Color Blind
displeased by an unexpected visit by two males at 10:00 p.m. The look she gave Harry was as if she might eat him. Harry never seemed to notice how it was with women when he came into a room, but I could see it, raw and naked, on her face.

She was a widow, and Sukey had been working for her a week. Harry said he knew of a job in the Company office that he could get for Sukey, and he asked Mrs. Campbell to let her go, without telling her we'd been there.

Mrs. Campbell's face took on a little color, making it appear more mottled than ever. And her voice was too shrill to be comfortable. She said that maids were very difficult to find this day and time, and that if Sukey didn't mind it, we shouldn't mind either. She wouldn't give her up.

"Let's wait and see what Sukey has to say about it," I suggested.

Harry shook his head. "We can't do that. She mustn't know we've been here, Chuck."

"Why? Servants may be out of date, but there's nothing disgraceful about honest labor."

"Of course not," Harry said. "But to Sukey it must be embarrassing. That's why she didn't let me know what she was doing, don't you see? It must have been that."

Well, it was logical enough. And that was Harry for you. Always thinking first of Sukey's feelings, whereas I would probably have turned her across my knee. But we had to do something.

We were going to be in port for three weeks, and Harry made an appointment to come back the following Thursday, when Sukey was away from the house, and try to reason once more with Althea Campbell.

Harry went back the next week, and the week after that, and he wasn't having any luck, but he said that at least he could make sure that Sukey was still all right.

Meanwhile I did some snooping, and I found out several things about Mrs. Campbell. She was worth eighteen and a half million bucks, and she had spent half that much trying to regain a face, and figure, and complexion of twenty years ago, that she probably remembered better than they were.

I talked to one of her former servants and learned that Sukey could expect a hard time working for her. The woman was a kind of sadist with servants, but Sukey would put up with anything to get what she wanted, and I knew what it was she was after now. I knew why she had taken the job.


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