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Page 67
"Friends?"
"So she said."
"Did she name them?"
"No--"
"Or say where?"
"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.
"He was there to-night--the old man, too; and after what Marian had
told me, I just couldn't trust myself to meet or speak to either of
them. So I bolted back here, took a stiff drink, changed from costume
to these clothes, and went out to make a besotted ass of myself.
Naturally I landed in Dutch House. And there--the first thing I
noticed when I went in was old Shaynon, sitting at the same table you
took, later--waiting. Imagine my surprise--I'd left him at the Bizarre
not thirty minutes before!"
"I'm imagining it, Peter. Get ahead."
"I hailed him, but he wouldn't recognise me--simply glared. Presently
Red November came in and they went upstairs together. So I stuck
around, hoping to get hold of Red and make him drunk enough to talk.
Curiously enough when Shaynon left, Red came directly to my table and
sat down. But by that time I'd had some champagne on top of whiskey
and was beginning to know that if I pumped in anything more, it'd be
November's party instead of mine. And when he tried to insist on my
drinking more, I got scared--feeling what I'd had as much as I did."
"You're not the fool you try to seem," P. Sybarite conceded. "I heard
November promise Shaynon, at the door, that you wouldn't remember much
when you came to. The old scoundrel didn't want to be seen--hadn't
expected to be recognised and, when he found you'd followed, planned
to fix things so that you'd never tell on him."
"But _why_?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. There's some sort of shenanigan
brewing, or my first name's Peter, the same as yours--which I wish it
was so.... Be quiet a bit and let me think."
For a little while P. Sybarite sat pondering with vacant eyes; and the
wounded boy stared upward with a frown, as though endeavouring to
puzzle the answer to this riddle out of the blankness of the ceiling.
"What time does this Hadley-Owen party break up?"
"Not till daylight. It's the last big fixture of the social season,
and ordinarily they keep it up till sunrise."
"It'll be still going, then?"
"Strong. They'll be in full swing, now, of after-supper dancing."
"That settles it: I'm going."
The boy lifted on his elbow in amaze, then subsided with a grunt of
pain.
"_You're_ going?"
"You say you've got a costume of some sort here? I'll borrow it. We're
much of a size."
"Heaven knows you're welcome, but--"
"But what?"
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