The day of days Louis Joseph Vance, Little, Brown and Company, University Press (Cambridge, Mass.), **: DOWN PZ 74 *».!(> HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY PURCHASED FROM THE BOSTON LIBRARY SOCIETY WITH INCOME FROM THE AMEY RICHMOND SHELDON FUND 1941 THE DAY OF DAYS BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE THE DAY OF DAYS THE DESTROYING ANGEL THE BANDBOX CYNTHIA-OF-THE-MINUTE NO MAN'S LAND THE FOBTDNE HUNTEB THE POOL OF FLAME THE BBONZE BELL THE BLACK BAG THE BRASS BOWL THE PRIVATE WAR TERENCE O'BOURKE * * • • • '. .i ..I • *.* "What I want to say is — will you be my guest at the theatre tonight?" Frontispiece. See page 27 THE DAY OF DAYS AX EXTRAVAGANZA in lofis Joseph vance Act;, k op 'Thk Bra^s Bowi ," "Tub Black Bk.," "Tuk iU.vuuox," "The. Pesthovihg Ahgel," etc. V TTT ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHLn WILLIAM l.M'WN BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMrANA' 1913 i •4 THE DAY OF DAYS AN EXTRAVAGANZA BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE Author of "The Brass Bowl," "Thk Black Bag," "The Bandbox," "The Destroying Angel," etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1913 Harvard university! LIBRARY MAK 5 194! Copyright, WIS, 1918, By Louis Joseph Vance. All rigKU reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian Published, February, 1913 Tot Unitosxtt Pbe&s, Cakbridox, Mabb., U. S. iu CHAPTER CONTENTS PAQB I. The Dub 1 n. Inspiration . 16 in. The Glove Counter . 22 IV. A Likely Stobt . 30 v. The Comic Spibit .... . 45 VI. Spring Twilight .... . 48 VII. Aftermath . 56 VIII. Wheels of Chance . 71 IX. The Plunges . . . 93 X. Undeb Fibe . 100 XI. Burglary Under Asms . . 115 XII. The Lady of the House . 131 XIII. Respectability .... . 146 XIV. Where Angels Fear to Tread . . 152 XV. Such Stuff as Plots are Made of . 168 XVI. Beelzebub . 184 XVII. In a Balcony . 204 xvni. The Brooch . 224 XIX. Nemesis . 240 XX. November . 253 XXL The Sortie . 271 XXII. Together . 289 XXIII. Perceval Unashamed . 294 ILLUSTRATIONS "What I want to say is — will you be my guest at the theatre tonight ?". . . Frontispiece "You are the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!" Page 122 Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor ... " 197 He was Red November "269 THE DAY OF DAYS i THE DUB "^MELL," P. Sybarite mused aloud . . . ^3 For an instant he was silent in depression. Then with extraordinary vehemence he continued crescendo: "Stupid-stagnant-sepulchral-sempiternally- sticky-Smell!" He paused for both breath and words — pondered with bended head, knitting his brows forbiddingly. - "Supremely squalid, sinisterly sebaceous, sombrely sociable Smell!" he pursued violently. Momentarily his countenance cleared; but his smile was as fugitive as the favour of princes. Vindictively champing the end of a cedar penholder, he groped for expression: "Stygian . . . sickening . . . surfeiting . . . slovenly . . . sour . . ." He shook his head impatiently and clawed the im- pregnated atmosphere with a tragic hand. "Stench!" he perorated in a voice tremulous with emotion. Even that comprehensive monosyllable was far from satisfactory. 2 THE DAY OF DAYS "Oh, what's the use?" P. Sybarite despaired. Alliteration could no more; his mother-tongue itself seemed poverty-stricken, his native wit inadequate. With decent meekness he owned himself unfit for the task to which he had set himself. "I'm only a dub," he groaned — "a poor, God-for- saken, prematurely aged and indigent dub!" For ten interminable years the aspiration to do justice to the Genius of the Place had smouldered in his humble bosom; to-day for the first time he had attempted to formulate a meet apostrophe to that God of his Forlorn Destiny; and now he chewed the bitter cud of realisa- tion that all his eloquence had proved hopelessly poor and lame and halting. Perched on the polished seat of a very tall stool, his slender legs fraternising with its legs in apparently in- extricable intimacy; sharp elbows digging into the nicked and ink-stained bed of a counting-house desk; chin some six inches above the pages of a huge leather- covered ledger, hair rumpled and fretful, mouth dole- ful, eyes disconsolate — he gloomed . . . On this the eve of his thirty-second birthday and like- wise the tenth anniversary of his servitude, the appear- ance of P. Sybarite was elaborately normal — varying, as it did, but slightly from one year's-end to the other. His occupation had fitted his head and shoulders with a deceptive but none the less perennial stoop. His means had endowed him with a single outworn suit of ready- THE DUB 3 made clothing which, shrinking sensitively on each suc- cessive application of the tailor's sizzling goose, had come to disclose his person with disconcerting candour — sleeves too short, trousers at once too short and too narrow, waistcoat buttons straining over his chest, coat buttons refusing to recognise a buttonhole save that at the waist. Circumstances these that added measurably to his apparent age, lending him the semblance of maturity attained while still in the shell of youth. The ruddy brown hair thatching his well-modelled head, his sanguine colouring, friendly blue eyes and mobile lips suggested Irish lineage; and his hands which, though thin and clouded with smears of ink, were strong and graceful (like the slender feet in his shabby shoes) bore out the suggestion with an added hint of gentle blood. But whatever his antecedents, the fact is indisputable that P. Sybarite, just then, was most miserable, and not without cause; for the Genius of the Place held his soul in Its melancholy bondage. The Place was the counting-room in the warehouse of Messrs. Whigham & Wimper, Hides & Skins; and the Genius of it was the reek of hides both raw and dressed — an effluvium incomparable, a passionate in- dividualist of an odour, as rich as the imagination of an editor of Sunday supplements, as rare as a reticent author, as friendly as a stray puppy. For ten endless years the body and soul of P. Sybarite 4 THE DAY OF DAYS had been thrall to that Smell; for a complete decade he had inhaled it continuously nine hours each day, six days each week — and had felt lonesome without it on every seventh day. But to-day all his being was in revolt, bitterly, hope- lessly mutinous against this evil and overbearing Genius. . . . The warehouse — impregnable lair of the Smell, from which it leered smug defiance at the sea-sweet atmos- phere of the lower city — occupied a walled-in arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, fronting on Frankfort Street, in that part of Town still known to elder inhabitants as "the Swamp." Above rumbled the everlasting inter- borough traffic; to the right, on rising ground, were haunts of roaring type-mills grinding an endless grist of news; to the left, through a sudden dip and down a long decline, a world of sober-sided warehouses, de- generating into slums, circumscribed by sleepy South Street; all, this afternoon, warm and languorous in the lazy breeze of a sunny April Saturday. The counting-room was a cubicle contrived by enclos- ing a corner of the ground-floor with two walls and a ceiling of match-boarding. Into this constricted space were huddled two imposing roll-top desks, P. Sybarite's high counter, and the small flat desk of the shipping clerk, with an iron safe, a Remington typewriter, a copy-press, sundry chairs and spittoons, a small gas- heater, and many tottering columns of dusty letter-files. THE DUB 5 The window-panes, encrusted with perennial deposits of Atmosphere, were less transparent than translucent, and so little the latter that electric bulbs burned all day long whenever the skies were overcast. Also, the win- dows were fixed and set against the outer air — im- pregnable to any form of assault less impulsive than a stone cast by an irresponsible hand. A door, set craftily in the most inconvenient spot imaginable, afforded both ventilation and access to an aisle which led tortuously between bales of hides to doors opening upon a waist-high stage, where trucks backed up to re- ceive and to deliver. Immured in this retreat, P. Sybarite was very much shut away from all joy of living — alone with his job (which at present nothing pressed) with Giant Despair and its interlocutor Ennui, and with that blatant, bru- tish, implacable Smell of Smells. . . . To all of these, abruptly and with ceremony, Mr. George Bross, shipping clerk, introduced himself: a brawny young man in shirt-sleeves, wearing a visorless cap of soiled linen, an apron of striped ticking, pencils behind both angular red ears, and a smudge of mark- ing-ink together with a broad irritating smile upon a clownish countenance. Although in receipt of a smaller wage than P. Syba- rite (who earned fifteen dollars per week) George squandered fifteen cents on newspapers every Sunday 6 THE DAY OF DAYS morning for sheer delight in the illuminated "funny sheets." In one hand he held an envelope. Draping himself elegantly over Mr. Wimper's desk, George regarded P. Sybarite with an indulgent and compassionate smile and wagged a doggish head at him. From these symptoms inferring that his fellow- employee was in the throes of a witticism, P. Sybarite cocked an apprehensive eye and tightened his thin- lipped, sensitive mouth. "O you —!" said George; and checked to enjoy a rude giggle. At this particular moment a mind-reader would have been justified in regarding P. Sybarite with suspicion. But beyond taking the pen from between his teeth he did n't move; and he said nothing at all. The shipping clerk presently controlled his mirth sufficiently to permit unctuous enunciation of the following cryptic exclamation: "O you Perceval!" P. Sybarite turned pale. "You little rascal!" continued George, brandishing the envelope. "You've been cunning, you have; but I've found you out at last. . . . Per-ce-val!" Over the cheeks of P. Sybarite crept a delicate tint of pink. His eyes wavered and fell. He looked, and was, acutely unhappy. "You 're a sly one, you are," George gloated — " al- THE DUB 7 ways signin' your name 'P. Sybarite' and pretendin' your maiden monaker was ' Peter ' I But now we know you! Take off them whiskers — Perceval!" A really wise mind-reader would have called a police- man, then and there; for mayhem was the least of the crimes contemplated by P. Sybarite. But restraining himself, he did nothing more than disentangle his legs, slip down from the tall stool, and approach Mr. Bross with an outstretched hand. "If that letter's for me," he said quietly, "give it here, please." "Special d'liv'ry — just come," announced George, holding the letter high, out of easy reach, while he read in exultant accents the traitorous address: "' Perceval Sybarite, Esquire, Care of Messrs. Whigham and Wimper '! O you Perceval — Esquire!" "Give me my letter," P. Sybarite insisted without raising his voice. "Gawd knows I don't want it," protested George. "I got no truck with your swell friends what know your real name and write to you on per-fumed paper with monograms and everything." He held the envelope close to his nose and sniffed in ecstasy until it was torn rudely from his grasp. "Here!" he cried resentfully. "Where's your mannners? . . . Perceval!" Dumb with impotent rage, P. Sybarite climbed back on his stool, while George sat down at his desk, lighted 8 THE DAY OF DAYS a Sweet Caporal (it was after three o'clock and both the partners were gone for the day) and with a leer watched the bookkeeper carefully slit the envelope and withdraw its enclosures. Ignoring him, P. Sybarite ran his eye through the few lines of notably careless feminine handwriting: My Dear Perceval,— Mother & I had planned to take some friends to the theatre tonight and bought a box for the Knickerbocker several weeks ago, but now we have decided to go .to Mrs. Hadley-0 wen's post-Lenten masque- rade ball instead, and as none of our friends can use the tickets, I thought possibly you might like them. They say Otis Skinner is wonderful. Of course you may not care to sit in a stage box with- out a dress suit, but perhaps you won't mind. If you do, maybe you know somebody else who could go properly dressed. Your aff'te cousin, Mak Alts. The colour deepened in P. Sybarite's cheeks, and instantaneous pin-pricks of fire enlivened his long- suffering eyes. But again he said nothing. And since his eyes were downcast, George was unaware of their fitful incandescence. Puffing vigorously at his cigarette, he rocked back and forth on the hind legs of his chair and crowed in jubilation: "Perceval! O you great, big, beautiful Perc'!" P. Sybarite made a motion as if to tear the note across, hesitated, and reconsidered. Through a long minute he sat thoughtfully examining the tickets pre- sented him by his aff'te cousin. THE DUB 9 In his ears rang the hideous tumult of George's joy: "Per-ce-val!" Drawing to him one of the Whigham & Wimper letterheads, P. Sybarite dipped a pen, considered briefly, and wrote rapidly and freely in a minute hand: My Dear Mab Alts :— Every man has his price. You know mine. Pocketing false pride, I accept your bounty with all the gratitude and humility be- coming in a poor relation. And if arrested for appearing in the box without evening clothes, I promise solemnly to brazen it out, pretend that I boughtthe tickets myself—or stole them—and keep the news- papers ignorant of our kinship. Fear not—trust me—and enjoy the masque as much as I mean to enjoy '' Kismet." And if you would do me the greatest of favours—should you ever again find an excuse to write me on any matter, please address me by the initial of my ridiculous first name only; it is of course im- possible for me to live down the deep damnation of having been born a Sybarite; but the indulgence of my friends can save me the fur- ther degradation of being known as Perceval. With thanks renewed and profound, I remain, all things con- sidered, Remotely yours, P. Sybarite. This he sealed and addressed in a stamped envelope: then thrust his pen into a raw but none the less antique potato; covered the red and black inkwells; closed the ledger; locked the petty-cash box and put it away; painstakingly arranged the blotters, paste-pot, and all the clerical paraphernalia of his desk; and slewed round on his stool to blink pensively at Mr. Bross. That gentleman, having some time since despaired of any response to his persistent baiting, was now pre* 10 THE DAY OF DAYS occupied with a hand-mirror and endeavours to erase the smudge of marking-ink from his face by means of a handkerchief which he now and again moistened in an engagingly natural and unaffected manner. "It's no use, George," observed P. Sybarite pres- ently. "If you 're in earnest in these public-spirited endeavours to — how would you put it ? — to remove the soil from your map, take a tip from an old hand and go to soap and water. I know it's painful, but, believe me, it's the only way." George looked up in some surprise. "Why, there you are, little Bright Eyes!" he ex- claimed with spirit. "I was beginnin' to be afraid this sittin' would pass off without a visit from Uncle George's pet control. Had little Perceval any message from the Other Side th'safternoon?" "One or two," assented P. Sybarite gravely. "To begin with, I'm going to shut up shop in just five minutes; and if you don't want to show yourself on the street looking like a difference of opinion between a bull-calf and a fountain pen —" "Gotcha," interrupted George, rising and putting away handkerchief and mirror. "I 'll drown myself, if you say so. Anythin's better 'n letting you talk me to death." "One thing more." Splashing vigorously at the stationary wash-stand, THE DUB 11 George looked gloomily over his shoulder, and in sepulchral accents uttered the one word: "Shoot!" "How would you like to go to the theatre to-night?" George soaped noisily his huge red hands. "I'd like it so hard," he replied, " that I'm already dated up for an evenin' of intellect'al enjoyment. Me and Sammy Holt's goin' round to Miner's Eight' Avenoo and bust up the show. You can trail if you wanta, but don't blame me if some big, coarse, two- fisted guy hears me call you Perceval and picks on you." He bent forward over the bowl, and the cubicle echoed with sounds of splashing broken by gasps, splut- ters, and gurgles, until he straightened up, groped blindly for two yards or so of dark grey roller-towel ornamenting the adjacent wall, buried his face in its hospitable obscurity, and presently emerged to daylight with a countenance bright and shining above his chin, below his eyebrows, and in front of his ears. "How's that?" he demanded explosively. "Come off all right — did n't it?" P. Sybarite inclined his head to one side and re- garded the outcome of a reform administration. "You look almost naked around the nose," he re- marked at length. "But you 'll do. Don't worry. . . . When I asked if you'd like to go to the theatre to-night, I meant it — and I meant a regular show, at a Broad- way house." THE DUB 13 "And never tell anybody, either," added the other, in deadly earnest. George hesitated. "Well, it's your name, ain't it?" he grumbled. "That's not my fault. I 'll be damned if I 'll be called Perceval." "And what if I keep on?" "Then I 'll make up my theatre party without you — and break your neck into the bargain," said P. Sybarite intensely. "You?" George laughed derisively. "You break my neck? Can the comedy, beau. Why, I could eat you alive, Perceval." P. Sybarite got down from his stool. His face was almost colourless, but for two bright red spots, the size of quarters, beneath either cheek-bone. He was half a head shorter than the shipping clerk, and apparently about half as wide; but there was sincerity in his manner and an ominous snap in the unflinching stare of his blue eyes. "Please yourself," he said quietly. "Only — don't say I did n't warn you!" "Ah-h!" sneered George, truculent in his amaze- ment. "What's eatin' you?" "We 're going to settle this question before you leave this warehouse. I won't be called Perceval by you or any other pink-eared cross between Balaam's ass and a laughing hyena." THE DUB 15 "P. S., I mean," George amended hastily. "Why didn't you ever tell me you was Jeffries's sparrin' partner?" "I'm not and never was, and furthermore I did n't hit you," replied P. Sybarite. "All I did was to let you fall over my foot and bump your head on the floor. You 're a clumsy brute, you know, George, and if you tried it another time you might dent that dome of yours. Better accept my offer and be friends." "Never call you Per —" "Don't say it!" "Oh, all right — all right," George agreed plain- tively. "And if I promise, I'm in on that theatre party?" "That's my offer." "It's hard," George sighed regretfully—"damn' hard. But whatever you say goes. I '11 keep your secret." "Good!" P. Sybarite extended one of his small, delicately modelled hands. "Shake," said he, smiling wistfully. II INSPIRATION WHEN they had locked in the Genius of the Place to batten upon itself until seven o'clock Monday morning, P. Sybarite and Mr. Bross, with at least every outward semblance of complete amity, threaded the roaring congestion in narrow-chested Frankfort Street, boldly breasted the flood tide of homing Brook- lynites, won their way through City Hall Park, and were presently swinging shoulder to shoulder up the sunny side of lower Broadway. To be precise, the swinging stride was practised only by Mr. Bross; P. Sybarite, instinctively aware that any such mode of locomotion would ill become one of his inches, contented himself with keeping up — his gait an apparently effortless, tireless, and comfortable amble, congruent with bowed shoulders, bended head, intro- spective eyes, and his aspect in general of patient pre- occupation. From time to time George, who was maintaining an unnatural and painful silence, his mental processes stag- nant with wonder and dull resentment, eyed his com- panion askance, with furtive suspicion. Their associa- tion was now one of some seven years' standing; and it INSPIRATION 17 seemed a grievous thing that, after posing so long as the patient butt of his rude humour, P. S. should have so suddenly turned and proved himself the better man — and that not mentally alone. "Lis'n —" George interjected of a sudden. P. Sybarite started. "Eh?" he enquired blankly. "I wanna know where you picked up all that classy footwork." "Oh," returned P. S., depreciatory, "I used to spar a bit with the fellows when I was a — ah — when I was younger." "When you was at what?" insisted Bross, declining to be fobbed off with any such flimsy evasion. "When I was at liberty to." "Huh! You mean, when you was at college." "Please yourself," said P. Sybarite wearily. "Well, you was at college oncet, was n't you?" "I was," P. S. admitted with reluctance; "but I never graduated. When I was twenty-one I had to quit to go to work for Whigham & Wimper." "G'wan," commented the other. "They ain't been in business twenty-five years." "I'm only thirty-one." "More news for Sweeny. You '11 never see forty agaim" "That statement," said P. Sybarite with some asper- ity, " is an uncivil untruth dictated by a spirit of gratu- itous contentiousness —" 18 THE DAY OF DAYS "Good God!" cried Bross in alarm. "I'm wrong and you 're right and I won't do it again — and forgive me for livin'!" "With pleasure," agreed P. Sybarite pleasantly. . . . "It's a funny world," George resumed in philo- sophic humour, after a time. "You would n't think I could work in the same dump with you seven years and only be startin' to find out things about you — like to-day. I always thought your name was Pete — honest." "Continue to think so," P. Sybarite advised briefly. "Your people had money, did n't they, oncet?" "I've been told so, but if true, it only goes to prove there's nothing in the theory of heredity." . . . "I gotcha," announced Bross, upon prolonged and painful analysis. "How?" asked P. Sybarite, who had fallen to think- ing of other matters. "I mean, I just dropped to your high-sign to mind my own business. All right, P. S. Far be it from me to wanta pry into your Past. Besides, I'm scared to — never can tell what I 'll turn up — like, f'rin- stance, Per —" "Steady!" "Like that they usta call you when you was innocent, I mean." To this P. Sybarite made no response; and George subsided into morose reflections. It irked him sore INSPIRATION 19 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; like- wise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the prom- ised 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 com- pany 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 did n't quite be- lieve 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 uncommunica- tive as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an 20 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 pri- vately, "to cop out the one pippin in the house all for his lonely. It's a wonder he would n'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 subter- fuge. He was, indeed, a bit relieved; the temporary dissociation promised just so much more time for sol- itary conspiracy. Turning west, he was presently prompted by that INSPIRATION 21 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 ad- vertisements, 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 contem- plated 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 har- boured 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. . . . Ill 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 recog- nition of circumstances as unpropitious as unforeseen. These consisted in three girls behind the counter and one customer before it; the latter commanding the atten- tion and services of a fair young woman with a pleasant THE GLOVE COUNTER 23 manner; while of the two disengaged saleswomen, one bold, disdainful brunette was preoccupied with her back hair and prepared mutinously to ignore anything re- motely 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 be- ribboned 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 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 in- exorable 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 I" 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 GLOVE COUNTER 25 The brune goddess shaped ironic lips: "Chauffeurs', I presoom i" 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" "I'm sure of that," returned P. Sybarite meekly; left her standing; and presented himself for the inspec- tion 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." THE GLOVE COUNTER 27 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 does n'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, re- placing 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 en- gagement for the evening." He could n't have served his cause more handsomely than by uttering just that transparent evasion. In a 28 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 eome way to get rid of me." Smiling quietly, the girl recovered the glove boxes. "I'm afraid we have n'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 ..." THE GLOVE COUNTER 29 "Thank you very much," said P. Sybarite with uncalled-for emotion. He backed away awkwardly, spoiled the effect alto- gether by lifting his hat, wheeled and broke for the doors. . . . IV A LIKELY STOET 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 fagade 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 A LIKELY STORY SI 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 day- light, 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 under- tone: "Here's the lollop now." 32 THE DAY OF DAYS "You are certainly one observin' young gent," re- marked 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, welcom^- ing him with wild wavings of a pretty, powdered forearm. "Well, look who's here! 'Tis old George W. Post- script — 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 had n't oughta carry on like that — at your age, too! Not that I mind — I rather like it; 84 THE DAY OF DAYS nobody 'll know you exist. Me and Molly Lessing '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. Squat- ting 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 A LIKELY STORY 35 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. Misa Leasing 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, naif 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 — 86 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 per- plexity a portrait labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the coarse mesh of the re- producing process had blurred it to a vague present- ment 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 Bless- ington 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 A LIKELY STORY 87 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 EVEN- ING JOURNAL declared that his ward sailed for Europe February 28th on the Mauretania, and has since been in constant communica- tion with her betrothed and his family. He also denied having em- ployed detectives to locate his ward. The sailing list of the Maure- tania 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 observa- tion, 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." 38 THE DAY OF DAYS "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 did n'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." "Simply because of the similarity of two syllables in their surnames and a fancied resemblance of Miss Lessing to this so-called portrait?" "Now you 're gettin' warm, P. S." P. S. laughed quietly: "George, I Ve been doing you a grave injustice. I apologise." A LIKELY STORY 3D George opened his eyes and emitted a resentful "Huh?" "For years I've believed you were merely stupid," P. S. explained patiently. "Now you develop a famous, if fatuous, gift of imagination. I'm sorry. I apologise twice." "Imag'nation hell!" Mr. Bross exploded. "Where's your own? It's plain's daylight what I say is so. When did Miss Lessing come here? Five weeks ago, to a day — March foist, or close onto it — just when the Joinal says she did her disappearin' stunt. How you goin' to get around that?" "You forget that the Journal simply reports a ru- mour. It does n't claim it's true. In fact, the story is contradicted by the very person that ought to know — Miss Blessington's guardian." "Well, if she sailed for Europe on the Mauretania, like he says — how's it come her name was n't on the passenger list?" "It's quite possible that a young woman as much sought after and annoyed by fortune hunters, may have elected to sail incognita. It can be done, you know. In fact, it has been done." George digested this in profound gloom. "Then you don't believe what I'm tellin' you?" "Not one-tenth of one iota of a belief." George betrayed in a rude, choleric grunt, his dis- gust to see his splendid fabrication, so painfully con- 40 THE DAY OF DAYS cocted for the delusion, and discomfiture of P. Sybarite, threatening to collapse of sheer intrinsic ftimsiness. He had counted so confidently on the credulity of the little bookkeeper! And Violet had supported his con- fidence with so much assurance! Disgusting was n't the word for George's emotions. In desperation he grasped at one final, fugitive hope. "All right," he said sullenly: "all right! You don't gotta believe me if you don't wanta. Only wait — that's all I ask — wait! You'll see I'm right when she turns down your invite to-night." P. Sybarite smiled sunnily. "So that is why you thought she would n't go with us, is it?" "You got me." "You thought she, if Marian Blessington, must nec- essarily be such a snob that she would n't associate with poor devils like us, did you?" "Wait. You 'll see." "Well, it's none of your business, George; but I don't mind telling you, you 're wrong. Quite wrong. In the head, too, George. I've already asked Miss Lessing, and she has accepted." George's eyes, protruding, glistened with poignant surprise. "You ast her already?" "That's why I left you down the street. I dropped into Blessington's for the sole purpose of asking her." "And she fell for it?" A LIKELY STORY 41 "She accepted my invitation — yes." After a long pause George ground his cigarette be- neath his heel, and rose. "In wrong, as usual," he admitted with winning simplicity. "I never did guess onythin' right the first time. Only — you just grab this from me: maybe she's willin' to run the risk of bein' seen with us, but that ain't sayin' she's anybody but Marian Bless- ington." "You really think it likely that Miss Blessington, hiding from her guardian and anxious to escape de- tection, would take a job at the glove counter of her own store, where everybody must know her by sight — where her guardian, Shaynon himself, couldn't fail to see her at least twice a day, as he enters and leaves the building %" Staggered, Bross recovered quickly. "That's just her cuteness. She doped it out the safest place for her would be the last place he'd look for her!" "And you really think that she, accustomed to every luxury that money can buy, would voluntarily come down to living here, at six dollars a week, and clerking in a department store — simply because, according to the papers, she's opposed to a marriage that she can't be forced to contract in a free country like this?" "Wel-l ..." George floundered helplessly for a moment; and fell back again upon an imagination for THE DAY OF DAYS the time being stimulated to an abnormal degree of inventiveness: "P'raps old Shaynon's double-crossed her somehow we don't know nothin' about. He ain't above it, if all they tell of him's true. Maybe he's got her coin away from her, and she had to go to work for a livin'. Stranger things have happened in this burg, P. S." It was the turn of P. S. to hesitate in doubt; or at all events, so George Bross inferred from a sudden change in the expression of the little man's eyes. Mo- mentarily they seemed to cloud, as if in introspection. But he rallied quickly enough. "All things are possible, George," he admitted with his quizzical grin. "But this time you 're mistaken. I'm not arguing with you, George; I'm telling you: you're hopelessly mistaken." "You think so — huh?" growled George. "Well, I got eight iron bucks that says Marian Blessington to any five of your money." He made a bold show of his pay envelope. "It'd be a shame to rob you, George," said P. Sybarite. "Besides, you 're bad-tempered when broke." "Never you mind about that. Here's my eight, if you've got five that makes a noise like Molly Lessing." P. Sybarite laughed softly and produced the little wad of bills that represented his weekly wage. At this, George involuntarily drew back. "And how would you settle the bet?" A LIKELY STORY 48 "Leave it to her," insisted George in an expiring gasp of bravado. "You'd ask her yourself?" "Ye-es —" "And let it stand on her answer?" "Wel-l —" "Here she comes now," added P. Sybarite, glancing up the street. "Quick, now; you've only a minute to decide. Is it a bet?" With a gesture of brave decision, George returned his money to his pocket. "You 're an easy mark," he observed in accents of deep pity. "I knew you'd think I meant it." "But did n't you, George?" "Nah—nothin' like that! I was just kiddin' you along, to see how much you'd swallow." "It's all right then," agreed P. Sybarite. "Only — George!" "Huh?" "Don't you breathe a word of this to Miss Lessing?" "Why not?" "Because I tell you not to — because," said P. Sybarite firmly, " I forbid you." "You — you forbid me? Holy Mike! And what —" "Sssh!" P. Sybarite warned him sibilantly. "Miss Lessing might hear you. . . . What will happen if you disobey me," he added as the shop girl turned in V THE COMIC SPIRIT PAUSING at the foot of the stoop, Miss Lessing looked up at the two young men and smiled. "Good-evening," she said with a pretty nod for P. Sybarite; and, with its fellow for George, "Good- evening, Mr. Bross," she added. Having acknowledged this salutation with that quaint courtesy which somehow seemed to fit him like a gar- ment, P. Sybarite smiled strangely at the shipping clerk. The latter mumbled something incoherent, glanced wildly toward the young woman, and spluttered explo- sively; all with a blush so deep that its effect was apoplectic. Alarmed by this exhibition, Miss Lessing questioned P. Sybarite with her lifted brows and puzzled eyes. "George is a little bit excited," he apologised. "Every so often he becomes obsessed with mad desire to impose upon some simple and credulous nature like mine. And failure always unbalances him. He be- comes excitable — ah — irrational —" With an inarticulate snort, Mr. Bross turned and fled into the house. Confusion possessed him, and with it rage: stumbling 46 THE DAY OF DAYS blindly on the first flight of steps, he clawed the atmos- phere with fingers that itched for vengeance. "I 'll get even!" he muttered savagely — "I 'll get hunk with that boob i£ it's the last act of my life!" Fortunately, the hall was gloomy and at that moment deserted. On the first landing he checked, clutched the banisters for support, and endeavoured to compose himself — but with less success than he realised. It was with a suggestion of stealth that he ascended the second flight — with an enforced deliberateness and caution that were wasted. For as he reached the top, the door of the back hall-bedroom opened gently for the space of three inches. Through this aperture were visible a pair of bright eyes, with the curve of a plump and pretty cheek, and an adorable bare arm and shoulder. "That you, George?" Violet Prim demanded with vivacity. Reluctantly he stopped and in a throaty monosyllable admitted his identity. "Well, how'd it go off?" "Fine!" "He fell for it?" "All over himself. Honest, Vi, it was a scream to watch his eyes pop. You could've clubbed 'em outa his bean without touchin' his beak. I 'most died." Miss Prim giggled appreciatively. THE COMIC SPIRIT 47 "You 're a wonder, George," she applauded. "It takes you to think 'em out." "Ah, I don't know," returned her admirer with be- coming modesty. "He's gone on her, all right, ain't he?" "Crazy about her!" "Think he 'll make a play for her now?" George demurred. Downright lying was all very well; he could manage that with passable craft, espe- cially when, as in this instance, detection would be diffi- cult; but prophecy was a little out of his line. Though with misgivings, he resorted to unvarnished truth: "You never can tell about P. S. He's a queer little gink." Footsteps became audible on the stairs below. "Well, so long. See you at dinner," George added in haste. "George!" "Well?" he asked, delaying with ill grace. "What makes you sound so funny?" "Laughin'!" protested George convincingly. With determination and a heavy tread he went on to his room. VI SPBING TWILIGHT WHEN he had shaved (with particular care) and changed his linen (trimming collar and cuffs to a degree of uncommon nicety) and resumed his coat (brushing and hating it simultaneously and with equal ferocity, for its very shabbiness) P. Sybarite sought out a pipe old and disreputable enough to be a comfort to any man, and sat down by the one window of his room (top floor, hall, back) to smoke and consider the state of the universe while awaiting the dinner gong. The window commanded an elevated if non-exhilarat- ing view of back yards, one and all dank, dismal, and littered with the debris of a long, hard winter. Famili- arity, however, had rendered P. Sybarite immune to the miasma of melancholy they exhaled; the trouble in his patient blue eyes, the wrinkles that lined his fore- head, owned another cause. In fact, George had wrought more disastrously upon his temper than P. Sybarite had let him see. His hints, innuendoes, and downright assertions had in reality distilled a subtle poison into the little man's humour. For in spite of his embattled incredulity and the clear reasoning with which he had overborne SPRING TWILIGHT 49 George's futile insistence, there still lingered in his mind (and always would, until he knew the truth him- self) a carking doubt. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps George had guessed shrewdly. Perhaps Molly Lessing of the glove counter really was one and the same with Marian Blessington of the fabulous fortune. Old Brian Shaynon was a known devil of infinite astuteness; it would be quite consistent with his char- acter and past performances if, despairing of gaining control of his ward's money by urging her into un- welcome matrimony with his son, he had contrived to over-reach her in some manner, and so driven her to become self-supporting. Perhaps hardly likely: the hypothesis was none the less quite plausible; a thing had happened, within P. Sybarite's knowledge of Brian Shaynon . . . Even if George's romance were true only in part, these were wretched circumstances for a girl of gentle birth and rearing to adopt. It was really a shocking boarding-house. P. Sybarite had known it intimately for ten years; use had made him callous to its short- comings; but he was not yet so far gone that he could forget how unwholesome and depressing it must seem to one accustomed to better things. He could remember most vividly how he had loathed it for weeks, months, and years after the tide of evil fortunes had cast him 60 THE DAY OF DAYS upon its crumbling brownstone stoop (even in that distant day, crumbling). Now, however ... P. Sybarite realised suddenly that habit had instilled into his bosom a sort of mean affection for the grim and sordid place. Time had made him sib to its spirit, close to its niggard heart. Scarcely a nook or corner of it with which he was not on terms of the most intimate acquaintance. In the adjoining room a deserted woman had died by her own hand; her moans, filtered through the dividing wall, had summoned P. Sybarite — too late. The double front room on the same floor harboured an amiable couple whose sempiternal dissensions only his tact and persistence ever served to still. The other hall-bedroom had housed for many years a dipsomaniac whose peri- odic orgies had cost P. Sybarite many a night of bedside vigil. On the floor below lived a maiden lady whose quenchless hopes still centred about his amiable person. Downstairs in the clammy parlour he had whiled away unnumbered hours assisting at dreary " bridge drives," or playing audience to amateur recitals on the aged and decrepit " family organ." For an entire decade he had occupied the same chair at the same table in the base- ment dining-room, feasting on beef, mutton, Irish stew, ham-and-beans, veal, pork, or just-hash — accord- ing to the designated day of the week. . . . The very room in which he sat was somehow dear to him; upon it he wasted a sentiment in a way akin SPRING TWILIGHT 51 to that with which one regards the grave of a beloved friend; it was, in fact, the tomb of his own youth. Its narrow and impoverished bed had groaned with the restless weight of him all those many nights through which he had lain wakeful, in impotent mutiny against the outrageous circumstances that made him a prisoner there. Its walls had muted the sighs in which the desires of youth had been spent. Its floor matting was worn threadbare with the impatient pacings of his feet (four strides from door to window: swing and repeat ad libitum). Its solitary gas-jet had, with begrudged illumination, sicklied o'er the pages of those innumer- able borrowed books with which he had sought to dull poignant self-consciousness. . . . A tomb! . . . Bitterly he granted the aptness of that description of his cubicle: mausoleum of his every hope and aspiration, sepulchre of all his ability and promise. In this narrow room his very self had been extinguished: a man had degenerated into a machine. Everything that caught his eye bore mute witness to this truth: the shabby tin alarm clock on the battered bureau was one of a dynasty that had roused him at six in the morning with unfailing regularity three hun- dred and sixty-five times per year (Sundays were too rare in his calendar and too precious to be wasted abed). From an iron hook in the window frame dangled the elastic home-exerciser with which it was his unfail- ing habit to perform a certain number of matutinal 52 THE DAY OF DAYS contortions, to keep his body wholesome and efficient. Beneath the bed was visible the rim of a shallow English tub that made possible his subsequent sponge bath. . . . A machine; a fixture; creature of an implacable routine; a spirit immolated upon the altar of habit: into this he had degenerated in ten years. Such was the effect of life in this melancholy shelter for the home- less wage-slave. He was no lonely victim. In his term he had seen many another come in hope, linger in disappointment, leave only to go to a meaner cell in the same stratum of misfortune. Was this radiant spirit of youth and gentle loveliness (who might, for all one knew to the contrary, be Marian Blessington after all) to be suffered to become one of that disconsolate crew? What could be done to prevent it? Nothing that the wits of P. Sybarite could compass: he was as inefficient as any gnat in any web. . . . Through the halls resounded the cacophonous clangour of a cracked gong announcing dinner. Sighing, P. Syb- arite rose and knocked the ashes delicately from his pipe — saving the dottle for a good-night whiff after the theatre. Being Saturday, it was the night of ham-and-beans. P. Sybarite loathed ham-and-beans with a deathly loath- ing. Nevertheless he ate his dole of ham-and-beans. He sat on the landlady's right, and was reluctant to hurt her feelings or incur her displeasure. Besides, he SPRING TWILIGHT 53 was hungry: between the home-exerciser and the daily walks to and from the Brooklyn Bridge, his normal appetite was that of an athlete in pink of training. Miss Lessing sat on the same side of the main dining- table, but half a dozen chairs away. P. Sybarite could n't see her save by craning his neck. He refused to crane his neck: it might seem ostentatious. Violet and her George occupied adjoining chairs at another and smaller table. Their attendance was occa- sionally manifested through the medium of giggles and guffaws. P. Sybarite envied them: he had it in his heart to envy anybody young enough to be able to see a joke at that dinner table. By custom, the landlady relinquished her seat some minutes in advance of any guest. When P. Sybarite left the room he found her established at a desk in the basement hallway. Pausing, he delivered unto her the major portion of his week's wage. Setting aside an- other certain amount against the cost of laundry work, tobacco, and incidentals, he had five dollars left. . . . He wondered if he dared risk the extravagance of a modest supper after the theatre; and knew he dared not—knew it in wretchedness of spirit, cursing his fate. . . . There remained half an hour to be killed before time to start for the theatre. George Bross joined him on the stoop. They smoked pensively, while the afterglow faded from the western sky and veil after veil of VII AFTEEMATH WELL," observed Violet generously, " I thought little me was pretty well stage-broke; but I gotta hand it to Otis. He's some actor. He had me going from the first snore." "Some actor is right," affirmed Mr. Bross with con- viction, "and some show, too, if you wanta know. I could sit through it twicet. Say, I could n't quit thinkin' what a grand young time I'd start in this old burg if I could only con this Kismet thing into slippin' me my Day of Days. Believe me or not, there would be a party." "What would you do?" asked Molly Lessing, smiling. "Well, the first flop I'd nail down all the coin that was handy, and then I'd buy me a flock of automo- biles — and have a table reserved for me at the Knick- erbocker for dinner every night — and ..." Imagi- nation flagged. "Well," he concluded defensively, "I can tell you one thing I would n't do." "What?" demanded Violet. "I would n't let any ward politician like that there Wazir, or whatever them A-rabs called him, kid me AFTERMATH 57 into trying to throw a bomb at Charlie Murphy — or anythin' like that. No-oh! Not this infant. That's where your friend Hajj the Beggar's foot slipped on him. Up to then he had everythin' his own way. If he'd only had sense enough to stall, he'd 've wound up in a blaze of glory." "But, you bonehead," Violet argued candidly, "he had to. That was his part: it was written in the play." "G'wan. If he'd just stalled round and refused to jump through, the author'd 've framed up some other way out. Why — blame it! — he'd've had to!" "That will be about all for me," said Violet. "I don't feel strong enough to-night to stand any more of your dramatic criticism. Lead me home — and please talk baseball all the way." With a resentful grunt, Mr. Bross clamped a warm, moist hand round the plump arm of his charmer, and with masterful address propelled her from the curb in front of the theatre, where the little party had paused, to the northwest corner of Broadway: their progress consisting in a series of frantic rushes broken by abrupt pauses to escape annihilation in the roaring after-theatre crush of motor-cars. P. Sybarite, moving instinctively to follow, leaped back to the sidewalk barely in time to save his toes a crushing beneath the tires of a hurtling taxicab. He smiled a furtive apology at Molly Lessing, who had demonstrated greater discretion, and she returned 58 THE DAY OF DAYS his smile in the friendliest manner. His head was buzzing—and her eyes were kind. Neither spoke; but for an instant he experienced a breathless sense of sympathetic isolation with her, there on that crowded corner, elbowed and shouldered in the eddy caused by the junction of the outpouring audience with the mid- night tides of wayfarers surging north and south. The wonder and the romance of the play were still warm and vital in his imagination, infusing his thoughts with a roseate glamour of unreality, wherein all things were strangely possible. The iridescent imagery of the Arabian Nights of his boyhood (who has forgotten the fascination of those three fat old volumes of crabbed type, illuminated with their hundreds of cramped old wood-cuts?) had in a scant three hours been recreated for him by Knoblauch's fantastic drama with its splen- did investment of scene and costume, its admirable histrionic interpretation, and the robust yet exquisitely tempered artistry of Otis Skinner. For three hours he had forgotten his lowly world, had lived on the high peaks of romance, breathing only their rare atmos- phere that never was on land or sea. Difficult he found it now, to divest his thoughts of that enthrallment, to descend to cold and sober reality, to remember he was a clerk, his companion a shop-girl, rather than a Prince disguised as Calander esquiring a Princess dedicated to Fatal Enchantment — that Kis- met was a quaint fallacy, one with that whimsical con- AFTERMATH 59 ceit of Orient fatalism which assigns to each and every man his Day of Days, wherein he shall range the skies and plumb the abyss of his Destiny, alternately its lord and its puppet. But presently, with an effort, blinking, he pulled his wits together; and a traffic policeman creating a favour- able opening, the two scurried across and plunged into the comparative obscurity of West Thirty-eighth Street: sturdy George and his modest Violet already a full block in advance. Discovering this circumstance by the glimmer through the shadows of Violet's conspicuously striped black-and- white taffeta, P. Sybarite commented charitably upon their haste. "If we hurry we might catch up," suggested Molly Lessing. "I don't miss 'em much," he admitted, without offer- ing to mend the pace. She laughed softly. "Are they really in love?" "George is," replied P. Sybarite, after taking thought. "You mean she is n't?" "To blush unseen is Violet's idea of nothing to do — not, at least, when one is a perfect thirty-eight and possesses a good digestion and an infinite capacity for amusement a la carte." "That is to say—?" the girl prompted. 60 THE DAY OF DAYS "Violet will marry well, if at all." "Not Mr. Bross, then?" "Nor any other poor man. I don't say she does n't care for George, but before anything serious comes of it he 'll have to make good use of his Day of Days — if Kismet ever sends him one. I hope it will," P. Sybarite added sincerely. "You don't believe — really —?" "Just now? With all my heart! I'm so full of romantic nonsense I can hardly stick. Nothing is too incredible for me to believe to-night. I'm ready to play Hajj the Beggar to any combination of impossibil- ities Kismet cares to brew in Bagdad-on-the-Hudson!" Again the girl laughed quietly to his humour. "And since you 're a true believer, Mr. Sybarite, tell me, what use you would make of your Day of Days?" "I? Oh, I —" Smiling wistfully, he opened deprecatory palms. "Hard to say. ... I'm afraid I should prove a fatuous fool in George's esteem equally with old Hajj. I'm sure that, like him, the sunset of my Day would see me proscribed, a price upon my head." "But —why?" "I'm afraid I'd try to use my power to right old wrongs." After a pause, she asked diffidently: "Your own?" "Perhaps. . . . Yes, my own, certainly. . . . AFTERMATH 61 And perhaps another's, not so old but possibly quite as grievous." "Somebody you care for a great deal?" Thus tardily made to realise into what perils his fancy was leading him, he checked and weighed her question with his answer, gravely judgmatical. "Perhaps I'd better not say that," he announced, a grin tempering his temerity; "but I'd go far for a friend, somebody who had been kind to me, and — ah — tolerant — if she were in trouble and could use my services." He fancied her glance was quick and sharp and searching; but her voice when she spoke was even and lightly attuned to his whimsical mood. "Then you 're not even sure she — your friend — is in trouble?" "I've an intuition: she wouldn't be where she is if she was n't." Her laughter at this absurdity was delightful; whether with him or at him, it was infectious; he echoed it without misgivings. "But — seriously — you 're not sure, are you, Mr. Sybarite?" "Only, Miss Lessing," he said soberly, "of my futile, my painfully futile good will." She seemed to start to speak, to think better of it, to fall silent in sudden, shy constraint. He stole a side- long glance, troubled, wondering if perhaps he had AFTERMATH 63 "I know," he replied: " crackers and cheese, beer and badinage: our humble pleasures. You '11 be bored to extinction — but you '11 come, won't you?" "Why, of course! I counted on it. But —" "They must have hurried on to make things ready — Violet to set her room to rights, George to tote the wash-pitcher to the corner for the beer. And very likely, pending our arrival, they 're lingering at the head of the stairs for a kiss or two." The girl paused at the gate. "Then we need n't hurry," she suggested, smiling. "We need n't delay," he countered amiably. "If somebody does n't interrupt 'em before long, George will be too late to get the pitcher filled. This town shuts up tight at midnight, Saturdays — if you want to believe everything you hear. So there's no need of being too indulgent with our infatuated fellow-inmates." "But — just a minute, Mr. Sybarite," she insisted. "As many as you wish," he laughed. "As a matter of fact, I loathe draught beer." "Do be serious," she begged. "I want to thank you." He was aware of a proffered hand, slender and fine in a shabby glove; and took it in his own, uneasily conscious of a curious disturbance in his bosom, of a strange and not unpleasant sense of commingled ex- pectancy, pleasure, and diffidence (as far as he was able to analyse it — or cared to — at that instant). 64 THE DAY OF DAYS "It was kind of you to come," he said jerkily, in his embarrassment. "I enjoyed every moment," she said warmly. "But that was n't all I meant when I thanked you." His eyebrows climbed with surprise. "What else, Miss Lessing?" "Your delicacy in letting me know you under- stood —" Disengaging her hand, she broke off with a startled movement, and a low cry of surprise. A taxicab, swinging into the street from Eighth Avenue, had boiled up to the curb before the gate, and pausing, discharged a young man in a hurry; witness the facts that he had the door open when halfway be- tween the corner and the house, and was on the running- board before the vehicle was fairly at a halt. In a stride this one crossed the sidewalk and pulled up, silently, trying to master the temper which was visibly shaking him. Tall, well-proportioned, impres- sively turned out in evening clothes, he thrust forward a handsome face marred by an evil, twisted mouth, and peered searchingly at the girl. Instinctively she shrank back inside the fence, eyeing him with a look of fascinated dismay. As instinctively P. Sybarite bristled between the two. "Well?" he snapped at the intruder. An impatient gesture of a hand immaculately gloved AFTERMATH 66 in white abolished him completely — as far, at least, as the other was concerned. "Ah — Miss Lessing, I believe?" The voice was strong and musical but poisoned with a malicious triumph that grated upon the nerves of P. Sybarite; he declined to be abolished. "Say the word," he suggested serenely to the girl, "and I '11 bundle this animal back into that taxi and direct the driver to the nearest accident ward. I'd rather like to, really." "Get rid of this microbe," interrupted the other sav- agely —" unless you want him buried between glass slides under a microscope." The girl turned to P. Sybarite with pleading eyes and imploring hands. "If you please, dear Mr. Sybarite," she begged in a tremulous voice: "I'm afraid I must speak alone with this " — there was a barely perceptible pause — "gentleman. If you won't mind waiting a moment — at the door — 2" "If it pleases you, Miss Lessing — most certainly." He drew back a step or two. "But speaking of mi- crobes," he added incisively, "a word of advice: don't tease 'em. My bite is deadly: neither Pasteur nor your family veterinary could save you." Ignored by the man, but satisfied in his employment of the last word, he strutted back to the brownstone 66 THE DAY OF DAYS stoop, there to establish himself, out of earshot but within easy hail. Hearing nothing, he made little more of the guarded conference that began on his withdrawal. The man, entering the dooryard, had cornered the girl in an angle of the fence. He seemed at once insistent, determined, and thoroughly angry; while she exhibited perfect com- posure with some evident contempt and implacable ob- stinacy. Nevertheless, in a brace of minutes the fellow seemingly brought forth some telling argument. She wavered and her accents rose in doubt: "Is that true?" His reply, if inaudible, was as forcible as it was pat- ently an affirmative. "I don't believe you!" "You don't dare doubt me." This time he was clearly articulate, and betrayed a conviction that he had won the day: an impression borne out by the evident irresolution of the girl, prefac- ing her abrupt surrender. "Very well," she said in a tone of resignation. "You 'll go?" "Yes." He moved aside, to give her way through the gate. But she hung back, with a glance for P. Sybarite. "One moment, please," she said: "I must leave a message." "Nonsense — 1" AFTERMATH 67 She showed displeasure in the lift of her chin. "I think I'm my own mistress — as yet." He growled indistinguishably. "You have my promise," she cut him short coldly. "Wait for me." And she turned back to the house. Wondering, P. Sybarite went to meet her. Impul- sively she gave him her hand a second time; with as little reflection, he took it in both his own. "Is there nothing I can do?" Her voice was broken: " I don't know. I must go — it's imperative. . . . Could you —? . . . I won- der!" "Anything you ask," he asserted confidently. Hesitating briefly, in a tone little above a whisper: "I must go," she repeated. "I can't refuse. But — alone. Do you understand — V "You mean — without him?" P. Sybarite nodded toward the man fuming in the gateway. "Yes. If you could suggest something to detain him long enough for me to get into the cab and say one word to the chauffeur —" The chest of P. Sybarite swelled. "Leave it to me," he said with fine simplicity. "Molly!" cried the man at the gate. "Don't answer," P. Sybarite advised: " if you don't, he 'll lose patience and come to fetch you. And then —" "But I'm afraid he may —" 68 THE DAY OF DAYS "Molly!" "Don't you fear for me: God's good to the Irish." "MOLLY!" "Do be quiet," suggested P. Sybarite, not altogether civilly. The other started as if slapped. "What's that?" he barked in a rage. "I said, hold your tongue." "The devil you did!" With a snort the man strode in to the stoop. "Do you know who you 're talking to?" he demanded wrathfully, towering over P. Syba- rite, momentarily forgetful of the girl. Stepping aside, as if in alarm, she moved behind the fellow, and darted through the gate. "I don't," P. Sybarite admitted amiably; "but your nose annoys me." He fixed that feature with an irritating glare. "You impudent puppy!" stormed the other. "Who are you?" "Who — me?" echoed P. Sybarite in surprise. (The girl was now instructing the chauffeur.) "Why," he drawled, "I'm the guy that put the point in dis- appointment. Sure you've heard of me?" At the curb, the door of the taxicab closed with a slam. Simultaneously the drone of the motor thick- ened to a rumble. The man with the twisted mouth turned just in time to see it drawing away. "Hi I " he cried in surprise and dismay. AFTERMATH 69 But the taxi did n't pause; to the contrary, it stretched out toward Ninth Avenue at a quickening pace. With profanity appreciating the fact that he had been tricked, he picked up his heels in pursuit. But P. Syba- rite had not finished with him. Deftly plucking the man back by the tail of his full-skirted opera coat, he succeeded in arresting his flight before it was fairly started. "Here!" he protested. "What's your hurry?" With a vicious snarl, the man turned and snatched at his cloak. But P. Sybarite adhered tenaciously to the coat. "We were discussing your nose —" At discretion, he interrupted himself to duck beneath the swing of a powerful fist. And this last, failing to find a mark, threw its owner off his balance. Tripping awkwardly over the low curbing of the dooryard walk, he reeled and went a-sprawl on his knees, while his hat fell off and (such is the impish habit of toppers) rolled and bounded several feet away. Releasing the cloak, P. Sybarite withdrew to a re- spectful remove and held himself coolly alert against reprisals that never came. The other picked himself up quickly, cast about for the taxicab, discovered it swiftly making off — already twenty yards distant — and with a howl of rage bounded through the gate and gave chase at the top of his speed. 70 THE DAY OF DAYS Gravely, P. Sybarite retrieved the hat and followed to the curbing. "Hey!" he shouted after the fast retreating figure — "here's your hat!" But he wasted breath. The taxicab was nearing Ninth Avenue, its pursuer sprinting bravely a hundred feet to the rear, and as he watched, both turned the northern corner and vanished like shapes of dream. Sighing, P. Sybarite went back to the stoop and sat down to consider the state of his soul (which was vain- glorious) and the condition of the hat (which was soiled, rumpled, and disreputable). VIII WHEELS OF CHANCE TURNING the affair over in his mind, and consid- ering it from every imaginable angle, P. Sybarite decided (fairly enough) that it was, on the whole, mysterious; lending at least some colour of likelihood to George's gratuitous guess-work. Certainly it would seem that one had now every right to assume Miss Molly Lessing to be other than as she chose to seem; nowadays the villain in shining evening dress does n't pursue the shrinking shop-girl save through the action of the obsolescent mellerdrammer or of the ubiquitous moving-picture reel. So much must at least be said for these great educators: they have broken the villain of his open-face attire; to-day he knows better, and when prowling to devour, disguises himself in the guileless if nobby "sack suit" of the widely advertised Kollege Kut brand. . . . In short, Molly Lessing might very well be Marian Blessington, after all! In which case the man with the twisted mouth was, more probably than not, none other than that same Bayard Shaynon whom the young lady was reported to have jilted so arbitrarily. 72 THE DAY OF DAYS Turning the topper over in his hands, it occurred to P. Sybarite to wonder if he did not, in it, hold a valuable clue to this riddle of identity. Promptly he took the hat indoors to find out, investigating it most thoroughly by the flickering, bluish glare of the lonely gas-jet that burned in the hallway. It was a handsome and heavy hat of English manu- facture, as witness the name of a Bond Street hatter in its crown; by the slight discolouration of its leather, had seen service without, however, depreciating in util- ity, needing only brushing and ironing to restore its pristine brilliance; carried neither name nor initials on its lining; and lacked every least hint as to its owner- ship— or so it seemed until the prying fingers of P. Sybarite turned down the leather and permitted a visit- ing card concealed therein to flutter to the floor. The hall rack was convenient; hanging up the hat, P. Sybarite picked up the card. It displayed in con- ventional script the name, Bailey Penfield, with the address, 07 West 45th Street; one corner, moreover, bore a pencilled hieroglyphic which seemed to read: "0. K. — B. P." "Whatever," P. Sybarite mused, "that may mean." He turned the card over and examined its unmarked and taciturn reverse. Stealthy footsteps on the stairs distracted his studious attention from the card. He looked up, blinking and frowning thoughtfully, to see George descending with WHEELS OF CHANCE 73 the wash-pitcher wrapped in, but by no means disguised by, brown paper. Once at the bottom of the stairs, this one expressed amazement in a whisper, to avoid rousing their landlady, who held, unreasonably, that it detracted from the tone of her establishment for gentle- men boarders to rush the growler. . . . "Hel-lo! We thought you must've got lost in the shuffle." "Did you?" said P. Sybarite absently. "Where's Molly?" "Miss Lessing?" P. Sybarite looked surprised. "Is n't she upstairs — with Violet?" "No!" "That's funny ..." "Why, when'd she leave you?" "Oh, ten minutes ago, or so." "She must have stopped in her room for somethin'." "Perhaps." "But why did n't you come on up?" "Well, you see, I met a man outside I wanted to talk to for a moment. So I left her at the door." "Well, Vi's waitin'. Run on up. I won't be five minutes. And knock on Molly's door and see what's the matter." "All right," returned P. Sybarite serenely. His constructive mendacity light upon his conscience, he permitted George time enough to leave the house and gain Clancey's, then quietly followed as far as the 74 THE DAY OF DAYS gate, from which point he cut across the southern side- walk, turned west to Ninth Avenue, and there north to Forty-second Street, where he boarded a cross-town car. This was quite the most insane freak in which he had indulged himself these many years; and frankly admitting this much, he was rather pleased than other- wise. He was bound to call on Mr. Bailey Penfield and inform that gentleman where he might find his hat. Incidentally he hoped to surprise something or other informing with regard to the fortunes of Miss Lessing subsequent to her impulsive flight by taxicab. All of which, he calmly admitted, constituted an in- excusable impertinence: he deserved a thoroughgoing snubbing, and rather anticipated one, especially if des- tined to find Mr. Penfield at home or, by some vagary of chance, to encounter Miss Lessing again. But he smiled cheerfully in contemplation of this prospect, buoyed up with a belief that his unconsciously idiotic behaviour was intrinsically more or less Quixotic, and further excited by the hope that he might possibly be permitted to serve his lady of mystery. At all events, he meant to know more about Mr. Bailey Penfield before he slept. Alighting at Sixth Avenue, he walked to Forty-fifth Street, turned off to the right, and in another moment was at a standstill, in the extremest perplexity, before Number 97. By every normal indication, the house was closed and ! WHEELS OF CHANCE 75 tenantless. From roof to basement its every window was blind with shades close-drawn. The front doors were closed, the basement grating likewise. An atmos- pheric accumulation of street debris littered the area flagstones, together with one or two empty and battered ash-cans, in whose shadows an emaciated cat skulked apprehensively. The one thing lacking to signify that the Penfield menage had moved bodily to the country, was the shield of a burglar protective association in one of the parlour windows. P. Sybarite looked for that in vain. Disappointed in the conviction that he had drawn a false lead, the little man strolled on eastward a little distance, then on sheer impulse, gave up his project and, swinging about, started to go home. But now, as he approached Number 97 the second time, a taxicab turned in from Sixth Avenue, slid to the curb before that dwelling, and set down a smallish young man dressed in the extreme of fashion — a person of physical characteristics by no means to be confused with those of the man with the twisted mouth — who, negligently handing a bill to the chauffeur, ran nimbly up the steps, rang the door-bell, and promptly letting himself into the vestibule, closed the door behind him. The taxicab swung round and made off. Not so P. Sybarite. Profoundly intrigued, he waited hope- fully for this second midnight caller to reappear, as baflled as himself. But though he dawdled away a 76 THE DAY OF DAYS patient five minutes, nothing of the sort occurred. The front doors remained closed and undisturbed, as little communicative as the darkened windows. Here was mystery within mystery, indeed! The cir- cumstances annoyed P. Sybarite intensely. And why (he asked himself, with impatience) need he remain outside when another entered without let or hindrance? Upon this thought he turned boldly up the steps, pressed the bell-button; laid hold of the door-knob, and entered into a vestibule as dark as his bewilderment and as empty as the palm of his hand; proving that the young gentleman of fashion had experienced no diffi- culty in penetrating farther into fastnesses of this singu- lar establishment. And reflecting that where one had gone, another might follow, P. Sybarite pulled the door to behind him. Instantly the bare and narrow vestibule was flooded with the merciless glare of half a dozen electric bulbs; and at the same time he found himself sustaining the intent scrutiny of a pair of inhospitable dark eyes set in an impassive dark face — this last abruptly dis- closed in the frame of a small grille in one of the inner doors. Though far too dumfounded for speech, he contrived to return the stare with aggressive interest, and to such effect that he presently wore through the patience of the other. "Well?" he was gruffly asked. WHEELS OF CHANCE 77 "The Saints be praised!" returned P. Sybarite. "I find myself so. And yourself?" he added civilly: not to be outdone, as the saying is. "What do you want?" Irritating discourtesy inhered in the speaker's tone. P. Sybarite stiffened his neck. "To see Mr. Penfield," he returned firmly — " of course!" "What Mr. Penfield?" asked the other, after a pause so transient that it was little more than distinguishable, but which to P. Sybarite indicated beyond question that at least one Mr. Penfield was known to his cautious interlocutor. "Mr. Bailey Penfield," he replied. "Who else?" During a pause slightly longer than the first, the hos- tile and suspicious eyes summed him up a second time. "No such party here," was the verdict. The man drew back and made as if to shut the grille. "Nonsense!" P. Sybarite insisted sharply. "I have his card with this number — got it from him only to-night." "Card?" The face returned to the grille. P. Sybarite made no bones about displaying his alleged credential. "I believe you 'll find that authentic," he observed with asperity. By way of answer, the grille closed with a snap; but his inclination to kick the door was nullified when, with- 78 THE DAY OF DAYS out further delay, it opened to admit him. Nose in air, he strutted in, and the door clanged behind him. "Gimme another slant at that card," the guardian insisted. Surrendering it with elaborate indifference, P. Syba- rite treated himself to a comprehensive survey of the place. He stood in the main hall of an old-fashioned resi- dence. To his right, a double doorway revealed a draw- ing-room luxuriously furnished but, as far as he could determine, quite untenanted. On the left, a long stair- case hugged the wall, with a glow of warm light at its head. To the rear, the hall ended in a single doorway through which he could see a handsome mahogany buffet elaborately arranged with shimmering damask, silver, and crystal. "It's all right," announced the warden of the grille, his suspicions to all seeming completely allayed. "Mr. Penfield ain't in just at present, but" — here he grinned shrewdly — "I reckon you ain't so dead set on seein' him as you made out." "On the contrary," P. Sybarite retorted stiffly, "my business is immediate and personal with Mr. Penfield. I will wait." "Sure." Into the accents of the other there crept magically a trace of geniality. "Will you go right on up, or would you like a bite of somethin' to eat first?" At the mere hint of food, a frightful pang of hunger WHEELS OF CHANCE 79 transfixed P. Sybarite. He winked furtively, afraid to trust his tongue to speech. "What d' ya say?" insinuated the doorkeeper. "Just a bit of a snack, eh? Say a caviare sandwich and a thimbleful of the grape?" Abandoning false pride, P. Sybarite yielded: "I don't mind if I do, thank you." "Straight on back; Pete '11 take care of you, all right." A thumb indicated the door in the rear of the hall. Thither P. Sybarite betook himself on the instant, spurred by the demands of an appetite insatiable once it had won recognition. He found the back room one of good proportions: whatever the architect's original intention, now serving as a combined lounge and grill, richly and comfortably furnished in sober, masculine fashion, boasting in all three buffets set forth with a lavish display of food and drink. In one of many deeply upholstered club chairs a gentleman of mature years and heavy body, with a scarlet face and a crumpled, wine-stained shirt- bosom, was slumbering serenely, two-thirds of an ex- travagant cigar cold between his fingers. In others two young men were confabulating quietly but with a most dissipated air, heads together over a brace of glasses. At a corner service table a negro in a white jacket was busy with a silver chafing-dish which exhaled a tantalis- ing aroma. This last, at the entrance of P. Sybarite, 80 THE DAY OF DAYS glanced quickly over his shoulder, and seeing a strange face, clapped the cover on the steaming chafing-dish and discovered a round black countenance bisected by a complete mouthful of the most brilliant teeth imaginable. "Yas-suh — comin'!" he gabbled cheerfully. "It's sho' a pleasure to see yo' again." "At least," suggested P. Sybarite, dropping into a chair, "it will be, next time." "Tha's right, suh — that's the troof!" The negro placed a small table adjacent to his elbow. "Tha's what Ah alius says to strange gemmen, fust time they comes hyeh, suh; makes 'em feel more at home like. Jus' lemme know what Ah kin do for yo' to-night. That 'ere lobstuh Newburg's jus' about prime fo' eatin' this very minute, ef yo' feel a bit peckish." "I do," P. Sybarite admitted. "Just a spoonful —" "An' uh lil drink, suh? Jus' one lil innercent cocktail to fix yo' mouf right?" "If you insist, Pete — if you insist." "Yas-suh; and wif the lobstuh, suh, Ah venture to sug-gest a nice cold lil ha'f-pint of Cliquot, Yallah Label? How that strike yo' fancy, suh? Er mebbe yo'd perfuh —" "Enough!" said P. Sybarite firmly. "A mere bite and a glass are enough to sustain life." "Ain't that the troof?" Chuckling, the negro waddled away, returned, and WHEELS OF CHANCE 81 offered the guest a glass brimming with amber-tinted liquid. Poising the vessel delicately between thumb and fore- finger, P. Sybarite treated himself to one small sip — an instant of lingering delectation — another sip. So only, it is asserted, must the victim of the desert begin to allay his burning thirst; with discretion — a sip at a time — gingerly. It was years since P. Sybarite had tasted a cocktail artfully concocted. Dreamily he closed his eyes halfway. From a point in his anatomy a degree or two south of his diaphragm, a sensation of the most warm congratulation began to pervade his famished system: as if (he thought) his domestic economy were organising a torchlight proces- sion by way of appropriate celebration. Tender morsels of lobster smothered in cream and sherry (piping hot) daintiest possible wafers of bread- and-butter embracing leaves of pale lettuce, a hollow- stemmed glass effervescent with liquid sunlight of a most excellent bouquet, and then another: these served not in the least to subdue his occult jubilation. Finally "the house," through the medium of its servitor, insisted that he top off with a cigar. Ten years since his teeth had gripped a Fancy Tales of Smoke! . . . Now it must n't be understood that P. Sybarite en- tertained any misapprehensions as to the nature of the 88 THE DAY OF DAYS institution into which he had stumbled. He had not needed the sound, sometimes in quieter moments audi- ble from upstairs, of a prolonged whirr ending in several staccato clicks, to make him shrewdly cognisant of its questionable character. So at length, satiate and a little weary — drawn by curiosity besides — he rose, endowed Pete lavishly with a handful of small change (something over fifty cents; all he had in the world aside from his cherished five dollars), and with an impressive air of the most thorough-paced sophistication (nodding genially to the doorkeeper en passant) slowly ascended to the second floor. Here, in remodelling the house for its present pur- poses, partitions had arbitrarily been dispensed with, aside from that enclosing the well of the stairway; the floor was one large room, wholly devoted to some half a dozen games of chance. With but few of these was P. Sybarite familiar; but on information and belief he marked down a faro layout, the device with which his reading had made him acquainted under the desig- nation of les petits chevaux, and at either end of the saloon, immense roulette tables. Upon all the gaming tables massive electric domes concentrated their light. The walls, otherwise severely unadorned, were covered with lustrous golden fabric; the windows were invisible, cloaked in splendid golden hangings; the carpet, golden brown in tone, was of a WHEELS OF CHANCE 83 velvet pile so heavy that it completely muffled the sound of footsteps. The room, indeed, was singularly quiet for one that harboured some two-score players in addi- tion to a full corps of dealers, croupiers, watchers, and waiters. The almost incessant whine of racing ivory balls with their clattering over the metal compartments of the roulette wheels, clicking of chips, dispassionate voices of croupiers, and an occasional low-pitched com- ment on the part of one or another of the patrons, seemed only to lend emphasis to the hush. The warmth of the room was noticeable. . . . A brief survey of the gathering convinced P. Sybarite that, barring the servants, he was a lonely exception to the rule of evening dress. But this discovery discom- fited him not at all. The wine buzzing in his head, his demeanour, not to mince matters, rakehelly, with an eye alert for the man with the twisted mouth, negligent hands in his trouser pockets, teeth tight upon that ad- mirable cigar, he strutted hither and yon, ostensibly as much in his native element as a press agent in a theatre lobby. A few minutes sufficed to demonstrate that the owner of the abandoned hat was not among those present; which fact, coupled with the doorkeeper's averment that Mr. Bailey Penfield was out, persuaded P. Sybarite that this last was neither more nor less than the pro- prietor of the premises. But this conclusion per- turbed, completely unsettling his conviction regarding 84 THE DAY OF DAYS the soirdisant Miss Lessing; he could n't imagine either her or Miss Marian Blessington in any way involved with a common (or even a proper) gambler. To feel obliged constantly to revise his hasty infer- ences, he considered tremendously tiresome. It left one all up in the air! His tour ended at last in a pause by the roulette table at the rear of the room. Curious to watch the game in being, he lingered there, head cocked shrewdly on one shoulder, a speculative pensiveness informing his eyes, his interest plainly aloof and impersonal. This despite the fact that his emotions of intestinal felicity were momentarily becoming more intense: the torch- light procession was in full swing, leaving an enduring refulgence wherever it passed. There were perhaps half a dozen players round the board — four on one wing, two on the other. Of the latter, one was that very young man who had been responsible for P. Sybarite's change of mind with re- gard to going home. With a bored air this prodigal was frittering away five-dollar notes on the colours, the columns, and the dozens: his ill success stupendous, his apparent indifference positively magnificent. But in the course of the little while that P. Sybarite watched, he either grew weary or succeeded in emptying his pockets, and ceasing to play, sat back with a grunt of impatience more than of disgust. The ball ran its course thrice before he moved. Then WHEELS OF CHANCE 85 abruptly lifting his finger to the croupier: "Five on the red, Andy," said he. "Five on the red," repeated the croupier; and set aside a chocolate-coloured chip in memorandum of the wager. When the ball settled again to rest, the announce- ment was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blase prodigal was presented with the chocolate-coloured token. Carelessly he tossed it upon the red diamond. Black won. Unperturbed, he made a second oral bet, this time on black, and lost; increased his wager to ten dollars on black — and lost; made it twenty, shifted to red, and lost; dropped back to five-dollar bets for three turns of the wheel, and lost them all. Fifty dol- lars in debt to the house, he rose, nodded casually to the croupier, left the room. In mingled envy and amazement P. Sybarite watched him go. Fancy losing three weeks' wages and a third of another week's without turning a hair! Fancy los- ing fifty dollars without being required to pay up! "Looks easy," meditated P. Sybarite with a thrill of dreadful yearning. . . . At precisely that instant the torchlight procession penetrated a territory theretofore unaffected, which re- ceived it with open arms and tumultuous rejoicings and even went so far as to start up a couple of bonfires of its own and hang out several strings of Japanese lan- 86 THE DAY OF DAYS terns. In the midst of a confusion of soaring sky- rockets and Roman candles vomiting showers of scin- tillant golden sparks, P. Sybarite was shocked to hear his own voice. "Five on the red," it said distinctly, with an effect of extravagant apathy. A thought later he caught the croupier's eye and drove the wager home with a nod. His heart stopped beating. Five dollars! All he had in the world! The whirr of the deadly little ball in its ebony run- way was like nothing less than the exultant shriek of a banshee. Instantaneously (as if an accident had hap- pened in the power house) every light in his body went out and left it cold and dark and altogether dismayed. The croupier began his chant: "Three, red—!" P. Sybarite failed to hear the rest. All the lights were on again, full blast. The croupier tossed him a chocolate token. He was conscious that he touched it with numb and witless fingers, mechanically pushing it upon the red diamond. Ensued another awful, soul-sickening minute of sus- pense. . . . "Twenty-five, red —!" A second brown chip appeared magically on top of the first. P. Sybarite regarded both stupidly; afraid to touch them, his brain communicated to his hand the WHEELS OF CHANCE 87 impulse to remove the chips ere it was too late, but the hand hung moveless in listless mutiny. "Thirty-four red —I" Two more chips were added to his stack. And this time his brain sulked. If his body would n't heed its plain and sagacious admonition — very well! — it just wouldn't bother to signal any further advice. But quite instinctively his hand moved out, tenderly embraced the four brown chips, and transferred them to the green area dominated by the black diamond. "Twelve, black —!" Forty dollars were represented in that stunted pillar of brown wafers! P. Sybarite experienced an effect of coming to his senses after an abbreviated and, to tell the truth, somewhat nightmarish nap. Aping the man- ner of one or two other players whom he had observed before this madness possessed him, he thrust the chips out of the charmed circle of chance, and nodded again (with what a seasoned air!) to the croupier. "Cash or chips?" enquired that functionary. "Oh — cash, thank you." The chips gathered into the company of their brethren, two twenty-dollar bills replaced them. Stuffing these into his pocket, P. Sybarite turned and strolled indifferently toward the door. "Better leave while your luck holds," Intelligence counselled. 88 THE DAY OF DAYS "Right you are," he admitted fairly. "I 'll go home now before anybody gets this away from me." "Sensible of you," Intelligence approved. "Still," suggested the small but clear voice of Greed, "you've got your original five dollars yet to lose. Be a sport. Don't go without turning in a cent to the house. It would n't look pretty." "There's something in that," admitted P. Sybarite again. Nevertheless, he never quite understood how it was that his feet carried him to the other roulette table, at the end of the salon opposite that at which he had been playing; or how it was that his fingers produced and coolly handed over the board, one of the twenty- dollar notes rather than the modest five he had meant to risk. "How many?" the new croupier asked pleasantly. P. Sybarite pulled a doubtful mouth. Five dollars' worth was all he really wanted. What on earth would he do with all the chips twenty dollars would buy? He'd need a bushel measure! Before he could make up his mind, however, exactly twenty white counters were meted out to him. "What are these worth?" he demanded incredu- lously, dropping into a chair. "One dollar each," he was informed. "Indeed?" he replied, politely smothering a slight yawn. WHEELS OF CHANCE 89 But he conceived a new respect for those infatuated men who so recklessly peppered the lay-out with chips — singly and in little piles of five and ten — worth one- hundred cents each! However, to save his face, he'd have to go through his twenty. But after that — exit! He made this promise to himself. Prying a single chip apart from its fellows, he tossed it heedlessly upon the numbered squares. It landed upon its rim, rolled toward the wheel, and fainted gracefully upon the green compartment numbered 00. The croupier cocked an eyebrow at him, as if ques- tioning his intention, at the instant the ivory ball began to sing its song of a single note. Abruptly it was chattering; in another instant it was still. "Double O!" announced a voice. A player next P. Sybarite swore soulfully. Thirty-five white chips were stacked alongside the winning stake. With unbecoming haste P. Sybarite removed them. "Well," he sighed privately, "there's one thing certain: this won't last. But I don't like to seem a piker. I 'll just make sure of this one: it can't win. And at that, I 'll be another fifteen dollars in." Deliberately he shifted the nineteen remaining of his original stack to keep company with his winning chip on the Double O. . . . A minute or so later the man at his elbow said ex- 90 THE DAY OF DAYS citedly: " I 'll be damned if it did n't repeat! Can you beat that —!" P. Sybarite stared stupidly. "How's that?" he said. "Double O," the croupier answered: "the second time." "This is becoming uncanny," P. Sybarite observed to himself; and — " Cash!" said he aloud with cold decision. Seven new one-hundred dollar certificates were placed in his hand. In a daze he counted, folded, and pocketed them. While thus engaged he heard the ball spin again. His original twenty dollars remained upon the double naught. Ten turned up: his stake was gathered in. "You've had enough," Intelligence advised. "Perfectly true," P. Sybarite admitted. This time his anatomy proved quite docile. He found himself at the foot of the steps, fatuously smiling at the doorkeeper. "He ain't come in yet," said the latter; "but he's liable to be here any minute now." "Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite brightly, after a brief pause — " Mr. Penfield, of course. Sorry I can't wait." "Well, you 'll want your hat before you go — won't you?" Placing an incredulous hand upon the crown of his head, P. Sybarite realised that it was covered exclu- sively with hair. WHEELS OF CHANCE 91 "I must have put it down somewhere upstairs," he murmured in panic. "Mebbe you left it with Pete before you went up." "Perhaps I did." Turning back to the lounge, he entered to find it deserted save for the somnolent old gentleman and the hospitable Pete, but for whom P. Sybarite would prob- ably never have known the delirious joy of that internal celebration or found the courage to risk his first bet. And suddenly the fifty-cent tip previously bestowed upon the servitor seemed, to one unexpectedly fallen heir to the princely fortune then in P. Sybarite's pockets, the very nadir of beggarliness. "Pete," said he with owlish gravity, "I begin to see that I have done you an inexcusable injustice." Giggling, the negro scratched his head. "Well, suh," he admitted, "Ah finds that gemmun gen'ly does change they min's erbout me, aftuh they done cut er melon, like." With the air of an emperor, P. Sybarite gave the negro a twenty-dollar bill. "And now," he cut short a storm of thanks, "if you 'll be good enough to give me just one more glass of champagne, I think I 'll totter home." "Y&s-suh!" In a twinkling a glass was in his hand. As if it were so much water — in short, indifferently — P. Sybarite tossed it off. THE DAY OF DAYS "And my hat." "Yo' hat?" Pete iterated in surprise. "Yo' did n't leaf yo' hat wif me, suh; yo' done tek it wif yo' when yo' went upstahs." "Oh," murmured P. Sybarite, dashed. He turned to the door, hesitated, turned back, and solemnly sat himself down. "Pete," said he, extending his right foot, "I wish you'd do something for me." "Yas-suh!" "Take off my shoe." Staring with naif incredulity until assured of the gentleman's complete seriousness, the negro plumped down upon his knees, unlaced, and removed the shoe. "It's a shocking shoe," observed P. Sybarite dreamily. Bending forward he tucked his original five-dollar note into the toe of the despised footgear. "I am not going home broke," he explained labori- ously to Pete; " as I certainly shall if I dare go upstairs again to find my hat." "Yo's sholly sens'ble," Pete approved. "But they ain't no reason why yo' sho'd tek enny mo' chances ef yo' don't wantuh," he added, knotting the laces. "I'd just as leave's not go fetch yo' hat." "You need n't bother," P. Sybarite returned with dignity. 94 THE DAY OF DAYS Glancing cunningly down his nose, he saw the finish of a fool. "Anyway," he insisted, "it was ever my fondest ambition to get rid of precisely seven hundred and thirty-five dollars in one hour by the clock." So he sat down at the end of the table of his first winnings, and exchanged one of his seven big bills for one hundred white chips. "What," he asked with an ingenious smile, "is the maximum?" "Seein's it's you," said the croupier, grinning, "we 'll make it twenty a throw." "Such being the case " — P. Sybarite pushed back the little army of white chips — " you may give me twenty dark-brown counters for these. ..." In ten minutes he had lost two hundred dollars. At the end of twenty minutes, he exchanged his last thirty-five dollars for seven brown chips. Ten minutes later, he was worth eighteen hundred dollars; in another ten, he had before him counters calling for five thousand or thereabouts. "It is," he observed privately — "it must be my Day of Days!" A hand touched his shoulder, and a quiet voice said: "Beg pardon —" He looked up with a slight start — that was n't one of joyous welcome, because the speaker was altogether a stranger — to find at his elbow a large body of man THE PLUNGER 95 entirely surrounded by evening clothes and urbanity; whose face was broad with plump cheeks particularly clean-shaven; whose eyes were keen and small and twinkling; whose fat hand (offered to P. Sybarite) was strikingly white and dimpled and well-manicured; whose dignity and poise (alike inimitable) combined with the complaisance of a seasoned student of man- kind to mark an individuality at once insinuating and forceful. "You were asking for me, I believe?" pursued this person, with complete suavity. P. Sybarite pursed doubtful lips. "I'm afraid," he replied pleasantly, " you have the advantage of me. . . . Let's see: this is my thirty-second birthday. ..." The ball was spinning. He deposited four chips on the square numbered 32. "I am Mr. Penfield," the stranger explained. "Really?" P. Sybarite jumped up and cordially seized his hand. "I hope I see you well to-night." Releasing the hand, he sat down. "Quite well, thank you; in fact, never better." With a slight smile Mr. Penfield nodded toward the gaming table. "Having a good time?" "Thirty-two, red, even," observed the croupier. . . . "Oh, tolerable, tolerable," assented P. Sybarite, blandly accepting counters that called for seven hundred dollars. . . . "In one year from to-day, I shall be thirty-three," 96 THE DAY OF DAYS he reckoned; and shifted a maximum to the square designated by that number. . . . "What do you think? Is Teddy going to get the nomination?" "I'm only very slightly interested in politics," re- turned Mr. Penfield. "I should n't like to express an opinion. . . . Sorry a prior engagement obliged me to keep you waiting." "Thirty-three, black, odd. ..." "Don't mention it," insisted P. Sybarite politely. "Not another word of apology — I protest! Indeed, I've managed to divert myself amazingly while wait- ing. . . . Thank you," he added in acknowledgment of another seven-hundred-dollar consignment of chips. "To-day," he mused aloud, "is the thirteenth of April —" "The fourteenth," corrected Mr. Penfield: "to-day is only about two hours old." "Right you are," admitted P. Sybarite, shifting twenty dollars from the 13 to the 14. "Careless mem- ory of mine ..." "Thirteen, black, odd. ..." "There, now! You see — you spoiled my aim," P. Sybarite complained peevishly. "Forgive me," murmured Mr. Penfield while P. Sybarite made another wager. "Are you in a hurry to break the bank?" he added. "It's my ambition," modestly confessed the little THE PLUNGER 97 man, watching a second twenty gathered in to the benefit of the house. "But I've only a few minutes more — and you do play such a darned small game." "Perhaps I can arrange matters for you," suggested Mr. Penfield. "You'd like the limit removed?" "Not as bad as all that. Make the maximum a hun- dred, and I 'll begin to feel at home." "Delighted to oblige. You won't object to my rolling for you?" Penfield nodded to the croupier; who (first paying P. Sybarite seven hundred on his last wager) surrendered his place. "Not in the least," agreed P. Sybarite, marshalling his chips in stacks of five: twenty-five dollars each. "It's an honour," he added, covering several numbers as Penfield deftly set ball and wheel in motion. He won the first fall; and encouraged by this, began to play extravagantly, sowing the board liberally with wagers of twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred dollars each. Hardly ever the ball clattered to a lodgment but he cashed one or another of these; and the number of times that the house paid him thirty-five hundred dollars passed his count. All other play at that table ceased; and a gallery of patrons of the establishment gathered round, following with breathless interest the fortunes of this shabby little plunger. Their presence, far from annoying, pleased him; it was just so much additional assurance of fair play. The mounting of the roulette wheel — it was placed upon a broad sheet X UNDER FIEE BLOATED though he was with lawless wealth and fat with insufferable self-satisfaction, P. Syba- rite, trotting by the side of his host, was dwarfed alike in dignity and in physique, strongly resembling an espe- cially cocky and ragged Airedale being tolerated by a well-groomed St. Bernard. Now when Pete had placed a plate of caviare sand- wiches between them, and filled their glasses from a newly opened bottle, he withdrew from the lounge and closed the door behind him; whether or not at a sign from Penfield, P. Sybarite was unaware; though as soon as they were alone and private, he grew unpleasantly sensitive to a drop in the temperature of the entente cordiale which had thus far obtained between himself and the gambler. Penfield's eyes promptly lost much of their genial glow, and simultaneously his face seemed weirdly less plump and rosy with prosperity and con- tentment. Notwithstanding this, with no loss of man- ner, he lifted a ceremonious glass to the health of his guest. "Congratulations!" said he; and drank as a thirsty man drinks. UNDER FIRE 101 "May your shadow never grow less!" P. Sybarite returned, putting down an empty glass. "That's a perfectly good wish plumb wasted," said Penfield, refilling both glasses, his features twisted in the wriest of grimaces. "Fact is — I don't mind tell- ing you — your luck to-night has, I'm afraid, played the very devil with me. This house won't open up again until I raise another bank-roll." "My sympathy," said P. Sybarite, sipping. "I'm really distressed. . . . And yet," he added thought- fully, "you had no chance — none whatever." "How's that?" said Penfield, staring. "You could n't have won against me to-night," P. Sybarite ingenuously explained; " it could not be done: I am invincible: it is — Kismet ! — my Day of Days!" Penfield laughed discordantly. "Maybe it looks that way to you. But aren't you a little premature? You have n't banked that wad yet, you know. Any minute something might happen to make you think otherwise." "Nothing like that is going to happen," P. Sybarite retorted with calm conviction. "The luck's with me at present!" "And yet," said the other, abandoning his easy pose and sitting up with a sharpened glance and tone, "you are wrong — quite wrong." "What makes you think that % " demanded P. Syba- rite, finishing his second glass. 102 THE DAY OF DAYS "Because," said his host with a dangerous smile, "lama desperate man." "Oh?" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully. "Believe me," insisted the other with convincing simplicity: "I'm such a bum loser, I'm willing to stake my last five hundred on the proposition that you don't leave this house a dollar richer than you entered it." "Done!" said P. Sybarite instantly. "If I get away with it, you pay me five hundred dollars. Is that right?" "Exactly!" "But — where shall we meet to settle the wager?" Penfield smiled cheerfully. "Dine with me at the Bizarre this evening at seven." "If I lose, with pleasure. Otherwise, you are to be my guest." "It's a bargain." "And — that being understood," pursued P. Sybarite curiously — " perhaps you won't mind explaining your grounds for this conspicuous confidence." "Not in the least," said the other, pulling com- fortably at his cigar — " that is, if you 're willing to come through with a little information. I'm curious to know how you came to butt in here on my personal card of introduction. Where did you get it?" "Found it in a hat left in my possession by a gentle- man in a great hurry, whom I much desired to see again, UNDER FIRE 103 and therefore — presuming him to be Mr. Bailey Pen- field— came here to find." "A gentleman unknown to you?" "Entirely: a tall young man with an ugly mouth; rather fancies himself, I should say: a bit of a bounder. You recognise this sketch?" "Perhaps ..." Penfield murmured thoughtfully. "His name?" "Maybe he would n't thank me for telling you that." "Very well. Now then: why and how are you go- ing to separate me from my winnings?" "By force," said Mr. Penfield with engaging can- dour. "It desolates me to descend to rough-neck methods, but I am a larger, stronger man than you, Mr. —" "Sybarite," said the little man, flushing, "P. — by the grace of God! — Sybarite." "Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Syba- rite. . . . But before we lose our tempers, what do you say to a fair proposition: leave me what you have won to-night,■ and I '11 pay it back to the last cent with interest in less than six months." P. Sybarite shook his head: "I'm sorry." The dark blood surged into Penfield's cheeks. "You won't accept my word —?" "I have every confidence in your professional honour," P. Sybarite replied blandly, "up to the cer- 104 THE DAY OF DAYS tain point to which we have attained to-night. But the truth is — I need the money." "You 're unwise," said the other, and sighed pro- foundly. "I'm sorry. You oblige me to go the ex- treme limit." "Not I. On the contrary, I advise you against any such dangerous course." "Dangerous?" "If .you interfere with me, I 'll go to the police." "The police?" Penfield elaborated an inflexion of derision. "I keep this precinct in my vest pocket." "Possibly — so far as concerns your maintenance of a gambling house. But murder — that's another matter." "Meaning, you refuse to submit without extreme measures ?"' "Meaning just that, sir!" Again the gambler sighed. "What must be, must," said he, rising. Moving to the wall, he pressed a call- button, and simultaneously whipped a revolver into view. "I hope you 're not armed," he protested sin- cerely. "It would only make things messy. And then I hate to have my employees run any risk —" "You are summoning a posse, I take it?" enquired P. Sybarite, likewise on his feet. "Half a dozen huskies," assented the other. "If you know your little book, you 'll come through at once and save yourself a manhandling." UNDER FIRE 105 "It's too bad," P. Sybarite regretted pensively — and cast a desperate glance round the room. What he saw afforded him no comfort. The one door was unquestionably guarded on the farther side. The windows, though curtained, were as indubitably locked and further protected by steel outside blinds. Besides, Penfield bulked big and near at hand, a weapon of the most deadly calibre steadily levelled at the head of his guest. But exactly at the moment when despair entered into the heart of the little man — dispossessing altogether his cool assumption of confidence in his star — there rang through the house a crash so heavy that its muffled thunder penetrated even the closed door of the lounge. Another followed it instantly, and at deliberate inter- vals a third and fourth. Penfield blenched. His eyes wavered. He punched the bell-button a second time. The door was thrown wide and — with the instanta- neous effect of a jack-in-the-box — Pete showed a dirty- grey face of fright on the threshold. "Good Lord, boss!" he yelled. "Run for yo' life! We's raided!" He vanished. . . . With an oath, Penfield started toward the door — and instantly P. Sybarite shot at his gun hand like a terrier at the throat of a rat. Momentarily the shock of the assault staggered the gambler, and as he gave 106 THE DAY OF DAYS ground, reeling, P. Sybarite closed one set of sinewy fingers tight round his right wrist, and with the other seized and wrested the revolver away. The incident was history in a twinkling: P. Sybarite sprang back, armed, the situation reversed. Recovering, Penfield threw him a cry of envenomed spite, and in one stride left the room. He was turning up the stairs, three steps and an oath at a bound, by the time P. Sybarite gained the threshold and sped his departing host with a reminder superfluously ironic: "The Bizarre at seven — don't forget!" A breathless imprecation dropped to him from the head of the staircase. And he chuckled — but cut the chuckle short when a heavy and metallic clang followed the disappearance of the gambler. The iron door up- stairs had closed, shutting off the second floor from the lower part of the house, and at the sfeme time con- signing P. Sybarite to the mercies of thejwlice as soon as they succeeded in battering down the front door. Now he harboured no whim to figure as the sole victim of the raid — to be arrested as a common gam- bler, loaded to the guards with cash and unable to give any creditable account of himself. "Damn!" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully. The front doors still held, though shaking beneath a shower of axe-strokes that filled the house with sono- rous echoes. At his feet, immediately to the left of the lounge 108 THE DAY OF DAYS beat — one of those creatures of Penfield's vaunted vest-pocket crew — invited in for a bite and sup by the steward of the house. The steward called away, he had drifted naturally into a gentle nap. And now — " Glad I'm not in his shoes!" mused P. Sybarite. And yet. . . . Urgent second thought changed the tenor of his temper toward the sleeper. Better far to be in his shoes than in those of P. Sybarite, just then. . . . Remembering Penfield's revolver, he made sure it was safe and handy in his pocket; then strode in and dropped an imperative hand on the policeman's shoulder. "Here — wake up!" he cried; and shook him rudely. The fellow stirred, grunted, and lifted a bemused, red countenance to the breaker of rest. "Hello!" he said in dull perception of a stranger. "What's —row?" "Get up — pull yourself together!" P. Sybarite ordered sternly. "You 're liable to be broke for this!" "Broke?" The officer's eyes widened, but remained cloudy with sleep, drink, and normal confusion. "Where's Jimmy? Who 're you?" "Never mind me. Look to yourself. This place is being raided." "Raided!" The man leaped to his feet with a cry. "G'wan! It ain't possible!" "Listen, if you don't believe me." The crashing of the axes and the grumble of the UNDER FIRE 109 curious crowd assembled in the street were distinctly audible. The officer needed no other confirmation; and yet — instant by instant it became more clearly apparent that he had drunk too deeply to be able to think for himself. Standing with a hand on the table, he rocked to and fro until, losing his balance, he sat down heavily. "My Gawd!" he cried. "I'm done for!" "Nonsense! No more than I — unless you 're too big a fool to take a word of advice. Here — off with your coat." "What's that?" "I say, off with your coat, man — and look sharp! Get it off and I 'll hide it while you slip into one of those waiter's jackets over there. Then, if they find us here, we can pretend to be employees. You under- stand?" "We 'll get pinched, all the same," the man objected stupidly. "Well, if we do, it only means a trip to the Night Court, and a fine of five or ten dollars. You 'll be up to-morrow for absence from post, of course, but that's better than being caught half-drunk in the basement of a gambling house on your beat." Impressed, the officer started to unbutton his tunic, but hesitated. "S'pose some of the boys recognise me?" "Where are your wits?" demanded P. Sybarite in exasperation. "This is n't a precinct raid! You ought UNDER FIRE 111 street in the guise of an officer, and so make off. But now — with his fingers on the bolts — misgivings assailed him. He was physically not much like any policeman he had ever seen; and the blue tunic with its brass buttons was a wretched misfit on his slight body. He doubted whether his disguise would pass unchallenged — doubted so strongly that he doubled suddenly to the back door, flung it open, and threw himself out into the black strangeness of the night — and at the same time into the arms of two burly plain- clothes men posted there to forestall precisely such an attempt at escape. Strong arms clipping him, he struggled violently for an instant. "Here!" a voice warned him roughly. "It ain't goin' to do you no good —" Another interrupted with an accent of deep disgust, in patent recognition of his borrowed plumage: "Damned if it ain't a patrolman!" "Why the hell did n't you say so?" demanded the first as P. Sybarite fell back, free. "Did n't — have — time. Here — gimme a leg over this fence, will you?" "What the devil —!" "They've got a door through to the next house — getting out that way. That's what I'm after — to stop 'em. Shut up!" P. Sybarite insisted savagely — "and give me a leg." 112 THE DAY OF DAYS "Oh, well!" said one of the plain-clothes men in a slightly mollified voice — " if that's the way of it — all right." "Come along, then," brusquely insisted the impostor, leading the way to the eastern wall of boards enclosing the back yard. Curiously complaisant for one of his breed, the de- tective bent his back and made a stirrup of his clasped hands, but no sooner had P. Sybarite fitted foot to that same than the man started and, straightening up ab- ruptly, threw him flat on his back. "Patrolman, hell! Whatcha doin' in them pants and shoes if you 're a patrol —" "Hel-Zo /" exclaimed the other indignantly. "Im- personatin' an officer — eh?" With this he dived at P. Sybarite; who, having bounced up from a supine to a sitting position, promptly and peevishly swore, rolled to one side (barely eluding clutches that meant to him all those frightful and humiliating consequences that arrest means to the aver- age man) and scrambled to his feet. Immediately the others closed in upon him, supremely confident of overcoming by concerted action that small- ish, pale, and terrified body. Whereupon P. Sybarite stepped quickly to one side and, avoiding the rush of one, directly engaged the other. Ducking beneath a windmill play of arms, he shot an accurate fist at this aggressor's jaw; there was a click of teeth, the man's UNDER FIRE 113 head snapped back, and folding up like a tripod, he subsided at length. Then swinging on a heel, P. Sybarite met a second onset made more dangerous by the cooler calculations of a more sophisticated antagonist. Nevertheless, deftly blocking a rain of blows, he closed in as if eager to escape punishment, and planted a lifted knee in the large of the detective's stomach so neatly that he, too, collapsed like a punctured presidential boom and lay him down at rest. Success so egregious momentarily stupefied even P. Sybarite. Gazing down upon those two still shapes, so mighty and formidable when sentient, he caught his breath in sharp amazement. "Great Heavens! Is it possible / did that?" he cried aloud — and the next moment, spurred by alert discretion, was scaling the fence with the readiness of an alley-cat. Instantaneously, as he poised above the abyss of Stygian blackness on the other side, not a little daunted by its imperturbable mystery, a quick backward glance showed him figures moving in the basement hallway of the gambling house; and easing over, he dropped. Hard flags received him with native impassivity: stumbling, he lost balance and sat down with an em- phasis that drove the breath from him in one mighty "Ooof!" There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange 114 THE DAY OF DAYS voices on the other side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement: "Feeny, by all that's holy!" "Mike Grogan, or I'm a liar!" "What hit the two av urn?" "Gawd knows!" "Thin 'tis this waay thim murdherous diwles is b'atin' ut!" "Gimme a back up that fince!" . . . P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alac- rity that if he'd landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a second fence, and was be- yond it in a twinkling. Swift as he was, however, detection attended him — a voice roaring: "There goes wan av thim now!" Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice. . . . Blindly clearing fence after fence without even think- ing to count them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward. Noises in the rear indicated a determined pursuit: once a voice whooped — " Halt or I fire I" — and a shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive's heels. . . . But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty — to find a way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy inspiration — as plain as the problem it presented was obscure. XI BTJEGLABY UNDEB AEMS ND there P. Sybarite stood, near the middle of JTm. a fence-enclosed area of earth and flagstones; winded and weary; looking up and all around him in distressed perplexity; in a stolen coat (to be honest about it) and with six months' income from a million dollars unlawfully procured and secreted upon his per- son; wanted for resisting arrest and assaulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and de- termined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides windQw after excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever was on land or sea. . . . Conceiving the block as a well a-brim with blackness and clamorous with violent sound, studded on high with inaccessible, yellow-bright loopholes wherefrom hostile eyes spied upon his every secret movement, and haunted below by vicious perils both animate and still: he found himself possessed of an overpowering desire to go away from there quickly. But — short of further dabbling in crime — how? 116 THE DAY OF DAYS To break his way to the street through one of those houses would be not only to invite apprehension: it would be downright burglary. To continue his headlong career of the fugitive back- yards tom-cat was out of the question, entirely too much like hard work, painful into the bargain — witness scratched and abraded palms and agonised shins. Sooner or later his strength must fail, some one would surely espy him and cry on the chase, he must be sur- rounded and overwhelmed: while to hide behind some ash-barrel was not only ignoble but downright fatuous: faith the most sublime in his Kismet could n't excuse any hope that, eventually, he wouldn't be discovered and ignominiously routed out. Very well, then! So be it! Calmly P. Sybarite elected to venture another and deeper dive into ama- teurish malfeasance; and gravely he studied the in- offensive building whose back premises he was then infesting. It seemed to offer at least the negative invitation of desuetude. It showed no lights; had not an open window—so far as could be determined by straining sight aided only by a faint reflection from the livid skies. One felt warranted in assuming the premises to be vacant. Encouraging surmise! If such were in fact the case, he might hope soon to be counting his spoils in the privacy of his top-floor-hall-bedroom, back. . . . At the same time, to one ignorant of the primary BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 117 principles of house-breaking, the problem of negotiating an entrance was of formidable proportions. To break a basement window was feasible, certainly — but highly inadvisable for a number of obvious reasons. To force a window-latch required (if memory served) a long flat-bladed knife — a kitchen knife; and P. Sybarite happened to have no such implement about him. Similarly, to pry open the back door would require the services of a jimmy (whatever that might be). Moreover, there were such things as burglar alarms — inventions of the devil! On the other hand, unless his senses deceived him, there were police officers in plenty only a fence or two away; and the back of this house boasted a fire-escape. By inverting a convenient ash-can and standing on it, an active man might possibly, if sufficiently desperate, manage to jump a vertical yard (more or less), catch the lowermost grating of the fire-escape, and draw him- self up. 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. 118 THE DAY OF DAYS Yet that mad attempt must be made. Why die fight- ing 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 con- stellations swirling round his poor head to the thunder- ous 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 im- provised, given similar circumstances and facilities as rude. It seemed hours, rather than instants, that the damned thing wallowed and bellowed beneath him, rais- ing a din to disturb all Christendom. While, the mo- ment 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 120 THE DAY OF DAYS inhabited, after all: its sombre and quiet aspect mask- ing 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 — pene- trating 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 im- penetrable 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 mali- cious ambush, so promptly did it go over — and with what a racket. BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 121 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. 122 THE DAY OF DAYS Fright inspired his latent histrionic genius; mo- mentarily 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 him- self from the window-ledge to a fire-escape five feet away — don't ask me how he did it! I got to the win- You 're the one woman in a thousand who knows enough to look before she shoots!" Page 122 BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 123 dow 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 elo- quent of positive incredulity. "Well, anyway," 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 would n't she accept that wildly fanci- ful 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 super- abundance 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 out- shone it tenfold with the dark splendour of her animal 124 THE DAY OF DAYS beauty. As comely and as able-bodied as a young pan- theress, 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 night- wear of sheer silk lace and crepe 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 con- vention — swearing without the least affectation, slang- ing heartily when slang best suited her humour. . . . "Maybe you 're telling the truth, at that," she an- nounced suddenly, eyes coldly unprepossessed. "You sound fishy as all-hell, and God knows you 're the sick- est-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. BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 125 I can use the room and time you 're occupying. Be- sides, 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 emulat- ing the fatuous ostrich. I don't pretend it's com- fortable, but I, believe me, madam, am a plain man, of modest tastes, unaccustomed to —" "Get up!" the lady interrupted peremptorily. "I 126 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 night- dress 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!" pro- tested 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 BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 127 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 bur- glar — or " — she added with unmistakable signifi- cance — "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: anatomi- cally, in short, he was hopelessly disqualified for his chosen role of favourite of Kismet, protagonist of this Day of Days. Withal, there was no use offering re- sistance to the demands of this masterful woman \ she was patently one to be humoured against a more aus- picious turn of affairs. BURGLARY UNDER ARMS 129 ing 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. Syba- rite pulled trigger. The hammer fell on an empty chamber, rose and fell half a dozen times without educ- ing any response other than the click of metal against metal: demonstrating beyond question that the revolver was unloaded. 130 THE DAY OF DAYS From the hand of the marauder another tongue of dame licked out, to the sound of the same dull, bronchial cough; and a bullet thumped heavily into the wall be- side 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, stum- bled 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 some- thing of the fantastic quality of a nightmare: an effect to which the discovery of a marauder, where P. Syba- rite had expected to find nobody, added measur- ably. . . . 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 ex- plosion 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 indul- gence with which hitherto he had been inclined to regard the unfolding of this night of outre adventure. Twice the man had shot to kill with that singular weapon of 132 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 petu- lence 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 par- quetry 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 constella- tions. THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 133 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 heed- lessly out and down a high stone stoop to the sidewalk — pulled up, bewildered to discover himself the sole liv- ing 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 inex- pert, truth to tell. Above him, on the stoop, the lady of the house ap- peared; 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 134- THE DAY OF DAYS 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 en- suring 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 dis- tressful 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 THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 135 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 could n'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 house- work?" "You do not," he affirmed politely. "But can you blame me for wondering where your servants 've been all through this racket?" 136 THE DAY OF DAYS "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 police- man, 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 inter- ests you to know, I saw my husband." "Madam!" P. Sybarite sat up with a shocked ex- pression. "Oh," said the woman lightly, "we 're good enough for one another — he and I. He deserved what he got when he married me. But that's not saying I'm con- tent to see him duck what's coming to him for to-night's deviltry. In fact, I mean to get him before he gets me. Are you game to lend me a hand?" "Me, madam!" cried P. Sybarite in alarm. "Far be it from me to come between husband and wife!" THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 187 "Don't be afraid: I'm not asking you to dabble your innocent hands in a fellow-human's blood — merely to run an errand for me." "Really — I'd rather be excused." "Really," she 'mocked pleasantly, "you won't be. I'm a gentle creature but determined — frail but firm, you know. Perhaps you've heard of me — Mrs. Jeffer- son Inche?" Decidedly he had; and so had nine-tenths of INew York's newspaper-reading population. His eyes widened with new interest. "Truly?" he said, civilly responsive to the challenge in her announcement. "But I never knew Mrs. Jeffer- son Inche was beautiful." "It needs a beautiful woman to be known as the most dangerous in Town," she explained with modest pride. "But — ah — Mr. Inche, I understand, died some years ago." "So he did." "Yet you speak of your husband —?" "Of my present husband, whose name I don't wear for reasons of real-estate. I took the rotter on because he's rich and will be richer when his father dies; he married me because he was rotten and I had the worst reputation he could discover. So we 're quits there. If our marriage comes out prematurely, he 'll be dis- inherited; so we've agreed to a sub-rosa arrangement which leaves him, ostensibly, a marketable bachelor. THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 139 "Now you know the lay of the land how about helping me out?" Now the trail of the man with the twisted mouth promised fair to lead to Molly Lessing. P. Sybarite did n't linger on his decision. "I'm awf'ly impressionable," he conceded with a sigh; "some day, I'm afraid, it 'll get me in a peck of trouble." "I can count on you, then?" "Short of trying a 'prentice hand at assassina- tion —" "Don't be an ass. I only want to protect myself. Besides, you can't refuse. Consider how lenient I've been with you." P. Sybarite lifted questioning eyebrows, and dragged down the corners of a dubious mouth. "If I wanted to be nasty," Mrs. Inche explained, "you'd be on your way now to a cell in the East Fifty- first Street station. But I was grateful." "The Saints be praised for that!" exclaimed the little man fervently. "What's it for?" "For waking me up in time to prevent my murder in my sleep," she returned coolly; "and also for being the spunky little devil you are and chasing off that hound of a husband of mine. If it was n't for you, he'd 've got me sure. Or else," she amended, "I'd've got him; which would have been almost as unpleasant — what with being pinched and tried and having juries 140 THE DAY OF DAYS disagree and getting off at last only on the plea of in- sanity — and all that." "Madam," said P. Sybarite, rising, "the more I see of you, the more you claim my admiration. I entreat you, permit me to go away before my emotion deepens into disastrous infatuation." "Sit down," countered Mrs. Inche amiably; "don't be afraid — I don't bite. Now you know who I am, but before you go, I mean to know who you are." "Michael Monahan, madam." This was the first alliterative combination to pop into his optimistic mind. "Can that," retorted the lady serenely — " solder it up tight, along with the business of pretending to be a cop. It won't get you anything. I've a proposition to make to you." "But, madam," he declared with his naif and dis- arming grin — " believe me — my young affections are already engaged." "You 're not half the imbecile you make yourself out," she judged soberly. "Come — what's your name?" Taking thought, he saw no great danger in being truthful for once. "P., unfortunately, Sybarite," he said: "bookkeeper for Whigham and Wimper — leather merchants, Frank- fort Street." "And how did you come by that coat and hat?" "Borrowed it from a drunken cop in Penfield's, a THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 141 little while ago. They were raiding the place and I kind of wanted to get away. Strange to say, my dis- guise did n't take, and I had to leave by way of the back fences in order to continue uninterrupted enjoy- ment of the inalienable rights of every American citi- zen — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness." "I don't know why I believe you," said Mrs. Inche reflectively, when he paused for breath. "Perhaps it's your spendthrift way with language. Do you talk like that when sober?" "Judge for yourself." "All right," she laughed indulgently: "I believe everything you say. Now what 'll you take to do me a service?" "My services, madam, are yours to command: my reward — ah — your smile." "Bunk," observed the lady elegantly. "How would a hundred look to you? Good, eh?" "You misjudge me," the little man insisted. "Money is really no object." "Still " — she frowned in puzzlement — "I should think a clerk in the leather business —!" "I'm afraid I've misled you. I should have said that I was a clerk in the leather business until to-day. Now I happen to be independently wealthy, a clerk no longer." "How's that — wealthy?" "Came into a small fortune this evening — nothing THE LADY OF THE HOUSE 143 the sound of the woman's high, clear voice at a telephone located (he fancied) somewhere in the hallway of the second story. "Hello! Columbus, seven, four hundred, please. . . . Hello — Mason? ... Taxicab, please — Mrs. Jefferson Inche. . . . Yes — charge. . . . Yes — immediately. . . . Thank you!" A moment later she reappeared on the stairs, carry- ing a wrap of some sort over her arm: a circumstance which caused P. Sybarite uneasily to wonder if she meant to push her notorious indifference to convention to the limit of going out in a taxicab with no other addition to her airy costume than a cloak. But when she again entered the "den," it proved to be a man's coat and soft hat that she had found for him. "Get up," she ordered imperiously, " and change to these before you get pinched for impersonating an officer. I've called a taxi for you, and this is what I want you to do: go to Dutch House — that's a dive on Fortieth Street —" "I've heard of it," nodded P. Sybarite. "Any sober man who stays away from it is almost perfectly safe, I believe." "I'll back you to take care of yourself," said the lady. "Ask for Red November. . . . You know who he is?" "The gangster? Yes." 144 THE DAY OF DAYS "If he is n't in, wait for him if you wait till day- light-" "Important as all that, eh?" "It's life or death to me," said Mrs. Inche serenely. "I've got to have protection — you've seen yourself how bad I need it. And the police are not for the likes of me. Besides," she added with engaging can- dour, "if I squeal and tell the truth, then friend hus- band will be disinherited for sure, and I 'll have had all my trouble for nothing." "You make it perfectly clear, Mrs. Inche. . . . And when I see Mr. Red November?" "Say to him three words: Nella wants you. He 'll understand. Then you can go home." "If I get out alive." "You 're safe if you don't drink anything there." "Doubtless; but I 'll feel safer if you 'll lend me the loan of this pretty toy," said P. Sybarite, weigh- ing in one hand her automatic pistol. "It's yours." "Anything in it?" "Three shots left, I believe. No matter. I 'll get you a handful of cartridges and you can reload the clip in the taxicab. Not that you 're likely to need it at Dutch House." From the street rose the rumble of a motor, punctu- ated by a horn that honked. "There's the cab, now," announced Mrs. Inche XIII RESPECTABILITY BUT when it came to viscid second thought, alone in the gloom of an unsympathetic taxicab, P. Syb- arite inclined to concede himself more ass than hero. It was all very well to say that, having spread his sails to the winds of Kismet, he was bound to let himself drift to their vagrant humour: but there are certain channels of New York life into which even the most courageous mariner were ill-advised to adventure under pilotage no more trustworthy than that of sufficient champagne and a run of good luck. Dutch House in Fortieth Street, West, wore the rep- utation of being as sinister a dive as ever stood cheek- by-jowl with Broadway and brazenly flaunted an all- night liquor license in the face of law-abiding New York; of which it was said that no sober man ever went there, other than those who went to prey, and that no drunkard ever escaped from it unfleeced; haunt of the most deadly riff-raff to be found in Town, barring inmates of certain negro stews on the lower West Side and of some of the dens to which the sightseer does not penetrate in the tour of Chinatown. Grim stories were current of men who had wandered RESPECTABILITY 147 thither in their cups, "for the lark of it," only to return to consciousness days afterwards, stripped, shorn, and shattered in health bodily and mental, to find them- selves in some vile kennel miles from Dutch House; and of other men who passed once through its foul portals and — passed out a secret way, never to return to the ken of their friends. . . . Yet it stood, and it stands, waxing fat in the folly of man and his greed. And to this place P. Sybarite was travelling to de- liver a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt's automatic and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate fortune that he carried with him in cash — a single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew that ran the place. However, in their ignorance his safety inhered; and it was not really necessary that he advertise his swollen fortunes; and as for the gold in his trousers pocket — a ponderable weight, liable to chink treacherously when he moved — P. Sybarite removed this and thoughtfully cached it under one of the cushions of his cab. It seemed a long chance to take with a hundred dollars: but a hundred dollars was n't a great deal, after all, to a man as flush as he; and better lose it all (said he) than make a noise like a peripatetic mint in a den of thieves and worse. . . . 148 THE DAY OF DAYS The cab drawing up to the curb, out P. Sybarite hopped, a dollar in hand for the chauffeur, and the admonition: "I'm keeping you; wait till I come out, if I'm all night; and don't let your motor die, 'cause I may be in a hurry." "Gotcha," said the chauffeur tersely; pocketed the bill; lighted a cigarette. . . . P. Sybarite held back an instant to inspect the approach. This being Sunday morning, Dutch House was de- corously dull to the street; the doors to the bar closed, the lights within low and drowsy; even the side door, giving access to the "restaurant," was closed much of the time — when, that is to say, it was n't swinging to admit an intermittent flow of belated casuals and habitues of both sexes. A row of vehicles lined the curb: nighthawk taxicabs for the most part, with one or two four-wheelers, as many disreputable and dilapidated hansoms, and (aside from that in which P. Sybarite had arrived) a single taxicab of decent appearance. This last stood, with door ajar, immediately opposite the side entrance, its motor pulsing audibly — evidently waiting under orders simi- lar to those issued by P. Sybarite. Now as the latter advanced to enter Dutch House, shadows appeared on the ground glass of the side door; and opening with a jerk, it let out a gush of fetid air RESPECTABILITY 149 together with Respectability on the prowl — Respect- ability incognito, sly, furtive of air, and in noticeable haste. He paused for a bare instant on the threshold; afford- ing P. Sybarite opportunity for a good, long look. "Two-thirty," said Respectability brusquely over his shoulder. The man behind him growled affirmation: "Two- thirty— don't worry: I'll be on the job." "And take care of that boy." "Grab it from me, boss, when he wakes up, he won't know where he's been." "Good-night, then," said Respectability grudgingly. "G'd-night." The door closed, and with an ineradicable manner of weight and consequence Respectability turned toward the waiting taxicab: a man of, say, well-preserved sixty, with a blowsy plump face and fat white side- whiskers, a fleshy nose and arrogant eyes, a double chin and a heavy paunch; one who, in brief, had no business in that galley at that or any other hour of day or night, and who knew it and knew that others (worse luck!) would know it at sight. All this P. Sybarite comprehended in a glance and, comprehending, bristled like a truculent game-cock or the faithful hound in the ghost-story. The aspect of Respectability seemed to have upon him the effect of a violent irritant; his eyes took on a hot, hard look, his 150 THE DAY OF DAYS lips narrowed to a thin, inflexible crease, and his hands unconsciously closed. And as Respectability strode across the sidewalk, obviously intending to bury himself in the body of his waiting cab as quickly as possible, P. Sybarite — with the impudence of a tug blocking the fairway for an ocean liner — stepped in his path, dropped a shoulder, and planted both feet firmly. Immediately the two came together; the shoulder of P. Sybarite in the paunch of Respectability, evoking a deep grunt of choleric surprise and bringing the gentle- man to an abrupt standstill. Upon this, P. Sybarite's mouth relaxed; he smiled faintly, almost placatingly. "Well, old top!" he cried with malicious cordiality. "Who'd think to meet you here! What's the matter? Has high finance turned too risky for your stomach? Or are you dabbling in low-life for the sheer fun of it — to titillate your jaded senses?" Respectability's cheeks puffed out like red toy bal- loons; so likewise his chest. "Sir!" he snorted — " you are drunk!" "Sir!" retorted P. Sybarite, none' too meekly — "you lie." The ebony-and-gold cane of Respectability quivered in mid-air. "Out of my way!" "Put down that cane, Mr. Brian Shaynon," said XIV WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD FROM street door to restaurant entrance, the hall- way of Dutch House was some twenty-five feet long, floored with grimy linoleum in imitation of tiling, greasy as to its walls and ceiling, and boasting an at- mosphere rank with a reek compounded of a dozen elements, in their number alcohol, cheap perfumery, cooked meats, the sweat of unclean humanity, and stale tobacco smoke. Save for this unsavoury composite wraith, the hall was empty when P. Sybarite entered it. But it echoed with sounds of rowdy revelry from the room in back: mechanical clatter of galled and spavined piano, de- spondent growling of a broken-winded 'cello, nervous giggling and moaning of an excoriated violin—the three wringing from the score of 0 You Beautiful Doll an entirely adequate accompaniment to the perfunctory performance of a husky contralto. Though by no means squeamish, on the testimony of his nose and ears P. Sybarite then and there concluded that he would have to have become exceedingly blase indeed to find Dutch House amusing. And when he had gone on into the restaurant itself, 154 THE DAY OF DAYS profitable plucking; but the rule of Dutch House is to neglect none, however lowly. "Well, bo'," grunted the waiter cheerfully, polishing off the top of the table with a saturated towel, "yuh don't come round's often as y' uster." "That's a fact," P. Sybarite agreed. "I've been a long time away — have n't I?" "Yuh said somethin' then. Mus' be months sinst I seen yuh last. What's the trouble? Y' ain't soured on the old joint, huh?" "No," P. Sybarite apologised. "I've been — away. Where's Bed?" "MacManus —?" asked the waiter, beginning to believe that this strange little creature must in fact be a "regular" of the "bunch " — one whose name and face had somehow, unaccountably, slipped from his memory. "November," P. Sybarite corrected. "Oh, he's stickin' round — pretty busy to-night. Would n't fuss him, 'f I was yuh, 'less it's somethin' extra." "I make you," said the little man. "But this is his business. Tell him I have a message for him, will you?" "Just as yuh say, bo'," returned the other cautiously. "What's it goin' to be? Bucket of grape or a tub of suds?" "Do I look like the foolish waters?" enquired ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 155 P. Sybarite with mild resentment. "Back me up a shell of lather." Grinning amiably at this happy metaphorical de- scription of the glass of lager regularly served at Dutch House, the waiter shouldered through the swinging doors to the bar. . . . Then fell a brief lull in the melange of music and tongues, during which a boyish voice lifted up in clear remonstrance at a table some three removed from that at which P. Sybarite sat: "But I don't want anything more to drink!" P. Sybarite looked that way. The owner of the voice (now again drowned) was apparently a youngster of twenty years — not more — clean of limb and feature, with a hot flush discolouring his good-looking face, a hectic glitter in his eyes, and a stubborn smile on his lips. Lounging low in a straight-backed chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head wagging obstinately, he was plainly intoxicated, but as yet at a stage suffi- ciently mild to admit of his recognising the self-evident truth that he needed not another drop. Yet his companions would have him drink more deeply. Of these, one was a woman of no uncertain caste, a woman handsome in a daring and costly gown, and as yet not old, but in whose eyes flickered a curious 156 THE DAY OF DAYS febrile glare (" as though," commented P. Sybarite, moralist, "reflected back from the mouth of Hell "). The other was a man singularly handsome in a for- eign way — Italian, at an indifferent guess — slight and graceful of person in well-tailored if somewhat flashy clothing; boasting too much jewellery; his teeth gleaming a vivid white against his dark colouring as he smiled good-humouredly in his attempts to press more drink upon the other. The music stopped altogether for a time, and again the boy's voice rang out clearly: "Tell you — 've had enough." The Italian said something urgent, in an undertone. The woman added inaudible persuasion to his argu- ment. The boy looked from one to another with a semi- stupid smile; but wagged an obdurate head. "I will not. No — and I don't want — lie down jus' for few minutes. I'm goin' sit here till these — ah — foolish legs 'mine straighten 'emselves out — then 'm going home." . . . "Here's your beer, bo'," P. Sybarite's waiter an- nounced. "Keep the change," said the guest, tendering a quarter. "T'anks " — with a look of surprise. Then famil- iarly knuckling the top of the table, the waiter stroked a rusty chin and surveyed the room. "There's Red, now," he observed. ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 157 "Where?" "Over there with the skirt and the kid souse. Yuh kin see for yourself he's busy. D' yuh want I sh'u'd stir him up now?" "Oh, yes," said P. Sybarite, in the tone of one recognising an oversight. "What's doing over there — anything?" he proceeded casually. The waiter favoured him with a hard stare. "Red November's business ain't none 'r mine," he growled; "an' less you know him a heluva sight better 'n I do, you'd better take a straight tip from me and — leave — it —lay I" "Oh!" said the little man hastily — "I was only wondering. . . . But I wish you would slip Red the high sign: all I want is one word with him." "All right, bo' — you 're on." Slouching off, obviously reluctant to interrupt the diversions of Mr. November, the man at length mus- tered up courage to touch that gentleman's elbow. The gangster turned sharply, a frown replacing the smile which had illuminated his attempts to overcome the boy's recently developed aversion to drink. The waiter murmured in his private ear. Promptly P. Sybarite received a sharp look from eyes as black and hard as shoe buttons; and with equanimity endured it — even went to the length of a nod accom- panied by his quaint, ingratiating smile. A courtesy ignored completely: the dark eyes veered back to the 158 THE DAY OF DAYS waiter's face and the white teeth flashed as he was curtly dismissed. He shuffled back, scowling, reported sulkily: "Says yuh gotta wait"; and turned away in answer to a summons from another table. Unruffled, P. Sybarite sipped his beer — sipped it sparingly and not without misgivings, but sedulously to keep in character as a familiar of the dive. Presently there came yet another lull in the clatter of tongues; and again the accents of the boy sounded distinctly from the gangster's table: "I won't — that's flat! I refuse positively — go up stairs — sleep it off. I'm a' right — give you m' word -— in the head. All my trouble's — these mutinous dogs of legs. But I'll make 'em mind, yet. Trust me —" And again the babel blotted out his utterance. But P. Sybarite had experienced a sudden rush of intelligence to the head — was in the throes of that mental process which it is our habit wittily to distin- guish by the expressive term, "putting two and two together." Could this, by any chance, be "that boy" who, Mr. Brian Shaynon had been assured, would n't know where he'd been when he waked? Was an attempt to ensure that desired consummation through the agency of a drug, being made in the open restaurant? If not, why was Red November neglecting all other ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 159 affairs to press drink upon a man who knew when he had enough? If so, what might be the nature of the link connect- ing the boy with the " job," to be on which at half-past two November had just now covenanted with Brian Shaynon? What incriminating knowledge could this boy pos- sess, to render old Shaynon willing that his memory should be expurgated by such a mind- and nerve-shat- tering agent as the knock-out drop of White Light commerce? Now Shaynon was capable of almost any degree of infamy, if not, perhaps, the absolute peer of Red November. This strange development of that night of Destiny began to assume in P. Sybarite's esteem a complexion of baleful promise. But the more keenly interested he grew, the more indifferent he made himself appear, slouching low and lower in his chair, his eyes listless and half closed — his look one of the most pronounced apathy: the while he conned the circumstances, physical as well as psychical, with the narrowest attention. Certainly, it would seem, a man who had enough instinctive decency to wish to escape the degradation of deeper drunkenness, should be humoured rather than opposed. . . . The table on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall, the young man sitting in the corner 160 THE DAY OF DAYS between November and the woman. Of two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates of the dive and creatures of November's — or their looks libelled them shamefully. It seemed unlikely that the boy could get away against the wishes of the gang leader, however steadfastly he might stand upon his determination to drink no more. For nothing was to be hoped for from the sots, prosti- tutes, and parasites who made up the balance of that company: one and all, either too indifferent or too sophisticated, if not in active sympathy with the prac- tices of the establishment, to lift a hand to inter- fere. . . . Testimony in support of this inference P. Sybarite received within the next few minutes, when the boy's temper abruptly veered from good-natured obduracy to open irritation. "Damn it, no!" he cried in a high voice and with an impatient movement struck the glass from Novem- ber's hand. Though it went to the floor with a splintering crash, the incident attracted little more than casual glances from those at neighbouring tables. . . . November's countenance, however, turned grey with anger beneath its olive shade. Momentarily his glance clashed with the woman's; and of a sudden the paint upon her cheeks and lips ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 161 stood out as starkly artificial as carmine splashed upon a whitewashed wall. At the same time he flashed a like warning to his two followers at the next table; and the legs of their chairs grated on the tiled flooring as they shifted position, making ready for the signal to "mix in." At this, P. Sybarite rose and nonchalantly moved over to November; his approach remarked by the latter with an evil leer; by the woman with a start of con- sternation; by the boy with sudden suspicion. In- dubitably this last was beginning to question a hos- pitality that would not permit him to do as to him seemed best. With relief P. Sybarite noted symptoms of this dawning distrust. It made the problem simpler, to have the boy alive to his peril. Pausing, P. Sybarite met November's glare with eyes informed with an expression amazingly remote and dis- passionate, and in a level and toneless voice addressed him. "I've a message for you — a hurry call — won't keep —" "Well?" snapped the gangster. "What's it about? Spit it out!" "Why, Nella says —" P. Sybarite began delib- erately; and paused to cough politely behind his hand; and leaned confidentially over the table. At this juncture the boy pushed back his chair and rose. ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 163 to the boy: "Clear out — quick — do you hear! — while you've got a chance —" "What t'ell business is it of yours?" November demanded, turning upon him furiously. With an enigmatic smile, P. Sybarite dexterously tipped up his side of the table and, overturning it, caught the gangster unprepared for any such manoeuvre and pinned him squirming in the angle of wall and floor. Immediately the woman came to her feet shrieking; while the little man seized the befuddled boy and swung him toward the door actually before he realised what was happening. Simultaneously, November's henchmen at the adjoin- ing table leapt into the brawl with an alacrity that sent their chairs clattering back upon the floor. But in his magnificent assurance P. Sybarite had foreseen and planned cunningly against precisely that same contingency. No sooner had he sent the boy stag- gering on his way than he whirled completely round with a ready guard and in no more than the very wink of exigence. Already one of the creatures was almost on his back — the other hanging off and singularly employed (it seemed, considering) with his hands; just what he was up to P. Sybarite had time neither to see nor to surmise. Sidestepping a wild swing, he planted a left full on the nose of the nearer assailant and knocked him 164 THE DAY OF DAYS backwards over a sprawling chair. Then turning atten- tion to the other, he was barely in time to duck an uppercut — and out of the corners of his eyes caught the glint of brass-knuckles on the fist that failed to land. Infuriated, he closed in, sent a staggering left to the thug's heart and a murderous right to his chin, so that he reeled and fell as if shot — while P. Sybarite with a bound again caught the boy by the arm and whirled him out through the doorway into the hall. "Hurry!" he panted. "We've one chance in ten thousand —" Beyond doubt they had barely that. Hardened though they were to scenes of violence, the clients of the dive had stilled in apprehension the mo- ment November lifted his voice in anger; while P. Sybarite's first overtly offensive move had struck them all dumb in terror. Red November was one who had shot down his man in cold blood on the steps of the Criminal Courts Build- ing and, through the favour of The Organisation that breeds such pests, escaped scot-free under the convenient fiction of " suspended sentence "; and knowing well the nature and the power of the man, the primal con- certed thought had been to flee the place before bullets began to fly. In blind panic like that of sheep, they rose as one in uproar and surged toward the outer doors. November himself, struggling up from beneath the 166 THE DAY OF DAYS materialised that most rare of metropolitan phenomena — the policeman on the spot. Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he blustered in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the skirts of his tunic and grasp the butt of the revolver in his hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor: "What's-all-this? What's-all-this-now?" "Robbery!" P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of hysterical relief. "Robbery and attempted murder! Arrest that man — Red November — with the gun in his hand." With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the gangster — and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him quickly to the sidewalk. By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of Kismet his taxi- cab was precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat. "Quick!" he ordered the reeling boy — " into that cab unless you want to be treated by a Bellevue saw- bones — held as a witness besides. Are you badly hurt?" "Not badly," gasped the boy — " shot through the shoulder — can wait for treatment — must keep out of the papers —" "Right!" P. Sybarite jerked open the door, and his charge stumbled into the cab. "Drive anywhere — ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD 167 like sin," he told the chauffeur — " tell you where to stop when we get clear of this mess —" Privately he blessed that man; for the cab was in motion almost before he could swing clear of the side- walk. He tumbled in upon the floor, and picked himself up in time to close the door only when they were swing- ing on two wheels round the corner of Seventh Avenue. XV SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS ABB MADE OF "T TOW is it?" P. Sybarite asked solicitously. IT, "Aches," replied the boy huddled in his corner of the cab. Then he found spirit enough for a pale, thin smile, faintly visible in a milky splash from an electric arc rocking by the vehicle in its flight. "Aches like hell," he added. "Makes one feel a bit sickish." "Anything I can do?" "No — thanks. I 'll be all right — as soon as I find a surgeon to draw that slug and plaster me up." "That's the point: where am I to take you?" "Home — the Monastery — Forty-third Street." "Bachelor apartments?" "Yes; I herd by my lonesome." "Praises be!" muttered P. Sybarite, relieved. For several minutes he had been entertaining a vision of himself escorting this battered and bloody young person to a home of shrieking feminine relations, and poignantly surmising the sort of welcome apt to be accorded the good Samaritan in such instances. And while he was about it, he took time briefly to THE STUFF OF PLOTS 169 offer up thanks that the shock of his wound seemed to have sobered the boy completely. Opening the door, he craned his neck out to establish communication with the ear of the chauffeur; to whom he repeated the address, adding an admonition to avoid the Monastery until certain he had shaken off pursuit, if any; and dodged back. At this juncture the taxicab was slipping busily up Eighth Avenue, having gained that thoroughfare via Forty-first Street. A little later it turned east- wards. . . . "No better, I presume?" P. Sybarite enquired. "Not so's you'd notice it," the boy returned bravely. ... "First time anything like this ever happened to me," he went on. "Funny sensation — precisely as if somebody had lammed me for a home run — with a steel girder for a bat ..." "Must be tough!" said P. Sybarite blankly, ex- periencing a qualm at the thought of a soft-nosed bullet mushrooming through living flesh. "Guess I can stand it. . . . Where are we?" P. Sybarite took observations." "Forty-seventh, near Sixth Avenue," he reported finally. "Good: we 'll be home in five minutes." "Think you can hold out that long?" "Sure — got to; if I keel over before we reach my digs . . . chances are it 'll get you into trouble . . . THE STUFF OF PLOTS 171 "You know that old blighter?" "Slightly — very slightly." "Friend of yours?" "Not exactly." The accent of P. Sybarite's laugh rendered the dis- claimer conclusive. "Glad to hear that," said the boy gravely: "I'd despise to be beholden to any friend of his ..." "Well. . . . But what's the trouble between you and old man Shaynon?" "Search me — unless he thought I was spying on him. I say!" the boy exclaimed excitedly — " what business could he have had with Red November there, to-night 1" "That is a question," P. Sybarite allowed. "Something urgent, I '11 be bound! — else he would n't ever have dared show his bare map in that dump." "One would think so. . . ." "I'd like to figure this thing out. Perhaps you can help. To begin with—I went to a party to-night." "I know," said P. Sybarite, with a quiet chuckle: "the Hadley-Owen masquerade." "How did you know?" "Kismet! It had to be." "Are you by any chance — mad?" "I should n't be surprised. Anyhow, I'm a bit mad I was n't invited. Everybody I know or meet — almost 172 THE DAY OF DAYS — is either bidden to that party or knows somebody who is. Forgive the interruption. . . . Anyway," he added, "we're here." The taxicab was drawing up before an apartment house entrance. Hastily recovering his hoard of gold-pieces, P. Syba- rite jumped out and presented one to the driver. "Can't change that," said the latter, staring. "Be- sides, this was a charge call." "I know," said P. Sybarite apologetically; "but this is for you." "Good God!" cried the chauffeur. "And yet," mused P. Sybarite, "they'd have you believe all taxicab chauffeurs mercenary!" Recklessly he forced the money into the man's not altogether inhospitable palm. "For being a good little tight-mouth," he explained gravely. "Forever and ever, amen! " protested the latter fer- vently. "And thank you!" "If you 're satisfied, we 're quits," returned P. Syba- rite, offering a hand to the boy. "I can manage," protested this last, descending with- out assistance. "And it's better so," he explained as they crossed to the door; "I don't want the hallboys here to suspect — and I can hold up a few minutes longer, never fear." "Business of taking off my hat to you," said P. X THE STUFF OF PLOTS 173 Sybarite in unfeigned admiration; "for pure grit, you 're a young wonder." A liveried hallboy opened the door. A second waited in the elevator. Promptly ascending, they were set down at one of the upper floors. Throughout the boy carried himself with never a quiver, his countenance composed and betraying what pain he suffered only to eyes keen to discern its trace of pallor. Now as he left the elevator and fitted a key to the lock of his private front door, he addressed the attendant, over his shoulder, in a manner admirably casual: "By the way, Jimmy —" "Sir?" "Call up Dr. Higgins for me." "Yes, sir." "Tell him I've an attack of indigestion and will be glad if he 'll turn out and see if he can't fix me up for the night." "Very good, Mr. Kenny." The gate clanged and the cage dropped from sight as Mr. Kenny opened the door and stood aside to let P. Sybarite precede him. "Rot!" objected the little man forcibly. "Go in and turn up the lights. Punctilio from a man in your condition —!" The boy nodded wearily, passed in, and switched up the lights in a comfortably furnished sitting-room. 174 THE DAY OF DAYS "As a matter of fact," he said thoughtfully, when P. Sybarite had followed him in and shut the door — "I'm wondering how much of a bluff I may be, after all." "Meaning —?" "By all literary precedent I ought to faint now, after my magnificent exhibition of superhuman en- durance. But I'm not going to." "That's rather sporting of you," P. Sybarite grinned. "Not at all; I just don't want to — don't feel like it. That sick feeling is gone — nothing but a steady agony like a hot iron through my shoulder — something any man with teeth to grit could stand." "We 'll find out soon enough. I don't pretend to be any sort of a dab at repairs on punctured humanity, but I read enough popular fiction myself to know that the only proper thing to do is to ruin that handsome coat of yours by cutting it off your back. We can anticipate the doctor to that extent, at least." "That's one thing, at least, that the popular novelist knows right," asserted Mr. Kenny with conviction. "Sorry for the coat — but you 'll find scissors yonder, on my desk." And when P. Sybarite fetched them, he sat himself sideways in a straight-backed chair and cheerfully en- dured the little man's impromptu essays in first-aid measures. THE STUFF OF PLOTS 175 A very little snipping and slashing sufficed to do away with the shoulder and sleeve of the boy's coat and to lay open his waistcoat as well, exposing a blood- stained shirt. And then, at the instant when P. Syb- arite was noting with relief that the stain showed both in back and in front, the telephone shrilled. "If you don't mind answering that —" grunted Mr. Kenny. P. Sybarite "^as already at the instrument. "Yes?" he answered. "Dr. Higgins %" "Sorry, sir," replied a strange voice: "Dr. Higgins is n't in yet. Any message?" "Tell him Mr. Kenny needs him at the Monastery, and the matter's urgent. . . . Doctor not in," he reported superfluously, returning to cut away collar, tie, shirt, and undershirt. "Never mind, I should n't be surprised if we could manage to do without him, after all." "Meaning it's not so bad—?" "Meaning," said the other, exposing the naked shoulder, "I'm beginning to hope you've had a mar- vellously narrow escape." "Feels like it," said Kenny, ironic. P. Sybarite withheld response while he made close examination. At the base of Mr. Kenny's neck, well above the shoulder-blade, dark blood was welling slowly from an ugly puncture. And in front there was a cor- responding puncture, but smaller. And presently his 176 THE DAY OF DAYS deft and gentle fingers, exploring the folds of the boy's undershirt, closed upon the bullet itself. "I don't believe," he announced, displaying his find, "you deserve such luck. Somehow you managed to catch this just right for it to slip through without either breaking bone or severing artery. And by a special dispensation of an all-wise Providence, Red November must have been preoccupied when he loaded that gun, for somehow a steel-jacketed instead of a soft-nosed bullet got into the chamber he wasted on you. Other- wise you'd have been pretty badly smashed. As it is, you 'll probably be laid up only a few days." "I told you I was n't so badly hurt —" "God's good to the Irish. Where's your bath- room?" With a gesture Kenny indicated its location. "And handkerchiefs —?" "Upper bureau drawer in the bedroom." In a twinkling P. Sybarite was off and back again with materials for an antiseptic wash and a rude bandage. "How'd you know I was Irish?" demanded the patient. "By yoursilf's name," quoth P. Sybarite in a thick brogue as natural as grass, while he worked away busily. ""lis black Irish, and well I know it. 'Twas me mither's maiden name — Kenny. She had a brother, Michael he was and be way av bein' a rich conthractor THE STUFF OF PLOTS 177 in this very town as ever was, befure he died — God rist his sowl! He left two children — a young leddy who mis-spells her name M-a-e A-l-y-s — keep still! — and Peter, yersilf, me cousin, if it's not mistaken I am." "The Lord save us!" said the boy. "You 're never Percy Sybarite!" P. Sybarite winced. "Not so loud!" he pleaded in a stage whisper. "Some one might hear you." "What the devil's the matter with you?" "I am that man you named — but, prithee, Percy me no Percevals, an' you'd be my friend. For fifteen years I've kept my hideous secret well. If it becomes public now ..." Peter Kenny laughed in spite of his pain. "I 'll keep your secret, too," he volunteered, "since you feel that way about it. . . . But, I say: what have you been doing with yourself since — since —" He stammered. "Since the fall of the House of Sybarite?" "Yes. I did n't know you were in New York, even." "Your mother and Mae Alys knew it — but kept it quiet, the same as me," said the little man. "But — well — what have you been doing, then?" "Going to and fro like a raging lion — more or less — seeking what I might devour." "And the devourings have been good, eh? You 're high-spirited enough." "I think," said P. Sybarite quietly — "I may say 180 THE DAY OF DAYS "Now,' if you M been celebrating your happy escape, I'd be the last to blame you." "You don't understand, and you won't give me a chance —" "I'm waiting — all ears — but not the way you mean." "It was n't as if she'd left me any excuse to hope . . . but she told me flat she did n't care for me." "That 's bad, Peter. Forgive my ill-timed levity: I didn't mean it meanly, boy," P. Sybarite protested. "It's worse than you think," Peter complained. "I can stand her not caring for me. Why should she?" "Why, indeed?" "It's because she's gone and promised to marry Bayard Shaynon." P. Sybarite looked dazed. "She? Bayard Shaynon? Who's the girl?" "Marian Blessington. Why do you ask? Do you know her?" There was a pause. P. Sybarite blinked furiously. "I've heard that name," he said quietly, at length. "Is n't she old Brian's ward — the girl who disap- peared recently?" "She did n't disappear, really. She's been staying "with friends — told me so herself. That's all the foundation the Journal had for its story." "Friends?" "So she said." THE STUFF OF PLOTS 183 "Strong. They 'll be in full swing, now, of after- supper dancing." "That settles it: I'm going." The boy lifted on his elbow in amaze, then subsided with a grunt of pain. "You 're going?" "You say you've got a costume of some sort here? I '11 borrow it. We 're much of a size." "Heaven knows you 're welcome, but —" "But what?" "You have no invitation." Rising, P. Sybarite smiled loftily. "Don't worry about that. If I can't bribe my way past a cordon of mercenary foreign waiters — and talk down any other opposition — I'm neither as flush as I think nor as Irish." "But what under the sun do you want there?" "To see what's doing — find out for myself what devilment Brian Shaynon's hatching. Maybe I 'll do no good — and maybe I 'll be able to put a spoke in his wheel. To do that — once — right — I'd be will- ing to die as poor as I've lived till this blessed night!" He paused an instant on the threshold of his cousin's bedroom; turned back a sombre visage. "I've little love for Brian Shaynon, myself, or none. You know what he did to me — and mine." XVI BEELZEBUB LATE enough in all conscience was the last guest J to arrive for the Hadley-Owen masquerade. Already town-cars, carriages, and private 'busses were being called for and departing with their share of the more seasoned and sober-sided revellers, to whom bed and appetite for breakfast had come to mean more than a chance to romp through a cotillion by the light of the rising sun — to say discreetly little or nothing of those other conveyances which had borne away their due proportion of far less sage and by no means sober- sided ones, who yet retained sufficient sense of the fitness of things to realise that bed followed by matuti- nal bromides would be better for them than further dalliance with the effervescent and evanescent spirits of festivity. More and more frequently the elevators, empty but for their attendants, were flying up to the famous ball- room floor of the Bizarre, to descend heavy-laden with languid laughing parties of gaily-costumed ladies and gentlemen no less brilliantly attired — prince and pau- per, empress and shepherdess, monk, milkmaid, and mountebank: all weary yet reluctant in their going. BEELZEBUB 185 And at this hour a smallish gentleman, in an old- style inverness opera-coat that cloaked him to his ankles, with an opera hat set jauntily a wee bit askew on his head, a mask of crimson silk covering his face from brows to lips, slipped silently like some sly, sinister shadow through the Fifth Avenue portals of the Bizarre, and shaped a course by his wits across the lobby to the elevators, so discreetly and unobtrusively that none of the flunkeys in attendance noticed his arrival. In effect, he did n't arrive at all, but suddenly was there. A car, discharging its passengers before the smallish gentleman could catch the eye of its operator, flew suddenly upward in the echo of a gate slammed shut in his face; and all the other cars were still at the top, according to the bronze arrows of their tell-tale dials. The late arrival held up patiently; but after an instant's deliberation, doffed his hat, crushed it flat, slipped out of his voluminous cloak, and beckoned a liveried attendant. In the costume thus disclosed, he cut an impish figure: "Satan on the half-shell," Peter Kenny had christened him. A dress coat of black satin fitted P. Sybarite more neatly than him for whom it had been made. The frilled bosom of his shirt was set with winking rubies, and the lace cuffs at his wrists were caught together 186 THE DAY OF DAYS with rubies whether real or false, like coals of fire: and ruby was the hue both of his satin mask and his satin small-clothes. Buckles of red paste brilliants burned on the insteps of his slender polished shoes with scarlet heels; and his snug black silk stockings set off ankles and calves so well-turned that the Prince of Sin himself might have taken pride in them. For bouton- niere he wore a smouldering ember—so true an imita- tion that at first he himself had hesitated to touch it. Literally to crown all, his ruddy hair was twisted up- ward from each temple in a cornuted fashion that was most vividly picturesque. "Here," he said, surrendering hat and coat to the servitor before the latter could remonstrate — " take and check these for me, please. I shan't be going for some time yet." "Sorry, sir, but the cloak-room down 'ere's closed, sir. You 'll have to check them on the ball-room floor above." "No matter," said the little man: and groping in a pocket, he produced a dollar bill and tendered it to ready fingers; "you keep 'em for me, down here. It 'll save time when I'm ready to go." "Very good, sir. Thank you." "You won't forget me?" The flunkey grinned. "You 're the only gentleman I've seen to-night, sir, in a costume anything like your own." BEELZEBUB 187 "There's but one of me in the Union," said the gentleman, sententious: "my spear knows no brother." "Thank you, sir," said the servant civilly, making off. With an air of some dubiety, the little man watched him go. "I say!" he cried suddenly—"come back!" He was obeyed. A second dollar bill appeared as it were by magic between his fingers. The flunkey stared. "Beg pardon, sir?" "Take it " — impatiently. "Thank you." The well-trained fingers executed their most familiar manoeuvre. "But — m'y I ask, sir—wot's it for?" "You called me a gentleman just now." "Yes, sir." "You were right." "Quite so, sir." "The devil is a gentleman," the masquerader insisted firmly. "So I've always 'eard, sir." "Then you may go; you've earned the other dollar." Obsequiousness stared: "M'y I ask, 'ow so?" "By standing for that antediluvian bromidiom. I had to get it off my chest to somebody, or else blow up. Far better to hire an audience when you can't be origi- nal. Remember that; you've been paid: you daren't object." 188 THE DAY OF DAYS "Thankyousir," said the lackey blankly. "And now — avaunt — before I brand thee for mine own!" The little gentleman flung out an imperative, melo- dramatic arm; and veritable sparks sprayed from his crackling finger-tips. The servant retired in haste and dismay. "'E's balmy — or screwed — or the Devil 'imself!" he muttered. . . . Beneath his mask the little man grinned privately at the man's retreat. "Piker!" said he severely — " sharpening your wits on helpless servants. A waiter has no friends, any- way!" An elevator, descending, discharged into the lobby half a dozen mirthful maskers. Of these, a Scheher- azade of bewitching prettiness (in a cloak of ermine!) singled out the silent, cynical little gentleman in scarlet mask and smalls, and menaced him merrily with a jewelled forefinger. "What — you, Lucifer! Traitor! Where have you been all evening?" "Madame!" — he bowed mockingly — " in spirit, always at your ear." She flushed and bit her lip in charming confusion; while an abbess, with face serene in the frame of her snowy coif, caught up the ball of badinage: "Ah, in spirit! But in the flesh?" BEELZEBUB 189 "Why, poppet! " he retorted in suave surprise — " it is n't possible that you missed me?" And she, too, coloured; while a third, a girl dressed all in buckskin from beaded hunting-shirt to fringed leggings and dainty moccasins, bent to peer into his face. "Who are you?" she demanded curiously. "I don't seem to know you —" "That, child, you have already proved." "I? . . . Proved? . . . How do you mean?" "You alone have not yet blushed." And wheeling mischievously to the others, he covered them with widespread hands in burlesque benediction. "The unction of my deep damnation abide with ye, my children, now and forevermore!" he chanted, showering sparks from crepitant finger-tips; and bounded lightly into the elevator. "But your mask!" protested Scheherazade in a pet. "You've no right — when we all unmasked at supper." Through the iron fretwork of the gate, the little gentleman shot a Parthian spark or two. "I wear no mask!" he informed them solemnly as the car shot from sight. The conceit tickled him; he had it still in mind when he alighted at the ball-room floor. Pausing in the anteroom, he struck an artificial pose on his high red heels and stroked thin, satiric lips with slender fingers, reviewing the crush with eyes that BEELZEBUB 191 "She won't — that's flat," Respectability's com- panion announced in a sullen voice. By the tone of this last Beelzebub knew that it issued from an ugly twisted mouth. "But," Respectability insisted heavily "You 're sure you've done your best to persuade her?" "She won't listen to reason." "Well . . . everything's arranged. You have me to thank for that." "Oh," sneered the younger man, "you've done a lot, you have!" And then, moving to give way to another making toward the elevators, Brian Shaynon discovered at his elbow that small attentive body in sinister scarlet and black. For a breath, utterance failed the old man. He glared pop-eyed indignation from a congested counte- nance, his fat lips quivering and his jowls as well; and then as Beelzebub tapped him familiarly if lightly upon the chest, his face turned wholly purple, from swollen temples to pendulous chin. "Well met, ame damnee!" P. Sybarite saluted him gaily. "Are you indeed off so early upon my business?" "Damnation!" exclaimed Brian Shaynon, all but choking. "It shall surely be your portion," gravely assented the little man. "To all who in my service prosper in 192 THE DAY OF DAYS a worldly way — damnation, upon my honourable Satanic word!" "Who the devil —?" "Whisht!" P. Sybarite reproved. "A trifle more respect, if you please — lest you wake in the morning to find all my benefactions turned to ashes in your strong-boxes!" But here Kespectability found his full voice. "Who are you?" he demanded so stormily that heads turned curiously his way. "I demand to know! Re- move that mask! Impertinent —!" "Mask?" purred Beelzebub in a tone of wonder. "I wear no mask!" "No mask!" stammered the older man, in con- fusion. "Nay, J am frankly what I am — old Evil's self," P. Sybarite explained blandly; "but you, Brian Shay- non — now you go always masked: waking or sleeping, hypocrisy's your lifelong mask. You see the distinc- tion, old servant?" In another moment he might have suffered a sound drubbing with the ebony cane but for Peter Kenny's parlour-magic trick. For as Brian Shaynon started forward to seize Beelzebub by the collar, a stream of incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly BEELZEBUB 193 wormed his way through the press to the dancing-floor itself. As for the younger man — he of the unhandsome mouth — P. Sybarite was content to hold him in reserve, to be dealt with later, at his leisure. For the present, his business pressed with the waning night. In high feather, bubbling with mischief, he sidled along the wall a little way, then halted to familiarise himself with scene and atmosphere against his next move. But after the first minute or two, spent in silent review of the brilliant scene, his thin lips lost some- thing of their cynic modelling, the eyes behind the scarlet visor something of their mischievous twinkle — softening with shadows envious and regretful. The room was as one vast pool of limpid golden light, walls and ceilings so luminous with the reful- gence of a thousand electric bulbs that they seemed translucent, glowing with a radiance from beyond. On the famous floor, twelve-score couples swung and swayed to the intoxicating rhythms of an unseen orches- tra; kaleidoscopic in their amazingly variegated cos- tuming of colour, drifting past the lonely, diabolical little figure, an endless chain of paired anachronisms. Searching narrowly each fair face that flashed past in another's arms, he waited with seeming patience. But the music buzzed in his brain and his toes tingled for it; breathing the warm, voluptuous air, he inhaled BEELZEBUB 195 For a thought he checked his breath in stupefaction. Had she, then, recognised him? Was it possible that her intuition had been keen enough to pierce his dis- guise, vizard and all? But the next moment he could have sworn in cha- grined appreciation of his colossal stupidity. Of course! — his costume was that worn by Peter Kenny earlier in the evening; and as between Peter and him- self, of the same stock, the two were much of a muchness in physique; both, moreover, were red-headed; their points of unlikeness were negligible, given a mask. So after all, her emotion had been due solely to em- barrassment and regret for the pain she had caused poor Peter by refusing his offer of marriage! Well! . . . P. Sybarite drew a long, sane breath, laughed wholesomely at himself, and thereafter had eyes only to keep the girl in sight, however far and involved her wanderings through the labyrinth of the dance. In good time the music ended; the fluent movement of the dancers subsided with a curious effect of eddying — like confetti settling to rest; and P. Sybarite left his station by the wall, slipping like quicksilver through the heart of the throng to the far side of the room, where, near a great high window wide to the night, the breathless shopgirl had dropped into a chair. At Beelzebub's approach the Incroyable, perhaps mindful of obligations in another quarter, bowed and moved off, leaving the field temporarily quite clear. 196 THE DAY OF DAYS She greeted him with a faint recurrence of her former blush. "Why, Peter!" she cried — and so sealed with con- firmation his surmise as to her mistake — "I was wondering what had become of you. I thought you must have gone home." "Peter did go home," P. Sybarite affirmed gravely, bending over her hand. His voice perplexed her tremendously. She opened eyes wide. "Peter!" she exclaimed reproachfully — "you promised it would n't make any difference. We were to go on just as always — good friends. And now ..." "Yes?" P. Sybarite prompted as she faltered. "I don't like to say it, Peter, but — your voice is so different. You've not been — doing anything fool- ish, have you?" "Peter has n't," the little man lied cheerfully; "Peter went home to sulk like the unwhipped cub he is; and sulking, was yet decent enough to lend me these rags." "You —you 're not Peter Kenny?" "No more than you are Molly Lessing." "Molly Lessing! What do you know —? Who can you be? Why are you masked?" "Simply," he explained pleasantly, "that my in- cognito may remain such to all save you." "But — but who are you?" Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor Page 197 BEELZEBUB 197 "It is permitted?" he asked, with a gesture offering to take the tiny printed card of dance engagements that dangled from her fingers by its silken thong. In dumb mystification the girl surrendered it. Seating himself beside her, P. Sybarite ran his eye down the list. "The last was number — which?" he enquired with unruffled impudence. Half angry, half amused, wholly confused, she told him: "Fifteen." "Then one number only remains." His lips hardened as he read the initials pencilled opposite that numeral; they were " B. S." "Bayard Shaynon?" he queried. She assented with a nod, her brows gathering. Coolly, with the miniature pencil attached to the card, he changed the small, faint B to a large black P, strengthened the 8 to correspond, and added to that ybarite; then with a bow returned the card. The girl received the evidence of her senses with a silent gasp. He bowed again r "Yours to command." "You —Mr. Sybarite!" "I, Miss Blessington." "But — incredible!" she cried. "I can't believe you ..." Facing her, he lifted his scarlet visor, meeting her stare with his wistful and diffident smile. 198 THE DAY OE DAYS "You see," he said, readjusting the mask. "But — what does this mean?" "Do you remember our talk on the way home after Kismet — four hours or several years ago: which is it?" "I remember we talked ..." "And I — clumsily enough, Heaven knows! — told you that I'd go far for one who'd been kind and toler- ant to me, if she were in trouble and could use my poor services?" "I remember — yes." "You suspected — surely — it was yourself I had in mind?" "Why, yes; but—" "And you '11 certainly allow that what happened later, at the door, when I stood in the way of the importunate Mr. ' B. S.' — if I'm not sadly in error — was enough to convince any one that you needed a friend's good offices?" "So," she said softly, with glimmering eyes — " so for that you followed me here, Mr. Sybarite!" "I wish I might claim it. But it would n't be true. No — I did n't follow you." "Please," she begged, " don't mystify me —" "I don't mean to. But to tell the truth, my own head is still awhirl with all the chapter of accidents that brought me here. Since you flew off with B. S., following afoot, I've traversed a vast deal of adventure BEELZEBUB 199 — to wind up here. If," he added, grinning, "this is the wind-up. I've a creepy, crawly feeling that it is n't. . . . "Miss Blessington," he pursued seriously, "if you have patience to listen to what I've been through since we parted in Thirty-eighth Street — %" Encouraged by her silence he went on: "I've broken the bank at a gambling house; been held up for my winnings at the pistol's point — but managed to keep them. I've been in a raid and escaped only after committing felonious assault on two detectives. I then burglarised a private residence, and saved the mistress of the house from being murdered by her rascally husband — blundered thence to the deadliest dive in New York met and slanged mine ancient enemy, the despoiler of my house — took part in a drunken brawl — saved my infatuated young idiot of a cousin, Peter Kenny, from assassina- tion— took him home, borrowed his clothing, and im- pudently invited myself to this party on the mere sus- picion that 'Molly Lessing' and Marian Blessington might be one and the same, after all! . . . And all, it appears, that I might come at last to beg a favour of you." "I can't think what it can be," breathed the girl, dumfounded. "To forgive my unpardonable impertinence —" "I've not been conscious of it." "You '11 recognise it immediately. I am about to 200 THE DAY OF DAYS transgress your privacy with a question — two, in fact. Will you tell me, please, in confidence, why you refused my cousin, Peter Kenny, when he asked you to marry him?" Colouring, she met his eyes honestly. "Because — why, it was so utterly absurd! He's only a boy. Besides, I don't care for him — that way." "You care for some one else — ' that way '?" "Yes," said the girl softly, averting her face. "Is it — Mr. Bayard Shaynon?" "No," she replied after a perceptible pause. "But you have promised to marry him?" "I once made him that promise — yes." "You mean to keep it \" "I must." "Why?" "It was my father's wish." "And yet — you don't like him!" Looking steadily before her, the girl said tensely: "I loathe him." "Then," cried P. Sybarite in a joyful voice, "I may tell you something: you needn't marry him." She turned startled eyes to his, incredulous. "Need not?" "I should have said can not —" Through the loud hum of voices that, filling the room, had furnished a cover for their conversation, sounded the opening bars of music for the final dance. BEELZEBUB 201 The girl rose suddenly, eyes like stars aflame in a face of snow. "He will be coming for me now," she said hurriedly. "But — if you mean what you say — I must know — instantly — why you say it. How can we manage to avoid him?" "This way," said P. Sybarite, indicating the wide window nearby. Through its draped opening a shallow balcony showed, half-screened by palms whose softly stirring fronds, touched with artificial light, shone a garish green against the sombre sky of night. Immediately Marian Blessington slipped through the hangings and, turning, beckoned P. Sybarite to follow. "There's no one here," she announced in accents tremulous with excitement, when he joined her. "Now — now tell me what you mean!" "One moment," he warned her gently, turning back to the window just as it was darkened by another figure. The man with the twisted mouth stood there, peering blindly into the semi-obscurity. "Marian . . . ?" he called in a voice meant to be ingratiating. "Well?" the girl demanded harshly. "I thought I saw you," he commented blandly, ad- vancing a pace and so coming face to face with the 202 THE DAY OF DAYS bristling little Mephistophelean figure, which he had endeavoured to ignore. "My dance, I believe," he added a trace more brusquely, over the little man's head. "I must ask you to excuse me," said the girl coldly. "You don't care to dance again to-night?" "Thank you —no." "Then I will give myself the pleasure of sitting it out with you." "I'm afraid you 'll have to excuse me, Bayard," she returned, consistently inflexible. He hesitated. "Do I understand you 're ready for me to take you home?" "You 're to understand that I will neither dance nor sit out the dance with you — and that I don't wish to be disturbed." "Bless your heart!" P. Sybarite interjected pri- vately. The voice of the younger Shaynon broke with passion. "This is — the limit!" he cried violently. "I've reached the end of my endurance. Who's this creature you 're with?" "Is your memory so short?" P. Sybarite asked quietly. "Have you forgotten the microbe % — the little guy who puts the point in disappointment %" "I've forgotten nothing, you — animal! Nor that you insulted my father publicly only a few minutes ago, you —" XVII IN A BALCONY BEWILDEEMENT and consternation, working in the man, first struck him dumb, aghast, and wit- less, 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 IN A BALCONY 205 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 inflex- ibly 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. "Re- member 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, antici- pating 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 206 THE DAY OF DAYS heavily, he averted a face that took on the hue of parch- ment in the cold light striking up from the electric globes that march Fifth Avenue. Then quietly adjust- ing 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 could n't resist the temptation to make him squirm." "If you only knew how I despised him," she said, "you would n't think it necessary to excuse your- self 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 hap- pened 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. 208 THE DAY OF DAYS seem insistent by the part he's playing. His father does n't know of this entanglement; he'd disinherit Bayard if he did; naturally, Bayard would n'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 con- fusion of adjusting her vision of lifa 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." IN A BALCONY 209 "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 was n'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 did n't let me alone. . . . You see, Mr. Shay- non 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 did n't suit — or rather, it seemed to satisfy them only for a little time. Very soon they were pes- 212 THE DAY OF DAYS scious self-betrayal of the unskilled but potential crim- inal." "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 would n'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 for- tunes — 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 214. THE DAY OF DAYS 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 sub- jected 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 was n'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 — 216 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 discuss- ing; 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 could n't tell — he bent so low that for a thought she fancied he meant to touch his rips 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 Shay- non —" 818 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 be- lieve." 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. IN A BALCONY 219 "I shall look for you in the lobby," she replied, smil- ing; and slipped away through the throng. Picking his way to the elevators, constantly squirm- ing more inextricably into the heart of the press, el- bowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only/ fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and debutante, 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 IN A BALCONY 221 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 fool- ish—" "Did you hear me, Bayard?" "You 're making a scene —" the man flashed, col- ouring darkly. "And," P. Sybarite interjected quietly, "I '11 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 '11 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 222 THE DAY OF DAYS from the walls of Mrs. Inche's " den." But his accents, when he spoke, were even, if menacing in their tone- lessness. "Then, Marian, I'm to understand it's — good- night?" "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 — a 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 mis- giving. "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. IN A BALCONY 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. XVIII THE BROOCH THEY came to the carriage entrance, where the crush of waiting people had somewhat thinned — not greatly. Leaving Marian in the angle of the doorway, P. Sybarite pressed out to the booth of the carriage-call apparatus, gave the operator the numbered and per- forated cardboard together with a coin, saw the man place it on the machine and shoot home a lever that hissed and spat blue fire; then turned back. "What was the number?" she asked as he ap- proached. "Did you notice? I did — but then thought of something else; and now I've forgotten." "Two hundred and thirty," replied P. Sybarite ab- sently. Between the two there fell a little pause of con- strained silence ended by Marian. "I want to see you again, very soon, Mr. Sybarite." The eyes of the little man were as grateful as a dog's. "If I may call —!" he ventured diffidently. "Could you come to-morrow to tea?" "At the Plaza?" "At the Plaza!" she affirmed with a bright nod. THE BROOCH 225 "Thank you." Above the hum of chattering voices rose the bellow of the carriage porter: "Two hundred and thirty! Two hundred and thirty!" "My car!" said the girl with a start. P. Sybarite moved in front of her, signalling with a lifted hand. "Two hundred and thirty," he repeated. A handsome town-car stood at the curb beneath the permanent awning of iron and glass. Behind it a long rank waited with impatient, stuttering motors and dull- burning lamps that somehow forced home drowsy thoughts of bed. Hurrying across the sidewalk, Marian permitted P. Sybarite to help her into the vehicle. Transported by this proof of her graciousness, he gave the chauffeur the address: "Hotel Plaza." With the impudent imperturbability of his breed, the man nodded and grunted without looking round. From the body of the vehicle Marian extended a white-gloved hand. "Good-night, Mr. Sybarite. To-morrow at five." Touching her fingers, P. Sybarite raised his hat; but before he could utter the response ready upon his tongue, he was seized by the arm and swung rudely away from 226 THE DAY OF DAYS the door. At the same time a voice (the property of the owner of that unceremonious hand) addressed the porter roughly: "Shut that door and send the car along! I '11 take charge of this gentleman!" In this speech an accent of irony inhered to exasper- ate P. Sybarite. Half a hundred people were looking on — listening! Angrily he wrenched his arm free. "What the devil —!" he cried into the face of the aggressor; and in the act of speaking, recognised the man as him with whom Bayard Shaynon had been con- versing in the lobby: that putative parvenu — hard- faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained, awkward in evening dress. . . . The hand whose grasp he had broken shifted to his shoulder, closing fingers like steel hooks upon it. "If you need a row," the man advised him quietly, "try that again. If you've got good sense — come along quiet'." "Where? What for? What right have you —?" P. Sybarite demanded in one raging breath. "I'm the house detective here," the other answered, holding his eyes with an inexorable glare. And the muscles of his heavy jaw tightened even as he tightened his grasp upon the little man's shoulder. "And if it's all the same to you, we 're going to have a quiet little talk in the office," he added with a jerk of his head. A sidelong glance discovered the fact that Marian's 228 THE DAY OF DAYS ning or surprised stares, they strode across the lobby and through the designated door. It was immediately closed; and the key, turned in the lock, was removed and pocketed by the detective. In this room — a small interior apartment, plainly furnished as a private office — two people were wait- ing: a stout, smooth little man with a moustache of foreign extraction, who on better acquaintance proved to be the manager of the establishment; the other Bayard Shaynon, stationed with commendable caution on the far side of the room, the bulk of a broad, flat- topped mahogany desk fencing him off from the wrath- ful little captive. "Well?" this last demanded of the detective the moment they were private. "Take it calm', son, take it calm'," counselled the man, his tone not altogether lacking in good-nature. "There seems to be some question as to your right to attend that party upstairs; we got to investigate you, for the sake of the rep. of the house. Get me?" P. Sybarite drew a long breath. If this were all that Shaynon could have trumped up to discomfit him —! He looked that one over with the curling lip of contempt. "I believe it's no crime to enter where you 've not been invited, provided you don't force door or window to do it," he observed. "You admit — eh?" the manager broke in ex- citedly — " you have no card of invitation, what?" THE BROOCH 281 not strong for that — mind — and I'm going to make the lot of you smart for this indignity; but I'm per- fectly willing to prove my innocence now, by letting you search me, so long as it affords me an earlier oppor- tunity to catch Mister Shaynon when he has n't got you to protect him." "That's big talk," commended the detective, appar- ently a little prepossessed; "and it's all to the good if you can back it up." He rose. "You don't mind my going through your pockets — sure?" "Go ahead," P. Sybarite told him shortly. "To save time," Shaynon suggested dispassionately, "you might explore his coat-tail pockets first. It was there that I saw him put away the brooch." Nervously in his indignation, P. Sybarite caught his coat-tails from beneath his inverness, dragged them round in front of him, and fumbling, found a pocket. Groping therein, his fingers brushed something strange to him — a small, hard, and irregular body which, escaping his clutches, fell with a soft thud to the carpet at his feet. Transfixed, he stared down, and gulped with horror, shaken by a sensation little short of nausea, as he recog- nised in the object — a bar of yellow metal studded with winking brilliants of considerable size — the brooch described by Shaynon. With a noncommittal grunt, the detective stooped and retrieved this damning bit of evidence, while the r" THE BROOCH 233 "Caught with the goods on, eh?" he chirped. "Well," growled the man, dashed. "Now, what do you think?" "I'm every bit as much surprised as you are," P. Sybarite confessed. "Come now — be fair to me — own up: you did n't expect to see that — did you?" The detective hesitated. "Well," he grudged, "you did have me goin' for a minute — you were so damn' cock-sure — and it certainly is pretty slick work for an amateur." "You think I'm an amateur — eh?" "I guess I know every map in the Rogues' Gallery as well's the palm of my hand!" "And mine is not among them?" P. Sybarite in- sisted triumphantly. The detective grunted disdain of this inconclusive argument: "You all 've got to begin. It 'll be there to-morrow, all right." "It looks bad, eh — not?" the manager questioned, his predacious eyes fixed greedily upon the trinket. "You think so?" P. Sybarite purposefully misin- terpreted. "Let me see." Before the detective could withdraw, P. Sybarite caught the brooch from his fingers. "Bad?" he mused aloud, examining it closely. "Phony? Perhaps it is. Looks like Article de Paris to me. See what you think." He returned the trinket indifferently. 234 THE DAY OF DAYS "Nonsense! " Shaynon interposed incisively. "Mrs. Strone's not that kind." "Shut up!" snapped P. Sybarite. "What do you know about it? You've lied yourself out of court already." A transitory expression of bewilderment clouded Shaynon's eyes. "I'm no judge," the detective announced doubtfully. "It makes no difference," Shaynon insisted. "Theft's theft!" "It makes a deal of difference whether it's grand or petit larceny," P. Sybarite flashed — "a difference almost as wide and deep as that which yawns between attempted and successful wife-murder, Mr. Shaynon!" His jaw dropped and a look of stupefying terror stamped itself upon Shaynon's face. It was the turn of P. Sybarite to laugh. "Well?" he demanded cuttingly. "Are you ready to come to the station-house and make a charge against me? I 'll go peaceful as a lamb with the kind cop, if by so doing I can take you with me. But if I do, believe me, you 'll never get out without a bondsman." Shaynon recollected himself with visible effort. "The man's crazy," he muttered sickishly, rising. "I don't know what he's talking about. Arrest him — take him to the station-house — why don't you?" "Who 'll make the charge?" asked the detective, eyeing Shaynon without favour. THE DAY OF DAYS chuckled with an affectation of ease to "which he was entirely a stranger: ceaselessly his mind was engaged with the problem of this trumped-up charge of Shaynon's. Was simple jealousy and resentment, a desire to " get even," the whole explanation? Or was there something of an uglier complexion at the bottom of the affair? His head buzzed with doubts and suspicions, and with misgivings on Marian's behalf but indifferently mitigated by the reflection that, at worst, the girl had escaped unhindered and alone in her private car. By now she ought to be safe at the Plaza. . . . "He won't be back," P. Sybarite observed generally to detective and manager; and sat him down serenely. "You feel pretty sure about that?" the detective asked. "Wait and see." Bending forward, the little man examined the gilt clock on the manager's desk. "Twenty minutes past four," he announced: "I give you ten minutes to find some one to make a charge against me — Shaynon, Mrs. What 's-her-name, or either of yourselves, if you like the job. If you fail to produce a complainant by half- past four precisely, out of here I go — and I'm sorry for the man who tries to stop me." The detective took a chair, crossed his legs, and pro- duced a cigar which he began to trim with tender care. THE BROOCH 237 The manager, anxiously pacing the floor, after another moment or so paused at the door, fidgeted, jerked it open, and with a muffled "Pardon!" disappeared — presumably in search of Shaynon. Striking a match, the detective puffed his cigar aglow. Over its tip his small eyes twinkled at P. Sybarite. "Maybe you 're a gentleman crook, and maybe not," he returned with fine impartiality. "But you 're all there, son, with the tongue action. You got me still goin' round in circles. Damn 'f I know yet what to think." "Well, if that's your trouble," P. Sybarite told him coolly, "this is your cue to squat on your haunches, scratch your left ear with your hind leg, and gaze up into my face with an intelligent expression in your great brown eyes." "I 'll do better 'n that," chuckled the man. "Have a cigar." "Thank you," said P. Sybarite politely, accepting the peace offering. "All I need now is a match: I acknowledge the habit." The match supplied, he smoked in silence. Four minutes passed, by the clock: no sign of the manager, Shaynon, or Mrs. Strone. "Story % " the detective suggested at length. "Plant," retorted P. Sybarite as tersely. "You mean he salted you?" "In the elevator, of course." 238 THE DAY OF DAYS "It come to me, that was the way of it when he sprung that bunk stuff about you coarsely loading said loot into your coat-tail," admitted the detective. "That did n't sound sensible, even if you did have a skirt to fuss into a cab. The ordinary vest-pocket of commerce would 've kept it just as close, besides being more natural — easy to get at. Then the guy was too careful to tip me off not to pinch you until the lady had went — did n't want her name dragged into it. . . . A fellow in my job's gotta have a lot of imagination," he concluded complacently. "That's why I'm letting you get away with it in this unprofessional manner." "More human than in line with the best literary precedent, eh?" "That's me. I seen he was sore when the dame turned him down, too, and started right off wondering if maybe it was n't a jealousy plant. I seen this sorta thing happen before. Not that I blame him for feeling cut up: that was one swell piece of goods you bundled into numba two-thirty." P. Sybarite's cigar dropped unheeded from his lips. "What!" he cried. The detective started. "Was n't that the numba of the lady's cab — two- thirty?" "Good God!" ejaculated P. Sybarite, jumping up. "What's hit you?" "I'm going!" the little man announced fiercely. THE BROOCH 239 "Your time allowance ain't expired by several min- utes —" , " To hell with my time allowance! Try to keep me, if you like!" P. Sybarite strode excitedly to the door and jerked it open. The detective followed him, puffing philo- sophically. There was no one in sight in the hall. "Looks like you got a fine show for a clean getaway," he observed cheerfully between his teeth. "Your friend's beaten it, the boss has ducked the responsibility, and you got me scared to death. Besides — damn 'f I'm going to be the goat that saddles this hash-hut with a suit for damages." His concluding words were addressed to the horizon- tal folds of the inverness that streamed from the shoulders of P. Sybarite as he bolted unhindered through the Fifth Avenue doorway. 242 THE DAY OF DAYS than half a dozen wayfarers; all of whom gave him way and went their own with that complete indifference so distinctly Manhattanesque. . . . He had emerged from the restaurant building to find the street bare of any sort of hirable conveyance and himself in a fret too exacting to consider walking to the Plaza or taking a street-car thither. Nothing less than a taxicab — and that, one with a speed-mad chauffeur — would satisfy his impatient humour. And indeed, if there were a grain of truth in his suspicions, formless though in a measure they remained, he had not an instant to lose. But on the way to the Bizarre from Peter Kenny's rooms, some freak of a mind superficially preoccupied had caused him to remark, on the south side of Forty- third Street, immediately east of Sixth Avenue, a long rank of buildings which an utilitarian age had humbled from their once proud estate of private stables to the lowlier degree of quarters for motor vehicles both public and private. Of these one building boasted the blazing electric announcement: "ALL NIGHT GARAGE." Into this last P. Sybarite pelted at the top of his speed and pulled up puffing, to stare nervously round a place gloomy, cavernous, and pungent with fragrance of oil, rubber, and gasoline. Here and there lonely electric bulbs made visible somnolent ranks of motor- NEMESIS 243 cars. Out of the shadows behind him, presently, came a voice drawling: "You certainly do take on like you'd lost a power of trouble." P. Sybarite whirled round as if stung. The speaker occupied a chair tilted back against the wall, his feet on the rungs, a cigarette smouldering between his lips in open contempt of the regulations of the Fire Depart- ment and all other admonitions of ordinary common- sense. "What can I do for you?" he resumed, nothing about him stirring save eyes that twinkled as they trav- elled from head to foot of the odd and striking figure P. Sybarite presented as Beelzebub, Knight Errant. "Taxi!" the little man panted vociferously. The other yawned and stretched. "It can't be done," he admitted fairly. "They ain't no such animal on the premises." With a gesture P. Sybarite singled out the nearest car. "What's that?" he demanded angrily. Shading his eyes, the man examined it with growing wonder which presently found expression: "Am I live, it's an autymobeel!" "Damn your sense of humour!" stormed P. Syba- rite. "What's the matter with that car?" "As man to man — nothing." "Why can't I have it?" 244 THE DAY OF DAYS "Ten dollars an hour —" "I '11 take it." "But you asked for a taxi," grumbled the man, rising to press a button. Whereupon a bell shrilled somewhere in the dark backwards of the establishment. "De- posit . . . ?" he suggested, turning back. P. Sybarite disbursed a golden double-eagle; and to the operator who, roused by the bell, presently drifted out of the shadows, gaping and rubbing his eyes, he promised a liberal tip for haste. In two minutes he was rolling out of the garage, ensconced in the body of a luxurious and high-powered touring machine which he strongly suspected to be somebody's private car lawlessly farmed out while its owner slept. The twilight was now stronger, if still dull and as cold as the air it coloured, rendering P. Sybarite grate- ful for Peter Kenny's inverness as the car surged spiritedly up the deserted avenue, its disdain for speed regulations ignored by the string of yawning peg-post cops — almost the only human beings in sight. Town was indeed deep sunk in lethargy at that small hour; the traditional milk-wagon itself seemed to have been caught napping. With one consent residence and shop and sky-scraping hotel blinked apathetically at the flying car; then once more turned and slept. Even the Bizarre had forgotten P. Sybarite — showed at least no sign of recognition as he scurried past. 246 THE DAY OF DAYS "Wait," said P. Sybarite in a manner of abstraction that did him no injustice; and entering the car, mechan- ically shut the door and sat down, permitting his gaze to range absently among the dusky distances of Central Park; where through the netted, leafless branches, the lamps that march the winding pathways glimmered like a hundred tiny moons of gold lost in some vast purple well. . . . Should he appeal to the police? His solicitude for the girl forbade him such recourse save as a last resort. Publicity must be avoided until the time when, all else having failed, it alone held out some little promise of assistance. But — adrift and blind upon uncharted seas of un- certainty ! — what to do! Suddenly it became plain to him that if in truth it was with her as he feared, at least two persons knew what had become of the girl — two persons aside from himself and her hired kidnappers: Brian Shaynon and Bayard, his son. From them alone authoritative information might be extracted, by ruse or wile or downright intimidation, eked out with effrontery, a stout heart, and perhaps a little luck. A baleful light informing his eyes, an ominous ex- pression settling about his mouth, he gave the operator the address of Shaynon's town-house; and as the car slipped away from the hotel was sensible of keen regret NEMESIS 247 that he had left at Peter Kenny's, what time he changed his clothing, the pistol given him by Mrs. Jefferson Inche, together with the greater part of his fortuitous fortune — neither firearms nor large amounts of money seeming polite additions to one's costume for a dance. . . . In five minutes the car drew up in front of one of those few old-fashioned, brownstone, English-basement residences which to-day survive on Fifth Avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, elbowed, shouldered, and frowned down upon by beetling hives of trade. At all of its wide, old-style windows, ruffled shades of straw-coloured silk were drawn. One sign alone held out any promise that all within were not deep in slumber: the outer front doors were not closed. Upon the frosted glass panels of the inner doors a dim light cast a sickly yellow stain. Laying hold of an obsolete bell-pull, P. Sybarite yanked it with a spirit in tune with his temper. Im- mediately, and considerably to his surprise, the doors were thrown open and on the threshold a butler showed him a face of age, grey with the strain of a sleepless night, and drawn and set with bleary eyes. "Mr. Shaynon?" the little man demanded sharply. "W'ich Mr. Shaynon, sir % " enquired the butler, too weary to betray surprise — did he feel any — at this ill-timed call. "Either — I don't care which." 250 THE DAY OF DAYS "What!" "He has it right — Nemesis," P. Sybarite replied incisively. "And you may as well see me now, whether you want to or not. Sooner or later you 'll have to!" There was a sound of heavy, dragging footsteps on the upper landing, and Brian Shaynon showed himself at the head of the stairs; now without his furred great-coat, but still in the evening dress of elderly Respectability — Respectability sadly rumpled and maltreated, the white shield of his bosom no longer lustrous and immaculate, his tie twisted wildly beneath one ear, his collar unbut- toned, as though wrenched from its fastenings in a moment of fury. These things apart, he had within the hour aged ten years in the flesh: gone the proud flush of his bewhiskered gills, in its place leaden pallor; and gone the quick, choleric fire from eyes now smouldering, dull and all but lifeless. . . . He stood peering down, with an obvious lack of recognition that hinted at failing sight. "I don't seem to know you," he said slowly, with a weary shake of his head; "and it's most inopportune — the hour. I fear you must excuse me." "That can't be," P. Sybarite returned. "I've busi- ness with you — important. Perhaps you did n't catch the name I gave your butler — Nemesis." "Nemesis?" Shaynon repeated vacantly. He stag- gered and descended a step before a groping hand XX NOVEMBEB *4 "171 'S gone," the butler announced. ml Kneeling beside the inert body of Brian Shaynon, where it had lodged on a broad, low landing three steps from the foot of the staircase, he turned up to P. Sybarite fishy, unemotional eyes in a pasty fat face. The little man said nothing. Resting a hand on the newel-post, he looked down unmoved upon the mortal wreck of him who had been his life's bane. Brian Shaynon lay in death with- out majesty; a crumpled and dishevelled ruin of flesh and clothing, its very insentience suggesting to the morbid fancy of the little Irishman something foul and obscene. Brian Shaynon living had been to him a sight less intolerable. . . . "Dead," the butler affirmed, releasing the pulseless leaden wrist, and rising. "I presume I'd best call 'is doctor, 'ad n't I, sir?" P. Sybarite nodded indifferently. Profound thought enwrapped him like a mantle. The butler lingered, the seals of professional reticence broken by this strange and awful accident. But there 254 THE DAY OF DAYS was no real emotion in his temper — only curiosity, self-interest, the impulse of loquacity. "Stroke," he observed thoughtfully, fingering his pendulous jowls and staring; "that's w'at it was — a stroke, like. He'd 'ad a bit of shock before you come in, sir." "Yes ?" murmured P. Sybarite absently. "Yes, sir; a bit of a shock, owin' to 'is 'avin' quar- relled with Mr. Bayard, sir." "Oh!" P. Sybarite roused. "Quarrelled with his son, you say?" "Yes, sir; somethin' dreadful they was goin' on. 'E couldn't 'ave got over it when you come. Mr. Bayard 'ad n't been gone, not more than five minutes, sir." P. Sybarite interrogated with his eyes alone. "It was a bit odd, come to think of it — the 'ole affair, sir. Must 'ave been over an hour ago, Mr. Shay- non 'ere, 'e come 'ome alone from the dance — I see you must've been there yourself, sir, if I m'y mike so bold as to tike notice of your costume. Very f awncy it is, too, sir — becomes your style 'andsome, it does, sir." "Never mind me. What happened when Mr. Shay- non came home?" ""W 'y, 'e 'ad n't more than got inside the 'ouse, sir, w'en a lidy called on 'im — a lidy as I 'ad never set eyes on before, sime as in your caise, sir; although I 258 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 col- loquy 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 pounc- ing 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 NOVEMBER 259 in P. Sybarite's weary head were so many and absorb- ing 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 did n' notice." NOVEMBER 263 had just dropped intc 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 did n't you tell me Bayard Shaynon lived in the flat below you?" "Did n'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 has n'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 go- ing? Fire escape?" NOVEMBER 265 "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 un- intentional 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, circum- locution'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 twi- light in the cramped and shadowed well down which 266 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 win- dow to advise, as P. Sybarite scrambled out upon the gridiron platform — " Shaynon's flat is n'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 win- dow. ... 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 dis- cover 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 still- ness 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. 268 THE DAY OF DAYS mistakable: 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, shuf- fling 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 in- continent 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 270 THE DAY OF DAYS 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 was n'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. 272 THE DAY OF DAYS Shaynon and Mrs. Inche calculated to prove incriminat- ing 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 pigeon- holes, 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 every- where else, his glance dropped to his feet and found it there — a torn and crumpled envelope with its en- closure flattened out and apart from it. This last he snatched up, but the envelope he did n't touch, having been quick to remark the print upon it THE SORTIE 273 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 trag- edy 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, lis- tened an instant, gently opened it — with his handker- chief 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. . . . 274. THE DAY OF DAYS 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 bless- ing by opening without delay. "Well?" he asked, when P. Sybarite — with a ges- ture 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 blood- thirsty —!" "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." THE SORTIE 275 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 sug- gest. Hayneb 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. Syba- rite returned his stare. "It's as plain as the face on you, Peter Kenny. Why, all along I've had an indefinite notion that some- thing 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 had n't had time to cook up the necessary papers, to suborn medical cer- tificates and purchase a commitment paper of some corrupt judge. But what of that?" P. Sybarite de- manded, slapping the message furiously. "She was in the way — at large — liable at any time to do some- thing that would put her money forever out of their reach. Therefore she must be put away at once, pend- ing 'legal formalities' to ensure her permanent in- carceration!" 276 THE DAY OF DAYS "The dogs!" Peter Kenny growled. "But consider how they've been served out — thun- derbolts — 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, add- ing: "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." THE SORTIE 277 "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 set- ting out for the Bizarre —" but what do you want me to —" "Call up that sanatorium — find out if Marian has arrived. If she has, threaten fire and sword and — all that sort of thing — if they don't release her — hand her over to me on demand. If she has n't, make 'em understand I '11 dynamite the place if they let November bring her there and get away before I show up. Tell 'em to call in the police and pinch November on sight. And then get a lawyer and send him up there after me. And then — set the police after November — tell 'em you heard the shot and went down the fire-escape to investigate. ... I'm off." The door slammed on Peter as Bewilderment. In the hall, savagely punching the elevator bell, P. Sybarite employed the first part of an enforced wait to return the clip of cartridges to its chamber in the butt of Mrs. Inche's pistol. . . . He punched the bell again. . . . He put his thumb upon the button and held it there. . . . 278 THE DAY OF DAYS From the bottom of the twelve-story well a faint, shrill tintinnabulation echoed up to him. But that was all. The car itself never stirred. Infuriated, he left off that profitless employment and threw himself down the stairs, descending in great bounds from landing to landing, more like a tennis ball than a fairly intelligent specimen of mature humanity in control of his own actions. Expecting to be met by the ascending car before halfway to the bottom, he came to the final flight not only breathless but in a towering rage — contemplating nothing less than a murderous assault as soon as he might be able to lay hands upon the hallboys — hoping to find them together that he might batter their heads one against the other. But he gained the ground-floor lobby to find it as empty as his own astonishment — its doors wide to the cold air of dawn, its lights dimmed to the likeness of smouldering embers by the stark refulgence of day; but nowhere a sign of a hallboy or anything else in human guise. As he paused to make sure of the reality of this phenomenon, and incidentally to regain his breath, there sounded from a distance down the street a noise the like of which he had never before heard: a noise re- sembling more than anything else the almost simulta- neous detonations of something like half a dozen fire- crackers of sub-cannon calibre. THE SORTIE Without understanding this or even being aware that he had willed his limbs to action, P. Sybarite found himself in the street. At the curb his hired car waited, its motor purring sweetly but its chauffeur missing. Subjectively he was aware that the sun was up and high enough to throw a sanguinary glare upon the upper stories of the row of garages across the street — those same from whose number he had chartered his touring car. And momentarily he surmised that perhaps the chauffeur had strolled over to the garage on some idle errand. But no sooner had this thought enhanced his irrita- tion than he had its refutation in the discovery of the chauffeur affectionately embracing a lamp-post three or four doors away, toward Sixth Avenue; and so singular seemed this sight that P. Sybarite wondered if, by any chance, the fellow had found time to get drunk during so brief a wait. At once, blind to all else, and goaded intolerably by his knowledge that the time was short if he were to forestall November at the asylum in Oscahana, he pelted hot-foot after the delinquent; came up with him in a trice; tapped him smartly on the shoulder. "Here!" he cried indignantly — " what the deuce's the matter with you?" The man showed him a face pale with excitement; recognised his employer; but made no offer to stir. 280 THE DAY OF DAYS "Come!" P. Sybarite insisted irascibly. "I've no time to waste. Get a move on you, man!" But as he spoke his accents were blotted out by a repetition of that portentous noise which had saluted him in the lobby of the Monastery, a moment since. His eyes, veering inevitably toward the source of that uproar, found it quickly enough to see short, vicious jets of flame licking out against the gloom of an open garage doorway, nearly opposite the Hippodrome stage entrance — something like a hundred feet down the street." "What," he cried, "in Hades —!" "Gang fight," his chauffeur informed him briefly: "fly-cops cornered a bunch of 'em in November's , garage —" "Whose garage —?" "Red November's! Guess you've heard of him," the man pursued eagerly. "That's right — he runs his own garage — taxis for Dutch House souses, yunno —" "Wait!" P. Sybarite interrupted. "Let me get this straight." Stimulated by this news, his wits comprehended the situation at a glance. At the side of his chauffeur, he found himself in line with a number of that spontaneous class which at the first hint of sensation springs up from nowhere in the streets of Manhattan. Early as was the hour, THE SORTIE 281 they were already quite fifty strong; and every minute brought re-enforcements straggling up from Fifth Avenue. But the lamp-post — still a mute, insensate recipient of the chauffeur's amorous clasp — marked a boundary beyond which curiosity failed to allure. Similarly at Sixth Avenue, a rabble was collecting, blocking the roadway and backing up to the Elevated pillars and surface-car tracks — but to a man balk- ing at an invisible line drawn from corner to corner. Midway, the dark open doorway to November's garage yawned forbiddingly; and in all the space that sepa- rated these two gatherings of spectators, there were visible just three human figures: a uniformed patrol- man, and two plain-clothes men — the former at a discreet distance, the two latter more boldly stationed and holding revolvers ready for instant employment. "Fly-cops," the chauffeur named the two in citizen's clothing: "I piped 'em stickin' round while you was inside, an' was wonderin' what they was after, when all of a sudden I sees November duck up from the basement next door to the Monastery, and they tries to jump him. That ain't two minutes ago. November dodges, pulls a gun, and fights 'em off until he can back into the garage —" A hand holding an automatic edged into sight round the corner of the garage door — and the pistol sang like a locust. Instantly one of the detectives fired. The THE SORTIE 283 "I want to stop this getaway —" "Not for mine, friend." The chauffeur laughed scornfully. "I ain't lost no Red November!" "Will a thousand dollars make you change your mind?" The chauffeur's eyes narrowed. "Whatcha drivin' at? Me — why — I'd take a lotta chances for a thousand." "Help me — do as I say— and it's yours." "Lead me to the coin," was the prompt decision. "Here, then!" P. Sybarite delved hastily into a trousers pocket and produced a handful of bills of large denominations. "There's a five hundred dollar bill to start with," he rattled, stripping off the first that fell to his fingers — " and here's a hundred — no, here's another five instead." "In the mitt," the chauffeur stipulated simply, ex- tending his palm. "Either you 're crazy or I am — but in the mitt, friend, and I '11 run the car right into that garage, 'f you say so." "Nothing so foolish as that." P. Sybarite handed over the two bills and put away the rest of his wealth. "Just jump into that car and be ready to swing across the street and block 'em as they come." "You 're on!" agreed the chauffeur with emotion — carefully putting his money away. "And a thousand more " — his courage wrung this 284 THE DAY OF DAYS tribute from P. Sybarite's admiration — " if you 're hurt —" "You 're on there, too — and don't think for a min- ute I 'll letcha fergit, neither." The chauffeur turned to his car, jumped into the driver's seat, and advanced the spark. The purr of the motor deepened to a leonine growl. "Hello!" he exclaimed in surprise, real or feigned, to see P. Sybarite take the seat by his side. "What t 'ell? Who's payin' you to be a God-forsaken ass?" "Did you think I'd ask you to run a risk that frightened me?" "Dunno's I thought much about it, but 'f yuh wanta know what I think now, I think you oughta get a rebate outa whatcha give me — if you live to apply for it. And I don't mind tellin' you, if you do, you won't get it." Again the spiteful drumming of the automatic: P. Sybarite swung round in time to see one of the plain- clothes men return the fire with several brisk shots, then abruptly drop his revolver, clap a hand to his bosom, wheel about-face, and fall prone. A cry shrilled up from the bystanders, only to be drowned out by another, but fortunately more harmless, fusillade from the garage. "Tunin' up!" commented the chauffeur grimly. "Sounds to me like they was about ready to com- mence!" THE SORTIE 285 P. Sybarite shut his teeth on a nervous tremor and lost a shade or two of colour. "Ready?" he said with difficulty. The chauffeur's reply was muffled by another volley; on the echoes of which the little man saw the nose of a car poke diagonally out of the garage door, pause, swerve a trifle to the right, and pause once again. . . . "They 're coming!" he cried wildly. "Stand by, quick 1" The alarm was taken up and repeated by two-score throats, while those dotting the street and sidewalks near by broke in swift panic and began madly to scuttle to shelter within doorways and down basement steps. . . . Like an arrow from the string, November's car broke cover at an angle. Ignoring the slanting way from threshold to gutter, it took the bump of the curb apparently at full tilt, and skidded to the northern curb before it could be brought under control and its course shaped eastward. With a shiver P. Sybarite recognised that car. It was not the taxicab that he had been led to expect, but the same maroon-coloured limousine into which he had assisted Marian Blessington at the Bizarre. On its front seats were two men — Red November himself at the driver's side, a revolver in either hand. And the body of the car contained one passenger, at least, if P. Sybarite might trust to an impression gained 286 THE DAY OF DAYS in one hasty glance through the forward windows as the car bore down upon them — November's weapons spitting fire. . . . He could not say who that one passenger might be; but he could guess; and guessing, knew the automatic in his grasp to be useless; he dared not fire at the gangster for fear of loosing a wild bullet into the body of the car. . . . Now they were within fifty feet of one another. By contrast with the apparent slowness of the touring car to get in motion, the limousine seemed already to have attained locomotive speed. A yell and a shot from one of November's revolvers (P. Sybarite saw the bullet score the asphalt not two feet from the forward wheel) warned them to clear the way as the gang leader's car swerved wide to pass them. And on this the touring car seemed to get out of control, swinging across the street. Immediately the other, crowded to the gutter, attempted to take the curb, but, the wheels meeting it at an angle not sufficiently acute, the manoeuvre failed. To a chorus of yells November's driver shut down the brakes not a thought too soon — not soon enough, indeed, to avoid a collision that crumpled a mudguard as though it had been a thing of pasteboard. Simultaneously P. Sybarite's chauffeur set the brakes, and with the agility of a hounded rabbit seeking its THE SORTIE 287 burrow, dived from his seat to the side of the car farthest from the gangsters. In an instant he was underneath it. P. Sybarite, on the other hand, had leaped before the accident. Staggering a pace or two — and all the time under fire — he at length found his feet not six feet from the limousine. It had stopped broadside on. In this position he commanded the front seats without great danger of sending a shot through the body. His weapon rose mechanically and quite deliberately he took aim — making assurance doubly sure through- out what seemed an age made sibilant by the singing past his head of the infuriated gangster's bullets. But his finger never tightened upon the trigger. November had ceased firing and was plucking ner- vously at the slide of his automatic. His driver had jumped down from his seat and was scuttling madly up the street. In a breath P. Sybarite realised what was the matter: as automatics will, when hot with fast firing, Novem- ber's had choked on an empty shell. With a sob of excitement the little man lowered his weapon and flung himself upon the gang leader. November rose to meet him, reversing his pistol and aiming at P. Sybarite's head a murderous blow. This, however, the little man was alert to dodge. November came bodily into his arms. Grappling, the two reeled 288 THE DAY OF DAYS and went down, P. Sybarite's fingers closing on the throat of the assassin just as the latter's head struck the pavement with brutal force. The man shivered, grunted, and lay still. P. Sybarite disengaged and got up on his feet. XXII TOGETHEB IN" a daze, P. Sybarite shook and felt himself all over, unable to credit his escape from that rain of bullets. But he was apparently unharmed. Kismet! . . . Then suddenly he quickened to the circumstances: the thing was finished, November stunned and helpless at his feet, November's driver making off, the crowd swarming round, the police an imminent menace. Now if Marian were in the body of the town-car, as he believed, he must get her out of it and away before the police and detectives could overtake and ap- prehend them both. Instant action, inspired audacity, a little luck — and the thing might possibly be accomplished. His chauffeur was crawling ignominiously out from beneath the touring car — his countenance livid with grime and the pallor of fright. Meeting the eye of his employer, he grinned a sheepish grin. P. Sybarite seized him by the arm. "Are you hurt?" "Not ten cents' worth — much less a thousand dol- lars! No such luck!" TOGETHER 291 An instant's work loosed her scored and excoriated wrists; in another, the bonds fell from her ankles. Deftly unknotting the bandage that closed her mouth, he asked could she walk. With difficulty, in a husky and painful whisper, but still courageously, she told him yes. Hopeful, rather than counting on this assurance, he jumped out and offered his hand. She put hers into it (and it was cold as ice), stirred, rose stiffly, tottered to the door, and fell into his arms. . A uniformed patrolman, breaking through the crowd about them, seized P. Sybarite and held him fast. "What's this? Who's this?" he gabbled incoher- ently, brandishing a vaguely formidable fist. "A lady, you fool!" P. Sybarite snapped. "Let go and catch that scoundrel over there — if you 're worth your salt." He waved his free hand broadly in the direction taken by November's driver. Abruptly and without protest the patrolman released him, butted his way through the crowd, and disappeared. An arm boldly about Marian's waist, P. Sybarite helped her to the step of the touring car — and blessed that prince among chauffeurs, who was up and ready in his seat! But now again he must be hindered: a plain-clothes man dropped a heavy hand upon his shoulder and screwed the muzzle of a revolver into P. Sybarite's ear. PERCEVAL UNASHAMED 295 honest indignation escaped the grim portals of the ship- ping clerk's mouth. "Sa-ay!" he exploded — " looky here: where've you been all night?" "Ah-h!" P. Sybarite sighed provokingly: "that's a long and tiresome story, George." With much the air of a transient, he sat him down by George's side. "A very long and very weary story, George. I don't like to tell it to you, really. We'd be sure to quarrel." "Why?" George demanded aggressively. "Because you would n't believe me. I don't quite believe it myself, now that all's over, barring a page or two. Your great trouble, George, is that you have no imagination." "The devil I ain't!" "Perfectly right: you have n't. If you point with pride to that wild flight of fancy which identified ' Molly Lessing' with Marian Blessington, George, your posi- tion is (as you yourself would say) untenable. It was n't imagination: it was fact." "No!" George ejaculated. "Is that right? What'd I tell you?" "Word of honour! But it's a secret, as yet — from everybody except you and Violet; and even you we would n't tell had you not earned the right to know by guessing and making me semi-credulous — enough to start something — several somethings, in fact." PERCEVAL UNASHAMED 297 "It's me," said P. Sybarite humbly: "I admit it. . . . And the worst of it is — I like it! So would you if you'd been through a Day of Days." George let that pass; for the moment he was other- wise engaged in vain speculation as to the appearance of a phenomenon rather rare in the calendar of that West Thirty-eighth Street boarding-house. A Western Union boy, weary with the weariness of not less than forty summers, was shuffling in at the gate. "Sa-ay!" he called with the asperity of ingrained ennui —" either of youse guys know a guy named Perceval Sybarite't lives here?" Silently P. Sybarite held out his hand, took the greasy little book in its black oil-cloth binding, scrawled his signature in the proper blank, and received the message in its sealed yellow envelope. "Wait," he commanded calmly, eyeing Western Union with suspicion. "Wat's eatin' you? Is they an answer?" "They ain't no answer," P. Sybarite admitted. "Well, whatcha want? I got no time to stick round here kiddin'." "One moment of your valuable time. I believe you delivered a message at the Monastery Apartments in Forty-third Street this morning." "Well, an' what 'f I did?" "Only this." 298 THE DAY OF DAYS P. Sybarite extracted an immense roll of bills from his pocket; transferred it to his other hand; delved deeper; eventually produced a single twenty-dollar gold- piece. "Take this," he said, tossing it to the boy with princely nonchalance. "It's the last of a lot, but —• it's yours." "What for?" Western Union demanded in amaze; while, as for George Bross, he developed plain symptoms of apoplexy. "You '11 never know," said P. Sybarite. "Now run along before I come to." In the shadow of this threat, Western Union fled pre- cipitately. . . . P. Sybarite rose; yawned; smiled benignantly upon George Bross. "I'm off to bed — was only waiting for this mes- sage," he announced; "but before I go — tell me; how much money does Violet think you ought to be earning before you 're eligible for the Matrimonial Stakes?" "She said somethin' oncet about fifty per," George remembered gloomily. "It's yours — doubled," P. Sybarite told him. "To-morrow you will resign from the employ of Whig- ham & Wimper and go to Blessington's to enter their shipping department at a hundred a week; and if you don't earn it, may God have mercy on your wretched soul!" 300 THE DAY OF DAYS "And whatcha goin' do then?" "I? To tell you the truth, I'm considering joining the Union and agitating for an eight-hour Day of Days. This one of mine has been eighteen hours long, more or less — since I got those theatre tickets, you know — and I'm too dog-tired to keep my eyes open another minute. After I've had a nap, I 'll tell you all about everything." . . . But he wasn't too tired to read his telegram, when he found himself again, and for the last time, in his hall bedroom. It said simply: "I love you.—Marian." From this P. Sybarite looked up to his reflection in the glass. And presently he smiled sheepishly, and blinked. "Perceval ... I n murmured the little man fondly. THE END A Curious Story of Woman's Love THE DESTROYING ANGEL By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE Author of "The Bandbox," "The Day of Days," etc. Illustrated by A. I. Keller. Cloth. $1.25 net. Mr. Vance keeps events moving too fast to cast any shadows before. — New York World. A very readable story . . . Certainly there is not a dull moment in the book.—New York Times. It's a good story, well told, with plenty of brisk down-to-date humor, and its few characters stand out well. — Los Angeles Times. Full of romance and itrange surprises ... A narrative of dramatic events, thrilling adventures, and all-conquering passion that makes a swiftly moving tale.—Philadelphia North American. Half a dozen less vigorous and full-blooded stories might be built from the material so lavishly employed . . •. There is no moment, from start to finish, when the story is not absorbing, and the end of the narrative, which winds to a happy climax, is all that the most ardent romancist could desire.—Chicago Record- Herald. LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 34 Beacon Street, Boston