Book: The False Faces

V >> Vance, Louis Joseph >> The False Faces




If this were the watchman Howson, doubtless he would be satisfied with
finding the room dark and apparently untenanted, and would go off upon his
rounds unsuspecting. If he did not, or if he noticed the displaced panel,
then would come Lanyard's time to break cover and run for it.

With a faint creak one of the windows swung inward. Curtain-rings clashed
dully on their poles. Someone came through the portières and paused,
pulling them together behind him. The beam of an electric flash-lamp lanced
the gloom and its spotlight danced erratically round the walls.

Now there was no more thought of flight in Lanyard's humour, but rather a
firm determination to stand his ground. This was no night watchman, but a
housebreaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those premises than
himself; and at that an unskilled hand at such work, the rawest of amateurs
practising methods as clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary
on a stage before a simple-minded audience.

The noise he made on entering alone proved that, then this fatuous business
with the flash-lamp. And as he moved inward from the windows it became
evident that he had not even had the wit to close the portières completely;
a violet glimmer of starlight shone in through a deep triangular gap
between them at the top.

For all that, the intruder seemed to know what he wanted and where to seek
it, betrayed a nice acquaintance with the room, proceeding directly to the
safe picked out by his lamp.

Arrived beneath it he uttered a low sound which might have been interpreted
as surprise due to finding the panel already out of place. If so, surprise
evidently roused in him no suspicion that all might not be well. On the
contrary, he quite calmly located and turned the switch controlling the
picture-light.

Immediately, as its rays gushed down and disclosed the man, Lanyard
rose boldly from his place in hiding. Now there was no more need for
concealment; now was his enemy delivered into his hands.

The man was "Karl."

His back to Lanyard, unconscious of that one's catlike approach, the spy
put up his flash-lamp, searched in a waistcoat pocket and produced a slip
of paper, and bent his face close to the combination dial, studying its
figures; but abruptly, like a startled animal, whirled round to face the
windows.

One of the sashes was thrown back roughly, and a figure clad in the gray
livery of a private watchman parted the portières and entered the library.

"Everything all right in here, Mr. Blensop?"

Lanyard saw the sheen of blue steel in the hands of "Karl," and leaped too
late: even as he fell upon the spy's shoulders, the pistol exploded.

The watchman reeled back with a choking cry, caught wildly at the
portières, and dragged them down with him as he fell.

His screams of agony made hideous the night. And the second cry was no more
than uttered when Lanyard, even in the heat of his struggle, heard sounds
indicating that already the household was alarmed.

But the door would hold for a while; it was not probable that the first to
come downstairs would think to bring with him the key. Time enough to
think of escape when Lanyard had settled his score with this one: no light
undertaking; not only was the score a long one, longer than Lanyard then
dreamed, but, as he had learned to his cost, the man was an antagonist of
skill and strength not to be despised.

Nevertheless, aided by the surprise of his onslaught, Lanyard succeeded
in disarming the spy, forcing him to drop the pistol at the outset, and
through attacking from behind had him at a further disadvantage. For all
that he found his hands full till, by a trick of jiu-jitsu, he wrenched one
of the fellow's arms behind him so roughly as almost to dislocate it at the
shoulder and, forcing the forearm up toward his shoulder blades, held him
temporarily helpless.

"Be still, you murderous canaille!" he growled--"or must I tear your arm
from its socket? Still, I say!"

"Karl" uttered a grunt of pain and ceased to struggle.

Pinning him against the bookcase, Lanyard hastily rifled his pockets, at
the first dip bringing forth a thin sheaf of American bank-notes with the
figures $1000 conspicuous on the uppermost.

"Ten thousand dollars," he said grimly--"precisely my fee for the use of my
name--to say nothing of its abuse!"

A torrent of untranslatable German blasphemy answered him. Intelligible was
the half-frantic demand: "Who the devil are you?"

"Take a look, assassin--see for yourself!" Lanyard twisted the spy around
to face him, holding him helpless against the wall with a knee in his
middle and a hand gripping his throat inexorably. "Do you know me now--the
man you thought you'd drowned a hundred fathoms deep?"

Blows thundered on the hallway door. Neither heeded. The spy was staring
into Lanyard's face, his eyes starting with horror and affright.

"Lanyard!" he gasped. "Good God! will you never die?"

"Never by your hand--" Lanyard began, but stopped sharply.

For a moment he glared incredulously, and in that moment knew his enemy.

"Ekstrom!" he cried; and the man at his mercy winced and quailed.

The din in the hallway grew louder. Voices cried out for the key. Somebody
threw himself against the door so heavily that it shook.

The emergency forced itself upon Lanyard's consciousness, would not be
denied. Its dilemma seemed calculated to unseat his reason. If he lingered,
he was lost. Either he must grant this creature new lease of life, or be
caught and pay the penalty of murder for an execution as surely just as any
in the history of mankind.

It was bitter, too bitter to have come to this his hour so long desired, so
long deferred, so arduously sought, and have the fruits of it snatched from
his craving grasp.

He could not bring himself to this renunciation; slowly his fingers
tightened on the other's throat.

Driven to desperation by the light of madness that began to flicker in
Lanyard's eyes, the Prussian abruptly put all he had of might and fury into
one final effort, threw Lanyard off, and in turn attacked him, fighting
like a lunatic for footroom, for space enough to turn and make for the
windows.

In spite of all he could do Lanyard saw the man work away from the wall and
manoeuvre his back toward the windows; then he flew at him with redoubled
fury, driving home blow after blow that beat down Ekstrom's guard and sent
him staggering helplessly, till an uppercut, swinging in under his uplifted
forearms, put an end to the combat. Ekstrom shot backward half a dozen
feet, stumbled over the prostrate body of the watchman, and crashed
headlong into the windows, going down in a shower of shattered glass.

In one and the same instant Lanyard darted back and dropped upon his knees
in the shadow of the club lounge, and the door to the hallway slammed open.
A knot of men, to the number of half a dozen, tumbling into the library,
saw that figure floundering amid the ruins of the window, and made for it,
passing on the other side of the lounge, between it and the fireplace.

Unseen, Lanyard rose, ran crouching across the room; found the side door,
opened it just far enough to permit the passage of his body, and drew it to
behind him.

Ninety-fifth Street was a lonely lane of midnight quiet. He sped across it
like the shadow of a cloud wind-hunted.




XVI

AU PRINTEMPS


In those days New York nights were long; this was still young when Lanyard
sauntered sedately from a side street and stopped on a corner of Broadway
in the Nineties; he had not long to wait ere a southbound taxicab hove in
sight and sheered over to the curb in answer to his signal.

It was still something short of one o'clock when he was set down at his
door.

Wearily he let himself in by the private entrance, made a light, and
without troubling even to discard his overcoat threw himself into a chair.
Leaden depression weighed down his heart, and the flavour of failure was
as aloes in his mouth. Thrice within an hour he had fallen short of his
promises, to Cecelia Brooke, to himself, to his _idée fixe_. His three
chances, to redeem his word to the girl, to measure up to his queer
criterion of honour, to rid his world of Ekstrom, all had slipped through
fingers seemingly too infirm to profit by them.

He felt of a sudden old; old, and tired, and lonely.

The uses of his world, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable! What was
his life? An emptiness. Himself? A shuttlecock, the helpless sport of
his own failings, a vain thing alternately strutting and stumbling, now
swaggering in the guise of an avenger self-appointed, now sneaking in the
shameful habiliments of a felon self-condemned.

What had prevented his dealing out to Ekstrom the punishment he had so well
earned? That insatiable lust for loot of his. But for that damning evidence
against him of the stolen necklace in his pocket he might have had his will
of Ekstrom, and justified himself when discovered by proving that he had
merely done justice to a thief who sold what he had stolen and stole back
to steal again what he had sold.

Self-contempt attacked self-conceit like an acid. He saw Michael Lanyard
a sorry figure, sitting stultified with self-pity ... crying over spilt
milk....

Impatiently he shook himself. What though he had to-night forfeited his
chances? He could, nay, would, make others. He must....

To what end? Would life be sweeter if one found a way to restore to Cecelia
Brooke her precious document and to smuggle back to Mrs. Arden her pilfered
diamonds? Would this deadly ache of loneliness be less poignant with
Ekstrom dead?

With lack-lustre eyes he looked round that cheerless room, reckoning its
perfunctory pretense of comfort the forlornest mockery. To lodgings such as
this he was condemned for life, to an interminable sequence of transient
quarters, sordid or splendid, rich or mean, alike in this common quality of
hollow loneliness....

His aimless gaze wandered toward the door opening on the public hallway,
and became fixed upon a triangular shape of white paper, the half of an
envelope tucked between door and sill.

Presently he rose and got the thing, not until he touched it quite
persuaded he was not the victim of an optical hallucination.

A square envelope of creamy paper, it was superscribed simply in a hand
strange to him, _Anthony Ember, Esq_., with the address of his apartment
house.

Tearing the envelope he found within a double sheet of plain notepaper
bearing a message of five words penned hastily:

"_Au Printemps_--
"_one o'clock_--
"_Please_!"

Nothing else, not another word or pen-scratch....

Opening the door Lanyard hailed the hall-attendant, a sleepy and not
over-intelligent negro.

"When did this come for me?"

"'Bout anour ago, Mistuh Embuh."

"Who brought it?"

"A messenger boy done fotch it, suh--look lak th' same boy."

"What same boy?"

"Same as come in when you do, 'bout 'leven o'clock--remembuh?"

Lanyard nodded, recalling that on his way up the street from Sixth Avenue
he had been subconsciously irritated by the shrill, untuneful whistling of
a loutish youth in Western Union uniform, who had followed him into the
house and become engaged in some minor altercation with the attendants
while Lanyard was unlocking the door to his apartment.

"What of him?"

"Why, he bulge in heah an' say we done send a call, an' we tell him we don'
know nuffin' 'bout no call, an' he sweah an' carry on, an' aftuh you done
gone in he ast whut is yo' name, an' somebody tell him an' he go away. An'
then 'bout haffanour aftuhwuds he come back with that theah lettuh--say to
stick it undeh yo' do, ef yo' ain't home. Leastways he look to me lak th'
same boy. Ah dunno fo' suah."

Repeated efforts failing to extract more enlightenment from this source,
Lanyard again shut himself in with the puzzle.

Somebody had set a messenger boy to dog him and find out his name and
address. Not Crane: Lanyard had seen that one disappear in the elevator of
the Knickerbocker and had thereafter moved too quickly to permit of Crane's
returning to the lobby, calling a messenger boy, and pointing out Lanyard.

For that matter, Lanyard was prepared to swear nobody had followed him from
the Knickerbocker to the Biltmore.

Vaguely he seemed to recall a first impression of the boy at the time when
he emerged from the drug store after his unprofitable effort to telephone
Cecelia Brooke, an indefinite memory of a shambling figure with nose
flattened against the druggist's window, apparently fascinated by the
display of a catch-penny corn cure.

Was there a link between that circumstance and the long delay which Lanyard
had suffered in the telephone booth? Had the Knickerbocker operator been
less stupid and negligent than she seemed? Was the truth of the matter that
Crane had surmised Lanyard would attempt communication with the Brooke girl
and had set a watch on the switchboard for the call?

Assuming that the Secret Service man had been clever enough for that,
it was not difficult to understand that Lanyard had purposely been kept
dangling at the other end of the wire till the call could be traced back to
its source and a messenger despatched from the nearest Western Union office
with instructions to follow the man who left the booth, and report his name
and local habitation.

Sharp work, if these inferences were reasonable. And, satisfied that
they were, Lanyard inclined to accord increased respect to the detective
abilities of the American.

But this note, this hurried, unsigned scrawl of five unintelligible words:
what the deuce did it mean?

On the evidence of the handwriting a woman had penned it. Cecelia Brooke?
Who else? Crane might well have been taken into her confidence, subsequent
to the sinking of the _Assyrian_, and on discovering that Lanyard had
survived have used this means of relieving the girl's distress of mind.

But its significance?... "Au Printemps" translated literally meant "in the
springtime," and "in the springtime at one o'clock" was mere gibberish,
incomprehensible. There is in Paris a department store calling itself "Au
Printemps"; but surely no one was suggesting to Lanyard in New York a
rendezvous in Paris!

Nevertheless that "Please!" intrigued with a note at once pleading and
imperative which decided Lanyard to answer it without delay, in person.

"_Au Printemps--one o'clock--please_!"

Upon the screen of memory there flashed a blurred vision of an electric
sign emblazoning the phrase, "Au Printemps," against the façade of a
building with windows all blind and dark save those of the street level,
which glowed pink with light filtered through silken hangings; a building
which Lanyard had already passed thrice that night without, in the
preoccupation of his purpose, paying it any heed; a building on Broadway
somewhere above Columbus Circle, if he were not mistaken.

Already it was one o'clock. Fortunately he was still in evening dress, and
needed only to change collar and tie to repair the disarray caused by his
encounter with Ekstrom.

In two minutes he was once more in the street.

Within five a cab deposited him in front of the Restaurant Au Printemps, an
institution of midnight New York whose title for distinction resided mainly
in the fact that it opened its upper floors for the diversion of "members"
about the time when others put up their shutters.

Lanyard's advent occurred at the height of its traffic. The dining rooms on
the street level were closed and unlighted: but men and women in pairs
and parties were streaming across the sidewalk from an endless chain of
motor-cars and being ground through the revolving doors like grist in the
hopper of an unhallowed mill, the men all in evening dress, the women in
garments whose insolence outrivalled the most Byzantine nights of L'Abbaye
Thêlème.

Drawn in with the current through the turnstile door, Lanyard found himself
in an absurdly little lobby thronged to suffocation, largely with people
of the half-world--here and there a few celebrities, here and there small
tight clusters of respectabilities making a brave show of feeling at
ease--all waiting their turn to be lifted to delectable regions aloft in an
elevator barely big enough to serve in a private residence.

For a moment Lanyard lingered unnoticed on the outskirts of this
assemblage, searching its pretty faces for the prettier face he had come to
find and wondering that she should have chosen for her purpose with him a
resort of this character. His memory of her was sweet with the clean smell
of the sea; there was incongruity to spare in this atmosphere heady with
the odours of wine, flesh, scent, and tobacco. Perplexing....

A harpy with a painted leer and predacious eyes pounced upon him, tore away
his hat and coat, gave him a numbered slip of pasteboard by presenting
which he would be permitted to ransom his property on extortionate terms.

And still he saw no Cecelia Brooke, though his aloof attitude coupled with
an intent but impersonal inspection of every feminine face within his
radius of vision earned him more than one smile at once furtively
provocative and unwelcome.

By degrees the crowd emptied itself into the toy elevator--such of it, that
is, as was passed by a committee on membership consisting of one chubby,
bearded gentleman with the look of a French diplomatist, the empressement
of a head waiter and the authority of the Angel with the Flaming Sword.
_Personae non gratae_ to the management--inexplicably so in most
instances--were civilly requested to produce membership cards and, upon
failure to comply, were inexorably rejected, and departed strangely
shamefaced. Others of acceptable aspect were permitted to mingle with
the upper circles of the elect without being required to prove their
"membership."

In the person of this suave but inflexible arbiter Lanyard identified a
former maître d'hôtel of the Carlton who had abruptly and discreetly fled
London soon after the outbreak of war.

He fancied that this one knew him and was sedulous both to keep him in the
corner of his eye and never to meet his regard directly.

And once he saw the man speak covertly with the elevator attendant,
guarding his lips with a hand, and suspected that he was the subject of
their communication.

The lobby was still comfortably filled, a constant trickle of arrivals
replacing in measure the losses by election and rejection, when Lanyard,
watching the revolving doors, saw Cecelia Brooke coming in.

She was alone, at least momentarily; and in his sight very creditably
turned out, remembering that all her luggage must have been lost with the
_Assyrian_. But what Englishwoman of her caste ever permitted herself to be
visible after nightfall except in an evening gown of some sort, even though
a shabby sort? Not that Miss Brooke to-night was shabbily attired: she was
much otherwise; from some mysterious source of wardrobe she had conjured
wraps, furs, and a dancing frock as fresh and becoming as it was, oddly
enough, not immodest. And with whatever cares preying upon her secret mind,
she entered with the light step and bright countenance of any girl of her
age embarked upon a lark.

All that was changed at sight of Lanyard.

He bowed formally at a moment when her glance, resting on him, seemed about
to wander on; instead it became fixed in recognition. Instantly her smile
was erased, her features stiffened, her eyes widened, her lips parted, the
colour ebbed from her cheeks. And she stopped quite still in front of the
door till lightly jostled by other arrivals.

Then moving uncertainly toward him, she said, "Monsieur Duchemin!" not
loudly, for she was not a woman to give excuse for a scene under any
circumstances, but in a tone of complete dumbfounderment.

Covering his own dashed contenance with a semblance of unruffled
amiability, he bowed again, now over the hand which the girl tentatively
offered, letting it rest lightly on his fingers, touching it as lightly
with his lips.

"It is such a pleasant surprise," he said at a venture, then added
guardedly: "But my name--I thought you knew it was now Anthony Ember."

Her eyes were blank. "I don't understand," she faltered. "I thought you ...
I never dreamed.... Is it really you?"

"Truly," he averred, lips smiling but mind rife with suspicion and
distrust.

This was not acting; he was convinced that her surprise was absolutely
unfeigned.

So she had not expected to find him "Au Printemps" at one o'clock in the
morning, till that very moment had believed him as dead as any of those
poor souls who had perished with the _Assyrian_!

Therefore that note had not come from her, therefore Lanyard had
complimented Crane without warrant, crediting him with another's
cleverness. Then whose...?

And while Lanyard's head buzzed with these thoughts, an independent chamber
of his mind was engaged in admiring the address with which the girl was
recovering from what must have been, what plainly had been, a staggering
shock. Already she had begun to grapple with the situation, to take herself
in hand and dissemble; already her face was regaining its accustomed cast
of self-confidence, composure, and intelligent animation. Throughout she
pursued without a break the thread of conventional small talk.

"It is a surprise," she said calmly. "Really, you are a most astonishing
person, Mr. Ember. One never knows where to look for you."

"That is my good fortune, since it provides me with unexpected pleasures
such as this. You are with friends?"

"With a friend," she corrected quietly--"with Mr. Crane. He stopped outside
to pay our taxi-driver. How odd it seems to find any place in the world as
much alive as this New York!"

"It seems almost impossible," Lanyard averred--"indeed, somehow wrong. I've
a feeling one has no right to encourage so much frivolity. And yet...."

"Yes," she responded quickly. "It is good to hear people laugh once more.
That is why Mr. Crane suggested coming here to-night, to cheer me up. He
said Au Printemps was unique, promised I'd find it most amusing."

"I'm sure...." Lanyard began as Crane entered, breezing through the
turnstile and comprehending the situation in a glance.

"Hello!" he cried. "Didn't I tell you everybody alive would be here?"

Nor was Cecelia Brooke less ready. "But fancy meeting Mr. Ember here! I had
no idea he was in New York--had you?"

"Perhaps a dim suspicion," Crane admitted with a twinkle, taking Lanyard's
hand. "Howdy, Ember? Glad to see you, gladder'n you'd think."

"How is that?" Lanyard asked, returning the cordiality of his grasp.

Crane's penetrating accents must have been audible in the remotest corner
of the ground-floor rooms: he made no effort to modulate them to a quieter
pitch.

"You can help me out of a fix if you feel like it. You see, I promised Miss
Brooke if she'd take me for her guide, she'd see life to-night; and now,
just when we're going good, I've got to renig. Man I know held me up
outside, says I'm wanted down town on special business and must go. I might
be able to toddle back later, but can't bank on it. Do you mind taking over
my job?"

"Chaperoning Miss Brooke's investigations into the seamy side of current
social history? That will be delightful."

"Attaboy! If I'm not back in half an hour you'll see her safely home, of
course?"

"Trust me."

"And you'll excuse me, Miss Brooke? I hope you don't think--"

"What I do think, Mr. Crane, is that you have been most kind to a lonely
stranger. Of course I'll excuse you, not willingly, but understanding you
must go."

"That makes me a heap easier in my mind. But I' got to run. So it's
good-night, unless maybe I see you later. So long, Ember!"

With a flirt of a raw-boned hand, Crane swung about, threw himself
spiritedly into the revolving door, was gone.

"Amazing creature," Lanyard commented, laughing.

"I think him delightful," the girl replied, surrendering her wraps to a
maid. "If all Americans are like that--"

"Shall we go up?"

She nodded--"Please!"--and turned with him.

The committee on membership himself bowed them into the elevator. Several
others crowded in after them. For thirty seconds, while the car moved
slowly upward, Lanyard was free to think without interruption.

But what to think now? That Crane, actuated by some motive occult to
Lanyard, had engineered this apparently adventitious _rencontre_ for the
purpose of throwing him and the Brooke girl together? Or, again, that Crane
was innocent of guile in this matter--that other persons unknown, causing
Lanyard to be traced to his lodgings, had framed that note to entice him to
this place to-night? In the latter event, who was conceivably responsible
but Velasco, Dressier, O'Reilly--any one of these, or all three working in
concert? The last-named had looked Lanyard squarely in the face without
sign of recognition, back there in the lobby of the Knickerbocker,
precisely as he should, if implicated in the conspiracies of the Boche;
though it might easily have been Velasco or Dressier who had recognized the
adventurer without his knowledge....

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