Mademoiselle Bannon--with your permission--my friend, Monsieur Lanyard.

And Monsieur Bannon--an old, dear friend, with whom you will share a pa.s.sion for the beauties of art."

The hand of the American, when Lanyard clasped it, was cold, as cold as ice; and as their eyes met that abominable cough laid hold of the man, as it were by the nape of his neck, and shook him viciously. Before it had finished with him, his sensitively coloured face was purple, and he was gasping, breathless--and infuriated.

"Monsieur Bannon," De Morbihan explained disconnectedly--"it is most distressing--I tell him he should not stop in Paris at this season--"

"It is nothing!" the American interposed brusquely between paroxysms.

"But our winter climate, monsieur--it is not fit for those in the prime of health--"

"It is I who am unfit!" Bannon snapped, pressing a handkerchief to his lips--"unfit to live!" he amended venomously.

Lanyard murmured some conventional expression of sympathy. Through it all he was conscious of the regard of the girl. Her soft brown eyes met his candidly, with a look cool in its composure, straightforward in its enquiry, neither bold nor mock-demure. And if they were the first to fall, it was with an effect of curiosity sated, without hint of discomfiture.... And somehow the adventurer felt himself measured, cla.s.sified, filed away.

Between amus.e.m.e.nt and pique he continued to stare while the elderly American recovered his breath and De Morbihan jabbered on with unfailing vivacity; and he thought that this closer scrutiny discovered in her face contours suggesting maturity of thought beyond her apparent years--which were somewhat less than the sum of Lanyard's--and with this the suggestion of an elusive, provoking quality of wistful languor, a hint of patient melancholy....

"We are off for a glimpse of Montmartre," De Morbihan was explaining--"Monsieur Bannon and I. He has not seen Paris in twenty years, he tells me. Well, it will be amusing to show him what changes have taken place in all that time. One regrets mademoiselle is too fatigued to accompany us. But you, my friend--now if you would consent to make our third, it would be most amiable of you."

"I'm sorry," Lanyard excused himself; "but as you see, I am only just in from the railroad, a long and tiresome journey. You are very good, but I--"

"Good!" De Morbihan exclaimed with violence. "I? On the contrary, I am a very selfish man; I seek but to afford myself the pleasure of your company. You lead such a busy life, my friend, romping about Europe, here one day, G.o.d-knows-where the next, that one must make one's best of your spare moments. You will join us, surely?"

"Really I cannot to-night. Another time perhaps, if you'll excuse me."

"But it is always this way!" De Morbihan explained to his friends with a vast show of mock indignation. "'Another time, perhaps'--his invariable excuse! I tell you, not two men in all Paris have any real acquaintance with this gentleman whom all Paris knows! His reserve is proverbial--'as distant as Lanyard,' we say on the boulevards!" And turning again to the adventurer, meeting his cold stare with the De Morbihan grin of quenchless effrontery--"As you will, my friend!" he granted. "But should you change your mind--well, you'll have no trouble finding us. Ask any place along the regular route. We see far too little of one another, monsieur--and I am most anxious to have a little chat with you."

"It will be an honour," Lanyard returned formally....

In his heart he was pondering several most excruciating methods of murdering the man. What did he mean? How much did he know? If he knew anything, he must mean ill, for a.s.suredly he could not be ignorant of Roddy's business, or that every other word he uttered was rivetting suspicion on Lanyard of ident.i.ty with the Lone Wolf, or that Roddy was listening with all his ears and staring into the bargain!

Decidedly something must be done to silence this animal, should it turn out he really did know anything!

It was only after profound reflection over his liqueur (while Roddy devoured his Daily Mail and washed it down with a third bottle of Ba.s.s) that Lanyard summoned the maitre-d'hotel and asked for a room.

It would never do to fix the doubts of the detective by going elsewhere that night. But, fortunately, Lanyard knew that warren which was Troyon's as no one else knew it; Roddy would find it hard to detain him, should events seem to advise an early departure.

IV

A STRATAGEM

When the maitre-d'hotel had shown him all over the establishment (innocently enough, en route, furnishing him with a complete list of his other guests and their rooms: memoranda readily registered by a retentive memory) Lanyard chose the bed-chamber next that occupied by Roddy, in the second storey.

The consideration influencing this selection was--of course--that, so situated, he would be in position not only to keep an eye on the man from Scotland Yard but also to determine whether or no Roddy were disposed to keep an eye on him.

In those days Lanyard's faith in himself was a beautiful thing. He could not have enjoyed the immunity ascribed to the Lone Wolf as long as he had without gaining a power of st.u.r.dy self-confidence in addition to a certain amount of temperate contempt for spies of the law and all their ways.

Against the peril inherent in this last, however, he was self-warned, esteeming it the most fatal c.h.i.n.k in the armour of the lawbreaker, this disposition to underestimate the ac.u.men of the police: far too many promising young adventurers like himself were annually laid by the heels in that snare of their own infatuate weaving. The mouse has every right, if he likes, to despise the cat for a heavy-handed and bloodthirsty beast, lacking wit and imagination, a creature of simple force-majeure; but that mouse will not advisedly swagger in cat-haunted territory; a blow of the paw is, when all's said and done, a blow of the paw--something to numb the wits of the wiliest mouse.

Considering Roddy, he believed it to be impossible to gauge the limitations of that essentially British intelligence--something as self-contained as a London flat. One thing only was certain: Roddy didn't always think in terms of beef and Ba.s.s; he was n.o.body's facile fool; he could make a shrewd inference as well as strike a shrewd blow.

Reviewing the scene in the restaurant, Lanyard felt measurably warranted in a.s.suming not only that Roddy was interested in De Morbihan, but that the Frenchman was well aware of that interest. And he resented sincerely his inability to feel as confident that the Count, with his gossip about the Lone Wolf, had been merely seeking to divert Roddy's interest to putatively larger game. It was just possible that De Morbihan's identification of Lanyard with that mysterious personage, at least by innuendo, had been unintentional. But somehow Lanyard didn't believe it had.

The two questions troubled him sorely: Did De Morbihan _know_, did he merely suspect, or had he only loosed an aimless shot which chance had sped to the right goal? Had the mind of Roddy proved fallow to that suggestion, or had it, with its simple national tenacity, been impatient of such side issues, or incredulous, and persisted in focusing its processes upon the personality and activities of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan? However, one would surely learn something illuminating before very long. The business of a sleuth is to sleuth, and sooner or later Roddy must surely make some move to indicate the quarter wherein his real interest lay.

Just at present, reasoning from noises audible through the bolted door that communicated with the adjoining bed-chamber, the business of a sleuth seemed to comprise going to bed. Lanyard, shaving and dressing, could distinctly hear a tuneless voice contentedly humming "Sally in our Alley," a rendition punctuated by one heavy thump and then another and then by a heartfelt sigh of relief--as Roddy kicked off his boots--and followed by the tapping of a pipe against grate-bars, the squeal of a window lowered for ventilation, the click of an electric-light, and the creaking of bed-springs.

Finally, and before Lanyard had finished dressing, the man from Scotland Yard began placidly to snore.

Of course, he might well be bluffing; for Lanyard had taken pains to let Roddy know that they were neighbours, by announcing his selection in loud tones close to the communicating door.

But this was a question which the adventurer meant to have answered before he went out....

It was hard upon twelve o'clock when the mirror on the dressing-table a.s.sured him that he was at length point-device in the habit and apparel of a gentleman of elegant nocturnal leisure. But if he approved the figure he cut, it was mainly because clothes interested him and he reckoned his own impeccable. Of their tenant he was feeling just then a bit less sure than he had half-an-hour since; his regard was louring and mistrustful. He was, in short, suffering reaction from the high spirits engendered by his cross-Channel exploits, his successful get-away, and the unusual circ.u.mstances attendant upon his return to this memory-haunted mausoleum of an unhappy childhood. He even shivered a trifle, as if under premonition of misfortune, and asked himself heavily: Why not?

For, logically considered, a break in the run of his luck was due. Thus far he had played, with a success almost too uniform, his dual role, by day the amiable amateur of art, by night the nameless mystery that prowled unseen and preyed unhindered. Could such success be reasonably expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan's yarn a warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every gambler knows as much. And what was Michael Lanyard but a common gambler, who persistently staked life and liberty against the blindly impartial casts of Chance?

With one last look round to make certain there was nothing in the calculated disorder of his room to incriminate him were it to be searched in his absence, Lanyard enveloped himself in a long full-skirted coat, clapped on an opera hat, and went out, noisily locking the door. He might as well have left it wide, but it would do no harm to pretend he didn't know the bed-chamber keys at Troyon's were interchangeable--identically the same keys, in fact, that had been in service in the days of Marcel the wretched.

A single half-power electric bulb now modified the gloom of the corridor; its fellow made a light blot on the darkness of the courtyard. Even the windows of the conciergerie were black.

None the less, Lanyard tapped them smartly.

"_Cordon_!" he demanded in a strident voice. "_Cordon, s'il vous plait!

_"

"_Eh? _" A startled grunt from within the lodge was barely audible.

Then the latch clicked loudly at the end of the pa.s.sageway.

Groping his way in the direction of this last sound, Lanyard found the small side door ajar. He opened it, and hesitated a moment, looking out as though questioning the weather; simultaneously his deft fingers wedged the latch back with a thin slip of steel.

No rain, in fact, had fallen within the hour; but still the sky was dense with a sullen rack, and still the sidewalks were inky wet.

The street was lonely and indifferently lighted, but a swift searching reconnaissance discovered nothing that suggested a spy skulking in the shelter of any of the nearer shadows.

Stepping out, he slammed the door and strode briskly round the corner, as if making for the cab-rank that lines up along the Luxembourg Gardens side of the rue de Medicis; his boot-heels made a cheerful racket in that quiet hour; he was quite audibly going away from Troyon's.

But instead of holding on to the cab-rank, he turned the next corner, and then the next, rounding the block; and presently, reapproaching the entrance to Troyon's, paused in the recess of a dark doorway and, lifting one foot after another, slipped rubber caps over his heels.

Thereafter his progress was practically noiseless.

The smaller door yielded to his touch without a murmur. Inside, he closed it gently, and stood a moment listening with all his senses--not with his ears alone but with every nerve and fibre of his being--with his imagination, to boot. But there was never a sound or movement in all the house that he could detect.

And no shadow could have made less noise than he, slipping cat-footed across the courtyard and up the stairs, avoiding with super-developed sensitiveness every lift that might complain beneath his tread. In a trice he was again in the corridor leading to his bed-chamber.

It was quite as gloomy and empty as it had been five minutes ago, yet with a difference, a something in its atmosphere that made him nod briefly in confirmation of that suspicion which had brought him back so stealthily.

For one thing, Roddy had stopped snoring. And Lanyard smiled over the thought that the man from Scotland Yard might profitably have copied that trick of poor Bourke's, of snoring like the Seven Sleepers when most completely awake....