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Page 71
"She won't listen to reason."
"Well ... everything's arranged. You have me to thank for that."
"Oh," sneered the younger man, "you've done a lot, you have!"
And then, moving to give way to another making toward the elevators,
Brian Shaynon discovered at his elbow that small attentive body in
sinister scarlet and black.
For a breath, utterance failed the old man. He glared pop-eyed
indignation from a congested countenance, his fat lips quivering and
his jowls as well; and then as Beelzebub tapped him familiarly if
lightly upon the chest, his face turned wholly purple, from swollen
temples to pendulous chin.
"Well met, _�me damn�e_!" P. Sybarite saluted him gaily. "Are you
indeed off so early upon my business?"
"Damnation!" exclaimed Brian Shaynon, all but choking.
"It shall surely be your portion," gravely assented the little man.
"To all who in my service prosper in a worldly way--damnation, upon my
honourable Satanic word!"
"Who the devil--?"
"_Whisht!_" P. Sybarite reproved. "A trifle more respect, if you
please--lest you wake in the morning to find all my benefactions
turned to ashes in your strong-boxes!"
But here Respectability found his full voice.
"Who are you?" he demanded so stormily that heads turned curiously his
way. "I demand to know! Remove that mask! Impertinent--!"
"Mask?" purred Beelzebub in a tone of wonder. "I wear no mask!"
"No mask!" stammered the older man, in confusion.
"Nay, _I_ am frankly what I am--old Evil's self," P. Sybarite
explained blandly; "but you, Brian Shaynon--now you go always masked:
waking or sleeping, hypocrisy's your lifelong mask. You see the
distinction, old servant?"
In another moment he might have suffered a sound drubbing with the
ebony cane but for Peter Kenny's parlour-magic trick. 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.
As for the younger man--he of the unhandsome mouth--P. Sybarite was
content to hold him in reserve, to be dealt with later, at his
leisure. For the present, his business pressed with the waning night.
In high feather, bubbling with mischief, he sidled along the wall a
little way, then halted to familiarise himself with scene and
atmosphere against his next move.
But after the first minute or two, spent in silent review of the
brilliant scene, his thin lips lost something of their cynic
modelling, the eyes behind the scarlet visor something of their
mischievous twinkle--softening with shadows envious and regretful.
The room was as one vast pool of limpid golden light, walls and
ceilings so luminous with the refulgence of a thousand electric bulbs
that they seemed translucent, glowing with a radiance from beyond.
On the famous floor, twelve-score couples swung and swayed to the
intoxicating rhythms of an unseen orchestra; kaleidoscopic in their
amazingly variegated costuming of colour, drifting past the lonely,
diabolical little figure, an endless chain of paired anachronisms.
Searching narrowly each fair face that flashed past in another's arms,
he waited with seeming patience. But the music buzzed in his brain and
his toes tingled for it; breathing the warm, voluptuous air, he
inhaled hints of a thousand agreeable and exciting scenes; watching,
he perceived in perturbation the witchery of a hundred exquisite
women. And a rancorous discontent gnawed at his famished heart.
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