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Could such success be reasonably expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan's yarn a warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every gambler knows as much. And what was Michael Lanyard but a common gambler, who persistently staked life and liberty against the blindly impartial casts of Chance?
There was always a bare chance of an accident that De Morbihan's car would burst a tire or be pocketed by the traffic, enabling Lanyard to strike off into some maze of dark side-streets, abandon the cab, and take to cover in good earnest. But that was a forlorn hope at best, and he knew it.
But the hood of the touring-car nosed him inexorably round the arch, away from the avenue de la Grande Armee and into the avenue du Bois. Only when in full course for Porte Dauphine did he appreciate De Morbihan's design. He was to be rushed out into the midnight solitudes of the Bois de Boulogne and there run down and slain. But now he began to nurse a feeble thrill of hope.
The party piled back into De Morbihan's limousine and was driven up the avenue des Champs Elysees, pausing at the Elysee Palace Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl his daughter? whoever she was! Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn't trouble to ascertain. He drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many hours: bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart.
Yet he had little doubt but that the pursuing machine had risen from the aerodrome of Count Remy de Morbihan at St.-Germain-en-Laye; that it was nothing less, in fact, than De Morbihan's Valkyr, reputed the fastest monoplane in Europe and winner of a dozen International events; and that it was guided, if not by De Morbihan himself, by one of the creatures of the Pack quite possibly, even more probably, by Ekstrom!
"A crook and all that? Miss Bannon, you know it!" "The Lone Wolf?" "You've known it all along. De Morbihan told you or else your father. Or, it may be, you were shrewd enough to guess it from De Morbihan's bragging in the restaurant.
It was just possible that De Morbihan's identification of Lanyard with that mysterious personage, at least by innuendo, had been unintentional. But somehow Lanyard didn't believe it had. The two questions troubled him sorely: Did De Morbihan know, did he merely suspect, or had he only loosed an aimless shot which chance had sped to the right goal?
Indeed, he had prided himself on conducting his operations with a degree of circumspection unusually thorough-going, even for him. Yet he was unable to rid himself of those misgivings roused by De Morbihan's declaration that the theft of the Omber jewels had been accomplished only at cost of a clue to the thief's identity.
And his mind could not be at ease with respect to Roddy, thanks to De Morbihan's gasconade in the presence of the detective and also to that hint which the Count had dropped concerning some fatal blunder in the course of Lanyard's British campaign. The adventurer could recall leaving no step uncovered.
"Merely a hanger-on of De Morbihan's," he told her lightly; "a spineless animal no trouble about scaring him off.... Now take this note, please, and we'll go. But as we reach the door, turn back and go out the other. You'll find a taxi without trouble. And stop for nothing!"
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