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The Sybarite
by
I could not make out whether he was lying or not when he said that he had not sent the note. Kennedy picked up a pen. “Please write the same thing as you read in the note on this sheet of the Novella paper. It will be all right. You have plenty of witnesses to that.”
It must have irked Collins even to have his word doubted, but Kennedy was no respecter of persons. He took the pen and wrote.
“I’ll keep your name out of it as much as possible,” remarked Kennedy, glancing intently at the writing and blotting it.
“Thank you,” said Collins simply, for once in his life at a loss for words. Once more he whispered to O’Connor, then he excused himself. The man was so obviously sincere, I felt, as far as his selfish and sensual limitations would permit, that I would not have blamed Kennedy for giving him much more encouragement than he had given.
Kennedy was not through yet, and now turned quickly again to the cosmetic arcadia which had been so rudely stirred by the tragedy.
“Who is this girl Agnes who discovered Miss Blaisdell?” he shot out at the Millefleurs.
The beauty-doctor was now really painful in his excitement. Like his establishment, even his feelings were artificial.
“Agnes?” he repeated. “Why, she was one of Madame’s best hair- dressers. See–my dear–show the gentlemen the book of engagements.”
It was a large book full of girls’ names, each an expert in curls, puffs, “reinforcements,” hygienic rolls, transformators, and the numberless other things that made the fearful and wonderful hair- dresses of the day. Agnes’s dates were full, for a day ahead.
Kennedy ran his eye over the list of patrons. “Mrs. Burke Collins, 3:30,” he read. “Was she a patron, too?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Madame. “She used to come here three times a week. It was not vanity. We all knew her, and we all liked her.”
Instantly I could read between the lines, and I felt that I had been too charitable to Burke Collins. Here was the wife slaving to secure that beauty which would win back the man with whom she had worked and toiled in the years before they came to New York and success. The “other woman” came here, too, but for a very different reason.
Nothing but business seemed to impress Millefleur, however. “Oh, yes,” he volunteered, “we have a fine class. Among my own patients I have Hugh Dayton, the actor, you know, leading man in Blanche Blaisdell’s company. He is having his hair restored. Why, I gave him a treatment this afternoon. If ever there is a crazy man, it is he. I believe he would kill Mr. Collins for the way Blanche Blaisdell treats him. They were engaged–but, oh, well,” he gave a very good imitation of a French shrug, “it is all over now. Neither of them will get her, and I–I am ruined. Who will come to the Novella now?”
Adjoining Millefleur’s own room was the writing room from which the poisoned envelope had been taken to Miss Blaisdell. Over the little secretary was the sign, “No woman need be plain who will visit the Novella,” evidently the motto of the place. The hair- dressing room was next to the little writing-room. There were manicure rooms, steam-rooms, massage-rooms, rooms of all descriptions, all bearing mute testimony to the fundamental instinct, the feminine longing for personal beauty.
Though it was late when Kennedy had finished his investigation, he insisted on going directly to his laboratory. There he pulled out from a corner a sort of little square table on which was fixed a powerful light such as might be used for a stereopticon.
“This is a simple little machine,” he explained, as be pasted together the torn bits of the letter which he had fished out of the scrap-basket, “which detectives use in studying forgeries. I don’t know that it has a name, although it might be called a ‘rayograph.’ You see, all you have to do is to lay the thing you wish to study flat here, and the system of mirrors and lenses reflects it and enlarges it on a sheet.”