Lanyard waited for the other receiver to refind its hook, then hung up
in turn, and took his seething mystification back to the head of the
stairs, whence he could overhear the apologies Mallison was offering
below.
"Do be charitable, Folly, and make allowances for my weak mind. I simply
can not understand how I could have been so great an idiot as to forget
I'd promised Mary Ashe--Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe, you know--I'd join a party
she's made up for the Rendezvous tonight--"
"O Mally!" Mrs. McFee lamented--"how perfectly stupid!"
"I know: isn't it? But I promised over a week ago. And anyway, it's
partly your fault, getting up this little dinner to celebrate your
robbery, and making me forget everything else I had on for
tonight. . . . Now please don't budge--and I don't need Soames to put me
out, either. I know where I left my hat and coat and how to open and
shut a front door all by myself."
"You can take my car, Mally, if you'll send it right back," Pagan
generously put in. "Liane and I have got to hop along, too, in a brace
of shakes. That is, you're welcome to it if you find it waiting. I told
Ben to be back around ten."
"Thanks, old soul; but I'll have no trouble picking up a taxi over on
Park avenue. Besides, it isn't nearly ten yet."
Pronouncing gracious but hurried good-nights all round, Mallison was
heard to pass through the entrance hall, in a more guarded and intimate
tone, and a decidedly tender one, remonstrating with his hostess because
she had insisted on accompanying him to the door.
"Consider the looks of it, Folly: Liane and Peter will think you've
fallen for me at last."
"No fear," Folly returned with uncomplimentary composure: "they know
better."
"Besides, anyone would think you didn't trust me . . ."
This rang a note so false as to cause the eyebrows of the secret
audience to lift and knit. But Folly's frame of mind was too completely
and openly petulant to permit of her being wary and discriminative as
well.
"Trust you!" she mocked lightly. "I'd like to know why I should, the way
you carry on with women . . . Oh! I'm not in the least taken in by this
tale about Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe, you know, I believe that's just bunk to
cover up a heavy date with some other misguided female."
"How perfectly flattering!"
"You wouldn't think so if you knew my opinion of the kind of women that
fall for you, Mally."
The two moved into Lanyard's field of vision and paused by the door,
Mallison buttoning himself into his top-coat and leering down at Folly
with a doggish air, the woman maintaining for his benefit a pout that
was less than half put on.
"As if you'd care a snap of those lovely fingers if I really were
deceiving you!"
"You couldn't." Folly tossed her head. "I'm not quite simpleton enough
to believe you mean anything you say to a woman, to any pretty woman, it
doesn't matter who--"
"Now you _are_ flattering me and no mistake." Mallison clapped on his
topper, gave its crown an artful pat that adjusted it at the most
killing angle, and managed a still more maddening smirk of complacence.
"Believe you do care," he drawled . . .
"I care about having my party spoiled. Now Peter and Liane are going to
run, too, and leave me all lonely and lorn."
Mallison laid hold of the knob and opened the door, but put his back to
the edge of it and rested so, unaffectedly loath to forego the
flirtation at its piquant stage of the present. His smile grew
momentarily more personal and meaning; but some of its assurance might
have been make-believe, considering the nervousness he betrayed in
Lanyard's sight (though not in Folly's, since she couldn't see them) by
keeping his hands behind him and fiddling with the door-knob. An
impudent nod designated the two who had been left in the dining-room.
"I'll come back, if you like . . . after they've blown . . ."
"Mally!" Folly drew back, flushing. "Don't be a silly fool, don't say
things like that to make me angry. I oughtn't to overlook--"
Of a sudden Mallison stood away from the door, permitting it to shut
itself gently, and caught the woman in his arms. "I mean it," he
breathed ardently to Folly's hair, holding her fast in spite of a
notable absence of effort to escape. "I'm mad about you, Folly, simply
mad about you--and you know it, you wild, sweet witch!"
"I know you're mad now," the witch replied neither wildly nor sweetly.
"I may have suspected it before, but this proves it. Please let me go."
"Not a chance," Mallison confidently laughed--"I've got you now where
I've been wanting you, God knows how long! Folly dear: I'm simply
desperate with love of you. Only say the word--I'll tell Mrs. Ashe where
she can go, and be back here inside half an hour, or as soon as I'm sure
Peter and Liane have left. Folly! be kind to me--"
"Mally!" The cry was keyed low yet tense with indignation. A sudden
squirm broke his embrace. Folly stood back, fending the man off with a
firm hand. "Don't do that again, I won't have it. . . . How dare you
say, or even suggest, such things to me? You know I don't care the least
in the world for you. And even if I did . . . But I don't want to be
unfair. You've had too much to drink tonight. Do go now, please, go
right away, and don't come back till you're ready to beg my pardon."
"Oh!" The iced sincerity of the rebuff wiped away the self-confident
smirk and set in its place a scowl of affronted self-esteem. "That's
your style, is it, my lady? Virtue on a pedestal! And after the way
you've led me on."
Folly held him briefly in a stare of incredulous disdain; her rush of
colour slowly ebbing. A slight gesture sketched inability to understand
the man, in a voice of reproach and regret she said quietly: "O Mally!
how can you be so contemptible?"
The countenance of the dancing man grew darker still, his too-full lips
took on an ugly contour beneath their closely-trimmed moustache of the
mode. He seemed to contemplate, even with difficulty to refrain from
uttering, some embittered and withering retort. Instead, he turned in
dumb fury and flung out of the house. Thanks less to his temper and
intention than to its automatic air-check the door closed without noise
other than the click of its latch. And Folly gave herself a little shake
of impatience and reasserted the wonted spirit of her countenance as she
ran back to rejoin Pagan and Liane Delorme.
Their three voices were once more busy when Lanyard made his way back to
the boudoir telephone and took a long chance with it, communicating to
the Central operator the number Crane had left with him. But the turn of
his luck was such that, though the connection was established all but
instantaneously, the masculine voice that answered was not the one he
wanted to hear.
No: Mr. Crane wasn't in, and there was no telling when he would be in;
maybe in ten minutes, maybe in ten days. But the voice was perfunctorily
prepared to take any message that Lanyard might care to leave and see
that it got into Crane's hands as soon as he did return, if ever.
"Tell him, please, Mr. Duchemin called him up." It was necessary to
spell out that old alias which Crane could hardly have forgotten. "Say
my business is urgent--Mr. Crane will understand."
"Want him to call y'up? What's yuh number?"
Without the least hesitation, in a single phrase Lanyard abolished the
telephone installation at Folly McFee's: "Say there is no telephone. But
give him, if you will be so good, this address." Lanyard detailed the
number of the house and street and hung up. He had no fear that Crane
would fail to draw an intelligent inference and guide himself by the
light thereof. Nevertheless he would have been grateful for some
assurance that Crane would get the message in good time. . . .
Back at the head of the stairs, he felt warranted in assuming that his
daring with the telephone had not betrayed him. The hum of talk that
rose from the diminished dinner party was constant, or punctuated only
by the laughter with which the two women encouraged Peter Pagan in his
efforts to be funny. For all that, Lanyard escaped discovery by the
narrowest of squeaks; for he stepped out into the hallway only to find
that Mallison had let himself into the house again, and was furtively
slinking up the stairs--was even then, indeed, half way up.
Driven back to the refuge of the clothes-press, Lanyard pulled its door
into position in the same instant that saw Mallison skulk into the
boudoir.
It appeared from this, then, that one had not erred in mistrusting the
nervous hands of the dancing man as they had played with the knob--and
one might no longer doubt, with the safety-catch as well--what time
Mallison had delayed, posing with his back to the door and philandering
with Folly.