Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/220

200 thief known as 'The Lone Wolf', but have since displayed every indication of desire to reform your ways, and have been of considerable use to the Intelligence Office. I am desired to employ your services in my discretion, contingent—pardon me—upon your continued good behaviour."

"Precisely," assented "Karl."

"Proceed, Monsieur Duchemin."

"It is an affair of some delicacy. … Do we speak alone, Colonel Stanistreet?"

"Mr. Blensop is my confidential secretary. …"

"Oh, no objection. Still—if I may venture the suggestion—those windows open upon a garden, I take it?"

"Yes. Blensop, be good enough to close the windows."

"Certainly, sir."

Stepping delicately, Blensop moved toward the end of the room.

Again Lanyard was confronted with the alternatives of incontinent flight or attempting to remain undetected through the adoption of an expedient of the most desperate audacity. He had prepared against such contingency, he did not mean to go; but the feasibility of his contemplated manœuvre depended entirely upon chance, its success in any event was forlornly problematic.

"Karl" remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he from "Karl." Colonel Stanistreet, facing his caller, sat half turned away from the windows. Everything rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows he would elect first to close.

A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had fore-