Chapter 11

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.

"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?"

XVII

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."