g a call from
somebody whom he desired to await his return in his rooms!

With such an open occasion, how could one fail?

Sofia asked only three minutes alone with the painting....

And if by any mishap she were caught, still she would not be dismayed. The
letters were hers, were they not? They had been stolen from her, he had no
right title to them who had purchased only the picture which had served as
their hiding-place. By all means, let him keep that stupid canvas; he could
hardly refuse to let her have her letters, not if she pleaded her
prettiest. And even if he should prove obtuse, ungenerous....

Her smile was definite and confident. She was beautiful--and Monsieur
Lanyard was aware of that. Had she not, that afternoon, in the auction
room, without his knowledge detected admiration in his eyes, a look warm
with something more than admiration only?

He was impressionable, then. And it would be no distasteful task to play
upon his susceptibilities. He was not only personally attractive
("magnetic" was the catch-word of the period), but if half that Lady
Diantha had hinted concerning him were true, to make a conquest of Michael
Lanyard would be a feather in the cap of any woman, to attempt it a
temptation all but irresistible to one--like Sofia--in whose veins ran the
ichor of progenitors to whom the scent of danger had been as breath of life
itself. It was hardly conceivable; even now Sofia must smile at her
friend's amiable endeavours to identify this mysterious monsieur with a
celebrated and preposterous criminal.

It might be true that, as Lady Diantha had declared, wherever Michael
Lanyard showed himself in open pursuit of his avowed avocation as a
collector of rare works of art--in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or
where-not--there in due sequence the Lone Wolf would consummate one of his
fantastic coups.

And it was indisputable that Lanyard was at present living in London, where
for some time past the Lone Wolf had been perniciously busy; or else his
bad name had been taken in vain by a baffled and exasperated Scotland Yard.

Again: Diantha had insisted that the Lone Wolf was by every evidence
completely woman-proof; and there might be something in her contention that
such an elusive yet spectacularly successful thief could hardly have won
the high place he held in the annals of criminology and in the esteem of
the sensation-loving public, if he were one who maintained normal relations
with his kin