XXV

No responsive elation lightened the dark regard that shifted from

Lanyard's face to Mallison's and back again, only a smile pitiful and

chiding dawned. "So this," Eve slowly said, and slowly shook her head at

the man who loved her, "is why you ran away!"

That look he could no more interpret than he could the riddle of her

words; both he requited with a muddled stare. "I?" he blankly

wondered--"ran away--?"

She nodded once. "But you didn't know, I'm sure, what you were doing

then; it's natural you should not remember. You are yourself

tonight--you were not, then."

"Yes," he cried--"thank God! tonight I am myself . . ."

One of her hands went out to this, he caught it between his own, was

drawn by it to her bosom. Common impulse moved them aside and away from

the man they had forgotten, the man who lay sobbing and fighting for

breath on the floor beyond the desk.

"So you come back to me!" It was as if in the gaze that plunged into her

eyes his very soul passed out from him to lose itself, and all awareness

of the world without themselves as well, in that treasury of love

illimitable and incalculable which those eyes disclosed. "So, as I knew

you would, you come back to me at last, your honour cleansed! Michael,"

the woman breathed, yearning to him--"my Michael!"

"What are you telling me? _I_ ran away from you--!"

"Three months after you were injured in that motor accident, while your

memory still was uncertain, when often you couldn't recall one day's

events on the next . . . without a word of explanation or farewell, one

day you left me, disappeared . . ."

"_Left_ you!"

"I knew, of course, why . . . It was when the papers were revelling in

the sensational 'return'--as they called it--of the Lone Wolf. I had

tried to keep it from you, fearing the consequences of the excitement,

in your condition; but the hue and cry was out for you, I was at my

wits' ends to hide you away from the police, it was necessary to tell

you why . . . What I had so feared happened: you brooded incessantly,

whenever your mental condition made you forget the affair for a time--as

when you'd wake up from a sound night's sleep remembering nothing of the

previous day--something was sure to happen to remind you. A hundred

times you begged me to let you go, that you might find and expose the

scoundrel who was masquerading in your reputation; I knew you were

incompetent for that, at the time, and always managed somehow to talk

you out of it, until--as I say--abruptly, without word or sign, you left

me."

"Left _you_!"

"Ah! but you don't know." Her smile grew gently arch, fondly teasing.

"Don't you, my Michael! even remember--"

She gave a startled movement, averting her attention to the windows, her

body became tense in his embrace, her hands convulsively tightened upon

his shoulders.

The veranda was booming with a sudden, concerted rush of many feet.

Lanyard offered to release the woman, but she clung to him as if in

terror; and at the last he had to use his strength, because he foresaw

what was to befall, forcibly breaking her hold and throwing her from him

lest she share a peril that, he was resolved, must at any cost be his

alone.

Crying out, not loudly but in protest and solicitude for him, she

staggered back; and Lanyard turned toward the desk to retrieve his

pistol--too late. Already a man was shouldering in through the broken

window. He brought up standing with an automatic trained on Lanyard.

"Stick 'em up, my man!" he rumbled--"and be quick about it."

Lanyard was quick about it. His own weapon lay on the far edge of the

desk, at least eight feet away; before he could have covered half that

distance a bullet would have stopped him. Hands level with his ears, he

swung slowly to face Morphew.

Gross, ungainly, panting, rocking from one to the other of his heavily

planted feet, the Sultan of Loot stood with head slightly lowered and

thrust forward, face of a pig hideously twisted by a leer of malice

successful and exultant.

Behind him the window filled with followers, through it half a dozen

defiled into the room; three who were immediately identified as

individuals of Morphew's bodyguard who had helped manhandle Lanyard in

the Morphew town-house the night before; after these, the inevitable

Pagan, strutting, smirking; finally, two that were new figures in

Lanyard's sight--one an able-bodied young Irishman in police uniform but

lacking that elusive poise which somehow distinguishes members of the

New York police force, the other a simple citizen proudly parading a

nickel-plated badge on the bosom of his waistcoat.

"And keep 'em up, Lanyard!" Morphew was admonishing in an uglier note of

malice. "Don't take any chances with me this time--if I have to shoot,

I'll shoot to kill. You're caught at last, caught with the goods on!"

"'Caught'?" Eve de Montalais challenged. She stepped forward, coming

between Morphew and his chosen prey. "What are you saying? Caught doing

what?"

A mottled fat paw impatiently waved her out of the way; Morphew's

dourest scowl covered her. "Stand aside, madam!" he growled. "Don't make

me take a chance of hitting you; that man's a desperate criminal, if you

don't know it; the first move he makes, I'll fire--"

"But I do not know he is a desperate criminal," Eve sharply

contradicted. "As for you, whoever you may be, I think you must be

mad . . ."

"I guess you are," Morphew brusquely retorted. Yet his slotted eyes

winced from hers. "Caught him yourself--didn't you?--just now, robbing

your safe--"

"And if I did?" the woman surprisingly quibbled. "What concern is that

of yours? Have I invited your interference? Have I asked your help in

the management of my own affairs?"

"Maybe you haven't," Morphew sullenly contended--"but you're getting it

whether you want it or not--"

"With what authority, pray?"

"My authority, madam!" the man retorted in open rage--"the authority of

an honest, law-abiding citizen. I've been after that yegg there for

months. Now I've got him, by God! he don't escape with his life." He

jerked a peremptory head at the policeman and the man who sported the

nickel-plated badge. "Take your prisoner, Mr. Sheriff--"

"One moment!" Eve interposed a ringing demand that halted these two

before they had fairly got in motion to obey Morphew's behest. "I am the

householder here, if you please--you'll arrest nobody on these premises

without my sanction or a proper warrant. This gentleman has done nothing

to deserve arrest--"

"Nothing?" Morphew jeered. "You call burglary nothing?"

"He has committed no burglary--"

"Didn't break into this room and bust open that safe, I suppose?"

"To the contrary," Eve asseverated, "Mr. Lanyard is here in his own

right; more than that, he has prevented a burglary--"

"A likely story!" Morphew commented with a snort of grim derision. "If

he didn't do it, I want to know who did!"

"But allow me to answer this honest and law-abiding citizen, madame,"

Lanyard lightly put in. And wittingly at risk of his life he lowered one

hand to touch the woman's shoulder as he moved to one side, that she

might no longer persist in shielding him with her own body. "Permit me

to relieve the confusion of mind which distresses the amiable Monsieur

Morphew--"

"You keep your trap shut!"

"Softly, my good Morphew! I am about to do you a service--appreciating

as I do how worried you have been, and how pained, by the ungrateful

behavior of your tool and accomplice, Mal--"

"Shut your mouth, d'you hear?" Morphew bellowed, swaying his huge head

upon his shoulders like an infuriated animal about to charge. "Take your

prisoner, Mr. Sheriff! If this woman won't charge him with the burglary

he's committed here tonight, _I_ charge him with breaking into my house

in New York last night--"

The bellow ran out in a gasp that was followed by a choking noise. A

long arm had shot out over Morphew's shoulder from behind, and the bony

but powerful hand at the end of it had closed upon his wrist, jerking

the muzzle of the pistol toward the ceiling. As he swung round with an

incoherent roar another hand, the mate to the first, deftly seized the

weapon and twisted it from his grasp. He stared, in apoplectic

speechlessness, into the countenance composed yet sardonic of Crane.

Unobserved by anybody other than Eve and Lanyard, the detective had

quietly stepped in through the open window, closely followed by an

associate, a mild-mannered body hall-marked police detective by the

derby hat of tradition.

"Y'oughtn't to get gay like that with loaded firearms," Crane counselled

in gently pained reproach--"y'ought to know better, a man your age!" His

mouth hardened and he clamped fingers like the jaws of a vice on

Morphew's shoulder, nipping truculent bluster in the bud. "Crane's my

name, if you want to know, but bull's my nature, Mister Morphew; and

remember this"--eyes that had the glint of steel between narrowed lids

cowed Morphew's--"I don't ask no better luck than for you to give me a

good excuse to get even with you for all the trouble you've been putting

me to, first and last. Keep a civil tongue on your head if you value

your health!"

Morphew cast glances mutely eloquent of tormented appeal to his

henchmen; but they were one and all inattentive, to a man preoccupied

with the attitude of Crane's associate. And yet it had all the seeming

of the most inoffensive attitude imaginable. The mild-mannered man was

doing nothing whatever more than mildly keeping mild eyes on them and

his hands in his overcoat pockets. It is true that both the said pockets

boasted singular bulges, as if two forefingers of derision were being

pointed under their cover . . .

"But what the--who the--what the hell right 've you--?" Morphew

stammered.

"Well!" Crane chuckled, "I don't know. Kind of thought I'd drop in and

see how your little frame-up was working. Got the hottest kind of a tip

half an hour ago . . . Give you three guesses where it came from." One

of his eyebrows climbed his forehead on a slant, giving his face a

diabolically whimsical cast; his thin-lipped mouth widened in an unkind

smile. "Never mind guessing, Morphy, spare the old intellect the strain.

Here she comes now . . ."

A vision of elfin fantasy, with a fur-trimmed opera-wrap of crimson and

gold brocade negligently draped over her déshabillé, who quite frankly

hadn't stopped to dress, Folly McFee airily sauntered in from the

veranda and paused and posed, reviewing the tableau with glances of

mischievous amusement.

"Why, Morphy!" in affected solicitude she cried--"whatever has happened?

You look fussed to a perfect frazzle . . ."

"Best little side-kick any guy ever worked with," Crane quite seriously

affirmed. "Take it from me, Morph old boy, I'll look a long ways before

I find another little lady like that, who won't even stick at letting

her name be linked with the name of a mongrel like you, just to get the

low-down on your naughty little ways and shoot the information along to

yours truly."

A shove, seemingly playful and effortless, nevertheless shook the

balance of that hulking body; Morphew staggered back a step or two,

regained physical equilibrium with some effort, and braced himself like

a badgered brute in a bull-pen, feet wide apart, head swaying low upon

hunched and rocking shoulders. Rage and chagrin lent wattled cheeks the

complexion of flesh sorely bruised, his lower lip was pendulous, his

hooded light eyes, their whites newly shot with congested blood, were

wickedly agleam.

Lanyard, watchful, ready for anything now that Crane had deprived

Morphew of his pistol, told himself he had never seen a man more nearly

out of his mind with fury, had never encountered at close quarters an

animal more dangerous.

"But will you kindly look who's here!" Crane's happy drawl was

hailing--"as I live, old Hank Mallison, the spring-heeled yegg, none

other!"

Only his mild-mannered colleague had no attention to spare for the

spectacle of Mallison, like a spectre in a pantomime, slowly and

laboriously, with the help of hands that clutched the desk, hoisting

himself into view.

"Folks!" Crane solemnly declared--"I'm an officer of the law and

everything, but this is one big night. It ain't every night a poor dumb

dick like me is privileged to gaze upon the only authentic pirated copy

of the Lone Wolf. So if I can only wheedle our friend here, the King of

the Bootleggers, into selling me a bottle of his best bootliquor, the

drinks are on me, all round!"

On his feet at length, Mallison rested, trembling visibly, still stupid

with the effects of the thrashing he had suffered at Lanyard's hands. In

a face that retained recognizable traces of his make-up as the Lone

Wolf, his eyes had something of the bewildered look of a beaten

dog's--but for the merest instant only; terror replaced it in a

twinkling when his puzzled, questing glances discovered the presence of

Morphew.

There was an instant then that was gravid with presentiments of tragedy,

in which no one spoke, no one stirred from his place, no one moved in

any way but Morphew--for Mallison seemed frozen to immobility by sheer

fear.

Morphew was crouching lower, gathering himself together. The hands that

had been hanging limp lifted and tensed into the likeness of great livid

claws that itched for Mallison's throat. Morphew's lips had rolled back

from his teeth, from deep in his throat a dull, brutish growl was

rising. Of a sudden it waxed to an inhuman howl, and simultaneously that

ponderous bulk of flesh launched itself like a thunderbolt

incarnate across the room . . .

In its third stride it was stopped and thrown back as if it had dashed

itself against an invisible barrier. Mallison had found Lanyard's pistol

and fired. He fired again as Morphew was falling. But his third shot

ploughed the ceiling. Lanyard had gone into action while the first

report was still a noise of deafening reverberations in the room;

resting his hands upon the top of the desk, he vaulted it, his feet

striking Mallison's chest. The man went down with Lanyard on top of

him . . .