That—­the progressive involution of this insane imbroglio—­went very well indeed, in Lanyard’s reckoning; he could hardy wish, he could not reasonably demand that it should go better.

He knew now with what design Liane Delorme had made him a party to this sea adventure and intimate with every detail of the conspiracy; and he knew to boot why she had offered him the free gift of her love; doubt as to the one, scruples inspired by the other—­that reluctance which man cannot but feel to do a hurt to a heart that holds him dear, however scanty his response to its passion—­could no longer influence him to palter in dealing with the woman.  The revelation had in effect stricken shackles from Lanyard’s wrists, now when he struck it would be with neither hesitation nor compunction.

As to that stroke alone, its hour and place and fashion, he remained without decision.  He had made a hundred plans for its delivery, and one of them, that seemed the wildest, he thought of seriously, as something really feasible.  But single-handed!  That made it difficult.  If only one could devise some way to be in two places at one time and the same!  An impossibility?  He wouldn’t deny that.  But Lanyard had never been one to be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility.  He had known too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when subjected to a bold and resolute assault.  He wouldn’t say die.

Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to and did.  What imbecility!  What an escape had been his when, in that time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once and for all time!  But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility foredoomed them to farcical failure.

Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an answer to the question:  What made the Law by whose decree man may garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity?  That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings, through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained....

But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons were for himself alone.  He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly, giving nowhere any manner of offense:  for could he tell in what unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work out his unfaltering purpose?

And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his mind.  Well, he gave no sign.  Let them watch and wonder to their heart’s content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall.