The first cast of what Crane aptly termed the dragnet had brought in the management and service staff to a man, with a number of the restaurant's habitues, including Sophie Weringrode and her errand-boy, the exquisite Mr. Revel.
Velasco, however, had somehow mysteriously managed to slip through the meshes and had straightway hastened to spread the alarm.
As for O'Reilly and Dressier, they had left with Ekstrom in pursuit of
Lanyard less than five minutes before, and so had escaped not only arrest
but all knowledge of the raid prior to their return to Seventy-ninth
Street.
The second cast of the net had been made at the latter place as soon as the watchers were able to assure Crane that Ekstrom and O'Reilly had returned—Dressier having anticipated them there by something like half an hour.
By daybreak, then, these gentry would be interned on Ellis Island….
And break of day impended visibly in grayish shades that stole westward through the cross-town streets like clouds of secret agents spying out the city against invasion by the serried lances of the sun.
A garish twilight washed Forty-second Street from wall to wall by the time the car swung round in front of the Knickerbocker. As yet, however, there was little evidence that the town was growing restive in its sleep with premonition of the ardour of another day.
Lanyard stepped down and offered the girl a hand in whose palm her slender fingers rested lightly for an instant ere she passed on, while he turned to bid the driver wait. Following, he overtook her in the entrance, where by tacit consent both paused and lingered in an odd constraint. There was so much to be said that was impossible to say just then.
Visibly the woman drooped, betraying physical exhaustion in every line of her pose, seeming scarcely strong enough to lift the silken lashes that trembled upon cheeks a little drawn and pale, with the faintest of bluish rings beneath the eyes.
"I must not keep you," Lanyard broke the silence. "I merely wished to say good-night and … I am sorry."