“But is it?” she asked in a tone so intimate that it was barely audible. And she laughed once more. “I am not so sure ... as long as monsieur is here.”
Lanyard’s mouth twitched, slow colour mounted in his face, the light in his eyes was lambent. He found himself looking deep into other eyes that were like pools of violet shadow troubled by a deep surge and resurge of feeling for which there was no name. Aware that they revealed more than he ought to know, he sought to escape them by bending his lips to Sofia’s hands.
Sighing softly, she resigned them to his kisses.
IX
PAID IN FULL
It was late when Lanyard got home, but not too late: when he entered his living-room enough life lingered in the embers in the grate to betray to him a feline shape on all-fours creeping toward his bedchamber door. As he switched up the lights it bounded to its feet and dived through the portières with such celerity that he saw little more of it than coat-tails level on the wind.
Dropping hat and canvas, Lanyard gave chase and overhauled the marauder as he was clambering out through the open window, where a firm hand on his collar checked his preparations to drop half a dozen feet to the flagged court.
Victor swore fretfully and lashed out a random fist, which struck Lanyard’s cheek a glancing blow that carried just enough sting to kindle resentment. So the virtuous householder was rather more than unceremonious about yanking the princely housebreaker inside and lending him a foot to accelerate his return to the living-room; where Victor brought up, on all-fours again, in almost precisely the spot from which he had risen.
He bounced up, however, with a surprising amount of animation and ambition, and flew back to the offensive with flailing fists. In this his judgment was grievously in fault. Lanyard sidestepped, nipped a wrist, twitched it smartly up between the man’s shoulder-blades (with a wrench that won a grunt of agony), caught the other arm from behind by the hollow of its elbow, and held his victim helpless—though ill-advised enough to continue to hiss and spit and squirm and kick.
A heel that struck Lanyard’s shin earned Victor a shaking so thoroughgoing that he felt the teeth rattle in his jaws. When it was suspended, he was breathless but thoughtful, and offered no objection to being searched. Lanyard relieved him of a revolver and a dirk, then with a push sent Victor reeling to the table, where he stood panting, quivering, and glaring murder, while his captor put the dagger away and examined the firearm.
“Wicked thing,” he commented—“loaded, too. Really, monsieur le prince should be more careful. One of these fine days, if you don’t stop playing with such weapons, one of these will go off right in your hand—and the next high-light in your history will be when the judge says: ‘And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!’”