CHAPTER 40

As soon as I arrived, I attempted to locate my host, but the few people I asked about his whereabouts stared at me in such an astonished manner and denied any knowledge of his movements

so vehemently that I slipped away toward the cocktail table—the only place in the garden where a solitary man could linger without seeming aimless and alone.

I was about to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Casey Taylor emerged from the house and stood at the top of the marble steps, leaning slightly backward and looking down into the garden with an air of contemptuous interest.

Welcome or not, I found it necessary to attach myself to someone before I began to make cordial remarks to the passersby.

"Hello!" I called out, approaching her. My voice seemed unnaturally loud across the garden.

"I thought you might be here," she replied absently as I approached. "I remembered you lived next door to——"

She shook my hand impersonal, as if promising that she'd take care of me soon, and listened to two girls in twin yellow dresses who stopped at the bottom of the steps.

"Hello!" they chorused. "Sorry you didn't win."

That was about the golf tournament. She had lost in the finals the week before.

"You don't know who we are," said one of the girls in yellow, "but we met you here about a month ago."