Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/171

 Kestner's smile was still punctiliously non-committal. It even broadened a little as Sadie Wimpel whispered back to Wilsnach over her bare shoulder: "I'd a hunch this feed was goin' to be a frost!"

"Since you are the host this evening," Kestner was suavely explaining, "the number of your guests must, of course, depend on your own wishes!"

The edged steel of Kestner's urbanity caused Lieutenant Andelman to stand regarding him for a moment or two of thoughtful silence. Sadie herself, during this tableau, turned away toward the squared circle of the dinner-table. She was embarrassed by both the open hostility of Andelman's manner and by the consciousness of that Collet creation which Wilsnach himself had persuaded her into purchasing. So she stood with rueful and abstracted eyes, staring down at the shimmer of silver and glass, at the center of which stood a vase of Richmond rose-buds half-buried in a circling wreath of smilax. And to cover both her embarrassment and her indignation she deliberately leaned over the table and sniffed with her heaviest grande dame air at the perfume of the clustered Richmonds.

Then, looking over her stooping shoulder and finding Andelman's eyes still fixed on Kestner's