Part 47 (1/2)
Over across froht softly shi+ning down the walls of a private hall, fro
Rounding a dining-table, P Sybarite stole softly on, and paused, listening, just within the threshold
Frohted rooht that it seeuarded, but none the less un fro, a short wait followed and then a faint ”_Aah!_” of satisfaction, with the thulass set down upon some hard surface
And at once, before P Sybarite could by any means reconcile these noises with the sunored within the quarter-hour, soft footfalls beca-rooretful now that he had yielded to Peter's prejudice against loaded pistols) retreating sideways along the wall until he had put the bulk of a massive buffet between him and the door; and, in the small space between that article of furniture and the corner of the room, waited with every nerve taut and muscle tense, in full anticipation of incontinent detection
In line with these apprehensions, the footsteps ca-room door; then died out for what seeible to his understanding as their manifest stealth
Why need Shaynon take such elaborate precautions against noises in his own lodgings?
Suddenly, and -rooht or left a man strode directly to the openThere for an instant he delayed with an eye to the crack between the curtains; then, reassured, thrust one aside and stepped into the eer with his head out of the , intently reconnoitering, long enough to enable P Sybarite todiscovery: the ainst the light, his slight and supple forh his face was disfigured by a scant black visor across his eyes and the bridge of his nose
He was Red November
[Illustration: He was Red November]
What P Sybarite would have done had he been armed is problematical
What he did was remain moveless, even as he was breathless and powerless, but for his naked hands, either for offence or defence For that November was ar-barrelled revolver of blue steel (favoured by gunmen of the underworld) which he held at poise all the while he carefully surveyed his line of retreat
At length, releasing the curtain, the gang leader hopped lightly out upon the grating, and disappeared
In another breath P Sybarite hih the curtains showed the grating untenanted; and boldly poking his head forth, he looked down to see the figure of the gunle already several flights below, singularly rese a spider in some extraordinary web
Incontinently, the little -roo every effort to avoid a noise
No need now for caution, if his preeful spirit of Mrs Inche had not stopped short of eone on to the end ounman in those roohted room was Bayard Shaynon still in death upon the floor, one tee froht hand--carefully disposed with evident intent to indicate a case of suicide rather than of murder
XXI
THE SORTIE
At pains not to stir across the threshold, with quick glances P
Sybarite reviewed scrupulously the scene of November's crime
Eventually his nod indicated a contemptuous conclusion: that it should not prove difficult to convict November on the evidence afforded by the condition of the apartht to convince anybody, even one prone to precipitate conclusions, that Bayard Shaynon had never died by his own hand
If Nove the instrument of his crime close to the hand of its victim, had meant to mislead, to create an inference of _felo de se_, he had ordered all his other actions with a carelessness arguing one of three things: cynical indifference to the actual outcome of his false clue; sublime faith in the stupidity of the police; or a stupidity of his own as crass as that said to be characteristic of the average cries
The roohly if hastily ransacked--in search, P Sybarite didn't for an instant doubt, of evidence as to the relations between Shaynon and Mrs Inche calculated to prove incrih the little man entertained even less doubt that lust for loot had likewise been a potent h of this in the turned-out pockets of the murdered man; in the abstraction from the bosom of his shi+rt of pearl studs which P Sybarite had noticed there within the hour; in the abraded knuckles of a finger from which a conspicuous solitaire diaskin bill-fold, empty, ripped, turned inside out, and thrown upon the floor not far from the corpse