VI

A splitting headache roused Lanyard out of the void, with the help of an

unfeeling hand that shook his shoulder, and a voice that heartlessly

dinned his name into his ears.

When he tried to remonstrate his other shoulder was captured by another

vice-like hand, and he was raised to a sitting position on the side of

the bed. There, bending forward and clasping his head with both hands

lest it rend itself in twain, he regained a measure of lucidity.

Broad daylight was flooding the room, not sunlight but the warm

reflection of a sunny sky, beyond telling painful to optic nerves. On

throbbing eardrums a voice jarred, hideously cheerful.

"Well: how're you feeling now?"

Without understanding Lanyard blinked into the homely, grinning

countenance of Crane.

"Pretty rocky, I'll tell the World, the Tribune and the Herald! Next

time you'll know better than to take liberties with lawless liquor--or I

miss my guess. Got anything in the place good for a wrecked dome?"

Unwisely Lanyard sought to reply with a shake of the head under

consideration. His moans were heart-rendering. When he got them under

control he heard Crane say: "Well, son! it's a good thing to have a

true friend on the job when you're feeling like this. You set there and

take it easy while I run down to the drug store and fetch you a

pick-me-up."

What were intended to be words of gratitude in response came out as the

most disconsolate noises imaginable. Crane's footsteps receded through

the sitting-room and died out beyond a door which was closed with

thoughtful care. Pricked by pride, Lanyard put forth a tremendous effort

of will and stood up.

Not till then did he appreciate that he was fully clothed but for his

shoes and the dress-coat which he had a muggy memory of having discarded

in the adjoining room.

When Crane re-entered without knocking, Lanyard was splashing in the

bathroom. Some minutes later he came out wrapped in a dressing-gown and

bearing some resemblance to his normal, self-respecting self. A steaming

hot soak followed by five minutes under an icy needle-shower had

moderated the headache to a bearable grumble. Crane was waiting with a

tall and foaming glass. A draught long and acrid but grateful. The

flavour of aromatic spirits of ammonia replacing that of aloes in his

mouth, Lanyard was able to express his thanks with a smile less wan than

might have been expected.

"I think you called yourself a true friend," he said: "that was true

talk. Never in my life have I needed one more." Subsiding into a chair,

he waved a feeble hand toward another. "Sit down and tell me to what I

owe this act of mercy . . ."

"Well: if you want to know, I guess you owe it mainly to forgetting to

lock your door when you crashed in last night." Crane sat down and

favoured Lanyard with a quizzical stare, caressing lean jaws with bony

fingers. "I knocked till I was tired, then tried the door, feeling

pretty sure you were at home, because I could see by the transom you had

all the lights going full blast. So I just naturally walked in and found

you practically a total loss. You were cold sober when I saw you at two

o'clock, but you sure did manage to collect a skinful between then and

the time you turned in, whenever that was."

"To the best of my knowledge, not much after three."

"Blessed if I see how you managed it. Mind telling? I don't like to seem

nosey, but this record you're claiming for the standing broad jag in one

hour flat has got me guessing. Didn't know you went in much for that

sort of thing."

"No more do I," Lanyard protested. "That is to say, I never did before

and never will again, Heaven helping me to avoid further entanglements

with temperance drinks."

"That what you call 'em?"

"I mean, the sort of drinks one's friends serve in these Prohibition

times. I hesitate to ask you to believe that the ruin you see before you

was wrought by one small glass of champagne at the Clique last night,

followed by a single Scotch and soda at Mrs. McFee's."

"From the funny things I've seen bootliquor do in the last few months,"

Crane replied--"some of 'em not so darned funny, at that--I'm ready to

believe anything you want to blame on it. What bothers me now, is you

getting such stuff at Mrs. Folliott McFee's. That little lady is well

enough fixed to keep her cellar stocked with the best. However," he

reconsidered, "I guess she must've got it from her friend Morphew. She's

been training considerably with him and his gang of late; and I wouldn't

put it past that bird to poison his best friend for a profit of a few

dollars a case."

"We see Mr. Morphew with the same eyes, you and I."

Lanyard wanted very much to question Crane for information concerning

Mr. Hugh Morphew, but felt much too listless just then. Another time

would do as well, when his mental processes had somewhat recuperated.

"So you were at Mrs. McFee's last night, were you?"

"Naturally, I had to see her home," Lanyard replied. "She asked me in to

have that drink; and a little later the Delorme woman dropped in with a

hyena who calls himself Pagan--daresay you know who I mean"--Crane

nodded--"to make sure Mrs. McFee had come to no harm. You see, we were

all guests of Morphew's at the Clique when you raided the place. But I

presume that's no news . . ."

"You're wrong, then. Morphew and his lot got away clean. We couldn't

find hair nor hide of him or any of the parties you've named. They must

have beaten it by some secret passage while the lights were on the

blink."

Liane and Pagan, then, had lied about being turned back from the roof.

Not that it mattered . . .

"How'd you get on with the pretty McFee?" Crane was pursuing with an

interest too elaborately casual.

"Well enough, thanks. She seems a nice little thing if a thought

flighty."

"Flighty's the word. I guess you haven't known her long."

"Only met her last night, a few minutes before the raid."

"Nice place she's got . . ."

"Nice enough," Lanyard assented languidly.

"Get much of a show to look around while you were there?"

Lanyard opened his eyes. "You're not asking these questions for

conversation's sake."

"You're dead right I'm not," Crane drawled, stroking his jaws. "Guess I

may as well break it to you. Mrs. McFee reported this morning, her house

had been broken into last night, some time between three o'clock and

daylight, her safe opened--little tin box she keeps in her boodwah--and

the pick of her jewels looted."

"So!" said Lanyard--"it's to that I owe this honour."

"You've had such a lot of experience in that line, I thought maybe you

wouldn't mind giving me a few tips . . ."

Lanyard lounged back in his chair again, tolerantly smiling.

"Why trifle with the truth to spare my feelings?"

"Well!" Crane uncomfortably conceded--"I don't mind telling you, the job

had all the ear-marks of one of the Lone Wolf's."

"Indeed?"

"The bird that opened that box did it painlessly, like you always used

to, going on all I've heard--just talked to the works till the safe lay

down and rolled over with all four paws in the air. Of course, he didn't

leave any finger-marks. He got in by way of an extension at the back of

the house: there's a French window opens onto it from the study. He

didn't even need to jimmy that, though Mrs. McFee and the servants can't

explain how it come to be open. In fact, the butler swears he latched it

himself before he went to bed. Looks like somebody must have fixed

it . . ."

"Somebody who, like your obedient servant, had plenty of opportunity."

"You got the idea."

"In short," said Lanyard, "what you are delicately trying to convey is

that you'd be obliged if I'd come along quietly."

"No," Crane surprisingly answered: "nothing like that."

"Not--?" Lanyard persisted, in an unbelieving stare.

"No. . . . I'll admit, I looked you up today with a divided mind. I

couldn't somehow believe it of you. On the other hand, I've been fooled

by a lot of human nature in my time. But you put in an alibi, even

before you came to, sound enough to satisfy me. Maybe I'm wrong about

you, Lanyard, maybe you're as crooked as a Revenue inspector; but

nothing will ever make me believe you pulled that job and then pickled

yourself to celebrate, or that the Lone Wolf ever went home after

cracking a box and crawled into the hay leaving his front door unlocked.

Not only that, but just to make sure, in a perfectly friendly way, I

frisked your pockets and searched these rooms high and low before I woke

you up. You've got a good right to be sore, if it hits you that way; but

I figured it was my duty as a friend as well as an officer of the law."

"On the contrary," Lanyard sincerely assured him, "I am appreciative and

grateful, glad to be cleared in your sight, even more glad to be cleared

in my own."

"In your own?" Crane repeated in perplexity. "What d'you think you mean

by that?"

"I'm glad I do not have to wonder if possibly I did this thing in my

sleep, so to speak."

"Quit your kidding!" Crane got up with a laugh. "I've got to be getting

along now, oughtn't to have lost as much time as I have."

"I shall miss your soothing presence. But I am sure you understand that

there are times, and this is one of them, when one would rather be

alone."

"You said it."

"You will pardon my not rising to see you to the door?"

"Stay right where you are. I'll drop in again, some time this evening,

maybe, to see how you are."

"Do. There are many things I want to consult you about when I feel

better able."

[Illustration: AN UNINVITED GUEST AT THE BAL MASQUE, THE LONE WOLF

BRAVES THE SCRUTINY OF THE DETECTIVES.]

"Well: if anything gets in my way and I don't show up like I said . . ."

Crane fished out a card from a worn wallet and placed it on the

mantelpiece of the old-fashioned marble fireplace: "There's my name and

number. Give me a ring any time you feel like it, and I'll blow you to a

dinner with, maybe, something on the side whose kick isn't quite as

deadly as a Georgia mule's."

For upwards of an hour after the detective had taken himself off,

Lanyard lingered on in the easy chair, listlessly reviewing his memories

of the previous night, memories comfortably clear-cut up to a certain

stage . . .

After all, he were an ingrate to complain, surely he had no excuse for

considering himself in disgrace with fortune, who had come thus far

through this conjuncture retaining the confidence of Crane, but best of

all his own!

He counted himself happy indeed--for all the malaise from which he still

suffered and which only time and heroic measures in the way of exercise

would do away with altogether--that Crane's investigation, while he lay

senseless, had resolved every question that might otherwise have

perturbed his secret mind. It was grateful to be spared the torment

that, but for this exoneration, must have been his, the fear that he

might himself, without his knowledge, have proved there was support in

fact for the theory of criminal psychology which Pagan had advanced, the

theory that it was well within the compass of possibility for a man in

his plight, in sore financial straits and subconsciously tempted beyond

his strength, to commit a theft while in a phase of auto-hypnosis

coupled with amnesia, a condition comparable with somnambulism . . .

Otherwise his affairs, as Lanyard saw them, had come suddenly to a

precarious pass.

In spite of the fact that he knew his intelligence would need some time

to recover its accustomed competence, he entertained no slightest doubt

but that he would be tomorrow, as he was today, convinced that the

abstraction of the McFee jewels had been merely the first move in a

campaign shrewdly planned to bring him to Morphew's terms.

His defiance of that one had not been tardy of result: the enemy had not

only accepted his declaration of war, he had committed the first overt

act.

Lanyard's temper hardened. If Morphew wanted war, he should have his

fill . . .

But if war it must be, this was no time to waste in inaction: the enemy

was already in the field and taking the offensive, while he lay resting.

Rising, Lanyard bestirred himself to set his house in order.

When he had shaved and dressed and dosed himself with stabilizing

draughts of black coffee, he began to collect the clothes he had worn

overnight, all of which would require the attentions of a valet before

they would be again presentable. Rain had defaced the gloss of his

topper beyond repair but by the hatter's iron. His trousers were damp

and wrinkled bags of black stuff splashed to the knees with mud.

Over these stains Lanyard frowned. Impossible to understand how he had

managed to come by the worst of them, even taking into account the

condition in which he had traversed Fifth Avenue during the storm. The

marks of that thin black ooze which accumulates on asphaltum explained

themselves. But there were others inexplicable, and on his patent

leather boots as well, smears and crusts of ochre mud which he could

hardly have accumulated without wandering into broken ground, such as

was not to be found on Fifth avenue at any point within the bounds of

his besotted promenade.

But he distinctly recollected noticing an excavation behind the

residence of Folly McFee. . . .

With a worried shake of his head that cost him several stabs of anguish,

Lanyard folded and laid aside the trousers, and returned to the

sitting-room to get his dress-coat.

As he took this up something in one of the coat-tail pockets struck

against a leg of the table with a muffled but clashing thump.

By his own account, Crane had already rummaged the pockets of the

garment, but conceivably the coat-tail pockets he had overlooked, who

was better acquainted with dress clothes of American tailoring, from

which such conveniences are commonly omitted. Lanyard's clothes,

however, had been built in London; and to the British tailor coat-tail

pockets are as an article of faith.

An exploring hand brought forth a little packet knotted in a

handkerchief, one of his own.

Lanyard surmised its contents before he had succeeded in loosing the

knots.

With a sense of sickness, he stood staring down at the stolen jewels of

Folly McFee.