"Short of trying a 'prentice hand at assassination—"
"Don't be an ass. I only want to protect myself. Besides, you can't refuse. Consider how lenient I've been with you."
P. Sybarite lifted questioning eyebrows, and dragged down the corners of a dubious mouth.
"If I wanted to be nasty," Mrs. Inche explained, "you'd be on your way now to a cell in the East Fifty-first Street station. But I was grateful."
"The Saints be praised for that!" exclaimed the little man fervently. "What's it for?"
"For waking me up in time to prevent my murder in my sleep," she returned coolly; "and also for being the spunky little devil you are and chasing off that hound of a husband of mine. If it wasn't for you, he'd've got me sure. Or else," she amended, "I'd've got him; which would have been almost as unpleasant—what with being pinched and tried and having juries disagree and getting off at last only on the plea of insanity—and all that."
"Madam," said P. Sybarite, rising, "the more I see of you, the more you claim my admiration. I entreat you, permit me to go away before my emotion deepens into disastrous infatuation."
"Sit down," countered Mrs. Inche amiably; "don't be afraid—I don't bite. Now you know who I am, but before you go, I mean to know who you are."
"Michael Monahan, madam." This was the first alliterative combination to pop into his optimistic mind.
"Can that," retorted the lady serenely—"solder it up tight, along with the business of pretending to be a cop. It won't get you anything. I've a proposition to make to you."
"But, madam," he declared with his naïf and disarming grin—"believe me—my young affections are already engaged."
"You're not half the imbecile you make yourself out," she judged soberly. "Come—what's your name?"
Taking thought, he saw no great danger in being truthful for once.
"P., unfortunately, Sybarite," he said: "bookkeeper for Whigham and Wimper—leather merchants, Frankfort Street."
"And how did you come by that coat and hat?"
"Borrowed it from a drunken cop in Penfield's, a little while ago. They were raiding the place and I kind of wanted to get away. Strange to say, my disguise didn't take, and I had to leave by way of the back fences in order to continue uninterrupted enjoyment of the inalienable rights of every American citizen—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."
"I don't know why I believe you," said Mrs. Inche reflectively, when he paused for breath. "Perhaps it's your spendthrift way with language. Do you talk like that when sober?"
"Judge for yourself."
"All right," she laughed indulgently: "I believe everything you say. Now what'll you take to do me a service?"
"My services, madam, are yours to command: my reward—ah—your smile."
"Bunk," observed the lady elegantly. "How would a hundred look to you? Good, eh?"
"You misjudge me," the little man insisted. "Money is really no object."
"Still"—she frowned in puzzlement—"I should think a clerk in the leather business—!"
"I'm afraid I've misled you. I should have said that I was a clerk in the leather business until to-day. Now I happen to be independently wealthy, a clerk no longer."
"How's that—wealthy?"
"Came into a small fortune this evening—nothing immodest, but ample for one of my simple tastes and modest ambitions."
"I think," announced the lady thoughtfully, "that you are one of the slickest young liars I ever listened to."
"That must be considerable eminence," considered P. Sybarite with humility.
"On the other hand, you're unquestionably a perfect little gentleman," she pursued. "And anyhow I'm going to take you at your word and trust you. If you ever change your mind about that hundred, all you've got to do is to come back and speak for it.... Do I make you right? You're willing to go a bit out of your way to do me a favour to-night?"
"Or any other night."
"Very well." Mrs. Inche rose. "Wait here a moment."
Wrapping her negligee round her, she swept magnificently out of the "den," and a moment later again crossed P. Sybarite's range of vision as she ascended the stairs. Then she disappeared, and there was silence in the house: a breathing spell which the little man strove to employ to the best advantage by endeavouring to assort and rearrange his sadly disordered impressions.
Aware that he would probably do wisely to rise and flee the place, he none the less lingered, vastly intrigued and more than half inclined to see the affair through to the end.
His confused reverie was presently interrupted by the sound of the woman's high, clear voice at a telephone located (he fancied) somewhere in the hallway of the second story.
"Hello! Columbus, seven, four hundred, please.... Hello—Mason?... Taxicab, please—Mrs. Jefferson Inche.... Yes—charge.... Yes—immediately.... Thank you!"
A moment later she reappeared on the stairs, carrying a wrap of some sort over her arm: a circumstance which caused P. Sybarite uneasily to wonder if she meant to push her notorious indifference to convention to the limit of going out in a taxicab with no other addition to her airy costume than a cloak.
But when she again entered the "den," it proved to be a man's coat and soft hat that she had found for him.
"Get up," she ordered imperiously, "and change to these before you get pinched for impersonating an officer. I've called a taxi for you, and this is what I want you to do: go to Dutch House—that's a dive on Fortieth Street—"
"I've heard of it," nodded P. Sybarite. "Any sober man who stays away from it is almost perfectly safe, I believe."
"I'll back you to take care of yourself," said the lady. "Ask for Red November.... You know who he is?"
"The gangster? Yes."
"If he isn't in, wait for him if you wait till daylight—"
"Important as all that, eh?"
"It's life or death to me," said Mrs. Inche serenely. "I've got to have protection—you've seen yourself how had I need it. And the police are not for the likes of me. Besides," she added with engaging candour, "if I squeal and tell the truth, then friend husband will be disinherited for sure, and I'll have had all my trouble for nothing."
"You make it perfectly clear, Mrs. Inche.... And when I see Mr. Red November—?"
"Say to him three words: Nella wants you. He'll understand. Then you can go home."
"If I get out alive."
"You're safe if you don't drink anything there."
"Doubtless; but I'll feel safer if you'll lend me the loan of this pretty toy," said P. Sybarite, weighing in one hand her automatic pistol.
"It's yours."
"Anything in it?"
"Three shots left, I believe. No matter. I'll get you a handful of cartridges and you can reload the clip in the taxicab. Not that you're likely to need it at Dutch House."
From the street rose the rumble of a motor, punctuated by a horn that honked.
"There's the cab, now," announced Mrs. Inche briskly. "Shake yourself out of that coat and into this—and hustle!"
"It's my impressionable nature makes all my troubles," observed P. Sybarite disconsolately. "However..."
Shrugging into the coat Mrs. Inche held for him, he cocked the felt hat jauntily on the side of his head.
"Always," he proclaimed with gesture—hand on heart—"always the ladies' slave!"
RESPECTABILITY
But when it came to viscid second thought, alone in the gloom of an unsympathetic taxicab, P. Sybarite inclined to concede himself more ass than hero. It was all very well to say that, having spread his sails to the winds of Kismet, he was bound to let himself drift to their vagrant humour: but there are certain channels of New York life into which even the most courageous mariner were ill-advised to adventure under pilotage no more trustworthy than that of sufficient champagne and a run of good luck.
Dutch House in Fortieth Street, West, wore the reputation of being as sinister a dive as ever stood cheek-by-jowl with Broadway and brazenly flaunted an all-night liquor license in the face of law-abiding New York; of which it was said that no sober man ever went there, other than those who went to prey, and that no drunkard ever escaped from it unfleeced; haunt of the most deadly riff-raff to be found in Town, barring inmates of certain negro stews on the lower West Side and of some of the dens to which the sightseer does not penetrate in the tour of Chinatown.
Grim stories were current of men who had wandered thither in their cups, "for the lark of it," only to return to consciousness days afterwards, stripped, shorn, and shattered in health bodily and mental, to find themselves in some vile kennel miles from Dutch House; and of other men who passed once through its foul portals and—passed out a secret way, never to return to the ken of their friends....
Yet it stood, and it stands, waxing fat in the folly of man and his greed.
And to this place P. Sybarite was travelling to deliver a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt's automatic and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate fortune that he carried with him in cash—a single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew that ran the place.
However, in their ignorance his safety inhered; and it was not really necessary that he advertise his swollen fortunes; and as for the gold in his trousers pocket—a ponderable weight, liable to chink treacherously when he moved—P. Sybarite removed this and thoughtfully cached it under one of the cushions of his cab. It seemed a long chance to take with a hundred dollars: but a hundred dollars wasn't a great deal, after all, to a man as flush as he; and better lose it all (said he) than make a noise like a peripatetic mint in a den of thieves and worse....
The cab drawing up to the curb, out P. Sybarite hopped, a dollar in hand for the chauffeur, and the admonition: "I'm keeping you; wait till I come out, if I'm all night; and don't let your motor die, 'cause I may be in a hurry."
"Gotcha," said the chauffeur tersely; pocketed the bill; lighted a cigarette....
P. Sybarite held back an instant to inspect the approach.
This being Sunday morning, Dutch House was decorously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the "restaurant," was closed much of the time—when, that is to say, it wasn't swinging to admit an intermittent flow of belated casuals and habitués of both sexes.
A row of vehicles lined the curb: nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance. This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly—evidently waiting under orders similar to those issued by P. Sybarite.
Now as the latter advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air together with Respectability on the prowl—Respectability incognito, sly, furtive of air, and in noticeable haste.
He paused for a bare instant on the threshold; affording P. Sybarite opportunity for a good, long look.
"Two-thirty," said Respectability brusquely over his shoulder.
The man behind him growled affirmation: "Two-thirty—don't worry: I'll be on the job."
"And take care of that boy."
"Grab it from me, boss, when he wakes up, he won't know where he's been."
"Good-night, then," said Respectability grudgingly.
"G'd-night."
The door closed, and with an ineradicable manner of weight and consequence Respectability turned toward the waiting taxicab: a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side-whiskers, a fleshy nose and arrogant eyes, a double chin and a heavy paunch; one who, in brief, had no business in that galley at that or any other hour of day or night, and who knew it and knew that others (worse luck!) would know it at sight.
All this P. Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story. The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, and his hands unconsciously closed.
And as Respectability strode across the sidewalk, obviously intending to bury himself in the body of his waiting cab as quickly as possible, P. Sybarite—with the impudence of a tug blocking the fairway for an ocean liner—stepped in his path, dropped a shoulder, and planted both feet firmly.
Immediately the two came together; the shoulder of P. Sybarite in the paunch of Respectability, evoking a deep grunt of choleric surprise and bringing the gentleman to an abrupt standstill.
Upon this, P. Sybarite's mouth relaxed; he smiled faintly, almost placatingly.
"Well, old top!" he cried with malicious cordiality. "Who'd think to meet you here! What's the matter? Has high finance turned too risky for your stomach? Or are you dabbling in low-life for the sheer fun of it—to titillate your jaded senses?"
Respectability's cheeks puffed out like red toy balloons; so likewise his chest.
"Sir!" he snorted—"you are drunk!"
"Sir!" retorted P. Sybarite, none too meekly—"you lie."
The ebony-and-gold cane of Respectability quivered in mid-air.
"Out of my way!"
"Put down that cane, Mr. Brian Shaynon," said P. Sybarite peaceably, "unless you want me to play horse with you in a way to let all New York know how you spend the wee sma' hours!"
At the mention of his name Respectability stiffened in dismay.
"Damnation!" he cried hoarsely. "Who are you?"
"Why, have you forgotten me? Careless of you, Mr. Shaynon. I'm the little guy that put the speck in Respectability: I'm the noisy little skeleton in the cupboard of your conscience. Don't you know me now?"
With a gasp (prudently lowering his stick) Mr. Shaynon bent to peer into the face exposed as P. Sybarite pushed back his hat; stared an instant, goggling; wheeled about, and flung heavily toward his taxicab.
"The Bizarre!" wheezed he to the chauffeur; and dodging in, banged the door.
As for P. Sybarite, he watched the vehicle swing away and round the corner of Seventh Avenue, a doubtful glimmer in eyes that had burned hot with hostility, a slight ironic smile wreathing lips that had shown hatred.
"But what's the good of that?" he said in self-disgust, as the taxicab disappeared.
With a sigh, shaking himself together, he went into Dutch House.
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD
From street door to restaurant entrance, the hallway of Dutch House was some twenty-five feet long, floored with grimy linoleum in imitation of tiling, greasy as to its walls and ceiling, and boasting an atmosphere rank with a reek compounded of a dozen elements, in their number alcohol, cheap perfumery, cooked meats, the sweat of unclean humanity, and stale tobacco smoke.
Save for this unsavoury composite wraith, the hall was empty when P. Sybarite entered it. But it echoed with sounds of rowdy revelry from the room in back: mechanical clatter of galled and spavined piano, despondent growling of a broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin—the three wringing from the score of O You Beautiful Doll an entirely adequate accompaniment to the perfunctory performance of a husky contralto.
Though by no means squeamish, on the testimony of his nose and ears P. Sybarite then and there concluded that he would have to have become exceedingly blasé indeed to find Dutch House amusing.
And when he had gone on into the restaurant itself, slipping his modest person inconspicuously into a chair at the nearest unoccupied table, the testimony of his other senses as to the character of his company served to confirm this impression.
"It's no use," he sighed: "I'm too old a dog.... Be it ever so typical, there's no place like one's own hash-foundry." ...
This room was broad and deep, and boasted, at its far end, a miniature stage supporting the orchestra and, temporarily, the gyrations of a lady in a vivacious scarlet costume—mistress of the shopworn contralto—who was "vamping with the feet" the interval between two verses of her ballad.
The main floor was strewn with tables round which sat a motley gathering of gangsters, fools, pretty iniquities and others by no stretch of the imagination to be termed pretty, confidence men, gambling touts, and the sprinkling of drunkards—plain, common, transient, periodical, suburban, habitual, and unconscious—for and by whom the place was, and is, maintained. In and out among these circulated several able-bodied waiters with soiled shirt-bosoms, iron jaws and, not infrequently, cauliflower ears.
Spying out P. Sybarite, one of these bore down upon him with an air of the most flattering camaraderie.
It was true that the little man, in a dark coat and hat alike too large for him, with his shabby shoes and trousers and apologetic demeanour, promised no very profitable plucking; but the rule of Dutch House is to neglect none, however lowly.
"Well, bo'," grunted the waiter cheerfully, polishing off the top of the table with a saturated towel, "yuh don't come round's often as y' uster."
"That's a fact," P. Sybarite agreed. "I've been a long time away—haven't I?"
"Yuh said somethin' then. Mus' be months sinst I seen yuh last. What's the trouble? Y' ain't soured on the old joint, huh?"
"No," P. Sybarite apologised. "I've been—away. Where's Red?"
"MacManus—?" asked the waiter, beginning to believe that this strange little creature must in fact be a "regular" of the "bunch"—one whose name and face had somehow, unaccountably, slipped from his memory.
"November," P. Sybarite corrected.
"Oh, he's stickin' round—pretty busy to-night. Wouldn't fuss him, 'f I was yuh, 'less it's somethin' extra."
"I make you," said the little man. "But this is his business. Tell him I have a message for him, will you?"
"Just as yuh say, bo'," returned the other cautiously. "What's it goin' to be? Bucket of grape or a tub of suds?"
"Do I look like the foolish waters?" enquired P. Sybarite with mild resentment. "Back me up a shell of lather."
Grinning amiably at this happy metaphorical description of the glass of lager regularly served at Dutch House, the waiter shouldered through the swinging doors to the bar....
Then fell a brief lull in the mélange of music and tongues, during which a boyish voice lifted up in clear remonstrance at a table some three removed from that at which P. Sybarite sat:
"But I don't want anything more to drink!"
P. Sybarite looked that way. The owner of the voice (now again drowned) was apparently a youngster of twenty years—not more—clean of limb and feature, with a hot flush discolouring his good-looking face, a hectic glitter in his eyes, and a stubborn smile on his lips.
Lounging low in a straight-backed chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head wagging obstinately, he was plainly intoxicated, but as yet at a stage sufficiently mild to admit of his recognising the self-evident truth that he needed not another drop.
Yet his companions would have him drink more deeply.
Of these, one was a woman of no uncertain caste, a woman handsome in a daring and costly gown, and as yet not old, but in whose eyes flickered a curious febrile glare ("as though," commented P. Sybarite, moralist, "reflected back from the mouth of Hell").
The other was a man singularly handsome in a foreign way—Italian, at an indifferent guess—slight and graceful of person in well-tailored if somewhat flashy clothing; boasting too much jewellery; his teeth gleaming a vivid white against his dark colouring as he smiled good-humouredly in his attempts to press more drink upon the other.
The music stopped altogether for a time, and again the boy's voice rang out clearly:
"Tell you—'ve had enough."
The Italian said something urgent, in an undertone. The woman added inaudible persuasion to his argument. The boy looked from one to another with a semi-stupid smile; but wagged an obdurate head.
"I will not. No—and I don't want—lie down jus' for few minutes. I'm goin' sit here till these—ah—foolish legs 'mine straighten 'emselves out—then 'm going home." ...
"Here's your beer, bo'," P. Sybarite's waiter announced.
"Keep the change," said the guest, tendering a quarter.
"T'anks"—with a look of surprise. Then familiarly knuckling the top of the table, the waiter stroked a rusty chin and surveyed the room. "There's Red, now," he observed.
"Where?"
"Over there with the skirt and the kid souse. Yuh kin see for yourself he's busy. D' yuh want I sh'u'd stir him up now?"
"Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite, in the tone of one recognising an oversight. "What's doing over there—anything?" he proceeded casually.
The waiter favoured him with a hard stare. "Red November's business ain't none'r mine," he growled; "an' less you know him a heluva sight better'n I do, you'd better take a straight tip from me and—leave—it—lay!"
"Oh!" said the little man hastily—"I was only wondering.... But I wish you would slip Red the high sign: all I want is one word with him."
"All right, bo'—you're on."
Slouching off, obviously reluctant to interrupt the diversions of Mr. November, the man at length mustered up courage to touch that gentleman's elbow. The gangster turned sharply, a frown replacing the smile which had illuminated his attempts to overcome the boy's recently developed aversion to drink. The waiter murmured in his private ear.
Promptly P. Sybarite received a sharp look from eyes as black and hard as shoe buttons; and with equanimity endured it—even went to the length of a nod accompanied by his quaint, ingratiating smile. A courtesy ignored completely: the dark eyes veered back to the waiter's face and the white teeth flashed as he was curtly dismissed.
He shuffled back, scowling, reported sulkily: "Says yuh gotta wait"; and turned away in answer to a summons from another table.
Unruffled, P. Sybarite sipped his beer—sipped it sparingly and not without misgivings, but sedulously to keep in character as a familiar of the dive.
Presently there came yet another lull in the clatter of tongues; and again the accents of the boy sounded distinctly from the gangster's table:
"I won't—that's flat! I refuse positively—go up stairs—sleep it off. I'm a' right—give you m' word—in the head. All my trouble's—these mutinous dogs of legs. But I'll make 'em mind, yet. Trust me—"
And again the babel blotted out his utterance.
But P. Sybarite had experienced a sudden rush of intelligence to the head—was in the throes of that mental process which it is our habit wittily to distinguish by the expressive term, "putting two and two together."
Could this, by any chance, be "that boy" who, Mr. Brian Shaynon had been assured, wouldn't know where he'd been when he waked? Was an attempt to ensure that desired consummation through the agency of a drug, being made in the open restaurant?
If not, why was Red November neglecting all other affairs to press drink upon a man who knew when he had enough?
If so, what might be the nature of the link connecting the boy with the "job," to be on which at half-past two November had just now covenanted with Brian Shaynon?
What incriminating knowledge could this boy possess, to render old Shaynon, willing that his memory should be expurgated by such a mind- and nerve-shattering agent as the knock-out drop of White Light commerce?
Now Shaynon was capable of almost any degree of infamy, if not, perhaps, the absolute peer of Red November.
This strange development of that night of Destiny began to assume in P. Sybarite's esteem a complexion of baleful promise.
But the more keenly interested he grew, the more indifferent he made himself appear, slouching low and lower in his chair, his eyes listless and half closed—his look one of the most pronounced apathy: the while he conned the circumstances, physical as well as psychical, with the narrowest attention. Certainly, it would seem, a man who had enough instinctive decency to wish to escape the degradation of deeper drunkenness, should be humoured rather than opposed....
The table on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall, the young man sitting in the corner between November and the woman. Of two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates of the dive and creatures of November's—or their looks libelled them shamefully.
It seemed unlikely that the boy could get away against the wishes of the gang leader, however steadfastly he might stand upon his determination to drink no more. For nothing was to be hoped for from the sots, prostitutes, and parasites who made up the balance of that company: one and all, either too indifferent or too sophisticated, if not in active sympathy with the practices of the establishment, to lift a hand to interfere....
Testimony in support of this inference P. Sybarite received within the next few minutes, when the boy's temper abruptly veered from good-natured obduracy to open irritation.
"Damn it, no!" he cried in a high voice and with an impatient movement struck the glass from November's hand.
Though it went to the floor with a splintering crash, the incident attracted little more than casual glances from those at neighbouring tables....
November's countenance, however, turned grey with anger beneath its olive shade.
Momentarily his glance clashed with the woman's; and of a sudden the paint upon her cheeks and lips stood out as starkly artificial as carmine splashed upon a whitewashed wall. At the same time he flashed a like warning to his two followers at the next table; and the legs of their chairs grated on the tiled flooring as they shifted position, making ready for the signal to "mix in."
At this, P. Sybarite rose and nonchalantly moved over to November; his approach remarked by the latter with an evil leer; by the woman with a start of consternation; by the boy with sudden suspicion. Indubitably this last was beginning to question a hospitality that would not permit him to do as to him seemed best. With relief P. Sybarite noted symptoms of this dawning distrust. It made the problem simpler, to have the boy alive to his peril.
Pausing, P. Sybarite met November's glare with eyes informed with an expression amazingly remote and dispassionate, and in a level and toneless voice addressed him.
"I've a message for you—a hurry call—won't keep—"
"Well?" snapped the gangster. "What's it about? Spit it out!"
"Why, Nella says—" P. Sybarite began deliberately; and paused to cough politely behind his hand; and leaned confidentially over the table.
At this juncture the boy pushed back his chair and rose.
"Pardon me, m' dear," he said thickly to the woman; "'m goin' home."
"Ah, sit down," November interrupted quickly, pitching his protean accents to a key of cajolery—"sit down and have another. What's your hurry?"
His eyes caught the woman's.
"That's right, dearie," she chimed in hurriedly, laying a soft detaining hand on the boy's forearm. "Be a good fellow. Stake me to just one more pint—"
"No," the boy insisted, shaking free—"I'm going home. Le' me alone."
"Nella," P. Sybarite interpolated in an imperative tone, momentarily distracting November's attention—"Nella says to tell you she wants you—now—immediately. Do you get that?"
"Damn Nella!" snapped the gang leader. "Tell her to go to the devil. And you"—he menaced P. Sybarite with a formidable look—"you slide outa here—in a hurry! See?"
With this, rising in his place, he put forth a hand to detain the boy, who was sullenly pushing past the woman.
"Wait!" he insisted. "You can't go before you pay up—"
Whipping from his pocket a note (of what denomination he never knew—but it was large) P. Sybarite slapped it down upon the table.
"That'll pay whatever he owes," he announced, and to the boy: "Clear out—quick—do you hear!—while you've got a chance—"
"What t'ell business is it of yours?" November demanded, turning upon him furiously.
With an enigmatic smile, P. Sybarite dexterously tipped up his side of the table and, overturning it, caught the gangster unprepared for any such manoeuvre and pinned him squirming in the angle of wall and floor.
Immediately the woman came to her feet shrieking; while the little man seized the befuddled boy and swung him toward the door actually before he realised what was happening.
Simultaneously, November's henchmen at the adjoining table leapt into the brawl with an alacrity that sent their chairs clattering back upon the floor.
But in his magnificent assurance P. Sybarite had foreseen and planned cunningly against precisely that same contingency. No sooner had he sent the boy staggering on his way than he whirled completely round with a ready guard—and in no more than the very wink of exigence.
Already one of the creatures was almost on his back—the other hanging off and singularly employed (it seemed, considering) with his hands; just what he was up to P. Sybarite had time neither to see nor to surmise.
Sidestepping a wild swing, he planted a left full on the nose of the nearer assailant and knocked him backwards over a sprawling chair. Then turning attention to the other, he was barely in time to duck an uppercut—and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of brass-knuckles on the fist that failed to land.
Infuriated, he closed in, sent a staggering left to the thug's heart and a murderous right to his chin, so that he reeled and fell as if shot—while P. Sybarite with a bound again caught the boy by the arm and whirled him out through the doorway into the hall.
"Hurry!" he panted. "We've one chance in ten thousand—"
Beyond doubt they had barely that.
Hardened though they were to scenes of violence, the clients of the dive had stilled in apprehension the moment November lifted his voice in anger; while P. Sybarite's first overtly offensive move had struck them all dumb in terror.
Red November was one who had shot down his man in cold blood on the steps of the Criminal Courts Building and, through the favour of The Organisation that breeds such pests, escaped scot-free under the convenient fiction of "suspended sentence"; and knowing well the nature and the power of the man, the primal concerted thought had been to flee the place before bullets began to fly. In blind panic like that of sheep, they rose as one in uproar and surged toward the outer doors. November himself, struggling up from beneath the table, was caught and swept on willy-nilly in the front rank of the stampede. In a thought he found himself wedged tight in a press clogging the door. Before his enraged vision P. Sybarite was winning away with the boy.
Maddened, the gang leader managed to free his right arm and send a haphazard shot after them.
Only the instinctive recoil of those about him deflected his aim.
The report was one with a shock of shattered plate-glass: the soft-nosed bullet, splashing upon the glazed upper half of the door, caused the entire pane to collapse and disappear with the quickness of magic.
Halting, P. Sybarite wheeled and dropped a hand to the pocket wherein rested Mrs. Inche's automatic.
"Get that door open!" he cried to the boy. "I've got a taxi waiting—"
His words were drowned out by the thunderous detonations set up by a second shot in that constricted space.
With a thick sob, the boy reeled and swung against the wall as sharply as though he had been struck with a sledge-hammer.
Whimpering with rage, P. Sybarite tugged at the weapon; but it stuck fast, caught the lining of his coat-pocket.
Most happily before he could get it in evidence, the door was thrust sharply in, and through it with a rush materialised that most rare of metropolitan phenomena—the policeman on the spot.
Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he blustered in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the skirts of his tunic and grasp the butt of the revolver in his hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor:
"What's-all-this? What's-all-this-now?"
"Robbery!" P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of hysterical relief. "Robbery and attempted murder! Arrest that man—Red November—with the gun in his hand."
With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the gangster—and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him quickly to the sidewalk.
By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of Kismet his taxicab was precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat.
"Quick!" he ordered the reeling boy—"into that cab unless you want to be treated by a Bellevue sawbones—held as a witness besides. Are you badly hurt?"
"Not badly," gasped the boy—"shot through the shoulder—can wait for treatment—must keep out of the papers—"
"Right!" P. Sybarite jerked open the door, and his charge stumbled into the cab. "Drive anywhere—like sin," he told the chauffeur—"tell you where to stop when we get clear of this mess—"
Privately he blessed that man; for the cab was in motion almost before he could swing clear of the sidewalk. He tumbled in upon the floor, and picked himself up in time to close the door only when they were swinging on two wheels round the corner of Seventh Avenue.
SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS ARE MADE OF
"How is it?" P. Sybarite asked solicitously.
"Aches," replied the boy huddled in his corner of the cab.
Then he found spirit enough for a pale, thin smile, faintly visible in a milky splash from an electric arc rocking by the vehicle in its flight.
"Aches like hell," he added. "Makes one feel a bit sickish."
"Anything I can do?"
"No—thanks. I'll be all right—as soon as I find a surgeon to draw that slug and plaster me up."
"That's the point: where am I to take you?"
"Home—the Monastery—Forty-third Street."
"Bachelor apartments?"
"Yes; I herd by my lonesome."
"Praises be!" muttered P. Sybarite, relieved.
For several minutes he had been entertaining a vision of himself escorting this battered and bloody young person to a home of shrieking feminine relations, and poignantly surmising the sort of welcome apt to be accorded the good Samaritan in such instances.
And while he was about it, he took time briefly to offer up thanks that the shock of his wound seemed to have sobered the boy completely.
Opening the door, he craned his neck out to establish communication with the ear of the chauffeur; to whom he repeated the address, adding an admonition to avoid the Monastery until certain he had shaken off pursuit, if any; and dodged back.
At this juncture the taxicab was slipping busily up Eighth Avenue, having gained that thoroughfare via Forty-first Street. A little later it turned eastwards....
"No better, I presume?" P. Sybarite enquired.
"Not so's you'd notice it," the boy returned bravely.... "First time anything like this ever happened to me," he went on. "Funny sensation—precisely as if somebody had lammed me for a home run—with a steel girder for a bat ..."
"Must be tough!" said P. Sybarite blankly, experiencing a qualm at the thought of a soft-nosed bullet mushrooming through living flesh.
"Guess I can stand it.... Where are we?"
P. Sybarite took observations."
"Forty-seventh, near Sixth Avenue," he reported finally.
"Good: we'll be home in five minutes."
"Think you can hold out that long?"
"Sure—got to; if I keel over before we reach my digs ... chances are it'll get you into trouble ... besides, I want to fight shy of the papers ... no good airing this scandal ..."
"None whatever," affirmed P. Sybarite heartily. "But—how did you get into it?"
"Just by way of being a natural-born ass."
"Oh, well! If it comes to that, I admit it's none of my business—"
"The deuce it isn't! After all you've done for me! Good Lord, man, where would I be...!"
"Sleeping the sleep of the doped in some filthy corner of Dutch House, most likely."
"And you saved me from that!"
"And got this hole drilled through you instead."
"Got me away; I'd've collected the lead anyhow—wasn't meaning to stay without a fight."
"Then you weren't as drunk as you seemed?"
"Didn't you catch me making a move the minute you created a diversion? Of course, I'd no idea you were friendly—"
"Look here," P. Sybarite interrupted sharply: "doesn't it hurt you to talk?"
"No—helps me forget this ache."
"All right, then—tell me how this came about. What has Red November got on you, to make him so anxious—?"
"Nothing, as far as I know; unless it was Brian Shaynon's doing—"
"A-ah!"
"You know that old blighter?"
"Slightly—very slightly."
"Friend of yours?"
"Not exactly."
The accent of P. Sybarite's laugh rendered the disclaimer conclusive.
"Glad to hear that," said the boy gravely: "I'd despise to be beholden to any friend of his ..."
"Well.... But what's the trouble between you and old man Shaynon?"
"Search me—unless he thought I was spying on him. I say!" the boy exclaimed excitedly—"what business could he have had with Red November there, to-night?"
"That is a question," P. Sybarite allowed.
"Something urgent, I'll be bound!—else he wouldn't ever have dared show his bare map in that dump."
"One would think so...."
"I'd like to figure this thing out. Perhaps you can help. To begin with—I went to a party to-night."
"I know," said P. Sybarite, with a quiet chuckle: "the Hadley-Owen masquerade."
"How did you know?"
"Kismet! It had to be."
"Are you by any chance—mad?"
"I shouldn't be surprised. Anyhow, I'm a bit mad I wasn't invited. Everybody I know or meet—almost—is either bidden to that party or knows somebody who is. Forgive the interruption.... Anyway," he added, "we're here."
The taxicab was drawing up before an apartment house entrance.
Hastily recovering his hoard of gold-pieces, P. Sybarite jumped out and presented one to the driver.
"Can't change that," said the latter, staring. "Besides, this was a charge call."
"I know," said P. Sybarite apologetically; "but this is for you."
"Good God!" cried the chauffeur.
"And yet," mused P. Sybarite, "they'd have you believe all taxicab chauffeurs mercenary!"
Recklessly he forced the money into the man's not altogether inhospitable palm.
"For being a good little tight-mouth," he explained gravely.
"Forever and ever, amen!" protested the latter fervently. "And thank you!"
"If you're satisfied, we're quits," returned P. Sybarite, offering a hand to the boy.
"I can manage," protested this last, descending without assistance. "And it's better so," he explained as they crossed to the door; "I don't want the hallboys here to suspect—and I can hold up a few minutes longer, never fear."
"Business of taking off my hat to you," said P. Sybarite in unfeigned admiration; "for pure grit, you're a young wonder."
A liveried hallboy opened the door. A second waited in the elevator. Promptly ascending, they were set down at one of the upper floors.
Throughout the boy carried himself with never a quiver, his countenance composed and betraying what pain he suffered only to eyes keen to discern its trace of pallor. Now as he left the elevator and fitted a key to the lock of his private front door, he addressed the attendant, over his shoulder, in a manner admirably casual:
"By the way, Jimmy—"
"Sir?"
"Call up Dr. Higgins for me."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell him I've an attack of indigestion and will be glad if he'll turn out and see if he can't fix me up for the night."
"Very good, Mr. Kenny."
The gate clanged and the cage dropped from sight as Mr. Kenny opened the door and stood aside to let P. Sybarite precede him.
"Rot!" objected the little man forcibly. "Go in and turn up the lights. Punctilio from a man in your condition—!"
The boy nodded wearily, passed in, and switched up the lights in a comfortably furnished sitting-room.
"As a matter of fact," he said thoughtfully, when P. Sybarite had followed him in and shut the door—"I'm wondering how much of a bluff I may be, after all."
"Meaning—?"
"By all literary precedent I ought to faint now, after my magnificent exhibition of superhuman endurance. But I'm not going to."
"That's rather sporting of you," P. Sybarite grinned.
"Not at all; I just don't want to—don't feel like it. That sick feeling is gone—nothing but a steady agony like a hot iron through my shoulder—something any man with teeth to grit could stand."
"We'll find out soon enough. I don't pretend to be any sort of a dab at repairs on punctured humanity, but I read enough popular fiction myself to know that the only proper thing to do is to ruin that handsome coat of yours by cutting it off your back. We can anticipate the doctor to that extent, at least."
"That's one thing, at least, that the popular novelist knows right," asserted Mr. Kenny with conviction. "Sorry for the coat—but you'll find scissors yonder, on my desk."
And when P. Sybarite fetched them, he sat himself sideways in a straight-backed chair and cheerfully endured the little man's impromptu essays in first-aid measures.
A very little snipping and slashing sufficed to do away with the shoulder and sleeve of the boy's coat and to lay open his waistcoat as well, exposing a bloodstained shirt. And then, at the instant when P. Sybarite was noting with relief that the stain showed both in back and in front, the telephone shrilled.
"If you don't mind answering that—" grunted Mr. Kenny.
P. Sybarite was already at the instrument.
"Yes?" he answered. "Dr. Higgins?"
"Sorry, sir," replied a strange voice: "Dr. Higgins isn't in yet. Any message?"
"Tell him Mr. Kenny needs him at the Monastery, and the matter's urgent.... Doctor not in," he reported superfluously, returning to cut away collar, tie, shirt, and undershirt. "Never mind, I shouldn't be surprised if we could manage to do without him, after all."
"Meaning it's not so bad—?"
"Meaning," said the other, exposing the naked shoulder, "I'm beginning to hope you've had a marvellously narrow escape."
"Feels like it," said Kenny, ironic.
P. Sybarite withheld response while he made close examination. At the base of Mr. Kenny's neck, well above the shoulder-blade, dark blood was welling slowly from an ugly puncture. And in front there was a corresponding puncture, but smaller. And presently his deft and gentle fingers, exploring the folds of the boy's undershirt, closed upon the bullet itself.
"I don't believe," he announced, displaying his find, "you deserve such luck. Somehow you managed to catch this just right for it to slip through without either breaking bone or severing artery. And by a special dispensation of an all-wise Providence, Red November must have been preoccupied when he loaded that gun, for somehow a steel-jacketed instead of a soft-nosed bullet got into the chamber he wasted on you. Otherwise you'd have been pretty badly smashed. As it is, you'll probably be laid up only a few days."
"I told you I wasn't so badly hurt—"
"God's good to the Irish. Where's your bathroom?"
With a gesture Kenny indicated its location.
"And handkerchiefs—?"
"Upper bureau drawer in the bedroom."
In a twinkling P. Sybarite was off and back again with materials for an antiseptic wash and a rude bandage.
"How'd you know I was Irish?" demanded the patient.
"By yoursilf's name," quoth P. Sybarite in a thick brogue as natural as grass, while he worked away busily. "'Tis black Irish, and well I know it. 'Twas me mither's maiden name—Kenny. She had a brother, Michael he was and be way av bein' a rich conthractor in this very town as ever was, befure he died—God rist his sowl! He left two children—a young leddy who mis-spells her name M-a-e A-l-y-s—keep still!—and Peter, yersilf, me cousin, if it's not mistaken I am."
"The Lord save us!" said the boy. "You're never Percy Sybarite!"
P. Sybarite winced. "Not so loud!" he pleaded in a stage whisper. "Some one might hear you."
"What the devil's the matter with you?"
"I am that man you named—but, prithee, Percy me no Percevals, an' you'd be my friend. For fifteen years I've kept my hideous secret well. If it becomes public now ..."
Peter Kenny laughed in spite of his pain.
"I'll keep your secret, too," he volunteered, "since you feel that way about it.... But, I say: what have you been doing with yourself since—since—" He stammered.
"Since the fall of the House of Sybarite?"
"Yes. I didn't know you were in New York, even."
"Your mother and Mae Alys knew it—but kept it quiet, the same as me," said the little man.
"But—well—what have you been doing, then?"
"Going to and fro like a raging lion—more or less—seeking what I might devour."
"And the devourings have been good, eh? You're high-spirited enough."
"I think," said P. Sybarite quietly—"I may say—though you can't see it—that my present smile would, to a shrewd observer, seem to indicate I'd swallowed a canary-bird ... a nice, fat, golden canary-bird!" he repeated, smacking his lips with unction.
"You talk as if you'd swallowed a dictagraph," said Peter Kenny.
"It's my feeling," sighed P. Sybarite. "But yourself? Let's see; when I saw you last you were the only authentic child pest of your day and generation—six or seven at most. How long have you been out of college?"
"A year—not quite."
"And sporting bachelor rooms of your own!"
"I'm of age. Besides, if you must know, mother and Mae Alys are both dotty on the society game, and I'm not. I won't be rushed round to pink teas and—and all that sort of thing."
"Far more wholesome than pink whiskeys at Dutch House."
"You don't understand—"
"No; but I mean to. There!" announced P. Sybarite, finishing the bandage with a tidy flat knot—make yourself comfortable on that couch, tell me where you keep your whiskey, and I'll mix myself a drink and listen to your degrading confession....
"Now," he added, when Peter Kenny, stretched out on the couch, had suffered himself to be covered up—"not being an M.D., I've no conscience at all about letting you talk yourself to death; eaten alive as I am with curiosity; and knowing besides that you can't kill a Kenny but with kindness."
"You'll find the whiskey on the buffet," said the boy.
"Obliged to you," P. Sybarite replied, finding it.
"And I suppose I—"
"You're quite right; you've had enough. Alcohol is nothing to help mend a wound. If your friend Higgins permits it, when he comes—well and good.... Meanwhile," he added, taking a seat near the head of the couch, and fixing his youthful relation with a stern enquiring eye—"what were you doing in Dutch House the night?"
"I've been trying to tell you—"
"And now you must.... Is there a cigar handy?... Thanks.... This whiskey is prime stuff.... Go on. I'm waiting."
"Well," Peter Kenny confessed sheepishly. "I'm in love—"
"And you proposed to her to-night at the ball?"
"Yes, and—"
"She refused you."
"Yes, but—"
"So you decided to do the manly thing—go out and pollute yourself with drink?"
"That's about the size of it," Peter admitted, shamefaced.
"It's no good reason," announced P. Sybarite. "Now, if you'd been celebrating your happy escape, I'd be the last to blame you."
"You don't understand, and you won't give me a chance—"
"I'm waiting—all ears—but not the way you mean."
"It wasn't as if she'd left me any excuse to hope ... but she told me flat she didn't care for me."
"That's bad, Peter. Forgive my ill-timed levity: I didn't mean it meanly, boy," P. Sybarite protested.
"It's worse than you think," Peter complained. "I can stand her not caring for me. Why should she?"
"Why, indeed?"
"It's because she's gone and promised to marry Bayard Shaynon."
P. Sybarite looked dazed.
"She? Bayard Shaynon? Who's the girl?"
"Marian Blessington. Why do you ask? Do you know her?"
There was a pause. P. Sybarite blinked furiously.
"I've heard that name," he said quietly, at length. "Isn't she old Brian's ward—the girl who disappeared recently?"
"She didn't disappear, really. She's been staying with friends—told me so herself. That's all the foundation the Journal had for its story."
"Friends?"
"So she said."
"Did she name them?"
"No—"
"Or say where?"
"No; but some place out of town, of course."
"Of course," P. Sybarite repeated mechanically. He eyed fixedly the ash on the end of his cigar. "And she told you she meant to marry Bayard Shaynon, did she!"
"She said she'd promised.... And that," the boy broke out, "was what drove me crazy. He's—he's—well, you know what he is."
"His father's son," said P. Sybarite gloomily.
"He was there to-night—the old man, too; and after what Marian had told me, I just couldn't trust myself to meet or speak to either of them. So I bolted back here, took a stiff drink, changed from costume to these clothes, and went out to make a besotted ass of myself. Naturally I landed in Dutch House. And there—the first thing I noticed when I went in was old Shaynon, sitting at the same table you took, later—waiting. Imagine my surprise—I'd left him at the Bizarre not thirty minutes before!"
"I'm imagining it, Peter. Get ahead."
"I hailed him, but he wouldn't recognise me—simply glared. Presently Red November came in and they went upstairs together. So I stuck around, hoping to get hold of Red and make him drunk enough to talk. Curiously enough when Shaynon left, Red came directly to my table and sat down. But by that time I'd had some champagne on top of whiskey and was beginning to know that if I pumped in anything more, it'd be November's party instead of mine. And when he tried to insist on my drinking more, I got scared—feeling what I'd had as much as I did."
"You're not the fool you try to seem," P. Sybarite conceded. "I heard November promise Shaynon, at the door, that you wouldn't remember much when you came to. The old scoundrel didn't want to be seen—hadn't expected to be recognised and, when he found you'd followed, planned to fix things so that you'd never tell on him."
"But why?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. There's some sort of shenanigan brewing, or my first name's Peter, the same as yours—which I wish it was so.... Be quiet a bit and let me think."
For a little while P. Sybarite sat pondering with vacant eyes; and the wounded boy stared upward with a frown, as though endeavouring to puzzle the answer to this riddle out of the blankness of the ceiling.
"What time does this Hadley-Owen party break up?"
"Not till daylight. It's the last big fixture of the social season, and ordinarily they keep it up till sunrise."
"It'll be still going, then?"
"Strong. They'll be in full swing, now, of after-supper dancing."
"That settles it: I'm going."
The boy lifted on his elbow in amaze, then subsided with a grunt of pain.
"You're going?"
"You say you've got a costume of some sort here? I'll borrow it. We're much of a size."
"Heaven knows you're welcome, but—"
"But what?"
"You have no invitation."
Rising, P. Sybarite smiled loftily. "Don't worry about that. If I can't bribe my way past a cordon of mercenary foreign waiters—and talk down any other opposition—I'm neither as flush as I think nor as Irish."
"But what under the sun do you want there?"
"To see what's doing—find out for myself what devilment Brian Shaynon's hatching. Maybe I'll do no good—and maybe I'll be able to put a spoke in his wheel. To do that—once—right—I'd be willing to die as poor as I've lived till this blessed night!"
He paused an instant on the threshold of his cousin's bedroom; turned back a sombre visage.
"I've little love for Brian Shaynon, myself, or none. You know what he did to me—and mine."
BEELZEBUB
Late enough in all conscience was the last guest to arrive for the Hadley-Owen masquerade.
Already town-cars, carriages, and private 'busses were being called for and departing with their share of the more seasoned and sober-sided revellers, to whom bed and appetite for breakfast had come to mean more than a chance to romp through a cotillion by the light of the rising sun—to say discreetly little or nothing of those other conveyances which had borne away their due proportion of far less sage and by no means sober-sided ones, who yet retained sufficient sense of the fitness of things to realise that bed followed by matutinal bromides would be better for them than further dalliance with the effervescent and evanescent spirits of festivity.
More and more frequently the elevators, empty but for their attendants, were flying up to the famous ball-room floor of the Bizarre, to descend heavy-laden with languid laughing parties of gaily-costumed ladies and gentlemen no less brilliantly attired—prince and pauper, empress and shepherdess, monk, milkmaid, and mountebank: all weary yet reluctant in their going.
And at this hour a smallish gentleman, in an old-style Inverness opera-coat that cloaked him to his ankles, with an opera hat set jauntily a wee bit askew on his head, a mask of crimson silk covering his face from brows to lips, slipped silently like some sly, sinister shadow through the Fifth Avenue portals of the Bizarre, and shaped a course by his wits across the lobby to the elevators, so discreetly and unobtrusively that none of the flunkeys in attendance noticed his arrival.
In effect, he didn't arrive at all, but suddenly was there.
A car, discharging its passengers before the smallish gentleman could catch the eye of its operator, flew suddenly upward in the echo of a gate slammed shut in his face; and all the other cars were still at the top, according to the bronze arrows of their tell-tale dials. The late arrival held up patiently; but after an instant's deliberation, doffed his hat, crushed it flat, slipped out of his voluminous cloak, and beckoned a liveried attendant.
In the costume thus disclosed, he cut an impish figure: "Satan on the half-shell," Peter Kenny had christened him.
A dress coat of black satin fitted P. Sybarite more neatly than him for whom it had been made. The frilled bosom of his shirt was set with winking rubies, and the lace cuffs at his wrists were caught together with rubies—whether real or false, like coals of fire: and ruby was the hue both of his satin mask and his satin small-clothes. Buckles of red paste brilliants burned on the insteps of his slender polished shoes with scarlet heels; and his snug black silk stockings set off ankles and calves so well-turned that the Prince of Sin himself might have taken pride in them. For boutonnière he wore a smouldering ember—so true an imitation that at first he himself had hesitated to touch it. Literally to crown all, his ruddy hair was twisted upward from each temple in a cornuted fashion that was most vividly picturesque.
"Here," he said, surrendering hat and coat to the servitor before the latter could remonstrate—"take and check these for me, please. I shan't be going for some time yet."
"Sorry, sir, but the cloak-room down 'ere 's closed, sir. You'll have to check them on the ball-room floor above."
"No matter," said the little man: and groping in a pocket, he produced a dollar bill and tendered it to ready fingers; "you keep 'em for me, down here. It'll save time when I'm ready to go."
"Very good, sir. Thank you."
"You won't forget me?"
The flunkey grinned. "You're the only gentleman I've seen to-night, sir, in a costume anything like your own."
"There's but one of me in the Union," said the gentleman, sententious: "my spear knows no brother."
"Thank you, sir," said the servant civilly, making off.
With an air of some dubiety, the little man watched him go.
"I say!" he cried suddenly—"come back!"
He was obeyed.
A second dollar bill appeared as it were by magic between his fingers. The flunkey stared.
"Beg pardon, sir?"
"Take it"—impatiently.
"Thank you." The well-trained fingers executed their most familiar manoeuvre. "But—m'y I ask, sir—wot's it for?"
"You called me a gentleman just now."
"Yes, sir."
"You were right."
"Quite so, sir."
"The devil is a gentleman," the masquerader insisted firmly.
"So I've always 'eard, sir."
"Then you may go; you've earned the other dollar."
Obsequiousness stared: "M'y I ask, 'ow so?"
"By standing for that antediluvian bromidiom. I had to get it off my chest to somebody, or else blow up. Far better to hire an audience when you can't be original. Remember that; you've been paid: you daren't object."
"Thankyousir," said the lackey blankly.
"And now—avaunt—before I brand thee for mine own!"
The little gentleman flung out an imperative, melodramatic arm; and veritable sparks sprayed from his crackling finger-tips. The servant retired in haste and dismay.
"'E's balmy—or screwed—or the Devil 'imself!" he muttered....
Beneath his mask the little man grinned privately at the man's retreat.
"Piker!" said he severely—"sharpening your wits on helpless servants. A waiter has no friends, anyway!"
An elevator, descending, discharged into the lobby half a dozen mirthful maskers. Of these, a Scheherazade of bewitching prettiness (in a cloak of ermine!) singled out the silent, cynical little gentleman in scarlet mask and smalls, and menaced him merrily with a jewelled forefinger.
"What—you, Lucifer! Traitor! Where have you been all evening?"
"Madame!"—he bowed mockingly—"in spirit, always at your ear."
She flushed and bit her lip in charming confusion; while an abbess, with face serene in the frame of her snowy coif, caught up the ball of badinage:
"Ah, in spirit! But in the flesh?"
"Why, poppet!" he retorted in suave surprise—"it isn't possible that you missed me?"
And she, too, coloured; while a third, a girl dressed all in buckskin from beaded hunting-shirt to fringed leggings and dainty moccasins, bent to peer into his face.
"Who are you?" she demanded curiously. "I don't seem to know you—"
"That, child, you have already proved."
"I?... Proved?... How do you mean?"
"You alone have not yet blushed."
And wheeling mischievously to the others, he covered them with widespread hands in burlesque benediction.
"The unction of my deep damnation abide with ye, my children, now and forevermore!" he chanted, showering sparks from crepitant finger-tips; and bounded lightly into the elevator.
"But your mask!" protested Scheherazade in a pet. "You've no right—when we all unmasked at supper."
Through the iron fretwork of the gate, the little gentleman shot a Parthian spark or two.
"I wear no mask!" he informed them solemnly as the car shot from sight.
The conceit tickled him; he had it still in mind when he alighted at the ball-room floor.
Pausing in the anteroom, he struck an artificial pose on his high red heels and stroked thin, satiric lips with slender fingers, reviewing the crush with eyes that glinted light-hearted malice through the scarlet visor; seeking a certain one and finding her not among those many about him—their gay exotic trappings half hidden beneath wraps of modern convention assumed against impending departure.
A hedge of backs hid from him the ball-room, choking the wide, high arch of its entrance.
Turning to one side, he began to pick a slow way through the press, and so presently found himself shoulder to shoulder with elderly and pompous Respectability in a furred great-coat; who, all ready for the street, with shining topper poised at breast-level, had delayed his going for an instant's guarded confabulation with a youngish man conspicuous in this, that he, alone of all that company, was in simple evening dress.
Their backs were toward P. Sybarite, but by the fat pink folds above the back of Respectability's collar and the fat white side-whiskers adorning his plump pink chops, Beelzebub knew that he encountered for the second time that evening Respectability of the gold-capped cane.
Without the least shame, he paused and cocked sharp ears to catch what he could of the conversation between these two.