A little way down this street, before a black-windowed house, Clifford noted two empty, shadowy automobiles; he saw that they were alike at least in this, that both were low and long, built evidently for speed and the ability to maintain it.
Having reached this darkened and seemingly empty house, Loveman turned and ran quickly up the high, old-fashioned stoop. The next instant he had let himself in with a latch-key.
“I suppose you know what that place is?” whispered Uncle George, gripping Clifford’s forearm sharply.
“Yes,” breathed Clifford—“the house of Joe Le Bain!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE HOUSE OF MONSIEUR LE BAIN
Monsieur Le Bain, from catering to the reckless rich and to spendthrifts who had large sums that abode with them for a flitting month or so, and to monied persons about whose characters and designs he preferred to remain safely ignorant—Monsieur Le Bain had discovered that such as these, on occasion, desired a greater privacy than his Grand Alcazar or his Le Minuit or any other restaurant afforded them—a sumptuous exclusiveness in which, without danger of being seen by uninvited eyes or their merry-making marred or restrained by the propinquity of strangers, a party might dine or sup en famille. Quick to see and seize opportunities, Le Bain had devised the material equipment to please such patronage. In addition to the Grand Alcazar and Le Minuit, which he advertised and to which he welcomed all, he had set up another establishment which he did not advertise, and of which few even knew, and to which even fewer ever gained admission.
This was an old brownstone house in the upper Forties between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, outwardly most discreet and decorous—and, moreover, inwardly so most of the time. The house was furnished as a private residence, and richly furnished, too, albeit somewhat garishly since Le Bain’s latter-day æsthetics had been founded upon the gilt and rococo of Broadway restaurants. There was a large drawing-room whose windows were so deftly curtained that no inner light ever filtered into the street; behind that a large dining-room, in which one might be as merry as one liked without passers-by being halted by laugh or song—or by any possible sound of a less happy character that might originate therein. And in the basement there was a perfect kitchen, which, on those occasions when the house was briefly inhabited, Le Bain peopled with his most efficient and reticent retainers—it being understood that after the dinner or supper had been served, and if the host so directed, these cooks and waiters and ladies’ maids should vanish. And that the party might not suffer from such withdrawal, there was installed in the butler’s pantry an ingenious refrigerator in which foods were kept cold and wines properly iced—and from which host and guests might serve themselves.
Such was Le Bain’s other establishment. For the time paid for it was actually the lessee’s “home”—as much immune from police interference as any other man’s castle. This Le Bain would sublet possibly two or three times a week, possibly once a month, to some one he knew or some one with trustworthy introduction—always at a price commensurate with the extraordinary privacy he supplied. And he never asked questions; particularly did Le Bain prefer to know only the name of the renting host—never of the guests. Then, if anything ever happened there which got to the police,—and it might,—Le Bain would be able to say to interrogating officers that he maintained this place for patrons who wished to give “home dinner parties”—surely a legitimate business enterprise!—and he knew nothing at all about who was there and what they did.
When Peter Loveman, at two o’clock in the morning, quickly closed the outside door, slipped along the hallway, and then drew aside the hangings and peered reconnoiteringly into the great dining-room (finished as to walls and ceiling in paneled Flemish oak, lighted by a sunlike chandelier with multitudinous pendants), he saw just what he had expected to see, just what he had so skillfully planned and so adroitly manipulated. About a small, intimate table, food-strewn and wine-stained,—a table almost lost in this great room which could have seated a party of fifty,—sat Nina Cordova, Nan Burdette, Hilton, Jack Morton, and a slight, evilly handsome third man. His people had done their work well, exactly as per instructions, Loveman noted: the servants had obviously been sent away, and Jack was in the desired state of reckless and pliable hilarity. Loveman continued to look in for a moment, hesitating. He would have vastly preferred not to be here—there was too much danger for him. But his clever scheming, whose original outline the interference of Clifford and the uncalculated elements of human nature in Mary Regan had thrown repeatedly into disarray, was now nearing the culmination of what was its latest re-adjustment.
Loveman had held back his many-elemented new plan—two big plans they were, in fact—because each was dependent in a degree upon the other. He had not dared act too quickly in the matter of Mary, for such a course might, by some twist of circumstances or human nature, affect Jack, and therefore upset what he had contemplated concerning Jack. To succeed in either he had to succeed in both; and to succeed in both he had to synchronize them. Whether he had done this, the hour or so ahead was to prove.