"It recommended itself as the simplest way to seduce you into a
conversation which I meant to have before morning whether you wanted it
or not; furthermore, for me, by far the safest. Figure to yourself how
much more secure I feel in my skin, meeting you here, the last place
where you would have thought to find me . . ."
Morphew shifted slightly toward the door, a movement of impulse which he
seemed to repent when he found Lanyard in the way. "I came here to have
a talk with Mrs. McFee," he heavily stated, "at her invitation . . ."
"I have begged her to grant me the favour of a few minutes alone with
you."
"I've nothing to say to you . . ."
"That places one of us at a deplorable disadvantage; for I have much to
say to you, monsieur, and mean to say it."
"Suppose I don't care to listen . . ."
"It desolates me to feel obliged to inform you that, entirely by chance
and contrary to my preference and habit, I happen to be armed."
"Seems to me I've heard"--a slow sneer darkened the face of uncouth
ugliness--"it used to be your boast, 'The Lone Wolf never kills'."
"Monsieur says truly 'it used to be' . . . He will, moreover, wisely
remind himself that the Lone Wolf is no more, his code, such as it was,
is no sure guide to what Michael Lanyard may do when he fights for the
right to live his own life in his own way."
Another instant their glances clashed, then Morphew's fell, he turned
sullenly back to the table, fumbling, to cover nervousness out of
character, for his cigar-case. "Well: what do you want?"
Lanyard pushed the hall door to before replying.
"First, to give myself the felicity of telling you the great news."
Eyes beneath leaden lids shifted back to Lanyard's face, a gross hand
grossly crusted with diamonds brought to light a case of gold studded
with diamonds, but delayed to open it.
"Come, Monsieur Morphew! confess you are wondering what has become of
that zealous disciple of yours, Monsieur Mallison."
"What about Mallison?"
But Morphew had found it necessary to moisten his lips before he could
speak.
"He is, at the present moment, one has good reason to believe, wildly
telephoning about Town to get in touch with you and pray for a bondsman
to bail him out, when he is arraigned tomorrow morning for stealing Mrs.
McFee's emeralds."
The pupils of the little, flesh-embedded eyes contracted, Morphew licked
his lips again. "How's that?"
"Your protégé, monsieur, so neatly styled the dancing yegg, was caught
hiding in the boudoir upstairs, some fifteen or twenty minutes ago, and
arrested."
Morphew gave himself time to assimilate this ill-omened information,
bending over the gaudy trinket in his hands and making meticulous choice
of a cigar. He gnawed off its end, broadcasted the waste, put the case
away, struck a match, and through a screen of smoke and flame looked
back to Lanyard.
"How'd you manage that?"
"But surely one who couldn't--so simple a matter!--is not one to have
been honoured with the handsome offer you made me last night."
"I've put you a question," Morphew testily prompted; "I want to know how
you managed to put it over on Mally. Afraid to answer?"
"All in good time. For the present, I have the whim to point out what
dismal stupidity you have displayed in this affair, to the end that you
may spare yourself further discomfiture by foregoing any injudicious
schemes of vengeance which may be brewing behind that broad, impassive
brow."
"You swing a mean tongue in English," Morphew observed--"for a
foreigner." He cast about for a chair sturdy enough to sustain the bulk
of him, and with an air of resignation, his first voluntary confession
of feeling, sat down. "Go on, get it all off your chest; I don't mind
listening."
"Monsieur is too amiable. One can only prove one's appreciation by
endeavouring to be brief . . ."
"Take your time. I got plenty."
"Regard, then, my good Morphew, that last night, in this room, I was
drugged."
"Hootch?" Morphew sagely queried, and receiving a nod commented:
"There's a lot of wicked stuff being served nowadays."
"Four drinks were mixed for us last night, Morphew, by your man Pagan.
The other three were consumed without ill effects. Thirty minutes after
drinking mine, I became unconscious of my actions."
"Never knew a Frenchman yet could hold his liquor like a gentleman."
"No doubt monsieur knows best how a gentleman drinks . . . At the same
time, Pagan did his best, by means of hints thinly veiled, to prepare
Mrs. McFee to credit me with the robbery which was even then planned in
detail."
"Is this a confession you're making?"
"Planned by you, monsieur, and brilliantly executed by your henchman,
the dancing yegg."
"If you didn't know what you were doing last night, like you claim, how
d'you know you didn't pull the job off yourself?"
"One was waiting for that question, one knew it was sure to come after
the preparation Pagan had made for it."
"I notice you don't seem in any sweat to answer it."
"It has been answered for me. With her complaint of the theft, Mrs.
McFee communicated to the police the suspicions Pagan had been at such
pains to sow in her mind; with the result that my rooms were visited
early today and, like me, searched while I slept."
Morphew took the cigar from between his teeth and with an air of anxiety
inspected its half-inch or more of ash. "And nothing found," he
incuriously inferred.
"Nothing."
"Can't remember what you did with the stuff, either, I suppose?" The
cigar went back to its appointed berth. "Too bad. You must've been
stewed as a boiled owl, all right."
"Patience. Tonight, when Mrs. McFee called in the police to arrest
Mallison for having sneaked back like the thief he is, after leaving
this house in the character of a guest and friend, he was searched and
found to possess"--Lanyard made provokingly deliberate pause--"a pocket
kit of burglar's tools."
"Sounds fishy." Nevertheless, more business with the cigar told of
strain to keep up appearances under unrelenting study. "That all your
news?"
"But by no means all. Further search proved that Mallison had been
guilty of the amazing indiscretion of bringing the emeralds, concealed
upon his person, back into the house from which he had stolen them."
Untouched by Morphew's hand the cigar between his teeth dropped its ash.
"How do you mean?" he mumbled, watching his fat bedizened fingers brush
gray flakes from the lapel of his dinner jacket. "The emeralds couldn't
have been found on Mally unless"--the colourless eyes lifted to
Lanyard's face--"unless you put them there!"
"My gifts are small, I am hardly so clever as monsieur flatters me by
supposing."
"By God!" Morphew heaved out of his chair in a cold rage of
conviction--"you planted the stuff on the boy!"
"But," Lanyard pointed out, his suavity unruffled--"if you are so
positive the emeralds were in my possession before they were found on
Mallison, the admission is implicit that you had compromising knowledge
of the robbery. Else how can you be so sure?"
"I'm satisfied you stole 'em," Morphew growled--"I'm satisfied you
planted 'em on Mally for fear they'd be found on you."
"But why?" Lanyard argued as one perplexed but reasonable. "Have you
never been mistaken in reading the hearts of those whom you employ?
Remember what you must have known about Mallison before you reckoned him
skillful and unscrupulous enough to be of use to you. Was it altogether
wise, do you think, to trust such a one to resist the temptation to keep
for himself the plunder you had set him to steal and bestow on me for my
undoing? Was it wise to forget the least miscarriage of the scheme would
leave you unable to prove your tool had been false to your trust? Was it
wise to believe Mallison too dense to think of that for himself? How can
you be sure he didn't put the jewels into his own pocket instead of into
mine?"
"See here--!" Morphew stammered, equanimity at last shattered beyond
dissembling.
"Ah! but there I have you," Lanyard chuckled. "There I touched the heel
of Achilles--eh, monsieur?--your vulnerable spot! The truth is, you dare
trust nobody; you don't know that Mallison didn't play you false, any
more than you know now he won't, when the pinch comes, turn State's
evidence and betray you to save himself."
"Get out of my way!" Morphew bit through his cigar and cast it from him
with a violent hand. "I've had enough of this, I've stood for about all
of your damned nonsense--"
"By all means, monsieur"--Lanyard politely stood clear of the
door--"hasten to the police station and put the fear of God into the
heart of this poor thing whom you were ass enough to trust. You haven't
a minute to lose if you hope to succeed in stopping the mouths of those
four whom the police are even now, doubtless, putting through the third
degree--"
"Four?" Morphew checked short in ponderous dismay, his heavy head low
between his shoulders and swaying like that of a tormented animal.
"Four!"
"Bless my soul! did I forget to tell you? How unpardonably stupid of me.
The lady so lost to shame that she openly accuses herself of being Mrs.
Mallison, the enterprising Mr. Howlin, and his associate Mr. Regan--all
stepped with Mallison into the trap you'd set for Mrs. McFee, for
purposes of blackmail, and sprung it on themselves. If you doubt my
word, you'll find them all at the East Fifty-first Street Police
Station."
"If that's true," Morphew rumbled, barely articulate--"if I owe that to
you, Lanyard--"
"It is--you do."
"You'll settle with me, you crook--if you hide at the ends of the earth,
I'll find you and break you--"
"Ah! thanks, my good Morphew, many thanks!" Lanyard laughed in high
delight. "How generously you play into my hands. You confess you
employed Pagan to drug me and Mallison to commit a burglary in an
attempt to fasten the crime on me--you own your complicity in an even
fouler job of blackmail 'framed,' as you would say, for Mrs. McFee--and
now you add the cap-stone!"