"That's reasonable . . ."
Lanyard had a thoughtful moment. "Do me another favour," he resumed—"allow me to use your good offices to make another test of my information. Take that telephone on the table by your elbow, call the Hotel Walpole, ask for Madame de Montalais. If she is no longer stopping there, find out, if you can, when she left, and whether the management knows her present address."
"Madame de Montalais . . ." Crane took the telephone instrument to his bosom and called for the Walpole, but while he waited for the connection made no secret of the spirit of inquisitiveness in which he was mulling over that strange new name. "If it's a fair question—"
"The lady with whom I dined at the Inn of the Green Woods, an hour before my misfortune on the Armonk Road."
Before Crane could comment, the Walpole answered; and after some delay the hotel detective, none too well pleased to be waked up at three in the morning but obligingly bestirring himself on behalf of a colleague, reported that Madame de Montalais had "checked out" to sail for France on the ninth of March, leaving the forwarding address of Château de Montalais, near the town of Nant, in the Department of the Lozère.
Lanyard nodded doleful acknowledgement of this facer to hopes cruelly reanimated by the discovery that Liane Delorme had, in the course of their conference on board the Port Royal, and for reasons of her own that remained illegible, been guilty of more than one lache in respect of the truth. "That avenue is closed, then. I feared it would be. But give me a moment now to put my thoughts in order . . ."
More to cover his disconsolation than for the reason alleged, he bent forward with an elbow on a knee and a hand shading his eyes. "You tell me," he presently pursued, "no one you know has seen me in the flesh since we met at Folly McFee's . . ."
"Any number of reputable citizens have caught glimpses of you," Crane corrected—"and very much in the flesh, very busy raising particular hell with their property rights."
"But nobody in fact who knew me personally, who could swear to my identity with the man who passed for me?"
"Nobody. Just the same, the descriptions they turned in were middling good portraits of the Lone Wolf in action. More than that, there's that flashlight photo—"