II

The breath of that November night was soft and warm, its dim sky

distilled a pensive rain with frequent lulls. Burnished by the daily

traffic of eighty thousand tires the wet pave of the Avenue resembled a

broad channel of black marble veined with pulsing gold. Over churning

tides of after-theatre travel the police towers watched like great gaunt

goblins, stabbing the misty mirk with angry eyes, ruby, emerald, and

amber.

The brougham drifted sedately with the northbound press; its pace all

too swift notwithstanding, its journey too quickly accomplished. Yet

neither of the lovers had spoken since leaving the Ritz. Only when the

grey palisades of the Hotel Walpole loomed ahead, spangled with the gilt

of a thousand windows, the woman stirred in her corner and sat forward,

peering with fond concern into the face of the man, giving him her

hands.

"Be patient with me, Michael," she said. "It isn't that I can't read

your heart--I know, my dear, I know! . . . All you said just now was

true enough; but all the truth has not yet been said. Neither are my

wits as ready as yours. You must give me time to think. You will, I

know."

"I am altogether yours," he answered. "Your happiness is all that

matters."

"Not all, not my happiness alone, but yours as well--ours!"

She swayed into his arms; for the first time Lanyard knew her lips . . .

He came to himself, after a fashion, standing bare of head beneath a

lamp-fringed canopy of bronze and glass, formally touching her fingers

and mouthing polite phrases as to a woman he barely knew . . . Absurd!

And on her part only enriched colour and a heightened radiance in her

eyes betrayed the revolutionary work of those too few moments.

"Tomorrow," he heard Eve saying . . . "No: not tomorrow; I'm dining with

the Druces. The day after. Call for me early, Michael: we'll have a long

drive and a little dinner somewhere in the country."

Her look said so much more, he had no certain knowledge of what he

stammered in response. But presumably the phrases served. She nodded

gayly, ran up the steps. He watched her whisk through the revolving door

and fade away from view in the hot illumination of the foyer before it

occurred to him to cover his head. And his stare was vacant when her

chauffeur delayed him with a respectful query; to which, after a moment,

Lanyard replied, many thanks, but he felt more in the humour for a

stroll than to be motored to his rooms; he wouldn't mind the drizzle.

The goblin eyes blinking from red to green, he profited by the

interruption of up-and-down-town travel to cross to the west side of the

Avenue before settling into stride for a walk of a mile to his modest

lodgings; in a mood of exaltation too rare to countenance return of

those misgivings to which he had that night for the first time given

voice, those doubts and fears by which his lonelier hours of late had

none the less been ridden, ever since he had learned that his love for

Eve de Montalais had grown to be a passion passing his strength to

withstand.

He had done his best but had essayed the impossible tonight, in

attempting to make her see that marriage between them were for her a

madness. He admitted that, now he knew of her own confession that she

loved him. Now with the music of her incomparable voice still chiming

that assurance in his memory, now with the fragrance of her lips

lingering on his own, Lanyard knew that whether he had fought well or

ill to save her from himself, the fight was lost; one course alone

remained to him: to do away with every hindrance to the firm

establishment of Eve's happiness, to reorganize his life so that every

objection to their union might be compromised, every echo of the past

silenced, every embarrassment of the present compensated.

A task to tax the wits and heart of a superman, contemplation of it in

that hour affected Lanyard with no dismay: armoured in and inspired by

her love he could not fail.

In this ecstatic temper only subconsciously aware of his surroundings,

the man was measuring off a round four miles an hour, southbound on the

sidewalk over across from the Cathedral, when that occurred which

brought his head down from the clouds: the semaphores signalled for

another suspension of traffic on the Avenue, and an instant later a

taxicab inexpertly driven at unlawful speed passed Lanyard crabwise,

skidding wildly on the greasy asphaltum as its chauffeur threw out

clutch and applied brakes to avoid crashing into a file of cars

debouching from West Fiftieth street.

An old-fashioned, gloomy contraption, of that high-chested hobbledehoy

type now fast becoming extinct, the cab performed two complete

revolutions like a skittish monstrosity chasing its tail, and toppled

perilously as if minded to try a somersault as well, before it brought

up, rocking and growling, broadside to the curb.

From its black pocket of a body noises of embittered expostulation were

issuing in a woman's voice and a foreign tongue; neither the voice of a

gentlewoman nor language such as one would employ with whatever

provocation. It was to Lanyard, indeed, like a souvenir of younger years

to hear that broadside of vituperation couched in the argot of the

thieves'-kitchens of Paris. And at a discreet distance he paused,

diverted, humanly hoping for the worst.

At the same time a badly rattled driver, comprehending no word of the

abuse cascading upon his head but sensitive enough to its tone, tumbled

off his box and made for the door, vainly seeking to make an authentic

brogue audible. But his hand was no sooner lifted to its latch than the

door flew open in his face and a lovely lady in resplendent attire and a

towering fury bounced out and--a figure of flaming colour in the

blue-blacks of the nocturnal scheme--addressed herself to the man with

gesticulation so vividly adequate to her temper that instinctively he

lifted both arms to guard his features and, stumbling over his own heels

in panic retreat, sat down with suddenness and shocking force.

No national spirit is so exquisitively responsive as that of the French

to comedy of physical misadventure. When the chauffeur coming into

contact with the sidewalk gave up his breath in one vast "_Ouf!_" his

fare forgot to be angry, bit a blistering epithet in two, and

incontinently passed into such spasms of mirth that she was fain to lean

her finery against the dripping side of the cab lest her limbs refuse to

sustain her. And while she shook and held her sides and uttered peal

upon peal of laughter--heedlessly permitting her wrap to fall open and

expose to the inclement air the most cynical of decolletages framing

flesh quite literally crusted with jewels--the chauffeur was scrambling

to his feet in a rage that threatened to rival her own late transports,

and a crowd was beginning to gather, too, as crowds will in New York,

upon any provocation, in any street, at any hour of any day or night. On

which accounts Lanyard reckoned in time to interfere.

Hurriedly consulting the taximeter, he stepped between the two, fished a

bill from his pocket, and thrust it into the palm of the chauffeur

before this last comprehended what was happening.

"None of that!" he enjoined, raising a peremptory voice to drown the

snarl with which the man was tuning up to repay abuse and derision with

the drippings of his own vocabulary. "You've got your fare, so clear

out before this officer whom I see approaching hands you a summons for

careless driving. D'you hear?--not another word!"

And as the chauffeur, cowed by this appearance of authority, shut a

gaping mouth and stumbled to his seat, Lanyard turned to the woman and

caught her arm in a firm grasp. "Come, Liane! compose yourself. I'll

find you another cab."

The woman responded with a moment of stupefied silence during

which her eyes incredulously rounded, then with a squeal of

rapture--"Lanyarrrrd!"--and an impulsive offer to enfold him to that

generous bosom, which only clever footwork foiled.

"Michael!" she cried in French--"my Michael! Of all men living the one

whom I most have longed to find!"

"Observe that the lost is now found," he advised in the same language,

smiling. "But be so amiable as not to keep me waiting here in the rain.

Pull yourself together, Liane--your wrap as well, if you don't want to

catch cold in your chest--in most of it, at least." In a more urgent

voice he added: "Can you not understand your danger? Cover yourself,

Liane--you are mad to expose such treasure on a public street at night!"

"What flattery!" the woman demurely responded. Nevertheless she did as

he bade, clipping her cloak at the throat with one hand while the other

slipped beneath his arm. "I am so overjoyed to find you again, my dear

friend, I do not believe any evil could affect me. But come . . ."

She tugged him out of the grinning ring that had begun to form, and away

from the kerb, where the grumbling chauffeur was settling into place

behind his wheel, and where Lanyard had been preparing to beckon in the

first vacant cab.

"But you want another taxi--"

"Not I, monsieur. It is but a step, where I am going. As for this rain,

it is nothing"--she held out a hand--"already it has ceased. And surely

I can count upon your gallantry . . ."

He consented with entire good-nature--"As ever, irresistible,

Liane!"--and found himself with the woman on his arm rounding the corner

and moving toward Sixth avenue. "New York, by what appears, has the

honour of entertaining you once again . . ."

"Again? But still, if you please."

"Proving the weakness of deductive reasoning," he observed. "When one

saw you in a hired cab, one inferred you were merely a bird of passage."

"But I have never been away, monsieur, never since that luckless voyage

landed us here last Spring. I find it amusing, this great town; as Paris

is no more, alas! thanks to the War and the poor health of the

franc. . . . As for that infamous taxicab, I ask you: what is one to do

when one's own car is, as these quaint Americans put it, laid out?"

"Laid up."

"Laid out or laid up--it is all the same."

"I believe you," Lanyard chuckled--"at my age, Liane."

He was aware, but seemed not to be, of sidelong scrutiny, keenly

inquisitive.

"Is it that you begin to find yourself bored with this America,

Michael?"

"Ah!" he parried--"I must not complain."

"The old life calls, eh?" (So she construed that equivoque as confirming

her surmise; which argued an anxiety to do so. But why?) "You miss

something, my friend, in this land where more things are verboten than

in Germany before the War?"

"I miss my youth," Lanyard admitted with a rueful laugh--"those misspent

years!"

"You would have them back?" she inquisitively demanded. "What for? To

misspend them all over again?" He smiled illegibly; she laughed in

impish glee. "I felt sure of it, when I thought of you today, Michael, I

said to myself: By this time he will be well weary of this country of

atrocious cookery, ice-water, and virtue with the indigestion."

"You, then, knew I was still here?"

"One was so informed."

"One has, it seems, friends of whose kind interest one was unaware."

"It was a little bird that told me."

"An idle little bird, if it finds no better gossip to twitter than the

tale of my dull days."

"It is truly as I said!" She squeezed his arm. "You _are_ bored. So,

then! a little patience and you will call it, as I do, a happy chance

that threw me in your way tonight."

"Impossible that one should esteem it otherwise."

Lanyard smiled down at the woman, openly taking advantage of the

illumination of a street lamp to study her.

In her day reputed the most beautiful demi-mondaine in Paris and the

most dangerous, the old allure of her charms, by this tricky light at

least, seemed unimpaired; while that she was still dangerous one had

memories of events by no means stale to prove. And now what diablerie

was she fostering behind that mask of fair, seductive flesh? what

mischief had she in mind that required his co-operation?

An innate flair for anything in the nature of an intrigue stirred in its

sleep, lifted its head, sniffed the wind with eager nostrils . . .

They came to Sixth avenue, where the hand under his arm gently led him

south again, in the shadow of the Elevated.

"A long 'step' to this rendezvous of yours, Liane."

"Patience: we are nearly there. Or is it that your soul has grown so

deeply ennuied even I--?"

"To the contrary, as you see, I am coming along quite peaceably. I have

but one regret."

"And that?"

"It desolates me to know we must part so soon."

"This way, impostor." Guiding him across the Avenue, the woman held on

toward Broadway. "What hour is it, do you know?"

"A quarter to one," Lanyard reported on the advice of his watch.

"Then I am fifteen minutes beforehand--"

"That is to say, practically unsexed."

"Furthermore, my friends are never on time. Why not keep me company

while I wait, and enjoy a little raking over of old scandals?"

"It would be a pleasure, Liane; but are you sure--?"

"We are arrived."

The woman was diverging toward a dwelling which wore an aspect of too

much decorum; a modest establishment with just two windows on the street

level diffusing a benign, domestic glow through heavy draperies behind

stout bars of iron, and a tight-lipped look about the solid door at the

back of its mildly lighted vestibule.

Coupling the atmosphere of its environment, which was both tawdry and

rowdy, with certain rumours that had come to his attention, the reticent

expression of the house with the rank of private cars that lined the

kerb before it, Lanyard hazarded with an accent of distaste: "The Clique

Club, eh?"

"You are acquainted?"

"With its reputation only. One hears that the percentage of mortality

resulting from indulgence in its bootliquor is unusually low."

"Do you suspect me of luring you here to poison you, Michael?"

"Not while you remain incontestibly the mistress of weapons so much more

deadly than moonshine. Moreover, it is written in my horoscope,

curiosity will be the death of me."

Liane giggled, planting a finger on a push-button which, Lanyard

remarked, she located without looking. By way of response a horizontal

slit opened in the upper half of the door, and through this a pair of

anonymous eyes appraised them, Lanyard without favour, but otherwise in

respect of the woman. Then with an impressive clanking and thumping of

chains and bolts the door swung wide, disclosing an entry, the habitat

of a good actor in the make-up of a movie gangster, functioning as

Cerberus to this institution of post-Prohibition New York. And passing

through a second and less formidable door, Lanyard and the woman entered

a reception-hall of voluptuous embellishment and devilishly subtle

illumination.

Here, in a chair before an ardent grate, a youthful odalisque was

lounging with crossed knees, a waspy young blood of the town was holding

a pose of elegance, with elbow on the mantel, and both were engaging in

conversation an overmannered person distinguished by ornate evening

dress and the beak and bald head of a bird of prey; a scene that might

readily have passed for one in a private home but for wild squalls of

jazz drifting down the broad staircase and the vibration of the floor

above with the rhythmical shuffle and stamp of many feet.

At sight of the newcomers the hairless Wonder with a perfect bow excused

himself to his gossips, and glided forward, smirking, shaping

deferential shoulders, giving his bleached talons a good air-wash.

"Mademoiselle Delorme!" he uttered in accents of intense gratification.

"Good evening, Theodore," Liane gave him in French, with friendly

nonchalance. "Monsieur Morphew is here so soon, no?"

"Not yet, mademoiselle. But before long, beyond doubt . . ."

"The usual room? We will go up and wait . . . But I believe you do not

know Monsieur Lanyard, Theodore."

"The Clique Club is so unfortunate," Theodore deplored, saluting Lanyard

profoundly, "as not to number monsieur among its members."

"And very stupid of it, if you ask me," Liane retorted. "See that he

gets a card, will you."

"You are much too gracious, Liane; I shall have so little use for a

guest-card--"

"What are you talking about, Michael? Guest-card! I should say not. I am

proposing you for membership. It costs nothing when one is properly

introduced. Eh, Theodore?"

"As mademoiselle says . . . If Monsieur Lanyard will be so kind as to

let me have his address . . ."

With a shrug, Lanyard gave in. After all, it didn't matter. . . . And

when he had duly been entered in the club register, Theodore escorted

the newly fledged member to the foot of the stairs, upon which Liane

Delorme was picturesquely waiting, and there turned both over to the

guidance of a highly polished sub-altern.

Wide doorways on the first landing disclosed a chain of rooms dedicated

to the rites of jazz, liquid, instrumental, terpsichorean. Calculated to

remind a crusading clergyman of Belshazzar's Feast, they reminded

Lanyard of almost any Broadway restaurant at midnight.

On the second landing, however, a break in the dance music below made

audible the heartless laughter of an ivory ball coquetting with a

roulette wheel behind one closed door, while a waiter emerging from

another room permitted a glimpse of a private supper party at the peak

of its lead, an interior tolerably Hogarthian.

Lanyard exchanged amused glances with Liane. "Busy little club,"

he commented, "but wants rechristening--Clique's far too

conservative--should be known as the Liberal."

At the rear end of the hall another door admitted to a prettily

furnished supper room, where a table was being laid and, in coolers on a

side-table, several bottles of champagne were enjoying their last rest.

Requesting the waiter in attendance to open one of these, Liane shrugged

out of her wrap--which Lanyard took, though he kept his overcoat on by

way of pointing an intention to stop for a few minutes only--and having

made herself at ease upon the club fender of an open fire, clinked her

glass to Lanyard's.

"To you, my too-long lost friend, and to me--to a friendship that has

known too many interruptions and must henceforth know fewer."