Suave and courteous, Trent made himself at home among the crowd of people who were, so they informed him, world famous in a screen sense.
Trent, as usual, had timed things accurately. It was part of his scheme that Norah should want to banish from his mind the idea that there had been any collusion. She was bright and vivacious in her manner toward him.
“You are a sweet man,” she exclaimed, “I’m dreadfully hungry--and thirsty. Come on boys and girls.”
He noticed that although arrayed in a new costume of blue, she clung to her back moiré bag. He called Weiller aside while Norah mixed a last cocktail for the men.
“George,” he whispered, “that blue bag I bought is just the thing to give Norah.” George felt a parcel thrust into his hand. “It’s a little present from me to you and she mustn’t know I bought it.”
“She shan’t from me,” Weiller said almost tremulously. Nothing could have happened more delightfully. Not ten minutes ago in the presence of his even less prosperous motion picture colleagues, Norah had called him a tightwad who didn’t think enough of the woman he was to marry to buy her a ring. He explained that easily enough by saying nothing in San Francisco was good enough for her and that he was ordering one from New York. This present from a rich and careless spender would prove affluence no less than affection. “Thanks, old man, a million times.”
Norah was at the door when he presented it. She was genuinely affected by the gift. Perhaps her thanks were even warmer when one of her friends picked up the sales slip which had fluttered to the ground and read aloud the price. “I’m tired of that black bag,” George complained.
“Norah’s never going to carry that when she’s got this,” one of the other women cried. “It matches her gown exactly.”
“I took care of that,” George said complacently. “I told the saleswoman to get me the best she had but it must be gentian blue.”
There seemed a momentary hesitation before the black bag was discarded. To cling to it at such a moment would be to court suspicion. This was Trent’s strategy. Her manner was not lost upon one of the others, a character woman named Richards.
“Why, George,” she laughed, “I believe a former lover gave Norah that bag and she hates to part with it. I was in a picture once where the heroine carried the ashes of her first sweetheart around with her. I’d look into it if I was you.”