The False Faces Part 29

But only a minute later his driver pulled up in front of the Hotel Knickerbocker, and Lanyard, peering through the forward window, saw the number 76-385 on the license plate of a taxicab drawing away, empty, from the curb beneath the hotel canopy.

He tossed the second gold piece to the driver as his feet touched the sidewalk, and shouldered through a cl.u.s.ter of men and women at the main entrance to the lobby.

That rendezvous of Broadway was fairly thronged despite the slack mid-evening hour, between the dinner and the supper crushes; but Lanyard reviewed in vain the little knots of guests and loungers; if "Karl" were among them, he was n.o.body whom Lanyard had learned to know by sight on board the _a.s.syrian_.

With as little success he searched un.o.btrusively all public rooms on the main floor.

It was, of course, both possible and probable that "Karl," himself a guest of the hotel, had crossed directly to the elevators and been whisked aloft to his room.

With this in mind, Lanyard paused at the desk, asked permission to examine the register and, being accommodated, was somewhat consoled; if his chase had failed of its immediate objective, it now proved not altogether fruitless. A majority of the _a.s.syrian_ survivors seemed to have elected to stop at the Knickerbocker. One after another Lanyard, scanning the entries, found these names:

Edmund O'Reilly--Detroit Arturo Velasco--Buenos Aires Bartlett Putnam--Philadelphia Cecelia Brooke--London Emil Dressier--Geneve

Half inclined to commit the imprudence of sending a name up to Miss Brooke--any name but Andre d.u.c.h.emin, Michael Lanyard, or Anthony Ember--together with a message artfully worded to fix her interest without giving comfort to the enemy, should it chance to go astray, the adventurer hesitated by the desk; and of a sudden was satisfied that such a move would be not only injudicious but waste of time; for, now that he paused to think of it, he surmised that the young woman--"young and good-looking", on Walker's word--who had called to see Colonel Stanistreet was none other than this same Cecelia Brooke.

What more natural than that she should make early occasion to consult the head of the British Secret Service in America?

A pity he had not waited there in the window! If he had, no doubt the mystery with which the girl had surrounded herself would be no more mystery to Lanyard; he would have learned the secret of that paper cylinder as well as the part the girl had played in the intrigue for its possession, and so be the better advised as to his own future conduct.

But in his insensate pa.s.sion for revenge upon one who had all but murdered him, he had forgotten all else but the moment's specious opportunity.

With a grunt of impatience Lanyard turned away from the desk, and came face to face with Crane.

The Secret Service man was coming from the direction of the bar in company with Velasco, O'Reilly, and Dressier.

Of the three last named but one looked Lanyard's way, O'Reilly, and his gaze, resting transiently on the countenance of Andre d.u.c.h.emin minus the d.u.c.h.emin beard, pa.s.sed on without perceptible glimmer of recognition.

Why not? Why should it enter his head that one lived and had antic.i.p.ated his own arrival in New York by twenty hours whom be believed to be buried many fathoms deep off Nantucket?

As for Crane, his cool gray, humorous eyes, half-hooded with their heavy lids, favoured Lanyard with casual regard and never a tremor of interest or surprise; but as he pa.s.sed his right eye closed deliberately and with a significance not to be ignored.

To this Lanyard responded only with a look of blankest amaze.

Chatting with an air of subdued self-congratulation pardonable in such as have come safe to land through many dangers of the deep, the quartet strolled round the desk and boarded one of the elevators.

Not till its gate had closed did Lanyard stir. Then he went away from there with all haste and cunning at his command.

The route through the cafe to Broadway offered the speediest and least conspicuous of exits. From the side door of the hotel he plunged directly into the mouth of the Subway kiosk and, chance favouring him, managed to purchase a ticket and board a southbound local train an instant before its doors ground shut.

Believing Crane would take the next elevator down, once he had seen the others safely in their rooms, Lanyard was content to let him find the lobby dest.i.tute of ghosts, to let him fume and wonder and think himself perhaps mistaken.

The last thing he desired was entanglement with the American Secret Service. For Crane he entertained personal respect and temperate liking, thought the man socially an amusing creature, professionally a deadly peril to one who had a feud to pursue.

Leaving the train at Grand Central, the adventurer pa.s.sed through the back ways of the Terminus, into the Hotel Biltmore, upstairs to its lobby, thence out by the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance, walking through Forty-fourth Street to Fifth Avenue, where he chartered a taxicab, gave the address of his lodgings, and lay back in the corner of its seat satisfied he had successfully eluded pursuit and very, very grateful to the Subway system for the facilities it afforded fugitives like himself through its warren of underground pa.s.sages.

One thing troubled him, however, without respite: the Brooke girl was on his conscience. To her he owed an accounting of his stewardship of that trust which she had reposed in him. It was intolerable in his understanding that she should be permitted to go one unnecessary hour in ignorance of the truth about that business--the truth, that is, as far as he himself knew it.

If through Crane or in some unforseeable fashion she were to learn that Andre d.u.c.h.emin lived, she would think him faithless. If she knew that d.u.c.h.emin had been one with Michael Lanyard, the Lone Wolf, she would not be surprised. But that, too, was intolerable; even the Lone Wolf had his code of honour.

Again, if she remained in ignorance of the fact that Lanyard had escaped drowning, she would continue to believe her secret at the bottom of the sea with him; whereas, in the hands of the enemy, in the possession of "Karl"

and his, confederates, it was potentially Heaven only knew how dangerous a weapon.

Abruptly Lanyard reflected that at least one doubt had been eliminated by that encounter in the Knickerbocker. It was barely possible that "Karl" had gone to the bar on entering and added himself to Crane's party, but it was hardly creditable in Lanyard's consideration. He was convinced that, whether or not Velasco, O'Reilly, and Dressier were parties to the Hun conspiracy, none of these was "Karl."

As for the Brooke matter, he felt it inc.u.mbent upon him immediately to find some safe means of communicating with the girl. She could be trusted not to betray him to the police, however much she might at first incline to doubt him. But he would persuade her of his sincerity, never fear!

The telephone offered one solution of his difficulty, an agency non-committal enough, provided one were at pains not to call from one's private station, to which the call might be traced back.

With this in mind he stopped and dismissed his taxicab at Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and availed himself of a coin-box telephone booth in the corner druggist's.

The experience that followed was nothing out of the ordinary. Lanyard, connected with the Knickerbocker promptly, with the customary expenditure of patience laboriously spelled out the name B-r-double-o-k-e, and was told to hold the wire.

Several minutes later he began to agitate the receiver hook and was eventually rewarded with the advice that the Knickerbocker operator, being informed his party was in the rest'runt, was having her paged.

Still later the central operator told him his five minutes was up and consented to continue the connection only on deposit of an additional nickel.

Eventually, in sequel to more abuse of the hook, he received this response from the Knickerbocker switchboard: "Wait a min'te, can't you? Here's your party."

Lanyard was surprised at the eagerness with which he cried: "h.e.l.lo!"

A click answered, and a bland voice which was not the voice he had expected to hear: "h.e.l.lo? That you, Jack?"

He said wearily: "I am waiting to speak with Miss Cecelia Brooke."

"Oh, then there _must_ be some mistake. This is Miss _Crooke_ speaking."

Lanyard uttered a strangled "Sorry!" and hung up, abandoning further effort as hopeless.

That matter would have to stand over till morning.

Time now pressed: it was nearly eleven; he had a rendezvous with Destiny to keep at midnight, and meant to be more than punctual.

Walking to his apartment house, he proceeded to establish an alibi by entering through the public hallway and registering with the telephone attendant a call for seven o'clock the next morning.

In the course of the next half hour Lanyard let himself quietly out of the private door, slipped around the block and boarded a Riverside Drive bus.

Alighting at Ninety-third Street, he walked two blocks north on the Drive, turned east, and without misadventure admitted himself a second time to the Stanistreet garden.

XIV

DEFAMATION

It was hardly possible to watch Mr. Blensop functioning in his vocational capacity without reflecting on that cruel injustice which Nature only too often practises upon her offspring in secreting most praiseworthy qualities within fleshy envelopes of hopelessly frivolous cast.

The flowing gestures of this young man, his fluting accents, poetic eyes, and modestly ingratiating moustache, the preciosity of his taste in dress, a.s.sorted singularly with an austere devotion to duty rare if unaffected.