The Hand of Peril/Part 5/Chapter 4
IV
The tableau which must have succeeded that unexpected speech was lost to Kestner. He was conscious only of the sudden silence, prolonging itself until it became epochal. And that silence, to the listener, was doubly hard to bear, for he had no means of determining its cause and no way of relieving its tension.
Then, almost with relief, came the sound of a woman's voice, tense, reed-like, touched with both defiance and determination. And the moment he heard that voice, Kestner knew it was Maura Lambert speaking.
"Where is Carlesi?"
It was not merely a question. It was a declaration, an exaction, a challenge. It came as an ultimatum that was not to be ignored. It was apparently directed at Lambert, who required several moments' time before he could remarshal his forces against it. Kestner was further conscious of the fact that the man in the next room had not resumed his work at the press. He could hear the snap of the switch as the light was turned out, and he knew that Carlesi himself was becoming an interested spectator of that encounter. But Kestner had not time to dwell on these discoveries.
"What are you doing here?"
It was Lambert's voice that spoke. In that voice was an effort at the authoritative, the autocratic. It was not without the note of scorn; but as a counter-challenge it lacked confidence.
"You know what I am doing here," was the woman's calm retort. There was an answering and unequivocal derisiveness in her voice as she spoke. Kestner could even catch Lambert's movement of impatience.
"Let me talk to this girl for a few minutes," he said to the man called Burke.
"Sure," was Burke's airily indifferent reply. He evidently stopped and turned back as he crossed the room. "I've got to get that letter-head anyway. How long'll you be here?"
"It will not be long."
There was a barb to the words as Lambert shot them out.
"It may be longer than you imagine," said the quiet-voiced young woman. Burke must have stopped to study her. He laughed quietly, for no reason that Kestner could fathom.
"Then there's a door-key in the desk-drawer," the adventurer called back as he opened the street-door. "But don't you two high-spirited aristocrats get messin' up my office, or you'll be sorry you came."
Kestner could hear the sound of the door as it closed. Then came a period of silence, pregnant, disturbing, ominous.
"Now what do you want?" Lambert was heard to ask. There was quietness in his tone by this time, but there was also menace.
"I want Carlesi."
"Why?"
"My business is with Carlesi," was her uncompromising retort.
"And also with me"
"It will never again be with you." Her voice shook with a tremolo of restrained passion.
"Don't be too sure of that."
"I'm sure now of only one thing."
"Are you?" he mocked.
"That's of your life-time of lying and cheating and cowardice, of your utter baseness."
"And you're through with all that?" he taunted.
"I'm through with all that," she passionately maintained.
"Don't be too sure of yourself," he suddenly cried out to her. "You're in the mess as deep as I am. You're marked, and you know it. And you can't get away from this town any easier than I can."
There was almost a note of weariness in her reply. "I have got away from you."
"No, you haven't. And you're not going to. You've tried that before, and it never worked. It never will work."
It was words like these, Kestner suddenly remembered, that Morello himself had used to the girl.
"This time I think it will.… I came here to see Carlesi."
Lambert forced a laugh. It was not a mirthful one.
"Then you've started a little late. Carlesi's been dead for just seven years."
"Why should you lie to me—now?" she asked, and her quietness seemed more disturbing than any outburst could be.
Kestner, as he tried to picture them aligned there, combative face to face, felt that Lambert was not his old self, that his contention as to Carlesi was foolish, that some newborn timorousness of soul had robbed him of his old astuteness just as it had denuded him of his old dignity.
"I know Carlesi is in this building," was the girl's deliberate announcement.
"And what makes you think that?"
"I don't think it, I know it."
Then came still another interim of silence. Lambert was plainly not sure of his ground.
"And what do you intend to do? "
"I intend to see him."
"Then you're on the wrong trail."
"Can I never look for the truth from you?"
"Carlesi's on a freighter—on a freighter called the Laminian, anchored down the Bay—on a tramp carrying contraband of war, that's going to take him and you and me to South America."
"You know that neither you nor Carlesi can ever leave New York."
"Can't we? And who'll stop us?" That challenge was mouthed largely, but there was something deeper than concern in the strident voice.
"I don't need to tell you that."
Again Lambert emitted his scoffing laugh.
"Not your cigar-eating mouchard this time, my dear!"
There was a brief intermission of silence as Lambert obviously drew closer to the woman he was addressing. "Listen to me, my girl," and his voice was lower and more rasping as he went on. "You can't change your spots or jump your gang over-night. I'm not going to haggle about the past. But we're both cornered here, and we've both got a chance for a get-away. Wait—listen to me. We can get down to Colon or perhaps Port Limon, and strike up to San Jose. Then we can work Rio and Pemambuco and Buenos Ayres until things straighten out. Inside of two years, we can slip back to Europe, and by that time you can have enough to go where you like, and stay where you like."
"Enough what?"
There was something akin to pity in her voice as she put that question to him. It accentuated, to the listening Kestner, the essential difference in their natures, the one accepting without protest or revolt a condition of life which must always stand odious to the other.
"Enough hard cash," was Lambert's reply. "Enough to keep you going the way it kept you going in the past, that gave you the best in the land, no matter how I had to scheme and plot for it."
"I am not thinking of the past. I cannot think of it. What I'm thinking of is the future. And my problems are not the kind hard cash, as you call it, can solve."
"Ha, you'll sing another tune when the hard cash isn't where you want it."
"I shall thank God for the chance," was her devout rejoinder.
"And after that what'll you do?"
"I shall live my own life, in my own way."
"How'll you live? And where'll you live?"
"That must be my own concern.… And I came to see Carlesi."
"Well, find him!" challenged the other, swept away by his anger.
Kestner suddenly held his breath, for he could hear the woman as she quickly crossed the room and tried the very door behind which he crouched. Then she went to the door of the printing-room. It too was locked. But she was not to be deterred by trivial obstacles or side-issues.
"What is behind those doors?" she demanded.
"Nothing," was Lambert's retort.
"Then why are they locked?"
Her opponent did not answer for a moment or two.
"Why ask me? Ask the man who owns them."
"Will you open those doors?"
There was a finality in that demand, a finality which seemed to compel her adversary to a still newer course of equivocation.
"How am I to open them?" he craftily inquired.
"Then I shall find some one who can."
Lambert must have intercepted her on the way to the street door.
"Would you be fool enough to bring a cop in here?" he cried out, and he was panting a little, either from the exertion of holding her or from the shock at the thought of her madness.
"Don't dare to touch me," she said to him, and again the coerced and icy quietness of her voice was ominous.
"Then for the love o' God be reasonable," he cried, plainly conscious that the avenue of his escape was a narrowing one.
"Then take me to Carlesi."
"I tell you I can't do it," he protested, surrendering to some final compulsion of fear. There was, however, a subtler note in his voice as he spoke again. "But if you've got to have him, I'll get him for you."
"I intend to see him."
"Then stay here a minute."
Kestner waited, without breathing, wondering what it could mean. He waited for the sound of Lambert's approaching steps. But instead of approaching, they receded; they crossed the floor, and mounted the stairs, and passed out through the quickly opened door.
Then the white light of truth smote on the Secret Agent with a suddenness which caused him to gasp, as a banqueter gasps at a flashlight taken over his shoulder. The unexpected had happened, had come about in its unexpected way. Lambert had gone.
Kestner crouched there, waiting interminably, tortured by the thought that he was unable to act. He could merely listen with straining ears behind his locked door, debating within himself whether it would be better or not to push through that flimsy barrier and confront Carlesi and Maura Lambert while they stood within the same walls. For Lambert, he had instinctively felt, would never return to that room.