As it was, P. Sybarite managed to make his goal in record time without attracting the attention of more than half a dozen wayfarers; all of whom gave him way and went their own with that complete indifference so distinctly Manhattanesque....
He had emerged from the restaurant building to find the street bare of any sort of hirable conveyance and himself in a fret too exacting to consider walking to the Plaza or taking a street-car thither. Nothing less than a taxicab—and that, one with a speed-mad chauffeur—would satisfy his impatient humour.
And indeed, if there were a grain of truth in his suspicions, formless though in a measure they remained, he had not an instant to lose.
But on the way to the Bizarre from Peter Kenny's rooms, some freak of a mind superficially preoccupied had caused him to remark, on the south side of Forty-third Street, immediately east of Sixth Avenue, a long rank of buildings which an utilitarian age had humbled from their once proud estate of private stables to the lowlier degree of quarters for motor vehicles both public and private.
Of these one building boasted the blazing electric announcement: "ALL NIGHT GARAGE."
Into this last P. Sybarite pelted at the top of his speed and pulled up puffing, to stare nervously round a place gloomy, cavernous, and pungent with fragrance of oil, rubber, and gasoline. Here and there lonely electric bulbs made visible somnolent ranks of motor-cars. Out of the shadows behind him, presently, came a voice drawling:
"You certainly do take on like you'd lost a power of trouble."
P. Sybarite whirled round as if stung. The speaker occupied a chair tilted back against the wall, his feet on the rungs, a cigarette smouldering between his lips in open contempt of the regulations of the Fire Department and all other admonitions of ordinary common-sense.
"What can I do for you?" he resumed, nothing about him stirring save eyes that twinkled as they travelled from head to foot of the odd and striking figure P. Sybarite presented as Beelzebub, Knight Errant.
"Taxi!" the little man panted vociferously.
The other yawned and stretched. "It can't be done," he admitted fairly. "They ain't no such animal on the premises."
With a gesture P. Sybarite singled out the nearest car.
"What's that?" he demanded angrily.
Shading his eyes, the man examined it with growing wonder which presently found expression: "As I live, it's an autymobeel!"
"Damn your sense of humour!" stormed P. Sybarite. "What's the matter with that car?"
"As man to man—nothing."
"Why can't I have it?"
"Ten dollars an hour—"
"I'll take it."
"But you asked for a taxi," grumbled the man, rising to press a button. Whereupon a bell shrilled somewhere in the dark backwards of the establishment. "Deposit...?" he suggested, turning back.
P. Sybarite disbursed a golden double-eagle; and to the operator who, roused by the bell, presently drifted out of the shadows, gaping and rubbing his eyes, he promised a liberal tip for haste.
In two minutes he was rolling out of the garage, ensconced in the body of a luxurious and high-powered touring machine which he strongly suspected to be somebody's private car lawlessly farmed out while its owner slept.
The twilight was now stronger, if still dull and as cold as the air it coloured, rendering P. Sybarite grateful for Peter Kenny's inverness as the car surged spiritedly up the deserted avenue, its disdain for speed regulations ignored by the string of yawning peg-post cops—almost the only human beings in sight.
Town was indeed deep sunk in lethargy at that small hour; the traditional milk-wagon itself seemed to have been caught napping. With one consent residence and shop and sky-scraping hotel blinked apathetically at the flying car; then once more turned and slept. Even the Bizarre had forgotten P. Sybarite—showed at least no sign of recognition as he scurried past.
A curious sense of illusion troubled the little man. The glamour of the night was gone and with it all that had lent semblance of plausibility to his incredible career; daylight forced all back into confused and distorted perspective, like the pageant of some fantastic and disordered dream uncertainly recalled long hours after waking.
As for himself, in his absurd attire and bound upon his ambiguous errand, he was all out of the picture—horribly suggestive of an addled sparrow who had stayed up all night on purpose to cheat some legitimately early bird out of a chimerical first worm....
Self-conscious and ill at ease, he presented himself to the amused inspection of the night force in the office of the Plaza, made his halting enquiry, and received the discounted assurance that Miss Blessington, though a known and valued patron of the house, was not then its guest.
Convinced, as he had been from the moment that the words "two-thirty," falling from the lips of the Bizarre's house detective, had made him alive to his terrible oversight, that this would be the outcome at the Plaza, he turned away, sobered, outwitted, and miserably at a loss to guess what next to do.
Gloomily he paused with a hand on the open door of his car, thoughts profoundly disturbed and unsettled, for so long that the operator grew restless.
"Where next, sir?" he asked.
"Wait," said P. Sybarite in a manner of abstraction that did him no injustice; and entering the car, mechanically shut the door and sat down, permitting his gaze to range absently among the dusky distances of Central Park; where through the netted, leafless branches, the lamps that march the winding pathways glimmered like a hundred tiny moons of gold lost in some vast purple well....
Should he appeal to the police? His solicitude for the girl forbade him such recourse save as a last resort. Publicity must be avoided until the time when, all else having failed, it alone held out some little promise of assistance.
But—adrift and blind upon uncharted seas of uncertainty!—what to do?
Suddenly it became plain to him that if in truth it was with her as he feared, at least two persons knew what had become of the girl—two persons aside from himself and her hired kidnappers: Brian Shaynon and Bayard, his son.
From them alone authoritative information might be extracted, by ruse or wile or downright intimidation, eked out with effrontery, a stout heart, and perhaps a little luck.
A baleful light informing his eyes, an ominous expression settling about his mouth, he gave the operator the address of Shaynon's town-house; and as the car slipped away from the hotel was sensible of keen regret that he had left at Peter Kenny's, what time he changed his clothing, the pistol given him by Mrs. Jefferson Inche, together with the greater part of his fortuitous fortune—neither firearms nor large amounts of money seeming polite additions to one's costume for a dance....
In five minutes the car drew up in front of one of those few old-fashioned, brownstone, English-basement residences which to-day survive on Fifth Avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, elbowed, shouldered, and frowned down upon by beetling hives of trade.
At all of its wide, old-style windows, ruffled shades of straw-coloured silk were drawn. One sign alone held out any promise that all within were not deep in slumber: the outer front doors were not closed. Upon the frosted glass panels of the inner doors a dim light cast a sickly yellow stain.
Laying hold of an obsolete bell-pull, P. Sybarite yanked it with a spirit in tune with his temper. Immediately, and considerably to his surprise, the doors were thrown open and on the threshold a butler showed him a face of age, grey with the strain of a sleepless night, and drawn and set with bleary eyes.
"Mr. Shaynon?" the little man demanded sharply.
"W'ich Mr. Shaynon, sir?" enquired the butler, too weary to betray surprise—did he feel any—at this ill-timed call.
"Either—I don't care which."
"Mr. Bayard Shaynon 'as just left—not five minutes ago, sir."
"Left for where?"
"His apartments, I presume, sir."
"Then I'll see Mr. Brian Shaynon."
The butler's body filled the doorway. Nor did he offer to budge.
"I'm afraid, sir, Mr. Shaynon is 'ardly likely to see any one at this hour."
"He'll see me," replied P. Sybarite grimly. "He hasn't gone to bed, I gather?"
"Not yet, sir; but 'e's goin' immediate'."
"Very well. You may as well let me in."
Suspicious but impressed, the servant shuffled aside, and P. Sybarite brushed past him into the hallway.
"Where is he?"
"If you'll give me your nime, sir, I'll tell him you're 'ere."
P. Sybarite hesitated. He was in anything but the mood for joking, yet a certain dour humour in the jest caught his fancy and persuaded him against his better judgment.
"Nemesis," he said briefly.
"Mr.—name—what? Beg pardon, sir!"
"Nem-e-sis," P. Sybarite articulated distinctly. "And don't Mister it. He'll understand."
"Thenk you," muttered the servant blankly; and turned.
"If he doesn't—tell him it's the gentleman who was not masked at the Bizarre to-night."
"Very good, sir."
The man moved off toward the foot of a broad, shallow staircase at the back of the hall.
On impulse, P. Sybarite strode after him.
"On second thoughts, you needn't announce me. I'll go up with you."
"I'm afraid I can't permit that, sir," observed the butler, horrified.
"Afraid you'll have to."
And P. Sybarite would have pushed past, but the man with a quick and frightened movement of agility uncommon in one of his age and bulk put himself in the way.
"Please, sir!" he begged. "If I was to permit that, sir, it might cost me my position."
"Well—"
P. Sybarite drew back, relenting.
But at this juncture, from a point directly over their heads, the voice of Brian Shaynon himself interrupted them.
"Who is that, Soames?" he called impatiently, without making himself immediately visible. "Has Mr. Bayard returned?"
"No, sir," the butler called, distressed. "It's—it's a person, sir—insists on seein' you—says 'is nime's Nemmysis."
"What!"
"He has it right—Nemesis," P. Sybarite replied incisively. "And you may as well see me now, whether you want to or not. Sooner or later you'll have to!"
There was a sound of heavy, dragging footsteps on the upper landing, and Brian Shaynon showed himself at the head of the stairs; now without his furred great-coat, but still in the evening dress of elderly Respectability—Respectability sadly rumpled and maltreated, the white shield of his bosom no longer lustrous and immaculate, his tie twisted wildly beneath one ear, his collar unbuttoned, as though wrenched from its fastenings in a moment of fury. These things apart, he had within the hour aged ten years in the flesh: gone the proud flush of his bewhiskered gills, in its place leaden pallor; and gone the quick, choleric fire from eyes now smouldering, dull and all but lifeless....
He stood peering down, with an obvious lack of recognition that hinted at failing sight.
"I don't seem to know you," he said slowly, with a weary shake of his head; "and it's most inopportune—the hour. I fear you must excuse me."
"That can't be," P. Sybarite returned. "I've business with you—important. Perhaps you didn't catch the name I gave your butler—Nemesis."
"Nemesis?" Shaynon repeated vacantly. He staggered and descended a step before a groping hand checked him on the baluster-rail. "Nemesis! Is this an untimely joke of some sort, sir?"
His accents quavered querulously; and P. Sybarite with a flash of scorn put his unnatural condition down to drink.
"Far from it," he retorted ruthlessly. "The cat's out, my friend—your bag lean and flapping emptiness! What," he demanded sternly—"what have you done with Marian Blessington?"
"Mar—Marian?" the old voice iterated. "Why, she"—the man pulled himself together with a determined effort—"she's in her room, of course. Where should she be?"
"Is that true?" P. Sybarite demanded of the butler in a manner so peremptory that the truth slipped out before the fellow realised it.
"Miss Marian 'asn't returned as yet from the ball," he whispered. "'E—'e's not quite 'imself, sir. 'E's 'ad a bit of a shock, as one might s'y. I'd go easy on 'im, if you'll take a word from me."
But P. Sybarite traversed his advice without an instant's consideration.
"Brian Shaynon," he called, "you lie! The police have caught Red November; they'll worm the truth out of him within twenty minutes, if I don't get it from you now. The game's up. Come! What have you done with the girl?"
For all answer, a low cry, like the plaint of a broken-hearted child, issued from the leaden, writhen lips of the old man.
And while he stared in wonder, Brian Shaynon seemed suddenly to lose the strength of his limbs. His legs shook beneath him as with a palsy; and then, knees buckling, he tottered and plunged headlong from top to bottom of the staircase.
NOVEMBER
"E's gone," the butler announced.
Kneeling beside the inert body of Brian Shaynon, where it had lodged on a broad, low landing three steps from the foot of the staircase, he turned up to P. Sybarite fishy, unemotional eyes in a pasty fat face.
The little man said nothing.
Resting a hand on the newel-post, he looked down unmoved upon the mortal wreck of him who had been his life's bane. Brian Shaynon lay in death without majesty; a crumpled and dishevelled ruin of flesh and clothing, its very insentience suggesting to the morbid fancy of the little Irishman something foul and obscene. Brian Shaynon living had been to him a sight less intolerable....
"Dead," the butler affirmed, releasing the pulseless leaden wrist, and rising. "I presume I'd best call 'is doctor, 'adn't I, sir?"
P. Sybarite nodded indifferently. Profound thought enwrapped him like a mantle.
The butler lingered, the seals of professional reticence broken by this strange and awful accident. But there was no real emotion in his temper—only curiosity, self-interest, the impulse of loquacity.
"Stroke," he observed thoughtfully, fingering his pendulous jowls and staring; "that's w'at it was—a stroke, like. He'd 'ad a bit of shock before you come in, sir."
"Yes?" murmured P. Sybarite absently.
"Yes, sir; a bit of a shock, owin' to 'is 'avin' quarrelled with Mr. Bayard, sir."
"Oh!" P. Sybarite roused. "Quarrelled with his son, you say?"
"Yes, sir; somethin' dreadful they was goin' on. 'E couldn't 'ave got over it when you come. Mr. Bayard 'adn't been gone, not more than five minutes, sir."
P. Sybarite interrogated with his eyes alone.
"It was a bit odd, come to think of it—the 'ole affair, sir. Must 'ave been over an hour ago, Mr. Shaynon 'ere, 'e come 'ome alone from the dance—I see you must've been there yourself, sir, if I m'y mike so bold as to tike notice of your costume. Very fawncy it is, too, sir—becomes your style 'andsome, it does, sir."
"Never mind me. What happened when Mr. Shaynon came home?"
"W'y, 'e 'adn't more than got inside the 'ouse, sir, w'en a lidy called on 'im—a lidy as I 'ad never set eyes on before, sime as in your caise, sir; although I wouldn't 'ave you think I mean she was of your clawss, sir. 'Ardly. Properly speakin', she wasn't a lidy at all—but a woman. I mean to s'y, a bit flash."
"I understand you. Go on."
"Well, sir, I didn't 'ave a chance to over'ear w'at 'er business were, but it seemed to work on Mr. Brian there somethin' 'orrid. They was closeted in the library upstairs not more than twenty minutes, and then she went, and 'e rung for me and to bring 'im brandy and not delay about it. 'E nearly emptied the decanter, too, before Mr. Bayard got 'ere. And the minute they come together, it was 'ammer-and-tongs. 'Ot and 'eavy they 'ad it for upwards of an hour, be'ind closed doors, sime as like with the lidy. But w'en Mr. Bayard, 'e come to go, sir, the old gent follows 'im to the landin'—just where 'e was when he spoke to you, sir, before 'e 'ad the stroke—and 'e says to 'im, says 'e: 'Remember, I cawst you off. Don't come to me for nothin' after this. Don't ever you darken my doorstep ag'in,' 'e says. And Mr. Bayard, sir, 'e ups and laughs fiendish in 'is own father's fice. 'You've got another guess comin',' he mocks 'im open': 'you're in this business as deep as me,' 'e says, 'and if you cross me, I'll double-cross you, s'elp me Gawd, and in the newspapers, too.' And with that, out 'e went in a rige."
"So that was the way of it!" P. Sybarite commented dully.
So Mrs. Inche had sought the father to revenge herself upon the son; and with this outcome—Bayard unharmed, his father dead!...
"That was hexactly 'ow it 'appened, sir," affirmed the butler, rubbing his fat old hands.
"You 're wasting time. Go telephone the doctor," said P. Sybarite suddenly.
"Right you are, sir. But there's no real 'urry. He's dead as Guy Fawkes, and no doctor livin'—"
"Nevertheless, telephone—if you don't want to get into trouble."
"Quite right, sir. I'll do so at once."
Turning, the man waddled off, disappearing toward the back of the house.
Alone, with neither hesitation nor a single backward glance at the body of his ancient enemy, the little man swung about, walked quietly to the front door, and as quietly let himself out.
He was of no mind to be called as a witness at a possible inquest; and business of far greater import urged him, the real business of his life, this: to discover the whereabouts of Marian Blessington with the least avoidable delay.
His first cast having failed, he must now try to draw the son; and, if possible, before the latter learned of his father's death.
Not until about to re-enter the car did he remember he had neglected to secure Bayard's address from the butler. But he wouldn't turn back; it could be ascertained elsewhere; Peter Kenny would either know it or know where to get it.
To Peter's rooms he must of necessity return first of all; for it would not much longer prove possible to go up and down and to and fro upon Manhattan Island in a black silk dress-coat and flaming scarlet small-clothes; to change was imperative.
"The Monastery," he directed, settling back into his seat.
It was now clear daylight: a morning of bright promise breaking over a Town much livelier than it had been half an hour or so ago, with more citizens abroad, some striding briskly to the day's work, some trudging wearily from the night's.
Over all brooded still that effect of illusion: this might have been, almost, a foreign city into whose streets he was adventuring for the first time, so changed and strange seemed everything in his eyes.
P. Sybarite himself felt old and worn and tired, and with a thoughtful finger rubbed an over-night growth of stubble upon his chin....
"Wait," he told the driver, on alighting at the Monastery; "I'm keeping you."
Money passed between them—more than enough to render his wishes inviolable.
A dull-eyed hallboy recognised and let him in, sullenly passing him on to the elevator; but as that last was on the point of taking flight to Peter Kenny's door, it hesitated; and the operator, with his hand on the half-closed gate, shot it open again instead of shut.
A Western Union messenger-boy, not over forty years tired, was being admitted at the street door. The colloquy there was distinctly audible:
"Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"
"'Leventh floor. Hurry up—don't keep the elevator waitin'."
"Ah—ferget it!"
Whistling softly, the man with the yellow envelope ambled nonchalantly into the cage; fixed the operator with a truculent stare, and demanded the eleventh floor.
Now Peter Kenny's rooms were on the twelfth....
The telegram with its sprawling endorsement in ink, "Mr. Bayard Shaynon, Monastery Apartments," was for several moments within two feet of P. Sybarite's nose.
It was, indeed, anything but easy to keep from pouncing upon that wretched messenger, ravishing him of the envelope (which he was now employing artfully to split a whistle into two equal portions—and favour to none), and making off with it before the gate of the elevator could close.
Impossible to conjecture what intimate connection it might not have with the disappearance of Marian Blessington, what a flood of light it might not loose upon that dark intrigue!
Indeed, the speculations this circumstance set awhirl in P. Sybarite's weary head were so many and absorbing that he forgot altogether to be surprised or gratified by the favour of Kismet which had caused their paths to cross at precisely that instant, as if solely that he might be informed of Bayard Shaynon's abode....
"What door?" demanded Western Union as he left the cage at the eleventh floor.
"Right across the hall."
The gate clanged, the cage mounted to the next floor, and P. Sybarite got out, requiring no direction: for Peter Kenny's door was immediately above Bayard Shaynon's.
As he touched the bell-button for the benefit of the elevator man—but for his own, failed to press it home—the grumble of the door-bell below could be heard faintly through muffling fire-brick walls.
The grumble persisted long after the elevator had dropped back to the eleventh floor.
And presently the voice of Western Union was lifted in sour expostulation:
"Sa-ay, whatcha s'pose 's th' matta wid dis guy? I' been ringin' haffanour!"
"That's funny," commented the elevator boy: "he came in only about ten minutes ago."
"Yuh wuddn' think he cud pass away 's quick 's all that—wuddja?"
"Ah, I dunno. Mebbe he had a bun on when he come in. Gen'ly has. I didn' notice."
"Well, th' way he must be poundin' his ear now—notta hear dis racket—yud think he was trainin' for a Rip van Winkle Marathon."
Pause—made audible by the pertinacious bell, grinding away like a dentist's drill in a vacant tooth....
"Waitin' here all day won't get me nothin'. Here, what's th' matta wid you signin' for't?"
"G'wan. Sign it yourself 'nd stick unda the door, whydoncha?"
Second pause—the bell boring on, but more faintheartedly, as if doubting whether it ever would reach that nerve.
Finally Western Union gave it up.
"A'right. Guess I will."
Clang of the gate: whine of the descending car: silence....
Softly P. Sybarite tiptoed down the stairs.
Disappointment, however, lay in ambush for him at his nefarious goal: evidently Western Union had been punctilious about his duty; not even so much as the tip of a corner of yellow envelope peeped from under the door.
Reckless in exasperation, P. Sybarite first wasted time educing a series of short, sharp barks from the bell—a peculiarly irritating noise, calculated (one would think) to rouse the dead—then tried the door and, finding it fast, in the end knelt and bent an ear to the keyhole, listening....
Not a sound: silence of the grave; the house deathly still. He could hear his own heart drumming; but, from Shaynon's flat, nothing....
Or—was that the creak of a board beneath a stealthy footstep?
If so, it wasn't repeated....
Again, could it be possible his ears did actually detect a sound of human respiration through the keyhole? Was Bayard Shaynon just the other side of that inch-wide pressed-steel barrier, the fire-proof door, cowering in throes of some paralysing fright, afraid to answer the summons?...
If so, why? What did he fear? The police, perhaps? And if so—why? What crime had become his so to unman him that he dared not open and put his fate to the test?...
Quickly there took shape in the imagination of the little Irishman a hideous vision of mortal Fear, wild-eyed, white-lipped, and all a-tremble, skulking in panic only a little beyond his reach: a fancy that so worked upon his nerves that he himself seemed infected with its shuddering dread, and thought to feel the fine hairs a-crawl on his neck and scalp and his flesh a-creep.
When at length he rose and drew away it was with all stealth, as though he too moved in the shadow of awful terror bred of a nameless crime....
Once more at Peter Kenny's door, his diffident fingers evoked from the bell but a single chirp—a sound that would by no means have gained him admission had Peter not been sitting up in bed, reading to while away the ache of his wound.
But it was ordered so; Peter was quick to answer the door; and P. Sybarite, pulling himself together (now that he had audience critical of his demeanour) walked in with a very tolerable swagger—with a careless, good-humoured nod for his host and a quick look round the room to make certain they were alone.
"Doctor been?"
"Oh—an hour ago."
"And—?"
"Says I'm all right if blood-poisoning doesn't set in."
Shutting the door, Peter grinned not altogether happily. "That's one of the most fetching features of the new code of medical ethics, you know—complete confidence inspired in patient by utter frankness on doctor's part—and all that!...
"'An insignificant puncture,'" he mimicked: "'you'll be right as rain in a week—unless the wound decides to gangrene—it's apt to, all on its own, 'spite of anything we can do—in which case we'll have to amputate your body to prevent infection spreading to your head.'...
"Well?" he wound up almost gaily. "What luck?"
"The worst. Where are my rags? I've got to change and run. Also—while you're up"—Peter had just dropped into a chair—"you might be good enough to mix me a Scotch and soda."
Whereupon, while changing his clothes, and between breaths and gulps of whiskey-and-water, P. Sybarite delivered himself of an abbreviated summary of what had happened at the ball and after.
"But why," he wound up peevishly—"why didn't you tell me Bayard Shaynon lived in the flat below you?"
"Didn't occur to me; and if you ask me, I don't see why it should interest you now."
"Because," said P. Sybarite quietly, "I'm going down there and break in as soon as I'm dressed fit to go to jail."
"In the sacred name of Insanity—!"
"If he's out, I'll steal that telegram and find out whether it has any bearing on the case. If it hasn't, I'll sift every inch of the room for a suspicion of a leading clue."
"But if he's in—?"
"I'll take my chances," said P. Sybarite with grim brevity.
"Unarmed?"
"Not if I know the nature of the brute." He stood up, fully dressed but for his shoes. "Now—my gun, please."
"Top drawer of the buffet there. How are you going? Fire escape?"
"Where is it?" P. Sybarite asked as he possessed himself of his weapon.
"Half a minute." Peter Kenny held out his hand. "Let's have a look at that gun—will you?"
"What for?"
"One of those newfangled automatic pistols—isn't it? I 've never seen one before."
"But—Great Scott!—you've had this here—"
"I know, but I didn't pay much attention—thinking of other things—"
"But you're delaying me—"
"Mean to," said Peter Kenny purposefully; and without giving P. Sybarite the least hint of his intention, suddenly imprisoned his wrist, grabbed the weapon by the barrel, and took it to himself—with the greater ease since the other neither understood nor attempted resistance.
"What in blazes—?" he enquired, puzzled, watching Peter turn the weapon over curiously in his hands. "I should think—"
"There!" Peter interrupted placidly, withdrawing the magazine clip from its slot in the butt and returning the now harmless mechanism. "Now run along. Fire-escape's outside the far window in the bedroom, yonder."
"What the deuce! What's the matter with you? Hand over that clip. What good is this gun without it?"
"For your present purpose, it's better than if loaded," Peter asserted complacently. "For purposes of intimidation—which is all you want of it—grand! And it can't go off by accident and make you an unintentional murderer."
P. Sybarite's jaw dropped and his eyes opened; but after an instant, he nodded in entire agreement.
"That's a head you have on your shoulders, boy!" said he. "As for mine, I've a notion that it has never really jelled."
He turned toward the bedroom, but paused.
"Only—why not say what you want? Why these roundabout ways to your purpose? Have you, by any chance, been educated for the bar?"
"That's the explanation," laughed Peter. "I'm to be admitted to practise next year. Meanwhile, circumlocution's my specialty."
"It is!" said P. Sybarite with conviction. "Well ... back in five minutes...."
Of all his weird adventures, this latest pleased him least. It's one thing to take chances under cover of night when your heart is light, your pockets heavy, and wine is buzzing wantonly within your head: but another thing altogether to burglarise your enemy's apartments via the fire-escape, in broad daylight, and cold-sober. For by now the light was clear and strong, in the open.
Yet to his relief he found no more than limpid twilight in the cramped and shadowed well down which zigzagged the fire-escape; while the opposite wall of the adjoining building ran blind from earth to roof; giving comfortable assurance that none could spy upon him save from the Monastery windows.
"One thing more"—Peter Kenny came to the window to advise, as P. Sybarite scrambled out upon the gridiron platform—"Shaynon's flat isn't arranged like mine. He's better off than I am, you know—can afford more elbow-room. I'm not sure, but I think you'll break in—if at all—by the dining-room window.... So long. Good luck!"
Clasping hands, they exchanged an anxious smile before P. Sybarite began his cautious descent.
Not that he found it difficult; the Monastery fire-escape was a series of steep flights of iron steps, instead of the primitive vertical ladder of round iron rungs in more general use. There was even a guard-rail at the outside of each flight. Consequently, P. Sybarite gained the eleventh floor platform very readily.
But there he held up a long instant, dashed to discover his task made facile rather than obstructed.
The window was wide open, to force whose latch he had thoughtfully provided himself with a fruit knife from Peter Kenny's buffet. Within was gloom and stillness absolute—the one rendered the more opaque by heavy velvet hangings, shutting out the light; the other with a quality individual and, as P. Sybarite took it, somehow intimidating—too complete in its promise.
And so for a darkly dubious moment the little man hung back. To his quick Celtic instinct there seemed to inhere, in that open, dark, and silent window, something as sinister and repellent as the inscrutable, soundless menace of a revolver presented to one's head.
Momentarily, indeed, he experienced anew something of that odd terror, unreasoning and inexcusable, that had assailed him some time since, outside the hall-door to this abode of enigmatic and uncanny quiet....
But at length, shaking his head impatiently—as if to rid it of its pestering swarm of fancies—he stepped noiselessly, in his unshod feet, down through the window, cautiously parted the draperies, and advanced into darkness so thick that there might as well have been night outside instead of glowing daybreak.
Then, with eyes becoming accustomed to the change, he made out shapes and masses that first confirmed Peter's surmise as to the nature of the room, and next gave him his bearings.
Over across from the window stood a door, its oblong dimly luminous with light softly shining down the walls of a private hall, from a point some distance to the left of the opening.
Rounding a dining-table, P. Sybarite stole softly on, and paused, listening, just within the threshold.
From some uncertain quarter—presumably the lighted room—he could hear a sound, very slight: so slight that it seemed guarded, but none the less unmistakable: the hiss of carbonated water squirting from a syphon into a glass.
Ceasing, a short wait followed and then a faint "Aah!" of satisfaction, with the thump of a glass set down upon some hard surface.
And at once, before P. Sybarite could by any means reconcile these noises with the summons at the front door that had been ignored within the quarter-hour, soft footfalls became audible in the private hall, shuffling toward the dining-room.
Instinctively the little man drew back (regretful now that he had yielded to Peter's prejudice against loaded pistols) retreating sideways along the wall until he had put the bulk of a massive buffet between him and the door; and, in the small space between that article of furniture and the corner of the room, waited with every nerve taut and muscle tense, in full anticipation of incontinent detection.
In line with these apprehensions, the footsteps came no further than the dining-room door; then died out for what seemed full two minutes—a pause as illegible to his understanding as their manifest stealth.
Why need Shaynon take such elaborate precautions against noises in his own lodgings?
Suddenly, and more confidently, the footfalls turned into the dining-room; and without glance right or left a man strode directly to the open window. There for an instant he delayed with an eye to the crack between the curtains; then, reassured, thrust one aside and stepped into the embrasure, there to linger with his head out of the window, intently reconnoitering, long enough to enable P. Sybarite to make an amazing discovery: the man was not Bayard Shaynon.
In silhouette against the light, his slight and supple form was unmistakable to one who had seen it before, even though his face was disfigured by a scant black visor across his eyes and the bridge of his nose.
He was Red November.
He was Red November.
He was Red November.
What P. Sybarite would have done had he been armed is problematical. What he did was remain moveless, even as he was breathless and powerless, but for his naked hands, either for offence or defence. For that November was armed was as unquestionable as his mastery of the long-barrelled revolver of blue steel (favoured by gunmen of the underworld) which he held at poise all the while he carefully surveyed his line of retreat.
At length, releasing the curtain, the gang leader hopped lightly out upon the grating, and disappeared.
In another breath P. Sybarite himself was at the window. A single glance through the curtains showed the grating untenanted; and boldly poking his head forth, he looked down to see the figure of the gunman, foreshortened unrecognisably, moving down the iron tangle already several flights below, singularly resembling a spider in some extraordinary web.
Incontinently, the little man ran back through the dining-room and down the private hall, abandoning every effort to avoid a noise.
No need now for caution, if his premonition wasn't worthless—if the vengeful spirit of Mrs. Inche had not stopped short of embroiling son with father, but had gone on to the end ominously shadowed forth by the appearance of the gunman in those rooms....
What he saw from the threshold of the lighted room was Bayard Shaynon still in death upon the floor, one temple shattered by a shot fired at close range from a revolver that lay with butt close to his right hand—carefully disposed with evident intent to indicate a case of suicide rather than of murder.
THE SORTIE
At pains not to stir across the threshold, with quick glances P. Sybarite reviewed scrupulously the scene of November's crime.
Eventually his nod indicated a contemptuous conclusion: that it should not prove difficult to convict November on the evidence afforded by the condition of the apartment alone. A most superficial inspection ought to convince anybody, even one prone to precipitate conclusions, that Bayard Shaynon had never died by his own hand.
If November, in depositing the instrument of his crime close to the hand of its victim, had meant to mislead, to create an inference of felo de se, he had ordered all his other actions with a carelessness arguing one of three things: cynical indifference to the actual outcome of his false clue; sublime faith in the stupidity of the police; or a stupidity of his own as crass as that said to be characteristic of the average criminal in all ages.
The rooms, in short, had been most thoroughly if hastily ransacked—in search, P. Sybarite didn't for an instant doubt, of evidence as to the relations between Shaynon and Mrs. Inche calculated to prove incriminating at an inquest; though the little man entertained even less doubt that lust for loot had likewise been a potent motive influencing November.
He found proof enough of this in the turned-out pockets of the murdered man; in the abstraction from the bosom of his shirt of pearl studs which P. Sybarite had noticed there within the hour; in the abraded knuckles of a finger from which a conspicuous solitaire diamond in massive antique setting was missing; in a pigskin bill-fold, empty, ripped, turned inside out, and thrown upon the floor not far from the corpse.
Then, too, in one corner stood a fine old mahogany desk of quaint design and many drawers and pigeonholes, one and all sacked, their contents turned out to litter the floor. In another corner, a curio cabinet had fared as ill. Even bookcases had not been overlooked, and stood with open doors and disordered shelves.
Not, however, with any notion of concerning himself with the assassin's apprehension and punishment did P. Sybarite waste that moment of hasty survey. His eyes were only keen and eager to descry the yellow Western Union message; and when he had looked everywhere else, his glance dropped to his feet and found it there—a torn and crumpled envelope with its enclosure flattened out and apart from it.
This last he snatched up, but the envelope he didn't touch, having been quick to remark the print upon it of a dirty thumb whose counterpart decorated the face of the message as well.
"And a hundred more of 'em, probably," P. Sybarite surmised as to the number of finger marks left by November: "enough to hang him ten times over ... which I hope and pray they don't before I finish with him!"
As for the dead man, he read his epitaph in a phrase, accompanied by a meaning nod toward the disfigured and insentient head.
"It was coming to you—and you got it," said P. Sybarite callously, with never a qualm of shame for the apathy with which he contemplated this second tragedy in the house of Shaynon.
Too much, too long, had he suffered at its hands....
With a shrug, he turned back to the hall door, listened an instant, gently opened it—with his handkerchief wrapped round the polished brass door-knob to guard against clues calculated to involve himself, whether as imputed principal or casual witness after the fact. For he felt no desire to report the crime to the police: let them find it out at their leisure, investigate and take what action they would; P. Sybarite had lost no love for the force that night, and meant to use it only at a pinch—as when, perchance, its services might promise to elicit the information presumably possessed by Red November in regard to the fate of Marian Blessington....
The public hall was empty, dim with the light of a single electric bulb, and still as the chamber of death that lay behind.
Never a shadow moved more silently or more swiftly than P. Sybarite, when he had closed the door, up the steps to Peter Kenny's rooms. Hardly a conceivable sound could be more circumspect than that which his knuckles drummed on the panels of Peter's door. And Peter earned a heartfelt, instant, and ungrudged blessing by opening without delay.
"Well?" he asked, when P. Sybarite—with a gesture enforcing temporary silence—had himself shut the door without making a sound. "Good Lord, man! You look as if you'd seen a ghost."
On the verge of agitated speech P. Sybarite checked to shake an aggrieved head.
"Bromides are grand for the nerves," he observed cuttingly, "but you're too young to need 'em—and I want none now.... Listen to me."
Briefly he told his story.
"Well, but the telegram?" Peter insisted. "Does it help—tell you anything? It's maddening—to think Marian may be in the power of that bloodthirsty—!"
"There you go again!" P. Sybarite complained—"and not two minutes ago I warned you about that habit. Wait: I've had time only to run an eye through this: let me get the sense of it."
Peter peering over his shoulder, the two conned the message in silence: