"Why not?" Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her fingers of their rings.
"With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night"
"Letty is sensible," Stanistreet interrupted. "Howson's faithful enough, and these American police dependable, but second-storey men happen in the best-guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave your things here with Letty's."
"No fear," his wife returned coolly. "Too frightfully weird. …"
She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a pretty figure of disdainful discontent.
"But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right," Blensop interposed vivaciously. "What do you imagine I heard to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!"
"What is that you say?" Mrs. Arden demanded sharply.
"The Lone Wolf … Fact. Have it on most excellent authority."
"The Lone Wolf!" Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. "If you ask me, I think the Lone Wolf nothing in the world but a scapegoat for police stupidity."
"You wouldn't say that," Mrs. Arden retorted, "if you had lived in Paris as long as I. There, in the dear old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax not to believe in him."
"Frightful nonsense," insisted the other. "I'm off. 'Night, Arthur. Shall you be long, George?"
"Oh, half an hour or so," her husband responded absently as she disappeared.
With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped
