"
Speechless, the younger Shaynon hesitated, lifting an uncertain hand
to his throat, as if to relieve a sense of strangulation.
"Or what if I were to suggest--delicately--that you're within an Inche
of the end of your rope?" the little man pursued, grimly playful.
"Give you an Inche and--what will you take, eh?"
With an inarticulate cry, Shaynon's fist shot out as if to strike his
persecutor down; but in mid-air P. Sybarite's slim, strong fingers
closed round and inflexibly stayed his enemy's wrist, with barely
perceptible effort swinging it down and slewing the man off poise, so
that perforce he staggered back against the stone of the window's deep
embrasure.
"Behave!" P. Sybarite counselled evenly. "Remember where you are--in a
lady's presence. Do you want to go sprawling from the sole of my foot
into the presence of more than one--or over this railing, to the
sidewalk, and become food for inch-worms?"
Releasing Shaynon, he stepped back warily, anticipating nothing less
than an instant and disgraceful brawl.
"As for my mask," he said--"if it still annoys you--"
He jerked it off and away.
Escaping the balustrade, it caught a wandering air and drifted
indolently down through the darkness of the street, like an errant
petal plucked from some strange and sinister bloom of scarlet
violence.
"And if my face tells you nothing," he added hotly, "perhaps my name
will help.
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