Neither might he who unsuspected spied, through the crack of a
closet-door all but closed, on Mr. Mallison with many a gesture of quiet
authority making himself at home in Folly's rooms, seriously question
the presence of a practician adept in the grammar of second-storey work.
Mallison's footfalls would not have ruffled the repose of an insomniac,
the play of his hands was certain yet light as the flutter of butterfly
wings; and what he had to do by way of making ready for what he purposed
doing, he did with right professional economy of effort.
To begin with, he did nothing at all more than stand still in the middle
of the boudoir and study with glances keen, direct and comprehensive
what one guessed were surroundings not wholly strange to him. And seeing
him thus with his guard down, naked of all his petty social airs and
graces and that shining garment of conceit which clothed the man like a
woven armour when he was self-conscious, the hidden watcher began to
suspect that he might have erred in his first rating, that the Mallison
now revealed was worthier to be reckoned with than he had guessed. The
Mallison of this minute was nobody's fool, knew what he was about,
and--or Lanyard read every surface sign awry--was dangerously capable of
proving at need a disconcerting knowledge of how to take care of
himself.
With a muted grunt of gratification in the sum of his survey, the man
passed through to the bedchamber, wherein his maneuvres were less
readily followed, since the mirror in the boudoir revealed to Lanyard
only a narrow segment of the adjoining room. This comprehended, however,
the head of Folly's bed, and the small table beside it from whose drawer
Mallison removed a pretty trinket of a silver-plated, pearl-handled
pistol, extracting its shells, thoughtfully putting them away in one of
his waistcoat pockets, and finally replacing the weapon with nice
precision where he had found it.
Content, it seemed, thus to have done his bit for preparedness, Mallison
sauntered back to the boudoir, stripped off his top-coat, folded it with
meticulous care and hid it, together with his hat, on the floor behind a
capacious lounge chair.
Then consulting his watch and with a yawn politely shielded registering
time to kill, he strolled over to the secretary and stooped to inspect,
with a flickering, sly smile, the safe built into its base. The tip of a
fingernail discreetly pried open the blind front, leaving no treacherous
trace, but after a show of hesitation the man seemingly decided not to
disturb the safe itself, and restored the front to its former position.
Private papers, with which the pigeonholes of the secretary were well
stocked, next drew his interest, and he was betraying a mean disposition
to tamper with them when the chance discovery of a hand-mirror resting
face up on Folly's blotting-book diverted Mallison with a temptation
which he didn't even try to resist. And he had finished disciplining an
imperceptibly unruly eyebrow and had begun to practice a killing smile,
an artful variation of the infallible gleam-of-teeth suite, when a bell
grumbled vigorously in the bowels of the house and was interpreted as a
signal for strict attention to business thenceforward.
Mallison went at once to the door to listen, an occupation in which he
had the man in the clothes-press at a good disadvantage. The latter none
the less contrived to infer from noises in the entrance-hall that
Pagan's car had duly reported and that its owner and Liane were saying
good-night. Then, as the rumor of their voices failed, Mallison
re-crossed the boudoir with swift but silent tread and once more passed
from Lanyard's range of vision. The latter, however, recalled having
noticed a handsome, painted screen in that corner, and entertained no
doubt but that Mallison was making himself small behind it.
To prove this guess well-grounded, Folly herself entered in another
moment, and gave every evidence of being unaware of any alien presence
as she faltered through the boudoir, casting discontented glances round
as if in aimless search of something in the nature of a distraction.
Unmistakably disappointed, and thereby the more frankly fretted, she
drifted on to her bedchamber, from whose unseen recesses her voice and
her maid's were presently to be heard.
What they said was of no moment: their bedtime dialogue of every day,
varied only by Folly's decision to stay up a while longer: she wasn't
sleepy and had letters to write. So saying, she dismissed the maid and
sulkily trailed back into the boudoir, bringing a sizable case of tooled
leather which held, one surmised, the jewellery she had worn at dinner,
and which she proceeded to put away in the safe that deserved its style
so little, but only as a matter of habit, demonstrating that all faith
in the contraption was dead by not troubling to shut its door and set
the lock.
In the pause that ensued, with a sigh of boredom Folly settled down in
the chair before her secretary, and Lanyard ventured to widen the crack
of the door a fraction.
The woman sat toying with a pen and more than half-turned away from this
observer, charmingly posed with all the unconscious grace that was
native to the sweetly fashioned body which her négligé, a sheer web of
lace threaded with ribbon, made so bare a pretence of covering. A lamp
on the secretary turned the tangle of her hair into a living nimbus and
edged tenderly a neck and shoulders kissable in the sight of any man.
Indeed, Mallison was hardly to be blamed . . .
Without making a sound he stole up behind the woman lost in thought, the
fire of his lips on her flesh was the first that she knew of his
presence. Crying out in alarm and anger, she started up to find herself
in his arms.
"Hush, dear--please!" Mallison entreated, trying to insure her silence
by resting fingers lightly upon her lips. "The servants might hear--"
"'Might'!" Folly stormed, jerking her head away----"they shall!"
If Mallison had counted on such toleration as she had shown him by the
street door half an hour earlier, his lamentable error was made manifest
to him without an instant's grace. Folly fought him like a miniature
fury, and to such effect that she was free while her defiance was still
an echo in the room--free and swelling her throat with a scream when he
plunged upon his knees before her and threw wide arms of suppliance.
"Please, please!" he begged--"don't call for help. I'll do anything you
say, promise to be good and go quietly when you choose to send me
away--only, don't call your servants. Think what they'd think!"
"What's that to me?" Folly demanded. "What do I care what they think of
you?"
"It's you I'm considering," the man protested--"it's what they'd think
of you I'm worrying about. You can't imagine they'd give you the benefit
of the doubt . . ."
"Benefit of what doubt?"
"Do you suppose they'd believe I ever found my way up here without your
invitation?"
"Is a woman always suspected of enticing the man who breaks into her
house like a thief? I'll risk that."
"No--for God's sake! wait, listen to me, Folly! I don't deserve to be
thrown out, you owe me fairer treatment--"
"I owe you _what_?"
"You're a woman, not a school-girl--you know what you've been doing to
me these last few weeks, you know you've driven me half out of my head
flirting with me."
"Oh?" Sense of humour reasserted itself in a little laugh. "Why half?"
"Entirely, then," Mallison sullenly conceded. He got on his feet again,
but his attitude remained conciliatory, even though he would persist in
seeking to defend himself at her expense. "If it's insanity to love you,
then I'm mad enough--but, God's my witness! I'm not altogether to blame.
And you know that's true."
"And I'm to understand you stole back here tonight to tell me that?"
"No--but to beg your forgiveness for having acted as I did a while ago.
I couldn't leave things as they were between us overnight, I couldn't
think of anything but how unfair you were when I lost control of myself
for just one little minute and made you see how madly I love you. I had
to come back and have it out, explain--arrive at some sort of
understanding."
"And you want me to believe you considered these your best overtures?"
Folly uttered a cluck of contempt. "Before you go," she pursued,
instinctively dragging across her bosom the inadequate protection of the
négligé--"you might be good enough to explain how you did manage to
sneak up here."
But Mallison merely uttered a sibilant "_Hush!_" and lifted a hand of
warning.
Below, the grumble of the doorbell sounded with an accent imperative.
"What do you suppose that means?" the dancing man demanded in a whisper
of apprehension.
"Somebody at the front door . . . How should I know?" The noise was
repeated. A glint of distrust kindled in the woman's eyes. "What's the
matter, Mally? Expecting somebody?"
"Nonsense. What a question! Who should I be expecting?"
"How do I know?"
"I was only startled . . ."
"Yes," Folly affirmed with tightened lips: "I noticed that."
A sudden confusion arose in the lower hallway, several people giving
tongue all at once: evidently whoever it was that had answered the door
had been instantly made the target of a storm of questions.
Folly's face showed a stamp of deepened misgivings and suspicion. "What
on earth--!" she murmured.
Upon these words Mallison closed in on her again and made her captive in
a tight embrace.
"What does it matter?" he insisted. "Stupid people bothering Soames:
what do they matter to you and me? Folly, I love you, I'm mad--"
She was fighting wildly but impotently now, kicking, pommeling with
fists that did no hurt, biting at the hand that closed her mouth.
Downstairs the clamour rose to a higher pitch of angry disputation.
Boldly Lanyard stepped out of concealment.
Neither Folly nor Mallison saw him till he caught the dancing man from
behind, with calculated brutality broke the clasp of his arms round the
woman's body, and sent him spinning and stumbling across the room to
bring up against the further wall with a crash that started his eyes in
their orbits.
[Illustration: EVE BRIDGES A DIFFICULT SITUATION BY INTRODUCING LANYARD
AS "MY FRIEND MR. ANTHONY."]
The disturbance below by this time had attained the proportions of a
small riot. There were scuffling feet on the stairs. Nearer at hand
Folly was screaming. To this Mallison added the snarl with which,
recovering, he took the offensive in turn, launching himself at his
assailant's throat in murderous fury. Unhappily enough for him, Lanyard
had wanted nothing better. They closed, grappled, for a breath swayed as
one. Then Mallison felt one of his arms being irresistibly wrenched out
of its socket, and to such exquisite torture yielded, perforce turning
his back to Lanyard, who held him so another instant, then without
warning released him.
With the racket of argument, physical and vocal, now loud upon the very
landing outside, Lanyard dared not be merciful or give Mallison any
fighting chance. As the man whirled round to launch a new onslaught,
Lanyard's fist carried every ounce of his weight and all his ill-will to
the other's jaw. Lifted bodily by that terrific blow, Mallison crashed
back across an occasional table, sweeping off and extinguishing a lamp,
and collapsed, insensible, on the floor.
Simultaneously the door flung open and four people broke into the
boudoir, a struggling knot that instantly resolved itself into its
elements; the McFee butler, with coat half torn from his back, two
strange men, one of rough-and-ready appearance, the other a type
slightly more genteel, and a woman, a garish blonde of the synthetic
school, with her hat over one ear.
The shaded light on the secretary alone remained to lend these several
actors visibility. Lanyard stood squarely in front of it, his figure, to
eyes new from the stronger illumination of the hall, hardly better than
a silhouette. Folly, well out of harm's way on his one hand, was less
kindly shadowed, in view of the extreme candour of her déshabillé;
Mallison, on the other, was screened from the invaders by the drop-leaf
of the table behind which he had gone down.
Thus chance set the stage and lighted it for a twist in the action of
the piece unforseen even by its first player and collaborating
dramatist. For the bottle-made blonde with hat askew needed only a
glimpse of that tall, slender, and well-poised shape, bulking black
against the glow, to hurl herself across the room, fall weeping upon
Lanyard's bosom, and strain him passionately to the agitated abundance
of her own.
"My husband!" she cried--"my husband! O Harry! how could you?"
And Lanyard suffered her.
X
He was in no hurry, the truth would all too soon be her bitter medicine;
if meantime to rest on him the burthen of her wrongs were any comfort to
the lady, she was welcome. Still, he inclined to think it lamentable
that he didn't know her well enough to reason with her in a friendly way
about her taste in scent for the hair. Chivalry he reckoned a fine
gesture but a bit dear at the cost of asphyxiation.
For all that, the longer this unhappy creature continued blind to her
blunder, the better for Folly--for Michael Lanyard, too. He was far from
enjoying any sort of confidence that the next blind turn of events would
prosper his meddlesome hand; he was constrained by circumstance to count
more heavily than he relished on the resilience of Folly's wits and
their readiness to read his heart in respect of herself and play up to
the cues which he must somehow manage to give her.
An anxious sidelong glance caught Folly thunderstruck and gaping, with
eyes astart doubting their own dependability. The last man she had ever
thought to see again, with his consent, and particularly beneath that
roof, the alleged larcener of her emeralds last night, tonight figuring
spontaneously in the dual rôle of knight errant and spouse recreant!
He saw her so, and knew very well it could hardly tend but to make her
bewilderment the thicker, yet an irrepressible devil of ribaldry in
Lanyard prompted him to wag his head at Folly and make a comic mouth
over the fair false limpet that had fastened to his bosom. Not a little
to his surprise, more to his encouragement, a gleam of lively
appreciation broke through the clouds of Folly's bemusement. But the
limpet chose the selfsame moment to prove her protean versatility by
shifting all at once into the guise of a shrew, thus rendering
infeasible any further attempt to impart his mind to Folly through the
medium of the eloquent eye.
Abruptly and with a clever effect of casting Lanyard off by main
strength, the strange woman struck a florid pose with arm levelled and
eyes ablaze.
"There!" she rasped--and Lanyard wondered could this possibly be the
voice that had so lately cooed endearments by telephone--"there he is,
gentlemen! there stands my husband, the dirty hound that leaves me to
cry my heart out at home while he steps out with fast society dames,
like that shameless, half-naked hussy there!"
The quivering index of denunciation picked out the shrinking shape of
Folly in her informal attire, and the self-appointed censor paused to
let this characterization bite deep. But when she offered to resume she
half-choked instead because an unpresaged glare of ceiling lights,
thoughtfully switched on by Soames, revealed to her not the hang-dog
mask of Mallison but an utterly strange countenance whose graciousness
was shaded by a problematical smile.
A brief seizure of speechlessness was shared by the woman's companions,
and utilized by Lanyard to note the more salient features of the others,
individually, against the chance of future need. There was no
fore-telling when some flash of temper might not precipitate a
free-for-all of outcome highly dubious; it might be useful to be able to
identify these precious impostors should ill-luck throw one in with them
another time. Commonplace scamps he accounted them every one. Contempt
for Morphew mounted; a scoundrel of really respectable calibre would
have known better than to employ such cheap tools for even a simple job
of villainy.
The woman was, or had been, a comely wench; but the strong light wasn't
kind to her complexion, to such of it, that is, as she hadn't scrubbed
off on Lanyard's waistcoat. Her skin roughed up through its thick wash
of whiting and smears of carmine, skillfully painted contours failed to
amend the viciousness of thin lips that dragged in their corners, more
than belladonna and mascaro would be needed to restore the pristine
charm of eyes grown hard with looking too long upon life stripped of all
loveliness.
And the men seemed her well-suited associates: one, a thickset body
whose eyes of a brute went forbiddingly with an undershot jaw, the other
a figure of saturnine cast and seedy gentility set off by a cutaway coat
and a standing collar slightly soiled.
Recognizing in neither of these a personality to call for the waste of
two consecutive thoughts, Lanyard returned his attention to the woman,
who recoiled a step instinctively, as if afraid he meant to lay hold of
her. "What!" she squawked in throaty disgust--"you ain't my husband!"
"Madame"--Lanyard did her a grave bow--"the misfortune is mutual."
"But where is he? Where's my husband?"
"Madame has mislaid one?"
The mock told, with a slack jaw and befogged eyes the woman fell back
another pace. "I guess," she stammered, "there's some mistake . . ."
"The conjecture does madame's intelligence vast credit."
"It's Mr. Mallison she's after, sir." The butler Soames, schooled to
view without any amazement the vagaries of a mad world of masters, and
sensibly putting aside the immomentuous issue of his inability to
account for Lanyard, addressed himself to this last as to his one
intellectual peer of the time being. "They would 'ave it 'e was upstairs
'ere with Mrs. McFee, sir, and forced their way up in spite of all I
could do."
"I quite understand, Soames--Mrs. McFee, too, I'm sure. You do
understand, don't you, Mrs. McFee, this is no fault of Soames'?"
Folly shook herself together and vigorously nodded; but Lanyard coolly
forestalled whatever words they were that troubled her lips.
"Mr. Mallison is no doubt madame's husband?" he challenged the blonde
female. "She had some reason to think she would find him here?"
"Just a minute, Grace." The rusty genteel half of her supporting
company, now that he pushed himself forward, proved to possess a rather
formidable manner, at once truculent and crafty. "Let me speak for
you--"
"You have that right?" Lanyard with pointed civility enquired.
"I've been retained by Mrs. Mallison . . ." The fellow fished a passée
professional card from a pocket and thrust it under Lanyard's nose. "I
represent her in this case."
"Interesting--but perhaps irrelevant--_if_ true. I mean to say"--Lanyard
brushed the card aside, but not before his eye had caught the name
_Hobart G. Howlin_ in engraved script followed by the designation
_Attorney-at-law_; and all at once he became as ugly as he had
theretofore been bland--"what of it?"
"We were led to believe Mr. Mallison was here--"
"You call yourself a lawyer and pretend that gave you any right to
violate the privacy of this household?"
"It sometimes becomes necessary for a wronged wife to take the law into
her own hands."
"Mrs. Mallison has been wronged, then? How sad."
"Mrs. Mallison," her counsel persisted, but with shaken
bravado--"happens to know her husband has been spending too much of his
time of late in the society of Mrs. McFee."
"In brief: you have had the effrontery to force your way into a private
residence in the hope of securing evidence for divorce proceedings?"
"You've got the idea."
"O insolent!" Folly flamed.
It was now again necessary for Lanyard firmly to put down interference,
lest his diplomacy fail. "By your leave, Folly: permit me to deal with
these gentry. Their account of themselves is much too ingenious to lose.
If we let them rattle on--who knows?--we may learn something to their
disadvantage."
At this the rogue of ruder mien concluded that he, for one, had had
enough. "Come on," he mumbled, plucking at Howlin's sleeve: "le's get
out o' this."
"Not so fast. You entered by force; you will leave in the good pleasure
of Mrs. McFee. And then Mr. Mallison will go with you."
"What's that?" the lawyer demanded. "Mallison's _here_?"
"We have no wish to deceive you."
"But where?" the slighted wife shrilly objected. "I don't see him . . ."
"How little married folk ever know each other! The dear lad's so
high-strung, when he heard you on the stairs he swooned away. Half a
minute . . ."
Lanyard stepped behind the table to find Mallison in the first throes of
coming to. An unceremonious hand twisted in his collar helped him find
his feet. He swayed on them, glaring groggily round that ring of faces
whose lips framed confounded murmurs, while Lanyard nodded politely to
the confessed wife: "Permit me, Mrs. Mallison: your husband." More
brusquely he added: "Now Soames: if you think you could find a
policeman . . ."
The butler saluted this suggestion with unbegrudged respect, but the
man who had lately been so anxious to go now moved in haste to intercept
him at the door.
"Here!" he growled in an effort, not too happy, to assert
authority--"wait a minute, wait--a--minute, you! What's the grand idea?"
"What is your objection?" Lanyard countered.
"If you got any use for a cop, you don't have to look no farther. I'm a
city detective."
"Splendid. You shall enjoy every opportunity to exercise the powers of
your office. Nevertheless, Soames will proceed to fetch a policeman."
In a bluster of panic the self-styled detective elbowed the butler away
from the door. "Wait, now! This is my job; if any pinchin's goin' to be
done here tonight, I'll do it."
"To the contrary . . ." A hand slipped deftly beneath the skirts of
Mallison's dinner-jacket brought to light an automatic pistol of whose
presence on his person Lanyard had become aware in the course of their
struggle. "To the contrary, you will be good enough to stand back and
let Soames do my bidding. Do you hear? And all of you"--a push sent
Mallison reeling drunkenly into the ranks of his confederates--"all four
of you will be well advised to put up your hands."
Prompt and unanimous respect rewarded this good advice, even Mallison
proving himself sufficiently recovered to heed.
"Cut along now Soames; and you might tell the policeman he will need a
patrol wagon, with four prisoners to handle."
"Look here!" Mallison found his tongue in a splutter of spite and
fear--"you're going too far, Lanyard, carrying things with too high a
hand--"
"I know but one way to deal with blackmailers."
"And what about yourself--you damn' burglar?"
A new voice introduced itself to the dialogue. "Blackmailers?" it
drawled. "Burglar? Fightin' words, folks, fightin' words!"
Soames, moving to execute Lanyard's instructions, had opened the door to
find it blocked by a long, loose-jointed body. Now, hands in pockets,
hat well back on his head, chewing the unlighted cigar of his custom,
the detective Crane, lounged in, with ironic glances reviewing the
several countenances so variously coloured with emotion, until he
perceived the presence of Mrs. McFee. Then he was quick to uncover his
head and disembarrass his teeth.
"Your servant, ma'm. Hope you'll excuse the informality, but we found
your front door standing wide open and figured maybe something might be
going wrong. H'are you, Lanyard? Business as usual, I see." A nod and
wrinkling grin designated the pistol. "I'll tell anybody that don't
know, you're the little guy that stages the quick come-backs." Over his
shoulder, Crane called: "Come on in, Hoffmeyer; looks like we'd found us
a regular job."
A brisk policeman in uniform moved in from the hallway. And sensible of
sharp relief, Lanyard put down the pistol. "My friend!" he told Crane:
"never in your life were you more welcome."
"That's easy to believe; going on the looks of things we've happened
along at one of these psychological moments, all right. No thanks to
me, of course, Lanyard: I just naturally hiked right up here as soon as
I got your 'phone message."
"You telephoned for Mr. Crane?" Folly demanded, eyeing Lanyard intently.
"He sure did," Crane affirmed.
"At what time?"
"Half an hour or so ago--wasn't it, Lanyard?"
"Approximately. But I can fix the hour precisely: Mrs. McFee will
undoubtedly remember when Mallison was called from the table to answer
the telephone." Folly nodded, her eyes growing rounder. Lanyard laughed,
with a wave of a debonnaire hand introduced the other woman. "You see
here the lady who was then, according to Mallison, Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe.
Now she accuses herself of being his wife. One or both of them would
seem to be mistaken. No matter: after listening in on their
conversation, I felt warranted in calling up Mr. Crane without waiting
to secure your approval."
"You called him up from here?"
"But what would you?" With a specious show of naïveté Lanyard chose to
misconstrue that almost purely rhetorical query of astonishment. "Admit
that I had hardly time to run out and hunt up a sound-proof booth,
madame, admit that I had no choice other than to remain here if I were
to keep faith with you--and more especially when the telephone had just
told me enough to prove that this fine gentleman intended blackmail,
whether or not we were justified in crediting him with a graver offence
against your hospitality."
The earnest eyes that held Folly's saw them confused by these cunningly
sown hints and implications. And not until she had heard him out with a
comprehending nod for all comment, and the lips that had been parted in
breathless interest closed without uttering a word to refute his
impudent assertion of an understanding which made Folly a party to his
presence in the house, did Lanyard again find it easy to breathe. But
that nod, coupled with her silence, testified to appreciation of the
fact that in tacit confirmation of his claim lay the one sure way to
save her good repute, that to gainsay him would be to lend colour to the
calumny implicit in the intrusion of Mallison's "wife" and her
accomplices.
If Folly wanted proof of this, she had it in another breath, when the
seedy conspirator instituted a counter-offensive.
"Just a minute, gentlemen!" he insisted, pushing in his sallow, excited
face between Lanyard and Crane. "You go too fast. We deny all these
ridiculous allegations, but particularly we deny that my client is here
in any sort of collusion with her husband. That malicious innuendo we
flatly contradict and brand a lie out of whole cloth!"
"'We'?" Crane echoed, inquisitive but otherwise indifferently impressed.
"Your 'client'?"
"I am counsel for Mrs. Mallison--"
"You don't say? Bet anything she deserves you, too." Crane showed
Lanyard arched brows of dubiety. "Shyster?"
"Calls himself Howlin," Lanyard assented impatiently. "If you like
he'll show you a card almost as shady as the business which engages his
talents tonight."
"I can afford to ignore slurs upon my professional standing which come
from such a source," Howlin loftily retorted. "But my business tonight
being the legitimate one of looking after the interests of a client, I
can hardly be expected to stand by and enter no objection when I hear
her slandered."
"I'll say you can't," Crane cruelly agreed, looking the lady up and down
with a glance so discerning that it caused a dull flush to burn beneath
her complexion.
But now again Howlin considered the source and concluded he could afford
to ignore constructive sarcasm.
"Mr. Regan here," he said, introducing the man who had styled himself a
"city detective"--"has under my direction been shadowing my client's
husband for several weeks. His reports show there's a questionable
degree of intimacy between Mallison and Mrs. McFee. When, therefore,
Mallison was seen tonight letting himself into this house, using his own
latch-key, we had every excuse for assuming that an unexpected visit
would produce certain results. Now, however, since we would seem to have
been misled, we can only offer Mrs. McFee the assurance that my client
stands ready to give her every satisfaction the law may hold her
entitled to. I think that's all . . ."
He turned confidently toward the door. "Now, Mrs. Mallison, if you're
ready . . . Come, Regan."
"What's your hurry?" Crane genially wanted to know, but quickly enough
to anticipate the storm of words promised by Folly's violent start. "You
admit your liability for unlawful trespass, I take it?"
"If Mrs. McFee thinks she can induce any court in the land to call it
that," Howlin stipulated.
"Outside of that, however, you've got nothing to fear?"
Mr. Howlin achieved a shrug which utterly abolished a suggestion so
absurd.
"Then be good sports--why don't you?--and stick around a while. Maybe
you might be able to help us out in dealing with Mr. Mallison. Going on
all you tell me, Mrs. Mallison don't owe him any good will; I judge she
ought to be happy to see him come up with. How about it, ma'm?"
The person appealed to in a touching twitter looked to Howlin for
guidance, and got from him a subtle sign which she may have
misinterpreted; not without excuse, seeing that the situation was one of
the extremest delicacy for all of them, and that the sacrifice of one to
the salvation of the majority is a time-honoured expedient with her
kind.
"Ask me anything you want," she volunteered, waggling an indignant head
and giving Mallison a poisonous look . . . "after the way he's treated
me, the low cur!"
"That's handsome of you, ma'm." Crane beamed benignantly upon the lady,
and with little less warmth upon the unhappy dancing man. "I won't
forget it, either. But first I'd like to ask Mr. Lanyard here a few
questions, to sort of clear the ground."
"I object!" Mallison stuttered in dismay. "I refuse to submit to these
star-chamber proceedings--"
"Do you, now?" Crane commented with much interest. "Well, if you ask me,
'star-chamber proceedings' is a mighty hifalutin' name for what's going
to happen to you right here and now, my lad; it's going to be a whole
lot more like the third degree, if you know what I mean."
Mallison knew only too well; fear lent those ingratiating eyes, usually
so gentle beneath their long and silky lashes, the wickedness of a
cornered rat's. "I protest!" he snarled--"I deny your right--"
"You better hush. Hoffmeyer here don't like your looks nohow, he'll
admire to improve 'em if you don't quit speaking out of your turn."
Mallison got a black grin from the patrolman and subsided at discretion,
while Crane cocked a meaning eye at Lanyard.
"Now, Mr. Lanyard, if you'll just tell us what you know about how this
man Mallison comes to be here . . ."
"Gladly." Lanyard had his story pat, it fell from a glib tongue. "I
presume everybody present knows Mrs. McFee's emeralds were stolen last
night from the safe in that secretary over there, under circumstances
which caused a certain person to be suspected--"
"Why so modest?" Mallison interrupted vindictively. "Why so
mealy-mouthed? 'Suspected' is hardly the word."
"I am desolated to disappoint monsieur; unhappily or not, as you may
care to take it, Mr. Crane was able to establish my innocence this
morning."
"Like hell he was!"
"Just one more nasty crack out of you, Mallison," Crane advised, "and
I'll let Hoffmeyer do your wife a swell favour."
"Strangely enough," Lanyard serenely pursued: "Mrs. McFee and I,
thinking the case over independently, arrived at the same conclusion:
that Mallison probably knew as much as anybody about the theft. Mrs.
McFee accordingly laid a trap: invited him to a little dinner-party this
evening, in the course of which she let it become known that the thief
had overlooked a valuable lot of jewellery which she meant to leave
unprotected tonight other than by the safe which had once already been
attacked with success. This made a second visit probable, if there were
grounds for our suspicions. . . . I on my part arranged to occupy that
clothes-press which you see with its door open; by leaving the door just
off the latch, it was easy to keep direct watch over the safe. Toward
the end of dinner Mallison received the telephone call which has been
mentioned, and used it as a pretext for leaving before the other guests.
He said good night to Mrs. McFee at the front door, but as soon as she
returned to the dining-room let himself back into the house and stole
upstairs. He was hiding behind the screen in the corner when Mrs. McFee
came up, but when she had put her remaining jewels in the safe and
turned to go to her bedchamber, he blundered--made his presence known in
a way she couldn't overlook. Then he tried to overpower her, to prevent
her giving the alarm. I was obliged to interfere and had just succeeded
in discouraging him when these people broke in . . ."
"Straight enough story, far as it goes," Crane approved.
But Mallison dissented wildly: "A pack of lies from beginning to end!"
he termed it. To which Lanyard replied, with nonchalance quite
unfeigned, that if they doubted his word they might ask Mrs. McFee.
Neither was his confidence misplaced: quietly the young woman affirmed
the substantial truthfulness of the tissue of misrepresentation which he
had woven so brazenly under her very eyes and for her benefit as much as
for his own.
"But one thing I want settled at once," she declared: "These people say
Mallison used a latch-key. I say he didn't--unless he has one he stole.
If they're right, I want that key. If they're wrong, I want that proved
for my own sake."
"Reasonable enough," Crane agreed. "How about it, Mallison? got a little
key to give up?" The dancing man shook his head, mumbling a negative.
"You can save yourself a heap of trouble by forking it over, you know."
"I tell you I haven't got any key!" Mallison insisted with what seemed
extravagant passion, while Lanyard eyed him in deepening perplexity:
some secret fear, inexplicable, unwarranted by known circumstances,
seemed to be at work in the man, desperation was glimpsing in his hunted
eyes. "Mrs. McFee knows I haven't--I won't be sacrificed to save her--"
"How's that?"
"Mrs. McFee," Mallison defiantly affirmed, "knows damn' well I haven't
got a key and never had one, she knows damn' well she left the door
fixed for me, so that I could reopen it by simply turning the knob from
the outside--"
"Oh!" Folly gasped, infuriated--"what a contemptible lie! Search him,
Mr. Crane--I demand that this beast be searched and proved a liar. He
must have had a key, he couldn't possibly have got in any other way."
Even while she was speaking events got in motion, not consecutively but
all at once: Mallison, stung to frenzy by his fears, whirled on a heel
and made a mad dash for the passage leading to the bedchamber. A sinewy
hand at the end of one of Crane's long arms shot out, with surprising
readiness, to clamp upon his shoulder and drag him back. He turned and
fought wildly. The policeman, Hoffmeyer, cheerfully waded in to lend
Crane needed assistance. Mrs. Mallison and Messrs. Howlin and Regan
thought to profit by the general preoccupation, but were painfully
surprised to discover that Lanyard, an instant since a dozen feet away,
was now planted firmly in front of the hall door and smiling a bright,
bland smile over the sinister grin of Mallison's pistol.
They stopped. Simultaneously Mallison found himself helpless in an
embrace which Hoffmeyer had fastened round him from behind.
"Cut it out, now!" the patrolman growled. "You kick my shins again, and
I'll shake every tooth out of your fool head!"
Panting and twitching like a whipped animal, Mallison gave in, and with
eyes of blank hopelessness followed the work of Crane's clever hands as
they turned out the contents of his pockets, one by one, and neatly
arranged their plunder on the top of the occasional table; bringing to
light, in addition to everyman's horde of minor personal effects, a flat
leather case which fitted neatly a lining pocket in Mallison's dress
waistcoat and which held a light jointed jimmy of the toughest
procurable steel with an assortment of skeleton keys designed to make
the most modern of door-locks tamely yield up its secret.
Mallison's countenance gave open confession of abandonment to despair
when this damning find was made; yet Crane was not half-finished with
him. The next plunge of his fingers fished a tissue-paper packet from a
lower waistcoat pocket, which, being unfolded, disclosed the purloined
emeralds of Folly McFee.
Crane clucked in astonishment, Folly gave an incredulous squeal of joy,
Lanyard a graphic start and stare. The others present reacted variously,
each according to his idiosyncrasy. Only Mallison made neither sound nor
stir. But the eyes he turned toward Lanyard were a murderer's . . .