The Day of Days Part 45

Not until about to re-enter the car did he remember he had neglected to secure Bayard's address from the butler. But he wouldn't turn back; it could be ascertained elsewhere; Peter Kenny would either know it or know where to get it.

To Peter's rooms he must of necessity return first of all; for it would not much longer prove possible to go up and down and to and fro upon Manhattan Island in a black silk dress-coat and flaming scarlet small-clothes; to change was imperative.

"The Monastery," he directed, settling back into his seat.

It was now clear daylight: a morning of bright promise breaking over a Town much livelier than it had been half an hour or so ago, with more citizens abroad, some striding briskly to the day's work, some trudging wearily from the night's.

Over all brooded still that effect of illusion: this might have been, almost, a foreign city into whose streets he was adventuring for the first time, so changed and strange seemed everything in his eyes.

P. Sybarite himself felt old and worn and tired, and with a thoughtful finger rubbed an over-night growth of stubble upon his chin....

"Wait," he told the driver, on alighting at the Monastery; "I'm keeping you."

Money pa.s.sed between them--more than enough to render his wishes inviolable.

A dull-eyed hallboy recognised and let him in, sullenly pa.s.sing him on to the elevator; but as that last was on the point of taking flight to Peter Kenny's door, it hesitated; and the operator, with his hand on the half-closed gate, shot it open again instead of shut.

A Western Union messenger-boy, not over forty years tired, was being admitted at the street door. The colloquy there was distinctly audible:

"Mr. Bayard Shaynon?"

"'Leventh floor. Hurry up--don't keep the elevator waitin'."

"Ah--ferget it!"

Whistling softly, the man with the yellow envelope ambled nonchalantly into the cage; fixed the operator with a truculent stare, and demanded the eleventh floor.

Now Peter Kenny's rooms were on the twelfth....

The telegram with its sprawling endors.e.m.e.nt in ink, "_Mr. Bayard Shaynon, Monastery Apartments_," was for several moments within two feet of P. Sybarite's nose.

It was, indeed, anything but easy to keep from pouncing upon that wretched messenger, ravis.h.i.+ng him of the envelope (which he was now employing artfully to split a whistle into two equal portions--and favour to none), and making off with it before the gate of the elevator could close.

Impossible to conjecture what intimate connection it might not have with the disappearance of Marian Blessington, what a flood of light it might not loose upon that dark intrigue!

Indeed, the speculations this circ.u.mstance set awhirl in P. Sybarite's weary head were so many and absorbing that he forgot altogether to be surprised or gratified by the favour of _Kismet_ which had caused their paths to cross at precisely that instant, as if solely that he might be informed of Bayard Shaynon's abode....

"What door?" demanded Western Union as he left the cage at the eleventh floor.

"Right across the hall."

The gate clanged, the cage mounted to the next floor, and P. Sybarite got out, requiring no direction: for Peter Kenny's door was immediately above Bayard Shaynon's.

As he touched the bell-b.u.t.ton for the benefit of the elevator man--but for his own, failed to press it home--the grumble of the door-bell below could be heard faintly through m.u.f.fling fire-brick walls.

The grumble persisted long after the elevator had dropped back to the eleventh floor.

And presently the voice of Western Union was lifted in sour expostulation:

"Sa-ay, whatcha s'pose 's th' matta wid dis guy? I' been ringin'

haffanour!"

"That's funny," commented the elevator boy: "he came in only about ten minutes ago."

"Yuh wuddn' think he cud pa.s.s away 's quick 's all that--wuddja?"

"Ah, I dunno. Mebbe he had a bun on when he come in. Gen'ly has. I didn' notice."

"Well, th' way he must be poundin' his ear now--notta hear dis racket--yud think he was trainin' for a Rip van Winkle Marathon."

Pause--made audible by the pertinacious bell, grinding away like a dentist's drill in a vacant tooth....

"Waitin' here all day won't get me nothin'. Here, what's th' matta wid you signin' for't?"

"G'wan. Sign it yourself 'nd stick unda the door, whydoncha?"

Second pause--the bell boring on, but more faintheartedly, as if doubting whether it ever would reach that nerve.

Finally Western Union gave it up.

"A'right. Guess I will."

Clang of the gate: whine of the descending car: silence....

Softly P. Sybarite tiptoed down the stairs.

Disappointment, however, lay in ambush for him at his nefarious goal: evidently Western Union had been punctilious about his duty; not even so much as the tip of a corner of yellow envelope peeped from under the door.

Reckless in exasperation, P. Sybarite first wasted time educing a series of short, sharp barks from the bell--a peculiarly irritating noise, calculated (one would think) to rouse the dead--then tried the door and, finding it fast, in the end knelt and bent an ear to the keyhole, listening....

Not a sound: silence of the grave; the house deathly still. He could hear his own heart drumming; but, from Shaynon's flat, nothing....

Or--was that the creak of a board beneath a stealthy footstep?

If so, it wasn't repeated....

Again, could it be possible his ears did actually detect a sound of human respiration through the keyhole? Was Bayard Shaynon just the other side of that inch-wide pressed-steel barrier, the fire-proof door, cowering in throes of some paralysing fright, afraid to answer the summons?...

If so, why? What did he fear? The police, perhaps? And if so--why?

What crime had become his so to unman him that he dared not open and put his fate to the test?...

Quickly there took shape in the imagination of the little Irishman a hideous vision of mortal Fear, wild-eyed, white-lipped, and all a-tremble, skulking in panic only a little beyond his reach: a fancy that so worked upon his nerves that he himself seemed infected with its shuddering dread, and thought to feel the fine hairs a-crawl on his neck and scalp and his flesh a-creep.

When at length he rose and drew away it was with all stealth, as though he too moved in the shadow of awful terror bred of a nameless crime....

Once more at Peter Kenny's door, his diffident fingers evoked from the bell but a single chirp--a sound that would by no means have gained him admission had Peter not been sitting up in bed, reading to while away the ache of his wound.

But it was ordered so; Peter was quick to answer the door; and P.