The Day of Days, An Extravaganza, by Louis Joseph Vance.

MARIAN BLESSINGTON

only daughter of the late Nathaniel Blessington, millionaire founder of the great Blessington chain of department stores. Although much sought after on account of the immense property into control of which she is to come on her twenty-fifth birthday, Miss Blessington contrived to escape matrimonial entanglement until last January, when Brian Shaynon, her guardian and executor of the Blessington estate, gave out the announcement of her engagement to his son, Bayard Shaynon. This engagement was whispered to be distasteful to the young woman, who is noted for her independent and spirited nature; and it is now persistently being rumoured that she had demonstrated her disapproval by disappearing mysteriously from the knowledge of her guardian. It is said that nothing has been known of her whereabouts since about the 1st of March, when she left her home in the Shaynon mansion on Fifth Avenue, ostensibly for a shopping tour. This was flatly contradicted this morning by Brian Shaynon, who in an interview with a reporter for the EVENING JOURNAL declared that his ward sailed for Europe February 28th on the Mauretania, and has since been in constant communication with her betrothed and his family. He also denied having employed detectives to locate his ward. The sailing list of the Mauretania fails to give the name of Miss Blessington on the date named by Mr. Shaynon.

"Ain't you hep yet?" George betrayed some little exasperation in addition to his disappointment.

"Hep's the word," George affirmed: "John W. Hep, of the well-known family of that name—very closely related to the Jeremiah Wises. Yunno who I mean, don't you?"

"Sorry," said P. Sybarite sadly: "I'm not even distinctly connected with either family."

Impatiently brushing aside this incoherent observation, George slapped the folded paper resoundingly in the palm of his hand.

"You ain't dropped to the resemblance between Molly Lessing and Marian Blessington?"

"Why, they're dead ringers for each other. Any one what can't see that's blind."

"Ah, nix on the stallin'!" George insisted, on the verge of losing his temper. "Molly Lessing's the spit-'n'-image of Marian Blessington—and you know it. What's more—look at their names? Molly for Mary—you make that? Mary and Marian's near enough alike, ain't they? And what's Lessing but Blessington docked goin' and comin'?"

"Wait a second. If I understand you, George, you're trying to imply that Miss Lessing is identical with Marian Blessington."

"Simply because of the similarity of two syllables in their surnames and a fancied resemblance of Miss Lessing to this so-called portrait?"

P.S. laughed quietly: "George, I've been doing you a grave injustice. I apologise."

"For years I've believed you were merely stupid," P.S. explained patiently. "Now you develop a famous, if fatuous, gift of imagination. I'm sorry. I apologise twice."

"Imag'nation hell!" Mr. Bross exploded. "Where's your own? It's plain's daylight what I say is so. When did Miss Lessing come here? Five weeks ago, to a day—March foist, or close onto it—just when the Joinal says she did her disappearin' stunt. How you goin' to get around that?"

"You forget that the Journal simply reports a rumour. It doesn't claim it's true. In fact, the story is contradicted by the very person that ought to know—Miss Blessington's guardian."

"Well, if she sailed for Europe on the Mauretania, like he says—how's it come her name wasn't on the passenger list?"

"It's quite possible that a young woman as much sought after and annoyed by fortune hunters, may have elected to sail incognita. It can be done, you know. In fact, it has been done."

George betrayed in a rude, choleric grunt, his disgust to see his splendid fabrication, so painfully concocted for the delusion and discomfiture of P. Sybarite, threatening to collapse of sheer intrinsic flimsiness. He had counted so confidently on the credulity of the little bookkeeper! And Violet had supported his confidence with so much assurance! Disgusting wasn't the word for George's emotions.

"All right," he said sullenly: "all right! You don't gotta believe me if you don't wanta. Only wait—that's all I ask—wait! You'll see I'm right when she turns down your invite to-night."

P. Sybarite smiled sunnily. "So that is why you thought she wouldn't go with us, is it?"

"You thought she, if Marian Blessington, must necessarily be such a snob that she wouldn't associate with poor devils like us, did you?"

"Well, it's none of your business, George; but I don't mind telling you, you're wrong. Quite wrong. In the head, too, George. I've already asked Miss Lessing, and she has accepted."

"That's why I left you down the street. I dropped into Blessington's for the sole purpose of asking her."

"In wrong, as usual," he admitted with winning simplicity. "I never did guess anythin' right the first time. Only—you just grab this from me: maybe she's willin' to run the risk of bein' seen with us, but that ain't sayin' she's anybody but Marian Blessington."

"You really think it likely that Miss Blessington, hiding from her guardian and anxious to escape detection, would take a job at the glove counter of her own store, where everybody must know her by sight—where her guardian, Shaynon himself, couldn't fail to see her at least twice a day, as he enters and leaves the building?"

"That's just her cuteness. She doped it out the safest place for her would be the last place he'd look for her!"

"And you really think that she, accustomed to every luxury that money can buy, would voluntarily come down to living here, at six dollars a week, and clerking in a department store—simply because, according to the papers, she's opposed to a marriage that she can't be forced to contract in a free country like this?"

"Wel-l...." George floundered helplessly for a moment; and fell back again upon an imagination for the time being stimulated to an abnormal degree of inventiveness:

"P'raps old Shaynon's double-crossed her somehow we don't know nothin' about. He ain't above it, if all they tell of him's true. Maybe he's got her coin away from her, and she had to go to work for a livin'. Stranger things have happened in this burg, P.S."

It was the turn of P.S. to hesitate in doubt; or at all events, so George Bross inferred from a sudden change in the expression of the little man's eyes. Momentarily they seemed to cloud, as if in introspection. But he rallied quickly enough.

"All things are possible, George," he admitted with his quizzical grin. "But this time you're mistaken. I'm not arguing with you, George; I'm telling you: you're hopelessly mistaken."

"You think so—huh?" growled George. "Well, I got eight iron bucks that says Marian Blessington to any five of your money."

"It'd be a shame to rob you, George," said P. Sybarite. "Besides, you're bad-tempered when broke."

"Never you mind about that. Here's my eight, if you've got five that makes a noise like Molly Lessing."

P. Sybarite laughed softly and produced the little wad of bills that represented his weekly wage. At this, George involuntarily drew back.

"Here she comes now," added P. Sybarite, glancing up the street. "Quick, now; you've only a minute to decide. Is it a bet?"

"You're an easy mark," he observed in accents of deep pity. "I knew you'd think I meant it."

"Nah—nothin' like that! I was just kiddin' you along, to see how much you'd swallow."

"Sssh!" P. Sybarite warned him sibilantly. "Miss Lessing might hear you.... What will happen if you disobey me," he added as the shop girl turned in at the gateway, lowering his own voice and fixing the shipping clerk with a steely stare, "will be another accident, much resembling that of this afternoon—if you haven't forgotten. Now mind what I tell you, and be good."

Mr. Bross swelled with resentment; exhibited a distorted and empurpled visage; but kept silence.

Pausing at the foot of the stoop, Miss Lessing looked up at the two young men and smiled.

"Good-evening," she said with a pretty nod for P. Sybarite; and, with its fellow for George, "Good-evening, Mr. Bross," she added.

Having acknowledged this salutation with that quaint courtesy which somehow seemed to fit him like a garment, P. Sybarite smiled strangely at the shipping clerk.

The latter mumbled something incoherent, glanced wildly toward the young woman, and spluttered explosively; all with a blush so deep that its effect was apoplectic.

Alarmed by this exhibition, Miss Lessing questioned P. Sybarite with her lifted brows and puzzled eyes.

"George is a little bit excited," he apologised. "Every so often he becomes obsessed with mad desire to impose upon some simple and credulous nature like mine. And failure always unbalances him. He becomes excitable—ah—irrational—"

Confusion possessed him, and with it rage: stumbling blindly on the first flight of steps, he clawed the atmosphere with fingers that itched for vengeance.

"I'll get even!" he muttered savagely—"I'll get hunk with that boob if it's the last act of my life!"

On the first landing he checked, clutched the banisters for support, and endeavoured to compose himself—but with less success than he realised.

It was with a suggestion of stealth that he ascended the second flight—with an enforced deliberateness and caution that were wasted. For as he reached the top, the door of the back hall-bedroom opened gently for the space of three inches. Through this aperture were visible a pair of bright eyes, with the curve of a plump and pretty cheek, and an adorable bare arm and shoulder.

"All over himself. Honest, Vi, it was a scream to watch his eyes pop. You could've clubbed 'em outa his bean without touchin' his beak. I'most died."

George demurred. Downright lying was all very well; he could manage that with passable craft, especially when, as in this instance, detection would be difficult; but prophecy was a little out of his line. Though with misgivings, he resorted to unvarnished truth:

When he had shaved (with particular care) and changed his linen (trimming collar and cuffs to a degree of uncommon nicety) and resumed his coat (brushing and hating it simultaneously and with equal ferocity, for its very shabbiness) P. Sybarite sought out a pipe old and disreputable enough to be a comfort to any man, and sat down by the one window of his room (top floor, hall, back) to smoke and consider the state of the universe while awaiting the dinner gong.

The window commanded an elevated if non-exhilarating view of back yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the débris of a long, hard winter. Familiarity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his forehead, owned another cause.

In fact, George had wrought more disastrously upon his temper than P. Sybarite had let him see. His hints, innuendoes, and downright assertions had in reality distilled a subtle poison into the little man's humour. For in spite of his embattled incredulity and the clear reasoning with which he had overborne George's futile insistence, there still lingered in his mind (and always would, until he knew the truth himself) a carking doubt.

Perhaps it was true. Perhaps George had guessed shrewdly. Perhaps Molly Lessing of the glove counter really was one and the same with Marian Blessington of the fabulous fortune.

Old Brian Shaynon was a known devil of infinite astuteness; it would be quite consistent with his character and past performances if, despairing of gaining control of his ward's money by urging her into unwelcome matrimony with his son, he had contrived to over-reach her in some manner, and so driven her to become self-supporting.

Perhaps hardly likely: the hypothesis was none the less quite plausible; a thing had happened, within P. Sybarite's knowledge of Brian Shaynon....

Even if George's romance were true only in part, these were wretched circumstances for a girl of gentle birth and rearing to adopt. It was really a shocking boarding-house. P. Sybarite had known it intimately for ten years; use had made him callous to its shortcomings; but he was not yet so far gone that he could forget how unwholesome and depressing it must seem to one accustomed to better things. He could remember most vividly how he had loathed it for weeks, months, and years after the tide of evil fortunes had cast him upon its crumbling brownstone stoop (even in that distant day, crumbling).

Now, however ... P. Sybarite realised suddenly that habit had instilled into his bosom a sort of mean affection for the grim and sordid place. Time had made him sib to its spirit, close to its niggard heart. Scarcely a nook or corner of it with which he was not on terms of the most intimate acquaintance. In the adjoining room a deserted woman had died by her own hand; her moans, filtered through the dividing wall, had summoned P. Sybarite—too late. The double front room on the same floor harboured an amiable couple whose sempiternal dissensions only his tact and persistence ever served to still. The other hall-bedroom had housed for many years a dipsomaniac whose periodic orgies had cost P. Sybarite many a night of bedside vigil. On the floor below lived a maiden lady whose quenchless hopes still centred about his amiable person. Downstairs in the clammy parlour he had whiled away unnumbered hours assisting at dreary "bridge drives," or playing audience to amateur recitals on the aged and decrepit "family organ." For an entire decade he had occupied the same chair at the same table in the basement dining-room, feasting on beef, mutton, Irish stew, ham-and-beans, veal, pork, or just-hash—according to the designated day of the week....

The very room in which he sat was somehow dear to him; upon it he wasted a sentiment in a way akin to that with which one regards the grave of a beloved friend; it was, in fact, the tomb of his own youth. Its narrow and impoverished bed had groaned with the restless weight of him all those many nights through which he had lain wakeful, in impotent mutiny against the outrageous circumstances that made him a prisoner there. Its walls had muted the sighs in which the desires of youth had been spent. Its floor matting was worn threadbare with the impatient pacings of his feet (four strides from door to window: swing and repeat ad libitum). Its solitary gas-jet had, with begrudged illumination, sicklied o'er the pages of those innumerable borrowed books with which he had sought to dull poignant self-consciousness....

A tomb!... Bitterly he granted the aptness of that description of his cubicle: mausoleum of his every hope and aspiration, sepulchre of all his ability and promise. In this narrow room his very self had been extinguished: a man had degenerated into a machine. Everything that caught his eye bore mute witness to this truth: the shabby tin alarm clock on the battered bureau was one of a dynasty that had roused him at six in the morning with unfailing regularity three hundred and sixty-five times per year (Sundays were too rare in his calendar and too precious to be wasted abed). From an iron hook in the window frame dangled the elastic home-exerciser with which it was his unfailing habit to perform a certain number of matutinal contortions, to keep his body wholesome and efficient. Beneath the bed was visible the rim of a shallow English tub that made possible his subsequent sponge bath....

A machine; a fixture; creature of an implacable routine; a spirit immolated upon the altar of habit: into this he had degenerated in ten years. Such was the effect of life in this melancholy shelter for the homeless wage-slave. He was no lonely victim. In his term he had seen many another come in hope, linger in disappointment, leave only to go to a meaner cell in the same stratum of misfortune.

Was this radiant spirit of youth and gentle loveliness (who might, for all one knew to the contrary, be Marian Blessington after all) to be suffered to become one of that disconsolate crew?

Nothing that the wits of P. Sybarite could compass: he was as inefficient as any gnat in any web....

Through the halls resounded the cacophonous clangour of a cracked gong announcing dinner. Sighing, P. Sybarite rose and knocked the ashes delicately from his pipe—saving the dottle for a good-night whiff after the theatre.

Being Saturday, it was the night of ham-and-beans. P. Sybarite loathed ham-and-beans with a deathly loathing. Nevertheless he ate his dole of ham-and-beans. He sat on the landlady's right, and was reluctant to hurt her feelings or incur her displeasure. Besides, he was hungry: between the home-exerciser and the daily walks to and from the Brooklyn Bridge, his normal appetite was that of an athlete in pink of training.

Miss Lessing sat on the same side of the main dining-table, but half a dozen chairs away. P. Sybarite couldn't see her save by craning his neck. He refused to crane his neck: it might seem ostentatious.

Violet and her George occupied adjoining chairs at another and smaller table. Their attendance was occasionally manifested through the medium of giggles and guffaws. P. Sybarite envied them: he had it in his heart to envy anybody young enough to be able to see a joke at that dinner table.

By custom, the landlady relinquished her seat some minutes in advance of any guest. When P. Sybarite left the room he found her established at a desk in the basement hallway. Pausing, he delivered unto her the major portion of his week's wage. Setting aside another certain amount against the cost of laundry work, tobacco, and incidentals, he had five dollars left....

He wondered if he dared risk the extravagance of a modest supper after the theatre; and knew he dared not—knew it in wretchedness of spirit, cursing his fate....

There remained half an hour to be killed before time to start for the theatre. George Bross joined him on the stoop. They smoked pensively, while the afterglow faded from the western sky and veil after veil of shadow crept stealthily out of the east, masking the rectangular, utilitarian ugliness of the street, deepening its dusk to darkness. Street lamps, touched by the flame-tipped wand of a belated lamplighter, bourgeoned spasmodically like garish flowers of the metropolitan night. Across the way gas-lit windows glowed like squares on some great, blurred checker-board. The roadway teemed with shrieking children. Somewhere—near at hand—a pianola lost its temper and whaled the everlasting daylights out of an inoffensive melody from "The Pink Lady." Other, more diffident instruments tinkled apologetically in the distance. Intermittently, across the gaunt scaffolding of the Ninth Avenue L, at one end of the block, roaring trains flashed long chains of lights. On the other hand, Eighth Avenue buzzed resonantly in stifling clouds of incandescent dust. The air smelt of warm asphalt....

And it was Spring: the tenth Spring P. Sybarite had watched from that self-same spot.

Discontent bred in him a brooding despondency. He felt quite sure that the realists were right about Life: it wasn't worth living, after all.

The prospect of the theatre lost its attraction. He was sure he wouldn't enjoy it. Such silly romantical nonsense was out of tune with the immortal Truth about Things, which he had just discovered: Life was a poor Joke....

At his side, George Bross, on his behalf, was nursing his private and personal grouch. Between them they manufactured an atmosphere of gloom that would have done credit to a brace of dumb Socialists.

But presently Miss Prim and Miss Lessing appeared, and changed all that in a twinkling.

"Well," observed Violet generously, "I thought little me was pretty well stage-broke; but I gotta hand it to Otis. He's some actor. He had me going from the first snore."

"Some actor is right," affirmed Mr. Bross with conviction, "and some show, too, if you wanta know. I could sit through it twicet. Say, I couldn't quit thinkin' what a grand young time I'd start in this old burg if I could only con this Kismet thing into slippin' me my Day of Days. Believe me or not, there would be a party."

"Well, the first flop I'd nail down all the coin that was handy, and then I'd buy me a flock of automobiles—and have a table reserved for me at the Knickerbocker for dinner every night—and...." Imagination flagged. "Well," he concluded defensively, "I can tell you one thing I wouldn't do."

"I wouldn't let any ward politician like that there Wazir, or whatever them A-rabs called him, kid me into trying to throw a bomb at Charlie Murphy—or anythin' like that. No-oh! Not this infant. That's where your friend Hajj the Beggar's foot slipped on him. Up to then he had everythin' his own way. If he'd only had sense enough to stall, he'd've wound up in a blaze of glory."

"But, you bonehead," Violet argued candidly, "he had to. That was his part: it was written in the play."

"G'wan. If he'd just stalled round and refused to jump through, the author'd 've framed up some other way out. Why—blame it!—he'd've had to!"

"That will be about all for me," said Violet. "I don't feel strong enough to-night to stand any more of your dramatic criticism. Lead me home—and please talk baseball all the way."

With a resentful grunt, Mr. Bross clamped a warm, moist hand round the plump arm of his charmer, and with masterful address propelled her from the curb in front of the theatre, where the little party had paused, to the northwest corner of Broadway: their progress consisting in a series of frantic rushes broken by abrupt pauses to escape annihilation in the roaring after-theatre crush of motor-cars. P. Sybarite, moving instinctively to follow, leaped back to the sidewalk barely in time to save his toes a crushing beneath the tires of a hurtling taxicab.

He smiled a furtive apology at Molly Lessing, who had demonstrated greater discretion, and she returned his smile in the friendliest manner. His head was buzzing—and her eyes were kind. Neither spoke; but for an instant he experienced a breathless sense of sympathetic isolation with her, there on that crowded corner, elbowed and shouldered in the eddy caused by the junction of the outpouring audience with the midnight tides of wayfarers surging north and south.

The wonder and the romance of the play were still warm and vital, in his imagination, infusing his thoughts with a roseate glamour of unreality, wherein all things were strangely possible. The iridescent imagery of the Arabian Nights of his boyhood (who has forgotten the fascination of those three fat old volumes of crabbed type, illuminated with their hundreds of cramped old wood-cuts?) had in a scant three hours been recreated for him by Knoblauch's fantastic drama with its splendid investment of scene and costume, its admirable histrionic interpretation, and the robust yet exquisitely tempered artistry of Otis Skinner. For three hours he had forgotten his lowly world, had lived on the high peaks of romance, breathing only their rare atmosphere that never was on land or sea.

Difficult he found it now, to divest his thoughts of that enthrallment, to descend to cold and sober reality, to remember he was a clerk, his companion a shop-girl, rather than a Prince disguised as Calander esquiring a Princess dedicated to Fatal Enchantment—that Kismet was a quaint fallacy, one with that whimsical conceit of Orient fatalism which assigns to each and every man his Day of Days, wherein he shall range the skies and plumb the abyss of his Destiny, alternately its lord and its puppet.

But presently, with an effort, blinking, he pulled his wits together; and a traffic policeman creating a favourable opening, the two scurried across and plunged into the comparative obscurity of West Thirty-eighth Street: sturdy George and his modest Violet already a full block in advance.

Discovering this circumstance by the glimmer through the shadows of Violet's conspicuously striped black-and-white taffeta, P. Sybarite commented charitably upon their haste.

"To blush unseen is Violet's idea of nothing to do—not, at least, when one is a perfect thirty-eight and possesses a good digestion and an infinite capacity for amusement à la carte."

"Nor any other poor man. I don't say she doesn't care for George, but before anything serious comes of it he'll have to make good use of his Day of Days—if Kismet ever sends him one. I hope it will," P. Sybarite added sincerely.

"Just now? With all my heart! I'm so full of romantic nonsense I can hardly stick. Nothing is too incredible for me to believe to-night. I'm ready to play Hajj the Beggar to any combination of impossibilities Kismet cares to brew in Bagdad-on-the-Hudson!"

"And since you're a true believer, Mr. Sybarite, tell me, what use you would make of your Day of Days?"

"I? Oh, I—" Smiling wistfully, he opened deprecatory palms. "Hard to say.... I'm afraid I should prove a fatuous fool in George's esteem equally with old Hajj. I'm sure that, like him, the sunset of my Day would see me proscribed, a price upon my head."

"Perhaps.... Yes, my own, certainly.... And perhaps another's, not so old but possibly quite as grievous."

Thus tardily made to realise into what perils his fancy was leading him, he checked and weighed her question with his answer, gravely judgmatical.

"Perhaps I'd better not say that," he announced, a grin tempering his temerity; "but I'd go far for a friend, somebody who had been kind to me, and—ah—tolerant—if she were in trouble and could use my services."

He fancied her glance was quick and sharp and searching; but her voice when she spoke was even and lightly attuned to his whimsical mood.

Her laughter at this absurdity was delightful; whether with him or at him, it was infectious; he echoed it without misgivings.

"Only, Miss Lessing," he said soberly, "of my futile, my painfully futile good will."

She seemed to start to speak, to think better of it, to fall silent in sudden, shy constraint. He stole a side-long glance, troubled, wondering if perhaps he had ventured too impudently, pursuing his whim to the point of trespass upon the inviolable confines of her reserve.

She wore a sweet, grave face, en profile; her eyes veiled with long lashes, the haunts of tender shadows; her mouth of gracious lips unsmiling, a little triste. Compunctions smote him; with his crude and clumsy banter he had contrived to tune her thoughts to sadness. He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering him and willingness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers. For in retrospect his invitation assumed the proportions of an importunity, an egregious piece of presumption: so that he could have groaned to contemplate it.

He didn't groan, save inwardly; but respected her silence, and held his own in humility and mortification of spirit until they were near the dooryard of their boarding-house. And even then it was the girl who loosed his tongue.

Startled out of the deeps of self-contempt, P. Sybarite discovered that she meant Violet and George, who were nowhere visible.

"I know," he replied: "crackers and cheese, beer and badinage: our humble pleasures. You'll be bored to extinction—but you'll come, won't you?"

"They must have hurried on to make things ready—Violet to set her room to rights, George to tote the wash-pitcher to the corner for the beer. And very likely, pending our arrival, they're lingering at the head of the stairs for a kiss or two."

"We needn't delay," he countered amiably. "If somebody doesn't interrupt 'em before long, George will be too late to get the pitcher filled. This town shuts up tight at midnight, Saturdays—if you want to believe everything you hear. So there's no need of being too indulgent with our infatuated fellow-inmates."

"As many as you wish," he laughed. "As a matter of fact, I loathe draught beer."

He was aware of a proffered hand, slender and fine in a shabby glove; and took it in his own, uneasily conscious of a curious disturbance in his bosom, of a strange and not unpleasant sense of commingled expectancy, pleasure, and diffidence (as far as he was able to analyse it—or cared to—at that instant).

"I enjoyed every moment," she said warmly. "But that wasn't all I meant when I thanked you."

Disengaging her hand, she broke off with a startled movement, and a low cry of surprise.

A taxicab, swinging into the street from Eighth Avenue, had boiled up to the curb before the gate, and pausing, discharged a young man in a hurry; witness the facts that he had the door open when halfway between the corner and the house, and was on the running-board before the vehicle was fairly at a halt.

In a stride this one crossed the sidewalk and pulled up, silently, trying to master the temper which was visibly shaking him. Tall, well-proportioned, impressively turned out in evening clothes, he thrust forward a handsome face marred by an evil, twisted mouth, and peered searchingly at the girl.

Instinctively she shrank back inside the fence, eyeing him with a look of fascinated dismay.

An impatient gesture of a hand immaculately gloved in white abolished him completely—as far, at least, as the other was concerned.

The voice was strong and musical but poisoned with a malicious triumph that grated upon the nerves of P. Sybarite; he declined to be abolished.

"Say the word," he suggested serenely to the girl, "and I'll bundle this animal back into that taxi and direct the driver to the nearest accident ward. I'd rather like to, really."

"Get rid of this microbe," interrupted the other savagely—"unless you want him buried between glass slides under a microscope."

"If you please, dear Mr. Sybarite," she begged in a tremulous voice: "I'm afraid I must speak alone with this"—there was a barely perceptible pause—gentleman. If you won't mind waiting a moment—at the door—?"

"If it pleases you, Miss Lessing—most certainly." He drew back a step or two. "But speaking of microbes," he added incisively, "a word of advice: don't tease 'em. My bite is deadly: neither Pasteur nor your family veterinary could save you."

Ignored by the man, but satisfied in his employment of the last word, he strutted back to the brownstone stoop, there to establish himself, out of earshot but within, easy hail.

Hearing nothing, he made little more of the guarded conference that began on his withdrawal. The man, entering the dooryard, had cornered the girl in an angle of the fence. He seemed at once insistent, determined, and thoroughly angry; while she exhibited perfect composure with some evident contempt and implacable obstinacy. Nevertheless, in a brace of minutes the fellow seemingly brought forth some telling argument. She wavered and her accents rose in doubt:

This time he was clearly articulate, and betrayed a conviction that he had won the day: an impression borne out by the evident irresolution of the girl, prefacing her abrupt surrender.

He moved aside, to give her way through the gate. But she hung back, with a glance for P. Sybarite.

She showed displeasure in the lift of her chin. "I think I'm my own mistress—as yet."

"You have my promise," she cut him short coldly. "Wait for me." And she turned back to the house.

Wondering, P. Sybarite went to meet her. Impulsively she gave him her hand a second time; with as little reflection, he took it in both his own.

Her voice was broken: "I don't know. I must go—it's imperative.... Could you—?... I wonder!"

Hesitating briefly, in a tone little above a whisper: "I must go," she repeated. "I can't refuse. But—alone. Do you understand—?"

"You mean—without him?" P. Sybarite nodded toward the man fuming in the gateway.

"Yes. If you could suggest something to detain him long enough for me to get into the cab and say one word to the chauffeur—"

"Don't answer," P. Sybarite advised: "if you don't, he'll lose patience and come to fetch you. And then—"

"The devil you did!" With a snort the man strode in to the stoop. "Do you know who you're talking to?" he demanded wrathfully, towering over P. Sybarite, momentarily forgetful of the girl.

Stepping aside, as if in alarm, she moved behind the fellow, and darted through the gate.

"Who—me?" echoed P. Sybarite in surprise. (The girl was now instructing the chauffeur.) "Why," he drawled, "I'm the guy that put the point in disappointment. Sure you've heard of me?"

At the curb, the door of the taxicab closed with a slam. Simultaneously the drone of the motor thickened to a rumble. The man with the twisted mouth turned just in time to see it drawing away.

But the taxi didn't pause; to the contrary, it stretched out toward Ninth Avenue at a quickening pace.

With profanity appreciating the fact that he had been tricked, he picked up his heels in pursuit. But P. Sybarite had not finished with him. Deftly plucking the man back by the tail of his full-skirted opera coat, he succeeded in arresting his flight before it was fairly started.

With a vicious snarl, the man turned and snatched at his cloak. But P. Sybarite adhered tenaciously to the coat.

At discretion, he interrupted himself to duck beneath the swing of a powerful fist. And this last, failing to find a mark, threw its owner off his balance. Tripping awkwardly over the low curbing of the dooryard walk, he reeled and went a-sprawl on his knees, while his hat fell off and (such is the impish habit of toppers) rolled and bounded several feet away.

Releasing the cloak, P. Sybarite withdrew to a respectful remove and held himself coolly alert against reprisals that never came. The other picked himself up quickly, cast about for the taxicab, discovered it swiftly making off—already twenty yards distant—and with a howl of rage bounded through the gate and gave chase at the top of his speed.

But he wasted breath. The taxicab was nearing Ninth Avenue, its pursuer sprinting bravely a hundred feet to the rear, and as he watched, both turned the northern corner and vanished like shapes of dream.

Sighing, P. Sybarite went back to the stoop and sat down to consider the state of his soul (which was vain-glorious) and the condition of the hat (which was soiled, rumpled, and disreputable).

Turning the affair over in his mind, and considering it from every imaginable angle, P. Sybarite decided (fairly enough) that it was, on the whole, mysterious; lending at least some colour of likelihood to George's gratuitous guess-work.

Certainly it would seem that one had now every right to assume Miss Molly Lessing to be other than as she chose to seem; nowadays the villain in shining evening dress doesn't pursue the shrinking shop-girl save through the action of the obsolescent mellerdrammer or of the ubiquitous moving-picture reel. So much must at least be said for these great educators: they have broken the villain of his open-face attire; to-day he knows better, and when prowling to devour, disguises himself in the guileless if nobby "sack suit" of the widely advertised Kollege Kut brand....

In which case the man with the twisted mouth was, more probably than not, none other than that same Bayard Shaynon whom the young lady was reported to have jilted so arbitrarily.

Turning the topper over in his hands, it occurred to P. Sybarite to wonder if he did not, in it, hold a valuable clue to this riddle of identity. Promptly he took the hat indoors to find out, investigating it most thoroughly by the flickering, bluish glare of the lonely gas-jet that burned in the hallway.

It was a handsome and heavy hat of English manufacture, as witness the name of a Bond Street hatter in its crown; by the slight discolouration of its leather, had seen service without, however, depreciating in utility, needing only brushing and ironing to restore its pristine brilliance; carried neither name nor initials on its lining; and lacked every least hint as to its ownership—or so it seemed until the prying fingers of P. Sybarite turned down the leather and permitted a visiting card concealed therein to flutter to the floor.

The hall rack was convenient; hanging up the hat, P. Sybarite picked up the card. It displayed in conventional script the name, Bailey Penfield, with the address, 97 West 45th Street; one corner, moreover, bore a pencilled hieroglyphic which seemed to read: "O.K.—B.P."

Stealthy footsteps on the stairs distracted his studious attention from the card. He looked up, blinking and frowning thoughtfully, to see George descending with the wash-pitcher wrapped in, but by no means disguised by, brown paper. Once at the bottom of the stairs, this one expressed amazement in a whisper, to avoid rousing their landlady, who held, unreasonably, that it detracted from the tone of her establishment for gentlemen boarders to rush the growler....

"Miss Lessing?" P. Sybarite looked surprised. "Isn't she upstairs—with Violet?"

"Well, you see, I met a man outside I wanted to talk to for a moment. So I left her at the door."

"Well, Vi's waitin'. Run on up. I won't be five minutes. And knock on Molly's door and see what's the matter."

His constructive mendacity light upon his conscience, he permitted George time enough to leave the house and gain Clancey's, then quietly followed as far as the gate, from which point he cut across the southern sidewalk, turned west to Ninth Avenue, and there north to Forty-second Street, where he boarded a cross-town car.

This was quite the most insane freak in which he had indulged himself these many years; and frankly admitting this much, he was rather pleased than otherwise. He was bound to call on Mr. Bailey Penfield and inform that gentleman where he might find his hat. Incidentally he hoped to surprise something or other informing with regard to the fortunes of Miss Lessing subsequent to her impulsive flight by taxicab.

All of which, he calmly admitted, constituted an inexcusable impertinence: he deserved a thoroughgoing snubbing, and rather anticipated one, especially if destined to find Mr. Penfield at home or, by some vagary of chance, to encounter Miss Lessing again.

But he smiled cheerfully in contemplation of this prospect, buoyed up with a belief that his unconsciously idiotic behaviour was intrinsically more or less Quixotic, and further excited by the hope that he might possibly be permitted to serve his lady of mystery.

Alighting at Sixth Avenue, he walked to Forty-fifth Street, turned off to the right, and in another moment was at a standstill, in the extremest perplexity, before Number 97.

By every normal indication, the house was closed and tenantless. From roof to basement its every window was blind with shades close-drawn. The front doors were closed, the basement grating likewise. An atmospheric accumulation of street debris littered the area flagstones, together with one or two empty and battered ash-cans, in whose shadows an emaciated cat skulked apprehensively. The one thing lacking to signify that the Penfield ménage had moved bodily to the country, was the shield of a burglar protective association in one of the parlour windows. P. Sybarite looked for that in vain.

Disappointed in the conviction that he had drawn a false lead, the little man strolled on eastward a little distance, then on sheer impulse, gave up his project and, swinging about, started to go home. But now, as he approached Number 97 the second time, a taxicab turned in from Sixth Avenue, slid to the curb before that dwelling, and set down a smallish young man dressed in the extreme of fashion—a person of physical characteristics by no means to be confused with those of the man with the twisted mouth—who, negligently handing a bill to the chauffeur, ran nimbly up the steps, rang the door-bell, and promptly letting himself into the vestibule, closed the door behind him.

The taxicab swung round and made off. Not so P. Sybarite. Profoundly intrigued, he waited hopefully for this second midnight caller to reappear, as baffled as himself. But though he dawdled away a patient five minutes, nothing of the sort occurred. The front doors remained closed and undisturbed, as little communicative as the darkened windows.

Here was mystery within mystery, indeed! The circumstances annoyed P. Sybarite intensely. And why (he asked himself, with impatience) need he remain outside when another entered without let or hindrance?

Upon this thought he turned boldly up the steps, pressed the bell-button; laid hold of the door-knob, and entered into a vestibule as dark as his bewilderment and as empty as the palm of his hand; proving that the young gentleman of fashion had experienced no difficulty in penetrating farther into fastnesses of this singular establishment. And reflecting that where one had gone, another might follow, P. Sybarite pulled the door to behind him.

Instantly the bare and narrow vestibule was flooded with the merciless glare of half a dozen electric bulbs; and at the same time he found himself sustaining the intent scrutiny of a pair of inhospitable dark eyes set in an impassive dark face—this last abruptly disclosed in the frame of a small grille in one of the inner doors.

Though far too dumfounded for speech, he contrived to return the stare with aggressive interest, and to such effect that he presently wore through the patience of the other.

"The Saints be praised!" returned P. Sybarite. "I find myself so. And yourself?" he added civilly: not to be outdone, as the saying is.

Irritating discourtesy inhered in the speaker's tone. P. Sybarite stiffened his neck.

"What Mr. Penfield?" asked the other, after a pause so transient that it was little more than distinguishable, but which to P. Sybarite indicated beyond question that at least one Mr. Penfield was known to his cautious interlocutor.

During a pause slightly longer than the first, the hostile and suspicious eyes summed him up a second time.

"No such party here," was the verdict. The man drew back and made as if to shut the grille.

"Nonsense!" P. Sybarite insisted sharply. "I have his card with this number—got it from him only to-night."

By way of answer, the grille closed with a snap; but his inclination to kick the door was nullified when, without further delay, it opened to admit him. Nose in air, he strutted in, and the door clanged behind him.

Surrendering it with elaborate indifference, P. Sybarite treated himself to a comprehensive survey of the place.

He stood in the main hall of an old-fashioned residence. To his right, a double doorway revealed a drawing-room luxuriously furnished but, as far as he could determine, quite untenanted. On the left, a long staircase hugged the wall, with a glow of warm light at its head. To the rear, the hall ended in a single doorway through which he could see a handsome mahogany buffet elaborately arranged with shimmering damask, silver, and crystal.

"It's all right," announced the warden of the grille, his suspicions to all seeming completely allayed. "Mr. Penfield ain't in just at present, but"—here he grinned shrewdly—"I reckon you ain't so dead set on seein' him as you made out."

"On the contrary," P. Sybarite retorted stiffly, "my business is immediate and personal with Mr. Penfield. I will wait."

"Sure." Into the accents of the other there crept magically a trace of geniality. "Will you go right on up, or would you like a bite of somethin' to eat first?"

At the mere hint of food, a frightful pang of hunger transfixed P. Sybarite. He winked furtively, afraid to trust Iris tongue to speech.

"What d'ya say?" insinuated the doorkeeper. "Just a bit of a snack, eh? Say a caviare sandwich and a thimbleful of the grape?"

A thumb indicated the door in the rear of the hall. Thither P. Sybarite betook himself on the instant, spurred by the demands of an appetite insatiable once it had won recognition.

He found the back room one of good proportions: whatever the architect's original intention, now serving as a combined lounge and grill, richly and comfortably furnished in sober, masculine fashion, boasting in all three buffets set forth with a lavish display of food and drink. In one of many deeply upholstered club chairs a gentleman of mature years and heavy body, with a scarlet face and a crumpled, wine-stained shirt-bosom, was slumbering serenely, two-thirds of an extravagant cigar cold between his fingers. In others two young men were confabulating quietly but with a most dissipated air, heads together over a brace of glasses. At a corner service table a negro in a white jacket was busy with a silver chafing-dish which exhaled a tantalising aroma. This last, at the entrance of P. Sybarite, glanced quickly over his shoulder, and seeing a strange face, clapped the cover on the steaming chafing-dish and discovered a round black countenance bisected by a complete mouthful of the most brilliant teeth imaginable.

"Yas-suh—comin'!" he gabbled cheerfully. "It's sho' a pleasure to see yo' again."

"At least," suggested P. Sybarite, dropping into a chair, "it will be, next time."

"Tha's right, suh—that's the troof!" The negro placed a small table adjacent to his elbow. "Tha's what Ah allus says to strange gemmun, fust time they comes hyeh, suh; makes 'em feel more at home like. Jus' lemme know what Ah kin do for yo' to-night. That 'ere lobstuh Newburg's jus' about prime fo' eatin' this very minute, ef yo' feel a bit peckish."

"Yas-suh; and wif the lobstuh, suh, Ah venture to sug-gest a nice cold lil ha'f-pint of Cliquot, Yallah Label? How that strike yo' fancy, suh? Er mebbe yo'd perfuh—"

"Enough!" said P. Sybarite firmly. "A mere bite and a glass are enough to sustain life."

Chuckling, the negro waddled away, returned, and offered the guest a glass brimming with amber-tinted liquid.

Poising the vessel delicately between thumb and forefinger, P. Sybarite treated himself to one small sip—an instant of lingering delectation—another sip. So only, it is asserted, must the victim of the desert begin to allay his burning thirst; with discretion—a sip at a time—gingerly.

Dreamily he closed his eyes halfway. From a point in his anatomy a degree or two south of his diaphragm, a sensation of the most warm congratulation began to pervade his famished system: as if (he thought) his domestic economy were organising a torchlight procession by way of appropriate celebration.

Tender morsels of lobster smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread-and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow-stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation.

Finally "the house," through the medium of its servitor, insisted that he top off with a cigar.

Now it mustn't be understood that P. Sybarite entertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the institution into which he had stumbled. He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audible from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its questionable character.

So at length, satiate and a little weary—drawn by curiosity besides—he rose, endowed Pete lavishly with a handful of small change (something over fifty cents; all he had in the world aside from his cherished five dollars), and with an impressive air of the most thorough-paced sophistication (nodding genially to the doorkeeper en passant) slowly ascended to the second floor.

Here, in remodelling the house for its present purposes, partitions had arbitrarily been dispensed with, aside from that enclosing the well of the stairway; the floor was one large room, wholly devoted to some half a dozen games of chance. With but few of these was P. Sybarite familiar; but on information and belief he marked down a faro layout, the device with which his reading had made him acquainted under the designation of les petits chevaux, and at either end of the saloon, immense roulette tables.

Upon all the gaming tables massive electric domes concentrated their light. The walls, otherwise severely unadorned, were covered with lustrous golden fabric; the windows were invisible, cloaked in splendid golden hangings; the carpet, golden brown in tone, was of a velvet pile so heavy that it completely muffled the sound of footsteps. The room, indeed, was singularly quiet for one that harboured some two-score players in addition to a full corps of dealers, croupiers, watchers, and waiters. The almost incessant whine of racing ivory balls with their clattering over the metal compartments of the roulette wheels, clicking of chips, dispassionate voices of croupiers, and an occasional low-pitched comment on the part of one or another of the patrons, seemed only to lend emphasis to the hush.

A brief survey of the gathering convinced P. Sybarite that, barring the servants, he was a lonely exception to the rule of evening dress. But this discovery discomfited him not at all. The wine buzzing in his head, his demeanour, not to mince matters, rakehelly, with an eye alert for the man with the twisted mouth, negligent hands in his trouser pockets, teeth tight upon that admirable cigar, he strutted hither and yon, ostensibly as much in his native element as a press agent in a theatre lobby.

A few minutes sufficed to demonstrate that the owner of the abandoned hat was not among those present; which fact, coupled with the doorkeeper's averment that Mr. Bailey Penfield was out, persuaded P. Sybarite that this last was neither more nor less than the proprietor of the premises. But this conclusion perturbed, completely unsettling his conviction regarding the soi-disant Miss Lessing; he couldn't imagine either her or Miss Marian Blessington in any way involved with a common (or even a proper) gambler.

To feel obliged constantly to revise his hasty inferences, he considered tremendously tiresome. It left one all up in the air!

His tour ended at last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torchlight procession was in full swing, leaving an enduring refulgence wherever it passed.

There were perhaps half a dozen players round the board—four on one wing, two on the other. Of the latter, one was that very young man who had been responsible for P. Sybarite's change of mind with regard to going home. With a bored air this prodigal was frittering away five-dollar notes on the colours, the columns, and the dozens: his ill success stupendous, his apparent indifference positively magnificent. But in the course of the little while that P. Sybarite watched, he either grew weary or succeeded in emptying his pockets, and ceasing to play, sat back with a grunt of impatience more than of disgust.

The ball ran its course thrice before he moved. Then abruptly lifting his finger to the croupier: "Five on the red, Andy," said he.

"Five on the red," repeated the croupier; and set aside a chocolate-coloured chip in memorandum of the wager.

When the ball settled again to rest, the announcement was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blasé prodigal was presented with the chocolate-coloured token.

Carelessly he tossed it upon the red diamond. Black won. Unperturbed, he made a second oral bet, this time on black, and lost; increased his wager to ten dollars on black—and lost; made it twenty, shifted to red, and lost; dropped back to five-dollar bets for three turns of the wheel, and lost them all. Fifty dollars in debt to the house, he rose, nodded casually to the croupier, left the room.

In mingled envy and amazement P. Sybarite watched him go. Fancy losing three weeks' wages and a third of another week's without turning a hair! Fancy losing fifty dollars without being required to pay up!

At precisely that instant the torchlight procession penetrated a territory theretofore unaffected, which received it with open arms and tumultuous rejoicings and even went so far as to start up a couple of bonfires of its own and hang out several strings of Japanese lanterns. In the midst of a confusion of soaring skyrockets and Roman candles vomiting showers of scintillant golden sparks, P. Sybarite was shocked to hear his own voice.

A thought later he caught the croupier's eye and drove the wager home with a nod. His heart stopped beating.

The whirr of the deadly little ball in its ebony runway was like nothing less than the exultant shriek of a banshee. Instantaneously (as if an accident had happened in the power house) every light in his body went out and left it cold and dark and altogether dismayed.

P. Sybarite failed to hear the rest. All the lights were on again, full blast. The croupier tossed him a chocolate token. He was conscious that he touched it with numb and witless fingers, mechanically pushing it upon the red diamond.

A second brown chip appeared magically on top of the first. P. Sybarite regarded both stupidly; afraid to touch them, his brain communicated to his hand the impulse to remove the chips ere it was too late, but the hand hung moveless in listless mutiny.

And this time his brain sulked. If his body wouldn't heed its plain and sagacious admonition—very well!—it just wouldn't bother to signal any further advice.

But quite instinctively his hand moved out, tenderly embraced the four brown chips, and transferred them to the green area dominated by the black diamond.

Forty dollars were represented in that stunted pillar of brown wafers! P. Sybarite experienced an effect of coming to his senses after an abbreviated and, to tell the truth, somewhat nightmarish nap. Aping the manner of one or two other players whom he had observed before this madness possessed him, he thrust the chips out of the charmed circle of chance, and nodded again (with what a seasoned air!) to the croupier.

The chips gathered into the company of their brethren, two twenty-dollar bills replaced them.

Stuffing these into his pocket, P. Sybarite turned and strolled indifferently toward the door.

"Right you are," he admitted fairly. "I'll go home now before anybody gets this away from me."

"Still," suggested the small but clear voice of Greed, "you've got your original five dollars yet to lose. Be a sport. Don't go without turning in a cent to the house. It wouldn't look pretty."

Nevertheless, he never quite understood how it was that his feet carried him to the other roulette table, at the end of the salon opposite that at which he had been playing; or how it was that his fingers produced and coolly handed over the board, one of the twenty-dollar notes rather than the modest five he had meant to risk.