AN UNINVITED GUEST AT THE BAL MASQUE, THE LONE WOLF BRAVES THE SCRUTINY OF THE DETECTIVES.
"Well: if anything gets in my way and I don't show up like I said . . ." Crane fished out a card from a worn wallet and placed it on the mantelpiece of the old-fashioned marble fireplace: "There's my name and number. Give me a ring any time you feel like it, and I'll blow you to a dinner with, maybe, something on the side whose kick isn't quite as deadly as a Georgia mule's."
For upwards of an hour after the detective had taken himself off, Lanyard lingered on in the easy chair, listlessly reviewing his memories of the previous night, memories comfortably clear-cut up to a certain stage . . .
After all, he were an ingrate to complain, surely he had no excuse for considering himself in disgrace with fortune, who had come thus far through this conjuncture retaining the confidence of Crane, but best of all his own!
He counted himself happy indeed—for all the malaise from which he still suffered and which only time and heroic measures in the way of exercise would do away with altogether—that Crane's investigation, while he lay senseless, had resolved every question that might otherwise have perturbed his secret mind. It was grateful to be spared the torment that, but for this exoneration, must have been his, the fear that he might himself, without his knowledge, have proved there was support in fact for the theory of criminal psychology which Pagan had advanced, the theory that it was well within the compass of possibility for a man in his plight, in sore financial straits and subconsciously tempted beyond his strength, to commit a theft while in a phase of auto-hypnosis coupled with amnesia, a condition comparable with somnambulism . . .
Otherwise his affairs, as Lanyard saw them, had come suddenly to a precarious pass.
In spite of the fact that he knew his intelligence would need some time to recover its accustomed competence, he entertained no slightest doubt but that he would be tomorrow, as he was today, convinced that the abstraction of the McFee jewels had been merely the first move in a campaign shrewdly planned to bring him to Morphew's terms.
His defiance of that one had not been tardy of result: the enemy had not only accepted his declaration of war, he had committed the first overt act.
Lanyard's temper hardened. If Morphew wanted war, he should have his fill . . .
But if war it must be, this was no time to waste in inaction: the enemy was already in the field and taking the offensive, while he lay resting.
Rising, Lanyard bestirred himself to set his house in order.
When he had shaved and dressed and dosed himself with stabilizing draughts of black coffee, he began to collect the clothes he had worn overnight, all of which would require the attentions of a valet before they would be again presentable. Rain had defaced the gloss of his topper beyond repair but by the hatter's iron. His trousers were damp and wrinkled bags of black stuff splashed to the knees with mud.
Over these stains Lanyard frowned. Impossible to understand how he had managed to come by the worst of them, even taking into account the condition in which he had traversed Fifth Avenue during the storm. The marks of that thin black ooze which accumulates on asphaltum explained themselves. But there were others inexplicable, and on his patent leather boots as well, smears and crusts of ochre mud which he could hardly have accumulated without wandering into broken ground, such as was not to be found on Fifth avenue at any point within the bounds of his besotted promenade.
But he distinctly recollected noticing an excavation behind the residence of Folly McFee. . . .
With a worried shake of his head that cost him several stabs of anguish, Lanyard folded and laid aside the trousers, and returned to the sitting-room to get his dress-coat.
As he took this up something in one of the coat-tail pockets struck against a leg of the table with a muffled but clashing thump.
By his own account, Crane had already rummaged the pockets of the garment, but conceivably the coat-tail pockets he had overlooked, who was better acquainted with dress clothes of American tailoring, from which such conveniences are commonly omitted. Lanyard's clothes, however, had been built in London; and to the British tailor coat-tail pockets are as an article of faith.
An exploring hand brought forth a little packet knotted in a handkerchief, one of his own.
Lanyard surmised its contents before he had succeeded in loosing the knots.
With a sense of sickness, he stood staring down at the stolen jewels of Folly McFee.
VII
In sequel the life of Michael Lanyard knew some of its busiest moments, his modest lodgings were the stage of a scene of rare animation whose solitary actor figured as the restless axis of a whirlwind of garments. Then the air, clearing, disclosed the man decently clad for the street and stowing away in a safe pocket his unchancy treasure-trove.
Thus far he had gone about doing what he had to do automatically in a measure, as one will in times of extremity, putting off against an hour more opportune, when he might bring a clearer head to bear upon the business, too, the deliberate study which his troubles needed. Enough now to know the longer he delayed where he was, the more immediate his peril of suffering a second domiciliary visit by the police; who on this new occasion, beyond much doubt, would be represented by agents less kindly biassed than Crane, more skeptical and thoroughgoing in the matter of searching for Folly McFee's emeralds. It remained for Lanyard to prove appreciation of this fleeting smile of fortune by turning to good account the slender chance it granted to work out his salvation in his own time and way.
One detail, however, he dared not slight, though it cost minutes each more precious than the last: Lanyard left behind him shoes and trousers from which every lingering suspicion of mud had been erased.
Some two hours later, after a tedious tale of twists and turns in the labyrinth of New York's several transportation systems, he left a train at the Mount Vernon terminal of the subway extension, and addressed himself to the tramp back to New York.
The sky was bright, the Indian Summer sunlight kind, the air inspiriting. By the time Lanyard had stretched his legs over a mile or two of by-roads—chosen for the long and lonely perspectives which enabled him to make sure he travelled with no other shadow than his own—he began to feel once more competent to ponder his fix and plot a way out.
No easy task: the problem posed by the fact that he had somehow, at some time in the course of the preceding night, unwittingly come into possession of stolen property, seemed open to solution only on one of two hypotheses, antagonistic, and neither at a glance more likely than the other. Failing his ability to turn up proof that another hand had rifled the McFee safe and secreted its loot in his coat while he slept, Lanyard would have to become reconciled to the belief that he himself had stolen the jewels while in a phase of submerged consciousness. Distasteful as was the bare suggestion, and human though the temptation was to adopt the more grateful theory and guide himself thereby, he still could not but doubt: the other was all too possibly the true explanation.
One thing at least he might take for granted, that the drink Pagan had brought him was drugged. But here again the lane of likelihood developed a confounding fork: Who could say whether the drug had been added to the drink by Pagan, or whether the whiskey itself had been one of those deadly synthetic concoctions with which that bastard offspring of Prohibition, the bootlegging industry, had flooded the land?
If it were the whiskey that Lanyard had to blame, Pagan, too, and Folly McFee and Liane Delorme must have suffered as severely, Liane even more, since she had made away with two drinks to Lanyard's one. . . . A simple matter to find out the truth, if one only knew the woman's address; but she had neglected to say where she was stopping, and other than those whom under the circumstances he would hardly care to consult, Lanyard could think of nobody who would be likely to know.
And even though investigation might prove that nobody else had been so punished, and thus satisfy Lanyard that his drink alone had maliciously been doctored, such knowledge would not necessarily lead him nearer to the facts of the robbery. Comfortable though it was to impute to Pagan the mischief with the whiskey, and assume that its object had been to throw Lanyard into coma and thus render it feasible to enter his rooms without his knowledge, smear yellow mud on his clothing and plant the plunder in his pocket, still it remained possible that the arch-intelligence which had decreed the administration of the drug, whether Morphew's or another's, had reckoned with even more diabolical cunning upon its breaking down those inhibitions which honour and faith and a good intent had imposed upon a nature perhaps—and for all Lanyard could assert to the contrary—irreclaimably a thief's.
Hashish was reputed to work like that, to act upon its victims precisely as an acid eats away lacquer, stripping off layer by layer the most stubborn crust of honour and habit ever indurated by conscience and civilized convention, baring at last the primitive beast that lurks in every man.
No matter: though the identity of the thief must be a riddle still, to learn the truth about the whiskey would resolve the primary doubts that were harassing Lanyard and leave him better advised concerning what further steps would be required to clear up the mystery altogether. To this end the one thing now distinctly indicated was the need for action prompt, direct, and drastic.
Lanyard had not forgotten that appointment for the following afternoon which he must be able to keep with a clear mind and a clean heart, unapprehensive of any sort of interference.
He began to foresee a programme for the intervening night tolerably long and arduous. He had to hit upon some way to disembarrass himself of the emeralds that would clear him of all suspicion of ever having had anything to do with them. He had further to acquit or convict Pagan of tampering with his drink—and in the event of the conviction which he anticipated with entire confidence, to invent and enforce some means of persuading Pagan and his lot that Michael Lanyard was a good man to let alone.
Now dusk was closing down upon the world in shade on shade of lilac, violet and blue, through which, moment by moment, the lights of the outlying city were blowing their blossoms of silver and gold. Directly ahead of Lanyard the electric sign of a roadhouse exploded its soundless salvo against the sky; and thus reminded that he needed food, who had so much to do ere dawn, he entered the place and dined with a frugality considerate of digestive powers sadly out of kilter. Then in the dark of the young night he resumed his walk, and between nine and half-past might have been (only that he took good care not to be) seen at pause on the Lexington avenue corner of the block in which Folly McFee dwelt, quietly reconnoitering the approach to her residence.
The house stood on the north side of the street, nearer Lexington avenue than Park, and with windows diffusing a dim glow through discreet draperies presented to the beholder the demure face that suited an establishment whose youthful chatelaine sported a sobriquet so apt and alluring.
Observers less interested than Lanyard was then have been known feelingly to comment upon the impish trick houses frequently practice of keeping their own counsel: the shrewdest reader of façades would have gathered nothing informing from the aspect worn that night by the dwelling of Folly McFee, no clue as to whether its pretty resident were at home, or, if at home, alone . . .
Lanyard hazarded a saunter past on the sidewalk opposite. Under more direct scrutiny the house remained as little communicative, the only profit he had of the maneuvre was the assurance that nobody was skulking in any of the areaways over across from it, on the watch for the likes of himself. But then there was no conceivable reason why anybody should be; not even his most impassioned ill-wisher, much less an unimaginative police force, could have been expected to divine that any attraction could possibly draw this putative criminal back to haunt the scene of his alleged crime.
Lanyard nevertheless, on gaining the Park avenue corner, merely crossed the street and continued his stroll through the next to the north, passing on the way the gaping foundation pit observed the night before from the windows of Folly's study, a survey of which from this new angle confirmed his belief that the thief need not have found it difficult to make his way into the backyard and swarm up to the roof of the extension. On the other hand, this aspect of the premises afforded Lanyard no least twinge of guilty reminiscence. Another circumstance that proved nothing; if his personal acquaintance with downright drunkenness was limited, he knew too well that it was quite possible for one to drink oneself into a state of alcoholic insanity and retain, on coming out of it, no memory of one's performances while in that condition.
Circumnavigation of the block having brought him again into the street upon which the McFee residence faced, but this time on its northern sidewalk, Lanyard's pace slackened; and idlest insouciance masked the surge of acute interest in him when, at twenty paces' distance, he saw the iron gate to its service entrance swing open and a maid emerge and make briskly off toward Park avenue—a tidy figure in black dress, white apron and cap, taking letters to post at the corner letter-box in time for the last collection.
Another freak of friendly fortune? or one of ill-favoured fate? The thing was too confoundedly well-timed, the invitation of that unguarded entrance too tempting. Indeed, when it occurred to Lanyard that his action might have been considered a thought precipitate, it was too late to turn back, he had already slipped into the service hallway and restored the door to the position, half on the latch, in which the woman had left it. To change his mind now and retreat would be to court her attention, who would already be on her way back from the corner.
The hallway was long, narrow, dimly lighted. At its far end a stairway led down to kitchen offices. Midway, a swing-door communicated with the main body of the house. Through this Lanyard had no choice but to dart, reckless of what might await him on its far side: to linger where he was meant immediate discovery . . . and the emeralds on his person!
The swing-door gave into a butler's pantry, at the moment empty, where another opened into the dining-room and a third to the main hallway. Stacks of dishes in the pantry sink, no less than a clash of cheerful voices in the room adjoining, with Folly's rippling laughter clearly recognizable, told of a dinner party still in progress. The other living-rooms, then, ought to be untenanted. The butler due to pop back from the dining-room at any instant, Lanyard passed on to the entrance-hall, and experienced a relief, on finding it deserted, that betrayed an old hand sorely out of practice: the day had been when he could have taken far more desperate chances without a tremor.
Even so, he wasted no gestures. To go the way he meant to go, he had the dining-room door to pass, the risk to run of being seen. He edged to a point whence Folly's back was visible, and the butler, a decent, plodding, British body, taking himself off with an emptied decanter. He disappeared; and the pantry-door was heard to buffet the air. Lanyard waited a minute, then coolly ran—or, rather, stumped—the risk of the open door, trusting, if noticed by any of the diners, to pass as the butler with some business in the front part of the house. To the best of his observation his audacity served: the dinner-party seemed to be finding itself much too amusing to have attention to spare for matters of domestic routine. But one swift glance askance noted that Folly was entertaining only Pagan, Liane Delorme, and Mallison.
So much for Lanyard's solemn sermon on the dangers of questionable associations!
But could one fairly have expected anything better, when Folly had been given, subsequently, every reason to believe she had entertained in that overnight moralist a felon unawares? This, presumably, was her way of consoling herself for having been so shamefully taken in: as gay a partie carrée as heart could wish, figuratively making merry on the very coffin-lid of Folly's most recent bereavement . . .
Fragments were all Lanyard could garner of the talk, who had no time at all to spare; but what little he did overhear was instructive. Folly, he learned, was firmly declining to be down-hearted: the police had given her every assurance that she would be wearing her emeralds again within a few days at most. Meantime, she knew no lack of objects of bedizenment: the thief in his haste had overlooked a secret cache of treasure in the safe he had used so cavalierly, she had still the McFee pearls and diamonds to don for protection against inclement elements; in witness whereto she was wearing them now. Challenged by Pagan to state what steps, if any, she had taken to safeguard these against the chance that the marauder might return to cancel his oversight, Folly laughed the notion to scorn, but under pressure admitted that she meant to have the combination of the safe changed as soon as she could remember to telephone its maker.
Communications all pitched in a key of the lightest banter. Folly, for example, was pleased to recount the antics of her maiden aunt when it dawned upon her that she had actually slept all through the visit of a burglar: the good woman had forthwith gone into hysterics and had come out of them only to pack herself off (at Folly's expense) to Atlantic City, professing the slender hope that a vacation from this theatre of crime would mend a shattered nervous system. In view of which Folly was disposed to hold the loss of her emeralds a not unmixed affliction. And when Pagan suggested that it might be good business for Folly to put a professional house-breaker on her weekly payroll, Liane applauded his wit with a deep-chested laugh.
No more need to wonder how this last had fared after her two drinks of the liquor a single dose of which had been enough to put Lanyard hors de combat. True: Liane might have been innocent of what was intended. But it wasn't easy to give her the benefit of the doubt.
As for Pagan, the pencilled question-mark against his name had been replaced by a cross in indelible ink.
VIII
From a point close by the street door rose a flight of stairs which introduced Lanyard to a floor by every indication devoted wholly to the most intimate uses of Folly. There were two major rooms, a bedchamber at the back of the house and a boudoir overlooking the street, linked by a short hall on which opened a bathroom and capacious clothes-presses, all furnished with an extravagance that bespoke means ample to gratify the wildest whim of even a modern young woman. Folly's wardrobe alone would have given a dozen exacting women of fashion a choice of changes for every hour of the day and have left the first owner still ridiculously over-stocked. And Lanyard, taking cursory yet comprehensive note of the endless detail of luxury that went to make up a sybaritic ensemble, told himself it would be unreasonable to expect the tenant of this suite not to fancy herself much more than merely a little.
His survey, however, had gained him little more than a bare grasp of the general arrangement, when a light patter on the stairs drove him to cover in a retreat whose selection had been his first care: a closet stored with clothing for day-wear exclusively, therefore the least liable to be used by night, and furthermore so situate that its door, left—as Lanyard had found it—half an inch ajar, afforded a direct and wide-angled vista of the boudoir, and also, indirectly, by grace of a long mirror in the latter, a more fragmentary view of the bedchamber.
To his taste almost too cosily snuggled into a smother of garments whose subtle fragrance was most demoralizing, he lurked for many minutes, spying—as the mirror permitted—on the maid whom he had first seen in the street and whose present duty, it transpired, was to turn down the bed-clothes and otherwise make the bedchamber ready to receive its mistress.
The quick, competent creature went about her work with a step so light that even ears trained to abnormal acuteness found it not entirely easy to keep track of her movements; so that, when she made an end and left the bedchamber, the man in hiding wasted several minutes waiting to make sure that he had the floor all to himself again.
Emerging at length, he wasted no more, but turned directly to the focal point of his most immediate interest, that is to say to the safe which had provided the wits of last night's thief with a test so trifling. And, Lanyard reflected, having inspected the thing, no wonder! When, he asked impatiently, would man learn anything from experience and cease to put his trust and his treasures in repositories of such pregnable construction? A pretty, dainty thing, neatly fitted into the base of a period secretary, its door masked by a hinged frame wrought to resemble a tier of drawers, its "combination-lock"—God save the mark!—capable of offering about as much resistance to trained talents as that of a child's bank . . .
Lanyard was proving all this to his own satisfaction, and indeed had already solved the combination by bending an ear to the fall of its tumblers, when the telephone rang.
The sharp thrill of the bell sounded in the study downstairs; the extension instrument on the little desk in the boudoir gave only a muffled click.
Lanyard used a silk handkerchief on the face of the safe to smudge out fingerprints, shut the false front, and moved lightly out into the hall, arriving at the rail round the stairway at the moment when the vocational singsong of the butler broke upon the conversation of Folly and her friends:
"Beg pardon, but Mr. Mallison is being wanted on the telephone."
With neither delay nor compunction Lanyard turned back to the boudoir extension, and had its receiver at his ear when Mallison arrived in the study and breathed a melodious "Hello?" to the waiting wire. But when a strange voice answered him, feminine at that, the eavesdropper was taken with a twinge of mixed chagrin and distaste, who had hoped for something worse than this and more illuminating, who had hastily set his heart on gaining instruction from Morphew's pompously measured rumble, and who, finally, knew no delight whatever in the prospect of prying upon some trivial affair of sentiment such as was promised by the cloying affection of this strange woman's salutation: "Is that you, Mally darling?"
Only the striking ambiguity of the reply she got helped Lanyard to overcome an impulse to hang up forthwith.
"Yes," Mallison pronounced too clearly, too loudly, and in a manner of cold enquiry that carried no conviction whatever—"this is Mr. Mallison speaking. Who wants him?"
"Clever old sweetie!" the unknown applauded with a confidential laugh. "I do hope she can hear you; but I suppose she isn't in the same room if you have to shout like that. Better soft-pedal it a bit, dear, or the little lady may get leary."
To this Mallison replied, again remarkably as to sense, and in accents of unmistakably mortified amazement: "Oh, for Heaven's sake! you don't mean to say it's tonight? I don't see how I could possibly have let anything so important slip my mind . . ."
No less remarkably the woman pursued: "It's all right, then, dearie? I mean, everything is all set for the big bust?"
"Why, of course!" Mallison intoned distinctly, with a dying echo of the emotion which had coloured his last preceding response—"of course I'll be there. But I shall have to go down on my knees and beg Mrs. McFee to forgive me—and I really can't quite forgive myself for being so forgetful."
"Gosh!" the other breathed in awed admiration—"got to hand it to you, kid, you stall so pretty. Well: our friend—you know—is getting impatient, so it's up to you to shake a leg. How soon shall I say you'll be ready?"
"Oh, but really! I'm afraid I can hardly make it under half an hour."
"Sure that'll be long enough?" Surprising solicitude seemed to shade the strange voice. "You know, dearie, we wouldn't for worlds crash in too soon, I mean before you get a good chance to do your very best dirty work. 'Cause the blacker the looks of it, the better the pay—and the surer."
"Oh quite!" Mallison cheerily agreed. "But half an hour will do me famously."
"Good enough." A sly chuckle accompanied this commendation. "You're one little fast worker, all right, darling: I only wanted you to take all the time you need to turn out an artistic job. All rightie: I'll set the alarm for thirty minutes from now—the zero hour! And mind you take good care of yourself, dearie. Ta-ta."
With elegance indisputable Mallison returned a musical "Au revoir."
Lanyard waited for the other receiver to refind its hook, then hung up in turn, and took his seething mystification back to the head of the stairs, whence he could overhear the apologies Mallison was offering below.
"Do be charitable, Folly, and make allowances for my weak mind. I simply can not understand how I could have been so great an idiot as to forget I'd promised Mary Ashe—Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe, you know—I'd join a party she's made up for the Rendezvous tonight—"
"O Mally!" Mrs. McFee lamented—"how perfectly stupid!"
"I know: isn't it? But I promised over a week ago. And anyway, it's partly your fault, getting up this little dinner to celebrate your robbery, and making me forget everything else I had on for tonight. . . . Now please don't budge—and I don't need Soames to put me out, either. I know where I left my hat and coat and how to open and shut a front door all by myself."
"You can take my car, Mally, if you'll send it right back," Pagan generously put in. "Liane and I have got to hop along, too, in a brace of shakes. That is, you're welcome to it if you find it waiting. I told Ben to be back around ten."
"Thanks, old soul; but I'll have no trouble picking up a taxi over on Park avenue. Besides, it isn't nearly ten yet."
Pronouncing gracious but hurried good-nights all round, Mallison was heard to pass through the entrance hall, in a more guarded and intimate tone, and a decidedly tender one, remonstrating with his hostess because she had insisted on accompanying him to the door.
"Consider the looks of it, Folly: Liane and Peter will think you've fallen for me at last."
"No fear," Folly returned with uncomplimentary composure: "they know better."
"Besides, anyone would think you didn't trust me . . ."
This rang a note so false as to cause the eyebrows of the secret audience to lift and knit. But Folly's frame of mind was too completely and openly petulant to permit of her being wary and discriminative as well.
"Trust you!" she mocked lightly. "I'd like to know why I should, the way you carry on with women . . . Oh! I'm not in the least taken in by this tale about Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe, you know, I believe that's just bunk to cover up a heavy date with some other misguided female."
"How perfectly flattering!"
"You wouldn't think so if you knew my opinion of the kind of women that fall for you, Mally."
The two moved into Lanyard's field of vision and paused by the door, Mallison buttoning himself into his top-coat and leering down at Folly with a doggish air, the woman maintaining for his benefit a pout that was less than half put on.
"As if you'd care a snap of those lovely fingers if I really were deceiving you!"
"You couldn't." Folly tossed her head. "I'm not quite simpleton enough to believe you mean anything you say to a woman, to any pretty woman, it doesn't matter who—"
"Now you are flattering me and no mistake." Mallison clapped on his topper, gave its crown an artful pat that adjusted it at the most killing angle, and managed a still more maddening smirk of complacence. "Believe you do care," he drawled . . .
"I care about having my party spoiled. Now Peter and Liane are going to run, too, and leave me all lonely and lorn."
Mallison laid hold of the knob and opened the door, but put his back to the edge of it and rested so, unaffectedly loath to forego the flirtation at its piquant stage of the present. His smile grew momentarily more personal and meaning; but some of its assurance might have been make-believe, considering the nervousness he betrayed in Lanyard's sight (though not in Folly's, since she couldn't see them) by keeping his hands behind him and fiddling with the door-knob. An impudent nod designated the two who had been left in the dining-room.
"I'll come back, if you like . . . after they've blown . . ."
"Mally!" Folly drew back, flushing. "Don't be a silly fool, don't say things like that to make me angry. I oughtn't to overlook—"
Of a sudden Mallison stood away from the door, permitting it to shut itself gently, and caught the woman in his arms. "I mean it," he breathed ardently to Folly's hair, holding her fast in spite of a notable absence of effort to escape. "I'm mad about you, Folly, simply mad about you—and you know it, you wild, sweet witch!"
"I know you're mad now," the witch replied neither wildly nor sweetly. "I may have suspected it before, but this proves it. Please let me go."
"Not a chance," Mallison confidently laughed—"I've got you now where I've been wanting you, God knows how long! Folly dear: I'm simply desperate with love of you. Only say the word—I'll tell Mrs. Ashe where she can go, and be back here inside half an hour, or as soon as I'm sure Peter and Liane have left. Folly! be kind to me—"
"Mally!" The cry was keyed low yet tense with indignation. A sudden squirm broke his embrace. Folly stood back, fending the man off with a firm hand. "Don't do that again, I won't have it. . . . How dare you say, or even suggest, such things to me? You know I don't care the least in the world for you. And even if I did . . . But I don't want to be unfair. You've had too much to drink tonight. Do go now, please, go right away, and don't come back till you're ready to beg my pardon."
"Oh!" The iced sincerity of the rebuff wiped away the self-confident smirk and set in its place a scowl of affronted self-esteem. "That's your style, is it, my lady? Virtue on a pedestal! And after the way you've led me on."
Folly held him briefly in a stare of incredulous disdain; her rush of colour slowly ebbing. A slight gesture sketched inability to understand the man, in a voice of reproach and regret she said quietly: "O Mally! how can you be so contemptible?"
The countenance of the dancing man grew darker still, his too-full lips took on an ugly contour beneath their closely-trimmed moustache of the mode. He seemed to contemplate, even with difficulty to refrain from uttering, some embittered and withering retort. Instead, he turned in dumb fury and flung out of the house. Thanks less to his temper and intention than to its automatic air-check the door closed without noise other than the click of its latch. And Folly gave herself a little shake of impatience and reasserted the wonted spirit of her countenance as she ran back to rejoin Pagan and Liane Delorme.
Their three voices were once more busy when Lanyard made his way back to the boudoir telephone and took a long chance with it, communicating to the Central operator the number Crane had left with him. But the turn of his luck was such that, though the connection was established all but instantaneously, the masculine voice that answered was not the one he wanted to hear.
No: Mr. Crane wasn't in, and there was no telling when he would be in; maybe in ten minutes, maybe in ten days. But the voice was perfunctorily prepared to take any message that Lanyard might care to leave and see that it got into Crane's hands as soon as he did return, if ever.
"Tell him, please, Mr. Duchemin called him up." It was necessary to spell out that old alias which Crane could hardly have forgotten. "Say my business is urgent—Mr. Crane will understand."
"Want him to call y'up? What's yuh number?"
Without the least hesitation, in a single phrase Lanyard abolished the telephone installation at Folly McFee's: "Say there is no telephone. But give him, if you will be so good, this address." Lanyard detailed the number of the house and street and hung up. He had no fear that Crane would fail to draw an intelligent inference and guide himself by the light thereof. Nevertheless he would have been grateful for some assurance that Crane would get the message in good time. . . .
Back at the head of the stairs, he felt warranted in assuming that his daring with the telephone had not betrayed him. The hum of talk that rose from the diminished dinner party was constant, or punctuated only by the laughter with which the two women encouraged Peter Pagan in his efforts to be funny. For all that, Lanyard escaped discovery by the narrowest of squeaks; for he stepped out into the hallway only to find that Mallison had let himself into the house again, and was furtively slinking up the stairs—was even then, indeed, half way up.
Driven back to the refuge of the clothes-press, Lanyard pulled its door into position in the same instant that saw Mallison skulk into the boudoir.
It appeared from this, then, that one had not erred in mistrusting the nervous hands of the dancing man as they had played with the knob—and one might no longer doubt, with the safety-catch as well—what time Mallison had delayed, posing with his back to the door and philandering with Folly.
IX
Neither might he who unsuspected spied, through the crack of a closet-door all but closed, on Mr. Mallison with many a gesture of quiet authority making himself at home in Folly's rooms, seriously question the presence of a practician adept in the grammar of second-storey work. Mallison's footfalls would not have ruffled the repose of an insomniac, the play of his hands was certain yet light as the flutter of butterfly wings; and what he had to do by way of making ready for what he purposed doing, he did with right professional economy of effort.
To begin with, he did nothing at all more than stand still in the middle of the boudoir and study with glances keen, direct and comprehensive what one guessed were surroundings not wholly strange to him. And seeing him thus with his guard down, naked of all his petty social airs and graces and that shining garment of conceit which clothed the man like a woven armour when he was self-conscious, the hidden watcher began to suspect that he might have erred in his first rating, that the Mallison now revealed was worthier to be reckoned with than he had guessed. The Mallison of this minute was nobody's fool, knew what he was about, and—or Lanyard read every surface sign awry—was dangerously capable of proving at need a disconcerting knowledge of how to take care of himself.
With a muted grunt of gratification in the sum of his survey, the man passed through to the bedchamber, wherein his maneuvres were less readily followed, since the mirror in the boudoir revealed to Lanyard only a narrow segment of the adjoining room. This comprehended, however, the head of Folly's bed, and the small table beside it from whose drawer Mallison removed a pretty trinket of a silver-plated, pearl-handled pistol, extracting its shells, thoughtfully putting them away in one of his waistcoat pockets, and finally replacing the weapon with nice precision where he had found it.
Content, it seemed, thus to have done his bit for preparedness, Mallison sauntered back to the boudoir, stripped off his top-coat, folded it with meticulous care and hid it, together with his hat, on the floor behind a capacious lounge chair.
Then consulting his watch and with a yawn politely shielded registering time to kill, he strolled over to the secretary and stooped to inspect, with a flickering, sly smile, the safe built into its base. The tip of a fingernail discreetly pried open the blind front, leaving no treacherous trace, but after a show of hesitation the man seemingly decided not to disturb the safe itself, and restored the front to its former position. Private papers, with which the pigeonholes of the secretary were well stocked, next drew his interest, and he was betraying a mean disposition to tamper with them when the chance discovery of a hand-mirror resting face up on Folly's blotting-book diverted Mallison with a temptation which he didn't even try to resist. And he had finished disciplining an imperceptibly unruly eyebrow and had begun to practice a killing smile, an artful variation of the infallible gleam-of-teeth suite, when a bell grumbled vigorously in the bowels of the house and was interpreted as a signal for strict attention to business thenceforward.
Mallison went at once to the door to listen, an occupation in which he had the man in the clothes-press at a good disadvantage. The latter none the less contrived to infer from noises in the entrance-hall that Pagan's car had duly reported and that its owner and Liane were saying good-night. Then, as the rumor of their voices failed, Mallison re-crossed the boudoir with swift but silent tread and once more passed from Lanyard's range of vision. The latter, however, recalled having noticed a handsome, painted screen in that corner, and entertained no doubt but that Mallison was making himself small behind it.
To prove this guess well-grounded, Folly herself entered in another moment, and gave every evidence of being unaware of any alien presence as she faltered through the boudoir, casting discontented glances round as if in aimless search of something in the nature of a distraction. Unmistakably disappointed, and thereby the more frankly fretted, she drifted on to her bedchamber, from whose unseen recesses her voice and her maid's were presently to be heard.
What they said was of no moment: their bedtime dialogue of every day, varied only by Folly's decision to stay up a while longer: she wasn't sleepy and had letters to write. So saying, she dismissed the maid and sulkily trailed back into the boudoir, bringing a sizable case of tooled leather which held, one surmised, the jewellery she had worn at dinner, and which she proceeded to put away in the safe that deserved its style so little, but only as a matter of habit, demonstrating that all faith in the contraption was dead by not troubling to shut its door and set the lock.
In the pause that ensued, with a sigh of boredom Folly settled down in the chair before her secretary, and Lanyard ventured to widen the crack of the door a fraction.
The woman sat toying with a pen and more than half-turned away from this observer, charmingly posed with all the unconscious grace that was native to the sweetly fashioned body which her négligé, a sheer web of lace threaded with ribbon, made so bare a pretence of covering. A lamp on the secretary turned the tangle of her hair into a living nimbus and edged tenderly a neck and shoulders kissable in the sight of any man. Indeed, Mallison was hardly to be blamed . . .
Without making a sound he stole up behind the woman lost in thought, the fire of his lips on her flesh was the first that she knew of his presence. Crying out in alarm and anger, she started up to find herself in his arms.
"Hush, dear—please!" Mallison entreated, trying to insure her silence by resting fingers lightly upon her lips. "The servants might hear—"
"'Might'!" Folly stormed, jerking her head away——"they shall!"
If Mallison had counted on such toleration as she had shown him by the street door half an hour earlier, his lamentable error was made manifest to him without an instant's grace. Folly fought him like a miniature fury, and to such effect that she was free while her defiance was still an echo in the room—free and swelling her throat with a scream when he plunged upon his knees before her and threw wide arms of suppliance.
"Please, please!" he begged—"don't call for help. I'll do anything you say, promise to be good and go quietly when you choose to send me away—only, don't call your servants. Think what they'd think!"
"What's that to me?" Folly demanded. "What do I care what they think of you?"
"It's you I'm considering," the man protested—"it's what they'd think of you I'm worrying about. You can't imagine they'd give you the benefit of the doubt . . ."
"Benefit of what doubt?"
"Do you suppose they'd believe I ever found my way up here without your invitation?"
"Is a woman always suspected of enticing the man who breaks into her house like a thief? I'll risk that."
"No—for God's sake! wait, listen to me, Folly! I don't deserve to be thrown out, you owe me fairer treatment—"
"I owe you what?"
"You're a woman, not a school-girl—you know what you've been doing to me these last few weeks, you know you've driven me half out of my head flirting with me."
"Oh?" Sense of humour reasserted itself in a little laugh. "Why half?"
"Entirely, then," Mallison sullenly conceded. He got on his feet again, but his attitude remained conciliatory, even though he would persist in seeking to defend himself at her expense. "If it's insanity to love you, then I'm mad enough—but, God's my witness! I'm not altogether to blame. And you know that's true."
"And I'm to understand you stole back here tonight to tell me that?"
"No—but to beg your forgiveness for having acted as I did a while ago. I couldn't leave things as they were between us overnight, I couldn't think of anything but how unfair you were when I lost control of myself for just one little minute and made you see how madly I love you. I had to come back and have it out, explain—arrive at some sort of understanding."
"And you want me to believe you considered these your best overtures?" Folly uttered a cluck of contempt. "Before you go," she pursued, instinctively dragging across her bosom the inadequate protection of the négligé—"you might be good enough to explain how you did manage to sneak up here."
But Mallison merely uttered a sibilant "Hush!" and lifted a hand of warning.
Below, the grumble of the doorbell sounded with an accent imperative.
"What do you suppose that means?" the dancing man demanded in a whisper of apprehension.
"Somebody at the front door . . . How should I know?" The noise was repeated. A glint of distrust kindled in the woman's eyes. "What's the matter, Mally? Expecting somebody?"
"Nonsense. What a question! Who should I be expecting?"
"How do I know?"
"I was only startled . . ."
"Yes," Folly affirmed with tightened lips: "I noticed that."
A sudden confusion arose in the lower hallway, several people giving tongue all at once: evidently whoever it was that had answered the door had been instantly made the target of a storm of questions.
Folly's face showed a stamp of deepened misgivings and suspicion. "What on earth—!" she murmured.
Upon these words Mallison closed in on her again and made her captive in a tight embrace.
"What does it matter?" he insisted. "Stupid people bothering Soames: what do they matter to you and me? Folly, I love you, I'm mad—"
She was fighting wildly but impotently now, kicking, pommeling with fists that did no hurt, biting at the hand that closed her mouth. Downstairs the clamour rose to a higher pitch of angry disputation. Boldly Lanyard stepped out of concealment.
Neither Folly nor Mallison saw him till he caught the dancing man from behind, with calculated brutality broke the clasp of his arms round the woman's body, and sent him spinning and stumbling across the room to bring up against the further wall with a crash that started his eyes in their orbits.