I could have made guesses about her personal relations with Bottweill, but hadn’t bothered. I have enough to do to handle my own personal relations without wasting my brain power on other people’s. As for her son Leon, he must have got his physique from his father-tall, bony, big-eared and long-armed. He was probably approaching thirty, below Kiernan but above Margot and Cherry.

When he shoved in between Cherry and me, giving me his back, and Emil Hatch had something to tell Kiernan, sour no doubt, I touched Margot’s elbow and she slid off the stool and let herself be steered across to a divan which had been covered with designs by Euclid in six or seven colors. We stood looking down at it.

“Mighty pretty,” I said, “but nothing like as pretty as you. If only that license were real! I can get a real one for two dollars. What do you say?”

“You!” she said scornfully. “You wouldn’t marry Miss Universe if she came on her knees with a billion dollars.”

“I dare her to try it. Did it work?”

“Perfect. Simply perfect.”

“Then you’re ditching me?”

“Yes, Archie darling. But I’ll be a sister to you.”

“I’ve got a sister. I want the license back for a souvenir, and anyway I don’t want it kicking around. I could be hooked for forgery. You can mail it to me, once my own.”

“No, I can’t. He tore it up.”

“The hell he did. Where are the pieces?”

“Gone. He put them in his wastebasket. Will you come to the wedding?”

“What wastebasket where?”

“The gold one by his desk in his office. Last evening after dinner. Will you come to the wedding?”