XIX

Morphew was holding down a huge easy-chair without any appearance of

ease: feet well apart and planted solidly, huge and bedizened paws

firmly clasping each an arm of the chair as if to forestall its wickedly

slipping out from under him. His face of a pale beast, with its

unwinking light eyes under leaden hoods, its gash of a mouth, its

flaccid jowls and wattles, was void of any readable expression; but for

seepage of smoke from its nostrils and the corner of the mouth that

wasn't filled by the cigar it might have passed for a devil-mask

modelled by hands of decadence.

Above and somewhat behind this unholy vision, Mr. Peter Pagan, resting

folded arms on the back of the chair, presented the face of a subsenile

imp in familiar attendance, innocent, however, of his master's affection

for the pose imperturbable--his clown's lips wide with a gleeful grin,

beady eyes alive with malice.

"I suppose," he said, as one might to a troublesome child, "you think

you're smart, keeping decent, law-abiding folk up like this, till all

hours!"

Lanyard reflected on this pleasantry with a weary droop of eyelids,

otherwise held still and dumb.

With dramatic deliberation Morphew relaxed the hold of one hand on the

chair long enough to extract the cigar from between his teeth. All in a

grunt he commanded: "Frisk him."

Trained fingers turned out the pockets of the captive. "This guy's got

no gat," the man on his chest reported in plaintive disappointment.

"Never thought he had," Pagan acidly commented: "Bluff is the middle

name of our fair-haired lad."

"Let him up," Morphew ordered--"but stand by in case he still feels

hostile."

A free man once more, Lanyard scrambled to his feet, shook himself like

a dog, gave his seagoing slacks a practised hitch, the sleeves and

skirts of his makeshift coat a scrupulous dusting, and smiled sunny

reassurance first on the watchful circle round him (noting impenitently

that one man was nursing a swollen nose while another was uttering a few

loosened teeth) then, with an impudent colour of indulgence added,

beamed upon the seated arbiter of the scene.

"Monsieur is needlessly alarmed," he said with an urbanity unaffected by

hastened breathing. "Something tells me I were well-advised to put off

our overdue accounting against a more favourable occasion."

"All the accounting that's going to be done," Morphew heavily countered,

"is going to happen right here and now, before either you or me leave

this room." He shifted a passionless glare to his henchmen. "Clear out

and wait in the hall: I'll give a whistle if I want you again. If I give

two whistles, one of you call a cop--the rest come running."

Lanyard indecorously yawned, then gave an open laugh as the battered

bodyguard withdrew. Uninvited, he helped himself to an overstuffed

lounge chair, and sighed in grateful relaxation.

"A policeman, my good Morphew! do my ears mislead me?"

"No," Morphew definitely replied, "they don't."

Pagan cocked a critical eye at the ears in question. "Even

foreshortened," he volunteered, "they don't look like ears to mislead

anybody else."

But Pagan could wait, Lanyard couldn't afford to let an antic second

distract any of the attention due his principal.

"I am to understand," he persisted, addressing Morphew, "it is your

intention to give me in charge?"

"That rests with you."

"Monsieur undoubtedly is pleased to be humorous . . ."

"Maybe, so, maybe not." Fixing Lanyard with an unintelligible stare,

Morphew thoughtfully champed his cigar. "There's a lot of popularity

lying around loose in this town, waiting to be pinned onto the hero that

puts the Lone Wolf behind bars. And you ought to know whether you've had

enough."

"But if you ask me," Lanyard frankly laughed--"too much!"

"All right," Morphew agreed in gloomy gratification: "That puts it up to

you which you want to do now--go up the River to do a nice long stretch

or stick on in Town here and take life easy."

"Not so long ago it was the Lone Wolf's boast that he never found it

necessary to take life easily or otherwise . . . as you were good enough

to remind me, monsieur, the last time we had the pleasure of conversing

together."

[Illustration: DETECTIVE CRANE OBEYING THE INSTINCT OF PROFESSION, AT

THE SAME TIME ADMIRES THE FASCINATING CROOK, MICHAEL LANYARD.]

"Not the last time by a long sight," Morphew bluntly contradicted; "but

I know when you mean."

"Today one begins to wonder if that boast was good only because the Lone

Wolf had never been given proper provocation."

Morphew took time to digest this. "You talk as crooked as you work," he

concluded; "but the way I take it, that's a threat."

"It is altogether as you care to take it."

"If you don't like the way you've been handled, you've only got yourself

to blame. I've given you every chance to come through like a

gentleman--"

"But constituted yourself judge of whether I did or not."

The wooden set of Morphew's features became, if possible, more than ever

marked, the puffed lids curtained more jealously those repellant eyes,

his ruminative way with the cigar knew a momentary break.

With a vaguely innocent smile Lanyard snuggled down into luxurious

upholstery and utilized the wait to look the room over with intelligent

interest in the taste which had ruled its composition. A surprisingly

handsome library, decorated and furnished with a dignity in no degree

oppressive: all at wide odds with an environment such as one might have

expected that bejewelled block of flesh to create for itself.

But the ominous pause was beginning to irk Pagan's nerves. He moved

restlessly from his station at Morphew's back and laid hands upon a

decanter which, with glasses and a siphon bottle, occupied a tray on one

end of the library table.

"How about a little snifter, what?" he suggested with a leer

overshoulder.

"Thank you," Lanyard returned politely--"but one recalls too well your

black art as a bar-tender, monsieur; one hesitates to risk another

waking up to find oneself accused of--it might well be--murder."

As if involuntarily, but without moving a superficial muscle, Morphew

permitted a meditative rumble to escape him: "Murder . . ." And in a

startled movement not wholly affected Lanyard sat up.

"Pardon, monsieur! one ought to keep a better guard upon one's tongue

lest one put ideas into your head."

"Oh I say now! cut it out, can't you?" Pagan hastily remonstrated. "Why

not be a sport, call that little skirmish of ours the fortunes of war,

and let it go at that? No end of water has flowed down the Hudson since

that night when you cut up so nasty--about nothing at all,

practically--Morph here had to give you a taste of the whip. Not that he

wanted to, but you asked for it, Lanyard--and you know you did!"

"But truly, monsieur, this grows fatiguing . . ."

"Everything's so different tonight," Pagan brightly argued. "We've all

been through so much, we know one another heaps better--there isn't any

sense at all in our keeping on at loggerheads."

"There is not?"

"Why! if the last half year has proved anything it's that we're all

travelling one road, aiming at the same mark . . . Or shall we say

marks, so long as the dear American people ain't listening in? . . .

And now we've all made our mistakes and are ready to admit and profit

by them--you're going to cut out all this running round in circles and

frothing at the mouth, going to come in and lie down under the table and

be a good dog."

"I am?"

"Sure thing. Ask Morph: he knows. And you will, too, before long, if you

don't now. And then we'll all be just like this"--Pagan illustrated by

lacing his fingers--"just girls together, you know, all out for a good

time. So why not begin the peace conference with just one friendly

little hooter? It'll do us both good: you've had a hard day of it, and

you've given us a hard night."

"It desolates me, monsieur, to think I have been, however unwittingly,

the agent of your martyrdom to insomnia."

"Well: what _did_ you think?" Giving up the ungrateful work of trying to

seduce Lanyard into tippling, Pagan philosophically mixed himself a

lonely solace. "Didn't suppose we'd be able to sleep a wink, did you,

when you'd got us all excited up?"

"I! but how?"

"Pulling off this pussyfoot return of the prodigal."

"It is true," Lanyard thoughtfully considered: "by what appears, you did

know of my return."

"If we hadn't, there wouldn't have been any sense in our staging this

swell reception in your honour."

"I presume it seems stupid of me to be surprised--"

"Dear man!" Pagan benignly advised him--"we _brought_ you back."

"I am afraid I am incurably stupid . . ."

"It was one of my boats you came north on from Rum Cay," Morphew

brusquely explained. "If I hadn't given the boys down there the word by

wireless, when they reported you'd turned up, you'd be there still, high

and dry on the beach."

"Stupid," Lanyard insisted, "is too weak a term for my imbecility. And I

never guessed--!"

"Never struck you it was funny," Morphew enquired in ponderous contempt,

"a bootlegging outfit would let a total stranger get the low-down on the

way the game was worked, and then give him free transportation North and

turn him loose to tell all he knew to the enforcement gang?"

"One must confess one thought those fine fellows strangely trustful."

"You likely charged it all up to your winning little ways," Pagan

sweetly observed over the rim of his tumbler. "Not that I want to rub it

in . . ."

"But do go on. It is really a consolation to hear your wit improvise so

brilliantly upon the theme of my infirmity--when I myself am at a loss

for words."

"Like hell you are!" Pagan complained with an anguished grimace--"not

so's anybody'd notice it."

"But still I find myself so feeble-minded," Lanyard confessed, "nothing

yet gives me to understand why--"

Pagan started vivaciously to pursue the advantage which Lanyard

conceded; but a baleful glance from Morphew reined his tongue in time,

and drove him to bury a snubbed nose silently in strong drink.

"It's like this," Morphew began with consequence, but paused to clear

his throat when Lanyard turned on him a look of bright attention. "I'm a

hard guy to cross," he stated with the simplicity of a strong plain

man--"a damned hard guy to cross, if you don't know it. What I make up

my mind I want, I get"--a pause lent the next word weight--"always.

Maybe I have to wait a while sometimes, but in the end I always get what

I go after. Always."

"Spoken like a one-hundred per-cent he-citizen, monsieur, of this land

of bred-in-the-bone go-getters."

"All right," Morphew replied, mysteriously tolerant. "I don't mind your

funny cracks at me, if they amuse you. That's your line, and I'll say

your right bright at it, too. It isn't mine, and maybe that's my

misfortune: a person can't have everything in this world, that's

sure . . . But somehow I notice, no matter how many laughs I miss when

they're being handed around--somehow I always manage to bag the last

one. I've let you get away with a lot of rough stuff at my expense,

Lanyard, but I'm not done with you yet. If you'd only lay off being a

comedian long enough to think things over, it ought to teach you

something and make it easier for us to understand each other."

"But continue, I beg you, monsieur," Lanyard replied with a speciously

straight face: "I am all attention, as you see."

Morphew darkly chewed his cigar for another moment . . . "I let my boys

fetch you back to New York because I figured out maybe you'd had knocks

enough to bring you round to a more docile frame of mind than you were

in when you high-tailed it for South America." A side alley of

self-revelation proved too tempting: "That's the way I am, you see: when

a man I want bucks on me, I make it a rule to give him all the rope he

wants to wind himself up in good and tight before I start hauling in the

slack. That night we first met, now . . . I made you a plain,

open-and-shut business proposition, take it or leave it. If you hadn't

r'ared back, showed your teeth and the whites of your eyes, and made

such a fuss altogether about your lovely virtue, I and you wouldn't 've

ever had any trouble. If there's one thing I despise worse than poison

it's phony righteousness. And the way you carried on that night showed

me plain enough kind treatment wasn't ever going to gentle you. So I

laid off and let you perform. What happened?"

"Must we go into that? See: you're embarrassing Mr. Pagan here

frightfully."

Morphew gave his head a shake, as one pestered by a buzzing insect.

"What happened?" he obstinately iterated. "You went off and got loaded

on a thimbleful of liquor, forgot all about being nature's nobleman, and

pulled off one of the rawest jobs of second-storey stuff ever."

"But surely you are dealing unfairly now by the talents of that poor but

willing creature Mallison."

"Mallison!"

A passion of indignation exploded in that snort, such as Morphew had

never before betrayed capacity for feeling; and seeming to choke on a

rush of words, he was temporarily unable to resume; while Lanyard,

forbearing to question or comment, continued in a wide stare of a

sudden grown genuine. Unmistakably his mention of Mallison had touched a

spot so sore that the iron rule of stolidity had been unseated. But for

an instant only; quick to pull himself together, Morphew resumed his

level drone of habit.

"Get that idea out of your head--if it's in it. Mally's a crooked little

damn' fool if there ever was one, but he never in his best days had the

guts to tackle big business."

"But, if memory serves, you were of another mind when we met at Mrs.

McFee's--"

"You had me at a disadvantage--"

"How generous an admission!"

"It was your word against mine; and what chance did I have of proving

you had everything all wrong, with the little McFee daft about you,

ready to believe black was white if you told her so?"

"It isn't fair to confuse me with compliments. Pardon a slight

digression: I am interested to know what became of Mallison."

"I don't know," Morphew admitted, louring. "But I will before

long . . ."

He gave a minute to savage brooding. "If that boy had only had sense

enough to trust me . . . But he got panicky for fear we'd fall down

trying to alibi him, and blew without so much as good night."

"And you have not see him since?"

"Fat chance. He knows enough to steer clear of me after jumping the bail

I put up for him."

"Still, one is hardly convinced that Mallison is the simple innocent you

make him out to be."

"I suppose"--Morphew's manner was irritating by intention--"what you

want me to believe is you don't remember owning up you done that job

yourself."

"Ah!" Light from yet another angle promised now to illuminate the darker

recesses of Liane's duplicity. "You have been talking with Mademoiselle

Delorme--"

"With both of you."

"Pardon?"

"I'm telling you the three of us talked all that business over, I and

you and Liane, half a dozen times if once, last Winter. You didn't make

any bones then about admitting you'd turned that trick at Folly's while

you were lit. What good do you think it's going to do you to stall about

it now, try to feed the bull to me, the way you did to Liane on board

that boat? Maybe she swallowed your yarn because she wanted to; but I'm

no crazy woman, I'm not so dead struck on you I'll let you get away with

telling me to my face you don't remember anything that went on in this

Town before you went South. I'm wise, I know what you've got in mind;

and that tale won't go down a little bit with yours truly."

"I see . . ."

"Well," Morphew roughly insisted: "what do you see?"

"For one thing, that one was not mistaken in assuming you had recently

talked with Mademoiselle Delorme."

"Why not? She hiked right back to Town as soon as you left her flat on

the Port Royal."

"And promptly reported to you of course."

"Who do you think? What other friend did her and you have, with pull

enough to keep the cops off your backs while you were running that

continuous performance of yours last Winter?"

"Nevertheless, your influence failed to save Liane from deportation."

"She came back all right, she's here now, isn't she? Well then: who do

you suppose fixed things up for her?"

"Pardon, monsieur: I do but marvel that power so autocratic should even

once have failed a friend."

"Pretending you've forgotten all about how that happened, too, eh?" An

uglier sneer overcast Morphew's countenance. "I suppose you don't

remember anything about how you two got to feeling your oats, after

you'd been Lone Wolfing a while and making a good thing out of it with

my protection, and thought you could give me the air and never miss

me--"

"No! not really?"

"I suppose you don't remember how I nudged the Government into deporting

Liane to teach her discipline and then, when I found you didn't handle

any better with her away, let her sneak back, gave you another chance,

and when _that_ didn't work made Town so hot for you both you had to

take a running jump off the Battery . . . I suppose it's only natural

you wouldn't remember little things like that."

"And very handsome it is of you to suppose so, and prove you do by

itemizing in such minute detail all I pretend to have forgotten."

"That line of talk won't get you anywhere with me, Lanyard. Sarcastic

cracks won't stop me checking up to show you where you get off trying to

pull that lost memory stall on me. Why!" Morphew snorted in

disgust--"you must think I'm easy."

"But no, monsieur! my memory is hardly so bad as all that."

"It's only on the blink when you want it to be, I guess."

"What it really needs now," Pagan put in with animation, "is for you to

get yourself lammed over the bean again." He grasped the neck of the

decanter suggestively. "I hate to do it, but for a friend . . . Just say

the word, Lanyard, and I'll crown you King of Cracksmen."

"Shut up," Morphew brutally snapped.

With a little moan the sycophant applied himself anew to the soothing

Scotch; and for a few moments no more was said, while Lanyard, sitting

forward, bent a thoughtful frown to the rug at his feet, and Morphew

studied his man with a subtile smile.

"Licked," he declared, at length: "that's what you are, Lanyard, licked

to a standstill. Your nature started the job and I finished it. You'd

ought to 've known better than to try to buck a combination like that."

"I'm sorry," Lanyard replied, looking up with an apologetic smile--"but

if it isn't too much to ask you to be more plain-spoken . . ."

"All I mean is--there's no cure for a crook. If you were born crooked,

you'll die a crook, no matter how hard you struggle. It's your nature,

and it's no use any man's trying to lick his nature: you're licked

before you start. God knows I don't blame you for not wanting to believe

that, on account of that dame you were stuck on--"

"By your leave, monsieur!" Lanyard sharply insisted--"we will not

discuss that phase of my affairs."

"Just as you like. No offense intended, none, far's I'm concerned,

taken." Morphew had suddenly shifted to an amazingly conciliatory line.

"I bear you no ill will, Lanyard, in spite of all you've done to sprain

my patience. Why! that battle you put up against your nature and me was

a classic, and a man can't help but admire you for it, even if he did

know all along you never had a chance. But now you know it, too, you're

too sensible to keep on kicking against the pricks. Your motto from now

on is 'Make the best of it'--and the best you can make of it, if you put

your back into the business, is the life of Reilly for a man who knows

how to live like you do."

"You advise me, then--?"

"I leave it to your good sense, seeing where you stand today, what's the

only sensible way for you to go."

In a subdued voice, with thoughtful gaze constant to Morphew's, Lanyard

repeated: "Where I stand today!"

"Well: where do you? You've got to live somehow, and you only know one

way to make a decent living. It's no good your pulling out for Paris or

London again. They read the papers over there, too--they'll never let

the Lone Wolf land from any steamer."

"But if they believe me drowned in the Bahamas--"

"Don't count on it," Morphew earnestly counselled. "If you try to shift

your scene of operations, somebody over here that maybe doesn't think

you've treated him right would be sure to tip off Scotland Yard and the

Surétè. See what I mean?"

"You make it all so clear . . ."

"Now on this side you've got everything in your favour. You're back in

Town, and nobody knows it but Pagan here and me; all you've got to do is

lay low a while, take things easy, and go ahead when you get good and

ready . . . providing you're ready to come to terms with me."

"Terms such as--?"

"The same as last Winter; you do the heavy lifting and I take care of

the high finance; we split the proceeds fifty-fifty, and you get full

protection thrown in for nothing."

"But what of this plagiarist of my methods who has been so active in my

absence?"

"Don't let him worry you. I've got a good line on that bird, he won't

stand in your light twenty-four hours after I switch on the stop

signal."

Over the head which Lanyard bowed in pondering, Pagan shot Morphew a

grin of cynical congratulation, to which Morphew returned a quick nod

and sign of caution.

"Take your time, think it over," he advised, not unkindly; "I don't want

to hurry you. But it's only fair to tell you, after all that's passed

between us, Lanyard, I'd think myself a born sap to take you back on the

old terms without conditions."

"It might be well to name them," Lanyard suggested without looking up.

"To begin with, from now on the Delorme is out, I and you will work

without any go-between. And then--you'll admit it's only fair I should

want some proof of good faith from you."

"For example--?"

"I want the say-so about your first few jobs. You'll have to tackle them

under conditions that'll satisfy me you mean to play the game on the

level."

"But I fancy you will find it hard to invent such conditions--"

"Oh!" Morphew almost genially laughed--"it's proof of good will I'm

after more than anything else. If it comes to that, you won't

double-cross me, once you've committed yourself, unless you want to

spend the rest of your born days in Sing-Sing or . . ."

The short laugh that filled in the ellipsis brought Lanyard's eyes up to

Morphew's once more. "Or--?" he prompted with interest.

"There are some things I don't like to say, when we seem to be hitting

it off so nice and easy. I was only thinking--I guess you realize you

wouldn't get a great ways with your life if you tried to sell me out

again. For instance: Say we should fall out here tonight; know what I'd

do?"

"How should I?"

"I'd call in the boys waiting out there in the hall, have 'em give you

a full shave, and turn you loose at Forty-second and Fifth Avenue, while

I sat on the steps of the Public Library and split my sides laughing."

"Very ingenious," Lanyard gravely applauded. "But assuming, purely for

the sake of the argument, that by means of some equally ingenious shift

I should escape unshorn . . ."

"Remember how long you lasted in November, after you'd told me to roll

my hoop? Must have been all of twenty-four hours."

"Decidedly," Lanyard observed, "I was unwise to mention murder in your

hearing--or would have been, had I seriously entertained any notion of

holding out against you, monsieur."

Exultation flickered in Morphew's eyes like northern lights in a

moon-blanched sky.

"Then it's a bargain?"

"You would not have wasted time offering it had you thought me insane

enough to reject it." Lanyard lifted a hand to plead for silence, while

the mellow music of a clock in the hall sang through the early morning

stillness. "Five o'clock," he said, rising. "Since we are to be so

closely associated henceforth, monsieur, I trust it isn't too much to

beg the favour of a bed. It has indeed been a long day for me, my head

at present is so dull with drowsiness I am hardly in a condition to go

further into this new arrangement . . ."