It had been Helen’s home all her life, and she always made me feel like an outsider in it. Which I was. Her dad had been a rich steelman, and she had been born in plush and raised in it. Just why she married me I never figured out, except that she wanted some variety, perhaps. Certainly there was nothing aristocratic-sounding about me—just an ordinary guy, a commercial artist who had never made much money and never would. Helen had the money. She inherited close to a million from her father, and there was another million-plus in trust fund cash falling due on her thirty-fifth birthday, which was fourteen months from now.

When I came in, the maid told me Mr. Berril was in the pahlah with Moddom Foster, and so I took the left-hand staircase and headed upstairs to say hello. Stuart J. Berril was Helen’s business manager and investment adviser, and he had known her a hell of a lot longer than I had; his father had held the same post for her old man, and he had simply inherited the account.

They were sitting at opposite sides of the sofa when I entered the parlor, with a pitcher of martinis on the coffee-table in front of them. Berril, as always, was immaculate—a clean-shaven pink-faced man of about forty, very very fastidious about such things as the fold of his handkerchief and the knot in his tie. After a long day in the city and a long railroad trip home, I knew I didn’t stack up—I was covered with city grime and needed a shave.

“Hello, you-all,” I said.

Helen detached herself from the sofa and glided across the carpet toward me. She was wearing her blue dress, the low-cut one, and it clung to her for dear life. She was a fine-looking woman, Helen, but there was something harsh and angular and unloving about her that I didn’t find in Peggy Armour.

She kissed me, aloofly, simply grazing my lips.

“Hello, darling. How’d everything go?”

“Pretty well,” I said, walking into the room and pouring a cocktail from the pitcher. “Hello, Stu. You and Helen figure out a new way to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury?”

“We’ve been discussing a new investment scheme, Mr. Foster,” Berril said primly. I’d been married to his client for six years, now, but he still hadn’t unbent far enough to call me Mike. “It may be a handsome little deal.”

“Stu figures it’ll bring in a 9% return,” Helen said. “And it’s a cumulative proposition with a steadily increasing increment. All we have to do is amortize the—”

“Okay,” I said. “Spare me the details. Stu, you’re a financial wizard. I bow six times to you every morning before breakfast.”