The Moonlit Way: A Novel

Barres heard himself saying, in a voice not much like his own:

“You can’t do this to me and get away with it! It’s nonsense! This sort of thing doesn’t go in New York!”

Suddenly his mind grew coldly, terrible clear:

“No, you can’t get away with it!” he concluded aloud, in the calm, natural voice of conviction. “Your stunt is scaring women! You try to keep clear of men – you dirty, blackmailing German crook! I’ve got your number! You’re the ‘Watcher’! – you murderous rat! You’re afraid to shoot!”

It was plain that the spectacled man had not discounted anything of this sort – plain now, to Barres, that if, indeed, murder actually had been meant, it was not his own murder that had been planned with that big, blunt, silver-plated pistol, now wavering wildly before his eyes.

“I blow your face off!” whispered the stranger, beginning to back away again, and ghastly pale.

“Keep out of thiss! I am not looking for you. Get you back; step once again inside that door away! – ”

But Barres had already jumped for him, had almost caught him, was reaching for him – when the man hurled the pistol straight at his face. The terrific impact of the heavy weapon striking him between the 214 eyes dazed him; he stumbled sideways, colliding with the wall, and he reeled around there a second.

But that second’s leeway was enough for the bespectacled stranger. He turned and ran like a deer. And when Barres reached the staircase the whitewashed hall below was still echoing with the slam of the street grille.

Nevertheless, he hurried down, but found the desk-chair empty and Soane nowhere visible, and continued on to the outer door, more or less confused by the terrific blow on the head.

Of course the bespectacled man had disappeared amid the noonday foot-farers now crowding both sidewalks east and west, on their way to lunch.

Barres walked slowly back to the desk, still dazed, but now thoroughly enraged and painfully conscious of a heavy swelling where the blow had fallen on his forehead.

In the superintendent’s quarters he found Soane, evidently just awakened after a sodden night at Grogan’s, trying to dress.

Barres said:

“There is nobody at the desk. Either you or Miss Kurtz should be on duty. That is the rule. Now, I’m going to tell you something: If I ever again find that desk without anybody behind it, I shall go to the owners of this building and tell them what sort of superintendent you are! And maybe I’ll tell the police, also!”

“Arrah, then, Misther Barres – ”

“That’s all!” said Barres, turning on his heel. “Anything more from you and you’ll find yourself in trouble!”

And he went up stairs.

The lumpy pistol still lay there in the corridor; he picked it up and took it into the studio. The weapon 215 was fully loaded. It seemed to be of some foreign make – German or Austrian, he judged by the marking which had been almost erased, deliberately obliterated, it appeared to him.

He placed it in his desk, seated himself, explored his bruises gingerly with cautious finger-tips, concluded that the bridge of his nose was not broken, then threw himself back in his armchair for some grim and concentrated thinking.

XVII

A CONFERENCE

The elegantly modulated accents of Aristocrates, announcing the imminence of luncheon, aroused Barres from disconcerted but wrathful reflections.

As he sat up and tenderly caressed his battered head, Thessalie and Dulcie came slowly into the studio together, their arms interlaced.

Both exclaimed at the sight of the young man’s swollen face, but he checked their sympathetic enquiries drily:

“Bumped into something. It’s nothing. How are you, Dulcie? All right again?”

She nodded, evidently much concerned about his disfigured forehead; so to terminate sympathetic advice he went away to bathe his bruises in witch hazel, and presently returned smelling strongly of that time-honoured panacea, and with a saturated handkerchief adorning his brow.

At the same time, there came a considerable thumping and bumping from the corridor; the bell rang, and Westmore appeared with the trunks – five of them. These a pair of brawny expressmen rolled into the studio and carried thence to the storeroom which separated the bedroom and bath from the kitchen.

“Any trouble?” enquired Barres of Westmore, when the expressmen had gone.

“None at all. Nobody looked at me twice. What’s happened to your noddle?”

“Bumped it. Lunch is ready.”

Thessalie came over to him:

“I have included Dulcie among my confidants,” she said in a low voice.

“You mean you’ve told her – ”

“Everything. And I am glad I did.”

Barres was silent; Thessalie passed her arm around Dulcie’s waist; the two men walked behind together.

The table was a mass of flowers, over which netted sunlight played. Three cats assisted – the Prophet, always dignified, blinked pleasantly from a window ledge; the blond Houri, beside him, purred loudly. Only Strindberg was impossible, chasing her own tail under the patient feet of Aristocrates, or rolling over and over beneath the table in a mindless assault upon her own hind toes.

Seated there in the quiet peace and security of the pleasant room, amid familiar things, with Aristocrates moving noiselessly about, sunlight lacing wall and ceiling, and the air aromatic with the scent of brilliant flowers, Barres tried in vain to realise that murder could throw its shadow over such a place – that its terrible menace could have touched his threshold, even for an instant.

No, it was impossible. The fellow could not have intended murder. He was merely a blackmailer, suddenly detected and instantly frightened, pulling a gun in a panic, and even then failing in the courage to shoot.

It enraged Barres to even think about it, but he could not bring himself to attach any darker significance to the incident than just that – a blackmailer, ready to display a gun, but not to use it, had come to bully a woman; had found himself unexpectedly trapped, and had behaved according to his kind.

Barres had meant to catch him. But he admitted to himself that he had gone about it very unskilfully. This added disgust to his smouldering wrath, but he realised that he ought to tell the story.

And after the rather subdued luncheon was ended, and everybody had gone out to the studio, he did tell it, deliberately including Dulcie in his audience, because he felt that she also ought to know.

“And this is the present state of affairs,” he concluded, lighting a cigarette and flinging one knee across the other, “ – that my friend, Thessalie Dunois, who came here to escape the outrageous annoyance of a gang of blackmailers, is followed immediately and menaced with further insult on my very threshold.

“This thing must stop. It’s going to be stopped. And I suggest that we discuss the matter now and decide how it ought to be handled.”

After a silence, Westmore said:

“You had your nerve, Garry. I’m wondering what I might have done under the muzzle of that pistol.”

Dulcie’s grey eyes had never left Barres. He encountered her gaze now; smiled at its anxious intensity.

“I made a botch of it, Sweetness, didn’t I?” he said lightly. And, to Westmore: “The moment I suspected him he was aware of it. Then, when I tried to figure out how to get him into the studio, it was too late. I made a mess of it, that’s all. And it’s too bad, Thessa, that I haven’t more sense.”

She gently shook her head:

“You haven’t any sense, Garry. That man might easily have killed you, in spite of your coolness and courage – ”

“No. He was just a rat – ”

“In a corner! You couldn’t tell what he’d do – ”

“Yes, I could. He didn’t shoot. Moreover, he 219 legged it, which was exactly what I was certain he meant to do. Don’t worry about me, Thessa; if I didn’t have brains enough to catch him, at least I was clever enough to know it was safe to try.” He laughed. “There’s nothing of the hero about me; don’t think it!”

“I think that Dulcie and I know what to call your behaviour,” she said quietly, taking the silent girl’s hand in hers and resting it in her lap.

“Sure; it was bull-headed pluck,” growled Westmore. “The drop is the drop, Garry, and you’re no mind-reader.”

But Barres persisted in taking it humorously:

“I read that gentleman’s mind correctly, and his character, too.” Then, to Thessalie: “You say you don’t recognise him from my description?”

She shook her head thoughtfully.

“Garry,” said Westmore impatiently, “if we’re going to discuss various ways of putting an end to this business, what way do you suggest?”

Barres lighted another cigarette:

“I’ve been thinking. And I haven’t a notion how to go about it, unless we turn over the matter to the police. But Thessa doesn’t wish publicity,” he added, “so whatever is to be done we must do by ourselves.”

Thessalie leaned forward from her seat on the lounge by Dulcie:

“I don’t ask that of you,” she remonstrated earnestly. “I only wanted to stay here for a little while – ”

“You shall do that too,” said Westmore, “but this matter seems to involve something more than annoyance and danger to you. Those miserable rascals are Germans and they are carrying on their impudent intrigues, regardless of American laws and probably to the country’s detriment. How do we know what they 220 are about? What else may they be up to? It seems to me that somebody had better investigate their activities – this one-eyed man, Freund – this handy gunman in spectacles – and whoever it was who took a shot at you the other day – ”

“Certainly,” said Barres, “and you and I are going to investigate. But how?”

“What about Grogan’s?”

“It’s a German joint now,” nodded Barres. “One of us might drop in there and look it over. Thessa, how do you think we ought to go about this affair?”

Thessalie, who sat on the sofa with Dulcie’s hand clasped in both of hers – a new intimacy which still surprised and pleasantly perplexed Barres – said that she could not see that there was anything in particular for them to do, but that she herself intended to cease living alone for a while and refrain from going about town unaccompanied.

Then it suddenly occurred to Barres that if he and Dulcie went to Foreland Farms, Thessalie should be invited also; otherwise, she’d be alone again, except for the servants, and possibly Westmore. And he said so.

“This won’t do,” he insisted. “We four ought to remain in touch with one another for the present. If Dulcie and I go to Foreland Farms, you must come, too, Thessa; and you, Jim, ought to be there, too.”

Nobody demurred; Barres, elated at the prospect, gave Thessalie a brief sketch of his family and their home.

“There’s room for a regiment in the house,” he added, “and you will feel welcome and entirely at home. I’ll write my people to-night, if it’s settled. Is it, Thessa?”

“I’d adore it, Garry. I haven’t been in the country since I left France.”

“And you, Jim?”

“You bet. I always have a wonderful time at Foreland.”

“Now, this is splendid!” exclaimed Barres, delighted. “If you disappear, Thessa, those German rats may become discouraged and give up hounding you. Anyway, you’ll have a quiet six weeks and a complete rest; and by that time Jim and I ought to devise some method of handling these vermin.”

“Nobody,” said Thessalie, smiling, “has asked Dulcie’s opinion as to how this matter ought to be handled.”

Barres turned to meet Dulcie’s shy gaze.

“Tell us what to do, Sweetness!” he said gaily. “It was stupid of me not to ask for your views.”

For a few moments the girl remained silent, then, the lovely tint deepening in her cheeks, she suggested diffidently that the people who were annoying Thessalie had been hired to do it by others more easy to handle, if discovered.

There was a moment’s silence, then Barres struck his palm with doubled fist:

“That,” he said with emphasis, “is the right way to approach this business! Hired thugs can be handled in only two ways – beat ’em up or call in the police. And we can do neither.

“But the men higher up – the men who inspire and hire these rats – they can be dealt with in other ways. You’re right, Dulcie! You’ve started us on the only proper path!”

Considerably excited, now, as vague ideas crowded in upon him, he sat smiting his knees, his brows knit in concentrated thought, aware that they were on the right track, but that the track was but a blind trail so far.

Dulcie ventured to interrupt his frowning cogitation:

“People of position and influence who hire men to do unworthy things are cowards at heart. To discover them is to end the whole matter, I think.”

“You’re absolutely right, Sweetness! Wait! I begin to see – to see things – see something – interesting – ”

He looked up at Thessalie:

“D’Eblis, Ferez Bey, Von-der-Goltz Pasha, Excellenz, Berlin – all these were mixed up with this German-American banker, Adolf Gerhardt, were they not?”

“It was Gerhardt’s money, I am sure, that bought the Mot d’Ordre from d’Eblis for Ferez – that is, for Berlin,” she said.

“Do you mean,” asked Westmore, “the New York banker, Adolf Gerhardt, of Gerhardt, Klein & Schwartzmeyer, who has that big show place at Northbrook?”

Barres smiled at him significantly:

“What do you know about that, Jim! If we go to Foreland we’re certain to be asked to the Gerhardt’s! They’re part of the Northbrook set; they’re received everywhere. They entertain the personnel of the German and Austrian Embassies. Probably their place, Hohenlinden, is a hotbed of German intrigue and propaganda! Thessa, how about you? Would you care to risk recognition in Gerhardt’s drawing-room, and see what information you could pick up?”

Thessalie’s cheeks grew bright pink, and her dark eyes were full of dancing light:

“Garry, I’d adore it! I told you I had never been a spy. And that is absolutely true. But if you think I am sufficiently intelligent to do anything to help my country, I’ll try. And I don’t care how I do it,” she 223 added, with her sweet, reckless little laugh, and squeezed Dulcie’s hand tightly between her fingers.

“Do you suppose Gerhardt would remember you?” asked Westmore.

“I don’t think so. I don’t believe anybody would recollect me. If anybody there ever saw Nihla Quellen, it wouldn’t worry me, because Nihla Quellen is merely a memory if anything, and only Ferez and d’Eblis know I am alive and here – ”

“And their hired agents,” added Westmore.

“Yes. But such people would not be guests of Adolf Gerhardt at Northbrook.”

“Ferez Bey might be his guest.”

“What of it!” she laughed. “I was never afraid of Ferez – never! He is a jackal always. A threatening gesture and he flees! No, I do not fear Ferez Bey, but I think he is horribly afraid of me… I think, perhaps, he has orders to do me very serious harm – and dares not. No, Ferez Bey comes sniffing around after the fight is over. He does no fighting, not Ferez! He slinks outside the smoke. When it clears away and night comes he ventures forth to feed furtively on what is left. That is Ferez – my Ferez on whom I would not use a dog-whip – no! – merely a slight gesture – and he is gone like a swift shadow in the dark!”

Fascinated by the transformation in her, the other three sat gazing at Thessalie in silence. Her colour was high, her dark eyes sparkled, her lips glowed. And the superb young figure so celebrated in Europe, so straight and virile, seemed instinct with the reckless gaity and courage which rang out in her full-throated laughter as she ended with a gesture and a snap of her white fingers.

“For my country – for France, whose generous mind has been poisoned against me – I would do anything – anything!” 224 she said. “If you think, Garry, that I have wit enough to balk d’Eblis, check Ferez, confuse the plotters in Berlin – well, then! – I shall try. If you say it is right, then I shall become what I never have been – a spy!”

She sat for a moment smiling in her flushed excitement. Nobody spoke. Then her expression altered, subtlely, and her dark eyes grew pensive.

“Perhaps,” she said wistfully, “if I could serve my country in some little way, France might believe me loyal… I have sometimes wished I might have a chance to prove it. There is nothing I would not risk if only France would come to believe in me… But there seemed to be no chance for me. It is death for me to go there now, with that dossier in the secret archives and a Senator of France to swear my life away – ”

“If you like,” said Westmore, very red again, “I’ll go into the business, too, and help you nail some of these Hun plotters. I’ve nothing better to do; I’d be delighted to help you land a Hun or two.”

“I’m with you both, heart and soul!” said Barres. “The whole country is rotten with Boche intrigue. Who knows what we may uncover at Northbrook?”

Dulcie rose and came over to where Barres sat, and he reached up without turning around, and gave her hand a friendly little squeeze.

She bent over beside him:

“Could I help?” she asked in a low voice.

“You bet, Sweetness! Did you think you were being left out?” And he drew her closer and passed one arm absently around her as he began speaking again to Westmore:

“It seems to me that we ought to stumble on something at Northbrook worth following up, if we go about 225 it circumspectly, Jim – with all that Austrian and German Embassy gang coming and going during the summer, and this picturesque fellow, Murtagh Skeel, being lionised by – ”

Dulcie’s sudden start checked him and he looked up at her.

“Murtagh Skeel, the Irish poet and patriot,” he repeated, “who wants to lead a Clan-na-Gael raid into Canada or head a death-battalion to free Ireland. You’ve read about him in the papers, Dulcie?”

“Yes … I want to talk to you alone – ” She blushed and dropped a confused little curtsey to Thessalie: “Would you please pardon my rudeness – ”

“You darling!” said Thessalie, blowing her a swift, gay kiss. “Go and talk to your best friend in peace!”

Barres rose and walked away slowly beside Dulcie. They stood still when out of earshot. She said:

“I have a few of my mother’s letters… She knew a young man whose name was Murtagh Skeel… He was her dear friend. But only in secret. Because I think her father and mother disliked him… It would seem so from her letters and his… And she was – in love with him… And he with mother… Then – I don’t know… But she came to America with father. That is all I know. Do you believe he can be the same man?”

“Murtagh Skeel,” repeated Barres. “It’s an unusual name. Possibly he is the same man whom your mother knew. I should say he might have been about your mother’s age, Dulcie. He is a romantic figure now – one of those dreamy, graceful, impractical patriots – an enthusiast with one idea and that an impossible one! – the freedom of Ireland wrenched by force from the traditional tyrant, England.”

He thought a moment, then:

“Whatever the fault, and wherever lies the blame for Ireland’s unrest to-day, this is no time to start rebellion. Who strikes at England now strikes at all Freedom in the world. Who conspires against England to-day conspires with barbarism against civilisation.

“My outspoken sympathy of yesterday must remain unspoken to-day. And if it be insisted on, then it will surely change and become hostility. No, Dulcie; the line of cleavage is clean: it is Light against Darkness, Right against Might, Truth against Falsehood, and Christ against Baal!

“This man, Murtagh Skeel, is a dreamer, a monomaniac, and a dangerous fanatic, for all his winning and cultivated personality and the personal purity of his character… It is an odd coincidence if he was once your mother’s friend – and her suitor, too.”

Dulcie stood before him, her head a trifle lowered, listening to what he said. When he ended, she looked up at him, then across the studio where Westmore had taken her place on the sofa beside Thessalie. They both seemed to be absorbed in a conversation which interested them immensely.

Dulcie hesitated, then ventured to take possession of Barres’ arm:

“Could you and I sit down over here by ourselves?” she asked.

He smiled, always amused by her increasing confidence and affection, and always a little touched by it, so plainly she revealed herself, so quaintly – sometimes very quietly and shyly, sometimes with an ardent impulse too swift for self-conscious second thoughts which might have checked her.

So they seated themselves in the carved compartments of an ancient choir-stall and she rested one elbow 227 on the partition between them and set her rounded chin in her palm.

“You pretty thing,” he said lightly.

At that she blushed and smiled in the confused way she had when teased. And at such times she never looked at him – never even pretended to sustain his laughing gaze or brave out her own embarrassment.

“I won’t torment you, Sweetness,” he said. “Only you ought not to let me, you know. It’s a temptation to make you blush; you do it so prettily.”

“Please – ” she said, still smiling but vividly disconcerted again.

“There, dear! I won’t. I’m a brute and a bully. But honestly, you ought not to let me.”

“I don’t know how to stop you,” she admitted, laughing. “I could kill myself for being so silly. Why is it, do you suppose, that I blu – ”

She checked herself, scarlet now, and sat motionless with her head bent over her clenched palm, and her lip bitten till it quivered. Perhaps a flash of sudden insight had answered her own question before she had even finished asking it. And the answer had left her silent, rigid, as though not daring to move. But her bitten lip trembled, and her breath, which had stopped, came swiftly now, desperately controlled. But there seemed to be no control for her violent little heart, which was racing away and setting every pulse a faster pace.

Barres, more uneasy than amused, now, and having before this very unwillingly suspected Dulcie of an exaggerated sentiment concerning him, inspected her furtively and sideways.

“I won’t tease you any more,” he repeated. “I’m sorry. But you understand, Sweetness; it’s just a friendly tease – just because we’re such good friends.”

“Yes,” she nodded breathlessly. “Don’t notice me, please. I don’t seem to know how to behave myself when I’m with you – ”

“What nonsense, Dulcie! You’re a wonderful comrade. We have bully times when we’re together. Don’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, for the love of Mike! What’s a little teasing between friends? Buck up, Sweetness, and don’t ever let me upset you again.”

“No.” She turned and looked at him, laughed. But there was a wonderful beauty in her grey eyes and he noticed it.

“You little kiddie,” he said, “your eyes are all starry like a baby’s! You are not growing up as fast as you think you are!”

She laughed again deliciously:

“How wise you are,” she said.

“Aha! So you’re joshing me, now!”

“But aren’t you very, very wise?” she asked demurely.

“You bet I am. And I’m going to prove it.”

“How, please?”

“Listen, irreverent youngster! If you are going to Foreland Farms with me, you will require various species of clothes and accessories.”

At that she was frankly dismayed:

“But I can’t afford – ”

“Piffle! I advance you sufficient salary. Thessalie had better advise you in your shopping – ” He hesitated, then: “You and Thessa seem to have become excellent friends rather suddenly.”

“She was so sweet to me,” explained Dulcie. “I hadn’t cared for her very much – that evening of the party – but to-day she came into your room, where I 229 was lying on the bed, and she stood looking at me for a moment and then she said, ‘Oh, you darling!’ and dropped on her knees and drew me into her arms… Wasn’t that a curious thing to happen? I – I was too surprised to speak for a minute; then the loveliest shiver came over me and I – I cuddled up close to her – because I had never remembered being in mother’s arms – and it seemed wonderful – I had wanted it so – dreamed sometimes – and awoke and cried myself to sleep again… She was so sweet to me… We talked… She told me, finally, about the reason of her visit to you. Then she told me about herself… So I became her friend very quickly. And I am sure that I am going to love her dearly… And when I love” – she looked steadily away from him – “I would die to serve – my friend.”