Chapter XLII The Man in the Mirror
The foremost of the intruders was the dapper detective, Brennen, and, as he recognized him, Barry scowled.
“So it’s you, is it?” he said shortly.
The fellow grinned. “It sure is!” he chuckled. “Mighty nice of you to trot down here and save me the trouble of hunting you up.”
Lawrence stared at him blankly. “What the mischief do you mean?” he demanded. “You don’t mean to say you wanted me here?”
Brennen nodded blithely. “Of course. Aren’t you on yet? That’s what we’ve been after right along. That’s why we had to put the lady here to a little inconvenience. Hated to do it, of course, but were afraid you——”
His companion, the tall, dark, urbane person Barry had passed in the hall below, plucked Brennen by the arm and whispered a few words in his ear.
“What’s the odds?” the detective returned briskly. “The big fellow’s due any minute, and then it’ll all come out. You see,” he went on, turning again to Lawrence, “it looked to us like you’d get wise and might make a sneak any minute. We couldn’t allow that, of course, so we took the only way which was left us, and, by a polite little fiction, induced your wife——”
“That’ll do!” cried Barry, his eyes flashing. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying; but I know this much: if you can’t keep this lady out of the conversation, I’ll take great pleasure in silencing you. She is not my wife, and your behavior in dragging her into this affair has been simply despicable.”
The detective shrugged his shoulders incredulously. “Suit yourself,” he returned blandly. He hesitated a moment, and then went on, with twinkling eyes: “Hope your friend don’t get tired hunting a cop.”
Barry gasped, but recovered himself swiftly. “What do you know about my friends?” he demanded.
“Know!” Brennen repeated amusedly. “Say, that’s good! Do I look like a boob? You don’t suppose for a minute, do you, that I wasn’t wise to that little pewee who trailed me down here from Forty-fourth Street? Ha, ha! Why, I wanted him to follow me, and made things so easy that he couldn’t fall down. What’s more, I turned about and went after him the minute he started back. Followed him to the club, and got after the three of you when you came this way again. I couldn’t take any chances, you see, with his nibs due to-night and expecting to see you here.”
If Lawrence had never felt chagrin before, he felt it now. The realization that they all simply had been playing into this fellow’s hands was maddening, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he refrained from showing his feelings. To gain time, he slipped out of his overcoat, which had been decidedly too warm, and flung it over a chair. Then he turned back to the irritating detective.
“Since you’re so clever,” he remarked sarcastically, “I suppose you haven’t lost sight of the fact that there’s a station house within five minutes’ walk, and that when I came in here my friend was headed straight in that direction.”
Brennen laughed. “Bless you, no!” he exclaimed jovially. “That was one of the first things I took care of, and, short as the distance is, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he got sidetracked, somehow, on the way.”
He paused a moment, his keen eyes fixed intently on Barry’s face. “I s’pose you’ve sized me up from the muss I made of things the other night,” he went on; “and I can’t say I blame you much. That was one of the worst fall-downs I ever had; and the trouble was my hands were tied. Instead of putting the matter up to me and letting me work it my own way, they had to go and plan it all out, and then tell me to do thus and so, as if I was one of these cheap guys with solid-ivory domes. Why, hang it all! I didn’t even know what you were then. I took you for some cheap sport who’d got into trouble on the other side and slipped over here to get away from it. If I’d had the least idea what was what, you can bet your last cent you wouldn’t have made that get-away as easy as you did.”
As he listened to the fellow’s incomprehensible words, Lawrence felt as if his brain were whirling round and round. And then, like a flash, his self-control snapped.
“Who the mischief do you take me for?” he burst out frantically. “Tell me that! Tell me his name! Tell me what I’m supposed to have done. Out with it now, unless you’re afraid.”
An expression of admiration came into Brennen’s face. “Clever!” he murmured to himself. “Mighty clever! I never saw anything better done on the stage. What a pity——”
He broke off abruptly as the purring of a motor car became audible in the room, and turned swiftly to his companion.
“That must be him, Jack,” he said tersely. “He’s overdue now. Listen!”
An instant later, as the car stopped outside, with a grinding of brakes, he went on swiftly: “Better slip down and make sure about it. Hager’s there, but we don’t want anything to go wrong. I’ll take a peep out of the window.”
The tall fellow hastily left the room, while Brennen stepped quickly to one of the windows and drew up a corner of the shade. Lawrence, his brain whirling and every nerve tense, stood dazedly for a second, then began to walk nervously up and down the floor. In a few moments he would know. Unless he was very much mistaken, the whole baffling mystery would swiftly be revealed to him, and he could scarcely restrain his impatience.
The closing of a door downstairs made him turn hastily in that direction; then his glance trailed back to the long mirror placed in the middle of the wall opposite the windows. Even in his perturbed state of mind, he noticed how like the black walnut frame was, in shape and size, to a doorway, and wondered why, with all the other looking-glasses about the room, another had been inserted here.
Of course it was a mirror, for, dim as the light was at this distance from the shaded lamp, he could see his own figure outlined in the glass, and even make out every detail of his face and clothes.
Then suddenly a puzzled wrinkle came into his forehead. There was something odd about the reflection. The background was dark, and showed no sign of the lamp on the marble-topped table. Curious, Barry took a single step forward to discover what was the matter, then stopped still as if turned to stone.
The reflection in the glass had smiled.
For the fraction of a second Lawrence felt that he was going mad. Then, in a flash, he realized the truth. It was not a mirror at all, but a doorway, in which stood a man who looked at him out of his own eyes, smiled at him with his own smile; whose face and figure, down to the smallest detail, could not have been more like Barry’s if the two had been bronze statues cast from the same mold. Even their clothes were of strikingly similar style.