last suspicions vanishing.
There were easels, chairs, stools, and a platform at one end with scenery propped against the wall near it. There were clean canvas frames, others partly finished, still others covered with cloths. A table had a few crocks upon it piled neatly at one end. An oil stove, extinguished, was in another corner. The floor was wooden, liberally bespattered with drops of varihued paints.
So much Elsa took in at a glance, then her eyes moved to the tall, blonde girl in a loose-fitting smock, idly smoking a cigarette, who came lounging towards her. She was definitely good-looking, and probably her figure also left nothing to be desired when divested of the formless covering she was wearing.
“This is Babs Vane,” Clive said, motioning. “And here is Elsa Farraday, Babs, of whom I told you.”
“Glad to know you, Miss Farraday.” Elsa’s hand was gripped by long, firm fingers. “Clive’s been telling me all about you. In fact he’s done little else since yesterday. Seems pretty sure he’s found in you exactly the type he’s looking for.”
Elsa only smiled. She was thinking at that moment that it would have been hard to find a more beautiful girl than Barbara Vane, with her natural golden hair, clear blue eyes, and straight features.
“I don’t look mystical, you see,” Barbara Vane explained, as though she had read Elsa’s thoughts. “Blondes never do....”
“Excuse the untidiness of everything, Miss Farraday,” Clive broke in, pulling up a chair. “Artists are notoriously Bohemian and I don’t claim to be an exception. Let me have your coat, Miss Farraday.”
“And hat, surely?” she smiled, removing it and patting her night-black tresses.
Clive nodded and took the hat from her, then he took the light dust coat too. Barbara reached out a hand for them and took them into the adjoining dressing room through an open interconnecting doorway.
“How about some tea before we start?” she enquired. “I don’t know about you, Miss Farraday, but I just can’t exist without it.”
“Oh, I can survive—but as it happens I’ve had a long and thirsty walk this morning,” Elsa responded. “I’ll be glad of some, thanks.”
With a nod Barbara lighted the oil stove and placed a kettle upon it. Then she returned to stand near Elsa and rested her arm on the back of a chair.
“I can see what Clive means,” she said pensively. “About the mystical look, that is. You’ve certainly got it.”
“Without doubt,” Clive Hexley agreed, turning to a bench and inspecting several tubes of colour lying thereon. “If I can just capture that look in the eyes, the turn of the head, and the general poise, I’ll really have something.”
Barbara Vane seated herself, drew at her cigarette for a moment, then asked a question in her languid voice.
“I believe you write, Miss Farraday, under the name of Hardy Strong? So Clive was telling me.”
Elsa nodded. “Yes, but I shan’t feel offended if you’ve never heard the name. I do fairly well, but I’m not a world-beater by any means—”
“Oh, but I do know your books. In fact I’ve read two of them, but....” Barbara frowned and examined the end of her cigarette.
“But what?” Hexley asked, turning. “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you mention Miss Farraday’s work. You never said anything about it to me yesterday.”
“No, chiefly because I wanted to ask Miss Farraday herself Do you really mean,” Barbara asked deliberately, “that you—an obviously refined girl—write that awful stuff?”
“Awful?” It seemed a hard glint crept into Elsa’s eyes.
“Not in the usual sense of ‘awful’ I don’t mean. You write quite well—but the material is horrifying. In fact I should think you’ve started a new vogue in terror stories! I frankly admit, Miss Farraday, that after reading two of your books I got so nauseated I resolved never to read any more! I even pictured to myself what kind of a mind this Hardy Strong could have to conjure up such elaborate ways of murdering people and disposing of them— Then out of a clear sky you have descended upon me! Not a big-fisted man but a retiring young woman. I just don’t understand it.”
“I simply write what the public wants,” Elsa responded, with a shrug. “And it pays. Certainly my work is in crime-horror thrillers, but that doesn’t imply that I have the mind of an assassin, does it? As a matter of fact I only write at all as a sort of escape.”
“Escape?” Clive repeated, puzzled. “From what?”
“Myself.”
At that moment the water in the kettle boiled and Barbara jumped up to attend to it. By the time she had prepared the tea and served it for the three of them the topic of Elsa’s writing had slipped out of focus. They talked instead of Clive’s work and everyday affairs, until Elsa was obviously at home enough to begin to pose for the portrait.
Under Clive’s directions she took a seat by the window where the light fell diagonally across her face, and she found herself forced to gaze at the uninteresting view outside. From the tail of her eye she had a vision of Clive’s right arm working at the canvas and, more remotely, Barbara moving about as she attended to odd jobs in the studio.
Elsa found that her first sitting occupied, in stages, about two hours, which brought the time close to noon—then Clive suddenly “downed tools” and insisted on taking her out to lunch. It was a suggestion that seemed to give Barbara some cause for thought, though she did not make any comment.
“I know an ideal place—the Artists’ Club—only a few streets away,” Clive insisted. “Surely you can’t refuse? Then I’ll see you safely back to your hotel.”
Elsa did not refuse: she accepted the invitation quite willingly, though she could not help but notice the queer light in Barbara’s blue eyes. It was an impression that remained with her so strongly she mentioned it over lunch.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about Babs,” Clive smiled. “She isn’t jealous, if that’s what you mean. Matter of fact, she’s no need to be. She’s friendly with a young actor—Terry Draycott. You’ll probably meet him soon. Come to think of it,” he reflected, “This makes a triumvirate of the arts, doesn’t it? Artist, actor, and writer.”
“Is he a well-known actor?” Elsa asked.
“Well, he’s a pretty celebrated supporting player, though he isn’t in the star class as yet. Just working his way up. At the moment he has the villain’s part in that new murder thriller at the Adelphi—‘Robert Had Two Knives.’”
Elsa nodded. She had seen the play advertised, but that was all.
“It isn’t very long since we met,” Clive resumed presently. “No more than twenty-four hours, yet we seem to be hitting it off all right, don’t we?”
“Well, I suppose a certain amount of co-operation is essential between artist and model,” Elsa replied evasively. “Just the same I do think, Mr. Hexley, that—”
“I wish you’d call me Clive.”
“Perhaps I will—later on. As I was saying, it’s imperative that I leave London within the next few days. I have my own work to do, you know. You can finish that portrait of me in that time, surely?”
“It’s debatable,” Hexley mused. “I’ve hardly done anything yet—only sketched in the rough outlines. I may as well be frank and tell you that you are a disturbing influence. I can’t concentrate on the painting because I’m concentrating on you. That never happens when I have Babs as a model. She registers blank negative on my emotions.... Anybody ever tell you that you have aura—a queer sort of personal magnetism?”
“No. I don’t believe I have, either. I’m one of the most retiring people imaginable.”