The Hand of Peril/Part 5/Chapter 5
V
Just why Kestner hesitated was not quite clear to himself. To break through a pine door, he knew, was easy enough, but it was not so easy to face the predicament of appearing ridiculous in Maura Lambert's eyes. His intrusion now could never be a dignified one. Among other things he was sadly in need of his shoes—and few men can hope to be impressive without their footwear. He was also a little ashamed of his rusty brown apparel. But he was more ashamed of the thought that around him would necessarily hang the odium of the eavesdropper, of the spy and lurker behind closed doors. He dreaded to face the woman in the next room. He would seem doubly ignoble before her now, swept as she was by her expiatory passion of renunciation. She was in some way above him, exalted by an emotion which he could not share with her. She was facing the light, for the first time in her life, and in that hour of illumination he himself would cut but a sorry figure. For a moment or two the Secret Agent almost hated his calling.
But all thought on the matter was ended by an abrupt movement from the next room. Kestner had no means of determining just what had prompted Carlesi's action. There was nothing to show that any sign or word had been passed in to the Italian in the printing-room. But some message, Kestner felt, must have been given and received, to bring about so new a course of action. There was the sound of a light switch being snapped on, the grate of a key turning in a lock, and the door of the printing-room was suddenly thrown open.
This was followed by a silence of several seconds, and then from the startled girl came a cry, low in note, yet shot through with a timbre which caused a small thrill to speed through Kestner's crouching body.
"Carlesi!"
She repeated the word more quietly, as though it were balm to her breast, as though she were hugging to her soul some truth which could never be taken away from her.
Kestner could see nothing. He no longer had any definite idea as to their positions. But he knew they were talking in Italian now, volubly, excitedly, feverishly. She was assailing him with anxious questions and demands. His answers, at times, seemed equivocal and circuitous. He kept hedging and contradicting himself, but by sheer force of will she was finally wringing the truth from him, forcing from his reluctant lips a confirmation of what Morello had already told her.
It was only brokenly that Kestner could follow the hurrying interplay of their talk. But he gathered that Carlesi had opened his shirt-front and was showing the girl a bullet scar there, the scar which she herself had made.
Then Kestner became instinctively aware of the fact that Carlesi's manner had changed. What caused that change the eavesdropper had no way of telling. But it was transparent enough that Carlesi was protesting that he was an old man, that he was broken in health, that his bullet wound had left him with a weak lung. He began to whimper for money, protesting that the girl had plenty and that all he needed was enough to get out of the country, to where it was warm and his cough could be cured.
The listener behind the closed door could hear the girl promising him her help, protesting she would give him what she could. The tones of her voice struck Kestner as being strangely impetuous and exalted, as though the consciousness of some great deliverance had lifted her high above the things of everyday life. Yet something about the answering voice of Carlesi touched the listener with disquiet. It brought that listener's ear closer against the wooden partition, in a panic to catch every sound that might pass between the couple so completely hidden from his view.
Yet what took place he could not altogether decipher. He only knew there was the sound of a sudden gasp from the girl, followed by an oddly choked little cry, as though a hand had been pressed over her mouth at the very moment she was about to call out. Then came a sharp concussion of the partition-boards and the equally sharp sounds of two bodies struggling together.
Kestner no longer hesitated. He stepped quickly back from the locked door and, throwing himself forward, shouldered against it with all his weight. That impact burst it open as readily as though it had been made of cardboard.
He was in time to see Carlesi grappling and twisting and catching at the girl's body—and he blindly recalled that there had been too much of this primal and animal-like contention, of this underworld assault of body against body. One gross arm, he saw, was about the girl's head, and a blackened and ink-stained hand clamped over her mouth. And she was being forced back against the metal of the bed press, calmly, vindictively, while Carlesi plainly deliberated as to the best manner of making her a prisoner.
The sight of that uneven struggle, of a body so contaminated confronting one so incongruously fragile, angered Kestner beyond all reason. It sent a blind surge of rage through his veins, seeming to explode like a bomb in the very core of his brain. He had no recollection of catching up the type-bar which he afterwards found in his hand. He faintly remembered the dull sound of the impact as that bar descended on the forward-bent head with its mat of unkempt and crow-black hair. He saw the Italian go down like a clouted rabbit. He saw the girl lean back against the press-wheel, and then stagger a little to one side, as this wheel half-turned with her weight. The pallor of her face made the ink stains about her mouth almost ludicrous. She did not seem to recognise him. She was panting and weak, and it was several seconds before she could compel her gaze to seek out the huddled figure on the paper-littered floor.
"You've killed him!" she gasped in a little more than a whisper. Then she looked at Kestner long and steadily, without moving.
"It's you this time!" she moaned, as she stared helplessly about her.
Kestner laughed, hysterically, foolishly. It seemed life again, that plunge into action after such aeons of silence and waiting.
"Killed him?" he cried as he stooped forward and slapped about the inert hip of the stunned man. "I ought to have killed him," he added as he drew Carlesi's revolver from its hidden pocket.
"Is he dead?" she quavered. Her hand was groping blindly about until it rested on one of the carbine-cases.
"He's no more dead than he was when Lambert said you'd shot him. And we know how dead that was!"
Kestner had already dropped to his knees and was busily engaged in unlacing the unconscious Italian's shoes. But his glance wandered to the white-faced woman, and still again there swept over him the ineffaceable conviction of her bodily beauty, the sense of that inapposite fineness of fibre which unfitted her for such scenes as this, just as it had unfitted her for the ways of the underworld into which she had been thrust.
"But what does it all mean?" she asked as she stared at Kestner's stooping figure.
"It means that Lambert tipped this man off to act just as he's acted. And it means, now, we both know who Lambert is and what he is."
She had dropped into a wooden chair on the far aide of the hand-press and was mopping her stained mouth with a foolishly small handkerchief. She stared at him a little vacantly as he quickly pulled on the Italian's shoes and fell to lacing them up. The feverish haste of his movements seemed to puzzle her.
"What are you going to do?" she finally asked.
"I'm going to get ready for Lambert," was his answer.
"But he'll never come back."
"Then I'll go for him." Kestner was on his feet by this time, dodging across the room. He found relief in quick movement, for he was not so calm as he pretended to be.
"But where can you go?"
"It won't be far," said Kestner as he dodged out to the telephone and caught up the receiver. Carlesi, he saw, had moved one hairy arm a little. There was no time to be lost.
He dodged back to the printing-room door and stood there with his hand on the knob. The girl saw that he was waiting for her to step to the outer room.
It was not until he had closed and locked the printing-room door that she turned slowly about and faced him. He could see that she was steeling herself to a final composure which was not easy to achieve.
"What must I do?" she asked him.
Kestner, who had been disconsolately studying his ill-fitting shoes, looked even more disconsolately up into her face. He stared at the shadowy violet-blue eyes, at the misty rose of the unhappy mouth that seemed made for happiness, and his own misery increased. Then he took a deep breath.
"I am a federal officer," he began, wondering why it was so hard for him to say what was necessary to say.
"I know it," she said. She was no longer looking at him.
"And I have certain duties to perform."
A silence fell between them. He found it hard to go on.
"You mean you can't let me go?" she finally suggested.
"No," he replied, "I can't let you go."
"Once," she said, "you told me I could count on your help."
"How can enemies help each other?"
She looked up quickly.
"We can never be enemies—now."
"And still there is nothing I can do."
"There is only one thing."
"What?" he asked, staring at the pale oval of her face.
"You must let me go."
"But where?"
"Anywhere. Anywhere away from here!"
"But that would only mean going out into danger."
She smiled a little wanly.
"I shall have to learn to face that danger."
"But you can't fight a thing like this out alone. You'll need help."
"I shall have to learn to fight it out alone. And I'm not afraid any more."
A great desolation was eating at his heart, the desolation of a man who must face failure both before and behind him.
"But how could I ever find you?"
That query arrested her as she moved to adjust the veil about her hat-brim. He had tried in vain to keep his voice from shaking as he spoke.
"You said once that the world was small," she began, in little more than a whisper. Then she stopped, hesitating. He realised, at that moment, how they were proceeding by indirection only, how vast were the reservations which dare not be forgotten, how divergent were the lives confronting each other across a narrow desk-top in that water-front cellar. But the desolation in his heart seemed more than he could endure.
"We may meet again," she was saying. "Some time when I can meet you without—without shame."
She was at the bottom of the steep little flight of steps that led to the street and liberty. One hand was on the rusty iron railing. He could have reached out and taken it. But he made no effort to stop her.
"We shall meet again!" he cried out with sudden conviction, catching at that hope as the drowning catch at a life-belt.
"Good-bye," she said very quietly. For one moment she looked into his eyes, and then she turned away. Her face, he remembered, was quite colourless. It wore more an air of relinquishment than of triumph. There were no tears in the dark lashed eyes as they gazed down into his, for she was already on the first step leading to the street. But they seemed crowned with a shadowy wistfulness that impressed him as more poignant than tears. And he cherished the thought, foolishly, that in that last vision of her, he was compelled to look up to her, and not down at her.
••••••
Wilsnach, dropping from his overdriven taxi-cab ten minutes later, beheld a dejectedly shabby figure in a soiled felt hat and a rusty brown suit staring absently out over the East River, grey with the light of the late afternoon.
Twice Wilsnach was compelled to accost this figure before eliciting any response.
"Wilsnach, there's a counterfeiter named Carlesi locked in down there," Kestner finally explained. "You'd better place him under arrest, for after to-night I'm quitting the service!"
"You mean you've got Lambert?" gasped Wilsnach.
"No," was Kestner's quiet response. "I said after to-night. And I'm going to get him before morning!"