"How many?" the new croupier asked pleasantly.
P. Sybarite pulled a doubtful mouth. Five dollars' worth was all he really wanted. What on earth would he do with all the chips twenty dollars would buy? He'd need a bushel measure!
Before he could make up his mind, however, exactly twenty white counters were meted out to him.
"What are these worth?" he demanded incredulously, dropping into a chair.
"One dollar each," he was informed.
"Indeed?" he replied, politely smothering a slight yawn.
But he conceived a new respect for those infatuated men who so recklessly peppered the lay-out with chips—singly and in little piles of five and ten—worth one-hundred cents each!
However, to save his face, he'd have to go through his twenty. But after that—exit!
He made this promise to himself.
Prying a single chip apart from its fellows, he tossed it heedlessly upon the numbered squares. It landed upon its rim, rolled toward the wheel, and fainted gracefully upon the green compartment numbered 00.
The croupier cocked an eyebrow at him, as if questioning his intention, at the instant the ivory ball began to sing its song of a single note. Abruptly it was chattering; in another instant it was still.
"Double O!" announced a voice.
A player next P. Sybarite swore soulfully.
Thirty-five white chips were stacked alongside the winning stake. With unbecoming haste P. Sybarite removed them.
"Well," he sighed privately, "there's one thing certain: this won't last. But I don't like to seem a piker. I'll just make sure of this one: it can't win. And at that, I'll be another fifteen dollars in."
Deliberately he shifted the nineteen remaining of his original stack to keep company with his winning chip on the Double O....
A minute or so later the man at his elbow said excitedly: "I'll be damned if it didn't repeat! Can you beat that—!"
P. Sybarite stared stupidly.
"How's that?" he said.
"Double O," the croupier answered: "the second time."
"This is becoming uncanny," P. Sybarite observed to himself; and—"Cash!" said he aloud with cold decision.
Seven new one-hundred dollar certificates were placed in his hand. In a daze he counted, folded, and pocketed them. While thus engaged he heard the ball spin again. His original twenty dollars remained upon the double naught. Ten turned up: his stake was gathered in.
"You've had enough," Intelligence advised.
"Perfectly true," P. Sybarite admitted.
This time his anatomy proved quite docile. He found himself at the foot of the steps, fatuously smiling at the doorkeeper.
"He ain't come in yet," said the latter; "but he's liable to be here any minute now."
"Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite brightly, after a brief pause—"Mr. Penfield, of course. Sorry I can't wait."
"Well, you'll want your hat before you go—won't you?"
Placing an incredulous hand upon the crown of his head, P. Sybarite realised that it was covered exclusively with hair.
"I must have put it down somewhere upstairs," he murmured in panic.
"Mebbe you left it with Pete before you went up."
"Perhaps I did."
Turning back to the lounge, he entered to find it deserted save for the somnolent old gentleman and the hospitable Pete, but for whom P. Sybarite would probably never have known the delirious joy of that internal celebration or found the courage to risk his first bet.
And suddenly the fifty-cent tip previously bestowed upon the servitor seemed, to one unexpectedly fallen heir to the princely fortune then in P. Sybarite's pockets, the very nadir of beggarliness.
"Pete," said he with owlish gravity, "I begin to see that I have done you an inexcusable injustice."
Giggling, the negro scratched his head.
"Well, suh," he admitted, "Ah finds that gemmun gen'ly does change they min's erbout me, aftuh they done cut er melon, like."
With the air of an emperor, P. Sybarite gave the negro a twenty-dollar bill.
"And now," he cut short a storm of thanks, "if you'll be good enough to give me just one more glass of champagne, I think I'll totter home."
"Yas-suh!"
In a twinkling a glass was in his hand. As if it were so much water—in short, indifferently—P. Sybarite tossed it off.
"And my hat."
"Yo' hat?" Pete iterated in surprise. "Yo' didn't leaf yo' hat wif me, suh; yo' done tek it wif yo' when yo' went upstahs."
"Oh," murmured P. Sybarite, dashed.
He turned to the door, hesitated, turned back, and solemnly sat himself down.
"Pete," said he, extending his right foot, "I wish you'd do something for me."
"Yas-suh!"
"Take off my shoe."
Staring with naïf incredulity until assured of the gentleman's complete seriousness, the negro plumped down upon his knees, unlaced, and removed the shoe.
"It's a shocking shoe," observed P. Sybarite dreamily.
Bending forward he tucked his original five-dollar note into the toe of the despised footgear.
"I am not going home broke," he explained laboriously to Pete; "as I certainly shall if I dare go upstairs again to find my hat."
"Yo's sholly sens'ble," Pete approved. "But they ain't no reason why yo' sho'd tek enny mo' chances ef yo' don't wantuh," he added, knotting the laces. "I'd just as leave's not go fetch yo' hat."
"You needn't bother," P. Sybarite returned with dignity.
THE PLUNGER
A humour the most cool and reckless imaginable now possessed P. Sybarite. The first flush of his unaccustomed libations seemed to have worn itself out, his more recent draught to have had no other effect than to steady his gratulate senses; and a certain solid comfort resided in the knowledge that his hard-earned five dollars reposed in safe deposit.
"They can't get that away from me—not so long as I'm able to kick," he reflected with huge satisfaction.
And the seven hundred and thirty-five in his pocket was possessed of a devil of restlessness. He could almost feel it quivering with impatience to get into action. After all, it was only seven hundred and thirty-five dollars: not a cent more than the wages of forty-nine weeks' servitude to the Genius of the Vault of the Smell!
"That," mused P. Sybarite scornfully, "won't take me far....
"What," he argued, "is the use of travelling if you can't go to the end of the line?...
"I might as well be broke," he asseverated, "as the way I am!"
Glancing cunningly down his nose, he saw the finish of a fool.
"Anyway," he insisted, "it was ever my fondest ambition to get rid of precisely seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in one hour by the clock."
So he sat down at the end of the table of his first winnings, and exchanged one of his seven big bills for one hundred white chips.
"What," he asked with an ingenious smile, "is the maximum?"
"Seein's it's you," said the croupier, grinning, "we'll make it twenty a throw."
"Such being the case"—P. Sybarite pushed back the little army of white chips—"you may give me twenty dark-brown counters for these...."
In ten minutes he had lost two hundred dollars.
At the end of twenty minutes, he exchanged his last thirty-five dollars for seven brown chips.
Ten minutes later, he was worth eighteen hundred dollars; in another ten, he had before him counters calling for five thousand or thereabouts.
"It is," he observed privately—"it must be my Day of Days!"
A hand touched his shoulder, and a quiet voice said: "Beg pardon—"
He looked up with a slight start—that wasn't one of joyous welcome, because the speaker was altogether a stranger—to find at his elbow a large body of man entirely surrounded by evening clothes and urbanity; whose face was broad with plump cheeks particularly clean-shaven; whose eyes were keen and small and twinkling; whose fat hand (offered to P. Sybarite) was strikingly white and dimpled and well-manicured; whose dignity and poise (alike inimitable) combined with the complaisance of a seasoned student of mankind to mark an individuality at once insinuating and forceful.
"You were asking for me, I believe?" pursued this person, with complete suavity.
P. Sybarite pursed doubtful lips. "I'm afraid," he replied pleasantly, "you have the advantage of me.... Let's see: this is my thirty-second birthday...."
The ball was spinning. He deposited four chips on the square numbered 32.
"I am Mr. Penfield," the stranger explained.
"Really?" P. Sybarite jumped up and cordially seized his hand. "I hope I see you well to-night."
Releasing the hand, he sat down.
"Quite well, thank you; in fact, never better." With a slight smile Mr. Penfield nodded toward the gaming table. "Having a good time?"
"Thirty-two, red, even," observed the croupier....
"Oh, tolerable, tolerable," assented P. Sybarite, blandly accepting counters that called for seven hundred dollars....
"In one year from to-day, I shall be thirty-three," he reckoned; and shifted a maximum to the square designated by that number....
"What do you think? Is Teddy going to get the nomination?"
"I'm only very slightly interested in politics," returned Mr. Penfield. "I shouldn't like to express an opinion.... Sorry a prior engagement obliged me to keep you waiting."
"Thirty-three, black, odd...."
"Don't mention it," insisted P. Sybarite politely. "Not another word of apology—I protest! Indeed, I've managed to divert myself amazingly while waiting.... Thank you," he added in acknowledgment of another seven-hundred-dollar consignment of chips. "To-day," he mused aloud, "is the thirteenth of April—"
"The fourteenth," corrected Mr. Penfield: "to-day is only about two hours old."
"Right you are," admitted P. Sybarite, shifting twenty dollars from the 13 to the 14. "Careless memory of mine ..."
"Thirteen, black, odd...."
"There, now! You see—you spoiled my aim," P. Sybarite complained peevishly.
"Forgive me," murmured Mr. Penfield while P. Sybarite made another wager. "Are you in a hurry to break the bank?" he added.
"It's my ambition," modestly confessed the little man, watching a second twenty gathered in to the benefit of the house. "But I've only a few minutes more—and you do play such a darned small game."
"Perhaps I can arrange matters for you," suggested Mr. Penfield. "You'd like the limit removed?"
"Not as bad as all that. Make the maximum a hundred, and I'll begin to feel at home."
"Delighted to oblige. You won't object to my rolling for you?" Penfield nodded to the croupier; who (first paying P. Sybarite seven hundred on his last wager) surrendered his place.
"Not in the least," agreed P. Sybarite, marshalling his chips in stacks of five: twenty-five dollars each. "It's an honour," he added, covering several numbers as Penfield deftly set ball and wheel in motion.
He won the first fall; and encouraged by this, began to play extravagantly, sowing the board liberally with wagers of twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred dollars each. Hardly ever the ball clattered to a lodgment but he cashed one or another of these; and the number of times that the house paid him thirty-five hundred dollars passed his count. All other play at that table ceased; and a gallery of patrons of the establishment gathered round, following with breathless interest the fortunes of this shabby little plunger. Their presence, far from annoying, pleased him; it was just so much additional assurance of fair play. The mounting of the roulette wheel—it was placed upon a broad sheet of plate-glass elevated several inches above the table—was proof against secret manipulation. And a throng of spectators not only forbade any attempt to call wrong numbers on a winning cast but likewise insured fair dealing on the part of the croupier, who was so busy raking in losing bets or paying winnings that P. Sybarite had time neither to watch him nor to check his payments.
Penfield, cool and smiling, confined his attention to the wheel. If he felt any uneasiness or dismay on account of P. Sybarite's steadily augmented mountain of chips, he betrayed it not at all overtly.
But abruptly (they had been playing less than fifteen minutes) he paused and, instead of starting the ball on another race round its ebony run, dropped it lightly in the depression immediately above the axle of the wheel.
"The game is closed," he announced evenly, with a slow smile. "Sir"—directly to P. Sybarite—"although it lacks the resources of Monte Carlo, this establishment nevertheless imitates its protective measures. A table losing twenty-five thousand dollars in one day ceases operations. You are just twenty-five thousand to the good. Accept my congratulations."
"You are very amiable," insisted P. Sybarite, rising, with a little bow. "But if you care for revenge, I shall be pleased to continue at the other table."
"Unfortunately that, too, has suspended operations," returned Penfield. "However, I hope before long to relieve you of your gains."
Opening the cash drawer, he cleared it completely of its contents, placing before P. Sybarite a tremendous accumulation of bills, old and new, of all denominations, loose and in packages, together with some ten or twelve golden double-eagles.
"I believe you will find that correct," he observed genially. "Afterwards, I trust you will do me the honour of splitting a bottle with me in the lounge."
"Delighted," said P. Sybarite.
Penfield strolled off, exchanged a few words with an acquaintance or two, and a few more with his employees, and went downstairs. The remaining handful of patrons disappeared gradually, yet so quickly that P. Sybarite was a lonely outsider by the time he had finished counting his winnings and stowing them away about his person.
Presenting the croupier with five hundred dollars, he recovered his hat (at last) and descended, to find Penfield awaiting him at the foot of the steps.
UNDER FIRE
Bloated though he was with lawless wealth and fat with insufferable self-satisfaction, P. Sybarite, trotting by the side of his host, was dwarfed alike in dignity and in physique, strongly resembling an especially cocky and ragged Airedale being tolerated by a well-groomed St. Bernard.
Now when Pete had placed a plate of caviare sandwiches between them, and filled their glasses from a newly opened bottle, he withdrew from the lounge and closed the door behind him; whether or not at a sign from Penfield, P. Sybarite was unaware; though as soon as they were alone and private, he grew unpleasantly sensitive to a drop in the temperature of the entente cordiale which had thus far obtained between himself and the gambler. Penfield's eyes promptly lost much of their genial glow, and simultaneously his face seemed weirdly less plump and rosy with prosperity and contentment. Notwithstanding this, with no loss of manner, he lifted a ceremonious glass to the health of his guest.
"Congratulations!" said he; and drank as a thirsty man drinks.
"May your shadow never grow less!" P. Sybarite returned, putting down an empty glass.
"That's a perfectly good wish plumb wasted," said Penfield, refilling both glasses, his features twisted in the wriest of grimaces. "Fact is—I don't mind telling you—your luck to-night has, I'm afraid, played the very devil with me. This house won't open up again until I raise another bank-roll."
"My sympathy," said P. Sybarite, sipping. "I'm really distressed.... And yet," he added thoughtfully, "you had no chance—none whatever."
"How's that?" said Penfield, staring.
"You couldn't have won against me to-night," P. Sybarite ingenuously explained; "it could not be done: I am invincible: it is—Kismet!—my Day of Days!"
Penfield laughed discordantly.
"Maybe it looks that way to you. But aren't you a little premature? You haven't banked that wad yet, you know. Any minute something might happen to make you think otherwise."
"Nothing like that is going to happen," P. Sybarite retorted with calm conviction. "The luck's with me at present!"
"And yet," said the other, abandoning his easy pose and sitting up with a sharpened glance and tone, "you are wrong—quite wrong."
"What makes you think that?" demanded P. Sybarite, finishing his second glass.
"Because," said his host with a dangerous smile, "I am a desperate man."
"Oh?" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully.
"Believe me," insisted the other with convincing simplicity: "I'm such a bum loser, I'm willing to stake my last five hundred on the proposition that you don't leave this house a dollar richer than you entered it."
"Done!" said P. Sybarite instantly. "If I get away with it, you pay me five hundred dollars. Is that right?"
"Exactly!"
"But—where shall we meet to settle the wager?"
Penfield smiled cheerfully. "Dine with me at the Bizarre this evening at seven."
"If I lose, with pleasure. Otherwise, you are to be my guest."
"It's a bargain."
"And—that being understood," pursued P. Sybarite curiously—"perhaps you won't mind explaining your grounds for this conspicuous confidence."
"Not in the least," said the other, pulling comfortably at his cigar—"that is, if you're willing to come through with a little information. I'm curious to know how you came to butt in here on my personal card of introduction. Where did you get it?"
"Found it in a hat left in my possession by a gentleman in a great hurry, whom I much desired to see again, and therefore—presuming him to be Mr. Bailey Penfield—came here to find."
"A gentleman unknown to you?"
"Entirely: a tall young man with an ugly mouth; rather fancies himself, I should say: a bit of a bounder. You recognise this sketch?"
"Perhaps ..." Penfield murmured thoughtfully.
"His name?"
"Maybe he wouldn't thank me for telling you that."
"Very well. Now then: why and how are you going to separate me from my winnings?"
"By force," said Mr. Penfield with engaging candour. "It desolates me to descend to rough-neck methods, but I am a larger, stronger man than you, Mr.—"
"Sybarite," said the little man, flushing, "P.—by the grace of God!—Sybarite."
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Sybarite.... But before we lose our tempers, what do you say to a fair proposition: leave me what you have won to-night, and I'll pay it back to the last cent with interest in less than six months."
P. Sybarite shook his head: "I'm sorry."
The dark blood surged into Penfield's cheeks. "You won't accept my word—?"
"I have every confidence in your professional honour," P. Sybarite replied blandly, "up to the certain point to which we have attained to-night. But the truth is—I need the money."
"You're unwise," said the other, and sighed profoundly. "I'm sorry. You oblige me to go the extreme limit."
"Not I. On the contrary, I advise you against any such dangerous course."
"Dangerous?"
"If you interfere with me, I'll go to the police."
"The police?" Penfield elaborated an inflexion of derision. "I keep this precinct in my vest pocket."
"Possibly—so far as concerns your maintenance of a gambling house. But murder—that's another matter."
"Meaning, you refuse to submit without extreme measures?"
"Meaning just that, sir!"
Again the gambler sighed. "What must be, must," said he, rising. Moving to the wall, he pressed a call-button, and simultaneously whipped a revolver into view. "I hope you're not armed," he protested sincerely. "It would only make things messy. And then I hate to have my employees run any risk—"
"You are summoning a posse, I take it?" enquired P. Sybarite, likewise on his feet.
"Half a dozen huskies," assented the other. "If you know your little book, you'll come through at once and save yourself a manhandling."
"It's too bad," P. Sybarite regretted pensively—and cast a desperate glance round the room.
What he saw afforded him no comfort. The one door was unquestionably guarded on the farther side. The windows, though curtained, were as indubitably locked and further protected by steel outside blinds. Besides, Penfield bulked big and near at hand, a weapon of the most deadly calibre steadily levelled at the head of his guest.
But exactly at the moment when despair entered into the heart of the little man—dispossessing altogether his cool assumption of confidence in his star—there rang through the house a crash so heavy that its muffled thunder penetrated even the closed door of the lounge. Another followed it instantly, and at deliberate intervals a third and fourth.
Penfield blenched. His eyes wavered. He punched the bell-button a second time.
The door was thrown wide and—with the instantaneous effect of a jack-in-the-box—Pete showed a dirty-grey face of fright on the threshold.
"Good Lord, boss!" he yelled. "Run for yo' life! We's raided!"
He vanished....
With an oath, Penfield started toward the door—and instantly P. Sybarite shot at his gun hand like a terrier at the throat of a rat. Momentarily the shock of the assault staggered the gambler, and as he gave ground, reeling, P. Sybarite closed one set of sinewy fingers tight round his right wrist, and with the other seized and wrested the revolver away. The incident was history in a twinkling: P. Sybarite sprang back, armed, the situation reversed.
Recovering, Penfield threw him a cry of envenomed spite, and in one stride left the room. He was turning up the stairs, three steps and an oath at a bound, by the time P. Sybarite gained the threshold and sped his departing host with a reminder superfluously ironic:
"The Bizarre at seven—don't forget!"
A breathless imprecation dropped to him from the head of the staircase. And he chuckled—but cut the chuckle short when a heavy and metallic clang followed the disappearance of the gambler. The iron door upstairs had closed, shutting off the second floor from the lower part of the house, and at the same time consigning P. Sybarite to the mercies of the police as soon as they succeeded in battering down the front door.
Now he harboured no whim to figure as the sole victim of the raid—to be arrested as a common gambler, loaded to the guards with cash and unable to give any creditable account of himself.
"Damn!" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully.
The front doors still held, though shaking beneath a shower of axe-strokes that filled the house with sonorous echoes.
At his feet, immediately to the left of the lounge door, yawned the well of the basement stairway. And one chance was no more foolhardy than another. Like a shot down that dark hole he dropped—and brought up with a bang against a closed door at the bottom. Happily, it wasn't locked. Turning the handle, he stumbled through, reclosed the door, and intelligently bolted it.
He was now in a narrow and odorous corridor, running from front to rear of the basement. One or two doors open or ajar furnished all its light. Trying the first at a venture, P. Sybarite discovered what seemed a servant's bedroom, untenanted. The other introduced him to a kitchen of generous proportions and elaborate appointments—cool, airy, and aglow with glistening white paint and electric light; everything in absolute order with the exception of the central table, where sat a man asleep, head pillowed on arms folded amid a disorder of plates, bottles and glasses—asleep and snoring lustily.
P. Sybarite pulled up with a hand on the knob, and blinked with surprise—an emotion that would assuredly have been downright dismay had the sleeper been conscious. For he was in uniform; and a cap hung on the back of his chair; and uniform and cap alike boasted the insignia of the New York Police Department.
Wrinkling a perplexed nose, P. Sybarite swiftly considered the situation. Here was the policeman on the beat—one of those creatures of Penfield's vaunted vest-pocket crew—invited in for a bite and sup by the steward of the house. The steward called away, he had drifted naturally into a gentle nap. And now—"Glad I'm not in his shoes!" mused P. Sybarite.
And yet.... Urgent second thought changed the tenor of his temper toward the sleeper. Better far to be in his shoes than in those of P. Sybarite, just then....
Remembering Penfield's revolver, he made sure it was safe and handy in his pocket; then strode in and dropped an imperative hand on the policeman's shoulder.
"Here—wake up!" he cried; and shook him rudely.
The fellow stirred, grunted, and lifted a bemused, red countenance to the breaker of rest.
"Hello!" he said in dull perception of a stranger. "What's—row?"
"Get up—pull yourself together!" P. Sybarite ordered sternly. "You 're liable to be broke for this!"
"Broke?" The officer's eyes widened, but remained cloudy with sleep, drink, and normal confusion. "Where's Jimmy? Who're you?"
"Never mind me. Look to yourself. This place is being raided."
"Raided!" The man leaped to his feet with a cry. "G'wan! It ain't possible!"
"Listen, if you don't believe me."
The crashing of the axes and the grumble of the curious crowd assembled in the street were distinctly audible. The officer needed no other confirmation; and yet—instant by instant it became more clearly apparent that he had drunk too deeply to be able to think for himself. Standing with a hand on the table, he rocked to and fro until, losing his balance, he sat down heavily.
"My Gawd!" he cried. "I'm done for!"
"Nonsense! No more than I—unless you're too big a fool to take a word of advice. Here—off with your coat."
"What's that?"
"I say, off with your coat, man—and look sharp! Get it off and I'll hide it while you slip into one of those waiter's jackets over there. Then, if they find us here, we can pretend to be employees. You understand?"
"We'll get pinched, all the same," the man objected stupidly.
"Well, if we do, it only means a trip to the Night Court, and a fine of five or ten dollars. You'll be up to-morrow for absence from post, of course, but that's better than being caught half-drunk in the basement of a gambling house on your beat."
Impressed, the officer started to unbutton his tunic, but hesitated.
"S'pose some of the boys recognise me?"
"Where are your wits?" demanded P. Sybarite in exasperation. "This isn't a precinct raid! You ought to know that. This is Whitman, going over everybody's head. Anyhow, it can't be worse for you than it is—and my way gives you a fighting chance to get off."
"Guess you 're right," mumbled the other thickly, shrugging out of his coat and surrendering it.
Several white jackets hung from hooks on the wall near the door. Seizing one of these, the policeman had it on in a jiffy.
"Now what'll I do?" he pursued, as P. Sybarite, the blue coat over his arm, grabbed the police cap and started for the door.
"Do? How do I know? Use your own head for a while. Pull yourself together—cut some bread—do something useful—make a noise like a steward—"
With this the little man shot out into the hallway, slammed the door behind him, and darted into the adjoining bedroom. Once there, he lost no time changing coats—not forgetting to shift his money as well—cocked the cap jauntily on one side of his head (a bit too big, it fitted better that way, anyhow) buttoned up, and left the room on the run. For by this time the front doors had fallen in and the upper floor was echoing with deep, excited voices and heavy, hurrying footsteps. In another moment or so they would be drawing the basement for fugitives.
He had planned—vaguely, inconclusively—to leave by the area door when the raiders turned their attention to the basement, presenting himself to the crowd in the street in the guise of an officer, and so make off. But now—with his fingers on the bolts—misgivings assailed him. He was physically not much like any policeman he had ever seen; and the blue tunic with its brass buttons was a wretched misfit on his slight body. He doubted whether his disguise would pass unchallenged—doubted so strongly that he doubled suddenly to the back door, flung it open, and threw himself out into the black strangeness of the night—and at the same time into the arms of two burly plain-clothes men posted there to forestall precisely such an attempt at escape.
Strong arms clipping him, he struggled violently for an instant.
"Here!" a voice warned him roughly. "It ain't goin' to do you no good—"
Another interrupted with an accent of deep disgust, in patent recognition of his borrowed plumage: "Damned if it ain't a patrolman!"
"Why the hell didn't you say so?" demanded the first as P. Sybarite fell back, free.
"Didn't—have—time. Here—gimme a leg over this fence, will you?"
"What the devil—!"
"They've got a door through to the next house—getting out that way. That's what I'm after—to stop 'em. Shut up!" P. Sybarite insisted savagely—"and give me a leg."
"Oh, well!" said one of the plain-clothes men in a slightly mollified voice—"if that's the way of it—all right."
"Come along, then," brusquely insisted the impostor, leading the way to the eastern wall of boards enclosing the back yard.
Curiously complaisant for one of his breed, the detective bent his back and made a stirrup of his clasped hands, but no sooner had P. Sybarite fitted foot to that same than the man started and, straightening up abruptly, threw him flat on his back.
"Patrolman, hell! Whatcha doin' in them pants and shoes if you're a patrol—"
"Hel-lo!" exclaimed the other indignantly. "Impersonatin' an officer—eh?"
With this he dived at P. Sybarite; who, having bounced up from a supine to a sitting position, promptly and peevishly swore, rolled to one side (barely eluding clutches that meant to him all those frightful and humiliating consequences that arrest means to the average man) and scrambled to his feet.
Immediately the others closed in upon him, supremely confident of overcoming by concerted action that smallish, pale, and terrified body. Whereupon P. Sybarite' stepped quickly to one side and, avoiding the rush of one, directly engaged the other. Ducking beneath a windmill play of arms, he shot an accurate fist at this aggressor's jaw; there was a click of teeth, the man's head snapped back, and folding up like a tripod, he subsided at length.
Then swinging on a heel, P. Sybarite met a second onset made more dangerous by the cooler calculations of a more sophisticated antagonist. Nevertheless, deftly blocking a rain of blows, he closed in as if eager to escape punishment, and planted a lifted knee in the large of the detective's stomach so neatly that he, too, collapsed like a punctured presidential boom and lay him down at rest.
Success so egregious momentarily stupefied even P. Sybarite. Gazing down upon those two still shapes, so mighty and formidable when sentient, he caught his breath in sharp amazement.
"Great Heavens! Is it possible I did that?" he cried aloud—and the next moment, spurred by alert discretion, was scaling the fence with the readiness of an alley-cat.
Instantaneously, as he poised above the abyss of Stygian blackness on the other side, not a little daunted by its imperturbable mystery, a quick backward glance showed him figures moving in the basement hallway of the gambling house; and easing over, he dropped.
Hard flags received him with native impassivity: stumbling, he lost balance and sat down with an emphasis that drove the breath from him in one mighty "Ooof!"
There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange voices on the other side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement:
"Feeny, by all that's holy!"
"Mike Grogan, or I'm a liar!"
"What hit the two av urn?"
"Gawd knows!"
"Thin 'tis this waay thim murdherous divvles is b'atin' ut!"
"Gimme a back up that fince!..."
P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alacrity that if he'd landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a second fence, and was beyond it in a twinkling.
Swift as he was, however, detection attended him—a voice roaring: "There goes wan av thim now!"
Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice....
Blindly clearing fence after fence without even thinking to count them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward. Noises in the rear indicated a determined pursuit: once a voice whooped—"Halt or I fire!"—and a shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive's heels....
But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty—to find a way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy inspiration—as plain as the problem it presented was obscure.
BURGLARY UNDER ARMS
And there P. Sybarite stood, near the middle of a fence-enclosed area of earth and flagstones; winded and weary; looking up and all around him in distressed perplexity; in a stolen coat (to be honest about it) and with six months' income from a million dollars unlawfully procured and secreted upon his person; wanted for resisting arrest and assaulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever was on land or sea....
Conceiving the block as a well a-brim with blackness and clamorous with violent sound, studded on high with inaccessible, yellow-bright loopholes wherefrom hostile eyes spied upon his every secret movement, and haunted below by vicious perils both animate and still: he found himself possessed of an overpowering desire to go away from there quickly.
But—short of further dabbling in crime—how?
To break his way to the street through one of those houses would he not only to invite apprehension: it would be downright burglary.
To continue his headlong career of the fugitive backyards tom-cat was out of the question, entirely too much like hard work, painful into the bargain—witness scratched and abraded palms and agonised shins. Sooner or later his strength must fail, some one would surely espy him and cry on the chase, he must be surrounded and overwhelmed: while to hide behind some ash-barrel was not only ignoble but downright fatuous: faith the most sublime in his Kismet couldn't excuse any hope that, eventually, he wouldn't be discovered and ignominiously routed out.
Very well, then! So be it! Calmly P. Sybarite elected to venture another and deeper dive into amateurish malfeasance; and gravely he studied the inoffensive building whose back premises he was then infesting.
It seemed to offer at least the negative invitation of desuetude. It showed no lights; had not an open window—so far as could be determined by straining sight aided only by a faint reflection from the livid skies. One felt warranted in assuming the premises to be vacant. Encouraging surmise! If such were in fact the case, he might hope soon to be counting his spoils in the privacy of his top-floor-hall-bedroom, back....
At the same time, to one ignorant of the primary principles of house-breaking, the problem of negotiating an entrance was of formidable proportions.
To break a basement window was feasible, certainly—but highly inadvisable for a number of obvious reasons.
To force a window-latch required (if memory served) a long flat-bladed knife—a kitchen knife; and P. Sybarite happened to have no such implement about him.
Similarly, to pry open the back door would require the services of a jimmy (whatever that might be).
Moreover, there were such things as burglar alarms—inventions of the devil!
On the other hand, unless his senses deceived him, there were police officers in plenty only a fence or two away; and the back of this house boasted a fire-escape. By inverting a convenient ash-can and standing on it, an active man might possibly, if sufficiently desperate, manage to jump a vertical yard (more or less), catch the lowermost grating of the fire-escape, and draw himself up.
In a thought P. Sybarite turned the galvanised iron cylinder bottom-up, clambered upon it, and on tiptoe sought to gauge the exact distance of the requisite leap. But now the grating seemed to have receded at least three feet from its position as first judged—to be hopelessly removed from the grasp of his yearning fingers.
Yet that mad attempt must be made. Why die fighting when a broken neck would serve as well?
Gathering his slight person together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints—and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. Clutching it and kicking footloose, he was stunned by the wonder of many brilliant new-born constellations swirling round his poor head to the thunderous music of the spheres, as rendered by the ash-can which, displaced by the vigour of his acrobatics, had toppled over and was rolling and clattering hideously on the flagging.
In his terrified bosom P. Sybarite felt the heart of him turn to cold and clammy stone.
No clamour more infernal could well have been improvised, given similar circumstances and facilities as rude. It seemed hours, rather than instants, that the damned thing wallowed and bellowed beneath him, raising a din to disturb all Christendom. While, the moment it was still, the cries of the police pack belled clear and near at hand:
"This way, b'ys!"
"There he is, the—"
"Got 'im now—"
"Halt or—!"
Another pistol shot!...
Glancing over shoulder, the hunted man caught a glimpse of uncouth shapes wriggling along a fence ridge several rods away. No more than the barest glimpse, it served: with a mighty heave and wriggle he breasted the lower platform, shifted a hand to the top of its railing, heaved himself up to a foothold, and swarmed up the iron ladder with an agility an ape might have envied.
But as he mounted, it grew momentarily more evident that the stage thunder manufactured by that wretched galvanised iron cylinder had, in fact, served him far from ill; reverberating from wall to wall within the hollow of the block, its dozen echoes diverted pursuit to as many quarters, luring the limbs of the law every way but the right one. Nobody, it appeared, was alert enough to espy that fugacious shadow on the fire-ladder. And in less than a brace of minutes P. Sybarite, at the top, was pulling himself gingerly over the lip of a stone coping.
Surmising that he had gained not the roof of the house but that of a two-story rear extension, he found himself in what seemed a small roof-garden, made private by awnings and Venetian blinds. Between his soles and the stone flooring he could feel the yielding texture of a grass mat, and he could not only dimly discern but also smell the perfume of green things in pots here and there. And his first step forward brought him into soft collision with a wicker basket-chair.
He paused and took thought in perturbation.
A most disappointing and deceptive sort of a house—inhabited, after all: its sombre and quiet aspect masking Heaven alone knew what pitfalls!...
Not a glint of light, not a sound....
When he moved again, it was with scrupulous caution.
Stealing softly on, the darkness seemed to thicken round him. He was sensible of suspense and qualms, of creeping flesh and an almost irresistible inclination to hold his breath. Uncanny business, this—penetrating unknown fastnesses of a dark and silent house at dead of night: a trespasser unable to surmise when the righteous householder, lurking on familiar ground and vigilant under arms, might not open fire....
Nevertheless, the police behind him were a menace of known calibre. With whatever shrinkings and dire misgivings, P. Sybarite went on.
Without misadventure he gained the main wall of the house, and there found open windows and (upon further cautious investigation) a doorway, likewise wide to the bland night air. Hesitant on the threshold of this last he sought with impotent senses to probe impenetrable obscurity—listening, every nerve taut and vibrant, for some sound significant of human tenancy, and detecting never an one. In spite of this, it was without the least confidence that presently he plucked up heart to proceed....
Three steps on into darkness, and his knee found a chair that might have poised itself on one leg, in malicious ambush, so promptly did it go over—and with what a racket.
Incontinently something rustled quite near at hand; followed a click—blinding light—a shrill, excited voice:
"Hands up!"
With a jerk, up went his hands high above his head. Blinking furiously in the glare, he comprehended his plight.
The lights he found so dazzling blazed from sconces round the walls of a bedroom more handsome than any he had thought ever to see—unless perhaps upon a stage. The voice belonged to a young woman sitting up in bed and coolly covering him with the yawning muzzle of a peculiarly poisonous-looking automatic pistol.
It was astonishingly evident that she wasn't at all frightened. The arm that levelled the weapon (a round and shapely arm, bare to the shoulder) was admirably steady; the rich colouring of her distinctly handsome face showed not a trace of pallor; and the fire that flickered in her large and darkly beautiful eyes was of indignation rather than of fear.
Abruptly she dropped her weapon and sat up yet straighter in her huddled bed-clothing, mouth and eyes widening with astonishment.
"Well!" she said quite simply—"I'll be damned if it ain't a cop!"
P. Sybarite immediately took occasion to lower his hands to a more comfortable position.
Fright inspired his latent histrionic genius; momentarily he became almost a good actor.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. "You're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots! Phwew!"
"You're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!"
"You're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!"
Quite naturally he drew a braided blue cuff across a beaded forehead.
"That's all very well," the woman took him up sharply—"but be careful I don't shoot after looking. Cop or no cop, you—what the devil do you want in my bedroom at this hour of the night?"
"Madam," P. Sybarite expostulated, aggrieved yet with an air of the utmost candour—"my duty, of course!"
"Duty!" she echoed. "What do you think you mean by that?"
"Perhaps," he countered blandly, "you're not aware a burglar has passed through this room?"
"A burglar? What rot!"
"Pardon me, madam," P. Sybarite lied nonchalantly, "but five minutes ago I was called in by the people in Two-thirty-three Forty-fifth Street, to nab a burglar who'd broken in there. They thought they had him locked up safe enough in one of the rooms, but when they came to open the door and let me at him—the bird had flown! He'd taken a long chance—swung himself from the window-ledge to a fire-escape five feet away—don't ask me how he did it! I got to the window just in time to see him go over the back fence. You heard me take a shot at him? No?"
"No, I didn't," said the woman in a manner eloquent of positive incredulity.
"Well, anyway," P. Sybarite went on with elaborate ease, "I saw this man climb your fire-escape and so I came after him."
The woman frowned as she weighed this likely story; and P. Sybarite was at pains to conceal any exultation he may have felt over the prompt response of his vivid imagination to the call of exigence.
Would she or wouldn't she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his? For moments that, brief though they must have been, seemed intolerably protracted, he awaited her verdict in the extremest anxiety—not, however, neglecting to employ the respite thus afforded him to make another quick survey of the room and a second and more shrewd appraisal of its admirably self-possessed tenant.
A bit too florid and ornate—he concluded—woman and lodgings alike were somewhat overdone. A superabundance of gilt and pink marred the colour scheme of the apartment; and there was ostentatious evidence of wealth lavishly expended on its furnishings. An overpowering voluptuousness of silken clothing dressed the bed itself.
But if her setting were luxurious, the woman outshone it tenfold with the dark splendour of her animal beauty. As comely and as able-bodied as a young pantheress, she was (one judged) little less dangerous—as vital, as self-centred, as deadly. Sitting up in bed, openly careless of charms hardly concealed by nightwear of sheer silk lace and crêpe de Chine, she looked P. Sybarite up and down with wide eyes overwise in the ways of life, shrewdly judicious of mankind; handled her pistol with experienced confidence; spoke, in a voice of surpassing sweetness, with decision and considerable overt contempt for the phraseology of convention—swearing without the least affectation, slanging heartily when slang best suited her humour....
"Maybe you're telling the truth, at that," she announced suddenly, eyes coldly unprepossessed. "You sound fishy as all-hell, and God knows you're the sickest-looking cop I ever laid eyes on; but there are less unlikely things than that a second-story man should try this route for his getaway.... Well!" she demanded urgently—"what're you standing there for, like a stone man?"
"My dear lady—!" expostulated the dismayed P. Sybarite.
"Can the fond stuff and get busy. What're you going to do?"
"What am I—? What—ah—do you wish me to do?"
"If you're a cop, go to it—cop somebody," she replied with a brusque laugh—"and then clear out. I can use the room and time you're occupying. Besides, while you stand there staring as if you'd never seen a good-looking woman in a nightgown before, you're slipping the said burglar a fine young chance to make the front door—unless he's under the bed."
"Under the bed?" stammered the masquerader.
"You said something then," the woman snapped. "Why not look?"
Mechanically obedient to her suggestion, down P. Sybarite plumped on his knees, lifted the silken valance at the foot of the bed, and pretended to explore the darkness thereunder—finding precisely what he had anticipated, that is to say, nothing.
While thus occupied (and badgering his addled wits to invent some plausible way to elude this Amazon) he was at once startled and still further dismayed to hear the bed-springs creak, a light double thump as two bare feet found the floor, and again the woman's voice flavoured with acid sarcasm.
"You seem to find it interesting down there. Is it the view? Or are you trying to hypnotise your burglar by the well-known power of the human eye?"
"It's pure and simple reverence for the proprieties," P. Sybarite replied without stirring, "keeps me emulating the fatuous ostrich. I don't pretend it's comfortable, but I, believe me, madam, am a plain man, of modest tastes, unaccustomed to—"
"Get up!" the lady interrupted peremptorily. "I guess your regard for the proprieties won't suffer any more than my fair name. Come out of that and hunt burglars like a good little cop."
"But who am I," pleaded the little man, "to gaze unblinded upon the sun?"
"That," said the lady, smothering a giggle, "will be about all from you. Get up—or I'll call in a sure-enough cop to search your title to that uniform."
Hastily P. Sybarite withdrew his head and rose. An embarrassed glance askance comforted him measurably: the lady had thrown an exquisite negligee over her nightdress and had thrust her pretty feet into extravagantly pretty silken mules.
"Now," said she tersely, "we'll comb the premises for this burglar of yours: and if we don't find him"—her lips tightened, her brows clouded ominously—"I promise you an interesting time of it!"
"I'm vastly diverted as it is—truly I am!" protested P. Sybarite, ruefully eyeing the lady's pistol. "But there 's really no need to disturb yourself: I'm quite competent to take care of any housebreaker—"
"That," she broke in, "is something you'll have to show me.... Where's your nightstick?"
"My—er—what?"
"Your nightstick. What've you done with it?"
With consternation P. Sybarite investigated the vacant loop at his side.
"Must've dropped out while I was shinning over the back fence," he surmised vaguely. "However, I shan't need it. This"—with a bright and confident smile displaying Penfield's revolver—"will do just as well—better, in fact."
"That?" she questioned. "That's not a Police Department gun. Where'd you—"
"Oh, yes, it is. It's the new pattern—recently adopted. They've just begun to issue 'em. I got mine to-day—"
The lady's lips curled. "Very well," she concluded curtly. "I don't believe a word you say, but we'll see. Lead the way—show me one solitary sign that a burglar has been here—"
"Perhaps you'd prefer me to withdraw from the case?" the little man suggested with offended dignity. "After all, I may be mistaken—"
"You'd better not be. I warn you, find me a burglar—or"—she added with unmistakable significance—"I'll find one myself."
Interpreting the level challenge of her glance, P. Sybarite's heart quaked, his soul curdled, his stomach for picaresque adventure failed him entirely: anatomically, in short, he was hopelessly disqualified for his chosen rôle of favourite of Kismet, protagonist of this Day of Days. Withal, there was no use offering resistance to the demands of this masterful woman; she was patently one to be humoured against a more auspicious turn of affairs.
He shrugged, gave in with a gesture. Her imperative arm, uplifted, indicated an inner door.
"Find that burglar!"
"Swell chance I've got to get away with that proposition," he grumbled. "You've delayed me long enough to let any burglar get clean away!"
"And you hang back, giving him more time," she cut in. "Lead the way, now!"
Awed, P. Sybarite grasped his revolver and strode to the door with much dramatic manner, but paused with a hand on the knob to look over his shoulder.
The woman was there, not a foot distant, her countenance a mask of suspicious determination.
"Go on!" she commanded in menacing accents.
He pulled the door open, flung out into the hallway, paused again at the mouth of the back pit of the stairway.
Behind him the woman snapped a switch; an electric bulb glared out of the darkness. And P. Sybarite, peering down, started back with a gasp of amazement that was echoed in his ear.
On the stairs, halfway down, a man was crouching in a posture of frozen consternation: a small electric pocket-lamp burning brilliantly in one hand, the other, lifted, grasping a weapon of some curious sort, in the eyes of P. Sybarite more than anything else like, a small black cannon: a hatless man in evening clothes, his face half blotted out by a black mask that, enhancing the brightness of startled eyes gleaming through its peepholes, left uncovered only his angular muscular jaw and ugly, twisted mouth.
For a full minute (it seemed) not one of the three so much as drew breath; while through the haze of dumfounderment in P. Sybarite's brain there loomed the fact that once again Kismet had played into his hands to save his face in thus lending material body and substance to the burglar of his desperate invention.
And then, as if from a heart of agony, the woman at his side breathed a broken and tortured cry:
"You dog! So it's come to murder, has it?"
As if electrified by that ejaculation, P. Sybarite whipped up Penfield's revolver and levelled it at the man on the stairs.
"Hands up!" he snapped. "Drop that gun!"
The answer was a singular sound—half a choking cough, half a smothered bark—accompanied by a jet of fire from the strange weapon, and coincident with the tinkling of a splintered electric bulb.
Instantly the hall was again drenched in darkness but little mitigated by the light from the bedroom.
Heedless of consequences, in his excitement, P. Sybarite pulled trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber, rose and fell half a dozen times without educing any response other than the click of metal against metal: demonstrating beyond question that the revolver was unloaded.
From the hand of the marauder another tongue of flame licked out, to the sound of the same dull, bronchial cough; and a bullet thumped heavily into the wall beside P. Sybarite.
Enraged beyond measure, he drew back his worthless weapon and threw it with all his might. And Kismet winged the missile to the firing arm of the assassin. With a cry of pain and anger, this last involuntarily relaxed his grasp and, dropping his own pistol, stumbled and half fell, half threw himself down to the next floor.
As this happened, a white arm was levelled over the shoulder of P. Sybarite.
The woman took deliberate aim, fired—and missed.
THE LADY OF THE HOUSE
Until that moment of the woman's shot, what with the failure of P. Sybarite's weapon to fire and the strange, muted coughing of the assassin's, an atmosphere of veritable decorum, nothing less, had seemed to mark the triangular duel, lending it something of the fantastic quality of a nightmare: an effect to which the discovery of a marauder, where P. Sybarite had expected to find nobody, added measurably....
But now, temporarily blinded by that vicious bright blade of flame stabbing the gloom a hand's breadth from his eyes, and deafened by the crash of the explosion not two feet from his ear-drums, he quickened to the circumstances with much of the confusion of a man awakened by a thunder-clap from evil dreams to realities yet more grim.
Of a sudden he understood that murder had been attempted in his presence and knowledge: a stark and hideous fact, jarring upon the semi-humorous indulgence with which hitherto he had been inclined to regard the unfolding of this night of outré adventure. Twice the man had shot to kill with that singular weapon of silent deadliness—and both times had missed his mark by the barest margin....
At once, like a demon of exceptional malignity, a breathless and overpowering rage possessed P. Sybarite. Without the least hesitation he stretched forth a hand, snatched the pistol from the grasp of the woman—who seemed to relinquish it more through surprise than willingly—threw himself halfway down the stairs, and took a hasty pot-shot at the man—almost invisible in the darkness as he rounded the turn of the next flight.
Missing, P. Sybarite flung on recklessly. As he gained the lower floor, the hall lights flashed up, switched on from the upper landing by the woman of the house. Thus aided, he caught another glimpse of his prey midway down the next flight, and checked to take a second shot.
Again he missed; and as the bullet buried itself in splintering wainscoting, a cry of almost childish petulence escaped him. With but one thought, he hurled on, swung round to the head of the stairs, saw his man at the bottom, pulled up to aim, and....
Beneath him a small rug slipped on polished parquetry of the landing. P. Sybarite's heels went up and his head down with a sickening thump. He heard his pistol explode once more, and again visioned a reeling firmament fugitively coruscant with strange constellations.
Then—bounding up with uncommon resiliency—he saw the street door of the house close behind the fugitive and heard the heavy slam of it.
In another breath, pulling himself together, he was up and descending three and four steps at a stride. Reaching the door, he threw it open and himself heedlessly out and down a high stone stoop to the sidewalk—pulled up, bewildered to discover himself the sole living thing visible in all that night-hushed stretch between Fifth Avenue and Sixth: of the assassin there was neither sign nor sound....
He felt perilously on the verge of tears—would gladly have bawled and howled with temper—and gained little relief from another short-lived break of heartfelt profanity—something halting and inexpert, truth to tell.
Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house appeared; paused to peer searchingly east and west; looked down at the trembling figure of the small man in his overgrown police tunic, shaking an impotent fist in the face of the City of New York; and laughed quietly to herself.
"Come back," she called in a guarded tone. "He's made a clean getaway. Got to hand him that. No use trying to follow—you'd never catch up in a thousand years. Come back—d'you hear?—and give me my gun!"
A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant glances; then in a spirit of witless and unquestioning docility returned.
The woman retired to the vestibule, where she closed and locked the door as he passed through, further ensuring security by means of a chain-bolt; then entering the hallway, closed, locked, and similarly bolted the inner doors.
"Now, then!" she addressed the little man with a brilliant smile—"now we can pow-wow. Come into the den"—and led the way toward the rear of the house.
Trotting submissively in her wake, his wrinkled nose and batting eyelids were eloquent of the dumb amaze with which he was reviewing this incredible affair.
Turning into a dark doorway, the woman switched light into an electric dome, illuminating an interior apartment transformed, by a wildly original taste in eccentric decoration, into a lounging room of such distressful uniquity that it would have bred unrest in the soul of a lotus-eater.
Black, red, and gold—lustreless black of coke, lurid crimson of fresh blood, bright glaring yellow of gold new-minted—were the predominant notes in a colour scheme at once sombre and violent. The walls were hung with scarlet tapestries whereon gold dragons crawled and fought or strove to swallow dead black planets, while on every hand black imps of Eblis writhed and struggled over golden screens, golden devils mocked and mowed from panels of cinnabar, and horrific masks of crimson lacquer, picked out with gold and black, leered and snarled dumb menaces from darkened corners.
In such a room as this the mildest mannered man, steeping his soul in the solace of mellow tobacco, might have been pardoned for dreaming lustfully of battle, murder and sudden death, or for contemplating with entire equanimity the tortured squirmings of some favourite enemy upon the rack.
"Cosy little hole," P. Sybarite couldn't forbear to comment with a shudder as he dropped into a chair in compliance with the woman's gesture.
"I have my whims," she said. "How would you like a drink?"
"Not at all," he insisted hastily. "I've had all I need for the time being."
"That's a mercy," she replied. "I don't much feel like waiting on you myself, and the servants are all abed."
Offering cigarettes in a golden casket, she selected and lighted one for herself.
"You have servants in the house, then?"
"Do I look like a woman who does her own housework?"
"You do not," he affirmed politely. "But can you blame me for wondering where your servants've been all through this racket?"
"They sleep on the top floor, behind sound-proof doors," his hostess explained complacently, "and have orders to answer only when I ring, even if they should happen to hear anything. I've a passion for privacy in my own home—another whim, if you like."
"It's nothing to me, I assure you," he protested. "Minding my own business is one of the best little things I do."
"If that's so, why do you walk uninvited into strange bedrooms at all hours, pretending to be a policeman, with a cock-and-bull yarn about a burglar—"
"But there was a burglar!" P. Sybarite contended brightly. "You saw him yourself."
"No."
"But—but you did see him—later, on the stairs!"
Smiling, the woman shook her head. "I saw no burglar—merely a dear friend. In short, if it interests you to know, I saw my husband."
"Madam!" P. Sybarite sat up with a shocked expression.
"Oh," said the woman lightly, "we're good enough for one another—he and I. He deserved what he got when he married me. But that's not saying I'm content to see him duck what's coming to him for to-night's deviltry. In fact, I mean to get him before he gets me. Are you game to lend me a hand?"
"Me, madam!" cried P. Sybarite in alarm. "Far be it from me to come between husband and wife!"
"Don't be afraid: I'm not asking you to dabble your innocent hands in a fellow-human's blood—merely to run an errand for me."
"Really—I'd rather be excused."
"Really," she mocked pleasantly, "you won't be. I'm a gentle creature but determined—frail but firm, you know. Perhaps you've heard of me—Mrs. Jefferson Inche?"
Decidedly he had; and so had nine-tenths of New York's newspaper-reading population. His eyes widened with new interest.
"Truly?" he said, civilly responsive to the challenge in her announcement. "But I never knew Mrs. Jefferson Inche was beautiful."
"It needs a beautiful woman to be known as the most dangerous in Town," she explained with modest pride.
"But—ah—Mr. Inche, I understand, died some years ago."
"So he did."
"Yet you speak of your husband—?"
"Of my present husband, whose name I don't wear for reasons of real-estate. I took the rotter on because he's rich and will be richer when his father dies; he married me because he was rotten and I had the worst reputation he could discover. So we're quits there. If our marriage comes out prematurely, he'll be disinherited; so we've agreed to a sub-rosa arrangement which leaves him, ostensibly, a marketable bachelor. Now, I happen to know a marriage has recently been offered him through which he would immediately come into control of a big pot of money, and naturally he's strong for it. But I refused his offer of a cool half-million to play the Reno circuit, and so he concluded to sue for a divorce with a revolver, a Maxim silencer, and a perfect alibi. Do you follow me?"
"As far as the alibi."
"Oh, that's quite simple. We don't live together, and he's in sure-enough society, and I'm not. To-night the annual Hadley-Owen post-lenten masquerade's in full swing just around the corner, and friend husband's there with the rest of the haughty bunch. Can't you see how easy it would be for him to drop round here between dances, murder his lawful wedded wife, and beat it back, without his absence ever being noticed?"
"It does sound feasible, if—ah—sickening," P. Sybarite admitted. "But really, it's hard to believe. Are you positive—?"
"I tell you," said the woman impatiently, "I recognised him; I saw his mouth—his mask wouldn't hide that—and knew him instantly."
P. Sybarite was silent: he, too, had recognized that mouth.
Briefly he meditated upon this curious freak of Kismet that was linking his fortunes of the night with those of the man with the twisted mouth.
"Now you know the lay of the land—how about helping me out?"
Now the trail of the man with the twisted mouth promised fair to lead to Molly Lessing. P. Sybarite didn't linger on his decision.
"I'm awf'ly impressionable," he conceded with a sigh; "some day, I'm afraid, it'll get me in a peck of trouble."
"I can count on you, then?"