“I didn’t know she had a necklace of that value,” he mused.
“I guess you don’t know much about the fortunes these millionaire women hang all over ’em,” said Lincoln. Lincoln had an idea the other man was a bookish scholar, a collector of rare editions, one removed from knowledge of society life.
“That must be it,” Trent agreed. He wondered if another man in all America had so intimate a knowledge of the disposition of famous gems. “So she won’t give you any money for ambulances?”
“It’s known she subscribed largely to the German Red Cross before we got into the war. Leopards don’t change their spots easily, as you know. It was one of her chauffeurs at her country place near Roslyn who rigged up a wireless and didn’t know he was doing anything the government disapproved of. His mistress lent him the money to equip the thing and she didn’t know she ought not to have done it. I tell you I felt like pulling that necklace off her fat old neck. Wouldn’t you feel that way?”
“It might make me,” Trent admitted, “a little envious.”
On the whole, Trent enjoyed his first evening of emancipation immensely. Particularly glad was he to meet his old friend, Alan Kent, again. The repressed life he had led made him more than ever susceptible to the hearty friendship of such men as he had met.
With some of them he made arrangements to go to a costume dance, a Greenwich Village festival, at Webster Hall, on the following evening. He did not know that Captain Kent was attending less as one who would enjoy the function socially than an emissary of his government. It was known that many of the villagers had not registered. Some had spoken openly against the draft and others were suspected of pro-German tendencies that might be dangerous. It was not a commission Kent cared about, but it was a time in the national history where old friendships must count for naught. Treason must be stamped out.
It was not until midnight that Trent dropped into Webster Hall. It was the nearest approach to the boulevard dances that New York ever saw. The costumes were gorgeous, some of them, but for the greater part quaint and bizarre. As a Pierrot he was inconspicuous. There were a number of men he knew from the Scribblers’ Club. He greeted Lincoln with enthusiasm. He liked the lad. He envied him his record. It was while he was talking to him that a gorgeously dressed woman seized Lincoln’s hands as one might grasp those of an old and dear friend.
“Naughty boy,” she said playfully. “Why haven’t you asked me to dance?”
“I feared I wasn’t good enough for you,” Lincoln lied with affable readiness. “You dance like a professional.”