“Good evening,” she answered, and a touch of her old gaiety came into her voice. Kahn was already seated, and now she motioned Straussmann to follow. She began slicing the cold potted beef and asked them about sugar in their tea, adding, “Oscar will be here soon.” To Kahn she showed only a very little trace of coldness, of indecision.
“No,” Straussmann said, still standing, legs apart: “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like a word or two with Kahn.” They stepped off the porch together.
“Kahn,” he said, going directly to the point, “listen,” he took hold of Kahn’s coat by the lapel. “You have known Emma longer than I have, you’ve got to break it to her.” He flourished a large key under Kahn’s nose, as he spoke.
“I’ve got him locked up in the out-house safe enough for the present, but we must do something immediately.”
“What’s the matter?” A strange, pleasant but cold sweat broke out upon Kahn’s forehead.
“I found Oscar sitting beside the body of his sweetheart, what’s-her-name; he had cut her throat with a kitchen knife, yes, with a kitchen knife—he seemed calm, but he would say nothing. What shall we do?”
“They’ll say he was a degenerate from the start——”
“No,” Kahn said, in a confused voice, “that’s not it.”
They stood and stared at each other so long that presently Emma grew nervous and came down the garden path to hear what it was all about.
A lady in a cowl of lawn With straight bound tabs and muted eyes, And lips fair thin and deftly drawn And oddly wise.
A cameo, a ruff of lace, A neck cut square with corners laid; A thin Greek nose and near the face A polished braid.
Low, sideways looped, of amber stain The pale ears caught within its snare. A profile like a dagger lain Between the hair.
“We have eaten a great deal, my friend, against the day of God.”
She was a fine woman, hard, magnificent, cold, Russian, married to a Jew, a doctor on the East Side.
You know that kind of woman, pale, large, with a heavy oval face.
A woman of ‘material’—a lasting personality, in other words, a ‘fashionable’ woman, a woman who, had she lived to the age of forty odd, would have sat for long fine hours by some window, overlooking some desolate park, thinking of a beautiful but lazy means to an end.