The Day of Days Part 38

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

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

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

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

She smiled in sympathy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picking his way to the elevators, constantly squirming more inextricably into the heart of the press, elbowed and shouldered and politely walked upon, not only fore and aft, but to port and starboard as well, by dame, dowager, and 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 embarra.s.sment at the abundant and n.o.bly 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 ident.i.ty of the man in the rear, the chances are he would have (thoughtlessly of course) brought down his heels upon the other's toes with all his weight on top of them. But in his ignorance P. Sybarite was diligent to keep the peace.

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

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

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

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

After a time P. Sybarite discovered Mr. Bayard Shaynon not far off, like himself waiting and with a vigilant eye reviewing the departing, the while he talked in close confidence with one who, a stranger to P.

Sybarite, was briefly catalogued in his gallery of impressions as "hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained but awkward--very likely, _nouveau riche_;" and with this summary, dismissed from the little man's thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

"Did you hear me, Bayard?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Finally!" she a.s.severated.

He shrugged again; and his eyes, wavering, of a sudden met P.

Sybarite's and stabbed them with a glance of ruthless and unbridled hatred, so envenomed that the little man was transiently conscious of a misgiving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forcing a wry grin, he mocked a shudder.