His defiance of that one had not been tardy of result: the enemy had not only accepted his declaration of war, he had committed the first overt act.
Lanyard's temper hardened. If Morphew wanted war, he should have his fill . . .
But if war it must be, this was no time to waste in inaction: the enemy was already in the field and taking the offensive, while he lay resting.
Rising, Lanyard bestirred himself to set his house in order.
When he had shaved and dressed and dosed himself with stabilizing draughts of black coffee, he began to collect the clothes he had worn overnight, all of which would require the attentions of a valet before they would be again presentable. Rain had defaced the gloss of his topper beyond repair but by the hatter's iron. His trousers were damp and wrinkled bags of black stuff splashed to the knees with mud.
Over these stains Lanyard frowned. Impossible to understand how he had managed to come by the worst of them, even taking into account the condition in which he had traversed Fifth Avenue during the storm. The marks of that thin black ooze which accumulates on asphaltum explained themselves. But there were others inexplicable, and on his patent leather boots as well, smears and crusts of ochre mud which he could hardly have accumulated without wandering into broken ground, such as was not to be found on Fifth avenue at any point within the bounds of his besotted promenade.
But he distinctly recollected noticing an excavation behind the residence of Folly McFee. . . .
With a worried shake of his head that cost him several stabs of anguish, Lanyard folded and laid aside the trousers, and returned to the sitting-room to get his dress-coat.
As he took this up something in one of the coat-tail pockets struck against a leg of the table with a muffled but clashing thump.
By his own account, Crane had already rummaged the pockets of the garment, but conceivably the coat-tail pockets he had overlooked, who was better acquainted with dress clothes of American tailoring, from which such conveniences are commonly omitted. Lanyard's clothes, however, had been built in London; and to the British tailor coat-tail pockets are as an article of faith.