The Hand of Peril/Part 3/Chapter 6
VI
It was twelve minutes later that Kestner stepped from his taxi-cab in front of the Union Club, paid his driver, and effected a careful scrutiny of Fifty-first Street before passing in through the ponderous doors of the Club itself.
His visit within those doors, however, was a brief one. Having made reasonably sure that he was not shadowed, he crossed Fifth Avenue and made his way westward along Fifty-first Street, facing the steady downpour which still deluged the city.
Then he went quietly up a wide flight of brownstone house-steps, as quietly inserting in the door lock one of the keys which he had taken from Lambert's pocket.
He opened the door without appreciable sound, sidling quickly in and as quickly closing the heavy door behind him.
Then he stood motionless in the unlighted entrance hall, with every sense alert, silently appraising the situation which lay before him.
He knew that he was on delicate ground, with a delicate task ahead of him. And he did not care to make a mis-step.
He stood there with ears strained, peering through the unbroken gloom. At one moment he thought he heard a sound somewhere in the undecipherable depths of the house. But he could not be sure of this. Yet he waited again, remembering that time was a matter of importance to him. And as he stood there he was oppressed by the consciousness that his method was as odious as his mission. But he knew that now there could be neither hesitation nor compromise. He was in the fight, and it had to be fought out.
His first task, once he felt the way was clear, was to get rid of his dripping raincoat and watersoaked hat. These he took off. Then groping about for the club bag which he had carried in with him, he moved silently forward, feeling his way as he went. The rubbers which he wore on his feet, he knew, would make his advance a noiseless one.
He found a door to the left, standing partly open, and groped his way through it, disturbed by the fact that he was leaving a trail of water-drops after him as he moved. Even in this inner room he did not risk a light. But when his groping fingers came in contact with what proved to be a bevel-fronted cabinet on heavily carved legs, he pushed hat, coat, and club bag well in under this piece of furniture. Then he turned about and made his way deeper into the house.
So far, he felt, luck had been with him. And luck was no insignificant feature in work such as his, where a turn of the hand brought a contingency that had not been counted on or a peril that had been unapprehended. Yet he had laid his plans carefully, and s far nothing had gone amiss.
He drew up, suddenly, subconsciously warned of a condition that was not normal, vaguely disconcerted by something which for a moment he could not define.
Then the truth of the matter came home to him. He could feel a faint current of cooler air blowing against his face. And as he crept on, from somewhere in front of him, he could hear the steady patter of falling raindrops.
That meant, he felt, that a door or window was open at the back of the house. And it was a conclusion which did not add to his sense of comfort. But he could not afford to leave it unexplained.
He groped his way on, veering through an open door and threading his way about furniture, until he had traversed the full length of the house. And in front of him, as he had feared, he found an open window and the rain blowing against a gently-flapping curtain-end.
He studiously explored the sash of this window. A little tingle of apprehension went through him as he did so, for his inquisitively caressing fingers told him how a segment, large enough to admit a man's hand, had been cut out of an inner window pane comer. It had obviously been scratched with a diamond chip, tapped sharply until the crack followed the line of the scratch, and then lifted away with a suction-cap. A hand had been reached in and unlocked the window. And it was ten to one that the owner of that hand was still in the house where Kestner stood. It was the practised work of the practised house-breaker and porch-climber, and Kestner knew just what to expect from such gentry.
His first move was to lift his revolver from its none too convenient hip-pocket and drop it into the right-hand pocket of his coat. Then he stood listening again, straining his eyes through the darkness, disturbed by the thought that plans so carefully laid could be so gratuitously disrupted by a factor on which he had failed to count.
He moved towards the front of the house again, following the wall as he went, with his right hand close to his side, ready for action. He paused when he reached the hall, pondering what his next step should be.
Then he crouched back, with every muscle tense, for there came to his ear the sudden and distinct sound of a key being fitted into the door that opened from the street.
He had no time to turn and find a hiding place. The door had already opened and a figure was stepping in. Then the door was heard to close again, shutting out the sound of the beating rain.
As Kestner stood with his back to the wall and his revolver in his hand, he could detect a newer small odour, the odour of rainsoaked garments on a warm body. He knew that the man was standing there, not five paces from him, listening as intently as he himself was listening. He could hear the faint drip of the water from the wet coat. He could even catch the sound of the other's breathing. The next moment, too, he could hear the subdued movement of feet as that newcomer advanced deeper into the house. He could hear a sleeve-button as it tapped against the newel-post at the foot of the stairway, while a hand groped through the darkness for the banister.
Kestner could have reached out and touched the hesitating figure as it stood there. But he crouched back, ready for the worst, hoping against hope that the light would not be switched on. The next sound that came to him was a sigh, and then the faint stir and rustle of cloth. Kestner knew the man was taking off his wet overcoat and hanging it across the banister-rail. On it, he knew, that the man was next balancing his rainsoaked hat. Then the steps went slowly and stealthily up the stairway.
Kestner waited until they took the turn at the head of the stairs. Then he reached over and examined the wet hat, gauging its dimensions with his distended fingers, sniffing at it as a hound might. Then he felt quickly through the dripping raincoat, attempting to verify the disquieting suspicion that the newcomer was indeed Morello. But the overcoat held nothing to confirm this fear.
Kestner no longer hesitated. He felt his way about the newel-post, creeping up the stairs as quietly as the man who had preceded him. Looking up, at the first turn, he was able to make out a faint glimmer of light falling across the well of the stairway on the floor still one flight above him. So he crept on, his rubber-soled feet deadening the sound of his steps.
He drew up, suddenly, as his head reached the level of this second floor, for blocked out against the oblong of light in a partly opened door he could see the figure of the newcomer. And it took no second glance to tell him that it was indeed Morello—Morello who by that hour should have been well on his way to Washington.
Something suspended and guarded in the pose of that figure told Kestner that within the lighted room was a third person, and that the movements of this third person were being watched by Morello. And Kestner felt reasonably sure that this third person could be no one but Maura Lambert.
He had scarcely time to digest this discovery before he became aware of the fact that Morello himself had suddenly and noiselessly sidled in through the partly opened door. Kestner waited, breathless, for some cry of alarm at that sudden invasion, or for at least the quick give and take of angry voices. But no sound came to him.
He waited for a moment or two and then the suspense became more than he cared to endure. He crept up the rest of the stairway and circled about to the partly opened door. Then he stooped forward and peered into the room.
In front of a dressing-table surmounted by a three-panelled mirror he could plainly see Maura Lambert. She was seated there in the full light of the two electric-globes on either side of her mirror. She wore a loose-sleeved dressing-gown of rose-coloured silk, open at the throat. Her hair was down, and in her right hand she held a silver-backed brush. She was not, at the moment, making use of this brush. She was leaning forward a little, staring absently into the middle panel of her looking-glass.
Kestner could see both the clear-cut profile and the reflected image of her in the mirror. He could see the ivory whiteness of the rounded throat, the shimmer of the heavy cascade of loosened hair, the soft line of one relaxed arm, almost white against the rose-colour of her gown. And more than ever before a wayward impression of her sheer physical beauty swept over him.
It was the first time he had ever seen her in a moment of impassivity, quite off her guard, with that touch of wistfulness which comes to humanity when alone with its own thoughts. He could detect a look of vague trouble about the idly staring eyes, a sense of want about the slightly parted lips, a listlessness about the droop of the forward-bent body hooded by its cascade of dull chestnut.
But Kestner gave little thought to this. For he had made the further discovery that Morello himself stood in that room, within six feet of the door. And the man peering through this door realised why Morello's advent had as yet remained undiscovered by the girl in front of the mirror. A few steps inside the door stood a panel-screen of rose and gold, and behind this screen Morello still crouched.
There seemed something intent and animal-like in his pose, and at the same time something childlike and ludicrous. Kestner could not analyse this mixed impression. He had scarcely time to make note of it, for at that moment he heard a sudden gasp from the woman in front of the mirror, and he knew she must have discovered she was being watched.