Chapter 17

IN A BALCONY

Bewilderment and consternation, working in the man, first struck him dumb, aghast, and witless, then found expression in an involuntary gasp that was more than half of wondering fear, the remainder rage slipping its leash entirely:

"What?"

He advanced a pace with threatening mien.

Overshadowed though he was, P. Sybarite stood his ground with no least hint of dismay. To the contrary, he was seen to stroke his lips discreetly as if to erase a smile.

"The word in question," he said with exasperating suavity, "is the common one of four letters, to-wit, inch; as ordinarily spelled denoting the unit of lineal measurement--the twelfth part of a foot; but lend it a capital I and an ultimate e--my good fellow!--and it stands, I fear too patiently, for the standard of your blackguardism."

Speechless, the younger Shaynon hesitated, lifting an uncertain hand to his throat, as if to relieve a sense of strangulation.

"Or what if I were to suggest--delicately--that you're within an Inche of the end of your rope?" the little man pursued, grimly playful. "Give you an Inche and--what will you take, eh?"

With an inarticulate cry, Shaynon's fist shot out as if to strike his persecutor down; but in mid-air P. Sybarite's slim, strong fingers closed round and inflexibly stayed his enemy's wrist, with barely perceptible effort swinging it down and slewing the man off poise, so that perforce he staggered back against the stone of the window's deep embrasure.

"Behave!" P. Sybarite counselled evenly. "Remember where you are--in a lady's presence. Do you want to go sprawling from the sole of my foot into the presence of more than one--or over this railing, to the sidewalk, and become food for inch-worms?"

Releasing Shaynon, he stepped back warily, anticipating nothing less than an instant and disgraceful brawl.

"As for my mask," he said--"if it still annoys you--"

He jerked it off and away.

Escaping the balustrade, it caught a wandering air and drifted indolently down through the darkness of the street, like an errant petal plucked from some strange and sinister bloom of scarlet violence.

"And if my face tells you nothing," he added hotly, "perhaps my name will help. It's Sybarite. You may have heard it!"

As if from a blow, Shaynon's eyes winced. Breathing heavily, he averted a face that took on the hue of parchment in the cold light striking up from the electric globes that march Fifth Avenue. Then quietly adjusting his crumpled cuff, he drew himself up.

"Marian," he said as soon as he had his voice under control, "since you wish it, I'll wait for you in the lobby, downstairs. As--as for you, sir--"

"Yes, I know," the little man interrupted wearily: "you'll 'deal with' me later, 'at a time and a place more fitting.'...Well, I won't mind the delay if you'll just trot along now, like a good dog--"

Unable longer to endure the lash of his mordacious wit, Shaynon turned and left them alone on the balcony.

"I'm sorry," P. Sybarite told the girl in unfeigned contrition. "Please forgive me. I've a vicious temper--the colour of my hair--and I couldn't resist the temptation to make him squirm."

"If you only knew how I despised him," she said, "you wouldn't think it necessary to excuse yourself--though I don't know yet what it's all about."

"Simply, I happen to have the whip-hand of the Shaynon conscience," returned P. Sybarite; "I happened to know that Bayard is secretly the husband of a woman notorious in New York under the name of Mrs. Jefferson Inche."

"Is that true? Dare I believe--?"

Intimations of fears inexpressibly alleviated breathed in her cry.

"I believe it."

"On what grounds? Tell me!"

"The word of the lady herself, together with the evidence of his confusion just now. What more do you need?"

Turning aside, the girl rested a hand upon the balustrade and gazed blankly off through the night.

"But--I can't help thinking there must be some mistake--some terrible mistake."

"If so, it is theirs--the Shaynons', father and son."

"But they've been bringing such pressure to bear to make me agree to an earlier wedding day--!"

"Not even that shakes my belief in Mrs. Inche's story. As a matter of fact, Bayard offered her half a million if she'd divorce him quietly, without any publicity, in the West."

"And she accepted--?"

"She has refused, believing she stands to gain more by holding on."

"If that is true, how can it be that he has been begging me this very night to marry him within a month?"

"He may have entertained hopes of gaining his end--his freedom--in another way."

"It's--it's inexpressibly horrible!" the girl cried, twisting her hands together.

"Furthermore," argued the little man, purposefully unresponsive, "he probably thinks himself forced to seem insistent by the part he's playing. His father doesn't know of this entanglement; he'd disinherit Bayard if he did; naturally, Bayard wouldn't dare to seem reluctant to hasten matters, for fear of rousing the old man's suspicions."

"It may be so," she responded vacantly, in the confusion of adjusting her vision of life to this new and blinding light....

"Tell me," he suggested presently, stammering--"if you don't mind giving me more of your confidence--to which I don't pretend to have any right--only my interest in--in you--the mystery with which you surround yourself--living alone there in that wretched boarding-house--"

He broke off with a brief uneasy laugh: "I don't seem to get anywhere.... My fear lest you think me presumptuous--"

"Don't fear that for another instant--please!" she begged earnestly; and swinging to face him again, gave him an impulsive hand. "I'm so grateful to you for--for what you've saved me from--"

"Then..." Self-distrustful, he retained her fingers only transiently. "Then why not tell me--everything. If I understood, I might be able to offer some suggestions--to save you further distress--"

"Oh, no; you can't do that," she interrupted. "If what you've said is true, I--I shall simply continue to live by myself."

"You don't mean you would go back to Thirty-eighth Street?"

"No," she said thoughtfully, "I'm--I don't mean that."

"You're right," he assured her. "It's no place for you."

"That wasn't meant to be permanent," she explained--"merely an experiment. I went there for two reasons: to be rid for a while of their incessant attempts to hasten my marriage with Bayard; and because I suddenly realised I knew nothing about my father's estate, and found I was to know nothing for another year--that is, until, under his will, I come into my fortune. Old Mr. Shaynon would tell me nothing--treated me as though I were still a child. Moreover I had grown deeply interested in the way our girls were treated; I wanted to know about them--to be sure they were given a fair chance--earned enough to live decently--and other things about their lives--you can imagine...."

"I think I understand," said P. Sybarite gravely.

"I had warned them more than once I'd run away if they didn't let me alone.... You see, Mr. Shaynon insisted it was my father's wish that I should marry Bayard, and on that understanding I promised to marry him when I came into possession of the estate. But that didn't suit--or rather, it seemed to satisfy them only for a little time. Very soon they were pestering me again to marry at once. I couldn't see the need--and finally I kept my word and ran away--took my room in Thirty-eighth Street, and before long secured work in my own store. At first I was sure they'd identify me immediately; but somehow no one seemed to suspect me, and I stayed on, keeping my eyes open and collecting evidence of a system of mismanagement and oppression--but I can't talk about that calmly--"

"Please don't if it distresses you," P. Sybarite begged gently.

"At all events," she resumed, "it wasn't until to-night that Bayard found out where I was living--as you saw. At first I refused to return home, but he declared my disappearance was creating a scandal; that one newspaper threatened to print a story about my elopement with a chauffeur, and that there was other unpleasant talk about Mr. Shaynon's having caused me to be spirited away so that he might gain control of my estate--"

"Wonder what put that into his head!" P. Sybarite broke in with quickening curiosity.

"He insisted that these stories could only be refuted if I'd come home for a few days and show myself at this dance to-night. And when I still hesitated, he threatened--"

"What?" growled the little man.

"That, if I didn't consent, he'd telephone the paper to go ahead and publish that awful story about the chauffeur."

P. Sybarite caught himself barely in time to shut his teeth upon an expletive.

"There!" said the girl. "Don't let's talk about it any longer. After what you've told me.... Well, it's all over now!"

P. Sybarite pondered this in manifest doubt.

"Are you sure?" he queried with his head thoughtfully to one side.

"Am I sure?" she repeated, puzzled. "Rather! I tell you, I've finished with the Shaynons for good and all. I never liked either of them--never understood what father saw in old Mr. Shaynon to make him trust him the way he did. And now, after what has happened ... I shall stop at the Plaza to-night--they know me there--and telephone for my things. If Mr. Shaynon objects, I'll see if the law won't relieve me of his guardianship."

"If you'll take a fool's advice, you'll do that, whether or no. An uneasy conscience is a fine young traitor to its possessor, as a rule."

"Now, what can you mean by that?"

"I don't believe there's been any whisper of suspicion that the Shaynons had caused you to be spirited away."

"Then why did Bayard say--"

"Because he was thinking about it! The unconscious self-betrayal of the unskilled but potential criminal."

"Oh!" cried the girl in horror. "I don't think that--"

"Well, I do," said P. Sybarite gloomily. "I know they're capable of it. It wouldn't be the first time Brian Shaynon ruined a friend. There was once a family in this town by the name of Sybarite--the family of a rich and successful man, associated with Brian Shaynon in a business way. I'm what's left of it, thanks to my father's faith in old Brian's integrity. It's too long a story to detail; but the old fox managed to keep within the letter of the law when he robbed me of my inheritance, and there's no legal way to get back at him. I'm telling you all this only to show you how far the man's to be trusted."

"Oh, I'm sorry--!"

"Don't be, please. What I've endured has done me no harm--and to-night has seen the turn of my fortunes--or else I'm hopelessly deluded. Furthermore, some day I mean to square my account with Brian Shaynon to the fraction of a penny--and within the law."

"Oh, I do hope you may!"

P. Sybarite smiled serenely. "I shall; and you can help me, if you will."

"How?"

"Stick to your resolution to have no more to do with the family; retain a good lawyer to watch your interests under old Brian's charge; and look out for yourself."

"I'll surely do all that, Mr. Sybarite; but I don't understand--"

"Well, if I'm not mistaken, it'll help a lot. Public disavowal of your engagement to Bayard will be likely to bring Shaynon's affairs to a crisis. I firmly believe they're hard pressed for money--that it wasn't consolidation of two going-concerns for mutual advantage, but the finding of new capital for a moribund and insolvent house that they've been seeking through this marriage. That's why they were in such a hurry. Even if Bayard were free--as his father believes him to be--why need the old man have been so unreasonable when all the delay you ask is another twelvemonth? Believe me, he had some excellent reason for his anxiety. Finally, if the old villain isn't fomenting some especially foul villainy, why need he sneak from here to-night to the lowest dive in town to meet and confer with a gang leader and murderer like Red November?"

"What are you talking about now?" demanded the bewildered girl.

"An hour or so ago I met old Brian coming out of a dive known as Dutch House, the worst in this old Town. What business had he there, if he's an honest man? I can't tell you because I don't know. But it was foul--that's certain. Else why need he have incited Red and his followers to drug Peter Kenny into forgetfulness? Peter found him there before I did. It was only after the deuce of a row that I got the boy away alive."

Temporarily he suppressed mention of Peter's hurt. The girl had enough to occupy her without being subjected to further drain upon her sympathies.

"I'd like to know!" he wound up gloomily.... "That old scoundrel never visited Dutch House out of simple curiosity; and whatever his purpose, one thing's sure--it wasn't one to stand daylight. It's been puzzling me ever since--an appointment of some sort he made with November just as I hove within earshot. 'Two-thirty,' he said; and November repeated the hour and promised to be on the job. 'Two-thirty!'--what can it mean? It's later than that now but--mark my words!--something's going to happen this afternoon, or to-morrow, or some time soon, at half-past two o'clock!"

"Perhaps you're right," said the girl doubtfully. "And yet you may be wrong in thinking me involved in any way. Indeed, I'm sure you must be wrong. I can't believe that he could wish me actual harm."

"Miss Blessington," said P. Sybarite solemnly, "when you ran off in that taxi at midnight, I had five dollars in all the world. This minute, as I stand, I'm worth twenty-five thousand--more money than I ever hoped to see in this life. It means a lot to me--a start toward independence--but I'd give every cent of it for some reliable assurance that Brian Shaynon and his son mean you no harm."

Surprised and impressed by his unwonted seriousness, the girl instinctively shrank back against the balustrade.

"Mr. Sybarite--!" she murmured, wide-eyed.

He remarked her action with a gesture almost of supplication.

"Don't be alarmed," he begged; and there was in his voice the least flavour of bitterness. "I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't--anything you wouldn't care to hear. I'm not altogether mad, Miss Blessington; only...

"Well!" he laughed quietly--"when my run of luck set in to-night back there at the gambling house, I told myself it was Kismet's doing--that this was my Day of Days. If I had thought, I should instead have called it my Night of Nights--knowing it must wear out with the dawn."

His gesture drew her heed to the east; where, down the darkling, lamp-studded canyon of a cross-town street, stark against a sky pulsing with the faintest foreboding of daybreak, the gaunt, steel-girdered framework of the new Grand Central Station stood--in its harshly angular immensity as majestic as the blackened skeleton of a burnt-out world glimpsed against the phosphorescent pallor of the last chill dawn....

In the great ball-room behind them, the last strains of dance music were dying out.

"Now," said the little man with a brisker accent, "by your leave, we get back to what we were discussing; your welfare--"

"Mr. Sybarite," the girl interrupted impetuously--"whatever happens, I want you to know that I at least understand you; and that to me you'll always be my standard of a gentleman brave and true--and kind."

As impulsively as she had spoken, she gave him her hands.

Holding them fugitively in both his own, he gazed intently into the shadowed loveliness of her face.

Then with a slight shake of his head--whether of renunciation or of disappointment, she couldn't tell--he bent so low that for a thought she fancied he meant to touch his lips to her fingers.

But he gave them back to her as they had come to him.

"It is you who are kind, Miss Blessington," he said steadily--"very kind indeed to me. I presume, and you permit; I violate your privacy, and you are not angry; I am what I am--and you are kind. That is going to be my most gracious memory....

"And now," he broke off sharply, "all the pretty people are going home, and you must, too. May I venture one step farther? Don't permit Bayard Shaynon--"

"I don't mean to," she told him. "Knowing what I know--it's impossible."

"You will go to the Plaza?"

"Yes," she replied: "I've made up my mind to that."

"You have a cab waiting, of course. May I call it for you?"

"My own car," she said; "the call check is with my wraps. But," she smiled, "I shall be glad to give it to you, to hand to the porter, if you'll be so good."

He had longed to be asked to accompany her; and at the same time prayed to be spared that trial. Already he had ventured too perilously close to the brink of open avowal of his heart's desire. And that way--well he knew it!--humiliation lay, and opaque despair. Better to live on in the melancholy company of a hopeless heart than in the wretchedness of one rejected and despised. And who--and what--was he, that she should look upon him with more than the transient favour of pity or of gratitude for a service rendered?

But, since she, wise in her day and generation, did not ask him, suddenly he was glad. The tension of his emotion eased. He even found grace to grin amiably.

"To do Bayard out of that honour!" he said cheerfully. "You couldn't invent a service to gratify me more hugely."

She smiled in sympathy.

"But he will be expecting to see you home?"

"No matter if he does, he shan't. Besides, he lives in bachelor rooms--within walking distance, I believe."

Holding aside the window draperies, he followed her through to the ball-room.

Already the vast and shining hall was almost empty; only at the farther wall a handful of guests clustered round the doorway, waiting to take their turn in the crowded cloakrooms. Off to one side, in a deep apsidal recess, the members of the orchestra were busily packing up their instruments. And as the last of the guests--save Marian Blessington and P. Sybarite--edged out into the ante-rooms, a detachment of servants invaded the dancing-floor and bustled about setting the room to rights.

A moment more, and the two were close upon the vanguard of departing guests.

"You'll have a time finding your hat and coat," smiled the girl.

"I? Not I. With marvellous sagacity, I left 'em with a waiter downstairs. But you?"

"I'm afraid I must keep you waiting. No matter if it is four in the morning--and later--women do take a time to wrap up. You won't mind?"

"Not in the least--it prolongs my Day of Days!" he laughed.

"I shall look for you in the lobby," she replied, smiling; and slipped away through the throng.

Picking his way to the elevators, constantly squirming more inextricably into the heart of the press, elbowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and d�butante, husband, lover, and esquire, patricians, celebrities and the commonalty (a trace, as the chemists say), P. Sybarite at length found himself only a layer or two removed from the elevator gates.

And one of these presently opening, he stumbled in with the crush, to hold his breath in vain effort to make himself smaller, gaze in cross-eyed embarrassment at the abundant and nobly undisguised back of the lady of distinction in front of him, and stand on tiptoes to spare those of the man behind him; while the cage descended with maddening deliberation.

If he had but guessed the identity of the man in the rear, the chances are he would have (thoughtlessly of course) brought down his heels upon the other's toes with all his weight on top of them. But in his ignorance P. Sybarite was diligent to keep the peace.

Liberated on the lower floor, he found his lackey, resumed hat and coat, and mounted guard in the lobby opposite the elevators.

Miss Blessington procrastinating consistently with her warning, he schooled himself to patience, mildly diverted by inspection of those who passed him, going out.

At the side-street entrance, the crush of ante-room and elevators was duplicated, people jamming the doorway and overflowing to the sidewalk while awaiting their motor-cars and carriages.

But through the Fifth Avenue entrance only the thin stream of those intending to walk was trickling away.

After a time P. Sybarite discovered Mr. Bayard Shaynon not far off, like himself waiting and with a vigilant eye reviewing the departing, the while he talked in close confidence with one who, a stranger to P. Sybarite, was briefly catalogued in his gallery of impressions as "hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained but awkward--very likely, nouveau riche;" and with this summary, dismissed from the little man's thoughts.

When idly he glanced that way a second time, the younger Shaynon was alone, and had moved nearer; his countenance impassive, he looked through and beyond P. Sybarite a thought too ostentatiously. But when eventually Marian appeared, he was instant to her side, forestalling even the alert flanking movement of P. Sybarite.

"You're quite ready, Marian?" Shaynon asked; and familiarly slipped a guiding hand beneath the arm of the girl--with admirable effrontery ignoring his earlier dismissal.

On the instant, halting, the girl turned to him a full, cold stare.

"I prefer you do not touch me," she said clearly, yet in low tones.

"Oh, come!" he laughed uneasily. "Don't be foolish--"

"Did you hear me, Bayard?"

"You're making a scene--" the man flashed, colouring darkly.

"And," P. Sybarite interjected quietly, "I'll make it worse if you don't do as Miss Blessington bids you."

With a shrug, Shaynon removed his hand; but with no other acknowledgment of the little man's existence, pursued indulgently: "You have your carriage-call check ready, Marian? If you'll let me have it--"

"Let's understand one another, once and for all time, Bayard," the girl interrupted. "I don't wish you to take me home. I prefer to go alone. Is that clear? I don't wish to feel indebted to you for even so slight a service as this," she added, indicating the slip of pasteboard in her fingers. "But if Mr. Sybarite will be so kind--"

The little man accepted the card with no discernible sign of jubilation over Shaynon's discomfiture.

"Thank you," he said mildly; but waited close by her side.

For a moment Shaynon's face reminded him of one of the masks of crimson lacquer and black that grinned from the walls of Mrs. Inche's "den." But his accents, when he spoke, were even, if menacing in their tonelessness.

"Then, Marian, I'm to understand it's--goodnight?"

"I think," said the girl with a level look of disdain, "it might be far better if you were to understand that it's good-bye."

"You," he said with slight difficulty--"you mean that, Marian?"

"Finally!" she asseverated.

He shrugged again; and his eyes, wavering, of a sudden met P. Sybarite's and stabbed them with a glance of ruthless and unbridled hatred, so envenomed that the little man was transiently conscious of a misgiving.

"Here," he told himself in doubt, "is one who, given his way, would have me murdered within twenty-four hours!"

And he thought of Red November, and wondered what had been the fate of that personage at the hands of the valiant young patrolman. Almost undoubtedly the gunman had escaped arrest....

Shaynon had turned and was striding away toward the Fifth Avenue entrance, when Marian roused P. Sybarite with a word.

"Finis," she said, enchanting him with the frank intimacy of her smile.

He made, with a serious visage, the gesture of crossed fingers that exorcises an evil spirit.

"Absit omen!" he muttered, with a dour glance over shoulder at the retreating figure of his mortal enemy.

"Why," she laughed incredulously, "you're not afraid?"

Forcing a wry grin, he mocked a shudder.

"Some irreverent body walked over the grave of me."

"You're superstitious!"

"I'm Irish," P. Sybarite explained sufficiently.