Mallison got a black grin from the patrolman and subsided at discretion, while Crane cocked a meaning eye at Lanyard.
"Now, Mr. Lanyard, if you'll just tell us what you know about how this man Mallison comes to be here . . ."
"Gladly." Lanyard had his story pat, it fell from a glib tongue. "I presume everybody present knows Mrs. McFee's emeralds were stolen last night from the safe in that secretary over there, under circumstances which caused a certain person to be suspected—"
"Why so modest?" Mallison interrupted vindictively. "Why so mealy-mouthed? 'Suspected' is hardly the word."
"I am desolated to disappoint monsieur; unhappily or not, as you may care to take it, Mr. Crane was able to establish my innocence this morning."
"Like hell he was!"
"Just one more nasty crack out of you, Mallison," Crane advised, "and I'll let Hoffmeyer do your wife a swell favour."
"Strangely enough," Lanyard serenely pursued: "Mrs. McFee and I, thinking the case over independently, arrived at the same conclusion: that Mallison probably knew as much as anybody about the theft. Mrs. McFee accordingly laid a trap: invited him to a little dinner-party this evening, in the course of which she let it become known that the thief had overlooked a valuable lot of jewellery which she meant to leave unprotected tonight other than by the safe which had once already been attacked with success. This made a second visit probable, if there were grounds for our suspicions. . . . I on my part arranged to occupy that clothes-press which you see with its door open; by leaving the door just off the latch, it was easy to keep direct watch over the safe. Toward the end of dinner Mallison received the telephone call which has been mentioned, and used it as a pretext for leaving before the other guests. He said good night to Mrs. McFee at the front door, but as soon as she returned to the dining-room let himself back into the house and stole upstairs. He was hiding behind the screen in the corner when Mrs. McFee came up, but when she had put her remaining jewels in the safe and turned to go to her bedchamber, he blundered—made his presence known in a way she couldn't overlook. Then he tried to overpower her, to prevent her giving the alarm. I was obliged to interfere and had just succeeded in discouraging him when these people broke in . . ."
"Straight enough story, far as it goes," Crane approved.
But Mallison dissented wildly: "A pack of lies from beginning to end!" he termed it. To which Lanyard replied, with nonchalance quite unfeigned, that if they doubted his word they might ask Mrs. McFee. Neither was his confidence misplaced: quietly the young woman affirmed the substantial truthfulness of the tissue of misrepresentation which he had woven so brazenly under her very eyes and for her benefit as much as for his own.