"A burglar? What rot!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

But if her setting were luxurious, the woman outshone it tenfold with the dark splendour of her animal beauty. As comely and as able-bodied as a young pantheress, she was (one judged) little less dangerous--as vital, as self-centred, as deadly. Sitting up in bed, openly careless of charms hardly concealed by nightwear of sheer silk lace and _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 surpa.s.sing sweetness, with decision and considerable overt contempt for the phraseology of convention--swearing without the least affectation, slanging heartily when slang best suited her humour....

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

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

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

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

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

"Under the bed?" stammered the masquerader.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That," said the lady, smothering a giggle, "will be about _all_ from you. Get up--or I'll call in a sure-enough cop to search your t.i.tle to that uniform."

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

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

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

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

"My--er--what?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Find that burglar!"

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

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

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

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

"Go on!" she commanded in menacing accents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As if electrified by that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, P. Sybarite whipped up Penfield's revolver and levelled it at the man on the stairs.