Atlanta Daily World

DAUGHTERS OF VENUS"
ROBERT TERRY SHANNON

In the dining room of a Los Angeles hotel, Juliet Rankin is approached by Denton Terhune, well known San Francisco lawyer. Attracted by Juliet's beauty and aloofness, he asks if he might chat with her. Terhune introduces her to Madame Hubert, wealthy beauty expert, whom he describes as the oddest and most interesting woman in Los Angeles, and her handsome, young manager, Thomas O'Hara.
O'Hara is worried over the case of a Mrs. Gottlieb who is in a serious condition at the beauty institute due to her heart being too weak to stand the ether administered during a facial operation. Madame Hubert, however, appears unconcerned. She compliments Juliet on her beauty and offers her a position. O'Hara objects strenuously saying: "Take my advice and keep out of it. I don't like you and you don't like me-we would never get on together."

CHAPTER III

Juliet looked at O'Hara coolly. Let her eyes run over his face, his clothes, his hands. All at once she was trembling--but she didn't know why. Never before except once--had any man affected her that way. Never before.

"I wish you'd tell me, Mr. O'Hara," she asked in a strained voice, "just why it is that you don't like me."

It was Madame Hubert who answered.

"It's because he knows I admire you and he's afraid you'll get his job."

Juliet tried to flash her most dazzling smile. "I'd love to have a whack at Mr. O'Hara's job!"

O'Hara got up from his chair. This time he was in earnest and he was leaving.

"Okay with me," he said quietly. "You've got the job right now Miss Rankin. Good night and goodby."

His broad departing back plowed its way out of the laughing and dancing and dining throng.

"Don't you worry, my dear," said Madame Hubert placidly to Juliet. "He'll be at his desk by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning-and so will you."

It was at this precise instant--when O'Hara's face was gone---that she remembered him. It all came back with a swirl that tore like a wolf at her heart that brought a stifled cry of anguish to her bright seductive lips.

Madame Hubert began making preparations to leave the Cocoanut Grove which, as midnight approached, was getting more crowded, and noisier, and smokier and gayer.

"Then it's settled, my dear," she told Juliet. "You're a member of the staff now. We'll discuss salary and all that tomorrow. I'll wait in the lounge while you run upstairs and get your wrap."

"You want me to go somewhere now?"

"We're going back to the Institute," said the older woman with surprising energy. "I don't need much sleep, and you shouldn't at your age. We have a dying woman on our hands--a patient-and something has got to be done."

The Madame got to her feet and Juliet saw that she was a mere shadow of a woman, a dry, croaking whisper of humanity. When she was upstairs in her bleak little room Juliet put on her wrap and paused to give her luxuriant hair a quick combing.

That man O'Hara. Her heart kept twisting and bleeding until she felt dizzy and faint as she continued to think of him. The handsome line of his profile, his black brows, the turn of his head and the swing of his shoulders brought back vividly the old anguish she had hoped to bury forever. O'Hara was the living image-the breathing photograph of her dead lover.

Juliet's past life whirled before her like a merry-go-round. Girlhood in an orphanage. The Middlewest-family that adopted her at eighteen. Their death and the inheritance of five thousand dollars that had taken her to Chicago. The wild fling at clothes, theatres, hotels, books, dances, all the dreamed-of luxuries of a hungry-hearted girlhood. Then poverty again. Next, New York, with few inconsequential bits on the stage and luckier fling at art modeling.
Love came to her like forked lightning out of the sky he was an aviator, a stunt flyer, younger than O'Hara but with the same brows, the same eyes, the same strong masculinity of profile.
Nature, by some cruel caprice, had reproduced, physically, in O'Hara even the mannerisms of that boy whose plane crashed him to death five years ago.
The funeral was held on the day they had set for their wedding. Juliet burned all his photographs and letters. After that nothing mattered. It was no good trying to keep alive something that was dead. A job as social secretary, a better one in an advertising agency, a small stroke of luck with a few stocks. Grass grew over his grave and the wound in her heart was naught but a scar until O'Hara--tonight--had torn it open.

And now she knew why she had trembled in O'Hara's presence, why those old seething currents had surged once more in her veins. The swift new pain of it was like the onslaught of some dangerous emotional madness. The aching stress of it was almost more than she could bear, but she knit her resolution together and tried desperately to obliterate all memory, all sensation.

In the lobby O'Hara, waiting, emerged from the depth of a great chair. Without a word he walked beside Juliet and Madame Hubert escorting them to the Madame's limousine. This act of repentance for rudeness kept Juliet from utterly despising him.

She was getting a grip on herself now and was able to ward off the agitation he radiated.

"Good night, Madame," he said, holding the door open.

As his hand touched Juliet's elbow, assisting her into the car, a faint current ran through her nerves.

"Lots of luck, Miss Rankin." He stood there with a derisive smile as they drove away.

The tawny greyhound of a limousine sped through streets strange to Juliet tree-lined with sleepy houses and quiet lawns: and drowsy trees slipping past. The late night air swept around the car, saturating it with crisp coolness, the stars in promise of some mysterious fulfillment. So beautiful it seemed that mist came stealing into her eyes, leaving her feeling pitiably small and excited.

"Why did you give me this opportunity, Madame Hubert?" she was surprised to hear herself asking. "I'm a stranger-you know absolutely nothing about me."

"Nothing wrong with you, is there?"

"Not that I know of," smiled Juliet. "Nothing, at least, that would interfere with my employment."

"I didn't think so." Madame Hubert told her. "The only danger I see in you is that you might be too attractive to the men. you won't get very far in our business if you start playing with fire. We shall see. Why did I hire you? Well, we need a beautiful thing like you at the Institute to offset my own ugliness. But that isn't the real reason. I'm taking you on because I have an instinct that amounts to genius for finding the right people when I need them."

The immediate need of Madame Hubert and her Institute was a solution of the Gottlieb case. Perhaps the old woman had clutched at Juliet's fresh mind for that very purpose.

At any rate, she laid the whole dangerous situation before Juliet while they were yet in the limousine.

"O'Hara's brain has gone stale on it. So has mine, and so has Von Guerdon's. All we do is quarrel at each other. Perhaps you'll have a good idea. We shall see."

(To Be Continued)

Copyright, 1936, by King Features Syndicate Inc.