Part 6 (1/2)
”But it must be so hard to credit! Even I... Why, it's more than a year since this last happened. Of course, as a child, it was almost a habit; they had to watch me all the time. Once... But that doesn't matter. I _am_ so sorry.”
”You really mustn't worry,” Lanyard insisted. ”It's all quite natural--such things do happen--are happening all the time--”
”But I don't want you--”
”I am n.o.body, Miss Bannon. Besides I shan't mention the matter to a soul. And if ever I am fortunate enough to meet you again, I shall have forgotten it completely--believe me.”
There was convincing sincerity in his tone. The girl looked down, as though abashed.
”You are very good,” she murmured, moving toward the door.
”I am very fortunate.”
Her glance of surprise was question enough.
”To be able to treasure this much of your confidence,” he explained with a tentative smile.
She was near the door; he opened it for her, but cautioned her with a gesture and a whispered word: ”Wait. I'll make sure n.o.body's about.”
He stepped noiselessly into the hall and paused an instant, looking right and left, listening.
The girl advanced to the threshold and there checked, hesitant, eyeing him anxiously.
He nodded rea.s.surance: ”All right--coast's clear!”
But she delayed one moment more.
”It's you who are mistaken,” she whispered, colouring again beneath his regard, in which admiration could not well be lacking, ”It is I who am fortunate--to have met a--gentleman.”
Her diffident smile, together with the candour of her eyes, embarra.s.sed him to such extent that for the moment he was unable to frame a reply.
”Good night,” she whispered--”and thank you, thank you!”
Her room was at the far end of the corridor. She gained its threshold in one swift dash, noiseless save for the silken whisper of her garments, turned, flashed him a final look that left him with the thought that novelists did not always exaggerate, that eyes could s.h.i.+ne like stars....
Her door closed softly.
Lanyard shook his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts, and went back into his own bed-chamber.
He was quite content with the explanation the girl had given, but being the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a mislaid sou.
If pressed, he would have been put to it to name what he sought or thought to find. What he did find was that nothing had been tampered with and nothing more--not even so much as a dainty, lace-trimmed wisp of sheer linen bearing the lady's monogram and exhaling a faint but individual perfume.
Which, when he came to consider it, seemed hardly playing the game by the book.
As for Roddy, Lanyard wasted several minutes, off and on, listening attentively at the communicating door; but if the detective had stopped snoring, his respiration was loud enough in that quiet hour, a sound of harsh monotony.
True, that proved nothing; but Lanyard, after the fiasco of his first attempt to catch his enemy awake, was no more disposed to be hypercritical; he had his fill of being ingenious and profound. And when presently he again left Troyon's (this time without troubling the repose of the concierge) it was with the reflection that, if Roddy were really playing 'possum, he was welcome to whatever he could find of interest in the quarters of Michael Lanyard.