Taking fright of what he had overheard Lanyard say, likely enough, that spy had made early occasion to seek a safer hiding place. But nothing persuaded Lanyard that he had marked down the only man assigned to the duty of seeing that he performed in faithful accord with his commitments. He counted confidently on every step of his private via dolorosa being dogged by a corporal's guard of shadows . . .
It was, however, in his mind to give them something less elusive than _his_ shadow to prove their skill with . . .
At ten minutes to three he pocketed his watch, opened the large blade of the pen-knife that had thoughtfully been provided him, and inched forward in his chair, eyes to the sky. And when the next great continent of cloud had blacked out the stars for a space and passed, Lanyard's place was vacant; and he, standing on the inside of the french window through which he had in effect dissolved, without causing a sound more than the thin click of a latch prized back by the knife blade, would have risked a round wager that nobody had seen him leave his chair.
He stood in the drawing-room, with every faculty at concert pitch, for more than a minute. But nothing stirred in the entrance-hall, so far as that was disclosed by a wide arched doorway, and he heard no sound from upstairs. Another arched opening joined the drawing to the dining-room, which last was quite black; but he chose that way to his goal rather than brave the lights in the entrance-hall, passed on to the butler's pantry and there hit upon what he had been seeking--the service stairway, unlighted and, at least to the pressure of practiced feet, agreeably taciturn.
Delivered by this route into the hallway of the second storey, and guided by prior acquaintance with the location of Morphew's bedchamber, Lanyard paused outside its door to unlatch the safety device on his commandeered pistol, then with what was equivalent to a single supple movement let himself into the room.
But the pistol, trained on the bed the moment his shoulders felt the door behind them, fell immediately to his side; eyes that had faithfully guided the errant footsteps of the Lone Wolf through many a blacker night needed no light to assure them that the room was untenanted.