Moon of madness
is over. I have blundered through by sheer good luck. Without your
aid, and the aid of someone else, I should have crashed badly.”
“Perhaps not,” I returned. “If you had not succeeded in one way, you
might quite easily have found another.”
“Or I might not,” said he. “No. I am a poor policeman, and peace-time
soldiering is no sort of game.”
“What do you mean, O’Shea?”
“I mean,” he replied, holding up to the light a glass that I had
handed to him, “that I am infernally restless.”
I sighed as loudly as he had done and stooped over the syphon. Then:
“Decies,” said O’Shea, “we live in a generation that grows up very
early.”
“We do,” I agreed.
“I should like to talk to you seriously. There are many men I have
known longer, but none I could sooner trust. Yet in this matter
somehow I don’t feel…”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“Well, I don’t feel quite at liberty to discuss it with you.”
There was a silence that might have been awkward. O’Shea was watching
me almost pathetically; and:
“I know what you want to talk about,” I said. “Nanette is a witch. But
there is only one man in the world for her now. It might be fair,
though, to give her a year to think it over.”
“You don’t doubt _my_ attitude in the matter,” O’Shea murmured.
“No,” I replied, “I know it.”
He looked at me very fixedly, when:
“Coo-ooh!” I heard.
O’Shea’s expression changed; and, turning, I crossed to an open
window, looking down into the street.
Standing just in front of the ladder which disfigured the front of the
premises, was Nanette, staring upward. A two-seater with several
people in it stood at the curb.
“Hello, Nanette,” I called.
“Saw your light,” she shouted, “as we were passing. May we come up, or
are you going to bed?”
“No,” I replied, and hesitated to tell her what I knew she hoped.
“Come right up and bring your friends. I have only just got in.”
“Right-oh!” she cried.
CHAPTER XXIX.
ADOLPH ZARA
The party that presently invaded us proved to consist of Nanette and
a brunette girl friend whom I had not seen before. They were escorted
by a young medical officer on leave from Mesopotamia--a very charming
type of Scotsman--and Milton, one of Nanette’s Madeira conquests,
whom, you may recall, I had met again recently under rather odd
circumstances. I thought that this evening was probably his reward for
the weary job of scouting that he had performed on that occasion.
He was not a happy man. The fact was beginning to dawn upon him that
at the Savoy, the Hippodrome, and wherever else they had gone, he had
been wasting his fragrance on the desert air. I pictured him driving
to my apartment as one consciously heading for his doom.
The poor fellow was rather pathetically young, and, regarding every
acquaintance of Nanette’s as a serious rival, he had awakened to the
fact that he had three score or so of deadly enemies in London.
Presently:
“Whisky and soda?” said I; “or have you reached the Bass stage?”
“Neither, thanks,” he returned, and glared around my modest bachelor
apartment as one who finds himself in the chamber of Bluebeard.
Nanette had sped to O’Shea like an arrow to its target. As I turned
aside from the peevish Milton, “I hadn’t dared to hope I should see
you again to-night,” I heard her say.
The other man and the pretty brunette were jointly occupying my most
comfortable armchair, therefore, conquering a perfectly stupid pique
which Milton had inspired:
“Well,” said I, holding out my cigarette case, “we seem to have no
alternative but to--look on, Milton.”
He rejected the olive-branch, and, rudely ignoring my proffered case,
crossed to the settee where Nanette and O’Shea sat side by side.
“I say, Nanette,” he exclaimed, “what about going on to Chelsea?”
Nanette barely glanced up as she replied:
“No, I don’t want to dance any more to-night, Jim.”
“Why not dance here?” cried her friend, pointing in the direction of
the piano. “Do you play, Mr. Decies?”
“Not dance music,” I confessed gladly.
“But Jim does,” she went on. “Go on, Jim! Just one.”
“Jim” crossed to the piano, offering an excellent imitation of an ox
approaching Chicago. He crashed into a piece of syncopation that put
years on the instrument. I had never heard the item before and trust
that I shall never hear it again. I saw O’Shea smilingly shake his
head; then Nanette ran across to me, and off we went around the
furniture, I wondering which would burst first, a wire in my reeling
piano or a blood-vessel in the empurpled skull of the player.
Nanette danced because she was too happy to keep still, even with
O’Shea beside her. I danced because I had no choice in the matter. It
was an odd business, pointedly illustrating the part that Terpsichore
plays in this modern civilization of ours.
Nanette was dancing with me, but she wanted to dance with O’Shea. The
other pair didn’t want to dance at all. They just wanted to be alone
together. And Milton didn’t want to be the band. In fact, the whole
thing was a sort of neutral territory, or sanctuary, in which the
various protagonists found temporary refuge.
I don’t know what momentous decision Nanette’s girl friend was
shirking, but when Milton threatened to weaken:
“Go on, Jim! Please go on!” she cried, avoiding the ardent gaze of her
partner.
Milton, the most ferociously reluctant musician I have ever seen at
work, made a renewed assault upon the keyboard. He was watching
Nanette, who rarely took her eyes off O’Shea; and a vein rose
unpleasantly upon his forehead. He perpetrated some discords that set
my teeth on edge.
How long this might have continued I hesitate to guess. Milton’s gorge
was rising tropically. I doubt that his destruction of my piano would
have ceased while life remained in the instrument, but an interruption
came.
Nanette and I had navigated an awkward channel behind the armchair and
were beating up toward the settee and O’Shea. The man from Mesopotamia
had ingeniously steered his partner into a little book-lined recess at
the farther end of the room. I had my back to the open window and
Nanette was facing it. Suddenly she grew rigid.
Her face became transfigured with an expression of horror that I can
never forget. She pulled up dead--staring, staring past me, into the
darkness of the street beyond.
“What is it, Nanette?” I began, when the music ceased with a crash and
I saw Milton bound to his feet.
Unconsciously, I had gripped Nanette hard. But, in the next instant,
she wrenched herself free from my grasp, turned, and with a queer sort
of smothered cry threw herself upon O’Shea!
I twisted about.
Not two feet behind me an arm protruded into the room! The hand
grasped a strange-looking pistol--for at that time I had never seen a
Maxim Silencer. I heard a muffled thud. Something came whizzing
through the air in my direction. (I learned later, when clarity came,
that it was a valuable Ming vase that had stood upon the piano.)
“Hold him, Decies!” yelled Milton.
It was Milton who had hurled this costly projectile at the dimly seen
arm in the window. The vase went crashing out into the street. I heard
a second thud. Milton fell forward across the instrument--and then
slid down on to the carpet. The hand clutching the pistol had
vanished.
A sort of vague red mist was dancing before my eyes. Came a rush of
footsteps. Nanette was slipping from O’Shea’s arms. His face as he
looked down into hers was a mask of tragedy. I heard her utter a
little moan and I saw a streak of blood upon one white shoulder.
Then followed chaos.
A very weak voice, which vaguely I recognized as that of Milton, said:
“Don’t worry about me, Doc. Look after Nanette.”
I saw O’Shea stoop and lift Nanette. I saw her pale face. When,
cutting through the tumult like a ray from a beacon:
“The window, Decies! Watch which way he goes!”
Automatically, I obeyed O’Shea. I strained out, looking to right and
to left of the ladder. It was boarded over, but I realized that a
desperate man, given sufficient agility, could have climbed the rungs
from underneath, as evidently the assassin had done.
At first, the street seemed to be empty from end to end; then I saw
the figure of a man emerge from shadow into a patch of light cast by a
street lamp--one who walked swiftly in the direction of Berkeley
Square. I withdrew my head and stared, only half believing, about the
room.
Milton, looking deathly, lay propped up against the piano. He met my
glance, and:
“Seen him?” he demanded.
I turned, as the military surgeon who had been bending over Nanette
looked up at her friend, who stood beside him.
“Know anything about nursing?” he jerked.
The girl was very pale, but:
“Yes,” she answered bravely, meeting his eyes, “a little. Tell me what
to do, and I will do it.”
He nodded, smiling, whereat I was reassured, and then:
“Have you a manservant in the house, Mr. Decies?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Dig him out. I can manage. You fellows are in the way. Get after the
swine who did this.”
But O’Shea had already started for the door. His expression was one I
had rather not have seen. There is a savage hidden in every Celt, if
one digs deep through.
The other members of the group by this time were safely housed in
cells. I thought that if we were destined to overtake Adolf Zara, he
was likely to enjoy the distinction of spending the night in a morgue.
CHAPTER XXX.
MEMORIES CAN SAVE
As Milton’s car, driven by O’Shea, raced around the corner into the
square, all question of the fugitive’s identity was settled.
Just vaulting into a two-seater that had been parked over by the
railings was the man whose retreating figure I had seen as I leaned
from the window! I prayed that he might be unable to start. But my
prayer was not answered. Off he went, heading for Piccadilly.
One swift glance back he gave over his shoulder. And in the light of
the street lamp by which the car had stood, I saw the face of Zara!
I glanced at O’Shea beside me. His pale features were set like a mask.
I looked to right and to left; but not a soul was in sight. Berkeley
Square was apparently deserted. Often enough I had wondered how
certain notorious burglaries had been accomplished with all the
resources of civilization at beck and call of justice. This was the
answer.
We had no means of arranging for Zara’s interception--although a
constable was on duty at the corner of Bruton Street! We could only
hope to keep him in sight or else overtake him. The merest hitch, or
slightest traffic delay, would deliver him into our hands. But the
betting was equal. Such an accident might as well befall us as him;
and, the quarry once out of sight, our chances fell below zero.
O’Shea spoke never a word. His mind held but one single purpose. That
purpose, I firmly believe, was to wreak justice upon Zara with his own
hands.
Momentarily, I wondered about Milton. Of Nanette I dared not think.
But a cold fury was growing within me, and I fingered the pistol that
had been in my pocket since the raid upon the house in Porchester
Terrace.
Zara whirled round into St. James’s Street. The traffic in Piccadilly
was not great but there were a number of pedestrians about. I even saw
policemen in the distance. It all seemed utterly grotesque. Then, hot
upon the fugitive, we, too, were dropping down the slope. Far ahead I
could see the clock above St. James’s Palace. The hour was a quarter
past two.
Our speed was outrageous. We crossed Pall Mall at about thirty-five,
and came out into the Mall, heading for Buckingham Palace in
Brooklands fashion. We were gaining slightly. We crept from forty-five
to fifty. Broad thoroughfares, brightly lighted, offered no
obstruction; and we flew around the sharp bend by the Victoria
Memorial and headed east.