At ten minutes to three he pocketed his watch, opened the large blade of the pen-knife that had thoughtfully been provided him, and inched forward in his chair, eyes to the sky. And when the next great continent of cloud had blacked out the stars for a space and passed, Lanyard's place was vacant; and he, standing on the inside of the french window through which he had in effect dissolved, without causing a sound more than the thin click of a latch prized back by the knife blade, would have risked a round wager that nobody had seen him leave his chair.
He stood in the drawing-room, with every faculty at concert pitch, for more than a minute. But nothing stirred in the entrance-hall, so far as that was disclosed by a wide arched doorway, and he heard no sound from upstairs. Another arched opening joined the drawing to the dining-room, which last was quite black; but he chose that way to his goal rather than brave the lights in the entrance-hall, passed on to the butler's pantry and there hit upon what he had been seeking—the service stairway, unlighted and, at least to the pressure of practiced feet, agreeably taciturn.
Delivered by this route into the hallway of the second storey, and guided by prior acquaintance with the location of Morphew's bedchamber, Lanyard paused outside its door to unlatch the safety device on his commandeered pistol, then with what was equivalent to a single supple movement let himself into the room.
But the pistol, trained on the bed the moment his shoulders felt the door behind them, fell immediately to his side; eyes that had faithfully guided the errant footsteps of the Lone Wolf through many a blacker night needed no light to assure them that the room was untenanted.
He reminded himself that Morphew's bedchamber was linked with Pagan's by way of an intervening dressing-room, and found the communicating doors not locked. But Pagan too, it appeared, had been perfidiously remiss in the matter of going to bed. Neither could Lanyard see anything to prove that either man had changed a garment or stopped in his room longer than the lights had burned; which had been just long enough to cover the time it ordinarily takes a man to shed his clothes and otherwise prepare for bed.
In that first dash of disappointment Lanyard was tempted to believe that Morphew's bag of tricks boasted as deep a bottom as his own. He was criminally spendthrift with his time, however, every second that he delayed there, scolding himself for his want of prevision, his idiocy in trusting the pair of them an inch out of his sight—while they were abroad, out there in the night, marshalling their forces, picketing every possible avenue of escape, leaving open to him only the way he was pledged to go—and setting their trap at its end.
He returned the way he had come, opened the door of Morphew's room, slipped out with all haste compatible with prudence—and found his retreat cut off.
In night dress and négligé Folly McFee stood between him and the head of the main staircase, which he would have to pass to regain the service stairs.
The hallway was without light other than leakage from the entrance-hall by way of the staircase well, a faint diffusion, barely enough to define the shadows, seemingly enough for Folly notwithstanding, since she betrayed neither dread of the marauder nor doubt of his identity, nor yet any astonishment to see him there who should have been twenty miles away.
In accents circumspect but crisp and even she demanded: "What are you doing there?"