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Rh Wolf and in his guise loot the world anew, to court forgetfulness even at the prison's gates. …

It was after ten when, cruising purposelessly, without a fare, he swung through the rue Auber into the place de l'Opéra and, approaching the Café de la Paix, was hailed by a door-boy of that restaurant.

Drawing in to the curb with the careless address that had distinguished his every action of that evening, he waited, with a throbbing motor, and with mind detached and gaze remote from the streams of foot and wheeled traffic that brawled past on either hand.

After a moment two men issued from the revolving door of the café, and approached the cab. Lanyard paid them no attention. His thoughts were now engaged with a certain hôtel particulier in the neighbourhood of La Muette and, in his preoccupation, he would need only the name of a destination and the sound of the cab-door slammed, to send him off like a shot.

Then he heard one of the men cough heavily, and in a twinkling stiffened to rigidity in his seat. If he had heard that cough but once before, that once had been too often. Without a glance aside, hardening his features to perfect immobility, he knew that the cough was shaking the slighter of those two figures.

And of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the clearness of the frosty atmosphere, of the merciless glare of electricity beating upon him from every side from the numberless street lamps and café lights. And poignantly he regretted neglecting to mask himself with his goggles.

He wasn't left long in suspense. The coughing died away