The Lone Wolf Part 19

"Are you?" she demanded quickly.

"Am I what?"

"What you've just said--"

"A crook--and all that? Miss Bannon, you know it!"

"The Lone Wolf?"

"You've known it all along. De Morbihan told you--or else your father.

Or, it may be, you were shrewd enough to guess it from De Morbihan's bragging in the restaurant. At all events, it's plain enough, nothing but desire to find proof to identify me with the Lone Wolf took you to my room last night--whether for your personal satisfaction or at the instigation of Bannon--just as nothing less than disgust with what was going on made you run away from such intolerable a.s.sociations....

Though, at that, I don't believe you even guessed how unspeakably vicious those were!"

He paused and waited, antic.i.p.ating furious denial or refutation; such would, indeed, have been the logical development of the temper in which she had come down to confront him.

Rather than this, she seemed calmed and sobered by his charge; far from resenting it, disposed to concede its justice; anger deserted her expression, leaving it intent and grave. She came quietly into the room and faced him squarely across the table.

"You thought all that of me--that I was capable of spying on you--yet were generous enough to believe I despised myself for doing it?"

"Not at first.... At first, when we met back there in the corridor, I was sure you were bent on further spying. Only since waking up here, half an hour ago, did I begin to understand how impossible it would be for you to lend yourself to such villainy as last night's."

"But if you thought that of me then, why did you--?"

"It occurred to me that it would be just as well to prevent your reporting back to headquarters."

"But now you've changed your mind about me?"

He nodded: "Quite."

"But why?" she demanded in a voice of amazement. "Why?"

"I can't tell you," he said slowly--"I don't know why. I can only presume it must be because--I can't help believing in you."

Her glance wavered: her colour deepened. "I don't understand..." she murmured.

"Nor I," he confessed in a tone as low....

A sudden grumble from the teakettle provided welcome distraction.

Lanyard lifted it off the flames and slowly poured boiling water on a measure of tea in an earthenware pot.

"A cup of this and something to eat'll do us no harm," he ventured, smiling uneasily--"especially if we're to pursue this psychological enquiry into the whereforeness of the human tendency to change one's mind!"

XIII

CONFESSIONAL

And then, when the girl made no response, but remained with troubled gaze focused on some remote abstraction, "You will have tea, won't you?" he urged.

She recalled her thoughts, nodded with the faintest of smiles--"Yes, thank you!"--and dropped into a chair.

He began at once to make talk in effort to dissipate that constraint which stood between them like an unseen alien presence: "You must be very hungry?"

"I am."

"Sorry I've nothing better to offer you. I'd have run out for something more substantial, only--"

"Only--?" she prompted, coolly helping herself to biscuit and potted ham.

"I didn't think it wise to leave you alone."

"Was that before or after you'd made up your mind about me--the latest phase, I mean?" she persisted with a trace of malice.

"Before," he returned calmly--"likewise, afterwards. Either way you care to take it, it wouldn't have been wise to leave you here. Suppose you had waked up to find me gone, yourself alone in this strange house--"

"I've been awake several hours," she interposed--"found myself locked in, and heard no sound to indicate that you were still here."

"I'm sorry: I was overtired and slept like a log.... But a.s.suming the case: you would have gone out, alone, penniless--"

"Through a locked door, Mr. Lanyard?"

"I shouldn't have left it locked," he explained patiently.... "You would have found yourself friendless and without resources in a city to which you are a stranger."

She nodded: "True. But what of that?"

"In desperation you might have been forced to go back--"

"And report the outcome of my investigation!"

"Pressure might have been brought to induce admissions damaging to me,"

Lanyard submitted pleasantly. "Whether or no, you'd have been obliged to renew a.s.sociations you're well rid of."

"You feel sure of that?"

"But naturally."

"How can you be?" she challenged. "You've yet to know me twenty-four hours."

"But perhaps I know the a.s.sociations better. In point of fact, I do.

Even though you may have stooped to play the spy last night, Miss Bannon--you couldn't keep it up. You had to fly further contamination from that pack of jackals."

"Not--you feel sure--merely to keep you under observation?"

"I do feel sure of that. I have your word for it."

The girl deliberately finished her tea, and sat back, regarding him steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: "You have your own way of putting one on honour!"