Chapter 12

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.

XVIII

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."