The Moonlit Way Part 47

"Give it to _me_!"

"I am instruc----"

"Give it to me, I tell you!--and come inside here! Do you hear what I'm saying to you?"

The spectacled man lost most of his colour as Barres started toward him.

"Excuse!" he faltered, backing off down the corridor. "I giff you the letter!" And he hastily thrust his hand into the side pocket of his coat. But it was a pistol he poked under the other's nose--a shiny, lumpy weapon, clutched most unsteadily.

"Hands up and turn me once around your back!" whispered the man hoa.r.s.ely. "Quick!--or I shoot you!"--as the other, astounded, merely gazed at him. The man had already begun to back away again, but as Barres moved he stopped and cursed him:

"Put them up your hands!" snarled the spectacled man, with a final oath. "Keep your distance or I kill you!"

Barres heard himself saying, in a voice not much like his own:

"You can't do this to me and get away with it! It's nonsense! This sort of thing doesn't go in New York!"

Suddenly his mind grew coldly, terrible clear:

"No, you _can't_ get away with it!" he concluded aloud, in the calm, natural voice of conviction. "Your stunt is scaring women! You try to keep clear of men--you dirty, blackmailing German crook! I've got your number! You're the 'Watcher'!--you murderous rat! You're afraid to shoot!"

It was plain that the spectacled man had not discounted anything of this sort--plain now, to Barres, that if, indeed, murder actually had been meant, it was not his own murder that had been planned with that big, blunt, silver-plated pistol, now wavering wildly before his eyes.

"I blow your face off!" whispered the stranger, beginning to back away again, and ghastly pale.

"Keep out of thiss! I am not looking for you. Get you back; step once again inside that door away!----"

But Barres had already jumped for him, had almost caught him, was reaching for him--when the man hurled the pistol straight at his face.

The terrific impact of the heavy weapon striking him between the eyes dazed him; he stumbled sideways, colliding with the wall, and he reeled around there a second.

But that second's leeway was enough for the bespectacled stranger. He turned and ran like a deer. And when Barres reached the staircase the whitewashed hall below was still echoing with the slam of the street grille.

Nevertheless, he hurried down, but found the desk-chair empty and Soane nowhere visible, and continued on to the outer door, more or less confused by the terrific blow on the head.

Of course the bespectacled man had disappeared amid the noonday foot-farers now crowding both sidewalks east and west, on their way to lunch.

Barres walked slowly back to the desk, still dazed, but now thoroughly enraged and painfully conscious of a heavy swelling where the blow had fallen on his forehead.

In the superintendent's quarters he found Soane, evidently just awakened after a sodden night at Grogan's, trying to dress.

Barres said:

"There is n.o.body at the desk. Either you or Miss Kurtz should be on duty. That is the rule. Now, I'm going to tell you something: If I ever again find that desk without anybody behind it, I shall go to the owners of this building and tell them what sort of superintendent you are! And maybe I'll tell the police, also!"

"Arrah, then, Misther Barres----"

"That's all!" said Barres, turning on his heel. "Anything more from you and you'll find yourself in trouble!"

And he went up stairs.

The lumpy pistol still lay there in the corridor; he picked it up and took it into the studio. The weapon was fully loaded. It seemed to be of some foreign make--German or Austrian, he judged by the marking which had been almost erased, deliberately obliterated, it appeared to him.

He placed it in his desk, seated himself, explored his bruises gingerly with cautious finger-tips, concluded that the bridge of his nose was not broken, then threw himself back in his armchair for some grim and concentrated thinking.

XVII

A CONFERENCE

The elegantly modulated accents of Aristocrates, announcing the imminence of luncheon, aroused Barres from disconcerted but wrathful reflections.

As he sat up and tenderly caressed his battered head, Thessalie and Dulcie came slowly into the studio together, their arms interlaced.

Both exclaimed at the sight of the young man's swollen face, but he checked their sympathetic enquiries drily:

"b.u.mped into something. It's nothing. How are you, Dulcie? All right again?"

She nodded, evidently much concerned about his disfigured forehead; so to terminate sympathetic advice he went away to bathe his bruises in witch hazel, and presently returned smelling strongly of that time-honoured panacea, and with a saturated handkerchief adorning his brow.

At the same time, there came a considerable thumping and b.u.mping from the corridor; the bell rang, and Westmore appeared with the trunks--five of them. These a pair of brawny expressmen rolled into the studio and carried thence to the storeroom which separated the bedroom and bath from the kitchen.

"Any trouble?" enquired Barres of Westmore, when the expressmen had gone.

"None at all. n.o.body looked at me twice. What's happened to your noddle?"

"b.u.mped it. Lunch is ready."

Thessalie came over to him:

"I have included Dulcie among my confidants," she said in a low voice.

"You mean you've told her----"

"Everything. And I am glad I did."

Barres was silent; Thessalie pa.s.sed her arm around Dulcie's waist; the two men walked behind together.

The table was a ma.s.s of flowers, over which netted sunlight played.

Three cats a.s.sisted--the Prophet, always dignified, blinked pleasantly from a window ledge; the blond Houri, beside him, purred loudly. Only Strindberg was impossible, chasing her own tail under the patient feet of Aristocrates, or rolling over and over beneath the table in a mindless a.s.sault upon her own hind toes.

Seated there in the quiet peace and security of the pleasant room, amid familiar things, with Aristocrates moving noiselessly about, sunlight lacing wall and ceiling, and the air aromatic with the scent of brilliant flowers, Barres tried in vain to realise that murder could throw its shadow over such a place--that its terrible menace could have touched his threshold, even for an instant.

No, it was impossible. The fellow could not have intended murder. He was merely a blackmailer, suddenly detected and instantly frightened, pulling a gun in a panic, and even then failing in the courage to shoot.

It enraged Barres to even think about it, but he could not bring himself to attach any darker significance to the incident than just that--a blackmailer, ready to display a gun, but not to use it, had come to bully a woman; had found himself unexpectedly trapped, and had behaved according to his kind.