marrying Nick out of pity, compassion—because you’re sorry for him and think he needs you?”

  The stem of the glass was cold between Catherine’s gripping fingers. A pulse in her throat leaped and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks. How had Stephen guessed? The wordless communication that had once existed between them had vanished into thin air, but he was right. If Nicky hadn’t been flown home two months ago, badly wounded, if he had come back a conquering hero in radiant health, she would have told him what she had learned dismayingly while he was gone; that what there was for them wasn’t enough, that his attraction for her had no roots, was almost purely physical. She had been depressed and lonely and sad, and he had made her feel young and like a woman again. You couldn’t build a lifetime on anything so fleeting. She had meant to tell him that she couldn’t make him permanently happy, or he her.

  It was this man, she thought with a sudden rush of bitterness, this man standing at the far end of the room in which he had no right to be, who had made her vacillating, a coward, unsure of herself, unfitted for normal human relationships.

  All that was changed now. She did love Nicky. They were going to be married. If she didn’t care for Nicky as she had once cared for Stephen Darrell—well, that was all to the good. Her first experience hadn’t been exactly felicitous. And how dared Stephen question her about Nicky? He was presumptuous. Moreover, it was a shot in the dark; he couldn’t know anything, he was only guessing. She had to convince him he was wrong—for Nicky’s sake, for her own.

  She lowered her glass to a crossed knee, sat up straighter, and returned Stephen’s glance unwaveringly, putting surprise into her widened eyes below gently lifted brows. “Pity?” She laughed softly. “Oh, no—no, indeed. Nicky and I—” She let her lashes fall, her faint smile deepen. “The way we feel, it can’t he soon enough. We’ve been separated so long, much too long.”

  She held her smile, her lips a little parted—and was surprised at the effect of her declaration. For some un-known reason, because nothing had changed or altered since he had entered the room, Stephen was violently angry.

  It didn’t show particularly on the surface. He retained the indolence of his pose, but she knew him too well to be deceived. All he said was, out of a pause, “I see your point. Yes, you’ve lost a whole year—and a year can be a hell of a long time.”

  He had been standing still, a cigarette in one hand, the other thrust into his pocket. He moved then, as though he were throwing off a weight, gave the effect of having reached some sort of decision.

  He crushed out his cigarette, crossed to the chair holding his coat and put it on. “Well, thanks for the drink.” His tone was easy, pleasant. He picked up his hat. “As long as Nick isn’t here I’ll run along. What’s his address?” Catherine gave it. He said, “Fine. I’ll look in on him if I get a chance. I’ve been offered a job in the Philippines. I may take it or I may not. Anyhow, if I don’t see you again—” He held out his hand.

  Numb after the lightning flash of pain that zigzagged through her from head to foot at the thought of never seeing Stephen Darrell again, of his being on the other side of the world permanently, she heard her own voice saying the appropriate things as she shook hands and went with him to the door.

  The door closed behind him and he was gone. She leaned against it in the vacuum he had left behind him, an arid waste without light or color or shape. “If I don’t see you again—”

  “No,” she whispered aloud, aghast at her reaction. Stephen Darrell was nothing to her, could be nothing after what he had done. Her feeling was simply an automatic reflex out of the past, a mechanical response to the physical entity of the man she had once loved.

  She was very tired. She left the little hall, walked slowly into her bedroom, paused at the dormer window and looked absently down into the dark night street. There was a florist shop on the corner. Above masses of colored bloom light streamed brilliantly through the panes on the passers-by, a woman with a dog, engaged in conversation with another woman laden with packages, a small man in a pinch-waisted coat walking briskly east. She gazed after his hurrying, foreshortened figure apathetically. He looked rather like the little man with whom she had collided on Sixty-fourth Street an hour earlier. Was it only an hour? It seemed like years. Then Stephen came into view on the heels of the little man, his tall figure slanted forward, his hands thrust into his pockets, moving along with his deceptively casual stride. How many times she had tried to match it with hers, how many times—She turned from the window abruptly, her throat tight.

  The telephone began to ring. She answered it. It was her Aunt Angela. “Catherine, my dear, how are you?”

  Angela’s voice, calm, round, mature, and yet with a childlike quality to it, an uncomplicated certainty, brought Catherine stumbling out of the shadows and back into the world where she belonged.

  Chapter Two - A Momentous Announcement

  “SO YOU AND NICKY are going to be married soon. Stephen Darrell was here last night. He told me.”

  It was twenty minutes past twelve on the following day and Catherine was with Angela Wardwell in the latter’s bedroom in the house on Sixty-fourth Street.

  Sunlight struck between the yellow satin draperies at the windows, at the polished black floor, gently illuminated the pale-lemon walls hung with a few high-toned, very good water colors. The room was uncluttered and serene, like Angela herself. She was largely made, deepbreasted, with long shapely legs, magnificent arms and shoulders, and a small waist. She had the classic figure. She had never been beautiful. Maturity became her. At 46 or 47, with her broad brow and fine eyes, she was a charming and dignified woman with plenty of quiet force.

  Seated a
t her dressing-table, she thrust a final hairpin into the coronet of warm chestnut braids wound round her large shapely head and went on looking at her niece. Her regard was affectionate and troubled.

  Catherine saw the trouble and was mystified by it. Nicky had been a friend of Tom La Mott’s for years. They all knew she was engaged to him. Angela had signified her approval. What was the matter?

  She dropped into a yellow armchair near the dressing-table, propped her elbows on her knees and her chin on her linked hands. “Why this—sudden doubt, Angela?” she asked pleasantly. “You like Nicky, don’t you?”

  “Like him? Of course I like him. It would be hard not to, wouldn’t it?” Angela lowered her round arms, adjusted a bracelet on her wrist.

  “Then—?”

  Her aunt was flurried. That in itself was almost epochal. Under the most trying of circumstances, she was seldom ruffled. Catherine had never been able to decide whether her calm came from lack of imagination or perfect self-control.

  She said, picking up an orangewood stick and fiddling with it, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that, with you, marriage will be for keeps. And these after-the-war marriages—Never mind—” She smiled. “I’m being stupid. That’s not what I wanted to say. What I do want to say is, if you’ve decided, if it’s definitely settled—you must let me help you.

  “Wait.” She raised a hand. “Put your prickly-pear pride in your pocket for a moment and listen to me. Coming home from a job and keeping house isn’t any fun. I know. I tried it years ago, after my sister Laura died and I first had Tom and Hat—before I married your uncle—and it simply doesn’t work. No woman can do two jobs and do them well.”

  Catherine got up out of her chair, took a cigarette from a low table beside the chaise longue and lighted it. “I know all that, but it won’t be for long. In six months or so Nicky will be on his feet and then—”