"Simple enough," Crane opined, "like all these funny little games crooks
frame up, once you locate the chink that gives you a look in at the
machinery."
He stood in the main doorway. Behind him the wind-swept sky was dull
grey with the dusk of a new day. On the drive, at the foot of the
veranda steps, a motor-car was waiting, Pagan and Mallison on the back
seat with the mild-mannered man, the left wrist of the latter
hand-cuffed to the right of the dancing yegg. Another car that could be
seen in the distance, turning out of the grounds to the highroad, was
carrying away Morphew's henchmen under guard, in the wake of an
ambulance from the nearest hospital that had arrived just in time to
receive the lifeless body of the Sultan of Loot.
"If crooks could think straight, they might make good, once in every so
often; but they can't, that's why we call 'em crooks; and that's why
everything they cook up and make such a mystery of is so blamed silly
and childish when you come to take it to pieces. Here's Morphew, the
biggest frog in his pond, going off his nut with jealousy because the
little McFee lady liked Lanyard a whole lot better'n him, and getting
Mallison to play Lone Wolf and pull off a couple of jobs so's Mrs.
McFee would see what a sap she'd been, falling for a so-called reformed
crook. And here's Mallison getting chesty because he's doing the
Lone Wolf act to the Queen's taste, and giving Morphew the
double-cross--which was plain suicidal mania, if you ask me--and trying
to go on with the game on his own. And then there's the Delorme woman,
kidnapping Lanyard while he wasn't mentally responsible, with the
notion, as near's a body can figure it, she could make him believe he
belonged to her and had gone wrong again, so the only thing for them to
do was to team up and collect a handsome living from the world at
large . . ."
He smiled a vaguely pitying smile at nothing in particular. "These
things wouldn't ever happen," he concluded, "if all crooks weren't
crazy. . . . Well! time I was on my way." He bent with unexpected
courtliness over Eve's hand, and shook Lanyard's. "The top of the
morning to you, madam. So long, Lanyard--we won't say good bye--and the
best of luck!"
The tyres crunched loudly on the cracked stone of the driveway, the high
wind raved about the house and soughed through the tossing limbs of
trees; but between Eve and Lanyard there was silence, on her part the
stillness of tranquil expectancy, on his the dumbness of constraint.
"So it comes true," he said with a bleak smile, mustering up heart to
meet her eyes at last--"what I foretold in the beginning. Say good bye
to me, Eve, and let me go."
The hand he offered to take did not move to meet his. "Where will you
go?" she quietly enquired.
"Back to England," he said in a sigh--"I suppose--as soon as I can get
in touch with the Secret Service and request my recall. That is, if
they'll have me again, after their faith in me has been sapped by this
Mallison business. It's a question of what and how much they choose to
believe."
"That will take a few days at least," she gravely considered. "I shall
have plenty of time to wind up my small affairs in this country--I shall
be ready, Michael, whenever you wish to go."
He hung his head and shook it wearily. "It is impossible," he said.
"Surely you must know now mine isn't a life I can ask the woman I love
to share."
"But you love me?"
"You know it."
"And you would leave me?"
"I must."
"Then," she made believe to sigh--"if you insist on having it that
way--I can only presume you wish me to divorce you on the grounds of
desertion."
"Divorce me!"
She went straightway to his bosom, clung to it in tears and laughter.
"Will you ever forgive me--I wonder!--for taking advantage of your
helplessness? As soon as possible after that accident, as soon as you
were able to talk--we were married!"