Another freak of friendly fortune? or one of ill-favoured fate? The thing was too confoundedly well-timed, the invitation of that unguarded entrance too tempting. Indeed, when it occurred to Lanyard that his action might have been considered a thought precipitate, it was too late to turn back, he had already slipped into the service hallway and restored the door to the position, half on the latch, in which the woman had left it. To change his mind now and retreat would be to court her attention, who would already be on her way back from the corner.
The hallway was long, narrow, dimly lighted. At its far end a stairway led down to kitchen offices. Midway, a swing-door communicated with the main body of the house. Through this Lanyard had no choice but to dart, reckless of what might await him on its far side: to linger where he was meant immediate discovery . . . and the emeralds on his person!
The swing-door gave into a butler's pantry, at the moment empty, where another opened into the dining-room and a third to the main hallway. Stacks of dishes in the pantry sink, no less than a clash of cheerful voices in the room adjoining, with Folly's rippling laughter clearly recognizable, told of a dinner party still in progress. The other living-rooms, then, ought to be untenanted. The butler due to pop back from the dining-room at any instant, Lanyard passed on to the entrance-hall, and experienced a relief, on finding it deserted, that betrayed an old hand sorely out of practice: the day had been when he could have taken far more desperate chances without a tremor.
Even so, he wasted no gestures. To go the way he meant to go, he had the dining-room door to pass, the risk to run of being seen. He edged to a point whence Folly's back was visible, and the butler, a decent, plodding, British body, taking himself off with an emptied decanter. He disappeared; and the pantry-door was heard to buffet the air. Lanyard waited a minute, then coolly ran--or, rather, stumped--the risk of the open door, trusting, if noticed by any of the diners, to pass as the butler with some business in the front part of the house. To the best of his observation his audacity served: the dinner-party seemed to be finding itself much too amusing to have attention to spare for matters of domestic routine. But one swift glance askance noted that Folly was entertaining only Pagan, Liane Delorme, and Mallison.
