Part 19

Not that Lanyard entertained the remotest desire to commit his fortunes to a hope so forlorn, he was too well possessed by curiosity concerning the nature of the scheme which Morphew was maturing, for Lanyard's introduction to which he had plotted an approach so tortuous, and which that evening could hardly fail to declare. It wasn't in reason that the man should take so much trouble to manufacture an atmosphere of mystery without a purpose of uncommon moment. And if it were true that he had some more than ordinarily devilish project brewing, Lanyard would feel cruelly slighted if denied a chance to get at least a peep into it.

Something after nine the cars picked their way through the outskirts of a town of good size, then found a by-road through open country fragrant with the breath of salt water, leading on to infer that Long Island Sound could not be far away. Properties jealously enclosed in walls or wrought-iron fences bordered the road, occasional gateways opened up fleeting vistas of drives that led toward lighted windows in the distance. Apparently a community of wealthy land-holders . . .

The landaulet turned in at last between two stone piers supporting handsome iron gates, and followed a winding drive through spacious lawns, dimly revealed by starlight, to a porte-cochère. The footman jumped down to the door, Lanyard alighted. As he ascended steps leading to a broad veranda, he heard the Rolls-Royce purr away behind him, and saw the headlights of its attendant car sweep down the drive that curved round to the rear of the house.

The veranda was lighted only by windows opening on it that diffused a gentle glow at best upon patches of flooring set with summer furniture, and deepened the gloom of the spaces intervening. The house was silent, nobody moved in an imposing entrance-hall that was visible through screen doors; and Lanyard pulled up, at a loss for his welcome.

That came, however, without too much delay: a low sweet laugh lifting up from the darkness between the two nearest windows, then a small shape of beauty and gracious animation running swiftly toward him with both hands extended.

He caught them with an exclamation of pleasure, and stood looking in wonder into the smiling eyes of Folly McFee.

XXI

Neither less nor more the dupe of vanity than most men of his years, Lanyard rather liked to think of himself as one whom life had lessoned out of all susceptibility to such emotions as that of surprise, a creature of sophistication cynical but bland, weathered by arduous experience and long contemplation of man the slave of folly and the feeble sport of chance until nothing could amaze him. But this contretemps (he couldn't count it better, remembering the genius of its machinery) flawed the picture; Folly's accents with their more than half-pretended petulance startled him awake to the fact that he had been holding her hands for minutes, gaping like a zany, speechlessly confounded.

"I don't believe you're glad to see me!"

"And I--I'm wondering if I am."

"That's not a very pretty speech," she pouted, tugging at her hands till he had to resign them.

"But everything considered, not an unnatural one. You must know nothing had prepared me . . ."

"That's good--because I'd be dreadfully cross if anything had spoiled the surprise."

"Then you can't be cross with me at all."

"I don't know . . ." the young woman gravely doubted. Instinct with that quenchless spirit of coquetry in default of which she had not been Folly, she posed provocatively to him in the half-light of the window behind her, head daintily aslant, elfin mischief glinting through the dusk that masked her eyes. "I must say you might take it more kindly, seeing how happy it makes me. You don't know how long you've kept me waiting--I'd begun to be afraid you'd backed out of coming after all."

"Then you actually were expecting me for dinner?"

"Of course! without you it wouldn't really be a party."

So much for the suspicion that his escort had mistaken the way and blundered into the wrong premises . . . Then it behooved him to have his wits about him and beware of being misled into taking false steps on such false ground.

"You're an arrant young baggage," Lanyard considered aloud.

"I know--but you're an old hand."

"Then cultivate a bit of reverence for my grey hairs, remember it's not seemly to make mock of your elders."

"Come and sit down, then, beside me." With a chuckle of delight Folly flitted back into the shadows from which she had come, plumped down upon a settee, and patted its vacant cushions with a peremptory hand as Lanyard more deliberately followed. "Do you always insist on having a plot to explain why people request the honour of your presence at their dinners?"

"I have a humble heart," Lanyard protested, sitting; "I am too much mystified to understand why it's termed an honour . . ."

"You're a great bluff--I've told you before. You know very well, most of the people one meets are incurably dull, whereas nothing can cure you of being a most interesting person. That's one reason at least why you're wanted."

"But you are dodging my question. Few people think it an honour to entertain the Lone Wolf--even if they didn't entertain him unawares."

"I don't call that humour," Folly observed, critical. "You can't amuse me by making believe you think I take any stock in all the rotten things people say about you."

"Oh!" Lanyard blankly cried--"you really don't?"

"I should say not--know you better."

Her tone rang true enough, and Lanyard could detect nothing to contradict it in the soft silhouette of her profile against the light.

"It makes me very happy, to think at least one person in the world has faith in me, after all the villainy that's been charged to my account."

"That isn't fair," Folly retorted with spirit: "You never give your friends credit--Morphy doesn't believe it, and neither does Peter."

"To be sure . . . Yes: naturally those two must have talked to you about me."

"You don't suppose they'd have lured you out here to dinner without first getting my permission, do you? If they hadn't, I'd hardly have been so fussed about your being late."

"But that wasn't my fault. I didn't know where I was coming--I could only comfort myself with the reminder that I was in the hands of--as you point out--my friends."

"It doesn't matter. We arranged to make it a late dinner anyway; and furthermore you're not the one who's kept it waiting. Morphy and Peter didn't show up till about ten minutes ago. They had a breakdown or something on the way."

"I was wondering . . ."

"They're upstairs in their rooms now, dressing."

"I hope they don't hurry," Lanyard confessed. "I can spare them a little longer, need time to get my bearings."

"Poor dear!" Folly closed an impulsive hand over Lanyard's. "It _is_ horrid of me to plague you, isn't it? But you know how I love fun . . ." She drew away and made herself prim and meek in her corner. "It's your turn now, I'm perfectly well aware I've got questions by the broadside coming. You may fire when ready."

"But I think you know too well what seems most strange to me . . ."

"All right. I don't mind telling . . . Yes: this is my place. No: I don't own it, I just rent it furnished. From Peter Pagan. He's been such a dear, let me have it for next to nothing for the Summer, and the most perfect staff of servants thrown in."

"I'm sure that sounds just like him."

Lanyard meant it. Since it was manifest that Morphew and Pagan were determined to pluck this poor foolish pigeon, and she was madly bent on being plucked, certainly it had been their book to surround her with a squad of servitors trained to their purpose.

"But that isn't what's most perplexing to you . . ."

"By no means."

"You're perfectly eaten alive by curiosity to know how Morphy got round me, aren't you? Well! but how did he get round _you_?"

Lanyard weakly parried: "Hasn't he told you?"

"Not in so many words. But of course I understand. How could anybody hold out against such magnanimity?"

"How indeed?"

"You weren't to blame for being so cruelly wrong about him . . . about Mallison and Morphy's having had anything to do with my emeralds, I mean. Everything looked so black for him . . . Even Morphy didn't blame you; only, of course, he was half wild at the time, when you didn't give him a chance to defend himself and prove that Mallison had abused his confidence just as he had mine, only more so. But of course he's told you all about that."

"I am none the less interested to learn what he told you."

"Just what I've said, what you know. He waited weeks before he tried to see me again, and spent simple sloughs of money on detectives, trying to find Mallison and bring him back to prove what an ingrate he'd been. Oh! but I wasn't the only one of Morphy's friends that had suffered through taking Mallison on his endorsement."

"I am sure you were not."

"And then, when he had to give that up as hopeless, he got Liane to ask me to give him a chance to explain; and of course, I could hardly refuse to listen. And he's been just wonderful to me ever since. Really, my friend, you don't know what a fine nature he has. Why! he wouldn't let Liane or Peter tell me a word about what he was doing for you, it was only today I wormed the whole story out of him, after he had brought me the good news."

"'Good news'?"

"About your recovery. And when I think of how he took care of you, all those months, after that terrible motor accident, all the while you were out of your head and the doctors held out no hope you would ever be yourself again--when I think of the way he fought to save your mind--and won!--well!" Folly submitted in a voice of awe--"there aren't any two ways of looking at it: Morphy's a sportsman if there ever was one."

"He is," Lanyard cautiously conceded--"unique."

The young woman sat up with an indignant jerk. "Is there a double meaning to that?" she demanded. "Because if there is--I ought to warn you--you'll end by making me dislike you against my will. Oh! I know Morphy has his shortcomings; but so have we all. And I can't believe you so ungrateful . . ."

"But I would be the last man to deny that I owe Morphew a great deal," Lanyard was able to state with entire sincerity. "And some day--it is my dearest hope some day to be able to repay him as he deserves."

"That's all right, then." Mollified, Folly relaxed. "I'm terribly glad."

"Is it fair to ask why?"

"Because I want you to like him . . . for my sake, you know."

"Afraid I don't know."

"He hasn't told you?"

"I begin to be afraid to ask more questions."

A small gurgle of vanity bubbled out of the shadows. Then Folly thrust a hand into the golden flood that fell through the windows beyond the settee. Upon her third finger a great cabochon emerald shone with soft, unwinking fire.

"It's the finest stone of its kind on this side of the Atlantic," its wearer declared, "outside of my collection. That is, it was outside till Morphy gave it to me."

"You mean--you can't mean you're going to be married--!"

"I don't see what else it can mean--do you?--when we're engaged."

"But are you really in love--?"

"Now really, Mr. Lanyard! do you think it's polite to be so bowled over by the very idea that Morphy could have fallen in love with simple little me?"

"But you--?"

"Well . . ." The suppliant accents of a child caught misbehaving confessed: "you know I've always been crazy about emeralds."

Lanyard let a little space of silence be eloquent for him. When he spoke again it was in another tone, rather a brusque one: "But why the devil did you do that?"

"Oh, I don't know!" Folly sighed in plaintive resentment of such bullying. "He kept asking me, and I didn't know what else to do . . . You weren't there, and I was lonely, and it was raining . . ."

XXII

With the portentous sweep of a sorcerer's wand one wing of the screen doors nearby swung wide to deliver to Lanyard's stunned recognition the last person in the world he had cared to see just then, a presence of florid allurement en grande toilette. He rose in resignation, telling himself he might have been better prepared, would have been had Folly's most recent confidence broken upon his understanding with force less scandalizing--that the interruption was after all timely, since beyond doubt it saved him from speaking his mind too plainly on the theme of Morphew as a husband meet for Folly.

The woman at the doorway waited a moment for her vision to accomodate itself to the change of light, then marked him where he stood by the settee and approached with a carriage whose measured grace matched the play of the fantastic fan of plumes she managed, her fine body sinuously undulant within its scanty sheath of lace and satin.

"It is you at last, my friend. One fancied it was your car one heard. . . . But how long since last we met!"

"Too long," Lanyard gallantly insisted, performing a punctilious bow over a hand whose fingers tightened upon his with a significance unsentimental, a brief sharp squeeze that carried a clear message to his discretion: Folly, he was to understand, knew nothing, and Liane for reasons personal and sufficient held it wise she should continue to know nothing, of that ill-fated flight of theirs together to the Bahamas.

By way of supplement the throaty voice pursued with heavier stress on the note of professional blandishment: "It is true, then, you have missed me?"

"Ah!" Lanyard gave back agreeably to her humour--"if you only knew!"

"Hark to that grand blageur!" Liane grumbled to Folly. "Who would believe, to hear him, the last time we met he coldly spurned my love? But it is always so with him, one never knows how to take this fickle animal. Heed what I tell you, who have suffered: do not let him break your heart, too."

"But he has already," Folly stated, deceitfully demure. "If it wasn't for him I would never have had any practice throwing myself at a man's head and falling flat on my foolish face."

"I am too much confused," Lanyard claimed on behalf of his modesty. "These unmaidenly confidences oblige me to change the subject kindly but with decision. Permit me to observe at a venture how ready we aliens are to adopt the tribal customs of this great country, such as the rite of Old Home Week. Tonight, for example, our little circle is completely reunited--with one lamentable defection--"

"Oh, hush!" Folly caught his arm with an imploring hand. "Here comes Morphy; don't let him hear us, the mere mention of Mallison's name makes him simply frantic."

"On your account I promise to be careful. But you really must take the good man in hand and teach him self-control. As your husband, he will be sure to need it."

Folly's eyes flashed up in mute prayer and warning: Morphy leaving the swing-door, was already within earshot. In his wake, as ever at no great distance, the inevitable Pagan strutted.

With that dogged elasticity of gait which men of too certain years and too, too solid flesh affect in their pathetic strivings to seem youthful to the women they prefer, Morphew approached, his dinner clothes, over-cleverly tailored, decked out with a regalia of jewels more than ordinarily shocking, last night's surly truculence now a genial suavity that harked back to the first half-hour of his acquaintance with Lanyard, at the Clique Club so long ago. On his very best behavior, he was apparently charmed to be so. And observing him in covert wonder when, after throwing Liane a light but friendly greeting, he bent his lips to Folly's hand, Lanyard perceived in a blinding flash of divination the chink in the armor of this uncouth colossus: Morphew was madly in love, in bondage absolute to one of those late blooming passions that men know who feel their flesh, still warm from the midday sun, breathed upon by chill premonitions of the night to come.

"Ah, Lanyard, my boy! there you are, eh?" No friend of his heart ever gave Lanyard a more cordial hand. "Sorry Pete and I had to keep you waiting--"

"But I was glad of the chance to find myself in relation to the surprise you had prepared for me--the surprises, I mean."

A small bow comprehended Liane, who returned an arch look as Folly linked her arm and snuggled.

"Darling Liane is stopping with me for the looks of the thing, to keep my name sweet on the tongue of my neighbours."

"Pour les convenances," Liane interpreted for Lanyard with an intonation inimitably droll.

Dinner was announced . . .

Long before that meal was finished Lanyard knew the conviction that never had he sat through a stranger, or one better composed and served, or consumed in an atmosphere of more general amenity.

It would have been anything but easy, for that matter, to be uncongenial under the influences of food of such excellence and so skillfully prepared, wines so well chosen, and the steady flow of high spirits contributed by Folly, Liane and Pagan in tacit collaboration, and encouraged by a surprising display of good feeling in the more saturnine Morphew. Yet Lanyard thought it doubtful if any of his company forgot self or selfish interests for one fleeting instant or pronounced a single unweighed witticism, however spontaneously it might seem to fall.

On his own part, he could not--had he wished--have forgotten the sinister tension of distrust and cross-purpose running through it all; and if he seemed to let himself go and enter without reserve into the frivolous spirit of the gathering, he remained in his heart an outsider to the end, captious and skeptical, and to the end a prey to dour forebodings. And his attention, ranging in turn from one to another, with a quality of vision inhumanly dispassionate stripped each and every one, even himself, of their trappings of pretension and self deception, and saw the rot that ate at every heart.

He saw in Pagan the perfect pattern of a parasite, fawning on all and sundry for empty laughter, that he might esteem himself a wit and so repair the abrasion of his self-love by the knowledge that he was, at bottom, no better than a pickthank and a pander.

He saw Liane Delorme estranged from these her boon accomplices of yesterday because of Morphew's inexplicable new animus, bitterly stung by the discovery that she who had ever been wont to queen it unchallenged was tonight being barely tolerated for what she might be worth toward the consummation of another's corrupt and ungenerous ends; haunted by the incidental knowledge that her charms were day by day more swiftly fading, that their potency once so magical was now nearly spent, and that the increase of her years had brought and would bring no compensating repose, neither the peace that crowns a life well lived nor any surcease from repining.

He saw Folly McFee, a trifling moth, vain, empty-headed, pretty-to-death, avid for admiration to dull the irk of discontent with life for all it had denied her of her heart's desire, for the shabby indemnity it offered her in the shape of Morphew as her promised husband.

He saw Morphew, gross in person, gross in appetites, seeking in vain to slake his lust for power, that men might look up to him, by fostering those puerile and unprofitable criminal intrigues of his incubation, and at the same time laid so low by love of a doll's face and a pretty body he could not dissemble his fatuous doting or the jealousy that made him sick to his core every time the amorous little baggage of his fancy chose to make eyes at another man.

Finally, Lanyard saw himself, to whom pride had once been as breath of life, broken and degraded to a shameful sort of peonage, constrained to take his orders from a Morphew and faithfully perform the tasks set for him, lest enemy and patron in one withdraw his favour and leave him without defense against the wrath of a society which his mere existence affronted beyond pardon.

Satyr and sycophant, coquette, courtesan and criminal: a shady crew . . .

And against that ring of worn and raddled faces present in actual being to his sight, hall-marked every one by self-seeking, he had ever before him a face infinitely more real and true, his vision of his lost love, beyond all telling fair and kind, never more near to him than now, nor ever more inaccessibly remote.

And these with whom he sat and dined and drank, with whom he laughed and leered and bandied ribald personalities, were they whose egoism had cost him Eve . . .

Dull rage smouldered in his bosom, he knew he was ripe for murder--and went on feeding and guzzling with them, winking and nudging and giggling with the best of them, put in his proper place by life at last, relegated to his rowdy sphere, to escape from which he had been insane ever to aspire . . .

Oh, he knew it now! Doubts no more vexed his mind. He was where he belonged, where his own acts had brought him, in the vicious circle of his peers, welcomed and accepted in virtue of the proof he had provided, though unconsciously and without intention, that he was one of them--"guilty as charged," guilty as Hell.

So be it--he was tired of fighting against the fate inherent in his failings, he would fight no more. The destiny of his own architecture must henceforth have its way with him. . . .

Quaint respect for the conventions of another world at length ordained the withdrawal of the women, leaving the men to the walnuts and wine of tradition. And Lanyard, when he got up with the others to bow Folly and Liane out of the room, returning to the table, drew his chair up to the end where Morphew presided.

The curious good nature of the Sultan of Loot was holding up in spite of his bereavement, the temporary defection of the apple of his eye; he felt free to declare the little party an unblemished success; and though he adhered strictly to his plain water régime, he didn't hesitate to hector the servants, who didn't need his hectoring, into producing from Folly's cellar for the delectation of Lanyard and Pagan the rarest of grandes champagnes.

"That's the stuff to go to the right spot," he asserted, with a glitter of envy in his moist eyes of an ex-tank. "Drink hearty, it won't hurt you any, and there's lashin's more where it came from--though you won't find half a dozen bottles between Maine and California, outside the stock I control."

"Monsieur is a rare judge, for one who never drinks."

"That isn't saying I never did." Vanity grew warm with reminiscence. "Haven't touched liquor in ten years, but my daily average is still high."

"But how seldom does one find a host who has foresworn drink so considerate of the palates of his guests."

"Stick around," Morphew countered in simple pride--and possibly, in Lanyard's judgment, with an arrière-pensée--"you'll find out a lot of things about me you don't know, before we part. Besides, tonight isn't every night . . ."

The pause of suspense was meant to provoke the question underlined by arching eyebrows: "No?"

"Want to put plenty of heart into you," Morphew jovially admitted, "so you can put it into your stuff tonight."

With reluctance Lanyard detached a ravished gaze from the amber contents of the glass which he had been holding up to the light. Knitting eyebrows now lent accent of apprehensiveness to the query: "My 'stuff'?"

"Sure thing, your stuff; your act, you know, your turn, your job, the little thing you do better'n anything else."

"Monsieur undoubtedly means my shop--the Lone Wolf's craft."

"Call it anything you like," Morphew graciously conceded--"you know what I mean."

"But--I think monsieur said something about tonight--"

"That's right. Tonight's the night."

With undisguised regret Lanyard put aside a barely tasted glass; whereupon Morphew made a noise of expostulation.

"When the Lone Wolf was at his best, monsieur, he never drank anything if he had work in view. I have had too much already, if I am to believe you are not jesting . . ."

"That's something else you're due to learn when you get to know me better--I never joke about serious matters."