Neither might he who unsuspected spied, through the crack of a closet-door all but closed, on Mr. Mallison with many a gesture of quiet authority making himself at home in Folly's rooms, seriously question the presence of a practician adept in the grammar of second-storey work. Mallison's footfalls would not have ruffled the repose of an insomniac, the play of his hands was certain yet light as the flutter of butterfly wings; and what he had to do by way of making ready for what he purposed doing, he did with right professional economy of effort.

To begin with, he did nothing at all more than stand still in the middle of the boudoir and study with glances keen, direct and comprehensive what one guessed were surroundings not wholly strange to him. And seeing him thus with his guard down, naked of all his petty social airs and graces and that shining garment of conceit which clothed the man like a woven armour when he was self-conscious, the hidden watcher began to suspect that he might have erred in his first rating, that the Mallison now revealed was worthier to be reckoned with than he had guessed. The Mallison of this minute was nobody's fool, knew what he was about, and—or Lanyard read every surface sign awry—was dangerously capable of proving at need a disconcerting knowledge of how to take care of himself.

With a muted grunt of gratification in the sum of his survey, the man passed through to the bedchamber, wherein his maneuvres were less readily followed, since the mirror in the boudoir revealed to Lanyard only a narrow segment of the adjoining room. This comprehended, however, the head of Folly's bed, and the small table beside it from whose drawer Mallison removed a pretty trinket of a silver-plated, pearl-handled pistol, extracting its shells, thoughtfully putting them away in one of his waistcoat pockets, and finally replacing the weapon with nice precision where he had found it.

Content, it seemed, thus to have done his bit for preparedness, Mallison sauntered back to the boudoir, stripped off his top-coat, folded it with meticulous care and hid it, together with his hat, on the floor behind a capacious lounge chair.

Then consulting his watch and with a yawn politely shielded registering time to kill, he strolled over to the secretary and stooped to inspect, with a flickering, sly smile, the safe built into its base. The tip of a fingernail discreetly pried open the blind front, leaving no treacherous trace, but after a show of hesitation the man seemingly decided not to disturb the safe itself, and restored the front to its former position. Private papers, with which the pigeonholes of the secretary were well stocked, next drew his interest, and he was betraying a mean disposition to tamper with them when the chance discovery of a hand-mirror resting face up on Folly's blotting-book diverted Mallison with a temptation which he didn't even try to resist. And he had finished disciplining an imperceptibly unruly eyebrow and had begun to practice a killing smile, an artful variation of the infallible gleam-of-teeth suite, when a bell grumbled vigorously in the bowels of the house and was interpreted as a signal for strict attention to business thenceforward.

Mallison went at once to the door to listen, an occupation in which he had the man in the clothes-press at a good disadvantage. The latter none the less contrived to infer from noises in the entrance-hall that Pagan's car had duly reported and that its owner and Liane were saying good-night. Then, as the rumor of their voices failed, Mallison re-crossed the boudoir with swift but silent tread and once more passed from Lanyard's range of vision. The latter, however, recalled having noticed a handsome, painted screen in that corner, and entertained no doubt but that Mallison was making himself small behind it.

To prove this guess well-grounded, Folly herself entered in another moment, and gave every evidence of being unaware of any alien presence as she faltered through the boudoir, casting discontented glances round as if in aimless search of something in the nature of a distraction. Unmistakably disappointed, and thereby the more frankly fretted, she drifted on to her bedchamber, from whose unseen recesses her voice and her maid's were presently to be heard.

What they said was of no moment: their bedtime dialogue of every day, varied only by Folly's decision to stay up a while longer: she wasn't sleepy and had letters to write. So saying, she dismissed the maid and sulkily trailed back into the boudoir, bringing a sizable case of tooled leather which held, one surmised, the jewellery she had worn at dinner, and which she proceeded to put away in the safe that deserved its style so little, but only as a matter of habit, demonstrating that all faith in the contraption was dead by not troubling to shut its door and set the lock.

In the pause that ensued, with a sigh of boredom Folly settled down in the chair before her secretary, and Lanyard ventured to widen the crack of the door a fraction.

The woman sat toying with a pen and more than half-turned away from this observer, charmingly posed with all the unconscious grace that was native to the sweetly fashioned body which her nÉgligÉ, a sheer web of lace threaded with ribbon, made so bare a pretence of covering. A lamp on the secretary turned the tangle of her hair into a living nimbus and edged tenderly a neck and shoulders kissable in the sight of any man. Indeed, Mallison was hardly to be blamed . . .

Without making a sound he stole up behind the woman lost in thought, the fire of his lips on her flesh was the first that she knew of his presence. Crying out in alarm and anger, she started up to find herself in his arms.

"Hush, dear—please!" Mallison entreated, trying to insure her silence by resting fingers lightly upon her lips. "The servants might hear—"

"'Might'!" Folly stormed, jerking her head away——"they shall!"

If Mallison had counted on such toleration as she had shown him by the street door half an hour earlier, his lamentable error was made manifest to him without an instant's grace. Folly fought him like a miniature fury, and to such effect that she was free while her defiance was still an echo in the room—free and swelling her throat with a scream when he plunged upon his knees before her and threw wide arms of suppliance.

"Please, please!" he begged—"don't call for help. I'll do anything you say, promise to be good and go quietly when you choose to send me away—only, don't call your servants. Think what they'd think!"

"What's that to me?" Folly demanded. "What do I care what they think of you?"

"It's you I'm considering," the man protested—"it's what they'd think of you I'm worrying about. You can't imagine they'd give you the benefit of the doubt . . ."

"Benefit of what doubt?"

"Do you suppose they'd believe I ever found my way up here without your invitation?"

"Is a woman always suspected of enticing the man who breaks into her house like a thief? I'll risk that."

"No—for God's sake! wait, listen to me, Folly! I don't deserve to be thrown out, you owe me fairer treatment—"

"I owe you what?"

"You're a woman, not a school-girl—you know what you've been doing to me these last few weeks, you know you've driven me half out of my head flirting with me."

"Oh?" Sense of humour reasserted itself in a little laugh. "Why half?"

"Entirely, then," Mallison sullenly conceded. He got on his feet again, but his attitude remained conciliatory, even though he would persist in seeking to defend himself at her expense. "If it's insanity to love you, then I'm mad enough—but, God's my witness! I'm not altogether to blame. And you know that's true."

"And I'm to understand you stole back here tonight to tell me that?"

"No—but to beg your forgiveness for having acted as I did a while ago. I couldn't leave things as they were between us overnight, I couldn't think of anything but how unfair you were when I lost control of myself for just one little minute and made you see how madly I love you. I had to come back and have it out, explain—arrive at some sort of understanding."

"And you want me to believe you considered these your best overtures?" Folly uttered a cluck of contempt. "Before you go," she pursued, instinctively dragging across her bosom the inadequate protection of the nÉgligÉ—"you might be good enough to explain how you did manage to sneak up here."

But Mallison merely uttered a sibilant "Hush!" and lifted a hand of warning.

Below, the grumble of the doorbell sounded with an accent imperative.

"What do you suppose that means?" the dancing man demanded in a whisper of apprehension.

"Somebody at the front door . . . How should I know?" The noise was repeated. A glint of distrust kindled in the woman's eyes. "What's the matter, Mally? Expecting somebody?"

"Nonsense. What a question! Who should I be expecting?"

"How do I know?"

"I was only startled . . ."

"Yes," Folly affirmed with tightened lips: "I noticed that."

A sudden confusion arose in the lower hallway, several people giving tongue all at once: evidently whoever it was that had answered the door had been instantly made the target of a storm of questions.

Folly's face showed a stamp of deepened misgivings and suspicion. "What on earth—!" she murmured.

Upon these words Mallison closed in on her again and made her captive in a tight embrace.

"What does it matter?" he insisted. "Stupid people bothering Soames: what do they matter to you and me? Folly, I love you, I'm mad—"

She was fighting wildly but impotently now, kicking, pommeling with fists that did no hurt, biting at the hand that closed her mouth. Downstairs the clamour rose to a higher pitch of angry disputation. Boldly Lanyard stepped out of concealment.

Neither Folly nor Mallison saw him till he caught the dancing man from behind, with calculated brutality broke the clasp of his arms round the woman's body, and sent him spinning and stumbling across the room to bring up against the further wall with a crash that started his eyes in their orbits.

---

The disturbance below by this time had attained the proportions of a small riot. There were scuffling feet on the stairs. Nearer at hand Folly was screaming. To this Mallison added the snarl with which, recovering, he took the offensive in turn, launching himself at his assailant's throat in murderous fury. Unhappily enough for him, Lanyard had wanted nothing better. They closed, grappled, for a breath swayed as one. Then Mallison felt one of his arms being irresistibly wrenched out of its socket, and to such exquisite torture yielded, perforce turning his back to Lanyard, who held him so another instant, then without warning released him.

With the racket of argument, physical and vocal, now loud upon the very landing outside, Lanyard dared not be merciful or give Mallison any fighting chance. As the man whirled round to launch a new onslaught, Lanyard's fist carried every ounce of his weight and all his ill-will to the other's jaw. Lifted bodily by that terrific blow, Mallison crashed back across an occasional table, sweeping off and extinguishing a lamp, and collapsed, insensible, on the floor.

Simultaneously the door flung open and four people broke into the boudoir, a struggling knot that instantly resolved itself into its elements; the McFee butler, with coat half torn from his back, two strange men, one of rough-and-ready appearance, the other a type slightly more genteel, and a woman, a garish blonde of the synthetic school, with her hat over one ear.

The shaded light on the secretary alone remained to lend these several actors visibility. Lanyard stood squarely in front of it, his figure, to eyes new from the stronger illumination of the hall, hardly better than a silhouette. Folly, well out of harm's way on his one hand, was less kindly shadowed, in view of the extreme candour of her dÉshabillÉ; Mallison, on the other, was screened from the invaders by the drop-leaf of the table behind which he had gone down.

Thus chance set the stage and lighted it for a twist in the action of the piece unforseen even by its first player and collaborating dramatist. For the bottle-made blonde with hat askew needed only a glimpse of that tall, slender, and well-poised shape, bulking black against the glow, to hurl herself across the room, fall weeping upon Lanyard's bosom, and strain him passionately to the agitated abundance of her own.

"My husband!" she cried—"my husband! O Harry! how could you?"

And Lanyard suffered her.

---