Little enough he profited by his open eavesdropping; what he heard was scarcely illuminating when applied to the puzzle that haunted him.
"She won't—that's flat," Respectability's companion announced in a sullen voice.
By the tone of this last Beelzebub knew that it issued from an ugly twisted mouth.
"But," Respectability insisted heavily—"You're sure you've done your best to persuade her?"
"She won't listen to reason."
"Well ... everything's arranged. You have me to thank for that."
"Oh," sneered the younger man, "you've done a lot, you have!"
And then, moving to give way to another making toward the elevators, Brian Shaynon discovered at his elbow that small attentive body in sinister scarlet and black.
For a breath, utterance failed the old man. He glared pop-eyed indignation from a congested countenance, his fat lips quivering and his jowls as well; and then as Beelzebub tapped him familiarly if lightly upon the chest, his face turned wholly purple, from swollen temples to pendulous chin.
"Well met, âme damnée!" P. Sybarite saluted him gaily. "Are you indeed off so early upon my business?"
"Damnation!" exclaimed Brian Shaynon, all but choking.
"It shall surely be your portion," gravely assented the little man. "To all who in my service prosper in a worldly way—damnation, upon my honourable Satanic word!"
"Who the devil—?"
"Whisht!" P. Sybarite reproved. "A trifle more respect, if you please—lest you wake in the morning to find all my benefactions turned to ashes in your strong-boxes!"
But here Respectability found his full voice.
"Who are you?" he demanded so stormily that heads turned curiously his way. "I demand to know! Remove that mask! Impertinent—!"
"Mask?" purred Beelzebub in a tone of wonder. "I wear no mask!"
"No mask!" stammered the older man, in confusion.
"Nay, I am frankly what I am—old Evil's self," P. Sybarite explained blandly; "but you, Brian Shaynon—now you go always masked: waking or sleeping, hypocrisy's your lifelong mask. You see the distinction, old servant?"
In another moment he might have suffered a sound drubbing with the ebony cane but for Peter Kenny's parlour-magic trick. For as Brian Shaynon started forward to seize Beelzebub by the collar, a stream of incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly wormed his way through the press to the dancing-floor itself.
As for the younger man—he of the unhandsome mouth—P. Sybarite was content to hold him in reserve, to be dealt with later, at his leisure. For the present, his business pressed with the waning night.
In high feather, bubbling with mischief, he sidled along the wall a little way, then halted to familiarise himself with scene and atmosphere against his next move.
But after the first minute or two, spent in silent review of the brilliant scene, his thin lips lost something of their cynic modelling, the eyes behind the scarlet visor something of their mischievous twinkle—softening with shadows envious and regretful.
The room was as one vast pool of limpid golden light, walls and ceilings so luminous with the refulgence of a thousand electric bulbs that they seemed translucent, glowing with a radiance from beyond.
On the famous floor, twelve-score couples swung and swayed to the intoxicating rhythms of an unseen orchestra; kaleidoscopic in their amazingly variegated costuming of colour, drifting past the lonely, diabolical little figure, an endless chain of paired anachronisms.
Searching narrowly each fair face that flashed past in another's arms, he waited with seeming patience. But the music buzzed in his brain and his toes tingled for it; breathing the warm, voluptuous air, he inhaled hints of a thousand agreeable and exciting scenes; watching, he perceived in perturbation the witchery of a hundred exquisite women. And a rancorous discontent gnawed at his famished heart.
This was all his by right of birth—should be his now, but for the blind malice of his sorry destiny. Kismet had favoured him greatly, but too late....
But of a sudden he forgot self-pity and vain repining, in the discovery of the one particular woman swinging dizzily past in the arms of an Incroyable, whose giddy plumage served only to render the more striking her exquisite fairness and the fine simplicity of her costume.
For she was all in the black-and-white uniform of a Blessington shopgirl; black skirt and blouse, stockings and pumps, relieved by showy linen at throat and wrists, with at waist the white patch of a tiny lace-and-linen apron.
Perhaps it was his start of recognition; it may have been the very fixed intensity of his regard; whatever drew it, her gaze veered to his silent and aloof figure, and for an instant his eyes held hers. At once, to his consternation, the hot blood stained her lovely face from throat to brow; her glance wavered, fell in confusion, then as though by a strong effort of will alone, steadied once more to his. Nodding with an air of friendly diffidence, she flashed him a strange, perplexing smile; and was swept on and away.
For a thought he checked his breath in stupefaction. Had she, then, recognised him? Was it possible that her intuition had been keen enough to pierce his disguise, vizard and all?
But the next moment he could have sworn in chagrined appreciation of his colossal stupidity. Of course!—his costume was that worn by Peter Kenny earlier in the evening; and as between Peter and himself, of the same stock, the two were much of a muchness in physique; both, moreover, were red-headed; their points of unlikeness were negligible, given a mask.
So after all, her emotion had been due solely to embarrassment and regret for the pain she had caused poor Peter by refusing his offer of marriage!
Well!... P. Sybarite drew a long, sane breath, laughed wholesomely at himself, and thereafter had eyes only to keep the girl in sight, however far and involved her wanderings through the labyrinth of the dance.
In good time the music ended; the fluent movement of the dancers subsided with a curious effect of eddying—like confetti settling to rest; and P. Sybarite left his station by the wall, slipping like quicksilver through the heart of the throng to the far side of the room, where, near a great high window wide to the night, the breathless shopgirl had dropped into a chair.
At Beelzebub's approach the Incroyable, perhaps mindful of obligations in another quarter, bowed and moved off, leaving the field temporarily quite clear.
She greeted him with a faint recurrence of her former blush.
"Why, Peter!" she cried—and so sealed with confirmation his surmise as to her mistake—"I was wondering what had become of you. I thought you must have gone home."
"Peter did go home," P. Sybarite affirmed gravely, bending over her hand.
His voice perplexed her tremendously. She opened eyes wide.
"Peter!" she exclaimed reproachfully—"you promised it wouldn't make any difference. We were to go on just as always—good friends. And now ..."
"Yes?" P. Sybarite prompted as she faltered.
"I don't like to say it, Peter, but—your voice is so different. You've not been—doing anything foolish, have you?"
"Peter hasn't," the little man lied cheerfully; "Peter went home to sulk like the unwhipped cub he is; and sulking, was yet decent enough to lend me these rags."
"You—you're not Peter Kenny?"
"No more than you are Molly Lessing."
"Molly Lessing! What do you know—? Who can you be? Why are you masked?"
"Simply," he explained pleasantly, "that my incognito may remain such to all save you."
"But—but who are you?"
"It is permitted?" he asked, with a gesture offering to take the tiny printed card of dance engagements that dangled from her fingers by its silken thong.
In dumb mystification the girl surrendered it.
Seating himself beside her, P. Sybarite ran his eye down the list.
"The last was number—which?" he enquired with unruffled impudence.
Half angry, half amused, wholly confused, she told him: "Fifteen."
"Then one number only remains."
His lips hardened as he read the initials pencilled opposite that numeral; they were "B.S."
"Bayard Shaynon?" he queried.
She assented with a nod, her brows gathering.
Coolly, with the miniature pencil attached to the card, he changed the small, faint B to a large black P, strengthened the S to correspond, and added to that ybarite; then with a bow returned the card.
The girl received the evidence of her senses with a silent gasp.
He bowed again: "Yours to command."
"You—Mr. Sybarite!"
"I, Miss Blessington."
"But—incredible!" she cried. "I can't believe you ..."
Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor, meeting her stare with his wistful and diffident smile.
Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.
Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor.
"You see," he said, readjusting the mask.
"But—what does this mean?"
"Do you remember our talk on the way home after Kismet—four hours or several years ago: which is it?"
"I remember we talked ..."
"And I—clumsily enough, Heaven knows!—told you that I'd go far for one who'd been kind and tolerant to me, if she were in trouble and could use my poor services?"
"I remember—yes."
"You suspected—surely—it was yourself I had in mind?"
"Why, yes; but—"
"And you'll certainly allow that what happened later, at the door, when I stood in the way of the importunate Mr. 'B.S.'—if I'm not sadly in error—was enough to convince any one that you needed a friend's good offices?"
"So," she said softly, with glimmering eyes—"so for that you followed me here, Mr. Sybarite!"
"I wish I might claim it. But it wouldn't be true. No—I didn't follow you."
"Please," she begged, "don't mystify me—"
"I don't mean to. But to tell the truth, my own head is still awhirl with all the chapter of accidents that brought me here. Since you flew off with B.S., following afoot, I've traversed a vast deal of adventure—to wind up here. If," he added, grinning, "this is the wind-up. I've a creepy, crawly feeling that it isn't...."
"Miss Blessington," he pursued seriously, "if you have patience to listen to what I've been through since we parted in Thirty-eighth Street—?" Encouraged by her silence he went on: "I've broken the bank at a gambling house; been held up for my winnings at the pistol's point—but managed to keep them. I've been in a raid and escaped only after committing felonious assault on two detectives. I then burglarised a private residence, and saved the mistress of the house from being murdered by her rascally husband—blundered thence to the deadliest dive in New York—met and slanged mine ancient enemy, the despoiler of my house—took part in a drunken brawl—saved my infatuated young idiot of a cousin, Peter Kenny, from assassination—took him home, borrowed his clothing, and impudently invited myself to this party on the mere suspicion that 'Molly Lessing' and Marian Blessington might be one and the same, after all!... And all, it appears, that I might come at last to beg a favour of you."
"I can't think what it can be," breathed the girl, dumfounded.
"To forgive my unpardonable impertinence—"
"I've not been conscious of it."
"You'll recognise it immediately. I am about to transgress your privacy with a question—two, in fact. Will you tell me, please, in confidence, why you refused my cousin, Peter Kenny, when he asked you to marry him?"
Colouring, she met his eyes honestly.
"Because—why, it was so utterly absurd! He's only a boy. Besides, I don't care for him—that way."
"You care for some one else—'that way'?"
"Yes," said the girl softly, averting her face.
"Is it—Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"
"No," she replied after a perceptible pause.
"But you have promised to marry him?"
"I once made him that promise—yes."
"You mean to keep it?"
"I must."
"Why?"
"It was my father's wish."
"And yet—you don't like him!"
Looking steadily before her, the girl said tensely: "I loathe him."
"Then," cried P. Sybarite in a joyful voice, "I may tell you something: you needn't marry him."
She turned startled eyes to his, incredulous.
"Need not?"
"I should have said can not—"
Through the loud hum of voices that, filling the room, had furnished a cover for their conversation, sounded the opening bars of music for the final dance.
The girl rose suddenly, eyes like stars aflame in a face of snow.
"He will be coming for me now," she said hurriedly. "But—if you mean what you say—I must know—instantly—why you say it. How can we manage to avoid him?"
"This way," said P. Sybarite, indicating the wide window nearby.
Through its draped opening a shallow balcony showed, half-screened by palms whose softly stirring fronds, touched with artificial light, shone a garish green against the sombre sky of night.
Immediately Marian Blessington slipped through the hangings and, turning, beckoned P. Sybarite to follow.
"There's no one here," she announced in accents tremulous with excitement, when he joined her. "Now—now tell me what you mean!"
"One moment," he warned her gently, turning back to the window just as it was darkened by another figure.
The man with the twisted mouth stood there, peering blindly into the semi-obscurity.
"Marian...?" he called in a voice meant to be ingratiating.
"Well?" the girl demanded harshly.
"I thought I saw you," he commented blandly, advancing a pace and so coming face to face with the bristling little Mephistophelean figure, which he had endeavoured to ignore.
"My dance, I believe," he added a trace more brusquely, over the little man's head.
"I must ask you to excuse me," said the girl coldly.
"You don't care to dance again to-night?"
"Thank you—no."
"Then I will give myself the pleasure of sitting it out with you."
"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Bayard," she returned, consistently inflexible.
He hesitated. "Do I understand you're ready for me to take you home?"
"You're to understand that I will neither dance nor sit out the dance with you—and that I don't wish to be disturbed."
"Bless your heart!" P. Sybarite interjected privately.
The voice of the younger Shaynon broke with passion.
"This is—the limit!" he cried violently. "I've reached the end of my endurance. Who's this creature you're with?"
"Is your memory so short?" P. Sybarite asked quietly. "Have you forgotten the microbe?—the little guy who puts the point in disappointment?"
"I've forgotten nothing, you—animal! Nor that you insulted my father publicly only a few minutes ago, you—"
"That is something that takes a bit of doing, too!" affirmed P. Sybarite with a nod.
"And I want to inform you, sir," Shaynon raged, "that you've gone too far by much. I insist that you remove your mask and tell me your name."
"And if I refuse?" said the little man coolly.
"If you refuse—or if you persist in this insolent attitude, sir!—I—I'll—"
"What? In the name of brevity, make up your mind and give it a name, man!"
"I'll thrash you within an inch of your life—here and now!" Shaynon blustered.
"One moment," P. Sybarite pleaded with a graceful gesture. "Before committing yourself to this mad enterprise, would you mind telling me exactly how you spell that word inch? With a capital I and a final e—by any chance?"
IN A BALCONY
Bewilderment and consternation, working in the man, first struck him dumb, aghast, and witless, then found expression in an involuntary gasp that was more than half of wondering fear, the remainder rage slipping its leash entirely:
"What?"
He advanced a pace with threatening mien.
Overshadowed though he was, P. Sybarite stood his ground with no least hint of dismay. To the contrary, he was seen to stroke his lips discreetly as if to erase a smile.
"The word in question," he said with exasperating suavity, "is the common one of four letters, to-wit, inch; as ordinarily spelled denoting the unit of lineal measurement—the twelfth part of a foot; but lend it a capital I and an ultimate e—my good fellow!—and it stands, I fear too patiently, for the standard of your blackguardism."
Speechless, the younger Shaynon hesitated, lifting an uncertain hand to his throat, as if to relieve a sense of strangulation.
"Or what if I were to suggest—delicately—that you're within an Inche of the end of your rope?" the little man pursued, grimly playful. "Give you an Inche and—what will you take, eh?"
With an inarticulate cry, Shaynon's fist shot out as if to strike his persecutor down; but in mid-air P. Sybarite's slim, strong fingers closed round and inflexibly stayed his enemy's wrist, with barely perceptible effort swinging it down and slewing the man off poise, so that perforce he staggered back against the stone of the window's deep embrasure.
"Behave!" P. Sybarite counselled evenly. "Remember where you are—in a lady's presence. Do you want to go sprawling from the sole of my foot into the presence of more than one—or over this railing, to the sidewalk, and become food for inch-worms?"
Releasing Shaynon, he stepped back warily, anticipating nothing less than an instant and disgraceful brawl.
"As for my mask," he said—"if it still annoys you—"
He jerked it off and away.
Escaping the balustrade, it caught a wandering air and drifted indolently down through the darkness of the street, like an errant petal plucked from some strange and sinister bloom of scarlet violence.
"And if my face tells you nothing," he added hotly, "perhaps my name will help. It's Sybarite. You may have heard it!"
As if from a blow, Shaynon's eyes winced. Breathing heavily, he averted a face that took on the hue of parchment in the cold light striking up from the electric globes that march Fifth Avenue. Then quietly adjusting his crumpled cuff, he drew himself up.
"Marian," he said as soon as he had his voice under control, "since you wish it, I'll wait for you in the lobby, downstairs. As—as for you, sir—"
"Yes, I know," the little man interrupted wearily: "you'll 'deal with' me later, 'at a time and a place more fitting.'...Well, I won't mind the delay if you'll just trot along now, like a good dog—"
Unable longer to endure the lash of his mordacious wit, Shaynon turned and left them alone on the balcony.
"I'm sorry," P. Sybarite told the girl in unfeigned contrition. "Please forgive me. I've a vicious temper—the colour of my hair—and I couldn't resist the temptation to make him squirm."
"If you only knew how I despised him," she said, "you wouldn't think it necessary to excuse yourself—though I don't know yet what it's all about."
"Simply, I happen to have the whip-hand of the Shaynon conscience," returned P. Sybarite; "I happened to know that Bayard is secretly the husband of a woman notorious in New York under the name of Mrs. Jefferson Inche."
"Is that true? Dare I believe—?"
Intimations of fears inexpressibly alleviated breathed in her cry.
"I believe it."
"On what grounds? Tell me!"
"The word of the lady herself, together with the evidence of his confusion just now. What more do you need?"
Turning aside, the girl rested a hand upon the balustrade and gazed blankly off through the night.
"But—I can't help thinking there must be some mistake—some terrible mistake."
"If so, it is theirs—the Shaynons', father and son."
"But they've been bringing such pressure to bear to make me agree to an earlier wedding day—!"
"Not even that shakes my belief in Mrs. Inche's story. As a matter of fact, Bayard offered her half a million if she'd divorce him quietly, without any publicity, in the West."
"And she accepted—?"
"She has refused, believing she stands to gain more by holding on."
"If that is true, how can it be that he has been begging me this very night to marry him within a month?"
"He may have entertained hopes of gaining his end—his freedom—in another way."
"It's—it's inexpressibly horrible!" the girl cried, twisting her hands together.
"Furthermore," argued the little man, purposefully unresponsive, "he probably thinks himself forced to seem insistent by the part he's playing. His father doesn't know of this entanglement; he'd disinherit Bayard if he did; naturally, Bayard wouldn't dare to seem reluctant to hasten matters, for fear of rousing the old man's suspicions."
"It may be so," she responded vacantly, in the confusion of adjusting her vision of life to this new and blinding light....
"Tell me," he suggested presently, stammering—"if you don't mind giving me more of your confidence—to which I don't pretend to have any right—only my interest in—in you—the mystery with which you surround yourself—living alone there in that wretched boarding-house—"
He broke off with a brief uneasy laugh: "I don't seem to get anywhere.... My fear lest you think me presumptuous—"
"Don't fear that for another instant—please!" she begged earnestly; and swinging to face him again, gave him an impulsive hand. "I'm so grateful to you for—for what you've saved me from—"
"Then..." Self-distrustful, he retained her fingers only transiently. "Then why not tell me—everything. If I understood, I might be able to offer some suggestions—to save you further distress—"
"Oh, no; you can't do that," she interrupted. "If what you've said is true, I—I shall simply continue to live by myself."
"You don't mean you would go back to Thirty-eighth Street?"
"No," she said thoughtfully, "I'm—I don't mean that."
"You're right," he assured her. "It's no place for you."
"That wasn't meant to be permanent," she explained—"merely an experiment. I went there for two reasons: to be rid for a while of their incessant attempts to hasten my marriage with Bayard; and because I suddenly realised I knew nothing about my father's estate, and found I was to know nothing for another year—that is, until, under his will, I come into my fortune. Old Mr. Shaynon would tell me nothing—treated me as though I were still a child. Moreover I had grown deeply interested in the way our girls were treated; I wanted to know about them—to be sure they were given a fair chance—earned enough to live decently—and other things about their lives—you can imagine...."
"I think I understand," said P. Sybarite gravely.
"I had warned them more than once I'd run away if they didn't let me alone.... You see, Mr. Shaynon insisted it was my father's wish that I should marry Bayard, and on that understanding I promised to marry him when I came into possession of the estate. But that didn't suit—or rather, it seemed to satisfy them only for a little time. Very soon they were pestering me again to marry at once. I couldn't see the need—and finally I kept my word and ran away—took my room in Thirty-eighth Street, and before long secured work in my own store. At first I was sure they'd identify me immediately; but somehow no one seemed to suspect me, and I stayed on, keeping my eyes open and collecting evidence of a system of mismanagement and oppression—but I can't talk about that calmly—"
"Please don't if it distresses you," P. Sybarite begged gently.
"At all events," she resumed, "it wasn't until to-night that Bayard found out where I was living—as you saw. At first I refused to return home, but he declared my disappearance was creating a scandal; that one newspaper threatened to print a story about my elopement with a chauffeur, and that there was other unpleasant talk about Mr. Shaynon's having caused me to be spirited away so that he might gain control of my estate—"
"Wonder what put that into his head!" P. Sybarite broke in with quickening curiosity.
"He insisted that these stories could only be refuted if I'd come home for a few days and show myself at this dance to-night. And when I still hesitated, he threatened—"
"What?" growled the little man.
"That, if I didn't consent, he'd telephone the paper to go ahead and publish that awful story about the chauffeur."
P. Sybarite caught himself barely in time to shut his teeth upon an expletive.
"There!" said the girl. "Don't let's talk about it any longer. After what you've told me.... Well, it's all over now!"
P. Sybarite pondered this in manifest doubt.
"Are you sure?" he queried with his head thoughtfully to one side.
"Am I sure?" she repeated, puzzled. "Rather! I tell you, I've finished with the Shaynons for good and all. I never liked either of them—never understood what father saw in old Mr. Shaynon to make him trust him the way he did. And now, after what has happened ... I shall stop at the Plaza to-night—they know me there—and telephone for my things. If Mr. Shaynon objects, I'll see if the law won't relieve me of his guardianship."
"If you'll take a fool's advice, you'll do that, whether or no. An uneasy conscience is a fine young traitor to its possessor, as a rule."
"Now, what can you mean by that?"
"I don't believe there's been any whisper of suspicion that the Shaynons had caused you to be spirited away."
"Then why did Bayard say—"
"Because he was thinking about it! The unconscious self-betrayal of the unskilled but potential criminal."
"Oh!" cried the girl in horror. "I don't think that—"
"Well, I do," said P. Sybarite gloomily. "I know they're capable of it. It wouldn't be the first time Brian Shaynon ruined a friend. There was once a family in this town by the name of Sybarite—the family of a rich and successful man, associated with Brian Shaynon in a business way. I'm what's left of it, thanks to my father's faith in old Brian's integrity. It's too long a story to detail; but the old fox managed to keep within the letter of the law when he robbed me of my inheritance, and there's no legal way to get back at him. I'm telling you all this only to show you how far the man's to be trusted."
"Oh, I'm sorry—!"
"Don't be, please. What I've endured has done me no harm—and to-night has seen the turn of my fortunes—or else I'm hopelessly deluded. Furthermore, some day I mean to square my account with Brian Shaynon to the fraction of a penny—and within the law."
"Oh, I do hope you may!"
P. Sybarite smiled serenely. "I shall; and you can help me, if you will."
"How?"
"Stick to your resolution to have no more to do with the family; retain a good lawyer to watch your interests under old Brian's charge; and look out for yourself."
"I'll surely do all that, Mr. Sybarite; but I don't understand—"
"Well, if I'm not mistaken, it'll help a lot. Public disavowal of your engagement to Bayard will be likely to bring Shaynon's affairs to a crisis. I firmly believe they're hard pressed for money—that it wasn't consolidation of two going-concerns for mutual advantage, but the finding of new capital for a moribund and insolvent house that they've been seeking through this marriage. That's why they were in such a hurry. Even if Bayard were free—as his father believes him to be—why need the old man have been so unreasonable when all the delay you ask is another twelvemonth? Believe me, he had some excellent reason for his anxiety. Finally, if the old villain isn't fomenting some especially foul villainy, why need he sneak from here to-night to the lowest dive in town to meet and confer with a gang leader and murderer like Red November?"
"What are you talking about now?" demanded the bewildered girl.
"An hour or so ago I met old Brian coming out of a dive known as Dutch House, the worst in this old Town. What business had he there, if he's an honest man? I can't tell you because I don't know. But it was foul—that's certain. Else why need he have incited Red and his followers to drug Peter Kenny into forgetfulness? Peter found him there before I did. It was only after the deuce of a row that I got the boy away alive."
Temporarily he suppressed mention of Peter's hurt. The girl had enough to occupy her without being subjected to further drain upon her sympathies.
"I'd like to know!" he wound up gloomily.... "That old scoundrel never visited Dutch House out of simple curiosity; and whatever his purpose, one thing's sure—it wasn't one to stand daylight. It's been puzzling me ever since—an appointment of some sort he made with November just as I hove within earshot. 'Two-thirty,' he said; and November repeated the hour and promised to be on the job. 'Two-thirty!'—what can it mean? It's later than that now but—mark my words!—something's going to happen this afternoon, or to-morrow, or some time soon, at half-past two o'clock!"
"Perhaps you're right," said the girl doubtfully. "And yet you may be wrong in thinking me involved in any way. Indeed, I'm sure you must be wrong. I can't believe that he could wish me actual harm."
"Miss Blessington," said P. Sybarite solemnly, "when you ran off in that taxi at midnight, I had five dollars in all the world. This minute, as I stand, I'm worth twenty-five thousand—more money than I ever hoped to see in this life. It means a lot to me—a start toward independence—but I'd give every cent of it for some reliable assurance that Brian Shaynon and his son mean you no harm."
Surprised and impressed by his unwonted seriousness, the girl instinctively shrank back against the balustrade.
"Mr. Sybarite—!" she murmured, wide-eyed.
He remarked her action with a gesture almost of supplication.
"Don't be alarmed," he begged; and there was in his voice the least flavour of bitterness. "I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't—anything you wouldn't care to hear. I'm not altogether mad, Miss Blessington; only...
"Well!" he laughed quietly—"when my run of luck set in to-night back there at the gambling house, I told myself it was Kismet's doing—that this was my Day of Days. If I had thought, I should instead have called it my Night of Nights—knowing it must wear out with the dawn."
His gesture drew her heed to the east; where, down the darkling, lamp-studded canyon of a cross-town street, stark against a sky pulsing with the faintest foreboding of daybreak, the gaunt, steel-girdered framework of the new Grand Central Station stood—in its harshly angular immensity as majestic as the blackened skeleton of a burnt-out world glimpsed against the phosphorescent pallor of the last chill dawn....
In the great ball-room behind them, the last strains of dance music were dying out.
"Now," said the little man with a brisker accent, "by your leave, we get back to what we were discussing; your welfare—"
"Mr. Sybarite," the girl interrupted impetuously—"whatever happens, I want you to know that I at least understand you; and that to me you'll always be my standard of a gentleman brave and true—and kind."
As impulsively as she had spoken, she gave him her hands.
Holding them fugitively in both his own, he gazed intently into the shadowed loveliness of her face.
Then with a slight shake of his head—whether of renunciation or of disappointment, she couldn't tell—he bent so low that for a thought she fancied he meant to touch his lips to her fingers.
But he gave them back to her as they had come to him.
"It is you who are kind, Miss Blessington," he said steadily—"very kind indeed to me. I presume, and you permit; I violate your privacy, and you are not angry; I am what I am—and you are kind. That is going to be my most gracious memory....
"And now," he broke off sharply, "all the pretty people are going home, and you must, too. May I venture one step farther? Don't permit Bayard Shaynon—"
"I don't mean to," she told him. "Knowing what I know—it's impossible."
"You will go to the Plaza?"
"Yes," she replied: "I've made up my mind to that."
"You have a cab waiting, of course. May I call it for you?"
"My own car," she said; "the call check is with my wraps. But," she smiled, "I shall be glad to give it to you, to hand to the porter, if you'll be so good."
He had longed to be asked to accompany her; and at the same time prayed to be spared that trial. Already he had ventured too perilously close to the brink of open avowal of his heart's desire. And that way—well he knew it!—humiliation lay, and opaque despair. Better to live on in the melancholy company of a hopeless heart than in the wretchedness of one rejected and despised. And who—and what—was he, that she should look upon him with more than the transient favour of pity or of gratitude for a service rendered?
But, since she, wise in her day and generation, did not ask him, suddenly he was glad. The tension of his emotion eased. He even found grace to grin amiably.
"To do Bayard out of that honour!" he said cheerfully. "You couldn't invent a service to gratify me more hugely."
She smiled in sympathy.
"But he will be expecting to see you home?"
"No matter if he does, he shan't. Besides, he lives in bachelor rooms—within walking distance, I believe."
Holding aside the window draperies, he followed her through to the ball-room.
Already the vast and shining hall was almost empty; only at the farther wall a handful of guests clustered round the doorway, waiting to take their turn in the crowded cloakrooms. Off to one side, in a deep apsidal recess, the members of the orchestra were busily packing up their instruments. And as the last of the guests—save Marian Blessington and P. Sybarite—edged out into the ante-rooms, a detachment of servants invaded the dancing-floor and bustled about setting the room to rights.
A moment more, and the two were close upon the vanguard of departing guests.
"You'll have a time finding your hat and coat," smiled the girl.
"I? Not I. With marvellous sagacity, I left 'em with a waiter downstairs. But you?"
"I'm afraid I must keep you waiting. No matter if it is four in the morning—and later—women do take a time to wrap up. You won't mind?"
"Not in the least—it prolongs my Day of Days!" he laughed.
"I shall look for you in the lobby," she replied, smiling; and slipped away through the throng.
Picking his way to the elevators, constantly squirming more inextricably into the heart of the press, elbowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and débutante, husband, lover, and esquire, patricians, celebrities and the commonalty (a trace, as the chemists say), P. Sybarite at length found himself only a layer or two removed from the elevator gates.
And one of these presently opening, he stumbled in with the crush, to hold his breath in vain effort to make himself smaller, gaze in cross-eyed embarrassment at the abundant and nobly undisguised back of the lady of distinction in front of him, and stand on tiptoes to spare those of the man behind him; while the cage descended with maddening deliberation.
If he had but guessed the identity of the man in the rear, the chances are he would have (thoughtlessly of course) brought down his heels upon the other's toes with all his weight on top of them. But in his ignorance P. Sybarite was diligent to keep the peace.
Liberated on the lower floor, he found his lackey, resumed hat and coat, and mounted guard in the lobby opposite the elevators.
Miss Blessington procrastinating consistently with her warning, he schooled himself to patience, mildly diverted by inspection of those who passed him, going out.
At the side-street entrance, the crush of ante-room and elevators was duplicated, people jamming the doorway and overflowing to the sidewalk while awaiting their motor-cars and carriages.
But through the Fifth Avenue entrance only the thin stream of those intending to walk was trickling away.
After a time P. Sybarite discovered Mr. Bayard Shaynon not far off, like himself waiting and with a vigilant eye reviewing the departing, the while he talked in close confidence with one who, a stranger to P. Sybarite, was briefly catalogued in his gallery of impressions as "hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained but awkward—very likely, nouveau riche;" and with this summary, dismissed from the little man's thoughts.
When idly he glanced that way a second time, the younger Shaynon was alone, and had moved nearer; his countenance impassive, he looked through and beyond P. Sybarite a thought too ostentatiously. But when eventually Marian appeared, he was instant to her side, forestalling even the alert flanking movement of P. Sybarite.
"You're quite ready, Marian?" Shaynon asked; and familiarly slipped a guiding hand beneath the arm of the girl—with admirable effrontery ignoring his earlier dismissal.
On the instant, halting, the girl turned to him a full, cold stare.
"I prefer you do not touch me," she said clearly, yet in low tones.
"Oh, come!" he laughed uneasily. "Don't be foolish—"
"Did you hear me, Bayard?"
"You're making a scene—" the man flashed, colouring darkly.
"And," P. Sybarite interjected quietly, "I'll make it worse if you don't do as Miss Blessington bids you."
With a shrug, Shaynon removed his hand; but with no other acknowledgment of the little man's existence, pursued indulgently: "You have your carriage-call check ready, Marian? If you'll let me have it—"
"Let's understand one another, once and for all time, Bayard," the girl interrupted. "I don't wish you to take me home. I prefer to go alone. Is that clear? I don't wish to feel indebted to you for even so slight a service as this," she added, indicating the slip of pasteboard in her fingers. "But if Mr. Sybarite will be so kind—"
The little man accepted the card with no discernible sign of jubilation over Shaynon's discomfiture.
"Thank you," he said mildly; but waited close by her side.
For a moment Shaynon's face reminded him of one of the masks of crimson lacquer and black that grinned from the walls of Mrs. Inche's "den." But his accents, when he spoke, were even, if menacing in their tonelessness.
"Then, Marian, I'm to understand it's—goodnight?"
"I think," said the girl with a level look of disdain, "it might be far better if you were to understand that it's good-bye."
"You," he said with slight difficulty—"you mean that, Marian?"
"Finally!" she asseverated.
He shrugged again; and his eyes, wavering, of a sudden met P. Sybarite's and stabbed them with a glance of ruthless and unbridled hatred, so envenomed that the little man was transiently conscious of a misgiving.
"Here," he told himself in doubt, "is one who, given his way, would have me murdered within twenty-four hours!"
And he thought of Red November, and wondered what had been the fate of that personage at the hands of the valiant young patrolman. Almost undoubtedly the gunman had escaped arrest....
Shaynon had turned and was striding away toward the Fifth Avenue entrance, when Marian roused P. Sybarite with a word.
"Finis," she said, enchanting him with the frank intimacy of her smile.
He made, with a serious visage, the gesture of crossed fingers that exorcises an evil spirit.
"Absit omen!" he muttered, with a dour glance over shoulder at the retreating figure of his mortal enemy.
"Why," she laughed incredulously, "you're not afraid?"
Forcing a wry grin, he mocked a shudder.
"Some irreverent body walked over the grave of me."
"You're superstitious!"
"I'm Irish," P. Sybarite explained sufficiently.
THE BROOCH
They came to the carriage entrance, where the crush of waiting people had somewhat thinned—not greatly.
Leaving Marian in the angle of the doorway, P. Sybarite pressed out to the booth of the carriage-call apparatus, gave the operator the numbered and perforated cardboard together with a coin, saw the man place it on the machine and shoot home a lever that hissed and spat blue fire; then turned back.
"What was the number?" she asked as he approached. "Did you notice? I did—but then thought of something else; and now I've forgotten."
"Two hundred and thirty," replied P. Sybarite absently.
Between the two there fell a little pause of constrained silence ended by Marian.
"I want to see you again, very soon, Mr. Sybarite."
The eyes of the little man were as grateful as a dog's.
"If I may call—?" he ventured diffidently.
"Could you come to-morrow to tea?"
"At the Plaza?"
"At the Plaza!" she affirmed with a bright nod.
"Thank you."
Above the hum of chattering voices rose the bellow of the carriage porter:
"Two hundred and thirty! Two hundred and thirty!"
"My car!" said the girl with a start.
P. Sybarite moved in front of her, signalling with a lifted hand.
"Two hundred and thirty," he repeated.
A handsome town-car stood at the curb beneath the permanent awning of iron and glass. Behind it a long rank waited with impatient, stuttering motors and dull-burning lamps that somehow forced home drowsy thoughts of bed.
Hurrying across the sidewalk, Marian permitted P. Sybarite to help her into the vehicle.
Transported by this proof of her graciousness, he gave the chauffeur the address:
"Hotel Plaza."
With the impudent imperturbability of his breed, the man nodded and grunted without looking round.
From the body of the vehicle Marian extended a white-gloved hand.
"Good-night, Mr. Sybarite. To-morrow—at five."
Touching her fingers, P. Sybarite raised his hat; but before he could utter the response ready upon his tongue, he was seized by the arm and swung rudely away from the door. At the same time a voice (the property of the owner of that unceremonious hand) addressed the porter roughly:
"Shut that door and send the car along! I'll take charge of this gentleman!"
In this speech an accent of irony inhered to exasperate P. Sybarite. Half a hundred people were looking on—listening! Angrily he wrenched his arm free.
"What the devil—!" he cried into the face of the aggressor; and in the act of speaking, recognised the man as him with whom Bayard Shaynon had been conversing in the lobby: that putative parvenu—hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained, awkward in evening dress....
The hand whose grasp he had broken shifted to his shoulder, closing fingers like steel hooks upon it.
"If you need a row," the man advised him quietly, "try that again. If you've got good sense—come along quiet'."
"Where? What for? What right have you—?" P. Sybarite demanded in one raging breath.
"I'm the house detective here," the other answered, holding his eyes with an inexorable glare. And the muscles of his heavy jaw tightened even as he tightened his grasp upon the little man's shoulder. "And if it's all the same to you, we're going to have a quiet little talk in the office," he added with a jerk of his head.
A sidelong glance discovered the fact that Marian's car had disappeared. Doubtless she had gone in ignorance of this outrage, perhaps thinking him accosted by a chance acquaintance. At all events, she was gone, and there was now nothing to be gained from an attempt to bluster the detective down, but deeper shame and the scorn of all beholders.
"What do you want?" the little man asked in a more pacific tone.
"We can talk better inside, unless"—the detective grinned sardonically—"you want to get out hand-bills about this matter."
"Let me go, then," said P. Sybarite. "I'll follow you."
"You've got a better guess than that: you'll go ahead of me," retorted the other. "And while you're doing it, remember that there's a cop at the Fifth Avenue door, and I've got a handy little emergency ration in my pocket—with my hand on the butt of it."
"Very well," said P. Sybarite, boiling with rage beneath thin ice of submission.
His shoulder free, he moved forward with a high chin and a challenge in his eye for any that dared question his burning face—marched up the steps through ranks that receded as if to escape pollution, and so re-entered the lobby.
"Straight ahead," admonished his captor, falling in at his side. "First door to the right of the elevators."
Shoulder to shoulder, the target for two-score grinning or surprised stares, they strode across the lobby and through the designated door.
It was immediately closed; and the key, turned in the lock, was removed and pocketed by the detective.
In this room—a small interior apartment, plainly furnished as a private office—two people were waiting: a stout, smooth little man with a moustache of foreign extraction, who on better acquaintance proved to be the manager of the establishment; the other Bayard Shaynon, stationed with commendable caution on the far side of the room, the bulk of a broad, flat-topped mahogany desk fencing him off from the wrathful little captive.
"Well?" this last demanded of the detective the moment they were private.
"Take it calm', son, take it calm'," counselled the man, his tone not altogether lacking in good-nature. "There seems to be some question as to your right to attend that party upstairs; we got to investigate you, for the sake of the rep. of the house. Get me?"
P. Sybarite drew a long breath. If this were all that Shaynon could have trumped up to discomfit him—! He looked that one over with the curling lip of contempt.
"I believe it's no crime to enter where you've not been invited, provided you don't force door or window to do it," he observed.
"You admit—eh?" the manager broke in excitedly—"you have no card of invitation, what?"
"I freely admit I have no card of invitation what or whatever."
"Then perhaps you'll explain whatcha doing here," suggested the detective, not without affability.
"Willingly: I came to find a friend—a lady whose name I don't care to bring into this discussion—unless Mr. Shaynon has forestalled me."
"Mr. Shaynon has mentioned a lady's name," said the manager with a significance lost upon P. Sybarite.
"That," he commented acidly, "is much what might have been expected of"—here he lifted his shoulders with admirable insolence—"Mr. Shaynon."
"You saw this lady, then?" the detective put in sharply.
"Why—yes," P. Sybarite admitted.
"He not only saw her," Shaynon interpolated with a malicious sneer, "but I saw him see her—and saw him get away with it."
"Get away with—what?" P. Sybarite asked blankly.
"Mr. Shaynon," drawled the detective, "says he saw you lift a di'mond brooch off'n Mrs. Addison Strone, while you was in the elevator."
And while P. Sybarite gaped, thunderstruck and breathless with the rage excited by this groundless accusation, the detective looked to Shaynon for confirmation.
"I stood behind him in the elevator, coming down, ten minutes or so ago," the latter stated heavily. "Mrs. Addison Strone was immediately in front of him. The cage was badly crowded—no one could move. But practically every one else was with friends, you understand—laughing, talking, paying no attention to this—ah—creature. As I got in, I noticed that Mrs. Strone's brooch, a gold bar set with several large diamonds, was apparently loose—pin had parted from the catch, you know—and meant to warn her she was in danger of losing it; but I couldn't, without shouting over this fellow's head, so waited until we got out; and then, when I managed to get to her, the brooch was gone. Later, I remembered this—fellow—and looking round the lobby, saw him in a corner, apparently concealing something about his person. So I spoke to you about it."
P. Sybarite's face settled into grim lines. "Shaynon," he said slowly, without visible temper, "this won't get you anything but trouble. Remember that, when I come to pay you out—unless you'll have the grace to retract here and now."
As if he had not heard, Shaynon deliberately produced a gold case, supplied himself with a cigarette, and lighted it.
"Meanin', I take it," the detective interpolated, "you plead not guilty?"
P. Sybarite nodded curtly. "It's a lie, out of whole cloth," he declared. "You've only to search me. I'm not strong for that—mind—and I'm going to make the lot of you smart for this indignity; but I'm perfectly willing to prove my innocence now, by letting you search me, so long as it affords me an earlier opportunity to catch Mister Shaynon when he hasn't got you to protect him."
"That's big talk," commended the detective, apparently a little prepossessed; "and it's all to the good if you can back it up." He rose. "You don't mind my going through your pockets—sure?"
"Go ahead," P. Sybarite told him shortly.
"To save time," Shaynon suggested dispassionately, "you might explore his coat-tail pockets first. It was there that I saw him put away the brooch."
Nervously in his indignation, P. Sybarite caught his coat-tails from beneath his Inverness, dragged them round in front of him, and fumbling, found a pocket.
Groping therein, his fingers brushed something strange to him—a small, hard, and irregular body which, escaping his clutches, fell with a soft thud to the carpet at his feet.
Transfixed, he stared down, and gulped with horror, shaken by a sensation little short of nausea, as he recognised in the object—a bar of yellow metal studded with winking brilliants of considerable size—the brooch described by Shaynon.
With a noncommittal grunt, the detective stooped and retrieved this damning bit of evidence, while the manager moved quickly to his side, to inspect the find. And P. Sybarite looked up with blank eyes in a pallid, wizened face in time to see Shaynon bare his teeth—his lips curling back in a manner peculiarly wolfish and irritating—and snarl a mirthless laugh.
It was something inopportune; the man could have done no better than keep his peace; left to himself P. Sybarite would in all probability have floundered and blustered and committed himself inextricably in a multitude of hasty and ill-considered protestations.
But that laugh was as good as a douche of cold water in his face. He came abruptly to his senses; saw clearly how this thing had come to pass: the temptation of the loose brooch to Shaynon's fingers itching for revenge, while they stood so near together in the elevator, the opportunity grasped with the avidity of low cunning, the brooch transferred, under cover of the crush, to the coat-tail pocket.
Mute in this limpid comprehension of the circumstances, he sobered thoroughly from sickening consternation; remained in his heart a foul sediment of deadly hatred for Shaynon; to whom he nodded with a significance that wiped the grimace from the man's face as with a sponge. Something clearly akin to fear informed Shaynon's eyes. He sat forward with an uneasy glance at the door.
And then P. Sybarite smiled sunnily in the face of the detective.
"Caught with the goods on, eh?" he chirped.
"Well," growled the man, dashed. "Now, what do you think?"
"I'm every bit as much surprised as you are," P. Sybarite confessed. "Come now—be fair to me—own up: you didn't expect to see that—did you?"
The detective hesitated. "Well," he grudged, "you did have me goin' for a minute—you were so damn' cock-sure—and it certainly is pretty slick work for an amateur."
"You think I'm an amateur—eh?"
"I guess I know every map in the Rogues' Gallery as well's the palm of my hand!"
"And mine is not among them?" P. Sybarite insisted triumphantly.
The detective grunted disdain of this inconclusive argument: "You all've got to begin. It'll be there to-morrow, all right."
"It looks bad, eh—not?" the manager questioned, his predacious eyes fixed greedily upon the trinket.
"You think so?" P. Sybarite purposefully misinterpreted. "Let me see."
Before the detective could withdraw, P. Sybarite caught the brooch from his fingers.
"Bad?" he mused aloud, examining it closely. "Phony? Perhaps it is. Looks like Article de Paris to me. See what you think."
He returned the trinket indifferently.
"Nonsense!" Shaynon interposed incisively. "Mrs. Strone's not that kind."
"Shut up!" snapped P. Sybarite. "What do you know about it? You've lied yourself out of court already."
A transitory expression of bewilderment clouded Shaynon's eyes.
"I'm no judge," the detective announced doubtfully.
"It makes no difference," Shaynon insisted. "Theft's theft!"
"It makes a deal of difference whether it's grand or petit larceny," P. Sybarite flashed—"a difference almost as wide and deep as that which yawns between attempted and successful wife-murder, Mr. Shaynon!"
His jaw dropped and a look of stupefying terror stamped itself upon Shaynon's face.
It was the turn of P. Sybarite to laugh.
"Well?" he demanded cuttingly. "Are you ready to come to the station-house and make a charge against me? I'll go peaceful as a lamb with the kind cop, if by so doing I can take you with me. But if I do, believe me, you'll never get out without a bondsman."
Shaynon recollected himself with visible effort.
"The man 's crazy," he muttered sickishly, rising. "I don't know what he 's talking about. Arrest him—take him to the station-house—why don't you?"
"Who'll make the charge?" asked the detective, eyeing Shaynon without favour.
"Not Bayard Shaynon!" P. Sybarite asseverated.
"It's not my brooch," Shaynon asserted defensively.
"You saw him take it," the detective persisted.
"No—I didn't; I suspected him. It's you who found the brooch on him, and it's your duty to make the charge."
"You're one grand little lightning-change-of-heart-artist—gotta slip it to you for that," the detective observed truculently. "Now, lis'n: I don't make no charge—"
"Any employee of the establishment will do as well, for my purpose," P. Sybarite cut in. "Come, Mr. Manager! How about you? Mr. Shaynon declines; your detective has no stomach for the job. Suppose you take on the dirty work—kind permission of Bayard Shaynon, Esquire. I don't care, so long as I get my grounds for suit against the Bizarre."
The manager spread out expostulatory palms. "Me, I have nossing whatever to do with the matter," he protested. "To me it would seem Mrs. Strone should make the charge."
"Well?" mumbled the detective of Shaynon. "How aboutcha?"
"Wait," mumbled Shaynon, moving toward the door. "I'll fetch Mrs. Strone."
"Don't go without saying good-bye," P. Sybarite admonished him severely. "It isn't pretty manners."
The door slammed tempestuously, and the little man chuckled with an affectation of ease to which he was entirely a stranger: ceaselessly his mind was engaged with the problem of this trumped-up charge of Shaynon's.
Was simple jealousy and resentment, a desire to "get even," the whole explanation?
Or was there something of an uglier complexion at the bottom of the affair?
His head buzzed with doubts and suspicions, and with misgivings on Marian's behalf but indifferently mitigated by the reflection that, at worst, the girl had escaped unhindered and alone in her private car. By now she ought to be safe at the Plaza....
"He won't be back," P. Sybarite observed generally to detective and manager; and sat him down serenely.
"You feel pretty sure about that?" the detective asked.
"Wait and see."
Bending forward, the little man examined the gilt clock on the manager's desk. "Twenty minutes past four," he announced: "I give you ten minutes to find some one to make a charge against me—Shaynon, Mrs. What's-her-name, or either of yourselves, if you like the job. If you fail to produce a complainant by half-past four precisely, out of here I go—and I'm sorry for the man who tries to stop me."
The detective took a chair, crossed his legs, and produced a cigar which he began to trim with tender care. The manager, anxiously pacing the floor, after another moment or so paused at the door, fidgeted, jerked it open, and with a muffled "Pardon!" disappeared—presumably in search of Shaynon.
Striking a match, the detective puffed his cigar aglow. Over its tip his small eyes twinkled at P. Sybarite.
"Maybe you're a gentleman crook, and maybe not," he returned with fine impartiality. "But you're all there, son, with the tongue action. You got me still goin' round in circles. Damn 'f I know yet what to think."
"Well, if that's your trouble," P. Sybarite told him coolly, "this is your cue to squat on your haunches, scratch your left ear with your hind leg, and gaze up into my face with an intelligent expression in your great brown eyes."
"I'll do better 'n that," chuckled the man. "Have a cigar."
"Thank you," said P. Sybarite politely, accepting the peace offering. "All I need now is a match: I acknowledge the habit."
The match supplied, he smoked in silence.
Four minutes passed, by the clock: no sign of the manager, Shaynon, or Mrs. Strone.
"Story?" the detective suggested at length.
"Plant," retorted P. Sybarite as tersely.
"You mean he salted you?"
"In the elevator, of course."
"It come to me, that was the way of it when he sprung that bunk stuff about you coarsely loading said loot into your coat-tail," admitted the detective. "That didn't sound sensible, even if you did have a skirt to fuss into a cab. The ordinary vest-pocket of commerce would've kept it just as close, besides being more natural—easy to get at. Then the guy was too careful to tip me off not to pinch you until the lady had went—didn't want her name dragged into it.... A fellow in my job's gotta have a lot of imagination," he concluded complacently. "That's why I'm letting you get away with it in this unprofessional manner."
"More human than in line with the best literary precedent, eh?"
"That's me. I seen he was sore when the dame turned him down, too, and started right off wondering if maybe it wasn't a jealousy plant. I seen this sorta thing happen before. Not that I blame him for feeling cut up: that was one swell piece of goods you bundled into numba two-thirty."
P. Sybarite's cigar dropped unheeded from his lips.
"What!" he cried.
The detective started.
"Wasn't that the numba of the lady's cab—two-thirty?"
"Good God!" ejaculated P. Sybarite, jumping up.
"What's hit you?"
"I'm going!" the little man announced fiercely.
"Your time allowance ain't expired by several minutes—"
"To hell with my time allowance! Try to keep me, if you like!"
P. Sybarite strode excitedly to the door and jerked it open. The detective followed him, puffing philosophically.
There was no one in sight in the hall.
"Looks like you got a fine show for a clean getaway," he observed cheerfully between his teeth. "Your friend's beaten it, the boss has ducked the responsibility, and you got me scared to death. Besides—damn 'f I'm going to be the goat that saddles this hash-hut with a suit for damages."
His concluding words were addressed to the horizontal folds of the inverness that streamed from the shoulders of P. Sybarite as he bolted unhindered through the Fifth Avenue doorway.
NEMESIS
"Dolt!... Blockhead!... Imbecile!... Idiot!... Numskull!... Ass!... Simpleton!... Loon!..."
The chill air of early morning wiped the blistering epithets from his lips as he fled like a madman down Fifth Avenue, at every stride wringing from the depths of an embittered bosom new and more virulent terms of vituperation with which to characterize his infatuated stupidity—and finding one and all far too mild. In simple truth, the King's English lacked invective poisonous enough to do justice to his self-contempt.
Deliberately had he permitted himself to be duped, circumvented, over-reached. He had held in his hand a tangible clue to that mystery which had so perplexed him—and had allowed it to be filched away before he could recognise it and shape his course accordingly.
Why had he never for an instant dreamed that the term "two-thirty" could indicate anything but the hour of some otherwise undesignated appointment? Of course it had signified the number of Marian's carriage-check, "230": two hundred and thirty, rolling off the modern tongue, stripped to essentials—thanks to the telephone's abbreviated influence—as, simply, "two-thirty"!
And he had held that check in his hand, had memorised its number and repeated it to Marian, had heard it bawled by the carriage porter, had shouted it himself in reply: never for an instant thinking to connect it with the elder Shaynon's parting admonition to the gang leader!
If he had ere this entertained any doubts whatever of the ugly grounds for his fears they were now resolved by recognition of Bayard's clumsy ruse to keep him both out of the cab and out of the way, while November and his lieutenants executed their infamous commission....
And all that was now ten—fifteen—twenty minutes old! Marian's car was gone; and if it had not reached the Plaza, the girl was lost, irrevocably lost to the frantic little man with the twinkling red heels and scarlet breeches, sprinting so wildly down Fifth Avenue in the dank, weird dusk that ran before the dawn of that April morning.
Fortunately he hadn't far to run; else he would certainly have been waylaid or overhauled by some policeman of enquiring turn of mind, anxious (in the way of duty) to learn his reason for such extraordinary haste.