But from Madame de Montalais he heard nothing.

“Mission successful,” he had wired—­“returning France by La Savoie in five days having arranged safe transportation your property—­please advise if you can meet me in Paris to receive same or your commands otherwise.”

And to this, silence only!—­silence to him to whom words of her dictation, however few and terse and filtered through no matter how many indifferent mediums of intelligence, would have been precious beyond expression.

So it was that, as hour followed hour and the tale of them lengthened into days, he fell into a temper of morbid brooding that was little like the man, and instead of faring abroad and seeking what amusement he might find in the most carefree city of the post-War world, shut himself up in his rooms and moped, indifferent to all things but the knocks at his door, the stridulation of the telephone bell that might announce the arrival of the desired message.

And so it was that, when the telephone did ring—­at last!—­towards noon of that third day, he fairly stumbled over himself in his haste to reach the instrument.  But the animation with which he answered the professional voice at the other end of the wire faded very quickly, the look of weariness returned, his accents voiced an indifference fairly desolating.

“Yes?...Oh, yes...Very well...Yes, at once.”

He returned to his view from the window, and was hating it with all his heart when a stout knuckling on his door announced his callers.

They filed into the room with a cheerfulness of mien in striking contrast to the weary courtesy with which Lanyard received them:  Liane Delorme first, then Monk, then Phinuit, rather bleached of colour and wearing one arm in a sling; all very smart in clothes conspicuously new and as costly as the Avenue afforded, striking figures of contentment in prosperity.

“It is a pleasure indeed,” Lanyard gravely acknowledged their several salutations—­“not, I must confess, altogether unexpected, but a pleasure none the less.”

“So you didn’t think we’d be long spotting you in the good little old town?” Phinuit enquired.  “Had a notion you thought the best way to lose us would be to put up at this well-known home of the highest prices.”

“No,” Lanyard replied.  “I never thought to be rid of you without one more meeting—­”

“Then there’s good in the old bean yet,” Phinuit interrupted in wasted irony.

“One cherishes that hope, monsieur....But the trail I left for you to follow!  I would be an ass indeed if I thought you would fail to find it.  When one borrows a rowboat at Plum Island Light without asking permission—­government property, too—­and leaves it moored to a dock on the Greenport waterfront; when one arrives in Greenport clothed in shirt and trousers only, and has to bribe its pardonably suspicious inhabitants with handfuls of British gold—­which they are the more loath to accept in view of its present depreciation—­in order to secure a slopchest coat and shoes and transportation by railway to New York; when a taxicab chauffeur refuses a sovereign for his fare from the Pennsylvania Station to this hotel, and one is constrained to borrow from the management—­why, I should say the trail was fairly broad and well blazed, mes amis.”