Chapter 2

To this P. Sybarite made no response; and George subsided into morose reflections. It irked him sore to remember he had been worsted by the meek little slip of a bookkeeper trotting so quietly at his elbow.

He was a man of his word, was George Bross; not for anything would he have gone back on his promise to keep secret that afternoon's titillating discovery; likewise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the promised treat; withal he was human (after his kind) and since reprisals were not barred by their understanding, he began then and there to ponder the same. One way or another, that day's humiliation must be balanced; else he might never again hold up his head in the company of gentlemen of spirit.

But how to compass this desire, frankly puzzled him. It were cowardly to contemplate knockin' the block off'n P. Sybarite; the disparity of their statures forebade; moreover, George entertained a vexatious suspicion that P. Sybarite's explanation on his recent downfall had not been altogether disingenuous; he didn't quite believe it had been due solely to his own clumsiness and an adventitious foot.

"That sort of thing don't never _happen_," George assured himself privately. "I was outclassed, all right, all right. What I wanna know is: where'd he couple up with the ring-wisdom?"

Repeated if covert glances at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite's face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation of the evening's promised amusement.

Suddenly it was borne in upon the shipping clerk that in the probable arrangement of the proposed party he would be expected to dance attendance upon Miss Violet Prim, leaving P. Sybarite free to devote himself to Miss Lessing. Whereupon George scowled darkly.

"P.S.'s got his nerve with him," he protested privately, "to cop out the one pippin in the house all for his lonely. It's a wonder he wouldn't slip her a chanct to enjoy herself with summon' her own age....

"Not," he admitted ruefully, "that I'd find it healthy to pull any rough stuff with Vi lookin' on. I don't even like to think of myself lampin' any other skirt while Violet's got _her_ wicks trimmed and burnin' bright."

Then he made an end to envy for the time being, and turned his attention to more pressing concerns; but though he pondered with all his might and main, it seemed impossible to excogitate any way to square his account with P. Sybarite. And when, at Thirty-eighth Street, the latter made an excuse to part with George, instead of going home in his company, the shipping clerk was too thoroughly disgusted to question the subterfuge. He was, indeed, a bit relieved; the temporary dissociation promised just so much more time for solitary conspiracy.

Turning west, he was presently prompted by that arch-comedian Destiny (disguised as Thirst) to drop into Clancey's for a shell of beer.

Now in Clancey's George found a crumpled copy of the _Evening Journal_ almost afloat on the high-tide of the dregs-drenched bar. Rescuing the sheet, he smoothed it out, examined (grinning) its daily meed of comics, read every word on the "Sports Page," ploughed through the weekly vaudeville charts, scanned the advertisements, and at length reviewed the news columns with a listless eye.

It may have been the stimulation of his drink, but it was probably nothing more nor less than jealousy that sparked his sluggish imagination as he contemplated a two-column reproduction in coarse half-tone of a photograph entitled "Marian Blessington." Slowly the light dawned upon mental darkness; slowly his grin broadened and became fixed--even as his great scheme for the confusion and confounding of P. Sybarite took shape and matured.

He left Clancey's presently, stepping high, with a mind elate; foretasting victory; convinced that he harboured within him the makings of a devil of a fellow, all the essential qualifications of (not to put _too_ fine a point upon it) a regular wag....

III

THE GLOVE COUNTER

With a feeling of some guilt, becoming in one who stoops to unworthy artifice, P. Sybarite walked slowly on up Broadway a little way, then doubled on his trail, going softly until a swift and stealthy survey westward from the corner of Thirty-eighth Street assured him that George was not skulking thereabouts to spy upon him. Then mending his pace, he held briskly on toward the shopping district.

From afar the clock recently restored to its coign high above unlovely Greeley Square warned him that his hour was fleeting: in twenty minutes it would be six o'clock; at six, sharp, Blessington's would close its doors. Distressed, he scurried on, crossed Thirty-fourth Street, aimed himself courageously for the wide entrance of the department store, battled manfully through the retreating army of feminine shoppers--and gained the glove counter with a good fifteen minutes to spare.

And there he halted, confused and blushing in recognition of circumstances as unpropitious as unforeseen.

These consisted in three girls behind the counter and one customer before it; the latter commanding the attention and services of a fair young woman with a pleasant manner; while of the two disengaged saleswomen, one bold, disdainful brunette was preoccupied with her back hair and prepared mutinously to ignore anything remotely resembling a belated customer whose demands might busy her beyond the closing hour, and the other had a merry eye and a receptive smile for the hesitant little man with the funny clothes and the quaint pink face of embarrassment. In most abject consternation, P. Sybarite turned and fled.

Weathering the end of the glove counter and shaping a course through the aisle that paralleled it, he found himself in a channel of horrors, threatened on one side by a display of most intimate lingerie, belaced and beribboned distractingly, on the other by a long rank of slender and gracious (if stolid) feminine limbs, one and all neatly amputated above their bended knees and bedight in silken hosiery to shame the rainbow; while to right and left, behind these impudent revelations, lurked sirens with shameless eyes and mouths of scarlet mockery.

A cold sweat damped the forehead of P. Sybarite. Inconsistently, his face flamed. He stared fixedly dead ahead and tore through that aisle like a delicate-minded jack-rabbit. He thought giggles were audible in his wake; and ere he could escape found his way barred by Authority and Dignity in one wonderfully frock-coated person.

"You were looking for something?" demanded this menace incarnate, in an awful voice accompanied by a terrible gesture.

P. Sybarite brought up standing, his nose six inches from and his eyes held in fascination to the imitation pearl scarf-pin in the beautiful cravat affected by his interlocutor.

"Gloves--!" he gasped guiltily.

"This way, if you please."

With this, Dignity and Authority clamped an inexorable hand about his upper arm, swung him round, and piloted him gently but ruthlessly back the way he had come, back to the glove counter, where he was planted directly in front of the dashing, dark saleslady with absorbing back hair and the manner of remote hauteur.

"Miss Brady, this gentleman wants to see some gloves."

The eyes of Miss Brady flashed ominously; as plain as print, they said: "Does, does he? Well, leave him to _me_!"

Aloud, she murmured from an incalculable distance: "Oh, ve-ry well!"

A moment later, looking over the customer's head, she added icily: "What kind?"

The floor-walker retired, leaving P. Sybarite a free agent but none the less haunted by a feeling that a suspicious eye was being kept on the small of his back. He stammered something quite inarticulate.

The brune goddess shaped ironic lips:

"Chauffeurs', I presoom?"

A measure of self-possession--akin to the deadly coolness of the cornered rat--returned to the badgered little man.

"No," he said evenly--"ladies', if you please."

Scornfully Miss Brady impaled the back of her head with a lead pencil.

"Other end of the counter, please," she announced. "I don't handle ladies' gloves!"

"I'm sure of that," returned P. Sybarite meekly; left her standing; and presented himself for the inspection of the fair young woman with the pleasant manner, who was now free of her late customer.

She recognised him with surprise, but none the less with a friendly smile.

"Why, Mr. Sybarite--!"

In his hearing, her voice was rarest music. He gulped; stammered "Miss Lessing!" and was stricken dumb by perception of his effrontery.

"Can I do anything for you?"

He breathed in panic: "Gloves--"

"For a lady, Mr. Sybarite?"

He nodded as expressively as any automaton.

"What kind?"

"I--I don't know."

"For day or evening wear?"

He wagged a dismal head: "I don't know."

Amusement touched her eyes and lips so charmingly that he thought of the sea at dawn, rimpled by the morning breeze, gay with the laughter of young sunlight.

"Surely you must!" she insisted.

"No," he contended in stubborn melancholy.

"Oh, I see. You wish to make a present--?"

"I--ah--suppose so," he admitted under pressure--"yes."

"Evening gloves are always acceptable. Does she go often to the theatre?"

"I--don't know."

The least suspicion of perplexed frown knitted the eyebrows of Miss Lessing.

"Well ... is she old or young?"

"I--ah--couldn't say."

"Mr. Sybarite!" said the young woman with decision.

He fixed an apprehensive gaze to hers--which inclined to disapproval, if with reservations.

"Yes, Miss Lessing?"

"Do you really want to buy gloves?"

"No-o...."

"Then what under the sun _do_ you want?"

He noticed suddenly that, however impatient her tone, her eyes were still kindly. Eyes of luminous hazel brown they were, wide open and clear beneath dark and delicate brows; eyes that assorted oddly with her hair of pale, dull gold, rendering her prettiness both individual and distinctive.

Somehow he found himself more at ease.

"Please," he begged humbly, "show me some gloves--any kind--it doesn't matter--and pretend you believe I want to buy 'em. I don't really. I--I only want--ah--word with you before you go home."

If this were impertinence, the girl elected quickly not to resent it. She turned to the shelves behind her, took down a box or two, and opened them for his inspection.

"These are very nice," she suggested quietly.

"I think so, too." He grinned uneasily. "What I want to say is--will you be my guest at the theatre to-night?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand you," she said, replacing the gloves.

"With Miss Prim and George Bross," he amended hastily. "Somebody--a friend--sent me a box for 'Kismet.' I thought--possibly--you might care to go. It--it would give me great pleasure."

Miss Lessing held up another pair of gloves.

"These are three-fifty-nine," she said absently. "Why did you come here to ask me?"

"I--I was afraid you might make some other engagement for the evening."

He couldn't have served his cause more handsomely than by uttering just that transparent evasion. In a thought she understood: at their boarding-house he could have found no ready opportunity to ask her save in the presence of others; and he was desperately afraid of a refusal.

After all, he had reason to be: they were only table acquaintances of a few weeks' standing. It was most presumptuous of him to dream that she would accept....

On the other hand, he was (she considered gravely) a decent, manly little body, and had shown her more civility and deference than all the rest of the boarding-house and shop people put together. And she rather liked him and was reluctant to hurt his feelings; for she knew instinctively he was very sensitive.

Her eyes and lips softened winningly.

"It's so good of you to think of me," she said.

"You mean--you--you will come?" he cried, transported.

"I shall be very glad."

"That's--that's awf'ly kind of you," he said huskily. "Now, do please find some way to get rid of me."

Smiling quietly, the girl recovered the glove boxes.

"I'm afraid we haven't what you want in stock," she said in a voice not loud but clear enough to carry to the ears of her inquisitive co-labourers. "We're expecting a fresh shipment in next week--if you could stop in then...."

"Thank you very much," said P. Sybarite with uncalled-for emotion.

He backed away awkwardly, spoiled the effect altogether by lifting his hat, wheeled and broke for the doors....

IV

A LIKELY STORY

From the squalour, the heat, dirt and turmoil of Eighth Avenue, P. Sybarite turned west on Thirty-eighth Street to seek his boarding-house.

This establishment--between which and the Cave of the Smell his existence alternated with the monotony of a pendulum--was situated midway on the block on the north side of the street. It boasted a front yard fenced off from the sidewalk with a rusty railing: a plot of arid earth scantily tufted with grass, suggesting that stage of baldness which finally precedes complete nudity. Behind this, the moat-like area was spanned to the front door by a ragged stoop of brownstone. The four-story facade was of brick whose pristine coat of fair white paint had aged to a dry and flaking crust, lending the house an appearance distinctly eczematous.

The sun of April, declining, threw down the street a slant of kindly light to mitigate its homeliness. In this ethereal evanescence the house Romance took the air upon the stoop.

George Bross was eighty-five per-centum of the house Romance. The remainder was Miss Violet Prim. Mr. Bross sat a step or two below Miss Prim, his knees adjacent to his chin, his face, upturned to his charmer, wreathed in a fond and fatuous smile. From her higher plane, she smiled in like wise down upon him. She seemed in the eyes of her lover unusually fair--and was: Saturday was her day for seeming unusually fair; by the following Thursday there would begin to be a barely perceptible shadow round the roots of her golden hair....

She was a spirited and abundant creature, hopelessly healthy beneath the coat of paint, powder and peroxide with which she armoured herself against the battle of Life. Normally good-looking in ordinary daylight, she was a radiant beauty across footlights. Her eyes were bright even at such times as belladonna lacked in them; her nose pretty and pert; her mouth, open for laughter (as it usually was), disclosed twin rows of sound, white, home-made teeth. Her active young person was modelled on generous lines and, as a rule, clothed in a manner which, if inexpensive, detracted nothing from her conspicuous sightliness. She was fond of adorning her pretty, sturdy shoulders, as well as her fetching and shapely, if plump, ankles, with semi-transparent things--and she was quite as fond of having them admired.

P. Sybarite, approaching the gate, delicately averted his eyes....

At that moment, George was announcing in an undertone: "Here's the lollop now."

"You are certainly one observin' young gent," remarked Miss Prim in accents of envious admiration.

Ignoring the challenge, Bross pondered hastily. "Think I better spring it on him now?" he enquired in doubt.

"My Gawd, no!" protested the lady in alarm. "I'd spoil the plant, sure. I'd _love_ to watch you feed it to him, but Heaven knows I'd never be able to hold in without bustin'."

"You think he'll swallow it, all right?"

"That simp?" cried Miss Prim in open derision. "Why, he'll eat it _alive_!"

P. Sybarite walked into the front yard, and the chorus lady began to crow with delight, welcoming him with wild wavings of a pretty, powdered forearm.

"Well, _look_ who's here! 'Tis old George W. Postscript--as I live! Hitherwards, little one: I wouldst speech myself to thee."

Smiling, P. Sybarite approached the pair. He liked Miss Prim for her unaffected high spirits, and because he was never in the least ill at ease with her.

"Well?" he asked pleasantly, blinking up at the lady from the foot of the steps. "What is thy will, O Breaker of Hearts?"

"That'll be about all for yours," announced Violet reprovingly. "You hadn't oughta carry on like that--at your age, too! Not that _I_ mind--I rather like it; but what'd your family say if they knew you was stuck on an actress?"

"'Love blows as the wind blows,'" P. Sybarite quoted gently. "How shall I hide the fact of my infatuation? If my family cast me off, so be it!"

"I told you, behave! Next thing you know, George will be bitin' the fence.... What's all this about you givin' a box party at the Knickerbocker to-night?"

"It's a fact," affirmed P. Sybarite. "Only I had counted on the pleasure of inviting you myself," he added with a patient glance at George.

"Never mind about that," interposed the lady. "I'm just as tickled to death, and I love you a lot more'n I do George, anyway. So _that's_ all right. Only I was afraid for a while he was connin' me."

"You feel better now?"

Violet placed a theatrical hand above her heart. "Such a relief!" she declared intensely--"you'll never know!" Then she jumped up and wheeled about to the door with petticoats professionally a-swirl. "Well, if I'm goin' to do a stagger in society to-night, it's me to go doll myself up to the nines. So long!"

"Hold on!" George cried in alarm. "You ain't goin' to go dec--decol--low neck and all that? Cut it, kid: me and P.S. ain't got no dress soots, yunno."

"Don't fret," returned Violet from the doorway. "I know how to pretty myself for my comp'ny, all right. Besides, you'll be at the back of the box and nobody'll know you exist. Me and Molly Leasing'll get all the yearnin' stares."

She disappeared by way of the vestibule. George shook a head heavy with forebodings.

"Class to that kid, all right," he observed. "Some stepper, take it from me. Anyway, I'm glad it's a box: then I can hide under a chair. I ain't got nothin' to go in but these hand-me-downs."

"You'll be all right," said P. Sybarite hastily.

"Well, I won't feel lonely if you don't dress up like a horse. What are you going to wear, anyway?"

"A shave, a clean collar, and what I stand in. They're all I have."

"Then you got nothin' on me. What's your rush?"--as P. Sybarite would have passed on. "Wait a shake. I wanna talk to you. Sit down and have a cig."

There was a hint of serious intention in the manner of the shipping clerk to induce P. Sybarite, after the hesitation of an instant, to accede to his request. Squatting down upon the steps, he accepted a cigarette, lighted it, inhaled deeply.

"Well?"

"I dunno how to break it to you," Bross faltered dubiously. "You better brace yourself to lean up against the biggest disappointment ever."

P. Sybarite regarded him with sharp distrust. "You interest me strangely, George.... But perhaps you're no more addled than usual. Consider me gently prepared against the worst--and get it off your chest."

"Well," said George regretfully, "I just wanna put you next to the facts before you ask her. Miss Lessing ain't goin' to go with us to-night."

P. Sybarite looked startled and grieved.

"No?" he exclaimed.

George wagged his head mournfully. "It's a shame. I know you counted on it, but I guess you'll have to get summonelse."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. How do you know Miss Lessing won't go? Did she tell you so?"

"Not what you might call exactly, but she won't all right," George returned with confidence. "There ain't one chance in a hundred I'm in wrong."

"In wrong? How?"

"About her bein' who she is."

P. Sybarite subjected the open, naïf countenance of the shipping clerk to a prolonged and doubting scrutiny.

"No, I ain't crazy in the head, neither," George asseverated with some heat. "I suspicioned somethin' was queer about that girl right along, but now I _know_ it."

"Explain yourself."

"Ah, it ain't nothin' against her! You don't have to scorch your collar. _She's_ all right. Only--she 's in bad. I don't s'pose you seen the evenin' paper?"

"No."

"Well, I picked up the _Joinal_ down to Clancey's--this is it." With an effective flourish, George drew the sheet from his coat pocket and unfolded its still damp and pungent pages. "And soon's I seen that," he added, indicating a smudged halftone, "I begun to wise up to that little girl. It's sure some shame about her, all right, all right."

Taking the paper, P. Sybarite examined with perplexity a portrait labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the coarse mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable individuality in the pose of the head remotely suggested Molly Lessing.

In a further endeavour to fathom his meaning, the little bookkeeper conned carefully the legend attached to the putative likeness:

MARIAN BLESSINGTON

only daughter of the late Nathaniel Blessington, millionaire founder of the great Blessington chain of department stores. Although much sought after on account of the immense property into control of which she is to come on her twenty-fifth birthday, Miss Blessington contrived to escape matrimonial entanglement until last January, when Brian Shaynon, her guardian and executor of the Blessington estate, gave out the announcement of her engagement to his son, Bayard Shaynon. This engagement was whispered to be distasteful to the young woman, who is noted for her independent and spirited nature; and it is now persistently being rumoured that she had demonstrated her disapproval by disappearing mysteriously from the knowledge of her guardian. It is said that nothing has been known of her whereabouts since about the 1st of March, when she left her home in the Shaynon mansion on Fifth Avenue, ostensibly for a shopping tour. This was flatly contradicted this morning by Brian Shaynon, who in an interview with a reporter for the EVENING JOURNAL declared that his ward sailed for Europe February 28th on the _Mauretania_, and has since been in constant communication with her betrothed and his family. He also denied having employed detectives to locate his ward. The sailing list of the _Mauretania_ fails to give the name of Miss Blessington on the date named by Mr. Shaynon.

Refolding the paper, P. Sybarite returned it without comment.

"Well?" George demanded anxiously.

"Well?"

"Ain't you hep yet?" George betrayed some little exasperation in addition to his disappointment.

"Hep?" P. Sybarite iterated wonderingly.

"Hep's the word," George affirmed: "John W. Hep, of the well-known family of that name--very closely related to the Jeremiah Wises. Yunno who I mean, don't you?"

"Sorry," said P. Sybarite sadly: "I'm not even distinctly connected with either family."

"You mean you don't make me?"

"God forestalled me there," protested P. Sybarite piously. "Inscrutable!"

Impatiently brushing aside this incoherent observation, George slapped the folded paper resoundingly in the palm of his hand.

"Then this here don't mean nothin' to you?"

"To me--nothing, as you say."

"You ain't dropped to the resemblance between Molly Lessing and Marian Blessington?"

"Between Miss Lessing and _that_ portrait?" asked P. Sybarite scornfully.

"Why, they're dead ringers for each other. Any one what can't see that's blind."

"But I'm _not_ blind."

"Well, then you gotta admit they look alike as twins--"

"But I've known twins who didn't look alike," said P.S.

"Ah, nix on the stallin'!" George insisted, on the verge of losing his temper. "Molly Lessing's the spit-'n'-image of Marian Blessington--and you know it. What's more--look at their names? _Molly_ for _Mary_--you make that? _Mary_ and _Marian's_ near enough alike, ain't they? And what's _Lessing_ but _Blessington_ docked goin' and comin'?"

"Wait a second. If I understand you, George, you're trying to imply that Miss Lessing is identical with Marian Blessington."

"You said somethin' then, all right."