Too Many Cooks

It was after eleven o’clock, and half the chairs in the club car were empty. Two of the wholesome young fellows who pose for the glossy hair ads were there drinking highballs, and there was a scattering of the baldheads and streaked grays who had been calling porters George for thirty years. Vukcic and Miss Berin were seated with empty glasses in front of them, neither looking animated or entranced. Next to her on the other side was a square-jawed blue-eyed athlete in a quiet gray suit who would obviously be a self-made man in another ten years. I stopped in front of my friends and dropped a greeting on them. They replied. The blue-eyed athlete looked up from his book and made preparations to raise himself to give me a seat.

But Vukcic was up first. “Take mine, Goodwin. I’m sure Miss Berin won’t mind the shift. I was up most of last night.”

He said goodnights, and was off. I deposited myself, and flagged the steward when he stuck his nose out. It appeared that Miss Berin had fallen in love with American ginger ale, and I requested a glass of milk. Our needs were supplied and we sipped.

She turned the purple eyes on me. They looked darker than ever, and I saw that that question would not be settled until I met them in daylight. She said, with throat in her voice, “You really are a detective, aren’t you? Mr. Vukcic has been telling me, he dines every month at Mr. Wolfe’s house, and you live there. He says you are very brave and have saved Mr. Wolfe’s life three times.” She shook her head and let the eyes scold me. “But you shouldn’t have told me that about watering the horses. You might have known I would ask about it and find out.”

I said firmly, “Vukcic has only been in this country eight years and knows very little about the detective business.”

“Oh, no!” She gurgled. “I’m not young enough to be such a big, fool as that. I’ve been out of school three years.”

“All right.” I waved a hand. “Forget the horses. What kind of a school do girls go to over there?”

“A convent school. I did. At Toulouse.”

“You don’t look like any nun I ever saw.”

She finished a sip of ginger ale and then laughed. “I’m not anything at all like a nun. I’m not a bit religious, I’m very worldly. Mother Cecilia used to tell us girls that a life of service to others was the purest and sweetest, but I thought about it and it seemed to me that the best way would be to enjoy life for a long while, until you got fat or sick or had a big family, and then begin on service to others. Don’t you think so?”

I shook my head doubtfully. “I don’t know, I’m pretty strong on service. But of course you shouldn’t overdo it. You’ve been enjoying life so far?”

She nodded. “Sometimes. My mother died when I was young, and father has a great many rules for me. I saw how American girls acted when they came to San Remo, and I thought I would act the same way, but I found out I didn’t know how, and anyway father heard about it when I sailed Lord Gerley’s boat around the cape without a chaperon.”

“Was Gerley along?”

“Yes, he was along, but he didn’t do any of the work. He went to sleep and fell overboard and I had to tack three times to get him. Do you like Englishmen?”

I lifted a brow. “Well … I suppose I could like an Englishman, if the circumstances were exactly right. For instance, if it was on a desert island, and I had had nothing to eat for three days and he had just caught a rabbit—or, in case there were no rabbits, a wild boar or a walrus. Do you like Americans?”

“I don’t know!” She laughed. “I have only met a few since I grew up, at San Remo and around there, and it seemed to me they talked funny and tried to act superior. I mean the men. I liked one I knew in London once, a rich one with a bad stomach who stayed at the Tarleton, and my father had special things prepared for him, and when he left he gave me nice presents. I think lots of them I have seen since I got to New York are very good-looking. I saw one at the hotel yesterday who was quite handsome. He had a nose something like yours, but his hair was lighter. I can’t really tell whether I like people until I know them pretty well …”

She went on, but I was busy making a complicated discovery. When she had stopped to sip ginger ale my eyes had wandered away from her face to take in accessories, and as she had crossed her knees like American girls, without undue fuss as to her skirt, the view upward from a well-shaped foot and a custom-built ankle was as satisfactory as any I had ever seen. So far, so good; but the trouble was that I became aware that the blue-eyed athlete on the other side of her had one eye focused straight past the edge of his book, and its goal was obviously the same interesting object that I was studying, and my inner reaction to that fact was unsociable and alarming. Instead of being pleased at having a fellow man share a delightful experience with me, I became conscious of an almost uncontrollable impulse to do two things at once: glare at the athlete, and tell her to put her skirt down!