Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-03-01
|4sH MANHATTAN NIGHTE wv
N :, "''." 1'"'' ''" SYIEaN
BY William Aimon Wolf

him; she had a disconcerting way of
being right altogether too often to
make her an easy person to ignore.
Something else bothered him, too.
He'd told Martha, when she called
him up that morning, that she needn't
explain anything to him, and he'd
meant it. What she chose to do was
her own business. Only he wished she
hadn't started to tell him something
and then changed the subject. He
happened at lunch. He wished She'd
either told him nothing at all or a
good deal more than she had.
He hated that feeling she'd given him,
and that came back, now that she
wasn't sitting across the table from him,
distracting him with her smile, keeping
him amused with her talk, to haunt
him; that feeling that she really was In
some serious, some very real, some pos
sibly quite desperate, trouble. He wasn't
curious, at all, or, at least. he quite
honestly believed that he wasn't. But
he wanted to be able to help her, and
he didn't see how he could, unless he
knew the whole story.
Getting his thoughts back to Martha
herself, rather than to what Carol had
been saying about her, did one thing for
him, though. 1t Gained him down, so
that he stopped tearing along like a
man on his way to fire, and he
nodded, finally, to the inviting gesture
of a taxi-driver. His normal good tenn
per was restored when he got home, and
he grinned as he shook his head to
Manuels inevitable suggestion Of .
cocktail.
Manuel was inordinately proud of his
cocktails, and was always hurt when
Peter didn't want one. The little Fill
pino's cleaning smile appeared again,
though, when Peter gave him his direc-
tions about his clothes for the evening.
Manuel had an absolute passion for
white ties and waistcoats, and the won
der was that a silk hat didn't come to
life and purr when Manuel brushed 1t.
Peter arrived at the Thayers' at that
comfortable moment which Is neither
early nor late, and while he had ex-
pected to find Martha and Tack
changed from the appearance they had
presented when he had last seen them
together, their actual appearance did
succeed in surprising him. Tack was
sober; all his charm was in evidence.
Peter decided that he hadn't gone on as
much as he had thought.
AS for Martha, her sheer loveliness
made him catch his breath. Every trace
VI SullcllIlCbo was kOIlCs SIiC was u pCLACCt
hostess, gracious, cleverly cordial, an
adept exponent of one of those arts that
cannot, after all, be mastered In single
lifetime.
Evan Ross, though, was link with
the night before. He gave Peter cool,
Indifferent nod. He was standing by a
window, talking to tall, handsome girl.
with full red lips, and red hair; girl
made striking and set apart somehow,
by the startling contrast of her coal
black eyebrows to her rudy hair. Peter
didn't know her; didn't remember, in
deed, having so much as seen her be-
fore. He'd met the other couple who
had come before him, though he didn't
know them well; Jimmy Bronson and
his wife, who had been Marian Drew.
Martha introduced him to the girl by
the window; it meant nothing to him to
learn that her name was Rita Gould.
Nor, obviously, did she care to concern
herself with him; she nodded, and went