Chapter 7

In a thought P. Sybarite turned the galvanised iron cylinder bottom-up, clambered upon it, and on tiptoe sought to gauge the exact distance of the requisite leap. But now the grating seemed to have receded at least three feet from its position as first judged--to be hopelessly removed from the grasp of his yearning fingers.

Yet that mad attempt must be made. Why die fighting when a broken neck would serve as well?

Gathering his slight person together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints--and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. Clutching it and kicking footloose, he was stunned by the wonder of many brilliant new-born constellations swirling round his poor head to the thunderous music of the spheres, as rendered by the ash-can which, displaced by the vigour of his acrobatics, had toppled over and was rolling and clattering hideously on the flagging.

In his terrified bosom P. Sybarite felt the heart of him turn to cold and clammy stone.

No clamour more infernal could well have been improvised, given similar circumstances and facilities as rude. It seemed hours, rather than instants, that the damned thing wallowed and bellowed beneath him, raising a din to disturb all Christendom. While, the moment it was still, the cries of the police pack belled clear and near at hand:

"This way, b'ys!"

"There he is, the--"

"Got 'im now--"

"Halt or--!"

Another pistol shot!...

Glancing over shoulder, the hunted man caught a glimpse of uncouth shapes wriggling along a fence ridge several rods away. No more than the barest glimpse, it served: with a mighty heave and wriggle he breasted the lower platform, shifted a hand to the top of its railing, heaved himself up to a foothold, and swarmed up the iron ladder with an agility an ape might have envied.

But as he mounted, it grew momentarily more evident that the stage thunder manufactured by that wretched galvanised iron cylinder had, in fact, served him far from ill; reverberating from wall to wall within the hollow of the block, its dozen echoes diverted pursuit to as many quarters, luring the limbs of the law every way but the right one. Nobody, it appeared, was alert enough to espy that fugacious shadow on the fire-ladder. And in less than a brace of minutes P. Sybarite, at the top, was pulling himself gingerly over the lip of a stone coping.

Surmising that he had gained not the roof of the house but that of a two-story rear extension, he found himself in what seemed a small roof-garden, made private by awnings and Venetian blinds. Between his soles and the stone flooring he could feel the yielding texture of a grass mat, and he could not only dimly discern but also smell the perfume of green things in pots here and there. And his first step forward brought him into soft collision with a wicker basket-chair.

He paused and took thought in perturbation.

A most disappointing and deceptive sort of a house--inhabited, after all: its sombre and quiet aspect masking Heaven alone knew what pitfalls!...

Not a glint of light, not a sound....

When he moved again, it was with scrupulous caution.

Stealing softly on, the darkness seemed to thicken round him. He was sensible of suspense and qualms, of creeping flesh and an almost irresistible inclination to hold his breath. Uncanny business, this--penetrating unknown fastnesses of a dark and silent house at dead of night: a trespasser unable to surmise when the righteous householder, lurking on familiar ground and vigilant under arms, might not open fire....

Nevertheless, the police behind him were a menace of known calibre. With whatever shrinkings and dire misgivings, P. Sybarite went on.

Without misadventure he gained the main wall of the house, and there found open windows and (upon further cautious investigation) a doorway, likewise wide to the bland night air. Hesitant on the threshold of this last he sought with impotent senses to probe impenetrable obscurity--listening, every nerve taut and vibrant, for some sound significant of human tenancy, and detecting never an one. In spite of this, it was without the least confidence that presently he plucked up heart to proceed....

Three steps on into darkness, and his knee found a chair that might have poised itself on one leg, in malicious ambush, so promptly did it go over--and with what a racket.

Incontinently something rustled quite near at hand; followed a click--blinding light--a shrill, excited voice:

"Hands up!"

With a jerk, up went his hands high above his head. Blinking furiously in the glare, he comprehended his plight.

The lights he found so dazzling blazed from sconces round the walls of a bedroom more handsome than any he had thought ever to see--unless perhaps upon a stage. The voice belonged to a young woman sitting up in bed and coolly covering him with the yawning muzzle of a peculiarly poisonous-looking automatic pistol.

It was astonishingly evident that she wasn't at all frightened. The arm that levelled the weapon (a round and shapely arm, bare to the shoulder) was admirably steady; the rich colouring of her distinctly handsome face showed not a trace of pallor; and the fire that flickered in her large and darkly beautiful eyes was of indignation rather than of fear.

Abruptly she dropped her weapon and sat up yet straighter in her huddled bed-clothing, mouth and eyes widening with astonishment.

"Well!" she said quite simply--"I'll be damned if it ain't a cop!"

P. Sybarite immediately took occasion to lower his hands to a more comfortable position.

Fright inspired his latent histrionic genius; momentarily he became almost a good actor.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed fervently. "You're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots! _Phwew!_"

Quite naturally he drew a braided blue cuff across a beaded forehead.

"That's all very well," the woman took him up sharply--"but be careful I don't shoot after looking. Cop or no cop, you--what the devil do you want in my bedroom at this hour of the night?"

"Madam," P. Sybarite expostulated, aggrieved yet with an air of the utmost candour--"my duty, of course!"

"Duty!" she echoed. "What do you think you mean by that?"

"Perhaps," he countered blandly, "you're not aware a burglar has passed through this room?"

"A burglar? What rot!"

"Pardon me, madam," P. Sybarite lied nonchalantly, "but five minutes ago I was called in by the people in Two-thirty-three Forty-fifth Street, to nab a burglar who'd broken in there. They thought they had him locked up safe enough in one of the rooms, but when they came to open the door and let _me_ at him--the bird had flown! He'd taken a long chance--swung himself from the window-ledge to a fire-escape five feet away--don't ask _me_ how he did it! I got to the window just in time to see him go over the back fence. You heard me take a shot at him? No?"

"No, I didn't," said the woman in a manner eloquent of positive incredulity.

"Well, _any_way," P. Sybarite went on with elaborate ease, "I saw this man climb your fire-escape and so I came after him."

The woman frowned as she weighed this likely story; and P. Sybarite was at pains to conceal any exultation he may have felt over the prompt response of his vivid imagination to the call of exigence.

Would she or wouldn't she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his? For moments that, brief though they must have been, seemed intolerably protracted, he awaited her verdict in the extremest anxiety--not, however, neglecting to employ the respite thus afforded him to make another quick survey of the room and a second and more shrewd appraisal of its admirably self-possessed tenant.

A bit too florid and ornate--he concluded--woman and lodgings alike were somewhat overdone. A superabundance of gilt and pink marred the colour scheme of the apartment; and there was ostentatious evidence of wealth lavishly expended on its furnishings. An overpowering voluptuousness of silken clothing dressed the bed itself.

But if her setting were luxurious, the woman outshone it tenfold with the dark splendour of her animal beauty. As comely and as able-bodied as a young pantheress, she was (one judged) little less dangerous--as vital, as self-centred, as deadly. Sitting up in bed, openly careless of charms hardly concealed by nightwear of sheer silk lace and _crêpe de Chine_, she looked P. Sybarite up and down with wide eyes overwise in the ways of life, shrewdly judicious of mankind; handled her pistol with experienced confidence; spoke, in a voice of surpassing sweetness, with decision and considerable overt contempt for the phraseology of convention--swearing without the least affectation, slanging heartily when slang best suited her humour....

"Maybe you're telling the truth, at that," she announced suddenly, eyes coldly unprepossessed. "You sound fishy as all-hell, and God _knows_ you're the sickest-looking cop I ever laid eyes on; but there are less unlikely things than that a second-story man should try this route for his getaway.... Well!" she demanded urgently--"what're you standing there for, like a stone man?"

"My dear lady--!" expostulated the dismayed P. Sybarite.

"Can the fond stuff and get busy. What're you going to do?"

"What am I--? What--ah--do you wish me to do?"

"If you're a cop, go to it--cop somebody," she replied with a brusque laugh--"and then clear out. I can use the room and time you're occupying. Besides, while you stand there staring as if you'd never seen a good-looking woman in a nightgown before, you're slipping the said burglar a fine young chance to make the front door--unless he's under the bed."

"Under the bed?" stammered the masquerader.

"You said something then," the woman snapped. "Why not look?"

Mechanically obedient to her suggestion, down P. Sybarite plumped on his knees, lifted the silken valance at the foot of the bed, and pretended to explore the darkness thereunder--finding precisely what he had anticipated, that is to say, nothing.

While thus occupied (and badgering his addled wits to invent some plausible way to elude this Amazon) he was at once startled and still further dismayed to hear the bed-springs creak, a light double thump as two bare feet found the floor, and again the woman's voice flavoured with acid sarcasm.

"You seem to find it interesting down there. Is it the view? Or are you trying to hypnotise your burglar by the well-known power of the human eye?"

"It's pure and simple reverence for the proprieties," P. Sybarite replied without stirring, "keeps me emulating the fatuous ostrich. I don't pretend it's comfortable, but I, believe me, madam, am a plain man, of modest tastes, unaccustomed to--"

"Get up!" the lady interrupted peremptorily. "I guess your regard for the proprieties won't suffer any more than my fair name. Come out of that and hunt burglars like a good little cop."

"But who am I," pleaded the little man, "to gaze unblinded upon the sun?"

"That," said the lady, smothering a giggle, "will be about _all_ from you. Get up--or I'll call in a sure-enough cop to search your title to that uniform."

Hastily P. Sybarite withdrew his head and rose. An embarrassed glance askance comforted him measurably: the lady had thrown an exquisite negligee over her nightdress and had thrust her pretty feet into extravagantly pretty silken mules.

"Now," said she tersely, "we'll comb the premises for this burglar of yours: and if we don't find him"--her lips tightened, her brows clouded ominously--"I promise you an interesting time of it!"

"I'm vastly diverted as it is--truly I am!" protested P. Sybarite, ruefully eyeing the lady's pistol. "But there 's really no need to disturb yourself: I'm quite competent to take care of any housebreaker--"

"That," she broke in, "is something you'll have to show me.... Where's your nightstick?"

"My--er--what?"

"Your nightstick. What've you done with it?"

With consternation P. Sybarite investigated the vacant loop at his side.

"Must've dropped out while I was shinning over the back fence," he surmised vaguely. "However, I shan't need it. This"--with a bright and confident smile displaying Penfield's revolver--"will do just as well--better, in fact."

"That?" she questioned. "That's not a Police Department gun. Where'd you--"

"Oh, yes, it is. It's the new pattern--recently adopted. They've just begun to issue 'em. I got mine to-day--"

The lady's lips curled. "Very well," she concluded curtly. "I don't believe a word you say, but we'll see. Lead the way--show me one solitary sign that a burglar has been here--"

"Perhaps you'd prefer me to withdraw from the case?" the little man suggested with offended dignity. "After all, I may be mistaken--"

"You'd better not be. I warn you, find me a burglar--or"--she added with unmistakable significance--"I'll find one myself."

Interpreting the level challenge of her glance, P. Sybarite's heart quaked, his soul curdled, his stomach for picaresque adventure failed him entirely: anatomically, in short, he was hopelessly disqualified for his chosen rôle of favourite of _Kismet_, protagonist of this Day of Days. Withal, there was no use offering resistance to the demands of this masterful woman; she was patently one to be humoured against a more auspicious turn of affairs.

He shrugged, gave in with a gesture. Her imperative arm, uplifted, indicated an inner door.

"Find that burglar!"

"Swell chance I've got to get away with that proposition," he grumbled. "You've delayed me long enough to let any burglar get clean away!"

"And you hang back, giving him more time," she cut in. "Lead the way, now!"

Awed, P. Sybarite grasped his revolver and strode to the door with much dramatic manner, but paused with a hand on the knob to look over his shoulder.

The woman was there, not a foot distant, her countenance a mask of suspicious determination.

"Go on!" she commanded in menacing accents.

He pulled the door open, flung out into the hallway, paused again at the mouth of the back pit of the stairway.

Behind him the woman snapped a switch; an electric bulb glared out of the darkness. And P. Sybarite, peering down, started back with a gasp of amazement that was echoed in his ear.

On the stairs, halfway down, a man was crouching in a posture of frozen consternation: a small electric pocket-lamp burning brilliantly in one hand, the other, lifted, grasping a weapon of some curious sort, in the eyes of P. Sybarite more than anything else like, a small black cannon: a hatless man in evening clothes, his face half blotted out by a black mask that, enhancing the brightness of startled eyes gleaming through its peepholes, left uncovered only his angular muscular jaw and ugly, twisted mouth.

For a full minute (it seemed) not one of the three so much as drew breath; while through the haze of dumfounderment in P. Sybarite's brain there loomed the fact that once again _Kismet_ had played into his hands to save his face in thus lending material body and substance to the burglar of his desperate invention.

And then, as if from a heart of agony, the woman at his side breathed a broken and tortured cry:

"You dog! So it's come to murder, has it?"

As if electrified by that ejaculation, P. Sybarite whipped up Penfield's revolver and levelled it at the man on the stairs.

"Hands up!" he snapped. "Drop that gun!"

The answer was a singular sound--half a choking cough, half a smothered bark--accompanied by a jet of fire from the strange weapon, and coincident with the tinkling of a splintered electric bulb.

Instantly the hall was again drenched in darkness but little mitigated by the light from the bedroom.

Heedless of consequences, in his excitement, P. Sybarite pulled trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber, rose and fell half a dozen times without educing any response other than the click of metal against metal: demonstrating beyond question that the revolver was unloaded.

From the hand of the marauder another tongue of flame licked out, to the sound of the same dull, bronchial cough; and a bullet thumped heavily into the wall beside P. Sybarite.

Enraged beyond measure, he drew back his worthless weapon and threw it with all his might. And _Kismet_ winged the missile to the firing arm of the assassin. With a cry of pain and anger, this last involuntarily relaxed his grasp and, dropping his own pistol, stumbled and half fell, half threw himself down to the next floor.

As this happened, a white arm was levelled over the shoulder of P. Sybarite.

The woman took deliberate aim, fired--and missed.

XII

THE LADY OF THE HOUSE

Until that moment of the woman's shot, what with the failure of P. Sybarite's weapon to fire and the strange, muted coughing of the assassin's, an atmosphere of veritable decorum, nothing less, had seemed to mark the triangular duel, lending it something of the fantastic quality of a nightmare: an effect to which the discovery of a marauder, where P. Sybarite had expected to find nobody, added measurably....

But now, temporarily blinded by that vicious bright blade of flame stabbing the gloom a hand's breadth from his eyes, and deafened by the crash of the explosion not two feet from his ear-drums, he quickened to the circumstances with much of the confusion of a man awakened by a thunder-clap from evil dreams to realities yet more grim.

Of a sudden he understood that murder had been attempted in his presence and knowledge: a stark and hideous fact, jarring upon the semi-humorous indulgence with which hitherto he had been inclined to regard the unfolding of this night of _outré_ adventure. Twice the man had shot to kill with that singular weapon of silent deadliness--and both times had missed his mark by the barest margin....

At once, like a demon of exceptional malignity, a breathless and overpowering rage possessed P. Sybarite. Without the least hesitation he stretched forth a hand, snatched the pistol from the grasp of the woman--who seemed to relinquish it more through surprise than willingly--threw himself halfway down the stairs, and took a hasty pot-shot at the man--almost invisible in the darkness as he rounded the turn of the next flight.

Missing, P. Sybarite flung on recklessly. As he gained the lower floor, the hall lights flashed up, switched on from the upper landing by the woman of the house. Thus aided, he caught another glimpse of his prey midway down the next flight, and checked to take a second shot.

Again he missed; and as the bullet buried itself in splintering wainscoting, a cry of almost childish petulence escaped him. With but one thought, he hurled on, swung round to the head of the stairs, saw his man at the bottom, pulled up to aim, and....

Beneath him a small rug slipped on polished parquetry of the landing. P. Sybarite's heels went up and his head down with a sickening thump. He heard his pistol explode once more, and again visioned a reeling firmament fugitively coruscant with strange constellations.

Then--bounding up with uncommon resiliency--he saw the street door of the house close behind the fugitive and heard the heavy slam of it.

In another breath, pulling himself together, he was up and descending three and four steps at a stride. Reaching the door, he threw it open and himself heedlessly out and down a high stone stoop to the sidewalk--pulled up, bewildered to discover himself the sole living thing visible in all that night-hushed stretch between Fifth Avenue and Sixth: of the assassin there was neither sign nor sound....

He felt perilously on the verge of tears--would gladly have bawled and howled with temper--and gained little relief from another short-lived break of heartfelt profanity--something halting and inexpert, truth to tell.

Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house appeared; paused to peer searchingly east and west; looked down at the trembling figure of the small man in his overgrown police tunic, shaking an impotent fist in the face of the City of New York; and laughed quietly to herself.

"Come back," she called in a guarded tone. "He's made a clean getaway. Got to hand him _that_. No use trying to follow--you'd never catch up in a thousand years. Come back--d'you hear?--and give me my gun!"

A trifle dashed, P. Sybarite raked the street with final reluctant glances; then in a spirit of witless and unquestioning docility returned.

The woman retired to the vestibule, where she closed and locked the door as he passed through, further ensuring security by means of a chain-bolt; then entering the hallway, closed, locked, and similarly bolted the inner doors.

"Now, then!" she addressed the little man with a brilliant smile--"now we can pow-wow. Come into the den"--and led the way toward the rear of the house.

Trotting submissively in her wake, his wrinkled nose and batting eyelids were eloquent of the dumb amaze with which he was reviewing this incredible affair.

Turning into a dark doorway, the woman switched light into an electric dome, illuminating an interior apartment transformed, by a wildly original taste in eccentric decoration, into a lounging room of such distressful uniquity that it would have bred unrest in the soul of a lotus-eater.

Black, red, and gold--lustreless black of coke, lurid crimson of fresh blood, bright glaring yellow of gold new-minted--were the predominant notes in a colour scheme at once sombre and violent. The walls were hung with scarlet tapestries whereon gold dragons crawled and fought or strove to swallow dead black planets, while on every hand black imps of Eblis writhed and struggled over golden screens, golden devils mocked and mowed from panels of cinnabar, and horrific masks of crimson lacquer, picked out with gold and black, leered and snarled dumb menaces from darkened corners.

In such a room as this the mildest mannered man, steeping his soul in the solace of mellow tobacco, might have been pardoned for dreaming lustfully of battle, murder and sudden death, or for contemplating with entire equanimity the tortured squirmings of some favourite enemy upon the rack.

"Cosy little hole," P. Sybarite couldn't forbear to comment with a shudder as he dropped into a chair in compliance with the woman's gesture.

"I have my whims," she said. "How would you like a drink?"

"Not at all," he insisted hastily. "I've had all I need for the time being."

"That's a mercy," she replied. "I don't much feel like waiting on you myself, and the servants are all abed."

Offering cigarettes in a golden casket, she selected and lighted one for herself.

"You have servants in the house, then?"

"Do I look like a woman who does her own housework?"

"You do not," he affirmed politely. "But can you blame me for wondering where your servants've been all through this racket?"

"They sleep on the top floor, behind sound-proof doors," his hostess explained complacently, "and have orders to answer only when I ring, even if they should happen to hear anything. I've a passion for privacy in my own home--another whim, if you like."

"It's nothing to me, I assure you," he protested. "Minding my own business is one of the best little things I do."

"If that's so, why do you walk uninvited into strange bedrooms at all hours, pretending to be a policeman, with a cock-and-bull yarn about a burglar--"

"But there was a burglar!" P. Sybarite contended brightly. "You saw him yourself."

"No."

"But--but you _did_ see him--later, on the stairs!"

Smiling, the woman shook her head. "I saw no burglar--merely a dear friend. In short, if it interests you to know, I saw my husband."

"Madam!" P. Sybarite sat up with a shocked expression.