Chapter 13

"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.

XIX

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.

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.

XX

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.