Somebody laughed hysterically.

"Go!" P. Sybarite cried to the chauffeur.

The crowd gave way before the lunge of the car....

They were halfway to Fifth Avenue before pursuit was thought of; had turned the corner before it was fairly started; in five minutes had thrown it off entirely and were running free at a moderate pace up Broadway just above Columbus Circle....

"Where to now, boss?" the chauffeur presently enquired.

P. Sybarite looked enquiringly at his charge. Since her rescue she had neither moved nor spoken--had rested motionless in her corner of the tonneau, eyes closed, body relaxed and listless. But now she roused; unveiled the dear wonder of her eyes of brown; even mustered up the ghost of a smile.

"Wherever you think best," she told him gently.

"The Plaza? You might be bothered there. We may be traced--we're sure to. This only saves us for the day. To-morrow--reporters--all that--perhaps. Perhaps not!... Don't you know somebody out of town to whom you could go for the day? Once across the city line, we're safe for a little."

She nodded: breathed an address in Westchester County....

Some time later P. Sybarite became sensible of an amazing fact. A hand of his rested on the cushioned seat, and in it lay, now warm and wonderfully soft and light, Marian's hand.

He stared incredulously until he had confirmed the substance of this impression; looked up blinking; met the confident, straightforward, and wistful regard of the girl; and blushed to his brows.

The car swept on and on, through the golden hush of that glorious Sunday morning....

XXIII

PERCEVAL UNASHAMED

Toward ten of that same Sunday morning a touring car of majestic mien drew up in front of a boarding-house in Thirty-eighth Street West.

From this alighted a little man of somewhat bedraggled appearance, wearing a somewhat weather-beaten but heartfelt grin.

Ostentatiously (or so it seemed to one solitary and sour-mouthed spectator, disturbed in his perusal of a comic supplement on the brownstone stoop of the boarding-house) he shook hands with the chauffeur, and, speaking guardedly, confirmed some private understanding with him.

Then the car rolled off, and P. Sybarite shuffled meekly in through the gate, crossed the dooryard, and met the outraged glare of George Bross with an apologetic smile and the request:

"If you've got a pack of Sweets about you, George, I can use one in my business."

Without abating his manifestation of entire disapproval, George produced a box of cigarettes, permitted P. Sybarite to select one, and helped himself.

They shared a match, even as brothers might, before honest indignation escaped the grim portals of the shipping 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 wouldn'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 haven't. If you point with pride to that wild flight of fancy which identified 'Molly Lessing' with Marian Blessington, George, your position is (as you yourself would say) untenable. It wasn't imagination: it was fact."

"No!" George e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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 wouldn'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."

"G'wan!" George coaxed. "Feed it to me: I'll eat it right outa your hand. Whatcha been doin' with yourself all night, P.S.?"

"I've been Day of Days-ing myself, George."

"Ah, can the kiddin', P.S. Come through! Whadja do?"

"Broke every Commandment in the Decalogue, George, barring one or two of the more indelicate ones; kicked the laws of chance and probability into a c.o.c.ked hat; fractured most of the Munic.i.p.al Ordinances--and--let me see--oh, yes!--dislocated the Long Arm of Coincidence so badly that all of its subsequent performances are going to seem stiff and lacking in that air of spontaneity without which--"

"My Gawd!" George despaired--"he's off again on that hardy annual talkalogue of his!... Lis'n, P.S.--"

"Call me Perceval," P. Sybarite suggested pleasantly.

"_Wh-at!_"

"Let it be Perceval hereafter, George--always. I grant you free permission."

"But I thought you said--"

"So I did--a few hours ago. Now I--well, I rather like it. It makes all the difference who calls you that sort of name first, and what her voice is like."

"One of us," George protested with profound conviction, "is plumb loony in the head!"

"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 pa.s.s; for the moment he was otherwise 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.