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Updated: May 29, 2025
The hall-boy was startled by his manner, amazed to hear the famous Dyckman ask for Miss L'Etoile. He telephoned the name while Dyckman fumed. After some delay he was told to come up. Zada was alone at least Cheever was not there. She had been astounded when Dyckman's name came through the telephone.
He consented to Zada's plan and promised to call up his wife. Zada took a brief triumph from that. But Peter was ashamed and afraid to speak to Charity even across the wire. He knew that it has become as difficult to lie by telephone as face to face. The treacherous little quavers in the voice are multiplied to a rattle, and nothing can ever quite imitate sincerity.
One of Cheever's worst embarrassments was the matter of Zada. His battered head suffered tortures before it contrived a proper lie for her. Then he called Zada up from his house and explained that as he was leaving his club to fly to her, his car had skidded into another, with the result that he had been knocked senseless and cut up with flying glass; otherwise he was in perfect shape.
It may be interesting to outline the procedure as a social document in chicanery, or social surgery, as one wills to call it. McNiven first laid under Charity's eyes a summons and complaint against Peter Cheever. She glanced over it and found it true except that Zada L'Etoile was not named; Cheever's alleged income was vastly larger than she imagined, and her claim for alimony was exorbitant.
Her answers were jumbled with his questions his voice terrified, hers victorious. "I've kept it a secret for months, because I was afraid of you. It's my right. It's too late to do anything now. And now we'll see whether you love me or not and how much, if any." There was again silence. Charity could hardly tolerate the suspense. Both she and Zada were hanging breathlessly on Cheever's answer.
The woman whom we first observed was the legal murderess. The Shah Zada offered the woman a considerable sum of money if she would waive her claim to right of personally inflicting the punishment on the delinquent, and allow the man to be delivered over to his officers of justice, promising a punishment commensurate with the crime he had committed.
The voices of Zada and her maid stopped jangling, and she heard the most familiar of all voices asking: "What's the row to-day?" There was an extra metal in the timbre and it had the effect of an old phonographic record, but there was no questioning whose voice it was. Zada's voice became audibly low in answer. "She is such a fool she drives me crazy."
At any rate, she was miserable, and if a person is going to be miserable she might as well be right while her misery is going on. Zada had dragged Cheever to a cabaret. She could lead him thither, but she could not make him dance. She was one-stepping unwillingly with a young cad who insulted her subtly in everything he said and looked.
Cheever was so distracted between the scruples of his lawyer and Zada's lack of them that when Charity confessed how she had set detectives on him and had secured a dictagraphic record of his alliance with Zada he was overcome with gratitude. So little a shift of circumstances makes all the difference between a spy and a savior.
He was afraid to trust his voice to any proposal or even to go out between the acts. The worst of it was that he felt sorrier for Zada than for his wife. Poor Zada had nothing, Charity had everything. How easily we vote other people everything! Cheever was afraid of the ride home with Charity; he dreaded to be at home to-night and to-morrow and always.
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