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Later, I remembered this fellow and looking round the lobby, saw him in a corner, apparently concealing something about his person. So I spoke to you about it." P. Sybarite's face settled into grim lines. "Shaynon," he said slowly, without visible temper, "this won't get you anything but trouble. Remember that, when I come to pay you out unless you'll have the grace to retract here and now."
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.
For as Brian Shaynon started forward to seize Beelzebub by the collar, a stream of incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly wormed his way through the press to the dancing-floor itself.
What I've endured has done me no harm and to-night has seen the turn of my fortunes or else I'm hopelessly deluded. Furthermore, some day I mean to square my account with Brian Shaynon to the fraction of a penny and within the law." "Oh, I do hope you may!" P. Sybarite smiled serenely. "I shall; and you can help me, if you will." "How?"
There for an instant he delayed with an eye to the crack between the curtains; then, reassured, thrust one aside and stepped into the embrasure, there to linger with his head out of the window, intently reconnoitering, long enough to enable P. Sybarite to make an amazing discovery: the man was not Bayard Shaynon.
"Either I don't care which." "Mr. Bayard Shaynon 'as just left not five minutes ago, sir." "Left for where?" "His apartments, I presume, sir." "Then I'll see Mr. Brian Shaynon." The butler's body filled the doorway. Nor did he offer to budge. "I'm afraid, sir, Mr. Shaynon is 'ardly likely to see any one at this hour." "He'll see me," replied P. Sybarite grimly. "He hasn't gone to bed, I gather?"
"I'll do better 'n that," chuckled the man. "Have a cigar." "Thank you," said P. Sybarite politely, accepting the peace offering. "All I need now is a match: I acknowledge the habit." The match supplied, he smoked in silence. Four minutes passed, by the clock: no sign of the manager, Shaynon, or Mrs. Strone. "Story?" the detective suggested at length. "Plant," retorted P. Sybarite as tersely.
As for the dead man, he read his epitaph in a phrase, accompanied by a meaning nod toward the disfigured and insentient head. "It was coming to you and you got it," said P. Sybarite callously, with never a qualm of shame for the apathy with which he contemplated this second tragedy in the house of Shaynon. Too much, too long, had he suffered at its hands....
"No; but some place out of town, of course." "Of course," P. Sybarite repeated mechanically. He eyed fixedly the ash on the end of his cigar. "And she told you she meant to marry Bayard Shaynon, did she!" "She said she'd promised.... And that," the boy broke out, "was what drove me crazy. He's he's well, you know what he is." "His father's son," said P. Sybarite gloomily.
And P. Sybarite looked up with blank eyes in a pallid, wizened face in time to see Shaynon bare his teeth his lips curling back in a manner peculiarly wolfish and irritating and snarl a mirthless laugh.
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