She smiled up at him, brightly. She patted his lean cheek with her soft cool scented hand. "Well, you never can tell. Something may happen." She left him to shave and dress.
He thought, "What a child she is. Women are."
She thought. "He's like a child. All men are.... Well, I've got to manage this."
There were two telephone connections in that big apartment—one in the front hall, another in the dining room at the rear. She went down the hall, closed the dining room door carefully, called Ben Gartz's office number in a low tense voice. It was not yet five-thirty. He might still be there. He must be, she told herself.
He was. His tone, when he heard her name, was rather sulky. But she had ways. We haven't seen a thing of you. Forgotten your old friends since you've made all that horrid money. Talking of you only yesterday. Who? Charley. Why not come up for dinner to-night. Just a plain family meal but there was a rather special deep dish pie.
He would come. You could hear that it was against his better judgment. But he would come. When she had hung up the receiver she sat for a minute, breathing fast, as if she had been running a close race. Then she went into the kitchen and began feverish preparations. Halfway, she stopped suddenly, went back into the dining room, picked up the receiver and gave her own telephone number, hung up quickly, opened the door that led from the dining room to the long hall, and let the telephone bell ring three times before she answered it. The maid opened the swinging door that led to the kitchen but Belle shook her head. "Never mind. I'll answer it." She said "hello," then hung up again, once the buzzing had ceased. Then, carefully, she carried on a brief conversation with some one who was not there—some one who evidently wanted to come to see them all; and wouldn't he like to run in to dinner. She went to the hall door and called. "Henry! Oh, Henry!"
A mumble from the direction of the bathroom meant that he was handicapped by shaving lather.
"I just wanted to tell you. That was Ben Gartz who just called up. He wanted to come up so I asked him to dinner. Is that all right?"
"'S'all right with me."
Grapefruit. Olives. A can of mushrooms to be opened. For over half an hour she worked furiously. At six Charley came home.