"Perhaps it would be more nearly right to call it a problem in psychology."
"I am all attention."
"It's like this . . ." Morphew had resumed his customary guise of profound solemnity. "What I want your expert opinion on, Mr. Lanyard, is the question of whether it's possible for a man . . . say he's a friend I'm taking a personal interest in . . . a man who built up a pretty warm criminal reputation for himself, when he was younger, and then hit the sawdust trail apparently for keeps . . . Whether it's possible for such a man to keep going straight in the face of every possible incentive to set up shop again as a master crook."
"Such incentives as——?" Lanyard enquired with every symptom of intelligent interest in a hypothetical instance.
"Well! let's suppose this man I've got in mind, this friend of mine, has fallen for a woman who's got everything, social position, any amount of coin, all that sort of thing. Say she's in love with him, too, and they want to get married. But my friend is broke, or next thing to it; and he's got a touchy sense of honour—sometimes reformed crooks have, you know—so he can't marry the woman, because that would make him look like a fortune-hunter if she ever found out he hadn't a red cent; and he can't let on to her he's stoney, because then she'd insist on marrying him to support him, and he'd feel like a yellow pup; and he can't do a quiet fade-out, either, because then she'd think he hadn't been on the level with her, and that would break her heart. That leaves him where? He's got to have coin to go on with, and the only way to get it is for him to remember some of the things he's been trying to forget. He's living in a city where there's more money and loot lying round loose to be picked up for the taking than any place else in the world, and where police protection against burglary and highway robbery is a positive joke, where a good fat safe is cracked or a hold-up pulled off every other day, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred the crook's never caught. So you see our friend has just what I said he had, every temptation to come back strong in the housebreaking line, and practically nothing to fear—except maybe that the woman he's crazy about will tumble sometime to how he's getting his dough. And that's the problem that's been puzzling me, Mr. Lanyard: What's our friend going to do? . . . What wouldyoudo?"
Lanyard thoughtfully ground out the fire of his cigarette in an ash-tray and got up. "I imagine," he said quietly, "your anonymous friend would do precisely what I mean to do, Mr. Morphew. He would gee well weary of tedious beating about the bush, but at the same time would remind himself that the obligations which devolve upon a guest constrain him to overlook, for the present, a piece of damnable impertinence. He would for that reason take his hat and coat and stick—as you see me taking mine—and finally his departure—as I shall take mine, monsieur, pausing only to advise you . . ."
Lanyard stood over Morphew, plunging a stare ugly with anger into the apathetic and unreadable eyes of his host. "At the first sign, Mr. Morphew," he said, "of any disposition on your part to meddle further in my affairs, either in person or through an agent, I will seek you out, wherever you may try to hide, and break this stick, or a stouter one, over your contemptible back. Be advised: hands off!"
He waited an instant to hear what Morphew might have to say to this defiance; but since the man said nothing, made no sign of any sort, his huge body betrayed his mind by not so much as the stir of a finger or the wince of an eye, Lanyard at length wheeled on a heel and went to the door. Only then, as his hand closed on the knob, Morphew spoke, employing the same conversational tone he had all along employed.
"One moment, Mr. Lanyard. It may interest you to know I own this joint. When I got up to shut that door a while ago, I gave Theodore the high-sign. Ever since then four of our waiters, the toughest rough-necks on the payroll, have been stationed in the hall. If you try to leave without my say so, you'll be badly beaten up; and if you try any rough stuff in here, my finger's on the push-button that will call them in . . . I am not done talking with you yet, my friend. So now, if you'll attend to me and keep your temper in hand, I'll show you just where you stand."
He rested, watching Lanyard with no perceptible emotion in his bleak, pale eyes; and when, after momentary consideration, Lanyard turned back from the door, the man resumed with the same minatory composure, leaning forward with an arm on the table and rapping out his points with a thick forefinger.
"Whether you've gone back to thieving or not, Lanyard, I don't know yet. I guess you have. If you haven't, you've thought of doing so. Whether or not, you've got to come to me. I've got you"—Morphew turned his hand palm up and closed the fingers slowly into a tremendous fist—"there! You can marry your Mrs. de Montalais as soon as you like, but only with my consent; and you won't get that for nothing. If you're back at your old game, you'll come across to me, fifty-fifty. If you marry the woman for her money, my share will be half of all you squeeze out of her."
"And"—Lanyard's fingers were itching to bury themselves in that fat throat and shake the beast till he cried for mercy—"and if I refuse?"
"I'll advertise you to all New York—or anywhere else you try to live with your wife—as the Lone Wolf back at his old dodges. I'll prove you committed every burglary of any size this Town has known in the last three months; and if that isn't enough, I'll plant others on you. You'll come across to me, my dear sir, or go up the River for life."
"Such being the case," said Lanyard, shortening his grip on his stick, "I think I would as willingly go up for manslaughter—if killing a blackmailer comes under that head."
As he spoke the door was thrown open, a vast din of angry and excited voices seethed up from below, and Theodore appeared on the threshold, chattering, wringing his talons in antic terror.
"Monsieur!" he stuttered between clashing teeth—"Monsieur Morphew! The police! A raid! A raid!"
With an incoherent bellow of rage and astonishment Morphew reared up out of his chair, over-turning it. But that was all: instantaneously something like a paralysis of consternation laid hold of him, so that he stood with huge hands fluttering feebly and knees quaking under his great weight, the light dimming behind the bleached flesh of his face, jaw sagging, stunned eyes seeking the doorway.
Through this last, a froth of noise upon the uproar from below, came sounds of scuffling and voices angry and expostulant. In the corridor a confused movement became visible, a knot of figures fell apart, Liane Delorme broke through and, ghastly with pallor beneath her war-paint, strode breathlessly into the room, one strong sweep of a perfectly modelled arm brushing aside the gibbering Theodore.
Mallison followed her closely, like a fearful child tagging at its mother's skirts, with the slinking tread and something of the witless look of a cowed animal peering through the sleek surface of his comeliness. And that this look little belied his state of mind was shown by the nervous shy he gave when Lanyard, satisfied there was nothing to be gained by more delay, made for the door.
The corridor was choked with people, flustered waiters mixed in with guests whom the alarm had routed out of the other private rooms, all aimlessly milling about and questioning one another with vacant eyes and babbling tongues. Nobody offered to stay Lanyard, on the other hand nobody offered to get out of his way. Pagan passed him, plying busy elbows, his habitual leer erased. Of Mrs. McFee one saw nothing.
Half-way to the head of the staircase Lanyard found the jam on the narrow landing too dense to be penetrated other than by main strength and ill will; and, crowded against the banisters, waited for some general movement that might permit him to proceed.
Looking down over the handrail, he commanded a view of the first landing, the stage of a more lively scene, as guests and employees stampeding for the stairs were checked, hustled, and bullyragged by a squad of police, readily to be picked out by their flat-topped blue caps, and by a number of plain-clothes men, quite as conspicuously badged by those weather-worn derbies lacking which self-respecting police detectives consider themselves no sportsmen in their attitude toward lawbreakers.
Hectoring cries of authority, plain profanity of an unimaginative citizenry, and yammering of hysterical women manufactured a clamour that drowned out all lesser noises till somebody near Lanyard used stentorian lungs to suggest the roof as a possible way of escape; upon which advice the whole body of people surged toward the third flight of stairs.
In that moment, while clinging to the banister-rail to keep from being swept along, Lanyard heard his name shrilled in a pathetic voice, and saw Mrs. McFee struggling in the rush, the violet eyes darkly dilate with dismay, the mouth of a child tremulous with appeal. Immediately he threw himself toward her. Tripped and jostled till her strength began to fail, his arms alone saved the young woman from going down under those panic feet. Then putting his shoulders to the press, he dragged her out of the worst of it and into the semi-shelter of a jog in the wall, in front of which he planted himself as a shield.
"Now we're all right," he cheerfully said. "Take it easy, and don't worry."
"But I can't help worrying!" the small person objected, clutching the lapels of his dress coat with importunate hands. "How can I, if I'm going to be arrested and put in jail and brought up in a police court with all these awful people? The shame of it! the disgrace!"
"If you'll trust to me," Lanyard suggested, "I think I can promise you none of those calamities will happen."
"But how can you——?"
"I'm sure I know a way . . ."
As he spoke, with no warning whatsoever the house from cellar to roof was drenched with darkness absolute.
This thing befell with fine dramatic force. Where there had been deafening hubbub and confusion to confound the readiest, a lull of a long moment succeeded, during which every voice was hushed and nobody stirred. In this breathing-spell Lanyard found time to surmise what had happened: that some creature of Morphew's, acting possibly on inspiration but more probably in conformance with a plan preconcerted against such emergency, had disconnected the master-switch of the electric lighting system. . . . But Folly McFee whimpered in new fright and caught him closer to her; and in another breath the turmoil revived in redoubled volume.
Lanyard lifted his hands to the woman's and gently disengaged them.
"There, Mrs. McFee! don't be alarmed. They've simply shut off the lights to give the people the police are after a chance to escape. If you will calm yourself and have a bit of faith in me, I'll get you out of this in a jiffy, and no harm done."
"But my wrap! I can't go without my wrap, I'd catch my death! And my handbag, too—I left it on the table——!"
"I'll find them for you; it won't delay us a minute."
Lanyard swept the darkness roundabout with an extended hand, which encountered nothing; then, satisfied that the landing was now practically deserted, drew the woman out of her corner and coolly wound an arm round her.
"I'll be better able to avoid losing you, this way," he explained. "Hope you don't mind."
"No-o," said the small voice—"I think—I believe I rather like it."
For all that unmitigated mirk Lanyard experienced no difficulty in finding the way back to the right door.
"Hello?" he called, pausing on its threshold. "I've got Mrs. McFee here, safe and sound. Somebody make a light: I noticed candles on the mantelpiece . . ."
Nothing answered him. But this he had discounted. Releasing the woman and bidding her stop where she was, he struck a match whose flare revealed a room deserted.
Folly McFee gave a gasp of astonishment: "Where are they?"
"In sound American slanguage," Lanyard replied, crossing to the fireplace and applying the flame to the wicks of moulded and tinted candles which decorated its mantel—"our friends have flown the coop. You see, Morphew just now told me he is the proprietor of these premises; so I'm inclined to suspect the lights were put out to permit him to make a clean getaway. . . . But here's your wrap." He draped the sable robe round the woman's shoulders. "And your bag," he added, finding the same where Folly had left it.
"But I don't understand," she protested, lifting a bewildered small face to the light.
"I never imagined you, would, Mrs. McFee," Lanyard laughed, catching up one of the candlesticks and turning to the door. "If you had understood, I fancy, you would never have come here tonight—or any night—that is, unless it's a fad of yours to live up to your nickname. . . ."
The words failed on his lips as he pulled up, finding the door blocked by a long, lanky shape of humanity that lounged with one lazy shoulder against the frame; the derby of tradition on the back of his head, hands buried in the pockets of an unbuttoned overcoat—one of them, Lanyard hadn't any doubt whatever, holding an automatic pistol ready.
"The devil!" he involuntarily exclaimed.
"Devil yourself, Monseer Lanyard," a nasal drawl retorted. "Funny! I was thinking only a day or so ago, it was about time for you and me to be bumping into each other again. And now, lo and behold you!"
"It can't be!" Lanyard incredulously cried, stepping nearer and holding his candle high.
"Wrong again: it can," drawled the humorous voice—"it is!"
Candlelight ruddled the lineaments of a North American Indian in the skin of a paleface: narrowed eyes beneath a lofty brow, a thin nose with a prominent bridge, lantern jaws and high cheek-bones, a wide slit of a firm-lipped mouth.
"Crane!" Lanyard cried in unfeigned pleasure.
"Never forget anything, do you?" Mr. Crane complained in mock bitterness. "Here I was counting on being able to put something over on you, because you hadn't seen me for five or six years—Nineteen-Seventeen, wasn't it?—and you'd ought've forgotten my map entirely . . . Swell chance!"
He surrendered to Lanyard's friendly grasp a bony hand of tremendous strength. "Well!" he groused on: "I guess here's where I miss another opportunity to put you out of harm's way—in the hoosegow—because you wouldn't be so gosh-awful glad to see me if you'd been doing anything real naughty."
"My dear man!" Lanyard informed him: "if every American detective discovered even a tenth of your deductive intelligence, New York's crime wave wouldn't be a ripple. . . . That aside, I'm more glad to see you than I can tell."
"I bet you are," Crane assented with ironic intent. "And I'll risk another safe bet, too: The sooner you see the last of me for tonight, the gladder you'll be."
"Why waste time trying to deceive you? I don't deny it."
"Then I reckon it'll make you and your lady happy if I fix it up pronto for you to get away without being mugged and finger-printed and all? Well: I'm a sworn servant of the law, and by all accounts you're a desperate bad lot; but come along . . . Only you got to promise you won't tell on me."
Crane sighed and straightened up, only to have Lanyard drop a detaining hand on his arm.
"A moment, my friend, by your leave. My personal gratitude I hope to prove when you are less occupied. But Mrs. McFee, too, would like to thank you. . . . Permit me, Mrs. McFee: Mr. Crane . . ."
"Mrs. Folliott McFee?" Crane quickly queried, with a glint of interest, and engulfed in his grasp her absurdly insignificant hand. "How do you do, ma'm? Pleased to meet you."
"It's awfully sweet of you," Folly replied with trusting eyes and that hint—no more—of an infantile lisp which she had found so serviceable in dealing with certain types of men. "I'm sure I'd be frightened silly if it wasn't for you and Mr. Lanyard."
"Nothing for you to be scared about," Crane reassured her. "It's the outfit runs this joint we're after tonight, not the general public, that great body"—his tone took on the authentic twang of a public orator—"of simple-minded, plain-living, law-deriding hooch hounds that forms the sturdy backbone of this glorious nation. . . . Listen to 'em yap!" He grinned broadly, cocking an appreciative ear to the racket. "No, ma'm: even if you and Monseer Lanyard hadn't run into me, the worst that could happen to you would be to have your names and addresses taken, so's you could be called as witnesses in case we caught somebody. Which," Crane added with conviction, "I don't much think we will, not tonight, not since they put the lights out on us. That's a brand new dodge, and a hot one. After this gets out, I reckon we'll have to carry our own lighting-plant along with us for night work, like in the movies."
He was piloting Mrs. McFee down the corridor while thus discoursing, in the wake of Lanyard's candle. Now, at the head of the stairs, he nodded to a patrolman stationed there, and the three were permitted to descend.
The raiding party had by this time found other candles and brought a few electric torches into play, by whose meagre illumination the business of winnowing out the goats from the sheep was proceeding in the rooms which had been reserved for dancing. But of this Lanyard and Folly McFee caught only the barest of glimpses in passing; for Crane, obviously in haste to discharge his friendly duty and be rid of them, passed them with all possible expedition through the house. At the front door he nevertheless held them for a moment.
"There's more or less a mob outside," he stated; "but I guess you won't have much trouble finding a taxi. That is, unless Mrs. McFee came in her own car . . ." But it transpired that Folly hadn't. "Then I guess it's good night folks! Only, I'd like one word with you first, Lanyard, if Mrs. McFee won't mind . . ."
Drawing Lanyard aside, Crane dropped his voice: "Still with the B. S. S.? Doing anything special over here?"
"No: in fact, nothing. On leave of absence."
"I see. Where you stopping?" Crane noted the street number on the back of an envelope. "I'll look you up as soon's I get time. Like to have a chin about this and that."
"Do, my friend; and don't delay too long."
Passed by Crane through the police lines but pursued by jeers and cat-calls of the crowd which had collected, Lanyard and Folly hurried round the corner into Sixth avenue, and there by good fortune picked up a cab almost at once. This they would hardly have needed but for the drizzle, which had set in again: Folly McFee, it appeared, lived in the lower Fifties, just east of Park avenue. Learning which, Lanyard hushed a sigh of content: the shorter the drive, the better. This latter part of his evening had exhilarated him not at all; and though the woman at his side was charming enough in her way, nothing would please him more than to see the last of her and be free to trot home to his dreams of Eve. In fact, he found himself surprisingly sleepy, considering the hour, which, according to a street clock on Fifth Avenue, still lacked a few minutes of two: so swift had been the transaction of events since his meeting with Liane Delorme.
A plaintive sigh from the other corner of the seat recalled him.
"You are tired, madame?" he enquired of the small figure huddled in that magnificent panoply of fur.
Passing lights fitfully revealed a petulant face to match Folly's tone: "More disgusted than tired. I'm so awfully grateful, and you've been such a perfect brick to me, Mr. Lanyard, it makes me sick to have you think me a little fool."
"But I assure you, I do not think anything of the sort."
"You forget what you said, back there in the Clique Club, about it's being a fad of mine to live up to my name."
"That would be unforgiveable were it open to the construction you put on it, madame. What I said was——"
"I know perfectly well what you said, at least what you meant: that I ought to have known better than to be there at all. But I don't see why."
"I should like very much to tell you, if I might without seeming to presume . . ."
"But I want you to tell me, Mr. Lanyard; I don't want to do things that make people think it's a fad of mine—"
"Surely you will be generous enough to forget those stupid words. Otherwise I shall never forgive myself."
"I will . . . on one condition." A suggestion of the impish spirit of an hour ago revived in Folly's smile. "And that is, that you explain what you meant—right away."
"But it is so late, madame; and already we are arrived."
The cab was in fact halting in front of one of those interesting bijou residences into which modern architectural ingenuity has, in the more fashionable quarters of New York, remodelled so many of the brownstone and brick abominations of decades dead and gone.
"Late?" Folly McFee expostulated, dilating eyes of naïve perplexity. "Why, it's only two—the shank of the evening! Plenty of time to come in and have a drink and a cigarette and tell me how to save myself from the pitfalls of life in a great city."
And Lanyard, helping the woman to alight, with a bow and a smile covered yet another sigh of sentimental desolation. There was no refusal possible without rudeness . . .
By the time he had paid off the taxi Folly had used a latch-key, and was unfastening the throat of her wrap in the little entrance-hall.
"Do leave your coat and hat here, Mr. Lanyard—and make believe you're not bored to tears with the prospect of spending half an hour alone with a pretty woman who thinks you're rather nice."
"You do me injustice," he gravely returned. "This pensive silence you misconstrue is solely due to wonder what your family will think . . ."
"The Saints be praised!" cried Folly McFee, rolling up devout eyes—"I haven't a suspicion of family, more than a maiden aunt who insists on living with me for the looks of the thing. But if it's information you're fishing for, it's only fair to tell you I'm a lone, lorn widdy woman, and have been for years. So you needn't be hoping for a jealous husband to pop in unexpectedly and save you from my wiles."
She danced to the back of the hall, a bewitching smile bidding him follow.
The room was a study and lounge in which easy chairs faced the embers of an open fire and windows heavily draped contributed to a cosy and informal atmosphere.
Here, measurably less bored than he thought he ought to be, Lanyard accepted a cigarette and a highball compounded with such Scotch as he had not tasted since leaving England, and made himself comfortable on one side of the fireplace while on the other Folly curled herself up in an interesting pose with feet beneath her.
"And now," she announced with a speciously demure look—"I'm waiting to be told why I'm aptly nicknamed."
Smiling, Lanyard put his glass aside. "Perhaps one reason is because you recklessly invite into your house at ungodly hours a man about whom you know nothing whatever."
"I know enough from the way you've behaved tonight. Besides, anything I want to know about you I can find out from Liane any time I care to ask." Folly made a provoking face. "You'll have to do better than that!"
Lanyard shrugged. "I see there's no fobbing you off . . . Is it permitted to be plain-spoken?"
"Please. Even if it hurts, I'm sure I'll find it refreshing . . ." With malice Folly amended: "coming from a man." She pursued with all the solemnity of a sagacious infant: "You know, Mr. Lanyard, it's all tosh, this effort you men are forever making to persuade the world you're the straight-forward sex. Maybe you are among yourselves, but with women—!"
Her eyes called Heaven to witness to the subtlety of masculine methods with women.
"I agree entirely, madame. But do you claim more for your own sex?"
"Oh! there's never any doubt about a woman's mind. She may not always say what she means, sometimes she doesn't just know how, but one always knows what she means."
"One always knows she means business . . ."
"Precisely." Folly giggled joyously. "You know, Mr. Lanyard, you're too delightful. I'm afraid you're a dangerous man."
Lanyard bowed his appreciation of this flattery. "You begin to believe, perhaps, you may have been a trifle injudicious in asking me in . . ."
The young woman agitated a dissentient head till its bobbed brassy tresses fluffed out like an aureole.
"Not the least bit!" she declared. "You could be dangerous and not half try; but so long as you persist in being a gentleman, why should I fear? Here am I using all my girlish arts to make you flirt—and all you can think of is how quickly you can read me the lecture I need and escape. Ain't that the truth?" She relished in elfin mischief Lanyard's momentary loss of countenance, then abruptly made a prim mouth, and sat with modest eyes downcast to folded hands. "Well!" she sighed: "go on . . ."
"No," Lanyard demurred; "I don't think I shall, if you don't mind. I begin to see my mistake: you can very well be trusted to take care of yourself."
"But if I insist? It isn't good manners to start something without finishing it."
"A man might better rush down a steep place into the sea than take a dare to advise any woman . . . But evidently I may as well resign myself to being thrown out instead of taking my leave in orderly fashion."
"Anything, so long as you get away some time soon!" Folly lisped, without looking up: "I understand you."
"To begin with, then: You are an extremely attractive young woman."
"Yes, I know. But is this part of the lecture? or have I at last succeeded in rousing you?"
But Lanyard wouldn't be diverted. "And apparently," he persisted, "too well supplied with money to know a real care."
"Simple sloughs of the wretched stuff," Folly frankly admitted.
"That sable coat you wore tonight can't have cost less than twenty thousand dollars."
"How little men know! It cost thirty."
"The jewels you're wearing would ransom a profiteer's wife—"
"Why not? I'm a profiteer's widow."
"Those emeralds alone must be worth a hundred thousand."
"You do know emeralds, don't you, Mr. Lanyard?"
"Altogether, taken as you stand, you'd probably assay a quarter of a million. Yet you complacently riot about town and without a moment's hesitation trust yourself in resorts like the Clique Club, rendezvous of the rarest set of rogues New York can boast—and your host its self-confessed proprietor!"
"Oh! everybody knows Morphy's the King of the Bootleggers; but nobody except Revenue officials considers a bootlegger a criminal nowadays."
"Possibly not. Still, I fancy, society is less kindly disposed toward professional blackmailers, notorious demi-mondaines, and jewel thieves of international ill-fame."
"Mr. Lanyard! you don't mean to say—" Folly McFee sat up and made shocked eyes.
"I am one whose lot it has been to see a vast deal of this world, madame. I give you my word I recognized representatives of all those classes at the Clique tonight."
The woman illustrated a little thrill of delicious dread. "Of course, as to blackmailers, I've nothing to fear—"
"Pardon: but can you be sure? In the absence of any fair excuse for bleeding their victims, blackmailers have been known to manufacture evidence. And it's always, with them, the open season for high-spirited young women of fortune with a taste for entertaining indiscretions."
The violet eyes widened and darkened. "Mr. Lanyard! you don't mean—you don't think—!"
"Tell me this, Mrs. McFee: How did you make the acquaintance of Mr. Morphew?"
"Why! through Madame Delorme—"
"And Liane?"
"Mally introduced us."
"And Mr. Mallison?"
"Oh! I don't know . . . I really don't remember where I met Mally. Somewhere at a dance. He's the perfectest dancer in Town."
"They are, as a rule."
"'They'?"
"Permit one more impertinent question: Does Mr. Mallison make love to you?"
"Why, of course! it's the only conversation he knows."
"And you encourage him?"
"Now it's no use your trying to make me believe Mally's a blackmailer. He hasn't got enough brains—or anything else."
"Perhaps not. But others have, with whom he herds. For example, Mr. Morphew."
"Morphy!" Folly laughed the notion to scorn—"the King of the Bootleggers makes too much money, he doesn't need to levy blackmail."
"It may be merely a hobby of his," Lanyard submitted reasonably; "or perhaps he's keeping his hand in order to have a good trade to fall back on if ever anything happens to upset the Eighteenth Amendment."
"You aren't serious, Mr. Lanyard?"
"Madame: Iknow."
"How can you?"
"Your American courts permit a witness to refuse to answer leading questions on the ground that his testimony might tend to incriminate or degrade."
"You mean Morphy's trying to blackmail you? What a wicked life you must have led!"
"I don't deny that; but rest assured, I admit it only to convince you I am not guessing. You will do well, believe me, madame, to avoid hereafter Mr. Morphew and all his crew."
"Mally and Peter Pagan and Liane Delorme? And they've been such fun! What's the matter with Liane?"
"Madame Delorme," Lanyard said slowly and with meaning, "I have known many years. Her friendship I value highly. I should be very sad to do anything to deserve her enmity."
"Youareprovoking!" Folly declared—"forever tantalizing one with hints. I presume you mean me to understand she's the notorious demi-mondaine you mentioned."
"Has Liane told you nothing about herself?"
"Oh heaps! but—"
"Then I beg you to excuse me from saying anything that might, possibly through my ignorance of the true facts, conflict with her confidences."
"Beast!" said Folly McFee with feeling, and made him a face of pique. "I suppose it's no use trying to pump you about that international jewel thief . . ."
"None whatever, madame."
"Of course, you mean the Lone Wolf."
"But why that one?"
"Peter Pagan was talking about him at the Ritz tonight, told us there was a rumour the Lone Wolf had convalesced from his reformation and was on the loose again, right here in New York."
"I have no doubt," Lanyard agreed with entire tranquillity, "there is such a rumour . . . And now that I have duly functioned in my paternal rôle, my dear young woman"—he rose—"now I have told you all I know—"
"Anybody that believes that—!"
"I fancy you will be relieved if I bid you good night."
"I think you're perfectly damn' horrid," said Folly McFee, rising and extending her hand. "First you spoil my evening, then you run away."
"You will forgive me one spoiled evening, I know, if anything I may have said preserves to you the beauty of your tomorrows."
"I won't forgive you for running away from me," the young woman promised darkly, holding fast to his hand and unleashing 80 c.-p. eyes to do their devastating work. "You can be rather a dear when you choose; but I don't think it's a bit fair of you to rob me of four friends and not replace them with one."
"But I trust very truly—" Lanyard began.
A peremptory buzz of the doorbell interrupted.
Folly McFee whipped her hand away with a jerk, her round eyes consulted Lanyard's, in that furtive tone which people seem instinctively to adopt in times of apprehension, irrespective of the possibility of being overheard, "What can that mean?" she demanded—"at this hour of morning! Who can it be?"
"One or more of our fancy friends, undoubtedly," Lanyard replied with comforting absence of agitation—"calling to enquire if you got safely home—with, I'll wager, some transparent excuse for having left you to shift for yourself during the raid."
"But," the woman boggled, with a frown, "I don't want to see them . . . And all the servants are in bed . . ."
"Then I'm afraid there's no way out of it." Lanyard moved toward the hall door as the bell sounded another and more imperative stridulation. "Let me—"
"No," Folly decided, darting ahead—"I'll let them in. But I do wish I didn't have to."
"Then remember," Lanyard enjoined: "better not give them any reason to suspect I have warned you . . ."
"I understand." She paused an instant, nodding back to him. "I'll do my best. But promise me one thing: you won't leave me alone with them."
He promised, a gay flirt of that fair head thanked him, Folly vanished. And in another moment Lanyard heard her give little cries of elation whose ring was as true as one could wish: "Liane! Peter! how sweet of you both!" And the listener gave a nod of thoughtful approbation.
The dry accents of Mr. Pagan replied: "I told Liane you were all right, but she wouldn't hear of going home without stopping to make sure . . ."
"Oh I'm all right, of course! Mr. Lanyard brought me home. Thanks to him we didn't have the least trouble. But do come in, both of you, and tell him howyougot out of it."
Liane was heard to consent, stipulating, however, that they would stop only a moment; and the three entered the study to find Lanyard at a wide window in the rear wall, thoughtfully peering out through its tear-blinded panes.
"Ah! ah! my friend," Liane saluted him in lively imitation of the tone she might have used to a child caught in mild mischief; and wagged a forefinger of reproof. "What are you up to there?"
"Trying to make out whether or not it's raining," Lanyard serenely explained, dropping the draperies his hands had parted.
"You might have waited to enquire of us."
"Judging by the state of mind you and Monsieur Pagan were betraying when I saw you last," Lanyard retorted, "it seemed fair to doubt whether you'd pay much attention to a drop or two of water." He comprehended Pagan in a lightly mocking bow. "You might tell us—we've been no end mystified—"
"I know," Mr. Pagan interrupted brightly. "You want the answer to that historical riddle: Where was Morphew when the lights went out?"
"Not where he was, monsieur, but where he went—and not alone—and with such amazing expedition."
"We didn't know what to think," Folly declared. "You vanished from that room like tumblers in a pantomime."
"It was very simple," Pagan glibly elucidated: "Everybody seemed to be making for the roof, so we followed the crowd."
"Presuming, of course," Liane amended, "you would, as well."
"You see," commented Lanyard, nodding to Folly, "how simply some things may be explained!" And thereby earned, and enjoyed, a resentful look from Pagan. "And did you actually get away across the roofs?"
"Unhappily, no. Those wretched police were up there, too," said Liane, with disgust. "So we had to go back and line up with the rest and give our pedigrees."
"Monsieur Morphew, too?" Lanyard's tone was skeptical. "And that so charming Monsieur Mallison?"
"All of us," Pagan snapped in a strangely sour temper. "That's what delayed us."
"Frankly, monsieur, you surprise me."
"How so?"
"Why! if I were in Monsieur Morphew's shoes—"
"You'd rattle," Pagan asserted.
"What a literal mind you have, my friend! Well; but if I were, like that good soul, head of an institution so exposed to police attentions, I would be at pains to provide myself with more than one secret avenue of escape—when the lights were out."
"You've got to make allowances for Morph," Pagan blandly declared; "he hasn't had your early advantages."
"What do I see?" Apparently possessed by the belief that some sharp distraction was indicated if open hostilities were to be averted, Liane pounced upon Lanyard's barely tasted highball. "And this hour I have been dying of thirst!" She gulped with gusto, making eyes at Lanyard over the glass. "Yours, my friend? Never mind: Folly will fetch you another."
"Do with a drink myself," Pagan volunteered. "No, don't you trouble, Mrs. McFee, I know the way."
He ducked briskly out into the hall and was presently heard in the dining-room making melody with glasses and siphons and ice.
Liane set aside an empty glass, crossed to Lanyard, and petted his cheek with the authentic professional touch. "You mustn't mind Peter, mon coco," she cooed affectionately in French. "He presumes, perhaps, but then he's a privileged type."
"Mind him?" Lanyard questioned in a tone that implied he found the thought weird. "Vermin, my dear Liane, were ever my pet aversion. If you set any value on this insect, be good enough to keep him out from under my feet."
"Every time you do that," Folly grumbled in English, "you make me sick, to think of all the youth I wasted studying what I fondly thought was French."
Liane turned with a murmur of self-reproach, and gracefully posing on the broad arm of the easy chair passed a fair arm round Folly's even fairer shoulders.
"Forgive me, my pretty. Michael and I knew each other so long ago in that dear Paris of before the War, it goes against Nature to converse with him in any tongue but French. . . . Ah! my old one," she lamented to Lanyard. "Those old days! will we ever know their like again?"
Mistrustful of her drift, Lanyard briefly replied: "God forbid!"
Timely to catch the sense of these latter lines, Pagan returned, his countenance of a clown radiant with good nature restored by the fragrance of four eight-inch glasses on the tray beneath his nose.
"The dilute laughter of the peasants of Scotland," he announced, presenting the tray to Folly and Liane—"guaranteed to cure every heartache born of pining for a past that, if the truth were known, probably wasn't half so pleasant as the present—Prohibition and everything!" He presented the tray to Lanyard in turn, then, determined at all costs to win the centre of the stage, struck an absurd declamatory attitude. "To tonight and tomorrow," he toasted—"to hell with yesterday! Why waste good time mourning that which is immortal, anyway? All of yesterday that mattered we carry with us, imperishably enshrined in our hearts. After all, what is the present more than the past plus? What man was yesterday, he is today, with something added. Eh, Mr. Lanyard?"
"Or subtracted."
"I disagree"—Pagan made him a formal salute—"with all due respect. Man adds daily to the sum of his experiences, which sum he is; but he can never subtract from that sum one iota of what he has been. The peasant who becomes a financier remains at heart a peasant still."
"A pretty thought," Liane interpolated with earnest interest. "But, to a woman, somewhat unsettling, is it not?"
Pagan stared: "How unsettling?"
"Why! by what you tell me, I find myself still a virgin."
"Don't be depressing. Here am I, being deuced entertaining and eloquent and profound, philosophizing on matters of the spirit, while you . . . Bah!" quoth Pagan. "But to continue: Give the financier who was a peasant respite from his cares, and whither turns his heart? Back to the stage of his young days; if he takes a vacation, he spends it in overalls down on the farm."
"And yours, one presumes, are devoted to making records for the gramophone?"
"Don't interrupt, Liane. . . . Or take, say a criminal who has abandoned his misguided ways and become a respected member of the community. How will he relax? Eh, Mr. Lanyard?"
"I will not presume to instruct monsieur on a point concerning which he is undoubtedly better informed than I."
Liane exploded a "Ho!" of pure joy, and Pagan shot Lanyard an envenomed glance which he was swift to mask with his well-worn smirk. "To be frank," he generously admitted, dropping into a conversational tone, "I had the Lone Wolf in mind. They say the fellow is here, in New York, now, and up to his old games again. I confess the thought rides my imagination, the puzzle of it. By all accounts, he went straight for years. How, then, came he to backslide? Were the claims of the past too strong? or the demands of the present? Does he steal today deliberately for gain? or involuntarily at the dictates of some subtle and deathless instinct?"
"But monsieur has so many entertaining theories, surely he will produce one to cover this hypothetical instance."
"I don't know. Nature is too strong for us, she laughs at all our efforts to revise her. We may repress and inhibit our native instincts as much as we will, but in the end, as a rule, they have their way. The Psychical Research Society reported, not long ago, the case of a man in whom the influence of instincts developed in early professional life were so strong that, buried though his criminal past was under a dozen years of law-abiding life, he reverted to old practices from time to time without knowing what he did; that is to say, in spells of amnesia, during which his first personality, the natural man, broke through the veneer of the secondary or artificial personality with which he had so painstakingly overlaid it. A safe-breaker and jewel thief like this Lone Wolf. Interesting if this were another such case."
"Interesting, indeed, monsieur, if conceivable."
"But think a minute, and I believe you'll admit it's easily conceivable. Imagine such a man, with wits and senses all habituated by years of rigorous training to serve his predatory nature. Because he's trying to live an honest life today doesn't mean that those old, ingrained habits have necessarily ceased to function. To the contrary, I imagine, they are always at work. As he goes to and fro and meets men and women who invite him into their homes—in their ignorance of his former identity, of course—inevitably, I maintain, such a man will always be observing and valuing and formulating plans of attack—subconsciously, perhaps, but still and for all that making use of the faculties he trained in other days. I can believe he never visits a home of any consequence without taking away with him a comprehensive scheme for burglarizing it. As you or I might, Mr. Lanyard, if either of us had the education of the Lone Wolf, say in respect of this very house. . . . And then some night, when he's least dreaming of anything of the sort, the old Adam reasserts itself, without or with his will and cognizance—"
Perhaps a little frightened by the gleam in Lanyard's eyes and the tension of his lips, Liane bounced up vivaciously, ran to Pagan, and clapped a palm over his mouth.
"Peter!" she cried—"you make me tired, you talk so much. Once you get started, you never know when to stop. But now you will stop, I insist that you stop and take me home. It is nearly three, and I am weary to the marrow of my bones, too fatigued to listen another instant to your twaddle."
Lanyard contrived with fair enough grace to decline Pagan's magnanimous offer of a lift in his car; but by the time he found himself on Fifth avenue again was half sorry he had. There were no taxicabs cruising for fares at that hour, at least all he spied were tearing along with metal flags reversed; and his head was at one and the same time buzzing with fumes of whiskey and thick with that drowsiness of which he had first become sensible in the cab with Folly McFee. Singularly enough, that cloud had lifted during his stop in her home, whereas since leaving it, ever since he had drawn his first breath of the dank, chill air of the streets, his wits had been like slugs fumbling blindly in a bed of cotton-wool. Now his feet as well were beginning to feel leaden, walking, ordinarily a source of such keen enjoyment to this man of vigorous physical life, had become a task.
Hard to understand how one could have been so affected by the scanty ration of alcohol one had consumed that evening, a solitary glass of champagne at the Clique, a single Scotch and soda two hours later. It might be, of course, that Pagan had mixed too stiff a highball. One hadn't been so impressed while drinking, but now the flavour of the whisky clung to the palate, harshly reminiscent. Evidently not such good stuff as it had seemed at the first sip.
Odd to find oneself resuming one's homeward walk at almost the very point where that rencontre with Liane had interrupted it. Still more odd, how that affair had resulted; in three brief hours everything had come true that one had foretold in seeking to dissuade Eve from the idea of marriage . . .
In a surge of grim rage Lanyard pledged Morphew and Pagan ample grounds for repentance should they show any disposition to persist in tampering with his concerns.
Then he found occasion to execrate the weather, too, perceiving that it had been only holding off till now, when it had him at its mercy. Now all at once it ceased to tease and settled down to rain in dogged earnest and get the business over with.
And still no taxis . . .
Lanyard turned up the collar of his overcoat and dug both hands into its pockets, clipping stick under arm and plodding heavily through the shining puddles, with every labored step growing more conscious of bodily oppression and the lethargy that ruled his mind, feeling more abused in some vague how and aggrieved.
In the many-hued lights of the street the back-spatter of raindrops drilling on the sidewalk churned in rainbow iridescence, a froth of phantom jewels, enchanting, evanescent . . .
Strange that one should never have remarked this effect ere now . . . Stranger still how blindly man was wont to move through the world, benighted to its wonders, only in rare moments cheating the bandages with which individualism sealed his eyes and catching glimpses fugitive and ravishing of beauty adorning the most hackneyed ways . . . As now when, lifting dazzled eyes, Lanyard beheld himself a lonely way-farer in a lane of jewels set in jet and gold . . .
Jewels that outrivalled even those the Sultan of Loot had paraded, and Liane, and that other woman . . . pretty little thing so well named . . . What the deuce was her name? Folly? Folly McFee!
Idiotic to mislay so soon a distinctive name like that . . .
Wading in jewels. Up to one's knees. As Liane waded in them, and Folly, and the Sultan of Loot . . . Between them these three must have had on display that night stones that would fetch four or five hundred thousand . . . flaunting them in the face of a pauper!
A pauper? Well: little better! Penniless, or next door to it. A few more days of running round with Eve . . . who must never guess . . . and he would be stoney. Not pinched for money—broke. The reward of virtue . . .
Lanyard laughed aloud, a cracked, ugly laugh.
Pagan hadn't been far wrong. Impertinent clown! Not far wrong, at that . . . Anything but easy to forget the cunning one once had gloried in, to remain forever deaf and dumb to the insidious prompting of instincts which, as long as the sun shone, seemed to have been utterly stamped out and exterminated, but which, when clouds massed and the wind bared its teeth, had an accursed habit of proving they had been but rebelliously quiescent . . .
Curious, how close to the line that mountebank had hewn in his guesswork at the psychology of the outlaw reclaimed!
There lingered still a picture instantaneously printed upon the sensitive film of consciousness, in that moment when Lanyard had stood peering out of the rear window at Folly McFee's: a view of the roof of a one-storey extension running back from the window, a flat roof decked over to serve as a terrace in warm weather, with, beyond it, thanks to an excavation being dug for a new building on the north side of the block, nothing between the house and the next street but a board fence enclosing the kitchen-yard. An open invitation to any man who might fancy the jewels of Folly McFee; jewels that, shrewdly marketed, would put a careful man beyond want for the rest of his days . . .
Lanyard growled an oath, gave himself an angry shake. What the devil had got into him tonight, that he should consent for a single instant to indulge such a train of thought?
Not that there was danger ofhisbeing tempted . . . He gave a thick chuckle of scorn. Nevertheless it was annoying to find oneself unable to forget that the temptation was there.
All the fault of that reptile with his viperous tongue and machine-made leer, What's-his-name . . . Whatwashis name? Fagin? No: Pagan. Loathsome creature . . .
What an ass one had been to swallow his insolence simply because there were women present, to let such an illogical consideration restrain one from yielding to natural, primitive impulse and, with every provocation, throttling the fellow, wringing his scrawny neck . . .
In amaze Lanyard emerged from a seizure of sodden insanity to find himself at halt in front of the Waldorf, standing quite still in the driving rain and glaring at his hands, which were extended with tensed fingers compressing the windpipe of an imaginary victim.
What was he doing? He made an effort to pull himself together, and cast glances right and left, shame-faced to think that he might have been seen. But there was not another soul in sight on the whole, undulant length of the Avenue. Only a taxi shot past, and its driver hooted . . .
He seemed to have mislaid his stick. After a moment of myopic searching he gave it up, pocketed his hands and lunged on. . . . Not far to go now; but one made indifferent progress because of the fog. Of course it was fog! What else could make the lights so dim? Like a London fog, a London particular. And getting thicker every minute, blotting out the lights as a blotting paper sops up ink, leaving only blurs, faint and formless blotches fading into night absolute, black and steaming . . .
In a sudden saffron blaze Lanyard identified the common aspect of the small suite of rooms which he rented furnished. He was in the sitting-room, wrestling with his overcoat. Soaked through and dripping, the wretched thing seemed possessed of a devil of perversity which resisted all his efforts to shed it. He gave an infuriated wriggle, heard something rip, and discovered, in some surprise, that he was rid of it. Then with indignation he saw that the door stood open to the public hall, a staring oblong of black in the lighted walls. Lurching to this, Lanyard flung it shut with a thundering crash.
The problem of escaping from the intimate embrace of his dress-coat next engaged his intelligence. Something he couldn't afford to tear off his back. Yet he darkly foresaw difficulties. After a while of pondering, a spirit of low cunning prompted him to try to deceive the thing by making believe he didn't care whether it came off or not. . . . And astonishingly it appeared that this strategem had been successful: he was holding the garment in his hands. With the harsh, unfeeling laugh of a conqueror he cast it from him and shaped a course for his bedchamber. And barely in time: that London fog had stolen in after him somehow, probably through the door he had carelessly left open, Heaven knew how long. . . . At its old tricks, dimming down the lights till one could hardly see. Rapidly, too. He succeeded in beating the darkness to his bed, but with nothing to spare: as he sat on its edge, fumbling with his shoes, night whelmed the world with a stunning crash . . .
A splitting headache roused Lanyard out of the void, with the help of an unfeeling hand that shook his shoulder, and a voice that heartlessly dinned his name into his ears.
When he tried to remonstrate his other shoulder was captured by another vice-like hand, and he was raised to a sitting position on the side of the bed. There, bending forward and clasping his head with both hands lest it rend itself in twain, he regained a measure of lucidity.
Broad daylight was flooding the room, not sunlight but the warm reflection of a sunny sky, beyond telling painful to optic nerves. On throbbing eardrums a voice jarred, hideously cheerful.
"Well: how're you feeling now?"
Without understanding Lanyard blinked into the homely, grinning countenance of Crane.
"Pretty rocky, I'll tell the World, the Tribune and the Herald! Next time you'll know better than to take liberties with lawless liquor—or I miss my guess. Got anything in the place good for a wrecked dome?"
Unwisely Lanyard sought to reply with a shake of the head under consideration. His moans were heart-rendering. When he got them under control he heard Crane say: "Well, son! it's a good thing to have a true friend on the job when you're feeling like this. You set there and take it easy while I run down to the drug store and fetch you a pick-me-up."
What were intended to be words of gratitude in response came out as the most disconsolate noises imaginable. Crane's footsteps receded through the sitting-room and died out beyond a door which was closed with thoughtful care. Pricked by pride, Lanyard put forth a tremendous effort of will and stood up.
Not till then did he appreciate that he was fully clothed but for his shoes and the dress-coat which he had a muggy memory of having discarded in the adjoining room.
When Crane re-entered without knocking, Lanyard was splashing in the bathroom. Some minutes later he came out wrapped in a dressing-gown and bearing some resemblance to his normal, self-respecting self. A steaming hot soak followed by five minutes under an icy needle-shower had moderated the headache to a bearable grumble. Crane was waiting with a tall and foaming glass. A draught long and acrid but grateful. The flavour of aromatic spirits of ammonia replacing that of aloes in his mouth, Lanyard was able to express his thanks with a smile less wan than might have been expected.
"I think you called yourself a true friend," he said: "that was true talk. Never in my life have I needed one more." Subsiding into a chair, he waved a feeble hand toward another. "Sit down and tell me to what I owe this act of mercy . . ."
"Well: if you want to know, I guess you owe it mainly to forgetting to lock your door when you crashed in last night." Crane sat down and favoured Lanyard with a quizzical stare, caressing lean jaws with bony fingers. "I knocked till I was tired, then tried the door, feeling pretty sure you were at home, because I could see by the transom you had all the lights going full blast. So I just naturally walked in and found you practically a total loss. You were cold sober when I saw you at two o'clock, but you sure did manage to collect a skinful between then and the time you turned in, whenever that was."
"To the best of my knowledge, not much after three."
"Blessed if I see how you managed it. Mind telling? I don't like to seem nosey, but this record you're claiming for the standing broad jag in one hour flat has got me guessing. Didn't know you went in much for that sort of thing."
"No more do I," Lanyard protested. "That is to say, I never did before and never will again, Heaven helping me to avoid further entanglements with temperance drinks."
"That what you call 'em?"
"I mean, the sort of drinks one's friends serve in these Prohibition times. I hesitate to ask you to believe that the ruin you see before you was wrought by one small glass of champagne at the Clique last night, followed by a single Scotch and soda at Mrs. McFee's."
"From the funny things I've seen bootliquor do in the last few months," Crane replied—"some of 'em not so darned funny, at that—I'm ready to believe anything you want to blame on it. What bothers me now, is you getting such stuff at Mrs. Folliott McFee's. That little lady is well enough fixed to keep her cellar stocked with the best. However," he reconsidered, "I guess she must've got it from her friend Morphew. She's been training considerably with him and his gang of late; and I wouldn't put it past that bird to poison his best friend for a profit of a few dollars a case."
"We see Mr. Morphew with the same eyes, you and I."
Lanyard wanted very much to question Crane for information concerning Mr. Hugh Morphew, but felt much too listless just then. Another time would do as well, when his mental processes had somewhat recuperated.
"So you were at Mrs. McFee's last night, were you?"
"Naturally, I had to see her home," Lanyard replied. "She asked me in to have that drink; and a little later the Delorme woman dropped in with a hyena who calls himself Pagan—daresay you know who I mean"—Crane nodded—"to make sure Mrs. McFee had come to no harm. You see, we were all guests of Morphew's at the Clique when you raided the place. But I presume that's no news . . ."
"You're wrong, then. Morphew and his lot got away clean. We couldn't find hair nor hide of him or any of the parties you've named. They must have beaten it by some secret passage while the lights were on the blink."
Liane and Pagan, then, had lied about being turned back from the roof. Not that it mattered . . .
"How'd you get on with the pretty McFee?" Crane was pursuing with an interest too elaborately casual.
"Well enough, thanks. She seems a nice little thing if a thought flighty."
"Flighty's the word. I guess you haven't known her long."
"Only met her last night, a few minutes before the raid."
"Nice place she's got . . ."
"Nice enough," Lanyard assented languidly.
"Get much of a show to look around while you were there?"
Lanyard opened his eyes. "You're not asking these questions for conversation's sake."
"You're dead right I'm not," Crane drawled, stroking his jaws. "Guess I may as well break it to you. Mrs. McFee reported this morning, her house had been broken into last night, some time between three o'clock and daylight, her safe opened—little tin box she keeps in her boodwah—and the pick of her jewels looted."
"So!" said Lanyard—"it's to that I owe this honour."
"You've had such a lot of experience in that line, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind giving me a few tips . . ."
Lanyard lounged back in his chair again, tolerantly smiling.
"Why trifle with the truth to spare my feelings?"
"Well!" Crane uncomfortably conceded—"I don't mind telling you, the job had all the ear-marks of one of the Lone Wolf's."
"Indeed?"
"The bird that opened that box did it painlessly, like you always used to, going on all I've heard—just talked to the works till the safe lay down and rolled over with all four paws in the air. Of course, he didn't leave any finger-marks. He got in by way of an extension at the back of the house: there's a French window opens onto it from the study. He didn't even need to jimmy that, though Mrs. McFee and the servants can't explain how it come to be open. In fact, the butler swears he latched it himself before he went to bed. Looks like somebody must have fixed it . . ."
"Somebody who, like your obedient servant, had plenty of opportunity."
"You got the idea."
"In short," said Lanyard, "what you are delicately trying to convey is that you'd be obliged if I'd come along quietly."
"No," Crane surprisingly answered: "nothing like that."
"Not—?" Lanyard persisted, in an unbelieving stare.
"No. . . . I'll admit, I looked you up today with a divided mind. I couldn't somehow believe it of you. On the other hand, I've been fooled by a lot of human nature in my time. But you put in an alibi, even before you came to, sound enough to satisfy me. Maybe I'm wrong about you, Lanyard, maybe you're as crooked as a Revenue inspector; but nothing will ever make me believe you pulled that job and then pickled yourself to celebrate, or that the Lone Wolf ever went home after cracking a box and crawled into the hay leaving his front door unlocked. Not only that, but just to make sure, in a perfectly friendly way, I frisked your pockets and searched these rooms high and low before I woke you up. You've got a good right to be sore, if it hits you that way; but I figured it was my duty as a friend as well as an officer of the law."
"On the contrary," Lanyard sincerely assured him, "I am appreciative and grateful, glad to be cleared in your sight, even more glad to be cleared in my own."
"In your own?" Crane repeated in perplexity. "What d'you think you mean by that?"
"I'm glad I do not have to wonder if possibly I did this thing in my sleep, so to speak."
"Quit your kidding!" Crane got up with a laugh. "I've got to be getting along now, oughtn't to have lost as much time as I have."
"I shall miss your soothing presence. But I am sure you understand that there are times, and this is one of them, when one would rather be alone."
"You said it."
"You will pardon my not rising to see you to the door?"
"Stay right where you are. I'll drop in again, some time this evening, maybe, to see how you are."
"Do. There are many things I want to consult you about when I feel better able."