This visit to his rooms was the briefest of the several Lanyard made that
night, considerations of mortal urgency dictating its drastic abbreviation.
If the events of the last few hours had meant anything whatever they had
demonstrated two truths which shone like beacon lights: that Manhattan
Island was overpopulated as long as both he and Ekstrom remained on it;
that Ekstrom had been goaded to the verge of aberration by the discovery
that Lanyard had come safely through the _Assyrian_ débâcle to take up anew
his self-appointed office of Nemesis to the Prussian spy system in general
and to the genius of its American bureau in particular.
Henceforth that one would know no more rest while Lanyard lived.
Thus that little street-level apartment forfeited whatever attractions it
originally had possessed in the adventurer's estimation. Not only was the
address known to Ekstrom's associates, and so open to him, but its peculiar
characteristics, its facilities for access from the street direct, rendered
it a highly practicable death-trap for a hunted man.
Lanyard was well persuaded he need only wait there long enough to receive a
deputation from Seventy-ninth Street. And with any assurance that Ekstrom
would come alone, he might have been content to wait. Not only had he
through too intimate acquaintance with his methods every assurance that
Ekstrom would never brave alone what he could induce another to risk with
him, but Lanyard was never one willing to play the passive part.
A banal axiom of all warfare applied: The advantage is with him who fights
upon the offensive.
Since midnight the offensive had shifted from Lanyard's grasp to the
enemy's. He was determined to recapture it; and that was something never to
be accomplished by sitting still and waiting for events to unfold, but only
by carrying the war into the enemy's camp.
He delayed, then, only long enough to change his clothing and to conceal
about him certain properties which it seemed unwise to expose to chance
discovery on the part of Ekstrom or in the ever-possible event of police
intervention.
Within five minutes from the time of his return he was closing behind him
the private door.
Wearing a quiet lounge suit but no top coat, with a hat not so soft as to
lack character but soft enough to stick upon one's head in time of action,
and carrying a stick neither brutishly stout nor ineffectively slender,
he strolled up to Seventh Avenue, turned north, entered Central Park--and
strolled no more.
Kindly shadows enfolded him, engulfed him altogether. One minute after he
had passed through the gateway he would have defied unaided apprehension
by the most zealous officer of the peace. He went swiftly and secretly,
avoiding all lighted ways.
Not till then did conscience stir and remind him of his slighted promise to
call up Cecelia Brooke.
No time now for that; the errand that engaged him was of a nature to brook
no more procrastination. The girl must wait. He was sorry if, as she had
protested, solicitude for his welfare must interfere with her night's rest.
But what must be, must: until he saw the end of this adventure he could be
influenced by no minor consideration whatsoever.
Not that he seriously believed Cecelia's sleep would be uneasy because of
him. That was too much.
His temper was grim and skeptical. The resentment roused by the trap that
had so nearly laid him by the heels, together with the subsequent effort to
assassinate him out of hand, had settled into a phase of smouldering fury
whose heat consumed like misty vapours every lesser emotion, every humane
consideration.
Some by-thought recalling the Weringrode's innuendo that he was in love
without his knowledge, moved him to laugh outright if strangely, an
unpleasant laugh that held as much of pain as of derision.
What room in that dark heart of his for love?... the heart of a thief and a
potential assassin, the heart of the Lone Wolf!...
How was he to know he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was
interrupted by the grumble of the house telephone?
Intermittently for upward of three minutes that sound persisted. When
at length it discontinued the quiet of the untenanted rooms reigned
undisturbed for a brief time only.
An odd metallic stridor became audible, a succession of scrapings of
stealthy accent at the private entrance. Its latch clicked. The door swung
back against the wall with a muffled bump. Two pairs of furtive feet padded
in the little private hallway. The flash of an electric hand-lamp flickered
hither and yon like a searching poignard, picked out the door to the one
bedchamber and vanished. There was guarded whispering, then a thud as one
of the intruders gained the middle of the bedchamber in a bound. An instant
later a switch snapped, and the room was flooded with light.
Beneath the chandelier stood a man in evening dress the worse for
misadventure, one knee of his trousers cut open, both legs caked with
a film of half-dry mud, his linen dingy with mud-stains, his top coat
shockingly bedraggled. He was bareheaded, apparently having lost his hat; a
black smear across one cheek added emphasis to the pallor of newly shaven
jowls; and his eyes were blazing.
"Stole away!" he muttered briefly in disgust, then called: "Ed!"