THERE was no appreciable change in Rodney Paget when he appeared at the Merrimac Club the day after the meeting of the Silent Seven. All traces of anxiety had left his features. His habitual composure was completely restored.
With Paget, languor was natural, not affected. The drooping fingers with their ivory cigarette holder hanging from them, indicated a man of some ability. For Paget was a deep schemer, whose greatest ability was his lack of unrestrained emotion.
He arrived at the club shortly after noon, and one of the first persons he encountered was Steuben. He drew his friend into a corner and pressed something into his hand. Steuben, upon looking at the article, was surprised to find a five-hundred-dollar bill.
As Paget turned away from Steuben, a solemn-faced man whom he did not recognize walked by. He wondered if this could be the individual who had been in the room the day before.
Paget strolled about the club for more than an hour. He appeared languorous and entirely disinterested in the surroundings. Actually, he was watching for some one; and he was sitting in the lobby when the expected individual arrived.
A short, dark-complexioned man came into the Merrimac Club. He walked with an air of importance, and he seemed to express self-satisfaction in every mannerism. He had a businesslike stride; he stared straight ahead.
His keen eyes, his thin, straight lips, and his carefully pointed moustache, added to his expression of superiority. He did not see Paget until the latter greeted him.
“Hello, Wilbur,” drawled Paget, taking his cigarette holder from his lips. The newcomer stopped.
“Ah, Rodney,” he said. He extended his hand and Paget rose to meet him.
“Lunch together?” questioned Paget.
The man glanced at his watch.
“All right, Rodney,” he agreed. “I have an appointment at two. Just a bite, and then I’ll hurry on.”
THE man with whom Rodney Paget was lunching was Wilbur Blake, one of the wealthiest young men in New York. Blake was several years Paget’s junior. He had inherited millions, and moved in the most exclusive circles, and frequently traveled from New York.
He lived at Newport in the summer, and visited Florida in the winter. This was one of the intervals during which he lived in his palatial Long Island home.
Paget had known Blake since boyhood, and he had often wished to capitalize upon his acquaintance with the multimillionaire, but he had considered it the part of wisdom to desist.
Blake had ended several friendships because people had tried to take advantage of his wealth. Hence Paget seemed to avoid Blake rather than to seek his company. This attitude had brought results.
Rodney Paget was the one member of the Merrimac Club whom Wilbur Blake would have been willing to accept as an intimate friend.
The waiter took the order. Blake twisted the ends of his moustache and stared across the room.
Paget opened a drawling conversation, which resulted in Blake inviting Paget out to his country house.
Paget accepted.
While Blake ate hurriedly, Paget was leisurely. He watched his friend closely, as though interested in every action that Blake made.
The millionaire did not observe this. He was in a hurry to complete his meal. He finished long before Paget was through, and left the table with a brusque reminder that to-morrow noon his chauffeur would call for Paget.
Paget watched Blake as he left the dining room. Then, as the waiter was bringing dessert, the clubman inserted a cigarette in the long holder and puffed thoughtfully.
A vague semblance of a smile appeared upon his lips.
Later in the afternoon, Paget returned to his apartment and packed two large suitcases. When he had completed the operation, he entered the alcove and looked at the window shade. There he stood in prolonged indecision.
Finally he shrugged his shoulders and left the apartment. He went to the club and dined alone.
At eight o’clock, he strolled to the street and summoned a taxicab.
With all his languorous manner, Paget was secretly observant as the cab left the front of the club. He saw another cab move after him. He rubbed his chin and nodded to himself.
His cab reached the Pennsylvania Station. There, Paget threaded his way through the busy throng, and suddenly emerged at another entrance, where he hurried away in another cab.
This time, when he looked behind him, a smile of satisfaction appeared upon his face. He was confident that no taxi was on his trail.
Paget’s destination was a street in the Nineties, east of Lexington Avenue. There, he left the cab and walked several blocks, turning two or three corners.
He arrived at an old house that had been converted into an apartment. He slipped into the dingy vestibule and rang a bell. A whistle came from the speaking tube on the wall.
“Okay,” replied Paget.
The door clicked and the clubman entered. He went up two flights of stairs and tapped at a door in the corner. The door opened, and Paget entered. He was in a poorly furnished room. A single light gleamed from a table in the corner.
The only occupant was the man who had admitted Paget. This individual was obscured in the semidarkness. The occupant closed the door. Paget took a chair beside the table.
“Well?” questioned his host.
“It’s set,” replied Paget.
An exclamation of satisfaction came in reply.
“When?” asked the man.
“I don’t know,” answered Paget. “Soon, though.”
“It had better be soon!” retorted the man sullenly. “I’ve waited a long time. I’m broke. Owe them fifty dollars rent, among other things.”
“I’ll fix that,” said Paget easily.
“You’ve said that before. I’ve waited long enough.”
“You have to wait.” Paget spoke sharply now.
“I know that. You’ve got me where you want me. I can’t squawk. I’ve played the waiting game fair enough. But it gets tiresome. I want action.”
“How’s this?”
PAGET’S hand appeared in the light holding a roll of bills. The other man responded with a gasp of eagerness. He came forward and reached for the money. Paget let him take it.
The man dropped into a chair beside the table and counted off twenty-five ten-dollar bills. His hands moved excitedly.
When he had completed his counting of the currency, he raised his head, and for the first time his features were completely visible in the table light.
A sallow face, with quick, active eyes; thin lips beneath a moustache with pointed waxed ends. The features bore an almost identical resemblance to those of Wilbur Blake.
“A little less eagerness,” said Paget quietly. “It doesn’t go with the part.”
The man nodded. Then he gave a short laugh.
“The laugh can be improved,” added Paget. “Don’t use it often. Now try this. I’m making a hint that makes you suspect I want a favor from you.”
The man’s eyebrows crept close together. His eyes became fixed and steady. The expression on his face betrayed suspicion.
“Good,” said Paget. “Now try this one. I’ve fooled you, laying you open to an idea without you knowing it. For instance, I want to visit you. I’ve just told you that I’m not doing anything right now, and you’re thinking about inviting me out to see you.”
The man’s eyelids raised.
“That’s it,” declared Paget. “You’ve got it perfectly. I watched to-day, to make sure—”
The man smiled.
“Be on hand here, in the evenings,” Paget said.
“Right.”
“Above all—” The words suddenly froze on Paget’s lips. He was staring beyond his companion, gazing intently at the window. The man noticed his eyes and began to turn. Paget gripped his wrist and muttered without moving his lips.
“Look this way,” were Paget’s words. “Don’t turn.”
Paget’s lackadaisical manner returned instantly. His eyes shifted toward the floor, but they were still in the direction of the window. Paget inserted a cigarette in his ivory holder.
His companion thought he was no longer intent. Yet Paget had lost none of his alertness. He was watching something on his dim floor — a huge shadow that lay motionless, projecting inward from the window.
Paget’s eyes never left the floor. His companion wondered, but made no comment. Two minutes went by. The only action in the room was that of Paget’s hand as it lifted the cigarette holder to and from his lips.
The black splotch that lay on the floor was motionless.
Paget arose. He walked toward the door. He turned and his eyes sought the floor. Still they saw no motion in that shadowy blot, yet Paget was sure that its position had changed.
The shadow had receded. The clubman gave no sign of his discovery. He walked to the door and placed his hand upon the knob. Then he swung about.
The black blot was moving now, drawing toward the window, shrinking into nothingness. Paget watched it, expecting it to stop. Instead, it disappeared with amazing suddenness.
With quick strides, Paget pounced across the room and reached the open window. His companion joined him. The man started to speak, wondering if Paget had gone suddenly insane. The clubman brushed him back.
“Keep away!” exclaimed Paget, as he leaned from the window.
BELOW him was a courtyard at the side of the building. A light from the street showed nothing but the rough brick wall of the old house. To the left was a corner, barely six feet away. There was no window directly below; the nearest was twenty feet to the right.
“The back of the house!” exclaimed Paget. “Do you have a window there?”
His companion shook his head.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I thought I saw some one at the window,” said Paget.
The man laughed.
“It would take a human fly to come up that wall,” he said. “You’re seeing things.”
“I saw a shadow on the floor,” returned Paget. “It moved away. It looked like the shadow of a man — a large shadow that shriveled.”
“Did you see any one outside?”
“No. He might have gone around the corner of the house.”
“Hanging on those bricks?”
Paget shrugged his shoulders. The man’s incredulity was logical. Still, Paget was sorry that there was no back window through which he might have made a quick inspection.
He decided to forget the matter, after adding one word of caution.
“Be careful, Dodge,” he said. “I didn’t want you to look toward the window. The less you are seen, the better.”
The man nodded. He replied in like manner.
“Watch the Dodge stuff,” he warned. “It’s a bad name to call me—”
“All right for the present,” said Paget. “I don’t use it much. It’s the first time I’ve said the name tonight. As soon as you get placed, I’ll forget the name Dodge, unless—”
“Unless?”
“Unless you try a double-cross!”
The man nodded.
Rodney Paget took one more glance from the window. Half satisfied, he waved good night to his companion and left the room without another word.
Outside the building, he looked cautiously up and down the street. Seeing no one, he walked away.
The shadows on the street seemed real to Rodney Paget as he threaded his way to Lexington Avenue.
He stopped a cab and rode to his apartment. At the door of the building, he looked across the street, staring suspiciously at the blackness of the opposite sidewalk.
Finally, convinced that his imagination was at work. Paget entered the apartment house. Lights appeared in his windows. Fifteen minutes later, they went out.
Rodney Paget had retired.
It was then that the shadowy mass across the street began to move. Something like a solid form emerged and flitted ghoulishly away.
As it neared the avenue at the end of the street, the moving shape again merged with the black fronts of the building. From that moment, the keenest eye could not have detected its presence.
A taxicab stopped in answer to a whistle. The driver could see no prospective passenger. Then he heard the door of the cab open.
The fare had stepped up without the taximan seeing him. A head appeared at the partition and a low voice gave the cab driver a destination.
As the cab rolled along the street in front of the apartment house where Rodney Paget lived, a low, mocking laugh came from the interior of the cab. It did not seem to be the laugh of a human being. It was a laugh that seemed to be the shadow of a laugh.