"Why?"
"I was hunted out of New York. The Boche would not let me be."
The officer looked startled. "The Boche?"
"More precisely, Herr Ekstrom—to name him as we knew him. But this I did not suspect for a long time, that it was he who was responsible for my persecution. I knew only that the police of America, informed of my identity with the Lone Wolf, sought to deport me, that every avenue to an honourable livelihood was closed. So I had to leave, to try to lose myself."
"Your wife … I mean to say, you married, didn't you?"
Lanyard nodded. "Lucy stuck by me till … the end…. She had a little money of her own. It financed our flight from the States. We made a round-about journey of it, to elude surveillance—and, I think, succeeded."
"You returned to Paris?"
"No: France, like England, was barred to the Lone Wolf…. We settled down in Belgium, Lucy and I and our boy. He was three months old. We found a quiet little home in Louvain—"
The officer interrupted with a low cry of apprehension, Lanyard checked him with a sombre gesture. "Let me tell you….
"We might have been happy. None knew us. We were sufficient unto ourselves. But I was without occupation; it occurred to me that my memoirs might make good reading—for Paris; my friends the French are as fond of their criminals as you English of your actors. On the second of August I journeyed to Paris to negotiate with a publisher. While I was away the Boche invaded Belgium. Before I could get back Louvain had been occupied, sacked…."