"Want him to call y'up? What's yuh number?"
Without the least hesitation, in a single phrase Lanyard abolished the telephone installation at Folly McFee's: "Say there is no telephone. But give him, if you will be so good, this address." Lanyard detailed the number of the house and street and hung up. He had no fear that Crane would fail to draw an intelligent inference and guide himself by the light thereof. Nevertheless he would have been grateful for some assurance that Crane would get the message in good time. . . .
Back at the head of the stairs, he felt warranted in assuming that his daring with the telephone had not betrayed him. The hum of talk that rose from the diminished dinner party was constant, or punctuated only by the laughter with which the two women encouraged Peter Pagan in his efforts to be funny. For all that, Lanyard escaped discovery by the narrowest of squeaks; for he stepped out into the hallway only to find that Mallison had let himself into the house again, and was furtively slinking up the stairs—was even then, indeed, half way up.
Driven back to the refuge of the clothes-press, Lanyard pulled its door into position in the same instant that saw Mallison skulk into the boudoir.
It appeared from this, then, that one had not erred in mistrusting the nervous hands of the dancing man as they had played with the knob—and one might no longer doubt, with the safety-catch as well—what time Mallison had delayed, posing with his back to the door and philandering with Folly.
IX
Neither might he who unsuspected spied, through the crack of a closet-door all but closed, on Mr. Mallison with many a gesture of quiet authority making himself at home in Folly's rooms, seriously question the presence of a practician adept in the grammar of second-storey work. Mallison's footfalls would not have ruffled the repose of an insomniac, the play of his hands was certain yet light as the flutter of butterfly wings; and what he had to do by way of making ready for what he purposed doing, he did with right professional economy of effort.
To begin with, he did nothing at all more than stand still in the middle of the boudoir and study with glances keen, direct and comprehensive what one guessed were surroundings not wholly strange to him. And seeing him thus with his guard down, naked of all his petty social airs and graces and that shining garment of conceit which clothed the man like a woven armour when he was self-conscious, the hidden watcher began to suspect that he might have erred in his first rating, that the Mallison now revealed was worthier to be reckoned with than he had guessed. The Mallison of this minute was nobody's fool, knew what he was about, and—or Lanyard read every surface sign awry—was dangerously capable of proving at need a disconcerting knowledge of how to take care of himself.
With a muted grunt of gratification in the sum of his survey, the man passed through to the bedchamber, wherein his maneuvres were less readily followed, since the mirror in the boudoir revealed to Lanyard only a narrow segment of the adjoining room. This comprehended, however, the head of Folly's bed, and the small table beside it from whose drawer Mallison removed a pretty trinket of a silver-plated, pearl-handled pistol, extracting its shells, thoughtfully putting them away in one of his waistcoat pockets, and finally replacing the weapon with nice precision where he had found it.