when Dan Sutton was still alive. Not what you’d call a best seller, but it still brings in some royalties. Some of the medical schools use it as supplementary reading in their advanced psychology courses.”
“Good. Then I’ll ask the Willings and that will have to be it. Amos and Vera, the Veseys and the Willings and that little woman down the road and her son.” Tony took a typescript out of its box and began to read, but Philippa went on, thinking aloud: “We’ll have a simple buffet supper. Ham and turkey, potatoes au gratin and salad, fresh fruit and Stilton. Let’s have Scotch and soda first. I’m sick of sweet, messy cocktails. And it’ll make Amos less conspicuous drinking his iced tea in a tall glass, too. If only I had time to get that cushion recovered. The one the mystery writer burned a cigarette hole in and…”
“Why, Tony!”
The masculine voice brought Tony’s head up from his script with a jerk and cut off Philippa’s hostess chatter.
The man who stood in the aisle was small and slender with a sickly, pallid face and burning, black eyes. His straight, dark hair lay lank and glossy against his well-shaped skull. The mouth was thrusting, a little simian and mischievous, but there was intelligence in the eyes and the speaking voice was beautiful—a thing of light and shade and color expressed in terms of sound. He faced them, smiling with an easy self-possession that seemed to announce: here is an individual of unique importance.
“Why, Leppy!” Tony shouted. “It’s been a coon’s age. Where did you come from?”
“Got on at 125th. I’ve been lecturing at Columbia. I was prowling the train looking for a smoking car and…”
“Sit down.” Tony was on his feet. Luckily the seat in front of them was empty. Tony pushed the back over so that the two seats now faced each other. “You’ve met my wife, Philippa, haven’t you?”
“I don’t believe I’ve had that pleasure.” It said a great deal for Lepton’s grace that his bow did not seem grotesque in such a small, ugly man. He slid into the opposite seat that Tony had provided and Philippa smiled at him pleasantly. “I remember you at our wedding, but that was a long time ago. Do you live in Connecticut now?”
“No, I’m on my way to the Shadbolts for the week end. You know Shad, don’t you, Tony? He wrote that South Windish thing laid in Taos last year.”
“I’ve just been reading your review of Amos Cottle’s latest,” put in Philippa, determined not to be left out of the shop talk.
“Ah!” Lepton’s eyelids drooped but the slitted eyes were more brilliant than ever. “Now there’s a man who really can write. He doesn’t imitate anybody. He’s just himself. An original. That’s what American letters needs so desperately today.”
“I think he’s good myself,” said Philippa, loyally.
“Good? Dear lady, he’s magnificent. If the word hadn’t been so brutally abused, I’d say he was a genius. There’s nothing else in contemporary literature quite like the Cottle touch. You’re to be congratulated, Tony.”
“Thanks.” Tony composed his features to a suitably reverential gravity, but Philippa had always suspected that Tony was far more interested in Amos’s sales figures than his literary qualities.
“Cottle must be a very lonely man,” went on Lepton, in a musing tone; “A talent like that is like great wealth—it cuts you off from the rest of humanity. I think of Kim as a monkish figure, withdrawn and abstracted, submerged in his own—er—ah…”
“Mystique,” suggested Philippa, like a bright child trying to join a grown-up conversation.
The brilliant gaze shifted to her. “I see you really have been reading my review.”
“It’s a nice word. I like it spelled that French way,” she prattled on, while Tony winced. “I like all the words you use—words like meaningful. If I were writing a review, I’d just say significant, but I suppose there must be an opposite of meaningless in the dictionary and it sounds a lot more Thursday Review…. You know Amos really isn’t monkish at all. He’s quite a lot of fun sometimes.”
Lepton looked thoughtfully at Tony. “I’d really like to meet him sometime. He must be as fascinating as one of his own characters.”
“Why, haven’t you ever met him at all?” Philippa was astonished.
“Leppy is not the kind of critic who frequents publication-day cocktail parties at Toots Shor’s,” said Tony.
“Haven’t you ever seen Amos on TV?” demanded Philippa.
“I do not own a TV set,” answered Lepton firmly. “I avoid TV whenever I can.”
“Amos has had his own weekly program for the last six months,” explained Tony. “He interviews other authors about their books. He doesn’t criticize. Just draws the other guy out and gets him to talk about what he was trying to do when he wrote the book in question.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t criticize,” said Lepton a little bitterly. “I’ve been told many times that there is no place for real criticism on TV.”
Philippa had an inspiration. “If you really want to meet Amos, we could arrange it for this week end. We were just planning a small supper party for Amos when you came by. Sunday at our house at six o’clock. We’d love to have you come and bring the Shadbolts.”
“That’s very kind of you indeed.” Lepton made another graceful little bow and Philippa wondered: why did critics always have much more charming manners than the wild, rough lot who called themselves creative writers?
“I’m sure the Shadbolts would appreciate it, too,” went on Lepton. “But I’ve already told them I would have to leave Sunday afternoon, and they may have made other arrangements for the evening. Why don’t I just get a taxi to run me over to your place around six?”
“I can run over to the Shadbolts in the Austin and pick you up,” said Philippa. “If you’re really coming.”
“Of course I’m coming.” He smiled. “I’ve never been able to live up to the standard of that English critic who made a point of never meeting a writer in the flesh throughout his long and acidulous career.”
The smile transmuted his monkey face into something Philippa found fascinating. She was reminded of an old story—an Edwardian rake who boasted: “I am considered the ugliest man in Europe, but give me half an hour alone with any woman and I can win her away from the handsomest man in the world.” What would half an hour alone with Maurice Lepton be like?
The thought was pleasantly disturbing. She began to plan what she would wear tomorrow when she went over to the Shadbolts. Of course Maurice Lepton wasn’t really her type. Indeed she wasn’t sure she even liked him, but…
Something feline in her nature enjoyed hunting for the sake of the hunt itself, without feeling either desire or hostility toward the quarry. Like a domestic cat, she managed her life so that she could enjoy both the civilized satisfactions of peaceful luxury at home and the savage excitements of the chase abroad. It was an ideal life, she thought—a life where all the prizes of a policed society were enjoyed without the repression of a single feral impulse. Philippa might have her faults, but she was entirely free of repressions. Sometimes she wondered if Tony had ever suspected the fact.
When Lepton left the train at Norwalk, Philippa allowed her ungloved hand to linger a moment in his. Their eyes met and for an instant that feeling of sweet disturbance swept over her again more strongly than before. She was a little frightened. Pleasure she understood, but she had always avoided passion. She had always been mistress of herself.
“Well, what do you think of Leppy?” asked Tony as the train rumbled on toward Westport.
“I don’t know.” Philippa was as puzzled as she was fascinated by the unplumbed depths in those eyes. Out of sheer intuition she plucked a curious phrase. “I think he’s unscrupulous and dangerous.”