Chapter 14

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.

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.

XXI

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:

BAYARD SHAYNON Monastery Apts., W. 43rd, N.Y.C.

Your wire received all preparations made send patient in charge as indicated at convenience legal formalities can wait as you suggest.

HAYNES PRIVATE SANATORIUM.

Blankly Peter Kenny looked at his cousin; with eyes in which deepening understanding mingled with anger as deep, and with profound misgivings as well, P. Sybarite returned his stare.

"It's as plain as the face on you, Peter Kenny. Why, all along I've had an indefinite notion that something of the sort was what they were brewing! Don't you see--'private sanatorium'? What more proof do you need of a plot to railroad Marian to a private institution for the insane? 'Legal formalities can wait as you suggest'--of course! They hadn't had time to cook up the necessary papers, to suborn medical certificates and purchase a commitment paper of some corrupt judge. But what of that?" P. Sybarite demanded, slapping the message furiously. "She was in the way--at large--liable at any time to do something that would put her money forever out of their reach. Therefore she must be put away at once, pending 'legal formalities' to ensure her permanent incarceration!"

"The dogs!" Peter Kenny growled.

"But consider how they've been served out--thunderbolts--justice from the very skies! All except one, and," said P. Sybarite solemnly, "God do so to me and more also if he's alive or outside bars before this sun sets!"

"Who?"

"November!"

"What can you do to him?"

"To begin with, beat him to that damned asylum. Fetch me the suburban telephone directory."

"Telephone directory?"

"Yes!" P. Sybarite raved. "What else? Where is it? And where are your wits?"

"Why, here--"

Turning, Peter took the designated volume from its hook beneath the wall instrument at the very elbow of P. Sybarite.

"I thought," he commented mildly, "you had all _your_ wits about you and could see it."

"Don't be impudent," grumbled P. Sybarite, rapidly thumbing the pages. "Westchester," he muttered, adding: "Oscahana--H--Ha--H-a-d--"

"Are you dotty?"

"Look at that telegram. It's dated from Oscahana: that's somewhere in Westchester, if I'm not mistaken. Yes; here we are: H-a-y--Haynes Private Sanatorium--number, Oscahana one-nine. You call 'em."

"What shall I say?"

"Where the devil's that cartridge clip you took away from me?... Give it here.... And I want my money."

"But," Peter protested in a daze, handing over the clip and watching P. Sybarite rummage in the buffet drawer wherein he had banked his fortune before setting out for the Bizarre--"but what do you want me to--"