THE SYBARITE


We found the Novella Beauty Parlour on the top floor of an office-
building just off Fifth Avenue on a side street not far from
Forty-second Street. A special elevator, elaborately fitted up,
wafted us up with express speed. As the door opened we saw a vista
of dull-green lattices, little gateways hung with roses, windows
of diamond-paned glass get in white wood, rooms with little white
enamelled manicure-tables and chairs, amber lights glowing with
soft incandescence in deep bowers of fireproof tissue flowers.
There was a delightful warmth about the place, and the seductive
scents and delicate odours betokened the haunt of the twentieth-
century Sybarite.

Both O'Connor and Leslie, strangely out of place in the enervating
luxury of the now deserted beauty-parlour, were still waiting for
Kennedy with a grim determination.

"A most peculiar thing," whispered O'Connor, dashing forward the
moment the elevator door opened. "We can't seem to find a single
cause for her death. The people up here say it was a suicide, but
I never accept the theory of suicide unless there are undoubted
proofs. So far there have been none in this case. There was no
reason for it."

Seated in one of the large easy-chairs of the reception-room, in a
corner with two of O'Connor's men standing watchfully near, was a
man who was the embodiment of all that was nervous. He was