"But it must be so hard to credit! Even I... Why, it"s more than a year since this last happened. Of course, as a child, it was almost a habit; they had to watch me all the time. Once... But that doesn"t matter. I _am_ so sorry."
"You really mustn"t worry," Lanyard insisted. "It"s all quite natural--such things do happen--are happening all the time--"
"But I don"t want you--"
"I am n.o.body, Miss Bannon. Besides I shan"t mention the matter to a soul. And if ever I am fortunate enough to meet you again, I shall have forgotten it completely--believe me."
There was convincing sincerity in his tone. The girl looked down, as though abashed.
"You are very good," she murmured, moving toward the door.
"I am very fortunate."
Her glance of surprise was question enough.
"To be able to treasure this much of your confidence," he explained with a tentative smile.
She was near the door; he opened it for her, but cautioned her with a gesture and a whispered word: "Wait. I"ll make sure n.o.body"s about."
He stepped noiselessly into the hall and paused an instant, looking right and left, listening.
The girl advanced to the threshold and there checked, hesitant, eyeing him anxiously.
He nodded rea.s.surance: "All right--coast"s clear!"
But she delayed one moment more.
"It"s you who are mistaken," she whispered, colouring again beneath his regard, in which admiration could not well be lacking, "It is I who am fortunate--to have met a--gentleman."
Her diffident smile, together with the candour of her eyes, embarra.s.sed him to such extent that for the moment he was unable to frame a reply.
"Good night," she whispered--"and thank you, thank you!"
Her room was at the far end of the corridor. She gained its threshold in one swift dash, noiseless save for the silken whisper of her garments, turned, flashed him a final look that left him with the thought that novelists did not always exaggerate, that eyes could shine like stars....
Her door closed softly.
Lanyard shook his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts, and went back into his own bed-chamber.
He was quite content with the explanation the girl had given, but being the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a mislaid sou.
If pressed, he would have been put to it to name what he sought or thought to find. What he did find was that nothing had been tampered with and nothing more--not even so much as a dainty, lace-trimmed wisp of sheer linen bearing the lady"s monogram and exhaling a faint but individual perfume.
Which, when he came to consider it, seemed hardly playing the game by the book.
As for Roddy, Lanyard wasted several minutes, off and on, listening attentively at the communicating door; but if the detective had stopped snoring, his respiration was loud enough in that quiet hour, a sound of harsh monotony.
True, that proved nothing; but Lanyard, after the fiasco of his first attempt to catch his enemy awake, was no more disposed to be hypercritical; he had his fill of being ingenious and profound. And when presently he again left Troyon"s (this time without troubling the repose of the concierge) it was with the reflection that, if Roddy were really playing "possum, he was welcome to whatever he could find of interest in the quarters of Michael Lanyard.
VI
THE PACK GIVES TONGUE
Lanyard"s first destination was that convenient little rez-de-chaussee apartment near the Trocadero, at the junction of the rue Roget and the avenue de l"Alma; but his way thither was so roundabout that the best part of an hour was required for what might have been less than a twenty-minute taxicab course direct from Troyon"s. It was past one when he arrived, afoot, at the corner.
Not that he grudged the time; for in Lanyard"s esteem Bourke"s epigram had come to have the weight and force of an axiom: "The more trouble you make for yourself, the less the good public will make for you."
Paradoxically, he hadn"t the least intention of attempting to deceive anybody as to his permanent address in Paris, where Michael Lanyard, connoisseur of fine paintings, was a figure too conspicuous to permit his making a secret of his residence. De Morbihan, moreover, through recognizing him at Troyon"s, had rendered it impossible for Lanyard to adopt a nom-de-guerre there, even had he thought that ruse advisable.
But he had certain businesses to attend to before dawn, affairs demanding privacy; and while by no means sure he was followed, one can seldom be sure of anything, especially in Paris, where nothing is impossible; and it were as well to lose a spy first as last. And his mind could not be at ease with respect to Roddy, thanks to De Morbihan"s gasconade in the presence of the detective and also to that hint which the Count had dropped concerning some fatal blunder in the course of Lanyard"s British campaign.
The adventurer could recall leaving no step uncovered. Indeed, he had prided himself on conducting his operations with a degree of circ.u.mspection unusually thorough-going, even for him. Yet he was unable to rid himself of those misgivings roused by De Morbihan"s declaration that the theft of the Omber jewels had been accomplished only at cost of a clue to the thief"s ident.i.ty.
Now the Count"s positive information concerning the robbery proved that the news thereof had antic.i.p.ated the arrival of its perpetrator in Paris; yet Roddy unquestionably had known nothing of it prior to its mention in his presence, after dinner. Or else the detective was a finer actor than Lanyard credited.
But how could De Morbihan have come by his news?
Lanyard was really and deeply perturbed....
Pestered to distraction by such thoughts, he fitted key to latch and quietly let himself into his flat by a private street-entrance which, in addition to the usual door opening on the court and under the eye of the concierge, distinguished this from the ordinary Parisian apartment and rendered it doubly suited to the adventurer"s uses.
Then he turned on the lights and moved quickly from room to room of the three comprising his quarters, with comprehensive glances reviewing their condition.
But, indeed, he hadn"t left the reception-hall for the salon without recognizing that things were in no respect as they ought to be: a hat he had left on the hall rack had been moved to another peg; a chair had been shifted six inches from its ordained position; and the door of a clothes-press, which he had locked on leaving, now stood ajar.
Furthermore, the state of the salon, which he had furnished as a lounge and study, and of the tiny dining-room and the bed-chamber adjoining, bore out these testimonies to the fact that alien hands had thoroughly ransacked the apartment, leaving no square inch unscrutinized.
Yet the proprietor missed nothing. His rooms were a private gallery of valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare books, ma.n.u.scripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, was by no means superficial.
Before checking off more elaborately his mental inventory, Lanyard turned attention to the protective device, a simple but exhaustive system of burglar-alarm wiring so contrived that any attempt to enter the apartment save by means of a key which fitted both doors and of which no duplicate existed would alarm both the concierge and the burglar protective society. Though it seemed to have been in no way tampered with, to test the apparatus he opened a window on the court.
The lodge of the concierge was within earshot. If the alarm had been in good order, Lanyard could have heard the bell from his window. He heard nothing.
With a shrug, he shut the window. He knew well--none better--how such protection could be rendered valueless by a thoughtful and fore-handed housebreaker.
Returning to the salon, where the main body of his collection was a.s.sembled, he moved slowly from object to object, ticking off items and noting their condition; with the sole result of justifying his first conclusion, that whereas nothing had escaped handling, nothing had been removed.
By way of a final test, he opened his desk (of which the lock had been deftly picked) and went through its pigeon-holes.
His scanty correspondence, composed chiefly of letters exchanged with art dealers, had been scrutinized and replaced carelessly, in disorder: and here again he missed nothing; but in the end, removing a small drawer and inserting a hand in its socket, he dislodged a rack of pigeon-holes and exposed the secret cabinet that is almost inevitably an attribute of such pieces of period furniture.
A shallow box, this secret s.p.a.ce contained one thing only, but that one of considerable value, being the leather bill-fold in which the adventurer kept a store of ready money against emergencies.
It was mostly for this, indeed, that he had come to his apartment; his London campaign having demanded an expenditure far beyond his calculations, so that he had landed in Paris with less than one hundred francs in pocket. And Lanyard, for all his pride of spirit, acknowledged one haunting fear that of finding himself strapped in the face of emergency.
The fold yielded up its h.o.a.rd to a sou: Lanyard counted out five notes of one thousand francs and ten of twenty pounds: their sum, upwards of two thousand dollars.