Part 31 (2/2)
”I hailed hilared Presently Red Noveether So I stuck around, hoping to get hold of Red and h when Shaynon left, Red came directly to ne on top of whiskey and was beginning to know that if I pu more, it'd be November's party instead of ot 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 hiure out There's so, or my first name's Peter, the same as yours--which I wish it was so Be quiet a bit and letwith vacant eyes; and the wounded boy stared upith 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'”
The boy lifted on his elbow in aoing?”
”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?”
”You have no invitation”
Rising, P Sybarite smiled loftily ”Don't worry about that If I can't bribe n waiters--and talk down any other opposition--I'm neither as flush as I think nor as Irish”
”But what under the sun do you want there?”
”To see what's doing--find out forMaybe I'll do no good--and maybe I'll be able to put a spoke in his wheel To do that--once--_right_--I'd be willing to die as poor as I've lived till this blessed night!”
He paused an instant on the threshold of his cousin's bedrooe
”I've little love for Brian Shaynon, myself, or none You knohat he did to h in all conscience was the last guest to arrive for the Hadley-Owen es, and private 'busses were being called for and departing with their share of the more seasoned and sober-sided revellers, to whom bed and appetite for breakfast had coh a cotillion by the light of the rising sun--to say discreetly little or nothing of those other conveyances which had borne away _their_ due proportion of far less sage and by no means sober-sided ones, who yet retained sufficient sense of the fitness of things to realise that bed followed by matutinal bromides would be better for them than further dalliance with the effervescent and evanescent spirits of festivity
More and more frequently the elevators, e up to the famous ball-roouid laughing parties of gaily-costuentlemen no less brilliantly attired--prince and pauper, empress and shepherdess, monk, oing
And at this hour a sentleman, in an old-style Inverness opera-coat that cloaked him to his ankles, with an opera hat set jauntily a wee bit askew on his head, ahis face from brows to lips, slipped silently like soh the Fifth Avenue portals of the Bizarre, and shaped a course by his wits across the lobby to the elevators, so discreetly and unobtrusively that none of the flunkeys in attendance noticed his arrival