Part 20

"In effect, monsieur has a great deal in common with humanity," Lanyard observed with a straight face. "It would be interesting, none the less, to learn where he draws the line between the serious and the trivial."

"I guess you won't want to argue that point when you realize the proposition I've laid out for you tonight is one of the biggest contracts you ever tackled."

With a quiet smile in eyes that cast back across a gulf of years, Lanyard pronounced: "I wonder . . ."

"Oh, I know you were a hell-bender in your prime!" Morphew contended--"but when all returns are in you'll be ready to admit you never went up against anything bigger than this."

Did the ulterior thought faintly re-echo in that assertion? With a finesse of which no man was more truly master Lanyard continued to seem astray in by-paths of diverting retrospection while in reality concentrating keenly critical scrutiny upon Morphew's countenance.

Such pure malevolence as glimpsed in those lightless eyes, in spite of every artifice of hooded lids and webbing wrinkles, was hardly to be taken as the work of a thwarted will to dominate or of mortified egotism merely, but must have been the distillation of an even stronger passion, fear or . . .

"The haul you made of Folly's emeralds that night you were pie-eyed, was a wonder, or would have been if you hadn't lost your nerve; and some of the tricks you've turned since then have been pippins; but tonight's going to make history. You listen to me . . ."

But Lanyard didn't, he heard only a rumour of words whose sense made no impression upon faculties staggered by a thunderstoke of intelligence. The very elaboration of carelessness with which he had named Folly McFee had betrayed Morphew's guarded secret: brute jealousy was the fundamental cause of the hatred in which he held Lanyard, the blind insensate jealousy of an aging man who foresees the failure of his efforts to find in love of woman fuel for waning fires.

Sensitive as he must have been, with that abnormal and abominable sensitiveness from which men of his coarse fiber too often suffer, to the aversion which his caresses could not but excite, to her instinctive shrinking from even the greed of his regard, and conceiving her to entertain a tenderness for the more personable man, the more dashing figure that was clothed as well in the glamour of a wildly romantic history, and the man who most intolerably was his junior by many years, Morphew--the conjecture gained force of verified conviction in the light of this late disclosure--had decided upon Lanyard's death as the one sure means of healing Folly of her infatuation, and had decreed that it should be brought to pass as an act of justice, approved by custom and the law, meted out to Lanyard while he was engaged in the commission of a felony.

Thus at a stroke he would rid himself of one whom he hated and feared as both a rival in love and an irreconcilable menace to his more material fortunes, prove to Folly she had misplaced her admiration, and clear Hugh Morphew of all suspicion of complicity in that old offense of Mallison and the emeralds; he would even rehabilitate Mallison, if he had any further use for that one, if his indignation on account of Mallison's imputed ingratitude had not been all a blind.

And indeed it was not hard to see how well it would be for all concerned, it might be even for Lanyard himself--it might be even for Eve!--if he were to be found dead the next morning of a bullet fired by an honest man in legitimate defense of his home . . .

Well for Eve and well for himself if he should meet his end tonight! That thought hummed in Lanyard's head like the refrain of some old song that, once recalled, sings itself endlessly over and over to memory's ear. It intensified the sobriety with which he listened while Morphew laid bare the cheap articulation of his plot, but it was permitted to work no deeper treason; so that Lanyard might very well have been as he seemed, as Pagan and Morphew believed him to be, impressed to admiration by the finely dove-tailed ingenuity and the imaginative daring of the scheme complete.

"The next property to the west"--Morphew flirted an iridescent paw toward that quarter--"is the summer home of the Vandergrifts. Guess you must know who they are . . ."

"As well as you know the fame of Rothschild, monsieur."

"The whole damn family's there just at present: pa and ma Vandergrift--she's sporting most of the Russian crown jewels since the last strike tacked a few dollars per ton on to the cost of coal; the Duchess of Allborough, Theodosia Vandergrift that was, wearing the Allborough diamonds and pearls; Dudley Vandergrift and his wife--her father was Jules Cottier of Cottier's, the French jewellers--"

"But assume the Lone Wolf to be acquainted with the fame of Cottier's, monsieur."

"And a whole houseful of guests--you know the sort. Nobody worth less than eighteen millions is ever invited to one of the Vandergrift house parties, not because ordinary millionaires ain't good enough, but because they'd feel like poor boys at a husking. At a conservative figure there must be upwards of a million in jewels under that roof tonight that belongs to the Vandergrift clan alone. They take good care of it, too. Their guests can do as they please about their stuff, but all the Vandergrifts' goes into the big safe in the library every night. It was built into the walls when the house was put up, in Eighteen Eighty-five or thereabouts; that's a good enough line on the sort of box you've got to tackle, for a man that knows all you do about safe construction."

"It doesn't sound formidable, assuming your information to be accurate."

"It's accurate, all right; don't let that worry cramp your style. I've been buying up inside dope on this proposition for months, getting it all set for you--had it all but ready to slip you when Liane and you kicked over the traces last Spring. Well--we'd have had to wait awhile anyway for ma and pa Vandergrift to move to the country, and now it's a bigger thing than it would have been any time sooner. So no harm done."

"And this information you have collected?"

"Got it right here." Morphew worried a gold-mounted wallet out of one of his hip-pockets and sorted from its contents several sheets of onion-skin tissue dark with minute pen-work. "There you are: map of the grounds, plan of the house, diagram of the library showing locations of all lights and switches, full notes on the habits of the household--everything but the combination of the safe."

"We left that out on purpose, Lanyard," Pagan smirked across the cloth, "just to make it interesting for you."

Impatiently Morphew thrust the diagrams and notes into Lanyard's hands.

"Everything else you want to know is there. Give it all the once over as soon as you can--we haven't got time now, ought to be joining the ladies before long--and any questions you want to ask I'll try to answer."

"Many thanks." Lanyard shuffled the papers under a thoughtful frown. "There is only one question I need ask: These fabulously wealthy folk no doubt maintain a corps of night watchmen?"

"That's just where you're wrong," Morphew contradicted in triumph. "There's only one night watchman for the whole works; and he's held the job twenty years and got so old and confident--nothing having ever happened to make him earn his pay--he spends most of his time on duty asleep in a chair by the garage door. He's supposed to make his rounds every hour, but I've fixed it so he'll forget about the three o'clock trip this night anyway."

"You have fixed it?"

"Don't suppose I'm taking any chances of his having a spell of sleeplessness tonight, do you? When he goes to sit down in his favorite chair this time he's going to find a flask that's slipped by accidental purpose off somebody's hip, a flask more than half full of prime stuff."

"Why not quite full, monsieur?"

Morphew winked hideously and laid a finger to his nose. "If that bird sees somebody had a few pulls at it, he won't worry about whether it's prune juice or ill-natured alcohol."

"Forgive my stupidity; now I understand--the cunning hand of Monsieur Pagan will have been at work upon the contents of that flask. How far-sighted you are to keep a tame chemist. But how will the bottle find its way to the seat of the chair?"

"One of my boys will take care of that, of course."

"You have spies within the gates, then?"

"Haven't I just been telling you I never leave anything to chance?"

"But I should say you leave everything to nothing else, when you repose faith in the loyalty of human hearts. Trust one man with your life, and you forfeit all your right to sleep; trust two, you may count yourself already betrayed. Trust nobody: it is the rule that made the Lone Wolf what he was."

"But you're trusting me--"

"Pardon, monsieur," Lanyard smiled; "but--you will admit--under duress."

"Well! but I'm trusting you--"

"With a cordon of God knows how many spies posted about the Vandergrift residence, beyond, to see that I am not interfered with while at work."

"But that's only a commonsense precaution," Morphew uneasily growled.

"And likewise to see that I do not take it into my head to--how do you say it? double-cross you?--pocket my plunder and neglect to return."

"Nothing like that." Morphew denied, with contempt for the suggestion. "Got too much confidence in your good sense."

"And yet you tell me you leave nothing to chance!"

"You're a great little kidder, all right." A sour smile commented on the concession. "As far as that goes, I don't expect you back here tonight."

"No?" Lanyard queried in surprise. "You meant to be a consistent gambler, then--trust me to return to New York with my loot alone?"

"Not exactly. You'll need a good car for your getaway, and a racing driver that knows all the back-roads--"

"Ah! not such a besotted gambler after all."

"I've marked a place on the map I gave you, a place just outside the grounds where you'll find a racing car waiting, when you're ready. Once you're in that, and the driver steps on the gas, nothing but an airplane stands a ghost of a show of overtaking you."

"Truly, you have thought of everything . . ."

"I'm that way."

There was a lull. Lanyard with an abstracted air folded the sheaf of papers and put them away in his pocket, then became amiably aware that both Morphew and Pagan were watching his every action with the eagerest interest.

"Eh bien, messieurs! Shall we, as you say, rejoin the ladies?"

"You"--Morphew abandoned all effort to disguise the strain upon his self-control--"you're going to go through with it?"

Lanyard's shoulders were more expressive even than the spoken retort: "What else has one to do?"

Sitting back, Morphew absently mopped his face with a napkin. "One hell of a hot night," he muttered. . . . "That's all right, then. You're such a fire-eater I didn't know but you might try to buck on me at the last minute."

"Tranquilize yourself, monsieur. My word has been passed. There is but one thing I cannot promise: I may not be able to make the clean sweep of the Vandergrift jewels that you desire."

"What's to stop you, once you get set at that safe?"

"Who knows, monsieur?" Lanyard pushed back his chair. "The element of chance enters into every human affair. Who knows whose hand will cast the dice tonight? Who knows how they will fall?"

To himself he added a cry of despair: "Mother of God! who cares?"

XXIII

The earlier hours of that night aged without departure from its programme as arranged by Morphew. With entire apathy Lanyard made himself flexible to every maneuvre which that one or Pagan recommended in bogus anxiety "to armour-plate his alibi"--Pagan's phrase, meaning so to colour appearances in advance that nobody would have any excuse for believing Lanyard had not been far from the theatre of the contemplated crime at the hour of its commission. Unshaken assurance that the intrigue had a single object, his permanent removal from Morphew's path at the smallest cost in embarrassment to the latter, prevented Lanyard's lending himself to the artful but meaningless dodges they proposed with anything but the compliance of complete fatigue. It couldn't matter to him what people might think and say of him after that event to whose occurrence he was looking forward with a resignation that, alone of all its preliminary business, afforded him a certain thrill of interest; he wondered a little at the manifestation of such indifference to life in one who had always ere now loved life so well . . .

The sequelae of that mental illness which had blotted seven months out of memory no doubt had something to do with the psychic background to the strange frame of mind which now was his--impossible to surmise how much or how little, lacking as he did the true data of that eclipse, having to guide speculation only Liane's account and Morphew's, each fragmentary and replete with inherent discrepancies as well as in conflict with the other on points of first importance. And even given a faithful record of all those days and nights when the Lone Wolf had walked and the mind of Michael Lanyard had been dark, still it would need a psychoanalyst to say in what manner and to what degree the after-effects of such an experience might be influencing his mental processes of today.

Not that it mattered now, not that Lanyard really cared; for him it sufficed to have in his heart tonight this living pain of longing for a love forever forfeit through no conscious error or omission, through no volition of his own.

Eight months ago he had reconciled himself to the thought of renouncing his love that Eve might never be made to repent her response, that her faith in him might endure. But since blind fate had conspired with human malice to uproot faith, stamp it out in that kind bosom and destroy it altogether, life held for him no more promise to make it worth the living, he could look back into the very face of death and know never a tremor of dismay. As even now . . .

It was quite true, he was not afraid. He searched his heart and found it steadfast, was confident it would not fail him when his hour struck. He was willing enough to go, only stipulating that when he went he would not go alone, Morphew must go with him. Upon this he was determined, and with so passionate a fixity of purpose that he wondered how Morphew could be in his company and remain insensible to what was in his mind.

They sat together, otherwise alone, long after midnight, in a sector of the veranda as dark as the house behind it. In the entrance-hall a night-light burned, throwing its dim fan of rays down the steps to the porte-cochère. Liane and Folly had some time since gone to bed, leaving Lanyard to enjoy a "conference" with Morphew of the latter's allegation, before leaving to return to town in the car that had fetched him. The servants, too, were all presumably abed, since Morphew had faithfully acted out the farce, for the benefit of Lanyard, of telling the butler not to wait up and promising to close up the front part of the house in person.

Not long after, the landaulet had ground its tyres upon the gravel of the drive, had stopped beneath the porte-cochère long enough to permit Pagan and Morphew to speed an imaginary parting guest with farewells loud and clear, then had crunched noisily away with Pagan as its passenger, under-studying Lanyard, to be set down outside the gates ere the car proceeded to New York; while Lanyard and Morphew had settled down to await his furtive return afoot.

A lengthy period of what would have been quiet had Morphew not been, as usual, masticating an unlighted cigar, ended in a snort of complacence: "Well! guess we're all set . . ."

"Not altogether."

"What's the matter? Haven't you had chance enough to study those diagrams?"

"I know them by heart. Nevertheless, you have forgotten one essential of my equipment."

"What's that? A jimmy?"

"I seldom use one, certainly shall have no use for one tonight."

"Don't see how you expect to get into the library without something of the sort."

"O you of little faith!" Lanyard laughed softly. "That is a matter for my skill."

"Well! maybe you do know your business best. But considering you don't use tools or soup on a box, damned if I see what else it can be you miss."

"A pistol, monsieur."

Distaste for the suggestion was evidenced by a delay which prefaced the response: "Thought you didn't go in for that sort of thing."

"What sort of a thing?"

"Toting a gun on a job. Thought it was against your principles to be fixed to shed blood if you got in a jam."

"It was. It was likewise contrary to the code of the Lone Wolf to work with accomplices. You have prescribed a new technique for me altogether; you can hardly object if I consent to adopt it only upon provisions which seem to me wise. After all, it is my liberty that is involved--very possibly my life, too."

"All rot. There isn't the slightest danger to you on this job, everything like that has been looked out for."

"You feel sure, monsieur?"

"Positive."

After a pause Lanyard asked: "Tell me, monsieur: have you noticed that, since we have been sitting here, a man has stolen up behind that clump of shrubbery yonder and is keeping watch on us?"

"What's that?" The legs of Morphew's chair grated harshly on the flooring. "What man? Where?"

"You didn't see him, then, as he came skulking across the lawns?"

"No--"

"Then you are not in a position to assert the fellow is not where I have indicated?"

"No--but see here--"

"Be at ease--there is nobody." Lanyard laughed quietly. "But neither am I in a position to assert--and stake my life on it--that I will find nobody on guard in the Vandergrift library tonight. So I will have a pistol for self-protection when I go to pay my call."

"You make that a positive condition?"

"Assuredly, monsieur. And if it comes to that--why not?"

"Suppose you'll have to have it, then."

"A supposition that does great credit to monsieur's efficiency of apprehension. If, however, you are afraid to trust me with firearms, I will cheerfully consent to a postponement till you have had time to think the matter over."

"Why should I be afraid to trust you with a gat?"

"The very question I have been asking myself. Believe me, monsieur, confidence alone can beget confidence."

"You've got me all wrong," Morphew sulkily insisted. "Oh, well! if you've got to have the thing--here."

An automatic pistol changed hands. Making sure that the safety catch was set--which proved that the weapon was loaded and ready for use--Lanyard contentedly dropped it into his pocket.

His first small success to break that tedious tale of reverses . . .

"At last," he announced, "the faithful Pagan!"

"Where?" Morphew goggled blindly at the gloom that clothed the grounds. "I don't see him . . ."

"If your sight by night is no better than that," Lanyard observed, "I feel sure, for the first time, it wasn't you who played Lone Wolf while my back was turned."

Morphew swung himself sharply--and cursed himself sotto-voce for the constructive self-betrayal.

"What put that silly fool idea into your head?"

"Don't be angry, monsieur--it was not said seriously."

A shadow picked out with the white wedge of a shirt-bosom sped lightly across the gravel and up the steps. Morphew's cluck brought it fawning to his side.

"His master's voice," Lanyard chuckled.

"See here!" Pagan bristled belligerently under the lee of his patron, "d'you know you're damned impertinent?"

"Yes."

If Pagan had a retort adequate to the insolence of that monosyllable, Morphew forbade it.

"Here! that's enough. You've been a hell of a long time; what kept you?"

"You shouldn't risk leaving our good friend alone so long," Lanyard cut in. "He's too trustful, people take advantage of his confidence in human nature and over-reach him. Regard that even I have been able to wheedle a pistol out of him while you were playing chuckfarthing on the tombstones--or whatever the mischief was you've been up to."

"Is that right?" Consternation jarred the toady out of his mean rôle for an instant. "What the devil--"

"Calm yourself, my good Pagan. If your terrors were not baseless, I would be making good use of the weapon this instant--if I had waited so long--instead of sitting here and playing the deuce with your nerves."

"Cut it out, can't you?" Morphew muttered. "This is no time to be squabbling like a couple of kids. You need every minute you've got to run over your plans--"

"Quite unnecessary, monsieur; my mind is already made up."

"All the same, it's better we should leave you to think things over--"

"I shall miss you like fun."

"Besides, it's only half an hour more now; and Pete and I want to be in bed and sound asleep by the time you go into action. Anything more you want to take up with me?"

"At this moment, monsieur--nothing."

"Then we'll be going." Morphew heaved out of his chair. "Good night," he mumbled in heavy effort to sound well-disposed. "Don't let 'em put anything over on you--watch your step."

"I shall not fail to do so." Lanyard was so occupied with cigarette-case and matches that he didn't see the hand which Morphew half-heartedly offered and with ill-disguised relief withdrew. "And you, too, monsieur--dream sweetly and--but surely there must be some appropriate American expression--don't fall out of bed!"

Pagan offered slightly curdled noises of valediction. Lanyard accepted them for what they were worth and dismissed their maker with the same gesture. Like lion and jackal--like a corpulent sloth of a lion attended by an exceptionally spry and pert jackal--the two familiars went into the house.

The front doors were closed and bolted, the shine of their fan-light grew more dull, the stairs complained of a weighty and deliberate tread, windows in the second storey burned brightly for several minutes, throwing saffron beams over the edge of the veranda roof to stain the lawns, then were darkened, Lanyard imagined that he heard a creak--Morphew's bed, or some door resenting an attempt to open it by stealth--and heard nothing more from the interior of the house.

There was no real stillness where he sat, on the edge of the open night. A wind soft and warm was blowing, gravid with presentiments of rain; occasional gusts of sterner stuff wrung aeolian roars from tormented tree tops, sharpened the rattle of leaves incessantly a-shiver, and sent strange, shapeless shadows scurrying across the lawns like spirits of darkness reft from their moorings in shrubbery and undergrowth. The moon had set, the stars were few and far and faint, vast convoys of cloud cruising beneath them drenched the world with Cimmerian mirk for minutes at a time; a night made to the order of sinners and spies . . .

He knew very well he was spied upon even then, while he sat small and still, his cigarette burning itself out a dozen feet away on the drive, the phosphorescent dial of his watch in the close cup of his palm. A quarter to three--five minutes more . . . He had told Morphew the truth about the man whom he had seen steal up to stand watch over them--more accurately, over Lanyard--from the cover of a mass of shrubbery; had lied in denying the discovery; both for sheer mischievous enjoyment of Morphew's loss of countenance when he saw the whole tissue of his scheme imperiled by the mischance, as he must have reckoned it, of a botched job of surveillance.

Taking fright of what he had overheard Lanyard say, likely enough, that spy had made early occasion to seek a safer hiding place. But nothing persuaded Lanyard that he had marked down the only man assigned to the duty of seeing that he performed in faithful accord with his commitments. He counted confidently on every step of his private via dolorosa being dogged by a corporal's guard of shadows . . .

It was, however, in his mind to give them something less elusive than _his_ shadow to prove their skill with . . .