Over across from the window stood a door, its oblong dimly luminous with light softly shining down the walls of a private hall, from a point some distance to the left of the opening.

Rounding a dining-table, P. Sybarite stole softly on, and paused, listening, just within the threshold.

From some uncertain quarter--presumably the lighted room--he could hear a sound, very slight: so slight that it seemed guarded, but none the less unmistakable: the hiss of carbonated water squirting from a syphon into a gla.s.s.

Ceasing, a short wait followed and then a faint "_Aah!_" of satisfaction, with the thump of a gla.s.s 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, shuffling 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 ma.s.sive buffet between him and the door; and, in the small s.p.a.ce between that article of furniture and the corner of the room, waited with every nerve taut and muscle tense, in full antic.i.p.ation of incontinent 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 the curtains; then, rea.s.sured, thrust one aside and stepped into the embrasure, there to linger with his head out of the window, intently reconnoitering, long enough to enable P. Sybarite to make an amazing discovery: the man was not Bayard Shaynon.

In silhouette against the light, his slight and supple form was unmistakable to one who had seen it before, even though his face was disfigured by a scant black visor across his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

He was Red November.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He was Red November.]

What P. Sybarite would have done had he been armed is problematical.

What he did was remain moveless, even as he was breathless and powerless, but for his naked hands, either for offence or defence. For that November was armed was as unquestionable as his mastery of the long-barrelled revolver of blue steel (favoured by gunmen of the underworld) which he held at poise all the while he carefully surveyed his line of retreat.

At length, releasing the curtain, the gang leader hopped lightly out upon the grating, and disappeared.

In another breath P. Sybarite himself was at the window. A single glance through the curtains showed the grating untenanted; and boldly poking his head forth, he looked down to see the figure of the gunman, foreshortened unrecognisably, moving down the iron tangle already several flights below, singularly resembling a spider in some extraordinary web.

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 wasn'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 b.u.t.t close to his right hand--carefully disposed with evident intent to indicate a case of suicide rather than of murder.

XXI

THE SORTIE

At pains not to stir across the threshold, with quick glances P.

Sybarite reviewed scrupulously the scene of November's crime.

Eventually his nod indicated a contemptuous conclusion: that it should not prove difficult to convict November on the evidence afforded by the condition of the apartment alone. A most superficial inspection ought to convince anybody, even one p.r.o.ne to precipitate conclusions, that Bayard Shaynon had never died by his own hand.

If November, in depositing the instrument of his crime close to the hand of its victim, had meant to mislead, to create an inference of _felo de se_, he had ordered all his other actions with a carelessness arguing one of three things: cynical indifference to the actual outcome of his false clue; sublime faith in the stupidity of the police; or a stupidity of his own as cra.s.s as that said to be characteristic of the average criminal in all ages.

The rooms, in short, had been most thoroughly if hastily ransacked--in search, P. Sybarite didn't for an instant doubt, of evidence as to the relations between Shaynon and Mrs. Inche calculated to prove incriminating at an inquest; though the little man entertained even less doubt that l.u.s.t 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 ma.s.sive 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 pigeonholes, 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 a.s.sa.s.sin'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 everywhere else, his glance dropped to his feet and found it there--a torn and crumpled envelope with its enclosure flattened out and apart from it.

This last he s.n.a.t.c.hed up, but the envelope he didn't touch, having been quick to remark the print upon it 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 tragedy 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, listened an instant, gently opened it--with his handkerchief wrapped round the polished bra.s.s door-k.n.o.b to guard against clues calculated to involve himself, whether as imputed princ.i.p.al 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....

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 circ.u.mspect than that which his knuckles drummed on the panels of Peter's door. And Peter earned a heartfelt, instant, and ungrudged blessing by opening without delay.

"Well?" he asked, when P. Sybarite--with a gesture 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 bloodthirsty--!"

"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."

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 suggest.

HAYNES 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. Sybarite returned his stare.