Chapter XXX

Two weeks later Gloria was able to sit up and have visitors. The first of them was May Seymour.

The minute Gloria laid eyes on May she saw that she was bursting with bad news.

"Well, I must hand it to you for giving the gossips the best nine-day wonder of the year, Gloria!" she said, after she had kissed her on both cheeks.

Gloria started.

"What do you mean, May?" she asked. There was a queer, sinking feeling at her heart.

"Well," May went on cheerfully, "that cat, Mrs. Wing, saw you pick Wayburn up in your car the afternoon of the wreck. She said that Wayburn was three sheets to the wind.... And the story's going 'round that you were too squiffy to drive straight...."

"It's not true!" Gloria burst out angrily. "I hadn't had a thing to drink! Not a thing!"

May smiled sweetly.

"You can tell me the truth, dearie! You know I'll never breathe it to a soul," she said.

"I don't care whether you do or not! I tell you I didn't have a thing to drink! It was raining and the car skidded into the ditch, that's all," Gloria said.

"But Stan was with you, wasn't he?" May asked.

"Yes, he was," Gloria answered defiantly. "But how did you know he was?"

"Oh, doctors' wives hear things, you know. Things that happen in hospitals!" May answered mysteriously.

"I'll tell you how I found out about it!" she added a moment later. "Mrs. O'Hara is a friend of one of the nurses who took care of you here at the hospital the night of the wreck. And this nurse told her about your calling for some one named 'Stan' all the time!"

Gloria stared at May without speaking.

"Mrs. O'Hara asked John who 'Stan' was," May went on. "And it never occurred to John who 'Stan' was.... But the minute he told me about it I knew you'd been calling for Wayburn! I guess I'm some little Sherlock Holmes!"

"I hope Dick hasn't heard about my calling 'Stan,'" Gloria said. "But I suppose he has!"

May took out her vanity case and powdered her prominent nose.

"By the way, Dick's much better, John says," she remarked. "He thinks he'll be able to come here to see you in a day or two."

And the next afternoon Dick came to the hospital.

Gloria wakened from a cat-nap to find him standing beside her bed, looking down at her. She smiled up at him in welcome.

"Well, Dick Gregory!" she cried. "It certainly seems fine to see you standing on your own feet again! Do you feel really well now?"

"Not well but a lot better," Dick answered. He drew up a chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

"Your car's still in the shop," he said, without smiling. "The man I sent out to tow it back to town said it was pretty badly smashed.... Tell me, Gloria, how did you happen to run off the road that day?"

Gloria swallowed hard.

"Well, it was raining, you know," she began, "and the car skidded ... and that's all. The next thing I knew I was lying in the road with the car on top of me!"

"What were you doing out in the country fifteen miles from home?" Dick went on.

"Oh, don't ask me any more questions!" Gloria cried impatiently. "Haven't I been through enough, lying here flat on my back for two weeks. Give me a little peace!"

"Was anybody with you?" Dick asked relentlessly.

Gloria closed her eyes.

"I'm tired," she said. "Go away."

"Not until you tell me if any one was with you in your car that day," Dick said in a low monotone.

Gloria opened her eyes. She smiled at Dick, showing the two tiny dimples that were tucked in at the corner of her mouth.

"You haven't kissed me yet, Rikky-Tikky-Tavy," she said. "I'm not going to kiss you," Dick answered calmly.

"Never again?"

"Perhaps ... but not right now," Dick replied. "Right now I'm interested in just one thing. I want to know who was with you 'way out in the country that day of the wreck! And, by Jove, I'm going to find out, too!"

Gloria burst out laughing.

"Not if I don't choose to tell you," she said. "After all, nobody knows who was along but me! And I'm not going to tell!"

Dick whitened. Suddenly Gloria was sorry for him.

"I was all alone, Dick," she said. "There wasn't any one with me. Cross my heart!"

Dick looked at her quietly for a minute. Then he put his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a little mud-stained flask, covered with cheap leather.

"How did you happen to have this along with you?" he asked. "Have you taken to solitary drinking, Gloria?"

His wife widened her eyes that were the color of brown pansies.

"Where in the world did you get that thing?" she asked. "I never saw it before in my life."

She shuddered as she looked at the flask. She seemed, still, to see it in Stan's hand as he tried to make her drink from it!

"You mean to tell me, upon your word of honor, that you never have seen this whisky flask before in your life?" Dick asked her.

Gloria answered him gravely. "I mean just that!" she said.

She watched him put the flask back into his pocket.

She drew a long breath of relief.

Then, fascinated, she saw him draw from his coat another shining object ... a silver cigarette case. It, too, was caked with yellow mud.

"Did you ever see this before, Gloria?" he asked.

Gloria shook her head.

"Never?" Dick asked. "Think before you speak."

"Never!"

Dick smiled scornfully.

"What kind of a woman are you, anyway?" he asked. "You know as well as I do whose cigarette case this is!"

He turned it over, so that Gloria could see the initials that were engraved upon it.... "S.W."

Stanley Wayburn!

Gloria took Wayburn's cigarette case from Dick.

Wondering, she turned it over and over in her slim hands.

"Where in the world did you get this thing?" she asked, puzzled. The last time she had seen it, it had been lying in the wet yellow mud beside the wreck of her car. And she was quite sure that she hadn't picked it up.

"The nurse in the office downstairs just gave it to me ... along with the jewelry you had on when you came into the hospital," Dick answered. His voice sounded tired and flat.

He took a little handful of jewelry from his pocket and tossed it down on the bed. Gloria picked up her rings and put them on. She slid her wrist watch under her pillow.

Then she looked up at Dick. There was scorn written in the lovely depths of her eyes.

"So you knew when you came into this room that I'd been with Stan the day of the wreck!" she said. "And you set a trap for me!"

"Of course I knew. The minute I saw his initials on the cigarette case I knew," Dick answered grimly. "I wish I had the fellow by the throat this minute!" He made a twisting movement with his hands.

"Dick, please don't get excited over this! There's really very little to it!" Gloria pleaded. "I told Stan that day that I was never going to see him again. Truly I did ... and, anyway, he's going to New York soon...."

Dick stared out of the window at the housetops across the street. He jerked his head toward them.

"I wonder if any of the men who live in those houses have wives like you, Gloria," he said. "I wonder if their wives are the kind who refuse to have children, who go tearing around with other men, who never stay at home ... who don't even know how to make a home...."

"Well, it's their own fault if they have!" Gloria cried shrilly. "It's their own fault!"

Dick turned toward her.

"How do you mean, it's their own fault?" he asked sharply. "I suppose you mean it's my fault that you've been stepping out with this Wayburn? Because you have, of course!"

"Yes," Gloria answered boldly. "I have. And I'll tell you why I have, if you want to know ... because he knows how to be a pal to me, and you don't!"

Dick said nothing. There was a white line around his lips. And a fine sweat came out on his forehead.

"No, you don't!" Gloria repeated as if she were arguing with him. "You think that because you've given me a roof over my head and paid the bills you've done your husbandly duty."

She paused for breath.

"Well, you've kept me pretty busy paying your bills," Dick said. "Although I wouldn't mention the fact if you hadn't brought it up."

Gloria flushed.

"You kick every time I ask you to take me out to a dance or to a picture show," she went on. "Your idea of the end of a perfect day is to go to sleep over the newspaper every night! And I can just sit there and twiddle my thumbs, I suppose? ... Well, I'm not going to! Not if I see myself first!"

"If I go to sleep over the newspaper it's because I'm dog-tired after my day's work," Dick answered. "And if you did your housework, as you should, instead of lying in bed till noon every day, you'd be pretty tired yourself at night. Other women don't want to be gadding every night in the week, I notice."

Gloria pulled her blue silk bed-jacket around her shoulders. With her uninjured arm she picked up her hand-mirror from the table at the side of her bed. She smiled into it.

"Other women! I should worry about other women!" she said serenely.

She turned so that Dick could see her face snuggled against the pillows, in its halo of short, red-gold hair. She smiled at him with teasing sweetness. The corners of her lips tilted up like the wings of a flying bird.

"Other women aren't as pretty as I am," she said bluntly. "Most of them are mighty lucky to have husbands. And they know it. They work hard to hold them ... but I don't have to! I don't even need a husband! You know, Rikky, that any stage-manager in the country would be glad to give me a job, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," Dick answered truthfully. "You're far and away the best-looking girl I've ever seen. But you remember what happened to Helen of Troy. In the end she was doggoned glad to sneak home to the old husband!"

"Yes, but she'd had her good time first!" Gloria said, brightening. "And you'd better treat me gently, Dick, or you'll wake up one of these mornings and find me gone."

"Treat you gently..." Dick groaned. "As if I'd ever treated you any other way! Sometimes I think that if I'd pulled a little of the caveman stuff on you, you'd been a better wife...."

He stopped, lost in a new train of thought.

"See here, Gloria," he said after a moment, "I want you to tell me how far this Wayburn affair has gone. Has he made love to you?"

Gloria widened her eyes at him, like an innocent child just waking up from a nap.

"He was trying to make love to me the day I wrecked the car," she said. "I hit him.... I forgot all about driving. And the next thing I knew I was lying under the car half dead...."

She began to cry weakly.

Dick put his arms around her very gently.

He could feel the beating of her heart. It fluttered like a frightened bird's, it seemed to him.

"And then you talk to me as if I was a bad woman!" she sobbed. "Just because I want to jazz around and have a little fun...."

Dick patted her round shoulder. When he spoke his voice was harsh. His eyes were filled with passion and tenderness.

"Poor little kiddie!" he said. "I'm sorry."

It was not until he was half way home ... away from the warmth and perfume of her ... that he began to doubt what Gloria had told him. She had lied to him so often!