XIX
Morphew was holding down a huge easy-chair without any appearance of ease: feet well apart and planted solidly, huge and bedizened paws firmly clasping each an arm of the chair as if to forestall its wickedly slipping out from under him. His face of a pale beast, with its unwinking light eyes under leaden hoods, its gash of a mouth, its flaccid jowls and wattles, was void of any readable expression; but for seepage of smoke from its nostrils and the corner of the mouth that wasn't filled by the cigar it might have passed for a devil-mask modelled by hands of decadence.
Above and somewhat behind this unholy vision, Mr. Peter Pagan, resting folded arms on the back of the chair, presented the face of a subsenile imp in familiar attendance, innocent, however, of his master's affection for the pose imperturbable—his clown's lips wide with a gleeful grin, beady eyes alive with malice.
"I suppose," he said, as one might to a troublesome child, "you think you're smart, keeping decent, law-abiding folk up like this, till all hours!"
Lanyard reflected on this pleasantry with a weary droop of eyelids, otherwise held still and dumb.
With dramatic deliberation Morphew relaxed the hold of one hand on the chair long enough to extract the cigar from between his teeth. All in a grunt he commanded: "Frisk him."
Trained fingers turned out the pockets of the captive. "This guy's got no gat," the man on his chest reported in plaintive disappointment.
"Never thought he had," Pagan acidly commented: "Bluff is the middle name of our fair-haired lad."
"Let him up," Morphew ordered—"but stand by in case he still feels hostile."
A free man once more, Lanyard scrambled to his feet, shook himself like a dog, gave his seagoing slacks a practised hitch, the sleeves and skirts of his makeshift coat a scrupulous dusting, and smiled sunny reassurance first on the watchful circle round him (noting impenitently that one man was nursing a swollen nose while another was uttering a few loosened teeth) then, with an impudent colour of indulgence added, beamed upon the seated arbiter of the scene.
"Monsieur is needlessly alarmed," he said with an urbanity unaffected by hastened breathing. "Something tells me I were well-advised to put off our overdue accounting against a more favourable occasion."
"All the accounting that's going to be done," Morphew heavily countered, "is going to happen right here and now, before either you or me leave this room." He shifted a passionless glare to his henchmen. "Clear out and wait in the hall: I'll give a whistle if I want you again. If I give two whistles, one of you call a cop—the rest come running."
Lanyard indecorously yawned, then gave an open laugh as the battered bodyguard withdrew. Uninvited, he helped himself to an overstuffed lounge chair, and sighed in grateful relaxation.
"A policeman, my good Morphew! do my ears mislead me?"
"No," Morphew definitely replied, "they don't."
Pagan cocked a critical eye at the ears in question. "Even foreshortened," he volunteered, "they don't look like ears to mislead anybody else."
But Pagan could wait, Lanyard couldn't afford to let an antic second distract any of the attention due his principal.
"I am to understand," he persisted, addressing Morphew, "it is your intention to give me in charge?"
"That rests with you."
"Monsieur undoubtedly is pleased to be humorous . . ."
"Maybe, so, maybe not." Fixing Lanyard with an unintelligible stare, Morphew thoughtfully champed his cigar. "There's a lot of popularity lying around loose in this town, waiting to be pinned onto the hero that puts the Lone Wolf behind bars. And you ought to know whether you've had enough."
"But if you ask me," Lanyard frankly laughed—"too much!"
"All right," Morphew agreed in gloomy gratification: "That puts it up to you which you want to do now—go up the River to do a nice long stretch or stick on in Town here and take life easy."
"Not so long ago it was the Lone Wolf's boast that he never found it necessary to take life easily or otherwise . . . as you were good enough to remind me, monsieur, the last time we had the pleasure of conversing together."
