The American Embassy was three blocks beyond the Presidencia. Hall wanted to walk to the party, but when he reached the street he became self-conscious about his palm-beach tuxedo jacket, and he hailed a strange cab.
The Embassy was housed in an old Spanish palace which a former Ambassador had left to the United States Government in his will. After the first World War, when the government had taken title to the palace, Washington sent an architect and an office efficiency man to San Hermano to redesign the structure. The outside remained more or less intact. But inside, many changes had been effected. The spacious street floor, designed as the slave quarters in the seventeenth century and later converted to storerooms and servants' quarters, was now a hive of offices and waiting rooms. The second floor was devoted largely to a tremendous ballroom, a state dining room, and the tapestried private offices of the Ambassador himself. The living quarters of the Ambassador took up the third floor, while the low-ceilinged fourth floor, originally designed for soldiers, was now given over to servants' rooms.
A secretary at the entrance checked Hall's name off against a list on a teak table. He took the carpeted stairs to the ballroom. Two butlers stood at a screen in the doorway to the big room. The first butler announced his name, but not loud enough to disturb any of the Ambassador's two hundred-odd guests. The second butler nodded to Hall, and led the way through a maze of dignitaries, diplomats' wives, and young people trying to dance to the music a rumba band was producing from a bandstand in a corner. Hall followed him patiently, looking for a sign of Jerry's red hair. The butler nodded gravely at a young girl dancing with a thin Latin in tails. She left her dancing partner and advanced on Hall with an outstretched hand.
"Mr. Matthew Hall, Miss Margaret," the butler whispered.
"I'm so glad you came, Mr. Hall. I'm Margaret Skidmore." Her hand, thin and remarkably strong, was covered with a white net glove that reached to her elbow.
"It's nice of you to have me," Hall said.
Margaret Skidmore took his arm. "We must get you a drink," she said, "and introduce you to some of the more interesting people here. And oh, yes, to my father. But I warn you, he's not in the first category." She was short; much smaller than Jerry, Hall thought, but a bird of a different color. As they crossed the room, a wisp of the black hair piled on top of her head dropped over her eye. Hall was amused by the way she blew the hair to one side twice before deciding to lift it with her gloved hand.
"This is my Dad's favorite punch," she said at the buffet table. "I forgot to tell you that the party is to celebrate the third anniversary of his mission."
Hall ladled out two cups. "Here's to the next three years," he toasted.
"The next three years are the ones that will count," Margaret Skidmore said. She was smiling at Hall and at some other guests when she said it, but it was not polite banter.