At that she gave me a look. No time or breath to waste. Bill, unquestioning, had hurried to his part of the work. I took up mine with, "Forgive me, Barbara. I'll not make that mistake again"; slipped my arm under hers to support her; dragged open the big doors; shoved past the hallman there; and we stepped into the many-colored, moving brilliance of the ballroom.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COUNTRY CLUB BALL
The ballroom of the country club at Santa Ysobel is big and finely proportioned. I don't know if anything of the sort could have registered with me at the moment, but I remembered afterward my impression of the great hall fairly walled and roofed with fruit blossoms, and the gorgeousness of hundreds of costumes. The mere presence of potential funds raises the importance of an event. The prune kings and apricot barons down there, with their wives and daughters in real brocades, satins and velvets, with genuine jewels flashing over them, represented so much in the way of substantial wealth that it seemed to steady the whole fantastic scene.
Barbara and I entered on the level of the slightly raised orchestra stand and only half a dozen paces from it. Nobody noticed us much; we came in right on the turn of things—floor managers darting around, orchestra with bows poised and horns at lips, the whole glittering company of maskers being made ready to weave their "Figure of Eight" across the dancing floor. My poor girl dragged on my arm; her small feet scuffed; I lifted her along, wishing I might pick her up and carry her as Bill had done. I made for an unoccupied musicians' bench; but once there, she only leaned against it, not letting go her hold on me, and stood to take in every detail of the confused, moving scene.
The double doors had swung closed behind us; the hallman there who held the knob, now reinforced by a uniformed policeman. The servants' way, at the further end was shut; men in plain clothes set their backs against it. And last, Big Bill himself in overalls, a touch of blunt blue realism, came fogging along the side-wall to swing into place the great wooden bar that secured the entire group of glass doors which gave on the porch. Barbara would have seen all these arrangements while I was getting ready for my first glance, but I prompted her nervously with a low-toned, "All set, girl," and then as she still didn't speak, "Bill's got every door guarded."
She nodded. The length of the room away, in the end gallery, was the cannery girl queen and her guard. Even at that distance, I recognized Eddie Hughes, in his pink-and-white Beef Eater togs, a gilded wooden spear in his hand, a flower tassel bobbing beside that long, drab, knobby countenance of his. There he was, the man I'd jailed for Thomas Gilbert's murder. Below on the dancing floor, were the two, Cummings and Bowman, who had put Worth behind the bars for the same crime. At my side was the pale, silent girl who declared that Clayte was the murderer.
Whispered tuning and trying of instruments up here; flutter and rush about down on the dancing floor; and Barbara, that clenched left hand of hers still pressed in hard against her side, facing what problem?