"What is that you say?" Mrs. Arden demanded sharply.
"The Lone Wolf … Fact. Have it on most excellent authority."
"The Lone Wolf!" Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. "If you ask me, I think the Lone
Wolf nothing in the world but a scapegoat for police stupidity."
"You wouldn't say that," Mrs. Arden retorted, "if you had lived in Paris as long as I. There, in the dear old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax not to believe in him."
"Frightful nonsense," insisted the other. "I'm off. 'Night, Arthur. Shall you be long, George?"
"Oh, half an hour or so," her husband responded absently as she disappeared.
With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped upon the desk, to the care of her brother-in-law, Mrs. Arden uttered good-nights and followed her sister.
Blensop bowed her out respectfully, shut the door and returned to the desk.
"What's this about the Lone Wolf?" Stanistreet enquired, sitting down to con the papers more intently.
"Oh!" Blensop laughed lightly. "I was merely repeating the blighter's own assertion. I mean to say, he boasted he was the Lone Wolf."