EVE BRIDGES A DIFFICULT SITUATION BY INTRODUCING LANYARD AS "MY FRIEND MR. ANTHONY."
The disturbance below by this time had attained the proportions of a small riot. There were scuffling feet on the stairs. Nearer at hand Folly was screaming. To this Mallison added the snarl with which, recovering, he took the offensive in turn, launching himself at his assailant's throat in murderous fury. Unhappily enough for him, Lanyard had wanted nothing better. They closed, grappled, for a breath swayed as one. Then Mallison felt one of his arms being irresistibly wrenched out of its socket, and to such exquisite torture yielded, perforce turning his back to Lanyard, who held him so another instant, then without warning released him.
With the racket of argument, physical and vocal, now loud upon the very landing outside, Lanyard dared not be merciful or give Mallison any fighting chance. As the man whirled round to launch a new onslaught, Lanyard's fist carried every ounce of his weight and all his ill-will to the other's jaw. Lifted bodily by that terrific blow, Mallison crashed back across an occasional table, sweeping off and extinguishing a lamp, and collapsed, insensible, on the floor.
Simultaneously the door flung open and four people broke into the boudoir, a struggling knot that instantly resolved itself into its elements; the McFee butler, with coat half torn from his back, two strange men, one of rough-and-ready appearance, the other a type slightly more genteel, and a woman, a garish blonde of the synthetic school, with her hat over one ear.
The shaded light on the secretary alone remained to lend these several actors visibility. Lanyard stood squarely in front of it, his figure, to eyes new from the stronger illumination of the hall, hardly better than a silhouette. Folly, well out of harm's way on his one hand, was less kindly shadowed, in view of the extreme candour of her déshabillé; Mallison, on the other, was screened from the invaders by the drop-leaf of the table behind which he had gone down.
Thus chance set the stage and lighted it for a twist in the action of the piece unforseen even by its first player and collaborating dramatist. For the bottle-made blonde with hat askew needed only a glimpse of that tall, slender, and well-poised shape, bulking black against the glow, to hurl herself across the room, fall weeping upon Lanyard's bosom, and strain him passionately to the agitated abundance of her own.
"My husband!" she cried—"my husband! O Harry! how could you?"
And Lanyard suffered her.
X
He was in no hurry, the truth would all too soon be her bitter medicine; if meantime to rest on him the burthen of her wrongs were any comfort to the lady, she was welcome. Still, he inclined to think it lamentable that he didn't know her well enough to reason with her in a friendly way about her taste in scent for the hair. Chivalry he reckoned a fine gesture but a bit dear at the cost of asphyxiation.
For all that, the longer this unhappy creature continued blind to her blunder, the better for Folly—for Michael Lanyard, too. He was far from enjoying any sort of confidence that the next blind turn of events would prosper his meddlesome hand; he was constrained by circumstance to count more heavily than he relished on the resilience of Folly's wits and their readiness to read his heart in respect of herself and play up to the cues which he must somehow manage to give her.
An anxious sidelong glance caught Folly thunderstruck and gaping, with eyes astart doubting their own dependability. The last man she had ever thought to see again, with his consent, and particularly beneath that roof, the alleged larcener of her emeralds last night, tonight figuring spontaneously in the dual rôle of knight errant and spouse recreant!
He saw her so, and knew very well it could hardly tend but to make her bewilderment the thicker, yet an irrepressible devil of ribaldry in Lanyard prompted him to wag his head at Folly and make a comic mouth over the fair false limpet that had fastened to his bosom. Not a little to his surprise, more to his encouragement, a gleam of lively appreciation broke through the clouds of Folly's bemusement. But the limpet chose the selfsame moment to prove her protean versatility by shifting all at once into the guise of a shrew, thus rendering infeasible any further attempt to impart his mind to Folly through the medium of the eloquent eye.
Abruptly and with a clever effect of casting Lanyard off by main strength, the strange woman struck a florid pose with arm levelled and eyes ablaze.
"There!" she rasped—and Lanyard wondered could this possibly be the voice that had so lately cooed endearments by telephone—"there he is, gentlemen! there stands my husband, the dirty hound that leaves me to cry my heart out at home while he steps out with fast society dames, like that shameless, half-naked hussy there!"
The quivering index of denunciation picked out the shrinking shape of Folly in her informal attire, and the self-appointed censor paused to let this characterization bite deep. But when she offered to resume she half-choked instead because an unpresaged glare of ceiling lights, thoughtfully switched on by Soames, revealed to her not the hang-dog mask of Mallison but an utterly strange countenance whose graciousness was shaded by a problematical smile.
A brief seizure of speechlessness was shared by the woman's companions, and utilized by Lanyard to note the more salient features of the others, individually, against the chance of future need. There was no fore-telling when some flash of temper might not precipitate a free-for-all of outcome highly dubious; it might be useful to be able to identify these precious impostors should ill-luck throw one in with them another time. Commonplace scamps he accounted them every one. Contempt for Morphew mounted; a scoundrel of really respectable calibre would have known better than to employ such cheap tools for even a simple job of villainy.
The woman was, or had been, a comely wench; but the strong light wasn't kind to her complexion, to such of it, that is, as she hadn't scrubbed off on Lanyard's waistcoat. Her skin roughed up through its thick wash of whiting and smears of carmine, skillfully painted contours failed to amend the viciousness of thin lips that dragged in their corners, more than belladonna and mascaro would be needed to restore the pristine charm of eyes grown hard with looking too long upon life stripped of all loveliness.
And the men seemed her well-suited associates: one, a thickset body whose eyes of a brute went forbiddingly with an undershot jaw, the other a figure of saturnine cast and seedy gentility set off by a cutaway coat and a standing collar slightly soiled.
Recognizing in neither of these a personality to call for the waste of two consecutive thoughts, Lanyard returned his attention to the woman, who recoiled a step instinctively, as if afraid he meant to lay hold of her. "What!" she squawked in throaty disgust—"you ain't my husband!"
"Madame"—Lanyard did her a grave bow—"the misfortune is mutual."
"But where is he? Where's my husband?"
"Madame has mislaid one?"
The mock told, with a slack jaw and befogged eyes the woman fell back another pace. "I guess," she stammered, "there's some mistake . . ."
"The conjecture does madame's intelligence vast credit."
"It's Mr. Mallison she's after, sir." The butler Soames, schooled to view without any amazement the vagaries of a mad world of masters, and sensibly putting aside the immomentuous issue of his inability to account for Lanyard, addressed himself to this last as to his one intellectual peer of the time being. "They would 'ave it 'e was upstairs 'ere with Mrs. McFee, sir, and forced their way up in spite of all I could do."
"I quite understand, Soames—Mrs. McFee, too, I'm sure. You do understand, don't you, Mrs. McFee, this is no fault of Soames'?"
Folly shook herself together and vigorously nodded; but Lanyard coolly forestalled whatever words they were that troubled her lips.
"Mr. Mallison is no doubt madame's husband?" he challenged the blonde female. "She had some reason to think she would find him here?"
"Just a minute, Grace." The rusty genteel half of her supporting company, now that he pushed himself forward, proved to possess a rather formidable manner, at once truculent and crafty. "Let me speak for you—"
"You have that right?" Lanyard with pointed civility enquired.
"I've been retained by Mrs. Mallison . . ." The fellow fished a passée professional card from a pocket and thrust it under Lanyard's nose. "I represent her in this case."
"Interesting—but perhaps irrelevant—if true. I mean to say"—Lanyard brushed the card aside, but not before his eye had caught the name Hobart G. Howlin in engraved script followed by the designation Attorney-at-law; and all at once he became as ugly as he had theretofore been bland—"what of it?"
"We were led to believe Mr. Mallison was here—"
"You call yourself a lawyer and pretend that gave you any right to violate the privacy of this household?"
"It sometimes becomes necessary for a wronged wife to take the law into her own hands."
"Mrs. Mallison has been wronged, then? How sad."
"Mrs. Mallison," her counsel persisted, but with shaken bravado—"happens to know her husband has been spending too much of his time of late in the society of Mrs. McFee."
"In brief: you have had the effrontery to force your way into a private residence in the hope of securing evidence for divorce proceedings?"
"You've got the idea."
"O insolent!" Folly flamed.
It was now again necessary for Lanyard firmly to put down interference, lest his diplomacy fail. "By your leave, Folly: permit me to deal with these gentry. Their account of themselves is much too ingenious to lose. If we let them rattle on—who knows?—we may learn something to their disadvantage."
At this the rogue of ruder mien concluded that he, for one, had had enough. "Come on," he mumbled, plucking at Howlin's sleeve: "le's get out o' this."
"Not so fast. You entered by force; you will leave in the good pleasure of Mrs. McFee. And then Mr. Mallison will go with you."
"What's that?" the lawyer demanded. "Mallison's here?"
"We have no wish to deceive you."
"But where?" the slighted wife shrilly objected. "I don't see him . . ."
"How little married folk ever know each other! The dear lad's so high-strung, when he heard you on the stairs he swooned away. Half a minute . . ."
Lanyard stepped behind the table to find Mallison in the first throes of coming to. An unceremonious hand twisted in his collar helped him find his feet. He swayed on them, glaring groggily round that ring of faces whose lips framed confounded murmurs, while Lanyard nodded politely to the confessed wife: "Permit me, Mrs. Mallison: your husband." More brusquely he added: "Now Soames: if you think you could find a policeman . . ."
The butler saluted this suggestion with unbegrudged respect, but the man who had lately been so anxious to go now moved in haste to intercept him at the door.
"Here!" he growled in an effort, not too happy, to assert authority—"wait a minute, wait—a—minute, you! What's the grand idea?"
"What is your objection?" Lanyard countered.
"If you got any use for a cop, you don't have to look no farther. I'm a city detective."
"Splendid. You shall enjoy every opportunity to exercise the powers of your office. Nevertheless, Soames will proceed to fetch a policeman."
In a bluster of panic the self-styled detective elbowed the butler away from the door. "Wait, now! This is my job; if any pinchin's goin' to be done here tonight, I'll do it."
"To the contrary . . ." A hand slipped deftly beneath the skirts of Mallison's dinner-jacket brought to light an automatic pistol of whose presence on his person Lanyard had become aware in the course of their struggle. "To the contrary, you will be good enough to stand back and let Soames do my bidding. Do you hear? And all of you"—a push sent Mallison reeling drunkenly into the ranks of his confederates—"all four of you will be well advised to put up your hands."
Prompt and unanimous respect rewarded this good advice, even Mallison proving himself sufficiently recovered to heed.
"Cut along now Soames; and you might tell the policeman he will need a patrol wagon, with four prisoners to handle."
"Look here!" Mallison found his tongue in a splutter of spite and fear—"you're going too far, Lanyard, carrying things with too high a hand—"
"I know but one way to deal with blackmailers."
"And what about yourself—you damn' burglar?"
A new voice introduced itself to the dialogue. "Blackmailers?" it drawled. "Burglar? Fightin' words, folks, fightin' words!"
Soames, moving to execute Lanyard's instructions, had opened the door to find it blocked by a long, loose-jointed body. Now, hands in pockets, hat well back on his head, chewing the unlighted cigar of his custom, the detective Crane, lounged in, with ironic glances reviewing the several countenances so variously coloured with emotion, until he perceived the presence of Mrs. McFee. Then he was quick to uncover his head and disembarrass his teeth.
"Your servant, ma'm. Hope you'll excuse the informality, but we found your front door standing wide open and figured maybe something might be going wrong. H'are you, Lanyard? Business as usual, I see." A nod and wrinkling grin designated the pistol. "I'll tell anybody that don't know, you're the little guy that stages the quick come-backs." Over his shoulder, Crane called: "Come on in, Hoffmeyer; looks like we'd found us a regular job."
A brisk policeman in uniform moved in from the hallway. And sensible of sharp relief, Lanyard put down the pistol. "My friend!" he told Crane: "never in your life were you more welcome."
"That's easy to believe; going on the looks of things we've happened along at one of these psychological moments, all right. No thanks to me, of course, Lanyard: I just naturally hiked right up here as soon as I got your 'phone message."
"You telephoned for Mr. Crane?" Folly demanded, eyeing Lanyard intently.
"He sure did," Crane affirmed.
"At what time?"
"Half an hour or so ago—wasn't it, Lanyard?"
"Approximately. But I can fix the hour precisely: Mrs. McFee will undoubtedly remember when Mallison was called from the table to answer the telephone." Folly nodded, her eyes growing rounder. Lanyard laughed, with a wave of a debonnaire hand introduced the other woman. "You see here the lady who was then, according to Mallison, Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe. Now she accuses herself of being his wife. One or both of them would seem to be mistaken. No matter: after listening in on their conversation, I felt warranted in calling up Mr. Crane without waiting to secure your approval."
"You called him up from here?"
"But what would you?" With a specious show of naïveté Lanyard chose to misconstrue that almost purely rhetorical query of astonishment. "Admit that I had hardly time to run out and hunt up a sound-proof booth, madame, admit that I had no choice other than to remain here if I were to keep faith with you—and more especially when the telephone had just told me enough to prove that this fine gentleman intended blackmail, whether or not we were justified in crediting him with a graver offence against your hospitality."
The earnest eyes that held Folly's saw them confused by these cunningly sown hints and implications. And not until she had heard him out with a comprehending nod for all comment, and the lips that had been parted in breathless interest closed without uttering a word to refute his impudent assertion of an understanding which made Folly a party to his presence in the house, did Lanyard again find it easy to breathe. But that nod, coupled with her silence, testified to appreciation of the fact that in tacit confirmation of his claim lay the one sure way to save her good repute, that to gainsay him would be to lend colour to the calumny implicit in the intrusion of Mallison's "wife" and her accomplices.
If Folly wanted proof of this, she had it in another breath, when the seedy conspirator instituted a counter-offensive.
"Just a minute, gentlemen!" he insisted, pushing in his sallow, excited face between Lanyard and Crane. "You go too fast. We deny all these ridiculous allegations, but particularly we deny that my client is here in any sort of collusion with her husband. That malicious innuendo we flatly contradict and brand a lie out of whole cloth!"
"'We'?" Crane echoed, inquisitive but otherwise indifferently impressed. "Your 'client'?"
"I am counsel for Mrs. Mallison—"
"You don't say? Bet anything she deserves you, too." Crane showed Lanyard arched brows of dubiety. "Shyster?"
"Calls himself Howlin," Lanyard assented impatiently. "If you like he'll show you a card almost as shady as the business which engages his talents tonight."
"I can afford to ignore slurs upon my professional standing which come from such a source," Howlin loftily retorted. "But my business tonight being the legitimate one of looking after the interests of a client, I can hardly be expected to stand by and enter no objection when I hear her slandered."
"I'll say you can't," Crane cruelly agreed, looking the lady up and down with a glance so discerning that it caused a dull flush to burn beneath her complexion.
But now again Howlin considered the source and concluded he could afford to ignore constructive sarcasm.
"Mr. Regan here," he said, introducing the man who had styled himself a "city detective"—"has under my direction been shadowing my client's husband for several weeks. His reports show there's a questionable degree of intimacy between Mallison and Mrs. McFee. When, therefore, Mallison was seen tonight letting himself into this house, using his own latch-key, we had every excuse for assuming that an unexpected visit would produce certain results. Now, however, since we would seem to have been misled, we can only offer Mrs. McFee the assurance that my client stands ready to give her every satisfaction the law may hold her entitled to. I think that's all . . ."
He turned confidently toward the door. "Now, Mrs. Mallison, if you're ready . . . Come, Regan."
"What's your hurry?" Crane genially wanted to know, but quickly enough to anticipate the storm of words promised by Folly's violent start. "You admit your liability for unlawful trespass, I take it?"
"If Mrs. McFee thinks she can induce any court in the land to call it that," Howlin stipulated.
"Outside of that, however, you've got nothing to fear?"
Mr. Howlin achieved a shrug which utterly abolished a suggestion so absurd.
"Then be good sports—why don't you?—and stick around a while. Maybe you might be able to help us out in dealing with Mr. Mallison. Going on all you tell me, Mrs. Mallison don't owe him any good will; I judge she ought to be happy to see him come up with. How about it, ma'm?"
The person appealed to in a touching twitter looked to Howlin for guidance, and got from him a subtle sign which she may have misinterpreted; not without excuse, seeing that the situation was one of the extremest delicacy for all of them, and that the sacrifice of one to the salvation of the majority is a time-honoured expedient with her kind.
"Ask me anything you want," she volunteered, waggling an indignant head and giving Mallison a poisonous look . . . "after the way he's treated me, the low cur!"
"That's handsome of you, ma'm." Crane beamed benignantly upon the lady, and with little less warmth upon the unhappy dancing man. "I won't forget it, either. But first I'd like to ask Mr. Lanyard here a few questions, to sort of clear the ground."
"I object!" Mallison stuttered in dismay. "I refuse to submit to these star-chamber proceedings—"
"Do you, now?" Crane commented with much interest. "Well, if you ask me, 'star-chamber proceedings' is a mighty hifalutin' name for what's going to happen to you right here and now, my lad; it's going to be a whole lot more like the third degree, if you know what I mean."
Mallison knew only too well; fear lent those ingratiating eyes, usually so gentle beneath their long and silky lashes, the wickedness of a cornered rat's. "I protest!" he snarled—"I deny your right—"
"You better hush. Hoffmeyer here don't like your looks nohow, he'll admire to improve 'em if you don't quit speaking out of your turn."
Mallison got a black grin from the patrolman and subsided at discretion, while Crane cocked a meaning eye at Lanyard.
"Now, Mr. Lanyard, if you'll just tell us what you know about how this man Mallison comes to be here . . ."
"Gladly." Lanyard had his story pat, it fell from a glib tongue. "I presume everybody present knows Mrs. McFee's emeralds were stolen last night from the safe in that secretary over there, under circumstances which caused a certain person to be suspected—"
"Why so modest?" Mallison interrupted vindictively. "Why so mealy-mouthed? 'Suspected' is hardly the word."
"I am desolated to disappoint monsieur; unhappily or not, as you may care to take it, Mr. Crane was able to establish my innocence this morning."
"Like hell he was!"
"Just one more nasty crack out of you, Mallison," Crane advised, "and I'll let Hoffmeyer do your wife a swell favour."
"Strangely enough," Lanyard serenely pursued: "Mrs. McFee and I, thinking the case over independently, arrived at the same conclusion: that Mallison probably knew as much as anybody about the theft. Mrs. McFee accordingly laid a trap: invited him to a little dinner-party this evening, in the course of which she let it become known that the thief had overlooked a valuable lot of jewellery which she meant to leave unprotected tonight other than by the safe which had once already been attacked with success. This made a second visit probable, if there were grounds for our suspicions. . . . I on my part arranged to occupy that clothes-press which you see with its door open; by leaving the door just off the latch, it was easy to keep direct watch over the safe. Toward the end of dinner Mallison received the telephone call which has been mentioned, and used it as a pretext for leaving before the other guests. He said good night to Mrs. McFee at the front door, but as soon as she returned to the dining-room let himself back into the house and stole upstairs. He was hiding behind the screen in the corner when Mrs. McFee came up, but when she had put her remaining jewels in the safe and turned to go to her bedchamber, he blundered—made his presence known in a way she couldn't overlook. Then he tried to overpower her, to prevent her giving the alarm. I was obliged to interfere and had just succeeded in discouraging him when these people broke in . . ."
"Straight enough story, far as it goes," Crane approved.
But Mallison dissented wildly: "A pack of lies from beginning to end!" he termed it. To which Lanyard replied, with nonchalance quite unfeigned, that if they doubted his word they might ask Mrs. McFee. Neither was his confidence misplaced: quietly the young woman affirmed the substantial truthfulness of the tissue of misrepresentation which he had woven so brazenly under her very eyes and for her benefit as much as for his own.
"But one thing I want settled at once," she declared: "These people say Mallison used a latch-key. I say he didn't—unless he has one he stole. If they're right, I want that key. If they're wrong, I want that proved for my own sake."
"Reasonable enough," Crane agreed. "How about it, Mallison? got a little key to give up?" The dancing man shook his head, mumbling a negative. "You can save yourself a heap of trouble by forking it over, you know."
"I tell you I haven't got any key!" Mallison insisted with what seemed extravagant passion, while Lanyard eyed him in deepening perplexity: some secret fear, inexplicable, unwarranted by known circumstances, seemed to be at work in the man, desperation was glimpsing in his hunted eyes. "Mrs. McFee knows I haven't—I won't be sacrificed to save her—"
"How's that?"
"Mrs. McFee," Mallison defiantly affirmed, "knows damn' well I haven't got a key and never had one, she knows damn' well she left the door fixed for me, so that I could reopen it by simply turning the knob from the outside—"
"Oh!" Folly gasped, infuriated—"what a contemptible lie! Search him, Mr. Crane—I demand that this beast be searched and proved a liar. He must have had a key, he couldn't possibly have got in any other way."
Even while she was speaking events got in motion, not consecutively but all at once: Mallison, stung to frenzy by his fears, whirled on a heel and made a mad dash for the passage leading to the bedchamber. A sinewy hand at the end of one of Crane's long arms shot out, with surprising readiness, to clamp upon his shoulder and drag him back. He turned and fought wildly. The policeman, Hoffmeyer, cheerfully waded in to lend Crane needed assistance. Mrs. Mallison and Messrs. Howlin and Regan thought to profit by the general preoccupation, but were painfully surprised to discover that Lanyard, an instant since a dozen feet away, was now planted firmly in front of the hall door and smiling a bright, bland smile over the sinister grin of Mallison's pistol.
They stopped. Simultaneously Mallison found himself helpless in an embrace which Hoffmeyer had fastened round him from behind.
"Cut it out, now!" the patrolman growled. "You kick my shins again, and I'll shake every tooth out of your fool head!"
Panting and twitching like a whipped animal, Mallison gave in, and with eyes of blank hopelessness followed the work of Crane's clever hands as they turned out the contents of his pockets, one by one, and neatly arranged their plunder on the top of the occasional table; bringing to light, in addition to everyman's horde of minor personal effects, a flat leather case which fitted neatly a lining pocket in Mallison's dress waistcoat and which held a light jointed jimmy of the toughest procurable steel with an assortment of skeleton keys designed to make the most modern of door-locks tamely yield up its secret.
Mallison's countenance gave open confession of abandonment to despair when this damning find was made; yet Crane was not half-finished with him. The next plunge of his fingers fished a tissue-paper packet from a lower waistcoat pocket, which, being unfolded, disclosed the purloined emeralds of Folly McFee.
Crane clucked in astonishment, Folly gave an incredulous squeal of joy, Lanyard a graphic start and stare. The others present reacted variously, each according to his idiosyncrasy. Only Mallison made neither sound nor stir. But the eyes he turned toward Lanyard were a murderer's . . .
XI
"Pretty!" The chuckle with which Crane let that priceless hoard cascade, clashing, a stream of baleful green fire, into the cupped, eager hands of its owner, ended the hush which had spellbound the assorted actors. "Me," he pursued in high contentment, "I'm convinced! Now if you'll slip your wrist-warmers on our little friend here, the dancing yegg, we'll blow, Hoffmeyer . . . But le's see: I guess Mrs. McFee would just as leave not treat the neighbours to the sight of a patrol wagon boiling up to her front door at this time of night to cart this gay bunch away—it might look sort of funny. So, if it's all right with you, ma'm, I'll just get your butler to breeze out and rustle a brace of taxis. And then, folks"—his tolerant regard embraced Mallison, his soi-distant wife, her counsel, and the disgusted collaborator of this last—"we'll all go riding round to the House with the Green Lamps in East Fifty-first."
Neither did argument, expostulation, abuse, and threats more or less unveiled budge him from adherence to this programme, to which one prisoner alone entered no objection: in disgrace with Fortune, Mallison demonstrated at least the wit of silence. Nothing he said was ever to be used against him at his trial, for he said nothing. What, indeed (he must have reasoned) was the use? What possible profit to him could accrue through his protesting that the case against him was a "frame-up," that Lanyard must wickedly have made him an involuntary receiver of stolen goods at some time during their struggle? The other contents of his pockets provided evidence too ruinous as to his character and secret shop to give such a claim a ghost of a show of winning evidence.
So Mallison submitted without any murmur; but the attention with which he enveloped Lanyard to the last left that one in no doubt as to his mind; and one less self-reliant might well have trembled to think that next morning at latest would see the man free, "out on bail," with every facility at his command to further plans for vengeance—else one had either overrated the power and prestige of Morphew or wronged that one in crediting him to Mallison in the rôle of patron.
The beck of Folly's head was brusque in deference to which Lanyard found himself finally closeted with her alone in her study, the temper in which she shut the door was openly one of direct impatience, his most disarming smile was wasted on the face she showed him, with its lips taut, brows level, and eyes uncompromising. To the "Well?" with which she chose to prompt him in a voice too cool for comfort, Lanyard returned a deprecating shrug.
"Well enough thus far, if you like; but this is far from the end. . . . I wonder, is it waste of time to beg a service of you, madame?"
The even brows contracted, his impudence earned the blank demur: "I don't know whether I ought!"
"After all," he submitted, "madame again has her emeralds . . ."
"And you to thank—I know. But still—!"
"And she retains that intangible something which is worth nothing till it is lost, I refer to her—as we absurdly say—good name."
"Haven't I proved my appreciation by letting you lie like a . . ."
Folly faltered, at loss for a figure, and Lanyard gravely suggested: "Like—I trust very truly—a gentleman."
"Well!" The efforts failed that she had been making to re-establish that poise of impartiality which he had already shaken, she twinkled outright. "And I loved you for it and lied like a baggage in your support. Still, I think you owe me something more . . ."
"The explanation which I am as ready to make as you are to hear it, but a strange story—"
"I can imagine."
"Forgive me if I doubt that . . . A story so strange it will hardly seem credible without the testimony of one little likely to be suspected of bias in my favour, I mean Monsieur Morphew—"
"Morphew!"
Lanyard pretended not to know he had managed to stagger her a second time: "If you would be so gracious as to telephone the good man—one assumes you know his number—"
"But Morphy's never at home in the evening."
"Nevertheless I venture to prophesy he will be found at home this evening, and not far from the telephone, either—providing you call him without too much delay."
"Morphew?" Folly re-echoed as if she mistrusted her ears.
"You are such great friends, he won't think it strange if you turn to him for friendly offices in your distress—"
"But I'm not in any distress."
"Precisely there is the favour I would beg of you, madame; to make believe you are, to tell Monsieur Morphew that something so disturbing has just happened, you can not rest without his advice. If you will do that, I think you will find him more than willing to oblige you, to wait on you here with all possible expedition."
"But what on earth—!"
"That I will make clear when you have telephoned. If you put it off until the Mallison lot is permitted to call in counsel and arrange for bondsmen, you won't catch Monsieur Morphew at home."
Lanyard endured gracefully the probe of mistrustful eyes, only a whimsical twitch of lips reminded Folly at length of his exemplary patience; whereupon she did a good descriptive bit with pretty shoulders and plumped herself down at the telephone.
Committing to memory the number she gave the Central operator, Lanyard saw the woman start when the voice that responded bore out his prediction that Morphew would be found anomalously at home, this night of all nights. But the ability of an excellent amateur actress which Folly had once before proved to Lanyard's delight this time again stood her in good stead, he was fain to admit he himself might have been taken in by the ring of sincerity in her tremulous accents.
"Is that you, really, Morphy? Oh, I'm so glad! . . . Something terrible has happened, Morphy. Please don't ask questions now, I don't want to talk about it over the wire; but if you can possibly spare a minute, come around and give me your advice. You're the wisest man I know, and I'm in a peck of trouble, half out of my mind with worry . . . How perfectly sweet of you! Yes: as soon as you can, I'll be waiting so anxiously . . ."
Without rising, Folly swung round and mutely challenged Lanyard to make good his promise. But he merely bowed the bow that signifies "Thank you very much."
"Morphy says he'll come this minute."
"Figure to yourself, madame, one can with difficulty constrain oneself to wait."
"That's no fair." Folly got up with a flounce. "You're not telling me anything."
"There is so little time—and one feels sure madame will need all of it if she means to remedy what one may, without intending an impertinence, be permitted to term the quite too delightful unconventionality of her attire."
Not in the least displeased, Folly demanded: "Are you complaining—?"
"I am seeking delicately to suggest it would be a pity to give Monsieur Morphew any excuse for jumping at a conclusion which, however flattering to my unworthy self, might prove difficult to correct, not to say painful . . ."
"Painful?"
"To him."
"But you aren't a bit fair, you know, to keep on making me like you when you know very well you haven't been playing the game."
"Madame wrongs me: one can play only such cards as chance deals to one's hand."
"O dear!" Folly sighed. "I'm afraid I'm too impressionable, or I'd never trust you at all, with appearances so black for you."
"Innocence," he modestly opined, "is so shining a garment, black appearances can only lend it an enhancing background." She wavered between a smile and a frown. "But you have trusted me so far"—judging the moment ripe, Lanyard passed from trifling to earnest entreaty—"surely you can afford to trust me still farther. I want you out of the way when Soames shows Morphew in—let him say you will be down directly, nothing more—I want Morphew to meet me alone and without any warning. On the other hand, I wish you to hear every word that passes; so all that seems mysterious now will be made clear. While Morphew is busy trying to dissemble his joy at meeting me so unexpectedly, you will be able to come downstairs without making too much noise—"
"You aren't suggesting that I eavesdrop—!"
"Why not? I did as much for you an hour ago—and very much to your advantage, you'll agree. Take my word for it, in this instance you will have even more excuse . . ."
"Heaven knows how you always manage to get round me, but you do." Folly went to the door, but there paused, looking back over her shoulder with provocative eyes, pretty to death as she stood with head perked pertly, her dainty body less hidden than set off by its frothy déshabillé. "And it's well for me, I'm afraid," she confided, "if its true, as Liane says, you're madly in love with another woman!"
She vanished, was heard briefly conferring with the butler in the entrance hall, then scampering up the stairs.
"And well for me!" Lanyard admitted then, with a wry grimace of self-knowledge; and forthwith closed his mind to the troubling concept of Folly as a woman too kindly inclined, a thought it wouldn't do to dally with for weightier reasons than that it was the truth Liane had babbled.
Against this impending interview of precarious issue he had to make all his dispositions, mental and environmental, in minutes of grace he had no means of knowing how few. Everything depended on how soon Morphew might leave his quarters in response to Folly's call, on whether or not he would learn before leaving of the reverse which had waited on the Mallison coup. Lanyard asked no longer odds than to have Morphew arrive uninformed and unsuspicious; if he didn't, Lanyard would need to mind his eye, likewise his step, if he meant to go on living . . .
Swift review of four walls and all they enclosed made careful note of the heavier articles of furniture and their arrangement in respect of one another and even more particularly of the four exits: the door to the entrance hall, the draped opening that communicated with the drawing-room, the two French windows that gave on the roof of the extension.
Wall-sconces with shields of painted parchment bathed the study in a glareless glow; these darkened, a shaded table lamp was left for all illumination. And this in its turn having been extinguished, it was feasible to reconnoitre at the windows without risking detection by any spy who might be stationed in the vacant land back of the house. But when Lanyard had gently parted the draperies and put his nose to a pane, his vision spent itself fruitlessly on the welter of blacks, from dense to dusky, that blotted out the kitchen-yard within its wooden walls and the open foundation pit beyond. Footfarers on the sidewalks to the north were well-defined by the bleak shine of a street light on the Lexington avenue corner; but if any living thing lurked in the waste between it was lost to the cunning of Lanyard's eyes.
Notwithstanding, he watched on, to make sure the avenues of escape were not stealthily picketed in advance of Morphew's call, till the house-bell dictated retreat from the window to relight the table lamp and take the place and pose which Lanyard most fancied, in an easy chair screened from the hall by the door that opened inward.
The professional soft-shoes of the butler padded from pantry to front door, bolts thumped, the latch rattled, Morphew was heard to salute Soames with gruff condescension, the colourless voice of the servant responded: and having surrendered his hat and coat, the Sultan of Loot paraded into the study with a strut (or the observation of his audience erred) coloured by a lively sense of gratification in unction yet to come. With Folly netted in his toils—no mistake about it, Morphew in this moment was on the best of terms with the business of life in a richly rewarding world. And viewing the man revealed in this humour, Lanyard ceased to entertain a doubt as to the best course to take with him.
Near the table whose lamp painted with stagey shadows his pale and crudely modelled features, Morphew halted. He cleared his throat importantly, consulted his watch, pricked an ear impatient for Folly's footfalls on the stairs, frowned ever so slightly over failure to hear them and, tickled by some furtive thought, flashed his rare, unholy smile. Then becoming cognizant of Lanyard sitting quietly in his corner, watchfully waiting, the man all at once grew taut in body and limb, like a dog confronted by some sudden shape of danger, and wiped his countenance clean of every treacherous trace of legibility. This much, and the swift veer of his eyes toward the doorway, alone confessed the facer to his expectations. The blinkless gaze that steadied to Lanyard's told nothing. Neither did it put any question. Pending the first move, which he was plainly resolved Lanyard must make, Morphew constrained himself to a set of dull, impassive patience.
An attitude Lanyard was nothing loath to humour. If the enemy preferred to resign the initiative, he didn't mind. If it came to that, he had meant all along, if it should appear, as now it did, that Morphew hadn't as yet heard what had happened in the last hour, to force the fighting. He got up and performed his courtliest bow.
"Good evening, monsieur. It was gracious of you to come round so promptly. Won't you be seated."
Morphew ignored the gesture that singled out a chair for him, but after a measured instant observed rather than asked: "You were expecting me . . ."
"It was even I who advised Mrs. McFee to call monsieur into consultation."
The full, hard lips grudgingly released the monosyllable: "Why?"
"It recommended itself as the simplest way to seduce you into a conversation which I meant to have before morning whether you wanted it or not; furthermore, for me, by far the safest. Figure to yourself how much more secure I feel in my skin, meeting you here, the last place where you would have thought to find me . . ."
Morphew shifted slightly toward the door, a movement of impulse which he seemed to repent when he found Lanyard in the way. "I came here to have a talk with Mrs. McFee," he heavily stated, "at her invitation . . ."
"I have begged her to grant me the favour of a few minutes alone with you."
"I've nothing to say to you . . ."
"That places one of us at a deplorable disadvantage; for I have much to say to you, monsieur, and mean to say it."
"Suppose I don't care to listen . . ."
"It desolates me to feel obliged to inform you that, entirely by chance and contrary to my preference and habit, I happen to be armed."
"Seems to me I've heard"—a slow sneer darkened the face of uncouth ugliness—"it used to be your boast, 'The Lone Wolf never kills'."
"Monsieur says truly 'it used to be' . . . He will, moreover, wisely remind himself that the Lone Wolf is no more, his code, such as it was, is no sure guide to what Michael Lanyard may do when he fights for the right to live his own life in his own way."
Another instant their glances clashed, then Morphew's fell, he turned sullenly back to the table, fumbling, to cover nervousness out of character, for his cigar-case. "Well: what do you want?"
Lanyard pushed the hall door to before replying.
"First, to give myself the felicity of telling you the great news."
Eyes beneath leaden lids shifted back to Lanyard's face, a gross hand grossly crusted with diamonds brought to light a case of gold studded with diamonds, but delayed to open it.
"Come, Monsieur Morphew! confess you are wondering what has become of that zealous disciple of yours, Monsieur Mallison."
"What about Mallison?"
But Morphew had found it necessary to moisten his lips before he could speak.
"He is, at the present moment, one has good reason to believe, wildly telephoning about Town to get in touch with you and pray for a bondsman to bail him out, when he is arraigned tomorrow morning for stealing Mrs. McFee's emeralds."
The pupils of the little, flesh-embedded eyes contracted, Morphew licked his lips again. "How's that?"
"Your protégé, monsieur, so neatly styled the dancing yegg, was caught hiding in the boudoir upstairs, some fifteen or twenty minutes ago, and arrested."
Morphew gave himself time to assimilate this ill-omened information, bending over the gaudy trinket in his hands and making meticulous choice of a cigar. He gnawed off its end, broadcasted the waste, put the case away, struck a match, and through a screen of smoke and flame looked back to Lanyard.
"How'd you manage that?"
"But surely one who couldn't—so simple a matter!—is not one to have been honoured with the handsome offer you made me last night."
"I've put you a question," Morphew testily prompted; "I want to know how you managed to put it over on Mally. Afraid to answer?"
"All in good time. For the present, I have the whim to point out what dismal stupidity you have displayed in this affair, to the end that you may spare yourself further discomfiture by foregoing any injudicious schemes of vengeance which may be brewing behind that broad, impassive brow."
"You swing a mean tongue in English," Morphew observed—"for a foreigner." He cast about for a chair sturdy enough to sustain the bulk of him, and with an air of resignation, his first voluntary confession of feeling, sat down. "Go on, get it all off your chest; I don't mind listening."
"Monsieur is too amiable. One can only prove one's appreciation by endeavouring to be brief . . ."
"Take your time. I got plenty."
"Regard, then, my good Morphew, that last night, in this room, I was drugged."
"Hootch?" Morphew sagely queried, and receiving a nod commented: "There's a lot of wicked stuff being served nowadays."
"Four drinks were mixed for us last night, Morphew, by your man Pagan. The other three were consumed without ill effects. Thirty minutes after drinking mine, I became unconscious of my actions."
"Never knew a Frenchman yet could hold his liquor like a gentleman."
"No doubt monsieur knows best how a gentleman drinks . . . At the same time, Pagan did his best, by means of hints thinly veiled, to prepare Mrs. McFee to credit me with the robbery which was even then planned in detail."
"Is this a confession you're making?"
"Planned by you, monsieur, and brilliantly executed by your henchman, the dancing yegg."
"If you didn't know what you were doing last night, like you claim, how d'you know you didn't pull the job off yourself?"
"One was waiting for that question, one knew it was sure to come after the preparation Pagan had made for it."
"I notice you don't seem in any sweat to answer it."
"It has been answered for me. With her complaint of the theft, Mrs. McFee communicated to the police the suspicions Pagan had been at such pains to sow in her mind; with the result that my rooms were visited early today and, like me, searched while I slept."
Morphew took the cigar from between his teeth and with an air of anxiety inspected its half-inch or more of ash. "And nothing found," he incuriously inferred.
"Nothing."
"Can't remember what you did with the stuff, either, I suppose?" The cigar went back to its appointed berth. "Too bad. You must've been stewed as a boiled owl, all right."
"Patience. Tonight, when Mrs. McFee called in the police to arrest Mallison for having sneaked back like the thief he is, after leaving this house in the character of a guest and friend, he was searched and found to possess"—Lanyard made provokingly deliberate pause—"a pocket kit of burglar's tools."
"Sounds fishy." Nevertheless, more business with the cigar told of strain to keep up appearances under unrelenting study. "That all your news?"
"But by no means all. Further search proved that Mallison had been guilty of the amazing indiscretion of bringing the emeralds, concealed upon his person, back into the house from which he had stolen them."
Untouched by Morphew's hand the cigar between his teeth dropped its ash. "How do you mean?" he mumbled, watching his fat bedizened fingers brush gray flakes from the lapel of his dinner jacket. "The emeralds couldn't have been found on Mally unless"—the colourless eyes lifted to Lanyard's face—"unless you put them there!"
"My gifts are small, I am hardly so clever as monsieur flatters me by supposing."
"By God!" Morphew heaved out of his chair in a cold rage of conviction—"you planted the stuff on the boy!"
"But," Lanyard pointed out, his suavity unruffled—"if you are so positive the emeralds were in my possession before they were found on Mallison, the admission is implicit that you had compromising knowledge of the robbery. Else how can you be so sure?"
"I'm satisfied you stole 'em," Morphew growled—"I'm satisfied you planted 'em on Mally for fear they'd be found on you."
"But why?" Lanyard argued as one perplexed but reasonable. "Have you never been mistaken in reading the hearts of those whom you employ? Remember what you must have known about Mallison before you reckoned him skillful and unscrupulous enough to be of use to you. Was it altogether wise, do you think, to trust such a one to resist the temptation to keep for himself the plunder you had set him to steal and bestow on me for my undoing? Was it wise to forget the least miscarriage of the scheme would leave you unable to prove your tool had been false to your trust? Was it wise to believe Mallison too dense to think of that for himself? How can you be sure he didn't put the jewels into his own pocket instead of into mine?"
"See here—!" Morphew stammered, equanimity at last shattered beyond dissembling.
"Ah! but there I have you," Lanyard chuckled. "There I touched the heel of Achilles—eh, monsieur?—your vulnerable spot! The truth is, you dare trust nobody; you don't know that Mallison didn't play you false, any more than you know now he won't, when the pinch comes, turn State's evidence and betray you to save himself."
"Get out of my way!" Morphew bit through his cigar and cast it from him with a violent hand. "I've had enough of this, I've stood for about all of your damned nonsense—"
"By all means, monsieur"—Lanyard politely stood clear of the door—"hasten to the police station and put the fear of God into the heart of this poor thing whom you were ass enough to trust. You haven't a minute to lose if you hope to succeed in stopping the mouths of those four whom the police are even now, doubtless, putting through the third degree—"
"Four?" Morphew checked short in ponderous dismay, his heavy head low between his shoulders and swaying like that of a tormented animal. "Four!"
"Bless my soul! did I forget to tell you? How unpardonably stupid of me. The lady so lost to shame that she openly accuses herself of being Mrs. Mallison, the enterprising Mr. Howlin, and his associate Mr. Regan—all stepped with Mallison into the trap you'd set for Mrs. McFee, for purposes of blackmail, and sprung it on themselves. If you doubt my word, you'll find them all at the East Fifty-first Street Police Station."
"If that's true," Morphew rumbled, barely articulate—"if I owe that to you, Lanyard—"
"It is—you do."
"You'll settle with me, you crook—if you hide at the ends of the earth, I'll find you and break you—"
"Ah! thanks, my good Morphew, many thanks!" Lanyard laughed in high delight. "How generously you play into my hands. You confess you employed Pagan to drug me and Mallison to commit a burglary in an attempt to fasten the crime on me—you own your complicity in an even fouler job of blackmail 'framed,' as you would say, for Mrs. McFee—and now you add the cap-stone!"
Lanyard checked, then called: "Are you there, Mrs. McFee?"
The portieres parted that closed the doorway to the drawing-room, Folly entered and halted, her slight figure now decorously clothed but drawn up to the full of its inches and from the crown of the dainty head to the tips of silken slippers tense with contempt from whose fire, ablaze in her eyes, Morphew had the grace to flinch.
"And now, before this witness," Lanyard pursued, "you add a threat against my life. It's more than I hoped for, Morphew, all I need to insure me a sound night's sleep. If I don't wake up from it unharmed, Mrs. McFee will know what to do. Must you go? Soames, no doubt, is waiting to show you out. But if you'd rather I gave you a lift with my foot—"
Morphew gave an incoherent bellow, lunged blindly to the door, threw it open and himself through to the hall. The very floor of the house quaked with the pounding of his feet as he stampeded for open air. The street door banged like thunder while Lanyard stood laughing into Folly's eyes.
XII
But Lanyard was one who had learned how to laugh without losing sight of graver matters; the surface of his mood alone chimed with Folly's delight in the confusion he had meted out to Morphew, his thoughts were all a-ferment with perception of the worth of every instant lost to his first duty, which was straightway to put himself beyond the range of Morphew's exacerbated spite.
Yet he was hardly so engrossed with the more serious as to be blind to his closer peril, the glow that warmed Folly's countenance for him beneath the bright ripples of her glee; and in its unmistakable kindness read but one more reason why he must let nothing stand in the way of his prompt going.
The thought took him quickly to the table; he was lifting a hand to the switch of the lamp when Folly caught his arm, her two hands staying him with a gesture as gentle and importunate as the clasp of tendrils.
"You're wonderful!" she declared in a breath, looking up with eyes from which mirth had been swift to ebb—"marvellous, the way you managed him, twisted him round your little finger, made him own up to everything! And I'd always considered Morphy a sort of superman, so wise and calm and strong."
"Never reproach yourself with that," Lanyard replied with a twinkle. "I too was taken in, till he made it worth my while to call his bluff. But we mustn't forget all men are much alike: only so long as he fails to find a way to call mine will Morphew respect me. My one hope is to keep him at a distance—how do you say, over here?—to keep him guessing."
But the young woman wasn't so cheaply to be cheated out of her new-found luxury of hero-worship, the bright head dissented vigorously. "Why, Morphy hasn't a chance! you're equal to a dozen of him any day—and as many more Mallisons and Peter Pagans thrown in for good measure. Don't I know? Haven't you proved it here tonight?"
"The night is still young," Lanyard gravely reminded her. "It may tell another tale, if Morphew's crew can contrive to lay hands on me before morning."
"After he'd threatened you in front of me? Nonsense: he simply wouldn't dare—just as you told him."
"My bluff. Not that I mean to give him any opportunity to prove it such. But I shall need to move quickly, none the less . . ."
The hint he gave of a desire to be free of her hands got little encouragement, indeed their hold tightened while she mocked his professions with looks of disturbing admiration and derisive lips: "You're not afraid!"
"But I assure you I am profoundly afraid. I don't say Morphew would be flattered, but I fancy he'd feel far less a fool if he knew how thoroughly I am afraid of him. For we may be sure of one thing: in the event of my becoming an early victim of some curious accident, Morphew's hand will never show. He's not the thundering scoundrel I thought him, but he's far too clever notwithstanding to order a misfortune for me that could possibly be traced to his management. So you see—with permission—I really must be going."
"But where, to be safe—?"
Lanyard's expression took on another shade of patience. "Time enough to think about that after I've called at my rooms to collect some belongings."
"But"—Folly held fast to his arm, with a little frown of solicitude to excuse her persistence—"if you feel so sure Morphew means mischief—"
"Do you need more proof than you've had tonight?"
"Then surely he'll have set somebody to watch the house already—"
"The front of it, yes. Precisely why I'm anxious to get away before he can set spies to guard the rear. If you have no objection, I shall leave by these windows after putting out the lamp."
"But why?" Folly adorably pouted. "You're safe enough here."
"Madame will forgive if I make so bold as to question that." She let fall her lovely lashes to deny Lanyard's meaning smile, but still held on. "And every minute I linger makes the danger outside more real."
"Then . . . don't leave at all . . ."
"Madame is generous to a fault. She forgets the world is never broad-minded. There are the servants to be considered, the neighbours—"
"A lot I care what people think, it's you I'm thinking of!"
Suffused with facile sentiment, the face at Lanyard's shoulder was that of an exquisite and ingenuous child, vibrant with glad recognition of a world whose wonder and beauty had till that moment been all unsuspected. And the worst of it was, she knew it . . . No: the real worst of it was that it wasn't art, it wasn't put on, she wasn't coquetting, actually she was stirred to the depths of her being and meant with all of her every lovely nuance of her looks. Even Lanyard knew an instant when nothing in life seemed more desirous than those lambent eyes and the yielding mouth whose lips trembled with her hastened breathing. . . .
But an instant only; in another he got himself in hand again and steeled his heart to cruel kindness. It went against nature to hurt her; but the hurt would not bite deep, its tonic pang would leave no scar. Not for the first time did life now give him proof of the readiness of a nature emotionally shallow and impressionable to succumb to the glamour of his ill-fame as a romantic rogue.
"Madame," said he with genuine reluctance, "would be so much wiser to think first of herself always."
She argued with a rebellious face: "But I can't help it—can I?—if it's you I must think of first."
"Nor can I help it," he gently said, "if I must always think first of another."
Folly caught her breath with a sharp little hiss, released Lanyard's arm and stood away, colouring but—strangely enough—not in anger.
"Oh!" she cried; and added with a half-smile of whimsical self-reproach—"I'd forgotten. So it's true, what Liane told me." She accepted a slow inclination of Lanyard's head, gave a small wistful sigh. "I suppose she must be very beautiful. . . . Won't you tell me what she is like?"
"Some day, perhaps," Lanyard vaguely agreed . . . "If you let me live to see another."
"I!"
"There's practically no danger if I may be permitted to say good night without more delay."
"I presume you must . . ." Folly wagged her head, with a smile that broke in ruefulness but radiated in unaffected amusement at her own expense. "What a silly you must think me, a sentimental little ninny! No: don't deny it, because you're quite right. So that's that—and what must be, must. Many thanks for my emeralds, Monsieur the Lone Wolf, and"—she dropped him a mischievous courtesy—"more for my lesson. And so—good bye!"
He waited with intention till, in a gesture of charming petulance, a hand fluttered into his.
"Good night, my dear," Folly tenderly murmured as he bent his lips to her hand—"good bye!"
Straightening up, Lanyard turned off the light.
XIII
Some time after four o'clock the brougham, curbed overlong to pace sedately the interlacing mazes of the Bronx, gave a little start and shudder of pleasure to find itself at last heading into open country, with a soft deep purr crescendo flirted the dust of White Plains from its tyres and sped away, ventre-à-terre, upon the highway which, skirting the eastern shores of the Kensico Reservoir, wanders with such a luring random air the lake country of Westchester.
That day, true to the type of those that render Autumn in the Northern states the fairest season of the four, had been luminous of sky and languorous with reminiscent warmth. But now—as in a field of pastel tinting ineffably pellucid its sun dipped low to hills whose shadows like vast purple wraiths crept sluggishly across the valleys and their embayed waters, small lakes as still and bright and bleakly blue as plaques of polished steel——now as the dim haze of Indian Summer took on shades of lavender ever deeper and more tender, blotted up all distances and robbed the wooded hillsides of their flaming splendour—premonitions of evening chill lent tang to air aromatic with incense of dead leaves a-smoulder in uncounted pyres.
Lanyard leaned forward and offered to put up the windows at the chauffeur's back, but Eve de Montalais gave a slight sign of dissent. "I like it better so, I love this air—if it's not too cold for you, my Michael."
He smiled a negative, and taking the rug from its rail made her snug in it. She lifted her eyes to his in lovely acknowledgement and, emboldened by the closing dusk and the loneliness of that little-travelled way, nestled nearer, cheek to his shoulder.
Thus, pensive with the gentle melancholy distilled by that hour of dying beauty, symbolic of the cruel haste with which all beauty passes, the lovers sat a while in silence; as, for that matter, they had, barring a few brief interludes of gossip upon indifferent topics, ever since leaving New York; not that either had too little to say . . .
"Michael: tell me you are happy."
He had to bend his head to hear that whisper, her lips brushed his cheek with a caress so fugitive and light they might have been a moth's fluttering wings.
"Never so happy, Eve."
"Tell me it shall be always so with us. Surely we can make it so . . ."
For all answer she had the tightened pressure of his arm; and, a little chilled with disappointment, she said no more till, after several minutes, Lanyard was moved to wonder aloud: "This country is all strange to my eyes. Where are you taking me?"
"To a far-away place I hope you'll like."
"How should I not, seeing it is your choice?"
"A little old inn, Michael, tucked away in the loneliest hills. We can be quiet there, and talk."
"Talk?" Lanyard made a sad stab at humour, hoping thereby to divert her. "Is it kind to encourage my besetting vice?"
"I think," Eve answered, "you have something to tell me tonight."
"But you know it already," he parried poorly in his disquietude—"I think you have heard too often what I have to tell you."
As if he hadn't spoken, as if involuntarily giving her heart voice, in a tone curiously dispassionate yet determined Eve replied: "We must not part."
Again he dared not trust his tongue . . .
The afterglow, pulsing through a hundred changes, faded, fainted, and contracted, till a long, clear pool of emeraude alone defined the foot of the sky, the profile of those hills within whose pleats night hung already close and breathless. Through its dark, across gulfs unguessable, lost lights winked, beaconing unknown heights. And the spreading surfaces of still water on every hand, so thickly shadowed as to be more felt than seen, grew wan by degrees with shine of stars.
Smartly tooled, with the sureness of a swallow's flight the car pursued its fan of yellow light over the intricate meander of the road, its windings, dips and soarings, while ever and again a bend ahead or the summit of some sharp ascent would take sudden shape in a sheen of spectral blue, heralding the advent of twin minor moons which, bearing down upon the brougham with a startling show of destructive mania, would pass harmlessly in a roaring rush; or some fleeting eye, crimson with anger, would be raised and over-hauled and swept astern, metamorphosed into headlights of blank glare rocking in feebly furious emulation of that headlong pace.
The buffeting air grew cooler and yet more cold; but neither the man nor the woman minded. His love warm in his arms, Lanyard was trying to live for the moment only, to be oblivious of yesterday and reckless of tomorrow. He failed, of course: impossible for one who loved so well to be deaf to the murmurings of his heart against that resolution which, shaped by his soberest judgment, firmed by his will, bade him put love away tonight forevermore, lest harm befall her in whom love had its source and whole existence. This evening together must be the last: so he was fixed in his intention. But how tell Eve, how make her understand, win her consent and concurrence? . . .
"Why do you look behind so often, Michael?"
"A bad old habit," Lanyard lightly lied, cursing his stupidity for having let her remark that symptom of a mind perturbed—"a souvenir of bad old days. Jungle folk, they say, never are wholly reclaimed from jungle ways; the instincts of the chase are always cropping up in our least considered action, we are forever conceiving ourselves, as of old, hunter, and hunted in the same skin."
"My poor Michael!" The woman indulgently laughed. "Does he imagine he is deceiving somebody?"
"But do you not forget"—he snatched at this straw—"that there are motor-cycle police abroad, even on these back-country roads? Naturally one keeps an eye out for them . . ."
For all that Eve had again contrived to put him out of countenance, there had been colour of truth in his equivocation that had failed: Lanyard's restless vigilance was more instinctive than excited by any indication either that the car was being trailed or that the riddle of his whereabouts was one of any present interest to those whose malevolence he had sound reason to beware of. Since the previous night nothing had happened to show that Morphew had succeeded in having the devious way traced which Lanyard had taken en route from Folly's residence to his own lodgings and then on to the modest hotel which ultimately had provided him with a bed, or to contradict the inference that Morphew had decided to profit by his lesson in humility and count it cheap at its cost. . . . Than which last Lanyard could not readily imagine any hope more infatuate: Life had taught him too well to know the temper of the Morphew breed.
It was true, however, that he had been at some pains all day to keep himself rather thoroughly insulated against news from Morphew's side. The story of the recovered emeralds had "broken" too late for the morning papers; and although Crane beyond much doubt could have supplied helpful information, Lanyard had been studious to remain lost to that one, too, entertaining as he did not the remotest wish to be haled into court as a witness against Mallison.
Not that conscience reproached for the ruse which had brought about the arrest of the dancing man as the thief of night before last. Even though Mallison might in point of simple fact be innocent of that crime, the severest sentence to which he was liable, if convicted, would be mild punishment for the part he had played in the conspiracy to blackmail Folly McFee; Lanyard cheerfully would have lied the man into a life term in requital for that alone, and with as much confidence would have looked to find the perjury recorded to his credit in the Judgment Book on the Day of the Last Accounting.
But if by any chance Mallison should manage to set up a convincing alibi, or even to leave his guilt or innocence an open question in Lanyard's mind, the doubt would find fresh force that would not down, new plausibility would clothe the fear that the Lone Wolf might have usurped dominion over the body and soul from which the mind of Michael Lanyard temporarily had been dispossessed, long enough to commit them anew to ancient ways of knavery.
In this respect at least Lanyard was constrained to own himself a moral coward: he shrank from any test that might result in proving him, though all unwittingly, apostate to the regeneration upon which Eve's faith in him was established; he held it torture intolerable to think that he might, in the last assay, be found wanting in the one condition that gave him a shadow of claim upon her consideration.
And with these thoughts a memory of later garnering lurked in the background of his reverie, a presence terrible and importunate . . . like a shape of horror stalking at the shoulder of one who treads the echoing emptiness of a house called haunted . . .
Opportunely that spectre was for the time being banished by Eve's announcement: "We are nearly there."
Its pace growing momentarily more moderate, the car approached the mouth of a by-way where a roadside sign seared the night with letters of fire: INN OF THE GREEN WOODS. Wheeling headlights raked aisles of pines through which the road serpentined at a sharp grade upward, leading the brougham out at last into a hilltop clearing where a rambling structure sat, of undressed logs, with deep verandas and windows of ingratiating warmth. To one side a few cars of earlier arrivals were parked. Indoors an atmosphere neither too rude nor too sybaritic made good Eve's recommendation, a discriminating taste had imposed the refinements of today upon yesterday's primitive accommodations. A great fireplace of field-stone nursed a blaze of logs grateful to flesh nipped by the night air. Tables dressed in good taste and not closely ranked gained an additional effect of privacy through low fences of rustic work setting them apart. Of these a number were in use when Eve de Montalais and Lanyard were conducted to one which waited in a corner, ready laid for them.