"Monsieur undoubtedly means my shop--the Lone Wolf's craft."
"Call it anything you like," Morphew graciously conceded--"you know what I mean."
"But--I think monsieur said something about tonight--"
With undisguised regret Lanyard put aside a barely tasted glass; whereupon Morphew made a noise of expostulation.
"When the Lone Wolf was at his best, monsieur, he never drank anything if he had work in view. I have had too much already, if I am to believe you are not jesting . . ."
"That's something else you're due to learn when you get to know me better--I never joke about serious matters."
"In effect, monsieur has a great deal in common with humanity," Lanyard observed with a straight face. "It would be interesting, none the less, to learn where he draws the line between the serious and the trivial."
"I guess you won't want to argue that point when you realize the proposition I've laid out for you tonight is one of the biggest contracts you ever tackled."
With a quiet smile in eyes that cast back across a gulf of years, Lanyard pronounced: "I wonder . . ."
"Oh, I know you were a hell-bender in your prime!" Morphew contended--"but when all returns are in you'll be ready to admit you never went up against anything bigger than this."
Did the ulterior thought faintly re-echo in that assertion? With a finesse of which no man was more truly master Lanyard continued to seem astray in by-paths of diverting retrospection while in reality concentrating keenly critical scrutiny upon Morphew's countenance.
Such pure malevolence as glimpsed in those lightless eyes, in spite of every artifice of hooded lids and webbing wrinkles, was hardly to be taken as the work of a thwarted will to dominate or of mortified egotism merely, but must have been the distillation of an even stronger passion, fear or . . .
"The haul you made of Folly's emeralds that night you were pie-eyed, was a wonder, or would have been if you hadn't lost your nerve; and some of the tricks you've turned since then have been pippins; but tonight's going to make history. You listen to me . . ."
But Lanyard didn't, he heard only a rumour of words whose sense made no impression upon faculties staggered by a thunderstoke of intelligence. The very elaboration of carelessness with which he had named Folly McFee had betrayed Morphew's guarded secret: brute jealousy was the fundamental cause of the hatred in which he held Lanyard, the blind insensate jealousy of an aging man who foresees the failure of his efforts to find in love of woman fuel for waning fires.