The Kingmakers

BY BURTON E. STEVENSON Author of “The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet,” “The Gloved Hand,” etc.
FRONTISPIECE BY E. C. CASWELL
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1922
Copyright, 1922, By BURTON E. STEVENSON The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
THE KINGMAKERS
SELDEN, entering from the dining-room, saw that the lounge was crowded, and he paused for a moment to look about him. It was the half-hour between dinner and the Sporting Club, and he was pleasantly aware of the odours of good coffee and super-excellent tobacco, mingled with the delicate and very expensive perfumes rising from the clothes, the hair, the shoulders of the women lying indolently back in the deep chairs.
It was the women who dominated the scene. There were men present, to be sure, but they were as unobtrusive to the eye, as strictly utilitarian, as the donor kneeling humbly in the corner of the picture before the madonna he had paid to have painted.
These men were donors, too, of many things besides paint—but the resemblance ended there. For there was nothing madonna-like about the women. They differed in being blonde or brune, of various contours, and of all ages, but some subtle quality of spirit bound them together in a common sisterhood. Their gowns ran the gamut of the rainbow and were of every material and degree of eccentricity, but a common purpose underlay them all. Every neck bore its rope of pearls, every hand its clustered diamonds.
Tributes to beauty, one might suppose—but not at all. The treasures of the Rue de la Paix, the choicest creations of Cartier, had been showered upon beauty and ugliness alike—if there was any difference, beauty had the worst of it. Indeed most of these women were anything but beautiful. There were some who were still slim, who still had youth and a certain charm; there were two or three of an incredible seductiveness, more dazzling than the brilliants on their fingers; but for the most part they were fat, raddled, unspeakably vulgar, gazing out at the world from between darkened lashes with eyes unutterably weary and disillusioned.