Roland Vane

Reginald Heade

SYNOPSIS Jeeze, put that radio off. It's sure giving me the gripes with its nigger moaning." Mrs. Van Tarlesan rose to her feet and swept across the room, her elegant evening dress creating a seductive rustle as she did so. There was a click, and the crooning voice of the negro songstress was snapped into nothingness. The three men who sat at a table in the centre of the room drinking, smoking cigars and playing poker, looked up at her casually. She was a finely proportioned woman. Every line and curve of her figure was perfect and the art of New York's most exclusive and expensive costumiers had been brought to bear to emphasise the fact. She was tall—about five foot ten—and her hair was as black as night, and as smooth and glossy as a raven's wing. Only Mrs. Van Tarlesan and her hairdresser could have told what it had cost to achieve that and to keep at bay the ravages of age and hard-living which, long before this, should have turned it as white as the driven snow.