The Stake in the Game — Evelyn Berckman

The phone call could not have come at a more inconvenient and inopportune moment. With imbecile mechanical insistence it shrilled and shrilled till it brought Mrs. Milland erupting from the kitchen with flushed cheeks and an air of arrested momentum to snatch it up and challenge rather than answer, “Hall-lo!”

An instant's silence followed before a voice came hesitantly, “Heather?”

“Oh.” The concentrated irritation of her tone vanished as by magic. “Sorry, darling. I didn't mean to shout at you.”

“Are you all right?” her sister queried. “You sounded so funny.”

“No, no, I -- I was hurrying, perhaps I sounded a bit blown.”…”Heather,” Robina drew another trembling breath. “Will you say I was with you all this afternoon? Will you, Hezz?”

“Wait, wait,” Heather adjured. Neither caution nor cowardice impelled her lack of immediate consent, only a need -- on Robina's behalf, not on hers -- to understand the circumstances. Inwardly she could hear little but her own inward clamor of I must help her, I've got to help her, she's up to her eyebrows -- in something worse than usual, by the sound of her. “What's it all about?”

…”Well then. I hate talking about it over the -- the -- but -- Oh hell, it's the usual thing, but this time it turns out that -- “ she fought the terror in her voice “ -- Hugh's been having me followed.”