Photo Finish

“Not on your Nelly,” said the great man and as an afterthought, “What’s the matter with her? Has she fallen in love with the composer?”

“Boy,” said Mr. Ruby deeply. “You said it.”

It was true. After her somewhat tigerish fashion the Sommita was in love. Rupert’s Byronic appearance, his melting glance, and his undiluted adoration had combined to do the trick. At this point she had a flaring row with her Australian secretary, who stood up to her and when she sacked him said she had taken the words out of his mouth. She then asked Rupert if he could type and when he said yes promptly offered him the job. He accepted, canceled all pending appointments, and found himself booked in at the same astronomically expensive hotel as his employer. He not only dealt with her correspondence. He was one of her escorts to the theatre and was permitted to accompany her at her practices. He supped with her after the show and stayed longer than any of the other guests. He was in heaven.

On a night when this routine had been observed and Mr. Reece had retired early, in digestive discomfort, the Sommita asked Rupert to stay while she changed into something comfortable. This turned out to be a ruby silken negligé, which may indeed have been comfortable for the wearer but which caused the beholder to shudder in an agony of excitement.

He hadn’t a hope. She had scarcely embarked upon the preliminary phases of her formidable techniques when she was in his arms or, more strictly, he in hers.

An hour later he floated down the long passage to his room, insanely inclined to sing at the top of his voice.

“My first!” he exulted. “My very first. And, incredibly— Isabella Sommita.”

He was, poor boy, as pleased as Punch with himself.

iv

As far as his nearest associates could discover, Mr. Reece was not profoundly disturbed by his mistress’s goings-on. Indeed he appeared to ignore them but, really, it was impossible to tell, he was so remarkably uncommunicative. Much of his time, most of it, in fact, was spent with a secretary, manipulating, it was widely conjectured, the stock markets and receiving long-distance telephone calls. His ma

It was at this juncture that Mr. Reece flew to New Zealand to inspect his island lodge, now completed.

On his return, three days later, to Melbourne, he found the Alleyns’ letters of acceptance and the Sommita in a high state of excitement.

“Dar-leeng,” she said, “you will show me everything. You have photographs, of course? Am I going to be pleased? Because I must tell you I have great plans. But such plans!” cried the Sommita and made mysterious gestures. “You will never guess.”

“What are they?” he asked in his flat-voiced way.

“Ah-ah!” she teased. “You must be patient. First the pictures, which Rupert, too, must see. Quick, quick, the pictures.”

She opened the bedroom door into the sitting room and in two glorious notes sang, “Rupert!”

Rupert had been coping with her fan mail. When he came in he found that Mr. Reece had laid out a number of glossy, colored photographs on the bed. They were all of the island lodge.

The Sommita was enchanted. She exclaimed, purred, exalted. Several times she burst into laughter. Ben Ruby arrived and the photographs were reexhibited. She embraced all three men severally and more or less together.

And then with a sudden drop into the practical, she said, “The music room. Let me see it again. Yes. How big is it?”

“From memory,” said Mr. Reece, “sixty feet long and forty wide.” Mr. Ruby whistled. “That’s quite a size,” he remarked. “That’s more like a bijou theatre than a room. You settling to give concerts, honey?”

“Better than that!” she cried. “Didn’t I tell you, Monty, my dar-leeng, that we have made plans? Ah, we have cooked up such plans, Rupert and I. Haven’t we, caro? Yes?”

“Yes,” Rupert said with an uncertain glance at Mr. Reece. “I mean—. Marvelous.”

Mr. Reece had an extremely passive face, but Rupert thought he detected a shade of resignation pass over it. Mr. Ruby, however, wore an expression of the deepest apprehension.

The Sommita flung her right arm magnificently across Rupert’s shoulders. “This dear child,” she said, and if she had made it “this adorable lover” she could have scarcely been more explicit, “has genius. I tell you — I who know. Genius.” They said nothing and she continued. “I have lived with his opera. I have studied his opera. I have studied the leading role. The ‘Ruth.’ The arias, the solos, the duets — there are two— and the ensembles. All, but all, have the unmistakable stigmata of genius. I do not,” she amended, “use the word stigmata in the sense of martyrdom. Better, perhaps, to say ‘they bear the ba

To look at Rupert at this moment one might have thought that martyrdom was, after all, the more appropriate word. His face was dark red and he shifted in her embrace. She shook him, none too gently. “Clever, clever one,” she said and kissed him noisily.

“Are we to hear your plan?” Mr. Reece asked.

The hour being seven o’clock, she hustled them into the sitting room and told Rupert to produce cocktails. He was glad to secrete himself in the chilly pantry provided for drinks, ice, and glasses. A few desultory and inaudible remarks came from the other three. Mr. Ruby cleared his throat once or twice. Then, so unexpectedly that Rupert spilled Mr. Reece’s whiskey and soda over his hands, the piano in the sitting room sketched the opening statement of what he had hoped would be the big aria from his opera, and the superb voice, in heartrending pianissimo, sang: “Alone, alone amidst the alien corn.”

It was at that moment with no warning at all that Rupert was visited by a catastrophic certainty. He had been mistaken in his opera. Not even the most glorious voice in all the world could ever make it anything but what it was — third-rate.

“It’s no good,” he thought. “It is ridiculously commonplace.” And then: “She has no judgment. She is not a musical woman.”

He was shattered.

Chapter two

The Lodge

i

Early on a fine morning in the antipodean spring the Alleyns were met at their New Zealand airport by a predictably rich car and were driven along roads that might have been ruled across the plains to vanishing points on the horizon. The Pacific was out of sight somewhere to their left and before them rose foothills. These were the outer ramparts of the Southern Alps.

“We’re in luck,” Alleyn said. “On a gray day when there are no hills to be seen, the plains can be deadly. Would you want to paint?”

“I don’t think so,” Troy said after considering it. “It’s all a bit inhuman, isn’t it? One would have to find an idiom. I get the feeling that the people only move across the surface. They haven’t evolved with it. They’re not included,” said Troy, “in the anatomy. What cheek,” she exclaimed, “to generalize when I’ve scarcely arrived in the country!”

The driver, who was called Bert, was friendly and anxious for his passengers to be impressed. He pointed out mountains that had been sheep-farmed by the first landholders.

“Where we’re going,” Troy asked, “to Waihoe Lodge, is that sheep country?”

“No way. We’re going into Westland, Mrs. Alleyn. The West Coast. It’s all timber and mining over there. Waihoe’s quite a lake. And the Lodge! You know what they reckon it’s cost him? Half a million. And more. That’s what they reckon. Nothing like it anywhere else in N’yerzillun. You’ll be surprised.”