He was in no hurry, the truth would all too soon be her bitter medicine; if meantime to rest on him the burthen of her wrongs were any comfort to the lady, she was welcome. Still, he inclined to think it lamentable that he didn't know her well enough to reason with her in a friendly way about her taste in scent for the hair. Chivalry he reckoned a fine gesture but a bit dear at the cost of asphyxiation.

For all that, the longer this unhappy creature continued blind to her blunder, the better for Folly—for Michael Lanyard, too. He was far from enjoying any sort of confidence that the next blind turn of events would prosper his meddlesome hand; he was constrained by circumstance to count more heavily than he relished on the resilience of Folly's wits and their readiness to read his heart in respect of herself and play up to the cues which he must somehow manage to give her.

An anxious sidelong glance caught Folly thunderstruck and gaping, with eyes astart doubting their own dependability. The last man she had ever thought to see again, with his consent, and particularly beneath that roof, the alleged larcener of her emeralds last night, tonight figuring spontaneously in the dual rÔle of knight errant and spouse recreant!

He saw her so, and knew very well it could hardly tend but to make her bewilderment the thicker, yet an irrepressible devil of ribaldry in Lanyard prompted him to wag his head at Folly and make a comic mouth over the fair false limpet that had fastened to his bosom. Not a little to his surprise, more to his encouragement, a gleam of lively appreciation broke through the clouds of Folly's bemusement. But the limpet chose the selfsame moment to prove her protean versatility by shifting all at once into the guise of a shrew, thus rendering infeasible any further attempt to impart his mind to Folly through the medium of the eloquent eye.

Abruptly and with a clever effect of casting Lanyard off by main strength, the strange woman struck a florid pose with arm levelled and eyes ablaze.

"There!" she rasped—and Lanyard wondered could this possibly be the voice that had so lately cooed endearments by telephone—"there he is, gentlemen! there stands my husband, the dirty hound that leaves me to cry my heart out at home while he steps out with fast society dames, like that shameless, half-naked hussy there!"

The quivering index of denunciation picked out the shrinking shape of Folly in her informal attire, and the self-appointed censor paused to let this characterization bite deep. But when she offered to resume she half-choked instead because an unpresaged glare of ceiling lights, thoughtfully switched on by Soames, revealed to her not the hang-dog mask of Mallison but an utterly strange countenance whose graciousness was shaded by a problematical smile.

A brief seizure of speechlessness was shared by the woman's companions, and utilized by Lanyard to note the more salient features of the others, individually, against the chance of future need. There was no fore-telling when some flash of temper might not precipitate a free-for-all of outcome highly dubious; it might be useful to be able to identify these precious impostors should ill-luck throw one in with them another time. Commonplace scamps he accounted them every one. Contempt for Morphew mounted; a scoundrel of really respectable calibre would have known better than to employ such cheap tools for even a simple job of villainy.

The woman was, or had been, a comely wench; but the strong light wasn't kind to her complexion, to such of it, that is, as she hadn't scrubbed off on Lanyard's waistcoat. Her skin roughed up through its thick wash of whiting and smears of carmine, skillfully painted contours failed to amend the viciousness of thin lips that dragged in their corners, more than belladonna and mascaro would be needed to restore the pristine charm of eyes grown hard with looking too long upon life stripped of all loveliness.

And the men seemed her well-suited associates: one, a thickset body whose eyes of a brute went forbiddingly with an undershot jaw, the other a figure of saturnine cast and seedy gentility set off by a cutaway coat and a standing collar slightly soiled.

Recognizing in neither of these a personality to call for the waste of two consecutive thoughts, Lanyard returned his attention to the woman, who recoiled a step instinctively, as if afraid he meant to lay hold of her. "What!" she squawked in throaty disgust—"you ain't my husband!"

"Madame"—Lanyard did her a grave bow—"the misfortune is mutual."

"But where is he? Where's my husband?"

"Madame has mislaid one?"

The mock told, with a slack jaw and befogged eyes the woman fell back another pace. "I guess," she stammered, "there's some mistake . . ."

"The conjecture does madame's intelligence vast credit."

"It's Mr. Mallison she's after, sir." The butler Soames, schooled to view without any amazement the vagaries of a mad world of masters, and sensibly putting aside the immomentuous issue of his inability to account for Lanyard, addressed himself to this last as to his one intellectual peer of the time being. "They would 'ave it 'e was upstairs 'ere with Mrs. McFee, sir, and forced their way up in spite of all I could do."

"I quite understand, Soames—Mrs. McFee, too, I'm sure. You do understand, don't you, Mrs. McFee, this is no fault of Soames'?"

Folly shook herself together and vigorously nodded; but Lanyard coolly forestalled whatever words they were that troubled her lips.

"Mr. Mallison is no doubt madame's husband?" he challenged the blonde female. "She had some reason to think she would find him here?"

"Just a minute, Grace." The rusty genteel half of her supporting company, now that he pushed himself forward, proved to possess a rather formidable manner, at once truculent and crafty. "Let me speak for you—"

"You have that right?" Lanyard with pointed civility enquired.

"I've been retained by Mrs. Mallison . . ." The fellow fished a passÉe professional card from a pocket and thrust it under Lanyard's nose. "I represent her in this case."

"Interesting—but perhaps irrelevant—if true. I mean to say"—Lanyard brushed the card aside, but not before his eye had caught the name Hobart G. Howlin in engraved script followed by the designation Attorney-at-law; and all at once he became as ugly as he had theretofore been bland—"what of it?"

"We were led to believe Mr. Mallison was here—"

"You call yourself a lawyer and pretend that gave you any right to violate the privacy of this household?"

"It sometimes becomes necessary for a wronged wife to take the law into her own hands."

"Mrs. Mallison has been wronged, then? How sad."

"Mrs. Mallison," her counsel persisted, but with shaken bravado—"happens to know her husband has been spending too much of his time of late in the society of Mrs. McFee."

"In brief: you have had the effrontery to force your way into a private residence in the hope of securing evidence for divorce proceedings?"

"You've got the idea."

"O insolent!" Folly flamed.

It was now again necessary for Lanyard firmly to put down interference, lest his diplomacy fail. "By your leave, Folly: permit me to deal with these gentry. Their account of themselves is much too ingenious to lose. If we let them rattle on—who knows?—we may learn something to their disadvantage."

At this the rogue of ruder mien concluded that he, for one, had had enough. "Come on," he mumbled, plucking at Howlin's sleeve: "le's get out o' this."

"Not so fast. You entered by force; you will leave in the good pleasure of Mrs. McFee. And then Mr. Mallison will go with you."

"What's that?" the lawyer demanded. "Mallison's here?"

"We have no wish to deceive you."

"But where?" the slighted wife shrilly objected. "I don't see him . . ."

"How little married folk ever know each other! The dear lad's so high-strung, when he heard you on the stairs he swooned away. Half a minute . . ."

Lanyard stepped behind the table to find Mallison in the first throes of coming to. An unceremonious hand twisted in his collar helped him find his feet. He swayed on them, glaring groggily round that ring of faces whose lips framed confounded murmurs, while Lanyard nodded politely to the confessed wife: "Permit me, Mrs. Mallison: your husband." More brusquely he added: "Now Soames: if you think you could find a policeman . . ."

The butler saluted this suggestion with unbegrudged respect, but the man who had lately been so anxious to go now moved in haste to intercept him at the door.

"Here!" he growled in an effort, not too happy, to assert authority—"wait a minute, wait—a—minute, you! What's the grand idea?"

"What is your objection?" Lanyard countered.

"If you got any use for a cop, you don't have to look no farther. I'm a city detective."

"Splendid. You shall enjoy every opportunity to exercise the powers of your office. Nevertheless, Soames will proceed to fetch a policeman."

In a bluster of panic the self-styled detective elbowed the butler away from the door. "Wait, now! This is my job; if any pinchin's goin' to be done here tonight, I'll do it."

"To the contrary . . ." A hand slipped deftly beneath the skirts of Mallison's dinner-jacket brought to light an automatic pistol of whose presence on his person Lanyard had become aware in the course of their struggle. "To the contrary, you will be good enough to stand back and let Soames do my bidding. Do you hear? And all of you"—a push sent Mallison reeling drunkenly into the ranks of his confederates—"all four of you will be well advised to put up your hands."

Prompt and unanimous respect rewarded this good advice, even Mallison proving himself sufficiently recovered to heed.

"Cut along now Soames; and you might tell the policeman he will need a patrol wagon, with four prisoners to handle."

"Look here!" Mallison found his tongue in a splutter of spite and fear—"you're going too far, Lanyard, carrying things with too high a hand—"

"I know but one way to deal with blackmailers."

"And what about yourself—you damn' burglar?"

A new voice introduced itself to the dialogue. "Blackmailers?" it drawled. "Burglar? Fightin' words, folks, fightin' words!"

Soames, moving to execute Lanyard's instructions, had opened the door to find it blocked by a long, loose-jointed body. Now, hands in pockets, hat well back on his head, chewing the unlighted cigar of his custom, the detective Crane, lounged in, with ironic glances reviewing the several countenances so variously coloured with emotion, until he perceived the presence of Mrs. McFee. Then he was quick to uncover his head and disembarrass his teeth.

"Your servant, ma'm. Hope you'll excuse the informality, but we found your front door standing wide open and figured maybe something might be going wrong. H'are you, Lanyard? Business as usual, I see." A nod and wrinkling grin designated the pistol. "I'll tell anybody that don't know, you're the little guy that stages the quick come-backs." Over his shoulder, Crane called: "Come on in, Hoffmeyer; looks like we'd found us a regular job."

A brisk policeman in uniform moved in from the hallway. And sensible of sharp relief, Lanyard put down the pistol. "My friend!" he told Crane: "never in your life were you more welcome."

"That's easy to believe; going on the looks of things we've happened along at one of these psychological moments, all right. No thanks to me, of course, Lanyard: I just naturally hiked right up here as soon as I got your 'phone message."

"You telephoned for Mr. Crane?" Folly demanded, eyeing Lanyard intently.

"He sure did," Crane affirmed.

"At what time?"

"Half an hour or so ago—wasn't it, Lanyard?"

"Approximately. But I can fix the hour precisely: Mrs. McFee will undoubtedly remember when Mallison was called from the table to answer the telephone." Folly nodded, her eyes growing rounder. Lanyard laughed, with a wave of a debonnaire hand introduced the other woman. "You see here the lady who was then, according to Mallison, Mrs. Stuyvesant Ashe. Now she accuses herself of being his wife. One or both of them would seem to be mistaken. No matter: after listening in on their conversation, I felt warranted in calling up Mr. Crane without waiting to secure your approval."

"You called him up from here?"

"But what would you?" With a specious show of naÏvetÉ Lanyard chose to misconstrue that almost purely rhetorical query of astonishment. "Admit that I had hardly time to run out and hunt up a sound-proof booth, madame, admit that I had no choice other than to remain here if I were to keep faith with you—and more especially when the telephone had just told me enough to prove that this fine gentleman intended blackmail, whether or not we were justified in crediting him with a graver offence against your hospitality."

The earnest eyes that held Folly's saw them confused by these cunningly sown hints and implications. And not until she had heard him out with a comprehending nod for all comment, and the lips that had been parted in breathless interest closed without uttering a word to refute his impudent assertion of an understanding which made Folly a party to his presence in the house, did Lanyard again find it easy to breathe. But that nod, coupled with her silence, testified to appreciation of the fact that in tacit confirmation of his claim lay the one sure way to save her good repute, that to gainsay him would be to lend colour to the calumny implicit in the intrusion of Mallison's "wife" and her accomplices.

If Folly wanted proof of this, she had it in another breath, when the seedy conspirator instituted a counter-offensive.

"Just a minute, gentlemen!" he insisted, pushing in his sallow, excited face between Lanyard and Crane. "You go too fast. We deny all these ridiculous allegations, but particularly we deny that my client is here in any sort of collusion with her husband. That malicious innuendo we flatly contradict and brand a lie out of whole cloth!"

"'We'?" Crane echoed, inquisitive but otherwise indifferently impressed. "Your 'client'?"

"I am counsel for Mrs. Mallison—"

"You don't say? Bet anything she deserves you, too." Crane showed Lanyard arched brows of dubiety. "Shyster?"

"Calls himself Howlin," Lanyard assented impatiently. "If you like he'll show you a card almost as shady as the business which engages his talents tonight."

"I can afford to ignore slurs upon my professional standing which come from such a source," Howlin loftily retorted. "But my business tonight being the legitimate one of looking after the interests of a client, I can hardly be expected to stand by and enter no objection when I hear her slandered."

"I'll say you can't," Crane cruelly agreed, looking the lady up and down with a glance so discerning that it caused a dull flush to burn beneath her complexion.

But now again Howlin considered the source and concluded he could afford to ignore constructive sarcasm.

"Mr. Regan here," he said, introducing the man who had styled himself a "city detective"—"has under my direction been shadowing my client's husband for several weeks. His reports show there's a questionable degree of intimacy between Mallison and Mrs. McFee. When, therefore, Mallison was seen tonight letting himself into this house, using his own latch-key, we had every excuse for assuming that an unexpected visit would produce certain results. Now, however, since we would seem to have been misled, we can only offer Mrs. McFee the assurance that my client stands ready to give her every satisfaction the law may hold her entitled to. I think that's all . . ."

He turned confidently toward the door. "Now, Mrs. Mallison, if you're ready . . . Come, Regan."

"What's your hurry?" Crane genially wanted to know, but quickly enough to anticipate the storm of words promised by Folly's violent start. "You admit your liability for unlawful trespass, I take it?"

"If Mrs. McFee thinks she can induce any court in the land to call it that," Howlin stipulated.

"Outside of that, however, you've got nothing to fear?"

Mr. Howlin achieved a shrug which utterly abolished a suggestion so absurd.

"Then be good sports—why don't you?—and stick around a while. Maybe you might be able to help us out in dealing with Mr. Mallison. Going on all you tell me, Mrs. Mallison don't owe him any good will; I judge she ought to be happy to see him come up with. How about it, ma'm?"

The person appealed to in a touching twitter looked to Howlin for guidance, and got from him a subtle sign which she may have misinterpreted; not without excuse, seeing that the situation was one of the extremest delicacy for all of them, and that the sacrifice of one to the salvation of the majority is a time-honoured expedient with her kind.

"Ask me anything you want," she volunteered, waggling an indignant head and giving Mallison a poisonous look . . . "after the way he's treated me, the low cur!"

"That's handsome of you, ma'm." Crane beamed benignantly upon the lady, and with little less warmth upon the unhappy dancing man. "I won't forget it, either. But first I'd like to ask Mr. Lanyard here a few questions, to sort of clear the ground."

"I object!" Mallison stuttered in dismay. "I refuse to submit to these star-chamber proceedings—"

"Do you, now?" Crane commented with much interest. "Well, if you ask me, 'star-chamber proceedings' is a mighty hifalutin' name for what's going to happen to you right here and now, my lad; it's going to be a whole lot more like the third degree, if you know what I mean."

Mallison knew only too well; fear lent those ingratiating eyes, usually so gentle beneath their long and silky lashes, the wickedness of a cornered rat's. "I protest!" he snarled—"I deny your right—"

"You better hush. Hoffmeyer here don't like your looks nohow, he'll admire to improve 'em if you don't quit speaking out of your turn."

Mallison got a black grin from the patrolman and subsided at discretion, while Crane cocked a meaning eye at Lanyard.

"Now, Mr. Lanyard, if you'll just tell us what you know about how this man Mallison comes to be here . . ."

"Gladly." Lanyard had his story pat, it fell from a glib tongue. "I presume everybody present knows Mrs. McFee's emeralds were stolen last night from the safe in that secretary over there, under circumstances which caused a certain person to be suspected—"

"Why so modest?" Mallison interrupted vindictively. "Why so mealy-mouthed? 'Suspected' is hardly the word."

"I am desolated to disappoint monsieur; unhappily or not, as you may care to take it, Mr. Crane was able to establish my innocence this morning."

"Like hell he was!"

"Just one more nasty crack out of you, Mallison," Crane advised, "and I'll let Hoffmeyer do your wife a swell favour."

"Strangely enough," Lanyard serenely pursued: "Mrs. McFee and I, thinking the case over independently, arrived at the same conclusion: that Mallison probably knew as much as anybody about the theft. Mrs. McFee accordingly laid a trap: invited him to a little dinner-party this evening, in the course of which she let it become known that the thief had overlooked a valuable lot of jewellery which she meant to leave unprotected tonight other than by the safe which had once already been attacked with success. This made a second visit probable, if there were grounds for our suspicions. . . . I on my part arranged to occupy that clothes-press which you see with its door open; by leaving the door just off the latch, it was easy to keep direct watch over the safe. Toward the end of dinner Mallison received the telephone call which has been mentioned, and used it as a pretext for leaving before the other guests. He said good night to Mrs. McFee at the front door, but as soon as she returned to the dining-room let himself back into the house and stole upstairs. He was hiding behind the screen in the corner when Mrs. McFee came up, but when she had put her remaining jewels in the safe and turned to go to her bedchamber, he blundered—made his presence known in a way she couldn't overlook. Then he tried to overpower her, to prevent her giving the alarm. I was obliged to interfere and had just succeeded in discouraging him when these people broke in . . ."

"Straight enough story, far as it goes," Crane approved.

But Mallison dissented wildly: "A pack of lies from beginning to end!" he termed it. To which Lanyard replied, with nonchalance quite unfeigned, that if they doubted his word they might ask Mrs. McFee. Neither was his confidence misplaced: quietly the young woman affirmed the substantial truthfulness of the tissue of misrepresentation which he had woven so brazenly under her very eyes and for her benefit as much as for his own.

"But one thing I want settled at once," she declared: "These people say Mallison used a latch-key. I say he didn't—unless he has one he stole. If they're right, I want that key. If they're wrong, I want that proved for my own sake."

"Reasonable enough," Crane agreed. "How about it, Mallison? got a little key to give up?" The dancing man shook his head, mumbling a negative. "You can save yourself a heap of trouble by forking it over, you know."

"I tell you I haven't got any key!" Mallison insisted with what seemed extravagant passion, while Lanyard eyed him in deepening perplexity: some secret fear, inexplicable, unwarranted by known circumstances, seemed to be at work in the man, desperation was glimpsing in his hunted eyes. "Mrs. McFee knows I haven't—I won't be sacrificed to save her—"

"How's that?"

"Mrs. McFee," Mallison defiantly affirmed, "knows damn' well I haven't got a key and never had one, she knows damn' well she left the door fixed for me, so that I could reopen it by simply turning the knob from the outside—"

"Oh!" Folly gasped, infuriated—"what a contemptible lie! Search him, Mr. Crane—I demand that this beast be searched and proved a liar. He must have had a key, he couldn't possibly have got in any other way."

Even while she was speaking events got in motion, not consecutively but all at once: Mallison, stung to frenzy by his fears, whirled on a heel and made a mad dash for the passage leading to the bedchamber. A sinewy hand at the end of one of Crane's long arms shot out, with surprising readiness, to clamp upon his shoulder and drag him back. He turned and fought wildly. The policeman, Hoffmeyer, cheerfully waded in to lend Crane needed assistance. Mrs. Mallison and Messrs. Howlin and Regan thought to profit by the general preoccupation, but were painfully surprised to discover that Lanyard, an instant since a dozen feet away, was now planted firmly in front of the hall door and smiling a bright, bland smile over the sinister grin of Mallison's pistol.

They stopped. Simultaneously Mallison found himself helpless in an embrace which Hoffmeyer had fastened round him from behind.

"Cut it out, now!" the patrolman growled. "You kick my shins again, and I'll shake every tooth out of your fool head!"

Panting and twitching like a whipped animal, Mallison gave in, and with eyes of blank hopelessness followed the work of Crane's clever hands as they turned out the contents of his pockets, one by one, and neatly arranged their plunder on the top of the occasional table; bringing to light, in addition to everyman's horde of minor personal effects, a flat leather case which fitted neatly a lining pocket in Mallison's dress waistcoat and which held a light jointed jimmy of the toughest procurable steel with an assortment of skeleton keys designed to make the most modern of door-locks tamely yield up its secret.

Mallison's countenance gave open confession of abandonment to despair when this damning find was made; yet Crane was not half-finished with him. The next plunge of his fingers fished a tissue-paper packet from a lower waistcoat pocket, which, being unfolded, disclosed the purloined emeralds of Folly McFee.

Crane clucked in astonishment, Folly gave an incredulous squeal of joy, Lanyard a graphic start and stare. The others present reacted variously, each according to his idiosyncrasy. Only Mallison made neither sound nor stir. But the eyes he turned toward Lanyard were a murderer's . . .

---