Part 10

"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.