Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned—to protect a butcher's clothing.
After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it, as if to bar out that reeking shambles.
He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully shaken with nausea.
The plot was damnably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the blame for it should be laid at Lanyard's door. Hence the attempt to drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find him there.
He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the second victim.
And the plot had succeeded despite its partial failure, despite the swift reverse chance and Lanyard's cunning had meted out to the Pack's agent. It was his dressing-gown that was saturate with Roddy's blood, just as they were his gloves, pilfered from his luggage, which had measurably protected the killer's hands, and which Lanyard had found in the next room, stripped hastily off and thrown to the floor—twin crumpled wads of blood-stained chamois-skin.
He had now little choice; he must either flee Paris and trust to his wits to save him, or else seek De Morbihan and solicit his protection, his boasted influence in high quarters.
But to give himself into the hands, to become an associate, of one who could be party to so cowardly a Crime as this … Lanyard told himself he would sooner pay the guillotine the penalty.…
