"But joking aside—" Crane began with some asperity.
"You ask too much," Lanyard interrupted. "Do you honestly expect me to gaze on this and keep a straight face?"
"If you want my opinion, I'll say it's no laughing matter for you."
"But do you tell me that as one who has given this photograph close and intelligent study?"
"What's the matter with it? Don't you think it does your fatal beauty justice?"
"But more: I am overcome by the appreciation which this drives home of the dashing figure I cut of old in the popular eye. Prior to this, I have always imagined that the public took the gentleman cracksman with a grain of salt—holding his attitudinizing in romantic evening dress properly peculiar to his appearances on the stage and the cinema screen. And you, my dear Crane! a man of your wide acquaintance with the ways of crooks taking this blatant bit of imposition seriously—!"
Crane's mouth tightened, his brows combatively beetled. "There are crooks and crooks. I never thought so badly of you as to suppose you worked like the rank and file."
"But like this!" Lanyard gave the print a derisive flick of fingernails. "Take my word for it, I was never such an ass."
"Never did a job in a full dress suit?"
"Never to my knowledge did I costume myself like a man in a play when deliberately setting out to open a safe. Furthermore"—Lanyard wrinkled a nose of scorn over the photograph—"never in my life have I been caught wearing a soft-bosomed shirt with a tail coat: an antic one cheerfully resigns to dancing men. By-the-bye: whatever did become of Mallison?"