about journey of it, to elude surveillance—and, I think, succeeded."
"You returned to Paris?"
"No: France, like England, was barred to the Lone Wolf. … We settled down in Belgium, Lucy and I and our boy. He was three months old. We found a quiet little home in Louvain"
The officer interrupted with a low cry of apprehension, Lanyard checked him with a sombre gesture. "Let me tell you. …
"We might have been happy. None knew us. We were sufficient unto ourselves. But I was without occupation; it occurred to me that my memoirs might make good reading—for Paris; my friends the French are as fond of their criminals as you English of your actors. On the second of August I journeyed to Paris to negotiate with a publisher. While I was away the Boche invaded Belgium. Before I could get back Louvain had been occupied, sacked. …"
He sat for a time in brooding silence; the officer made no attempt to rouse him, but the gaze he bent upon the man's lowered head was grave and pitiful. Abruptly, in a level and toneless voice, Lanyard resumed:
"In order to regain my home I had to go round by way of England and Holland. I crossed the Dutch frontier disguised as a Belgian peasant. When I re-entered Louvain it was to find … But all the world knows what the blond beast did in Louvain. My wife and little son had vanished utterly. I searched three months before I found trace of either. Then … Lucy died in my arms in a wretched hovel near Aerschot.
