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But with the Lone Wolf confidence was never akin to foolhardiness; and if on leaving Troyon's he took the girl's hand without asking permission and quite as a matter-of-course, and drew it through his arm it was his left arm that he so dedicated to gallantry; his right hand remained unhampered, and never far from the grip of his automatic. Nor was he altogether confident of his companion.
When at length his conveyance drew up at the historic corner, Lanyard alighting could have rubbed his eyes to see the windows of Troyon's all bright with electric light. Somehow, and most unreasonably, he had always believed the place would go to the hands of the house-wrecker unchanged. A smart portier ducked out, seized his luggage, and offered an umbrella.
"The peasants sow and reap and glean as in the days of Millet; Troyon's oxen and sheep are still standing in the meadow; Jacque's poultry are feeding in the barnyard.
And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements of the American following the fire at Troyon's.
Hence, the continuity of his patronage was never broken by trials of rival hostelries; and Troyon's was always expecting Bourke for the simple reason that he invariably arrived unexpectedly, with neither warning nor ostentation, to stop as long as he liked, whether a day or a week or a month, and depart in the same manner.
For an instant he felt dazed, half-stunned, suffocating, much as he had felt with Greggs' fingers tightening on his windpipe, that week-old night at Troyon's; he experienced real difficulty about breathing, and was conscious of a sickish throbbing in his temples and a pounding in his bosom like the tolling of a great bell. He stared, swaying....
Reviewing it all, he thought to detect something too damnably adventitious in the way she had nailed him, back there in the corridor of Troyon's. It was a bit too coincidental "a bit thick!" like that specious yarn of somnambulism she had told to excuse her presence in his room. Come to examine it, that excuse had been far too clumsy to hoodwink any but a man bewitched by beauty in distress.
Oh, to have Fred Obermuller say things like that to you! He gave me a bit of a push. 'Twas just a love-pat. I stumbled out on to the stage. And that's why, Marguerite de Monahan, I want you to buy in with the madam here. Let 'em keep on calling it Troyon's as much as they want, but you're to be a partner on the money I'll give you.
Lanyard lowered a window to release the musty odour peculiar to French taxis, got well peppered with moisture, and promptly put it up again. Then insensibly he relaxed, in the toils of memories roused by the reflection that this night fairly duplicated that which had welcomed him to Paris, twenty years ago. It was then that, for the first time in several months, he thought definitely of Troyon's.
Listen to what I've got to tell you, Mag, listen! You know where I was coming from yesterday when I passed Troyon's window and grinned up at you, sitting there, framed in bottles of hair tonic, with all that red wig of yours streaming about you? Yep, from that little, rat-eyed lawyer's office. I was glum as mud.
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