Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/180

 remained here in the house alone with Jack. He left the choice of diversion to his host.

Later in the morning, however, a lady publicist living at Santa Fe telephoned to ask Jack if he could bring his distinguished guest to lunch, an invitation which Jack accepted without consulting Ambrose.

But how did she learn I was here?

Oh, everybody knows everything about everybody in Santa Fe. Whether it is relayed telepathically through the mountain air or whether the servants gossip I don't know. Anyway we have no secrets from each other. We learned long ago it would be impossible to have and so we don't try.

Marna Frost lived in another adobe house, painted pink. The interior was hung exclusively with Indian and Spanish trophies: beaded moccasins and belts, splendid, ancient feather head-dresses, tassels of scarlet peppers and of multi-coloured ears of corn, ranging from black to magenta, sconces of embossed tin, and Spanish santos, tortured conceptions of the locally favourite saints, painted in vegetable colours on wood. The more elaborate of these were carved out in three dimensions and stood on the mantel-shelf.

Jack had described Marna Frost to Ambrose with some thoroughness. She was a poet of the New Eng-