"Why! by what you tell me, I find myself still a virgin."
"Don't be depressing. Here am I, being deuced entertaining and eloquent
and profound, philosophizing on matters of the spirit, while you . . .
Bah!" quoth Pagan. "But to continue: Give the financier who was a
peasant respite from his cares, and whither turns his heart? Back to the
stage of his young days; if he takes a vacation, he spends it in
overalls down on the farm."
"And yours, one presumes, are devoted to making records for the
gramophone?"
"Don't interrupt, Liane. . . . Or take, say a criminal who has abandoned
his misguided ways and become a respected member of the community. How
will he relax? Eh, Mr. Lanyard?"
"I will not presume to instruct monsieur on a point concerning which he
is undoubtedly better informed than I."
Liane exploded a "Ho!" of pure joy, and Pagan shot Lanyard an envenomed
glance which he was swift to mask with his well-worn smirk. "To be
frank," he generously admitted, dropping into a conversational tone, "I
had the Lone Wolf in mind. They say the fellow is here, in New York,
now, and up to his old games again. I confess the thought rides my
imagination, the puzzle of it. By all accounts, he went straight for
years. How, then, came he to backslide? Were the claims of the past too
strong? or the demands of the present? Does he steal today deliberately
for gain? or involuntarily at the dictates of some subtle and deathless
instinct?"
"But monsieur has so many entertaining theories, surely he will produce
one to cover this hypothetical instance."
"I don't know. Nature is too strong for us, she laughs at all our
efforts to revise her. We may repress and inhibit our native instincts
as much as we will, but in the end, as a rule, they have their way. The
Psychical Research Society reported, not long ago, the case of a man in
whom the influence of instincts developed in early professional life
were so strong that, buried though his criminal past was under a dozen
years of law-abiding life, he reverted to old practices from time to
time without knowing what he did; that is to say, in spells of amnesia,
during which his first personality, the natural man, broke through the
veneer of the secondary or artificial personality with which he had so
painstakingly overlaid it. A safe-breaker and jewel thief like this Lone
Wolf. Interesting if this were another such case."
"Interesting, indeed, monsieur, if conceivable."
"But think a minute, and I believe you'll admit it's easily conceivable.
Imagine such a man, with wits and senses all habituated by years of
rigorous training to serve his predatory nature. Because he's trying to
live an honest life today doesn't mean that those old, ingrained habits
have necessarily ceased to function. To the contrary, I imagine, they
are always at work. As he goes to and fro and meets men and women who
invite him into their homes--in their ignorance of his former identity,
of course--inevitably, I maintain, such a man will always be observing
and valuing and formulating plans of attack--subconsciously, perhaps,
but still and for all that making use of the faculties he trained in
other days. I can believe he never visits a home of any consequence
without taking away with him a comprehensive scheme for burglarizing it.
As you or I might, Mr. Lanyard, if either of us had the education of the
Lone Wolf, say in respect of this very house. . . . And then some night,
when he's least dreaming of anything of the sort, the old Adam reasserts
itself, without or with his will and cognizance--"
Perhaps a little frightened by the gleam in Lanyard's eyes and the
tension of his lips, Liane bounced up vivaciously, ran to Pagan, and
clapped a palm over his mouth.
"Peter!" she cried--"you make me tired, you talk so much. Once you get
started, you never know when to stop. But now you will stop, I insist
that you stop and take me home. It is nearly three, and I am weary to
the marrow of my bones, too fatigued to listen another instant to your
twaddle."
Lanyard contrived with fair enough grace to decline Pagan's magnanimous
offer of a lift in his car; but by the time he found himself on Fifth
avenue again was half sorry he had. There were no taxicabs cruising for
fares at that hour, at least all he spied were tearing along with metal
flags reversed; and his head was at one and the same time buzzing with
fumes of whiskey and thick with that drowsiness of which he had first
become sensible in the cab with Folly McFee. Singularly enough, that
cloud had lifted during his stop in her home, whereas since leaving it,
ever since he had drawn his first breath of the dank, chill air of the
streets, his wits had been like slugs fumbling blindly in a bed of
cotton-wool. Now his feet as well were beginning to feel leaden,
walking, ordinarily a source of such keen enjoyment to this man of
vigorous physical life, had become a task.
Hard to understand how one could have been so affected by the scanty
ration of alcohol one had consumed that evening, a solitary glass of
champagne at the Clique, a single Scotch and soda two hours later. It
might be, of course, that Pagan had mixed too stiff a highball. One
hadn't been so impressed while drinking, but now the flavour of the
whisky clung to the palate, harshly reminiscent. Evidently not such good
stuff as it had seemed at the first sip.
Odd to find oneself resuming one's homeward walk at almost the very
point where that rencontre with Liane had interrupted it. Still more
odd, how that affair had resulted; in three brief hours everything had
come true that one had foretold in seeking to dissuade Eve from the idea
of marriage . . .
In a surge of grim rage Lanyard pledged Morphew and Pagan ample grounds
for repentance should they show any disposition to persist in tampering
with his concerns.
Then he found occasion to execrate the weather, too, perceiving that it
had been only holding off till now, when it had him at its mercy. Now
all at once it ceased to tease and settled down to rain in dogged
earnest and get the business over with.
And still no taxis . . .
Lanyard turned up the collar of his overcoat and dug both hands into its
pockets, clipping stick under arm and plodding heavily through the
shining puddles, with every labored step growing more conscious of
bodily oppression and the lethargy that ruled his mind, feeling more
abused in some vague how and aggrieved.
In the many-hued lights of the street the back-spatter of raindrops
drilling on the sidewalk churned in rainbow iridescence, a froth of
phantom jewels, enchanting, evanescent . . .
Strange that one should never have remarked this effect ere now . . .
Stranger still how blindly man was wont to move through the world,
benighted to its wonders, only in rare moments cheating the bandages
with which individualism sealed his eyes and catching glimpses fugitive
and ravishing of beauty adorning the most hackneyed ways . . . As now
when, lifting dazzled eyes, Lanyard beheld himself a lonely way-farer in
a lane of jewels set in jet and gold . . .
Jewels that outrivalled even those the Sultan of Loot had paraded, and
Liane, and that other woman . . . pretty little thing so well
named . . . What the deuce was her name? Folly? Folly McFee!
Idiotic to mislay so soon a distinctive name like that . . .
Wading in jewels. Up to one's knees. As Liane waded in them, and Folly,
and the Sultan of Loot . . . Between them these three must have had on
display that night stones that would fetch four or five hundred
thousand . . . flaunting them in the face of a pauper!
A pauper? Well: little better! Penniless, or next door to it. A few more
days of running round with Eve . . . who must never guess . . . and he
would be stoney. Not pinched for money--broke. The reward of
virtue . . .
Lanyard laughed aloud, a cracked, ugly laugh.
Pagan hadn't been far wrong. Impertinent clown! Not far wrong, at
that . . . Anything but easy to forget the cunning one once had gloried
in, to remain forever deaf and dumb to the insidious prompting of
instincts which, as long as the sun shone, seemed to have been utterly
stamped out and exterminated, but which, when clouds massed and the wind
bared its teeth, had an accursed habit of proving they had been but
rebelliously quiescent . . .
Curious, how close to the line that mountebank had hewn in his guesswork
at the psychology of the outlaw reclaimed!
There lingered still a picture instantaneously printed upon the
sensitive film of consciousness, in that moment when Lanyard had stood
peering out of the rear window at Folly McFee's: a view of the roof of a
one-storey extension running back from the window, a flat roof decked
over to serve as a terrace in warm weather, with, beyond it, thanks to
an excavation being dug for a new building on the north side of the
block, nothing between the house and the next street but a board fence
enclosing the kitchen-yard. An open invitation to any man who might
fancy the jewels of Folly McFee; jewels that, shrewdly marketed, would
put a careful man beyond want for the rest of his days . . .
Lanyard growled an oath, gave himself an angry shake. What the devil had
got into him tonight, that he should consent for a single instant to
indulge such a train of thought?
Not that there was danger of _his_ being tempted . . . He gave a thick
chuckle of scorn. Nevertheless it was annoying to find oneself unable to
forget that the temptation was there.
All the fault of that reptile with his viperous tongue and machine-made
leer, What's-his-name . . . What _was_ his name? Fagin? No: Pagan.
Loathsome creature . . .
What an ass one had been to swallow his insolence simply because there
were women present, to let such an illogical consideration restrain one
from yielding to natural, primitive impulse and, with every
provocation, throttling the fellow, wringing his scrawny neck . . .
In amaze Lanyard emerged from a seizure of sodden insanity to find
himself at halt in front of the Waldorf, standing quite still in the
driving rain and glaring at his hands, which were extended with tensed
fingers compressing the windpipe of an imaginary victim.
What was he doing? He made an effort to pull himself together, and cast
glances right and left, shame-faced to think that he might have been
seen. But there was not another soul in sight on the whole, undulant
length of the Avenue. Only a taxi shot past, and its driver hooted . . .
He seemed to have mislaid his stick. After a moment of myopic searching
he gave it up, pocketed his hands and lunged on. . . . Not far to go
now; but one made indifferent progress because of the fog. Of course it
was fog! What else could make the lights so dim? Like a London fog, a
London particular. And getting thicker every minute, blotting out the
lights as a blotting paper sops up ink, leaving only blurs, faint and
formless blotches fading into night absolute, black and steaming . . .
In a sudden saffron blaze Lanyard identified the common aspect of the
small suite of rooms which he rented furnished. He was in the
sitting-room, wrestling with his overcoat. Soaked through and dripping,
the wretched thing seemed possessed of a devil of perversity which
resisted all his efforts to shed it. He gave an infuriated wriggle,
heard something rip, and discovered, in some surprise, that he was rid
of it. Then with indignation he saw that the door stood open to the
public hall, a staring oblong of black in the lighted walls. Lurching to
this, Lanyard flung it shut with a thundering crash.
The problem of escaping from the intimate embrace of his dress-coat next
engaged his intelligence. Something he couldn't afford to tear off his
back. Yet he darkly foresaw difficulties. After a while of pondering, a
spirit of low cunning prompted him to try to deceive the thing by making
believe he didn't care whether it came off or not. . . . And
astonishingly it appeared that this strategem had been successful: he
was holding the garment in his hands. With the harsh, unfeeling laugh of
a conqueror he cast it from him and shaped a course for his bedchamber.
And barely in time: that London fog had stolen in after him somehow,
probably through the door he had carelessly left open, Heaven knew how
long. . . . At its old tricks, dimming down the lights till one could
hardly see. Rapidly, too. He succeeded in beating the darkness to his
bed, but with nothing to spare: as he sat on its edge, fumbling with his
shoes, night whelmed the world with a stunning crash . . .