– Cora Hennessey.
Eve had moved into the apartment five days later. He was glad to be rid of Cora. She had demanded so much of him. He supposed she was too young for him, and he frowned uneasily at finding himself admitting such a thing. But how she had tired him! A week of her, and his nights became something to dread. There had been no satisfying her.
She hadn’t been easy to get rid of, and it cost him much more than he could afford. She had gone eventually, taking his gold and diamond cuff-links, his cigar cutter, and the little jade statue of a naked boy he had bought in a San Francisco brothel, an amusingly obscene bit of carving, and which he valued. He wanted these things back, but it would mean going to the police, and just now he was particularly anxious not to attract the attention of the police.
His mind shied away from this unpleasant channel, and he began to worry about Eve. What an extraordinary girl! How completely mistaken he had been about her! He had imagined she was an empty-headed little beauty whose only asset was her body. For the first six weeks he had no reason to believe otherwise. Then suddenly he realised she had been lulling him into a position of false security while she had been digging into his private affairs. Her apparently innocent questions about his past and present mode of life hadn’t been, as he had thought, the idle chatter of an empty-headed blonde. She had been building up a picture of him until she knew him almost as well as he knew himself. She had managed to find out about his financial position. How she had got the information he couldn’t imagine.
He supposed a girl with her looks could find out anything if she made the effort. Someone must have talked: someone possibly at his bank.
She had surprised him horribly one night by saying in her quiet, cool voice, ‘What’s the matter with you, Preston? Why are you drifting like this? You could be making piles of money instead of loafing here with me. Have you lost your ambition, or what is it?’
Startled, he had told her abruptly he had no need to work.
‘I have all the money I want,’ he had said sharply. ‘I’ve retired from business. Besides, so long as I give you what you want, I really can’t see it’s any business of yours what I do.’
But that hadn’t touched her. She had gone right on confounding him.
‘Why do you lie to me?’ she had asked; her big blue eyes seemed able to see right inside his mind.