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Page 84
"Shut that door and send the car along! I'll take charge of this
gentleman!"
In this speech an accent of irony inhered to exasperate P. Sybarite.
Half a hundred people were looking on--listening! Angrily he wrenched
his arm free.
"What the devil--!" he cried into the face of the aggressor; and in
the act of speaking, recognised the man as him with whom Bayard
Shaynon had been conversing in the lobby: that putative
parvenu--hard-faced, cold-eyed, middle-aged, fine-trained, awkward in
evening dress....
The hand whose grasp he had broken shifted to his shoulder, closing
fingers like steel hooks upon it.
"If you need a row," the man advised him quietly, "try that again. If
you've got good sense--come along quiet'."
"Where? What for? What right have you--?" P. Sybarite demanded in one
raging breath.
"I'm the house detective here," the other answered, holding his eyes
with an inexorable glare. And the muscles of his heavy jaw tightened
even as he tightened his grasp upon the little man's shoulder. "And if
it's all the same to you, we're going to have a quiet little talk in
the office," he added with a jerk of his head.
A sidelong glance discovered the fact that Marian's car had
disappeared. Doubtless she had gone in ignorance of this outrage,
perhaps thinking him accosted by a chance acquaintance. At all events,
she was gone, and there was now nothing to be gained from an attempt
to bluster the detective down, but deeper shame and the scorn of all
beholders.
"What do you want?" the little man asked in a more pacific tone.
"We can talk better inside, unless"--the detective grinned
sardonically--"you want to get out hand-bills about this matter."
"Let me go, then," said P. Sybarite. "I'll follow you."
"You've got a better guess than that: you'll go ahead of me," retorted
the other. "And while you're doing it, remember that there's a cop at
the Fifth Avenue door, and I've got a handy little emergency ration in
my pocket--with my hand on the butt of it."
"Very well," said P. Sybarite, boiling with rage beneath thin ice of
submission.
His shoulder free, he moved forward with a high chin and a challenge
in his eye for any that dared question his burning face--marched up
the steps through ranks that receded as if to escape pollution, and so
re-entered the lobby.
"Straight ahead," admonished his captor, falling in at his side.
"First door to the right of the elevators."
Shoulder to shoulder, the target for two-score grinning or surprised
stares, they strode across the lobby and through the designated door.
It was immediately closed; and the key, turned in the lock, was
removed and pocketed by the detective.
In this room--a small interior apartment, plainly furnished as a
private office--two people were waiting: a stout, smooth little man
with a moustache of foreign extraction, who on better acquaintance
proved to be the manager of the establishment; the other Bayard
Shaynon, stationed with commendable caution on the far side of the
room, the bulk of a broad, flat-topped mahogany desk fencing him off
from the wrathful little captive.
"Well?" this last demanded of the detective the moment they were
private.
"Take it calm', son, take it calm'," counselled the man, his tone not
altogether lacking in good-nature. "There seems to be some question as
to your right to attend that party upstairs; we got to investigate
you, for the sake of the rep. of the house. Get me?"
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