The first was a pretty young thing, piquantly fair and petite, with
glowing face and merry eyes, at sight of whom Lanyard felt warranted in
breathing an invocation to his prophetic soul. For now, it seemed,
chance or predestination was making good that presentiment to which he
had confessed during supper at the Ritz.
This brilliant little shape of life in the dark rectangle of the doorway
had been conspicuously one of that party whose forbidding host had
excited the aversion of Eve de Montalais and, in himself, half-formed
forebodings. The man at whom she was so gayly gurgling over her
shoulder, who wore both topper and grin at the doggish slant which
becomes the author of an amusingly improper wheeze, was the little chap
of the weazened wise mask whom Lanyard privately reckoned court jester
to the Sultan of Loot. The latter in very person bulked in the shadowy
background provided by the corridor, a presence vast but vague, betrayed
by the baleful burning of fire opals as a thunderhead on a summer's
night may remain more sensed than seen till a glimmer of lightning lends
definition to its loom. Behind lurked a fourth, a figure still more
indefinite. And in the rear a gleam picked out the hairless poll of
Theodore, inclined at a servile angle.
Discovering Liane Delorme all at once, the lady on the threshold
registered rapture, then ran to her with glad hands extended, her slight
little body bearing an extravagant wrap of Russian sables with a grace
as dainty as a fay's. Lips that didn't need paint to point their pretty
contours bubbling joyously--"Darling Liane! You luscious thing! How
we've missed you!"--she precipitated herself into Liane's arms and
printed inconsiderate kisses upon that studiously composed complexion.
When she permitted Liane to disengage and present Lanyard, he received
an almost disconcertingly cordial smile and a tiny hand on which blazed
in insolent beauty what he rated at first glance the most exquisite
emeralds he had ever seen, who in his day had been somewhat an amateur
of emeralds.
"Mr. Lanyard!"--Liane's introduction had been effected in English--"I
_am_ so glad to know you. It seems to me Liane knows all the interesting
people--and nobody else."
"One trusts very truly you will not find need tonight to revise that
recommendation," Lanyard returned, bowing low over the little hand. He
added with an enquiring inflexion, because he wasn't sure of having
caught the name aright: "Mrs. McFee . . ."
"Mrs. Folliott McFee," Liane supplied with an accent on the Folliott
that supplemented something to this sense: 'Surely you must know that
magic name!'
All the same, Lanyard didn't.
"Folly for short," laughed Mrs. McFee--"Folly to my friends." Then she
gave a small make-believe shriek because the sable robe was being lifted
from her shoulders by the gentleman of the carven countenance. "Peter
Pagan! how you startled me . . . You know Peter Pagan, of course, Mr.
Lanyard: everybody does."
"Business of initiating you to the inner circle of certified somebodies,
Mr. Lanyard," quoth Mr. Pagan solemnly, shaking hands, and leaving
Lanyard with a feeling that no man had a right to look like that if he
couldn't extemporize more tellingly.
But Liane had dropped a hand upon his sleeve and was drawing him aside
to be made known to the Sultan of Loot.
"Mr. Morphew: Mr. Lanyard . . . You must become good friends, you two
who are both such good friends of mine."
This impressive figure of the immobile and livid face and the hooded
eyes, this Mr. Hugh Morphew, met Lanyard with a manner subtly allusive
beneath a show of non-committal courtesy. His smile was grave, reticent
and fugitive, a solitary cat's-paw flawing the surface of plumbless
deeps; his few words were carefully chosen and cast in polished periods
by an orotund voice: he was honoured to make the acquaintance of Mr.
Lanyard and hoped that he, as a friend of Mademoiselle Delorme, would be
so very good as to become one of their number for the remainder of the
evening . . . But in the cast of his eye, the clasp of his hand, in an
undertone his accents had as he pronounced these perfunctory phrases,
there was meaning intended to be seized by Lanyard only, and which the
latter interpreted much to this effect: 'We have been waiting a long
time for this meeting, you and I. But patience: all in good time we
will come to understand each other perfectly.' . . .
To this finesse Lanyard returned no acknowledgement of any sort. Indeed,
he contrived to appear unconscious of it, to interpose an amiably modest
manner between the scrutiny of those inquisitive but illegible eyes and
a nature anything but easy to impress. He had lived so long in this
world, in the course of a busy life had had so much to do with
pretentiousness, that secretly, and the innuendoes of Liane Delorme to
the contrary notwithstanding, he inclined to suspect Mr. Morphew of
being a pompous fraud, a character of the utmost commonplaceness
skulking behind the consequential false front of a jerry-built
personality. He might be mistaken; but for the present the best he was
disposed to grant Mr. Morphew was suspended judgement.
Moreover, at the moment, Folly McFee was demanding his attention on
behalf of one Mr. Mallison, another whom Lanyard remembered having
noticed at the Ritz.
This final introduction was transacted without casualties but without
eliciting crows of ecstasy from either party. Mr. Mallison, indeed, was
unaffectedly off-hand in his attitude, he didn't care a damn who knew
that, to him, Mr. Lanyard was an interloper, an upstart, nobody in
particular. A gesture for which Lanyard was grateful since it enabled
him to reciprocate the sentiment that shaped it without feeling remiss
in the matter of everyday urbanity.
Tall and gracefully made, Mr. Mallison aired evening clothes and hair
of a lustre seldom to be observed this side of the cinema screen. His
speech had the tune of the educated English, or something nearly
resembling it, his manners were silky and sulky, he practised a furtive
smile down his nose as if he knew something but wouldn't tell, he had
mastered a killing trick or two of the eyes for use in talking to women.
And when it transpired, on the word of Folly McFee, that Mally tango'd
quite too divinely, one felt that one needed to know no more. . . . A
person of importance, if you asked Lanyard, solely as he might upon
occasion shine with incandescence borrowed from the genius of Mr.
Morphew, upon whom Mallison seemed assiduous to fawn in season and out.
Having offered the apology for his intrusion which custom prescribed and
accepted the equally conventional assurance that all hands were ravished
to have the privilege of welcoming one so well sponsored, Lanyard
settled down to use his wits, as Liane had recommended, and find out for
himself what this party was all about; if, indeed, it was 'about'
anything more unusual than mankind's native predisposition to make light
of whatever laws there be.
Certainly, if its members had foregathered at the Clique Club for any
purpose other than the desire to drink forbidden wine upon premises of
unholy repute, it wasn't at first blush apparent. Nobody was hungry,
every soul present having sat through a supper elsewhere and earlier. On
the other hand, everybody was famously thirsty with the exception of Mr.
Morphew, who was alleged never to drink, and Lanyard who, having
sampled it, didn't frightfully care for the Clique cellar. But all of a
sudden Folly McFee, in whom artificial exhilaration was mounting apace,
announced that she craved sure-enough excitement. Whereupon at a sign
from Morphew the cloth was whisked away and the green baize of a
card-table disclosed; whose top manipulation of a hidden catch reversed,
bringing to light a small layout for roulette, complete but for chips
and the metal wheel to fit in the bowl. These being supplied by
Theodore, Mr. Morphew announced that he would stand the first trick as
banker and croupier in one, and that white chips would cost one dollar
apiece and the sky would be the limit; Mrs. McFee produced an impressive
roll of bills from a jewelled mesh-bag and bought chips with a free
hand; while Liane Delorme, Mallison, and Pagan purchased more
conservatively but still eagerly.
But Lanyard, when Morphew's heavy-lidded eyes turned his way, shook his
head: "Thanks; but if you don't mind I'll just look on."
"O Mr. Lanyard!" Folly McFee remonstrated--"and you look like such a
good sport."
"You see how deceitful I am," Lanyard pointed out. "Let this be a lesson
to Folly, not to trust appearances."
"But really, my friend!" Liane observed reproachfully--"you are no
longer the man you were."
"I have always made it a rule not to gamble without money in pocket."
"But I will let you have any amount you want."
"You are too good, Liane. Another rule I have all my life observed is
never to gamble with borrowed money."
"Your credit is good, Mr. Lanyard," Morphew tersely put in.
"Rule Number Three: Never play on credit . . . I am deeply sensible of
your courtesy, Mr. Morphew, but really I will be most grateful if you
will permit me to sit by and look on merely. The novelty of seeing
myself in such a rôle at a roulette table will be compensation enough
for the self-denial."
"As you prefer . . ." Morphew politely gave in. But before long he made
occasion to exchange with Liane a look clouded with meaning, which
Lanyard wasn't supposed to see and which, so far as anybody else knew,
he didn't, who was busy just then refilling Folly McFee's glass and
making amused response to the coquetry with which the flushed and
laughing face turned up to his was instinct.
All the same, Lanyard wasn't missing much that went on, Life had too
well trained his faculties to overlook nothing that fell within their
range and to be wary of dismissing as necessarily negligible the most
minor and incidental details of any affair. He was beginning now to
experience glimmerings, to perceive that this curious post-midnight
party was 'about' something after all. Even before intercepting that
mute consultation of eyes he had felt tolerably satisfied that a
community of interests existed between at least three of those present,
that Liane, Morphew and Pagan were playing prearranged parts in complete
mutual sympathy. It was just possible that Mallison, too, was privy to
their confidence; but one rather doubted that, Mallison impressed one as
more likely to prove a tool, a pawn, a wage-loyal henchman, than a peer
of this interesting confederation.
The arguments he had adduced in his endeavour to make Eve understand
that he was not a man of the sort she ought to marry began to seem
inspired. Liane had never brought him here simply to gratify a vagrant
whim. Neither had her half-veiled hints been idly uttered, concerning
those nameless acquaintances of hers who were taking such a profound if
gratuitous interest in Lanyard, and the one whom she most wanted him to
meet, either Pagan or Morphew unquestionably, and who was "quite a
social power . . . in a quiet way." Because the woman was well-disposed,
for old sake's sake she had chosen to warn him, if in her own oblique
fashion, to be on his guard with those two in whose minds, Lanyard
hadn't any manner of doubt, the project for some time had been forming
of inveigling him into some shady sort of association with them, for
purposes of their own in the last degree questionable.
Undoubtedly they had taken a good deal of pains to inform themselves as
to Lanyard's circumstances. How they expected to be repaid for their
trouble remained for him to find out. Hardly out of his pocket; knowing
as much as Liane had revealed, they probably knew more, even that the
debacle of his unregenerate days had left him without resources other
than the half-pay attaching to an extended leave of absence from the
British Secret Service, and that the not inconsiderable cost of squiring
about New York a woman of fashion had brought him to a pass where he
might no longer refuse to face the prospect of being unable to pursue
that sweet association for sheer inability to finance it--he who had
been accustomed to waste money away as freely as in more spacious times
he had been wont to appropriate it! A plight the more painful in that it
was one he couldn't possibly confess to the woman he loved. He had gone
tonight as far in that direction as pride would let him. . . .
Since, then, it was manifestly not pence they wanted of him, this
precious pair, this Morphew and this Pagan, it followed that they wanted
something less tangible but probably in the upshot more profitable,
something which they might have found themselves in a position to
require of him if he could have been induced to play roulette on credit
and had lost--as he made no doubt he would have lost. Setting aside all
question of the honesty of the wheel which Morphew's huge hands were
manipulating with notable deftness, the observation and experience of
this inveterate gambler of other days had convinced Lanyard that luck
seldom or never favours him to whom its smile is a matter of life or
death.
Not that he conceived the game to have been planned with any idea of
inducing him to play and lose, his attendance had come about too
fortuitously. To believe that was to believe Liane had foreseen that he
would be marching down Fifth avenue at half an hour after midnight and
had deliberately arranged to have her cab skid and land her on the kerb
a dozen paces ahead of him.
No: by every sign acceptable to a fairly sophisticated intelligence,
tonight's affair had been plotted for the sole if highly problematic
benefit of Mrs. Folliott McFee. Not in all likelihood for the purpose of
fleecing her at a friendly little game, though she was punting with
feverish imprudence, broadcasting her bets and losing very considerable
sums without perceptible care. Lanyard was prepared to credit Messrs.
Morphew and Pagan with capacity for any degree of knavery; but their
evident affluence and their association with Liane Delorme inclined him
to believe that they were in this instance up to some mischief at least
a cut above crooked gambling. Liane, thorough-paced rip that she was,
had in the course of a highly chromatic career feathered her nest too
warmly to be reduced to the rôle of tout to a brace of common sharpers.
What, then, could their purpose be with this engaging and indiscreet
young person? If only one knew a little more about Mrs. Folliott McFee
it might be easier to guess.
In the absence of such specific information, a study of her as she was
tonight would do no harm, might quite possibly prove rewarding.
Indisputably a fascinating creature. Divested of her sables, disclosed
partially in but largely out of a flimsy piece of impudence which the
cynical Rue de la Paix had fashioned to serve as an evening gown, she
cut a figure the most sprightly and sightly heart could wish: an
animated miniature of extreme loveliness, abandoning herself to the
spirit of play with the heedless vivacity of a charming child; drinking
a bit more than she should, perhaps, while she watched her stakes
unfailingly fall to the lot of the croupier's rake, but plaguing
Mallison with a lightly malicious wit that struck him speechless and
left him more than ever sulky, bartering pungent banter with Mr. Peter
Pagan, cheeking the taciturn Morphew till he smiled perforce his rare
begrudged smiles, and never for an instant forgetting that Lanyard was
likewise an unattached and personable male; and all with a delicate air
that robbed her most flagrant audacities of any suggestion of poor taste
and made her seem strangely out of place in that ring of hard and
selfish faces, in that overheated private room of an establishment whose
every purpose was illicit, in that demoralizing atmosphere drenched with
perfume of wine and scent of perfumed flesh . . . Strangely out of
place, appealingly helpless for all her bravado: a child among thieves
and worse . . .
But it were a thankless job to waste solicitude upon her: if Folly
couldn't take care of herself, nothing was more certain than that the
way to earn her abiding dislike was to try to take care of her. In New
York, as every elsewhere in the haunts of men of means beyond their
needs or native ability to spend with good grace, no novelty at all
inheres in the spectacle of such flighty young women, amusement-mad and
gifted with too much freedom from responsibility, going devious ways
with dubious guides. And the worst of it is, as a general rule it's
nobody's business but their own.
Now in course of time, when a waiter entered with yet another cooler
wherein two more bottles were luxuriously cuddled in cracked ice, the
open door admitted stimulating strains of the orchestra downstairs; and
forthwith Folly McFee concluded she'd had enough of roulette, at least
temporarily.
"Perfectly damn' rotten luck!" she declared, pushing back her chair and
jumping up. "I'm for a dance, maybe that will change it. Who wants to
take me down for this tango? Mally----?"
"You can't have Mally," Liane Delorme informed her with serene decision.
"You've had him all evening at the Ritz. It's my turn now. Take Peter
Pagan: he's a better match for you, dear."
"Pick on somebody your own size," Pagan paraphrased, leaving his place
with an alacrity that forestalled Lanyard's intended response to the
glint of invitation in the eyes which Folly promptly had turned his way.
"If you refuse me, Folly, you doom me to dance with Liane; and that
always makes me feel like an enterprising tug waltzing the Mauretania
round the North River."
Liane retorted with one of those characterizations so dear to the
Parisian heart, a deadly insult but absolutely meaningless when rendered
into English; and Pagan proved a certain lack of finish in his
cosmopolitan education by merely looking blank as he mentally translated
her remarks. After which he bowed cheerfully to the traducer of his
lineage and ambled off with Folly's hand under his arm; while Liane rose
and playfully tweaked Mallison out of his chair by an ear, to his
indignation, for he had been winning and naturally wanted to go on
playing as long as his luck lasted.
"It isn't that I really want to dance," she coolly explained to Morphew
and Lanyard as she haled Mallison to the door, "but simply to give you
two time to get acquainted . . ."
Morphew lumbered heavily after her and set the spring-lock by way of
providing against interruption. "Intelligent woman, Liane," he approved,
unsmiling, as he returned to his chair.
"As to that, monsieur, one is entirely of your mind."
Lanyard helped himself to a cigarette and looked civilly receptive under
the weight of Morphew's direct and thoughtful stare.
"Odd," that one considered, "we never happened to meet before this, Mr.
Lanyard."
"Think so?"
"Noticed you about town often enough."
"But does not the fact that our paths have sometimes crossed prove we
travel widely different courses?"
"I'm not so sure . . ."
"Not----?" Lanyard murmured, lifting the brows of polite surprise.
"I've got a notion, if the whole truth were known, you and I would find
we were travelling in much the same direction . . . in the dark."
"Monsieur does much travelling in the dark?"
"Guess you know what I mean," Morphew's gravity was lightened by a
twinkle of genial cunning. "When I say 'in the dark,' I mean, of course,
the side of our lives we like to keep covered up."
"This is most interesting," Lanyard protested with animation. "You are
going to tell me about that side of your life which you like to keep
covered up?"
"No fear." The twinkle broadened into a grin. "Guess I'll let you guess
at that, same as I have to guess at yours."
"I hope very truly monsieur does not so waste his time. I can assure
him, if his guesswork were to flood with light every nook and by-way of
my life, what he would see would not entertain him."
The lines running from Morphew's nostrils to the corners of his mouth
took on a sardonic set. "I doubt that, Mr. Lanyard."
"My ways of life are very quiet."
"I believe you. Still, I doubt I'd be bored."
"Possibly not," Lanyard conceded. "One is able to judge only by what one
has seen of you in public, monsieur; which leads one to believe your
interests centre by choice in light-hearted young people, not
sober-sided, steady-paced elderlies like myself."
"Oh! as to that, I take folks as I find them," Morphew alleged. "And I
find 'em all interesting, one way or another. Now yourself . . ."
"But I do assure you I am not at all interesting."
"Point of view," Morphew contended. "I'll say you've had an interesting
life."
Lanyard gave a good-natured shrug. "After all, it is the only life I
have . . . But monsieur, I am sure"--his manner grew moderately
pointed--"would find it tiresome."
"I don't," Morphew bluntly countered.
"Then I am honoured--I presume--to learn you have concerned yourself in
respect of my modest self."
"I know a lot about you," Morphew admitted--"past and present."
"Yet you tell me you think my present mode of life intriguing!"
"Intensely."
Lanyard laughed. "Monsieur will pardon my suggesting that his sources of
information, however busy, are unreliable if they have led him to
believe my small affairs worthy of his attention."
"Point of view again." Morphew dismissed argument with a flirt of a
massive hand. "Be that as it may: I've been anxious to meet you to ask
you to help me answer a certain question."
"Indeed?"
"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 would _you_ do?"
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!"