“She won’t listen to reason.”

“Well ... everything’s arranged.  You have me to thank for that.”

“Oh,” sneered the younger man, “you’ve done a lot, you have!”

And then, moving to give way to another making toward the elevators, Brian Shaynon discovered at his elbow that small attentive body in sinister scarlet and black.

For a breath, utterance failed the old man.  He glared pop-eyed indignation from a congested countenance, his fat lips quivering and his jowls as well; and then as Beelzebub tapped him familiarly if lightly upon the chest, his face turned wholly purple, from swollen temples to pendulous chin.

“Well met, ame damnee!” P. Sybarite saluted him gaily.  “Are you indeed off so early upon my business?”

“Damnation!” exclaimed Brian Shaynon, all but choking.

“It shall surely be your portion,” gravely assented the little man.  “To all who in my service prosper in a worldly way—­damnation, upon my honourable Satanic word!”

“Who the devil—?”

“Whisht!” P. Sybarite reproved.  “A trifle more respect, if you please—­lest you wake in the morning to find all my benefactions turned to ashes in your strong-boxes!”

But here Respectability found his full voice.

“Who are you?” he demanded so stormily that heads turned curiously his way.  “I demand to know!  Remove that mask!  Impertinent—!”

“Mask?” purred Beelzebub in a tone of wonder.  “I wear no mask!”

“No mask!” stammered the older man, in confusion.

“Nay, I am frankly what I am—­old Evil’s self,” P. Sybarite explained blandly; “but you, Brian Shaynon—­now you go always masked:  waking or sleeping, hypocrisy’s your lifelong mask.  You see the distinction, old servant?”

In another moment he might have suffered a sound drubbing with the ebony cane but for Peter Kenny’s parlour-magic trick.  For as Brian Shaynon started forward to seize Beelzebub by the collar, a stream of incandescent sparks shot point-blank into his face; and when he fell back in puffing dismay, Beelzebub laughed provokingly, ducked behind the backs of a brace of highly diverted bystanders, and quickly and deftly wormed his way through the press to the dancing-floor itself.

As for the younger man—­he of the unhandsome mouth—­P.  Sybarite was content to hold him in reserve, to be dealt with later, at his leisure.  For the present, his business pressed with the waning night.

In high feather, bubbling with mischief, he sidled along the wall a little way, then halted to familiarise himself with scene and atmosphere against his next move.

But after the first minute or two, spent in silent review of the brilliant scene, his thin lips lost something of their cynic modelling, the eyes behind the scarlet visor something of their mischievous twinkle—­softening with shadows envious and regretful.

The room was as one vast pool of limpid golden light, walls and ceilings so luminous with the refulgence of a thousand electric bulbs that they seemed translucent, glowing with a radiance from beyond.