One morning, after a peculiarly exasperating night of thought concerning her, he said to young Kennedy: “I have a suggestion for you. I wish you would get this elevator man you are working with down there to get you a duplicate key to this studio, and see if there is a bolt on the inside. Let me know when you do. Bring me the key. The next time she is there of an evening with Mr. Gurney step out and telephone me.”
The climax came one night several weeks after this discouraging investigation began. There was a heavy yellow moon in the sky, and a warm, sweet summer wind was blowing. Stephanie had called on Cowperwood at his office about four to say that instead of staying down-town with him, as they had casually planned, she was going to her home on the West Side to attend a garden-party of some kind at Georgia Timberlake’s. Cowperwood looked at her with—for him—a morbid eye. He was all cheer, geniality, pleasant badinage; but he was thinking all the while what a shameless enigma she was, how well she played her part, what a fool she must take him to be. He gave her youth, her passion, her attractiveness, her natural promiscuity of soul due credit; but he could not forgive her for not loving him perfectly, as had so many others. She had on a summery black-and-white frock and a fetching brown Leghorn hat, which, with a rich-red poppy ornamenting a flare over her left ear and a peculiar ruching of white-and-black silk about the crown, made her seem strangely young, debonair, a study in Hebraic and American origins.
“Going to have a nice time, are you?” he asked, genially, politically, eying her in his enigmatic and inscrutable way. “Going to shine among that charming company you keep! I suppose all the standbys will be there—Bliss Bridge, Mr. Knowles, Mr. Cross—dancing attendance on you?”
He failed to mention Mr. Gurney.
Stephanie nodded cheerfully. She seemed in an innocent outing mood.
Cowperwood smiled, thinking how one of these days—very shortly, perhaps—he was certain to take a signal revenge. He would catch her in a lie, in a compromising position somewhere—in this studio, perhaps—and dismiss her with contempt. In an elder day, if they had lived in Turkey, he would have had her strangled, sewn in a sack, and thrown into the Bosporus. As it was, he could only dismiss her. He smiled and smiled, smoothing her hand. “Have a good time,” he called, as she left. Later, at his own home—it was nearly midnight—Mr. Kennedy called him up.
“Mr. Cowperwood?”
“Yes.”
“You know the studio in the New Arts Building?”
“Yes.”