In sequel the life of Michael Lanyard knew some of its busiest moments,
his modest lodgings were the stage of a scene of rare animation whose
solitary actor figured as the restless axis of a whirlwind of garments.
Then the air, clearing, disclosed the man decently clad for the street
and stowing away in a safe pocket his unchancy treasure-trove.
Thus far he had gone about doing what he had to do automatically in a
measure, as one will in times of extremity, putting off against an hour
more opportune, when he might bring a clearer head to bear upon the
business, too, the deliberate study which his troubles needed. Enough
now to know the longer he delayed where he was, the more immediate his
peril of suffering a second domiciliary visit by the police; who on this
new occasion, beyond much doubt, would be represented by agents less
kindly biassed than Crane, more skeptical and thoroughgoing in the
matter of searching for Folly McFee's emeralds. It remained for Lanyard
to prove appreciation of this fleeting smile of fortune by turning to
good account the slender chance it granted to work out his salvation in
his own time and way.
One detail, however, he dared not slight, though it cost minutes each
more precious than the last: Lanyard left behind him shoes and trousers
from which every lingering suspicion of mud had been erased.
Some two hours later, after a tedious tale of twists and turns in the
labyrinth of New York's several transportation systems, he left a train
at the Mount Vernon terminal of the subway extension, and addressed
himself to the tramp back to New York.
The sky was bright, the Indian Summer sunlight kind, the air
inspiriting. By the time Lanyard had stretched his legs over a mile or
two of by-roads--chosen for the long and lonely perspectives which
enabled him to make sure he travelled with no other shadow than his
own--he began to feel once more competent to ponder his fix and plot a
way out.
No easy task: the problem posed by the fact that he had somehow, at some
time in the course of the preceding night, unwittingly come into
possession of stolen property, seemed open to solution only on one of
two hypotheses, antagonistic, and neither at a glance more likely than
the other. Failing his ability to turn up proof that another hand had
rifled the McFee safe and secreted its loot in his coat while he slept,
Lanyard would have to become reconciled to the belief that he himself
had stolen the jewels while in a phase of submerged consciousness.
Distasteful as was the bare suggestion, and human though the temptation
was to adopt the more grateful theory and guide himself thereby, he
still could not but doubt: the other was all too possibly the true
explanation.
One thing at least he might take for granted, that the drink Pagan had
brought him was drugged. But here again the lane of likelihood
developed a confounding fork: Who could say whether the drug had been
added to the drink by Pagan, or whether the whiskey itself had been one
of those deadly synthetic concoctions with which that bastard offspring
of Prohibition, the bootlegging industry, had flooded the land?
If it were the whiskey that Lanyard had to blame, Pagan, too, and Folly
McFee and Liane Delorme must have suffered as severely, Liane even more,
since she had made away with two drinks to Lanyard's one. . . . A simple
matter to find out the truth, if one only knew the woman's address; but
she had neglected to say where she was stopping, and other than those
whom under the circumstances he would hardly care to consult, Lanyard
could think of nobody who would be likely to know.
And even though investigation might prove that nobody else had been so
punished, and thus satisfy Lanyard that his drink alone had maliciously
been doctored, such knowledge would not necessarily lead him nearer to
the facts of the robbery. Comfortable though it was to impute to Pagan
the mischief with the whiskey, and assume that its object had been to
throw Lanyard into coma and thus render it feasible to enter his rooms
without his knowledge, smear yellow mud on his clothing and plant the
plunder in his pocket, still it remained possible that the
arch-intelligence which had decreed the administration of the drug,
whether Morphew's or another's, had reckoned with even more diabolical
cunning upon its breaking down those inhibitions which honour and faith
and a good intent had imposed upon a nature perhaps--and for all Lanyard
could assert to the contrary--irreclaimably a thief's.
Hashish was reputed to work like that, to act upon its victims precisely
as an acid eats away lacquer, stripping off layer by layer the most
stubborn crust of honour and habit ever indurated by conscience and
civilized convention, baring at last the primitive beast that lurks in
every man.
No matter: though the identity of the thief must be a riddle still, to
learn the truth about the whiskey would resolve the primary doubts that
were harassing Lanyard and leave him better advised concerning what
further steps would be required to clear up the mystery altogether. To
this end the one thing now distinctly indicated was the need for action
prompt, direct, and drastic.
Lanyard had not forgotten that appointment for the following afternoon
which he must be able to keep with a clear mind and a clean heart,
unapprehensive of any sort of interference.
He began to foresee a programme for the intervening night tolerably long
and arduous. He had to hit upon some way to disembarrass himself of the
emeralds that would clear him of all suspicion of ever having had
anything to do with them. He had further to acquit or convict Pagan of
tampering with his drink--and in the event of the conviction which he
anticipated with entire confidence, to invent and enforce some means of
persuading Pagan and his lot that Michael Lanyard was a good man to let
alone.
Now dusk was closing down upon the world in shade on shade of lilac,
violet and blue, through which, moment by moment, the lights of the
outlying city were blowing their blossoms of silver and gold. Directly
ahead of Lanyard the electric sign of a roadhouse exploded its soundless
salvo against the sky; and thus reminded that he needed food, who had so
much to do ere dawn, he entered the place and dined with a frugality
considerate of digestive powers sadly out of kilter. Then in the dark of
the young night he resumed his walk, and between nine and half-past
might have been (only that he took good care not to be) seen at pause on
the Lexington avenue corner of the block in which Folly McFee dwelt,
quietly reconnoitering the approach to her residence.
The house stood on the north side of the street, nearer Lexington avenue
than Park, and with windows diffusing a dim glow through discreet
draperies presented to the beholder the demure face that suited an
establishment whose youthful chatelaine sported a sobriquet so apt and
alluring.
Observers less interested than Lanyard was then have been known
feelingly to comment upon the impish trick houses frequently practice of
keeping their own counsel: the shrewdest reader of façades would have
gathered nothing informing from the aspect worn that night by the
dwelling of Folly McFee, no clue as to whether its pretty resident were
at home, or, if at home, alone . . .
Lanyard hazarded a saunter past on the sidewalk opposite. Under more
direct scrutiny the house remained as little communicative, the only
profit he had of the maneuvre was the assurance that nobody was skulking
in any of the areaways over across from it, on the watch for the likes
of himself. But then there was no conceivable reason why anybody should
be; not even his most impassioned ill-wisher, much less an unimaginative
police force, could have been expected to divine that any attraction
could possibly draw this putative criminal back to haunt the scene of
his alleged crime.
Lanyard nevertheless, on gaining the Park avenue corner, merely crossed
the street and continued his stroll through the next to the north,
passing on the way the gaping foundation pit observed the night before
from the windows of Folly's study, a survey of which from this new angle
confirmed his belief that the thief need not have found it difficult to
make his way into the backyard and swarm up to the roof of the
extension. On the other hand, this aspect of the premises afforded
Lanyard no least twinge of guilty reminiscence. Another circumstance
that proved nothing; if his personal acquaintance with downright
drunkenness was limited, he knew too well that it was quite possible for
one to drink oneself into a state of alcoholic insanity and retain, on
coming out of it, no memory of one's performances while in that
condition.
Circumnavigation of the block having brought him again into the street
upon which the McFee residence faced, but this time on its northern
sidewalk, Lanyard's pace slackened; and idlest insouciance masked the
surge of acute interest in him when, at twenty paces' distance, he saw
the iron gate to its service entrance swing open and a maid emerge and
make briskly off toward Park avenue--a tidy figure in black dress, white
apron and cap, taking letters to post at the corner letter-box in time
for the last collection.
Another freak of friendly fortune? or one of ill-favoured fate? The
thing was too confoundedly well-timed, the invitation of that unguarded
entrance too tempting. Indeed, when it occurred to Lanyard that his
action might have been considered a thought precipitate, it was too late
to turn back, he had already slipped into the service hallway and
restored the door to the position, half on the latch, in which the woman
had left it. To change his mind now and retreat would be to court her
attention, who would already be on her way back from the corner.
The hallway was long, narrow, dimly lighted. At its far end a stairway
led down to kitchen offices. Midway, a swing-door communicated with the
main body of the house. Through this Lanyard had no choice but to dart,
reckless of what might await him on its far side: to linger where he was
meant immediate discovery . . . and the emeralds on his person!
The swing-door gave into a butler's pantry, at the moment empty, where
another opened into the dining-room and a third to the main hallway.
Stacks of dishes in the pantry sink, no less than a clash of cheerful
voices in the room adjoining, with Folly's rippling laughter clearly
recognizable, told of a dinner party still in progress. The other
living-rooms, then, ought to be untenanted. The butler due to pop back
from the dining-room at any instant, Lanyard passed on to the
entrance-hall, and experienced a relief, on finding it deserted, that
betrayed an old hand sorely out of practice: the day had been when he
could have taken far more desperate chances without a tremor.
Even so, he wasted no gestures. To go the way he meant to go, he had the
dining-room door to pass, the risk to run of being seen. He edged to a
point whence Folly's back was visible, and the butler, a decent,
plodding, British body, taking himself off with an emptied decanter. He
disappeared; and the pantry-door was heard to buffet the air. Lanyard
waited a minute, then coolly ran--or, rather, stumped--the risk of the
open door, trusting, if noticed by any of the diners, to pass as the
butler with some business in the front part of the house. To the best of
his observation his audacity served: the dinner-party seemed to be
finding itself much too amusing to have attention to spare for matters
of domestic routine. But one swift glance askance noted that Folly was
entertaining only Pagan, Liane Delorme, and Mallison.
So much for Lanyard's solemn sermon on the dangers of questionable
associations!
But could one fairly have expected anything better, when Folly had been
given, subsequently, every reason to believe she had entertained in that
overnight moralist a felon unawares? This, presumably, was her way of
consoling herself for having been so shamefully taken in: as gay a
partie carrée as heart could wish, figuratively making merry on the very
coffin-lid of Folly's most recent bereavement . . .
Fragments were all Lanyard could garner of the talk, who had no time at
all to spare; but what little he did overhear was instructive. Folly, he
learned, was firmly declining to be down-hearted: the police had given
her every assurance that she would be wearing her emeralds again within
a few days at most. Meantime, she knew no lack of objects of
bedizenment: the thief in his haste had overlooked a secret cache of
treasure in the safe he had used so cavalierly, she had still the McFee
pearls and diamonds to don for protection against inclement elements; in
witness whereto she was wearing them now. Challenged by Pagan to state
what steps, if any, she had taken to safeguard these against the chance
that the marauder might return to cancel his oversight, Folly laughed
the notion to scorn, but under pressure admitted that she meant to have
the combination of the safe changed as soon as she could remember to
telephone its maker.
Communications all pitched in a key of the lightest banter. Folly, for
example, was pleased to recount the antics of her maiden aunt when it
dawned upon her that she had actually slept all through the visit of a
burglar: the good woman had forthwith gone into hysterics and had come
out of them only to pack herself off (at Folly's expense) to Atlantic
City, professing the slender hope that a vacation from this theatre of
crime would mend a shattered nervous system. In view of which Folly was
disposed to hold the loss of her emeralds a not unmixed affliction. And
when Pagan suggested that it might be good business for Folly to put a
professional house-breaker on her weekly payroll, Liane applauded his
wit with a deep-chested laugh.
No more need to wonder how this last had fared after her two drinks of
the liquor a single dose of which had been enough to put Lanyard hors de
combat. True: Liane might have been innocent of what was intended. But
it wasn't easy to give her the benefit of the doubt.
As for Pagan, the pencilled question-mark against his name had been
replaced by a cross in indelible ink.