Content, it seemed, thus to have done his bit for preparedness, Mallison sauntered back to the boudoir, stripped off his top-coat, folded it with meticulous care and hid it, together with his hat, on the floor behind a capacious lounge chair.
Then consulting his watch and with a yawn politely shielded registering time to kill, he strolled over to the secretary and stooped to inspect, with a flickering, sly smile, the safe built into its base. The tip of a fingernail discreetly pried open the blind front, leaving no treacherous trace, but after a show of hesitation the man seemingly decided not to disturb the safe itself, and restored the front to its former position. Private papers, with which the pigeonholes of the secretary were well stocked, next drew his interest, and he was betraying a mean disposition to tamper with them when the chance discovery of a hand-mirror resting face up on Folly's blotting-book diverted Mallison with a temptation which he didn't even try to resist. And he had finished disciplining an imperceptibly unruly eyebrow and had begun to practice a killing smile, an artful variation of the infallible gleam-of-teeth suite, when a bell grumbled vigorously in the bowels of the house and was interpreted as a signal for strict attention to business thenceforward.
Mallison went at once to the door to listen, an occupation in which he had the man in the clothes-press at a good disadvantage. The latter none the less contrived to infer from noises in the entrance-hall that Pagan's car had duly reported and that its owner and Liane were saying good-night. Then, as the rumor of their voices failed, Mallison re-crossed the boudoir with swift but silent tread and once more passed from Lanyard's range of vision. The latter, however, recalled having noticed a handsome, painted screen in that corner, and entertained no doubt but that Mallison was making himself small behind it.
To prove this guess well-grounded, Folly herself entered in another moment, and gave every evidence of being unaware of any alien presence as she faltered through the boudoir, casting discontented glances round as if in aimless search of something in the nature of a distraction. Unmistakably disappointed, and thereby the more frankly fretted, she drifted on to her bedchamber, from whose unseen recesses her voice and her maid's were presently to be heard.
What they said was of no moment: their bedtime dialogue of every day, varied only by Folly's decision to stay up a while longer: she wasn't sleepy and had letters to write. So saying, she dismissed the maid and sulkily trailed back into the boudoir, bringing a sizable case of tooled leather which held, one surmised, the jewellery she had worn at dinner, and which she proceeded to put away in the safe that deserved its style so little, but only as a matter of habit, demonstrating that all faith in the contraption was dead by not troubling to shut its door and set the lock.
In the pause that ensued, with a sigh of boredom Folly settled down in the chair before her secretary, and Lanyard ventured to widen the crack of the door a fraction.
The woman sat toying with a pen and more than half-turned away from this observer, charmingly posed with all the unconscious grace that was native to the sweetly fashioned body which her négligé, a sheer web of lace threaded with ribbon, made so bare a pretence of covering. A lamp on the secretary turned the tangle of her hair into a living nimbus and edged tenderly a neck and shoulders kissable in the sight of any man. Indeed, Mallison was hardly to be blamed . . .
Without making a sound he stole up behind the woman lost in thought, the fire of his lips on her flesh was the first that she knew of his presence. Crying out in alarm and anger, she started up to find herself in his arms.
"Hush, dear—please!" Mallison entreated, trying to insure her silence by resting fingers lightly upon her lips. "The servants might hear—"
"'Might'!" Folly stormed, jerking her head away——"they shall!"