"And locked the door after him?"
"Yes, sir--securely."
"Howson anywhere about?"
"I didn't see him. Daresay he's prowling somewhere within call. Do you wish
to speak to him?"
"No.... But you might, if you see anything of him, tell him to keep an
extra eye open to-night. I don't trust this self-styled Lone Wolf."
"Naturally not, sir, under the circumstances."
Stanistreet acknowledged this with an irritated snort. "No matter," he
thought aloud; "if it has cost us a pretty penny, we have got this safe in
hand at last. I've not had too much sleep, I can promise you, since the
report came through of Bartholomew's death and Thackeray's disablement.
Nor am I satisfied that this Monsieur Duchemin came by the document
fairly--confound his impudence! If he hadn't put me on honour, tacitly, I'd
not hesitate an instant about informing the police."
"Rather chancy course to take in this business, what?"
"I don't know.... That Yankee invention known as the 'frame-up' would
easily make America too small for the Lone Wolf without the British Secret
Service ever being mentioned in the matter."
"Yes; but suppose the beast knows the contents of this paper, suspects
the authorship of the 'frame-up'--as he instinctively would--and blabs?
Messages have been unsealed and copied and resealed before this."
"That one consideration ties my hands.... Here, my boy: take this and
put it in the safe--and don't forget Mrs. Arden's things, of course.
Good-night."
"Trust me, sir. Good-night."
A door closed with a slight jar, and for half a minute the room was so
positively quiet that Lanyard was beginning to wonder if Blensop himself
had gone out with his employer, when he heard a low and musical chuckle,
followed by a soft clashing as the secretary scooped Mrs. Arden's jewellery
out of the desk drawer.
Itching with curiosity, Lanyard turned with infinite care and peered round
the wing of the chair, thus gaining a view of the wall farthest from the
street.
Blensop remaining invisible, Lanyard's interest centred immediately upon
the safe the ingenuity of whose concealment had excited "Karl's" favourable
comment, and with much excuse.
One of the portraits--that upon whose merits Blensop had descanted to
"Karl" earlier in the night--was, Lanyard saw, so mounted upon a solid
panel of wood that, by means of hidden mechanism, it could be moved
sidelong from its frame, uncovering the face of a safe built into the wall.
This last now stood open, its door, swung out toward Lanyard, showing
a simple arrangement of dials and locks with which he was on terms of
contemptuous familiarity; only the veriest tyro of a cracksman would want
more than a good ear and a subtle sense of touch in order to open it
without knowledge of the combination.
With all its reputation for efficiency and astuteness the British Secret
Service entrusted its mysteries to an antiquated contraption such as this!
Humming a blithe little air, Blensop moved into Lanyard's field of vision
and stopped between him and the safe, deftly pigeonholing therein the
docketed papers and Mrs. Arden's jewels. Then, closing the door, he shot
its bolts, gave the dial a brisk twirl, located a lever in the side of the
frame and thrust it into its socket.
With the same swish and thud which had puzzled Lanyard at first hearing,
the portrait slipped back into place.
Rounding on a heel, Blensop paused, head to one side, a slight frown
shadowing his bland countenance, and stood briefly rooted in some
perplexity of obscure origin. Twice he shook a peevish head, then smiled
radiantly and brought his hands together in an audible clap.
"I have it!" he cried in delight and, dancing briskly toward the desk, once
more disappeared.
Now what was this which Mr. Blensop so spontaneously had, and from the
having of which he derived so much apparently innocent enjoyment? Wanting
an answer, Lanyard settled back in disgust, then sat sharply forward, gaze
riveted to the near sash of the adjacent window.
In showing "Karl" out, Blensop had moved the portières, exposing more
glass than previously had been visible. Now this mirrored darkly to the
adventurer a somewhat distorted vision of Blensop standing over the
desk, seemingly employed in no more amusing occupation than filling his
fountain-pen. But undoubtedly he was in the highest spirits; for the lilt
of his humming rose sweet and clear and ever louder.
To this accompaniment he pocketed his pen, two-stepped to the windows,
drew the portières jealously close, returned to the desk, switched off the
reading lamp, and left the room completely dark but for a dim glow from the
ash-filmed embers of the fire.
But before he went out the secretary interrupted his humming to laugh
with a mischievous élan which completely confounded Lanyard. He was not
unacquainted with the Blensop type, but the secret glee which seemed to
animate this specimen was something far beyond his comprehension.
As the door softly closed Lanyard moved silently across the room and bent
an ear to its panels, meanwhile drawing over his hands a pair of thin white
kid gloves.
From beyond came no sound other than a faint creaking of stair-treads
quickly silenced.
Opening the door, Lanyard peered out, finding the hallway deserted and
dimly lighted by a single bulb of little candle-power at its far end, then
scouted out as far as the foot of the stairs, listened there for a little,
hearing no sounds above, and reconnoitred through the other living rooms,
at length returning to the library persuaded he was alone on the ground
floor of the house.
A Yale lock was fixed to the library side of the door. Lanyard released its
catch, insuring freedom from interruption on the part of anybody who lacked
the key, crossed to the other side door, left this on the latch and, having
thus provided an avenue for escape, turned attention to business, in brief,
to the safe.
Turning on the picture-light he found and operated the lever, with his
other hand so restraining the action of the panel that it moved aside
without perceptible jar.
Then with an ear to that smooth, cold face of enamelled steel, he began
to manipulate the combination. From within the door a succession of soft
clicks and knocks punctuated the muted whine of the dial, speaking
a language only too intelligible to the trained hearing of a thief;
synchronous breaks and resistance in the action of the dial conveyed
additional information through the medium of supersensitive finger tips.
Within two minutes he had learned all he needed to know, and standing back
twirled the knob right and left with a confident hand. At its fourth stop
he heard the dull bump of released tumblers, grasped the handle, and
twisted it strongly. The door swung open.
Systematically Lanyard searched the pigeonholes, emptying all but one,
examining minutely their contents without finding that slender roll of
paper.
Mystified, he hesitated. The thing, of course, was somewhere there, only
hidden more cunningly than he had hoped. It was possible, even probable,
that Blensop had stowed the cylinder away in a secret compartment.
But the interior arrangement was disconcertingly simple. Lanyard saw no
sign of waste space in which such a drawer might be secreted. Unless, to be
sure, one of the pigeonholes had a false back....
He began a fresh examination, again emptying each pigeonhole and sounding
its rear wall without result till there remained only that in which Blensop
had placed the Arden jewels.
It was necessary to move these, but Lanyard long withheld his hand,
reluctant to touch them, for that same reason which had influenced him to
avoid them in his first search.
Jewels such as these he both worshipped and desired with the passionate
adoration of connoisseur and lover in one. He feared violently the
temptation of physical contact with such stuff.
For his was no thief's errand to-night, but a matter, as he conceived
it, of his private honour, something apart and distinct from the code of
rogue's ethics which guided his professional activities. He had pledged
his word to Cecelia Brooke to keep safe for her that cylinder of paper, to
return it upon her demand for whatsoever disposition she might choose to
make of it. It was no concern of his what that choice might turn out to
be, any more than it was his affair if the document were a paper of
international importance. But she must and should, if act of his could
compass it, be given opportunity to redeem her word of honour if, as one
believed, that likewise were involved in the fate of the document.
He had stolen into this house like a thief because he had given his pledge
and perforce had been made false to that pledge, because he had been
despoiled of the concrete evidence of the trust reposed unasked in him, and
because he had learned that his spoiler was to meet Stanistreet in this
room at midnight.
He was here solely to make good his word, to take away that cylinder, could
he find it, and to return it to the girl ... not to thieve....
Never that!...
Slowly, reluctantly, inevitably he put forth his hand and selected from
among those brilliant symbols of his soul's profound damnation the
necklace, a rope of diamonds consummately matched, a rivulet of frozen
fire, no single stone less lovely than another.
"Admirable!" he whispered. "Oh, admirable!"
Hesitant to do this thing which to him, by the strange standard of his
warped code, spelled dishonour, he would and he would not; and while he
paltered, was visited by an oddly vivid memory of the clear and candid eyes
of Cecelia Brooke, seemed veritably to see them searching his own with
their look of grieving wonder ... the eyes of one woman who had reckoned
him worthy of her trust....
Almost he won victory in this fight he was foredoomed to lose. Under the
level and steadfast regard of those eyes his hand went out to replace the
necklace, moved unsteadily, faltered....
Beyond the windows an incautious footfall sounded. In the darkness out
there someone blundered into a piece of wicker furniture and disturbed it
with a small scraping sound, all but inaudible, but to the thief as loud as
the blast of a police whistle.
Instantly and instinctively, in two simultaneous gestures, Lanyard dropped
the necklace into an inner pocket of his coat and switched off the
picture-light.
With hands now as steady and sure as they had been vacillant a moment
since, he closed the safe door noiselessly, shot its bolts, and was yards
away, crouching behind an armchair, before the man outside had ceased to
fumble with the window fastenings.
If this were the watchman Howson, doubtless he would be satisfied with
finding the room dark and apparently untenanted, and would go off upon his
rounds unsuspecting. If he did not, or if he noticed the displaced panel,
then would come Lanyard's time to break cover and run for it.
With a faint creak one of the windows swung inward. Curtain-rings clashed
dully on their poles. Someone came through the portières and paused,
pulling them together behind him. The beam of an electric flash-lamp lanced
the gloom and its spotlight danced erratically round the walls.
Now there was no more thought of flight in Lanyard's humour, but rather a
firm determination to stand his ground. This was no night watchman, but a
housebreaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those premises than
himself; and at that an unskilled hand at such work, the rawest of amateurs
practising methods as clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary
on a stage before a simple-minded audience.
The noise he made on entering alone proved that, then this fatuous business
with the flash-lamp. And as he moved inward from the windows it became
evident that he had not even had the wit to close the portières completely;
a violet glimmer of starlight shone in through a deep triangular gap
between them at the top.
For all that, the intruder seemed to know what he wanted and where to seek
it, betrayed a nice acquaintance with the room, proceeding directly to the
safe picked out by his lamp.
Arrived beneath it he uttered a low sound which might have been interpreted
as surprise due to finding the panel already out of place. If so, surprise
evidently roused in him no suspicion that all might not be well. On the
contrary, he quite calmly located and turned the switch controlling the
picture-light.
Immediately, as its rays gushed down and disclosed the man, Lanyard
rose boldly from his place in hiding. Now there was no more need for
concealment; now was his enemy delivered into his hands.