Produced by Suzanne Shell, Jayam Subramanian and PG
Distributed Proofreaders
THE LONE WOLF
By
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
1914
CONTENTS
I. TROYON'S
II. RETURN
III. A POINT OF INTERROGATION
IV. A STRATAGEM
V. ANTICLIMAX
VI. THE PACK GIVES TONGUE
VII. L'ABBAYE
VIII. THE HIGH HAND
IX. DISASTER
X. TURN ABOUT
XI. FLIGHT
XII. AWAKENING
XIII. CONFESSIONAL
XIV. RIVE DROIT
XV. SHEER IMPUDENCE
XVI. RESTITUTION
XVII. THE FORLORN HOPE
XVIII. ENIGMA
XIX. UNMASKED
XX. WAR
XXI. APOSTATE
XXII. TRAPPED
XXIII. MADAME OMBER
XXIV. RENDEZVOUS
XXV. WINGS OF THE MORNING
XXVI. THE FLYING DEATH
XXVII. DAYBREAK
THE LONE WOLF
I
TROYON'S
It must have been Bourke who first said that even if you knew your way
about Paris you had to lose it in order to find it to Troyon's. But
then Bourke was proud to be Irish.
Troyon's occupied a corner in a jungle of side-streets, well withdrawn
from the bustle of the adjacent boulevards of St. Germain and St.
Michel, and in its day was a restaurant famous with a fame jealously
guarded by a select circle of patrons. Its cooking was the best in
Paris, its cellar second to none, its rates ridiculously reasonable;
yet Baedeker knew it not. And in the wisdom of the cognoscenti this was
well: it had been a pity to loose upon so excellent an establishment
the swarms of tourists that profaned every temple of gastronomy on the
Rive Droit.
The building was of three storeys, painted a dingy drab and trimmed
with dull green shutters. The restaurant occupied almost all of the
street front of the ground floor, a blank, non-committal double doorway
at one extreme of its plate-glass windows was seldom open and even more
seldom noticed.
This doorway was squat and broad and closed the mouth of a wide,
stone-walled passageway. In one of its two substantial wings of oak a
smaller door had been cut for the convenience of Troyon's guests, who
by this route gained the courtyard, a semi-roofed and shadowy place,
cool on the hottest day. From the court a staircase, with an air of
leading nowhere in particular, climbed lazily to the second storey and
thereby justified its modest pretensions; for the two upper floors of
Troyon's might have been plotted by a nightmare-ridden architect after
witnessing one of the first of the Palais Royal farces.
Above stairs, a mediaeval maze of corridors long and short, complicated
by many unexpected steps and staircases and turns and enigmatic doors,
ran every-which-way and as a rule landed one in the wrong room, linking
together, in all, some two-score bed-chambers. There were no salons or
reception-rooms, there was never a bath-room, there wasn't even running
water aside from two hallway taps, one to each storey. The honoured
guest and the exacting went to bed by lamplight: others put up with
candlesticks: gas burned only in the corridors and the
restaurant--asthmatic jets that, spluttering blue within globes obese,
semi-opaque, and yellowish, went well with furnishings and decorations
of the Second Empire to which years had lent a mellow and somehow
rakish dinginess; since nothing was ever refurbished.
With such accommodations the guests of Troyon's were well content. They
were not many, to begin with, and they were almost all middle-aged
bourgeois, a caste that resents innovations. They took Troyon's as they
found it: the rooms suited them admirably, and the tariff was modest.
Why do anything to disturb the perennial peace of so discreet and
confidential an establishment? One did much as one pleased there,
providing one's bill was paid with tolerable regularity and the hand
kept supple that operated the cordon in the small hours of the night.
Papa Troyon came from a tribe of inn-keepers and was liberal-minded;
while as for Madame his wife, she cared for nothing but pieces of
gold....
To Troyon's on a wet winter night in the year 1893 came the child who
as a man was to call himself Michael Lanyard.
He must have been four or five years old at that time: an age at which
consciousness is just beginning to recognize its individuality and
memory registers with capricious irregularity. He arrived at the hotel
in a state of excitement involving an almost abnormal sensitiveness to
impressions; but that was soon drowned deep in dreamless slumbers of
healthy exhaustion; and when he came to look back through a haze of
days, of which each had made its separate and imperative demand upon
his budding emotions, he found his store of memories strangely dulled
and disarticulate.
The earliest definite picture was that of himself, a small but vastly
important figure, nursing a heavy heart in a dark corner of a fiacre.
Beside him sat a man who swore fretfully into his moustache whenever
the whimpering of the boy threatened to develop into honest bawls: a
strange creature, with pockets full of candy and a way with little boys
in public surly and domineering, in private timid and propitiatory. It
was raining monotonously, with that melancholy persistence which is the
genius of Parisian winters; and the paving of the interminable strange
streets was as black glass shot with coloured lights. Some of the
streets roared like famished beasts, others again were silent, if with
a silence no less sinister. The rain made incessant crepitation on the
roof of the fiacre, and the windows wept without respite. Within the
cab a smell of mustiness contended feebly with the sickening reek of a
cigar which the man was forever relighting and which as often turned
cold between his teeth. Outside, unwearying hoofs were beating their
deadly rhythm, _cloppetty-clop_....
Back of all this lurked something formlessly alluring, something sad
and sweet and momentous, which belonged very personally to the child
but which he could never realize. Memory crept blindly toward it over a
sword-wide bridge that had no end. There had been (or the boy had
dreamed it) a long, weariful journey by railroad, the sequel to one by
boat more brief but wholly loathsome. Beyond this point memory failed
though sick with yearning. And the child gave over his instinctive but
rather inconsecutive efforts to retrace his history: his daily life at
Troyon's furnished compelling and obliterating interests.
Madame saw to that.
It was Madame who took charge of him when the strange man dragged him
crying from the cab, through a cold, damp place gloomy with shadows,
and up stairs to a warm bright bedroom: a formidable body, this Madame,
with cold eyes and many hairy moles, who made odd noises in her throat
while she undressed the little boy with the man standing by, noises
meant to sound compassionate and maternal but, to the child at least,
hopelessly otherwise.
Then drowsiness stealing upon one over a pillow wet with tears ...
oblivion....
And Madame it was who ruled with iron hand the strange new world to
which the boy awakened.
The man was gone by morning, and the child never saw him again; but
inasmuch as those about him understood no English and he no French, it
was some time before he could grasp the false assurances of Madame that
his father had gone on a journey but would presently return. The child
knew positively that the man was not his father, but when he was able
to make this correction the matter had faded into insignificance: life
had become too painful to leave time or inclination for the adjustment
of such minor and incidental questions as one's parentage.
The little boy soon learned to know himself as Marcel, which wasn't his
name, and before long was unaware he had ever had another. As he grew
older he passed as Marcel Troyon; but by then he had forgotten how to
speak English.
A few days after his arrival the warm, bright bed-chamber was exchanged
for a cold dark closet opening off Madame's boudoir, a cupboard
furnished with a rickety cot and a broken chair, lacking any provision
for heat or light, and ventilated solely by a transom over the door;
and inasmuch as Madame shared the French horror of draughts and so kept
her boudoir hermetically sealed nine months of the year, the transom
didn't mend matters much. But that closet formed the boy's sole refuge,
if a precarious one, through several years; there alone was he ever
safe from kicks and cuffs and scoldings for faults beyond his
comprehension; but he was never permitted a candle, and the darkness
and loneliness made the place one of haunted terror to the sensitive
and imaginative nature of a growing child.
He was, however, never insufficiently fed; and the luxury of forgetting
misery in sleep could not well be denied him.
By day, until of age to go to school, he played apprehensively in the
hallways with makeshift toys, a miserable, dejected little body with
his heart in his mouth at every sudden footfall, very much in the way
of femmes-de-chambre who had nothing in common with the warm-hearted,
impulsive, pitiful serving women of fiction. They complained of him to
Madame, and Madame came promptly to cuff him. He soon learned an almost
uncanny cunning in the art of effacing himself, when she was imminent,
to be as still as death and to move with the silence of a wraith. Not
infrequently his huddled immobility in a shadowy corner escaped her
notice as she passed. But it always exasperated her beyond measure to
look up, when she fancied herself alone, and become aware of the
wide-eyed, terrified stare of the transfixed boy....
That he was privileged to attend school at all was wholly due to a
great fear that obsessed Madame of doing anything to invite the
interest of the authorities. She was an honest woman, according to her
lights, an honest wife, and kept an honest house; but she feared the
gendarmerie more than the Wrath of God. And by ukase of Government a
certain amount of education was compulsory. So Marcel learned among
other things to read, and thereby took his first blind step toward
salvation.
Reading being the one pastime which could be practiced without making a
noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it
in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by
stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird mélange of
newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels: cullings
from the débris of guest-chambers.
Before Marcel was eleven he had read "Les Misérables" with intense
appreciation.
His reading, however, was not long confined to works in the French
language. Now and again some departing guest would leave an English
novel in his room, and these Marcel treasured beyond all other books;
they seemed to him, in a way, part of his birthright. Secretly he
called himself English in those days, because he knew he wasn't French:
that much, at least, he remembered. And he spent long hours poring over
the strange words until; at length, they came to seem less strange in
his eyes. And then some accident threw his way a small English-French
dictionary.
He was able to read English before he could speak it.
Out of school hours a drudge and scullion, the associate of scullions
and their immediate betters, drawn from that caste of loose tongues and
looser morals which breeds servants for small hotels, Marcel at eleven
(as nearly as his age can be computed) possessed a comprehension of
life at once exact, exhaustive and appalling.
Perhaps it was fortunate that he lived without friendship. His concept
of womanhood was incarnate in Madame Troyon; so he gave all the hotel
women a wide berth.
The men-servants he suffered in silence when they would permit it; but
his nature was so thoroughly disassociated from anything within their
experience that they resented him: a circumstance which exposed him to
a certain amount of baiting not unlike that which the village idiot
receives at the hands of rustic boors--until Marcel learned to defend
himself with a tongue which could distil vitriol from the vernacular,
and with fists and feet as well. Thereafter he was left severely to
himself and glad of it, since it furnished him with just so much more
time for reading and dreaming over what he read.
By fifteen he had developed into a long, lank, loutish youth, with a
face of extraordinary pallor, a sullen mouth, hot black eyes, and dark
hair like a mane, so seldom was it trimmed. He looked considerably
older than he was and the slightness of his body was deceptive,
disguising a power of sinewy strength. More than this, he could care
very handily for himself in a scrimmage: la savate had no secrets from
him, and he had picked up tricks from the Apaches quite as effectual as
any in the manual of jiu-jitsu. Paris he knew as you and I know the
palms of our hands, and he could converse with the precision of the
native-born in any one of the city's several odd argots.
To these accomplishments he added that of a thoroughly practised petty
thief.
His duties were by day those of valet-de-chambre on the third floor; by
night he acted as omnibus in the restaurant. For these services he
received no pay and less consideration from his employers (who would
have been horrified by the suggestion that they countenanced slavery)
only his board and a bed in a room scarcely larger, if somewhat better
ventilated, than the boudoir-closet from which he had long since been
ousted. This room was on the ground floor, at the back of the house,
and boasted a small window overlooking a narrow alley.
He was routed out before daylight, and his working day ended as a rule
at ten in the evening--though when there were performances on at the
Odéon, the restaurant remained open until an indeterminate hour for the
accommodation of the supper trade.
Once back in his kennel, its door closed and bolted, Marcel was free to
squirm out of the window and roam and range Paris at will. And it was
thus that he came by most of his knowledge of the city.
But for the most part Marcel preferred to lie abed and read himself
half-blind by the light of purloined candle-ends. Books he borrowed as
of old from the rooms of guests or else pilfered from quai-side stalls
and later sold to dealers in more distant quarters of the city. Now and
again, when he needed some work not to be acquired save through
outright purchase, the guests would pay further if unconscious tribute
through the sly abstraction of small coins. Your true Parisian,
however, keeps track of his money to the ultimate sou, an idiosyncrasy
which obliged the boy to practise most of his peculations on the
fugitive guest of foreign extraction.
In the number of these, perhaps the one best known to Troyon's was
Bourke.
He was a quick, compact, dangerous little Irishman who had fallen into
the habit of "resting" at Troyon's whenever a vacation from London
seemed a prescription apt to prove wholesome for a gentleman of his
kidney; which was rather frequently, arguing that Bourke's professional
activities were fairly onerous.
Having received most of his education in Dublin University, Bourke
spoke the purest English known, or could when so minded, while his
facile Irish tongue had caught the trick of an accent which passed
unchallenged on the Boulevardes. He had an alert eye for pretty women,
a heart as big as all out-doors, no scruples worth mentioning, a secret
sorrow, and a pet superstition.
The colour of his hair, a clamorous red, was the spring of his secret
sorrow. By that token he was a marked man. At irregular intervals he
made frantic attempts to disguise it; but the only dye that would serve
at all was a jet-black and looked like the devil in contrast with his
high colouring. Moreover, before a week passed, the red would crop up
again wherever the hair grew thin, lending him the appearance of a
badly-singed pup.
His pet superstition was that, as long as he refrained from practising
his profession in Paris, Paris would remain his impregnable Tower of
Refuge. The world owed Bourke a living, or he so considered; and it
must be allowed that he made collections on account with tolerable
regularity and success; but Paris was tax-exempt as long as Paris
offered him immunity from molestation.
Not only did Paris suit his tastes excellently, but there was no place,
in Bourke's esteem, comparable with Troyon's for peace and quiet.
Hence, the continuity of his patronage was never broken by trials of
rival hostelries; and Troyon's was always expecting Bourke for the
simple reason that he invariably arrived unexpectedly, with neither
warning nor ostentation, to stop as long as he liked, whether a day or
a week or a month, and depart in the same manner.
His daily routine, as Troyon's came to know it, varied but slightly: he
breakfasted abed, about half after ten, lounged in his room or the café
all day if the weather were bad, or strolled peacefully in the gardens
of the Luxembourg if it were good, dined early and well but always
alone, and shortly afterward departed by cab for some well-known bar on
the Rive Droit; whence, it is to be presumed, he moved on to other
resorts, for he never was home when the house was officially closed for
the night, the hours of his return remaining a secret between himself
and the concierge.
On retiring, Bourke would empty his pockets upon the dressing-table,
where the boy Marcel, bringing up Bourke's petit déjeuner the next
morning, would see displayed a tempting confusion of gold and silver
and copper, with a wad of bank-notes, and the customary assortment of
personal hardware.
Now inasmuch as Bourke was never wide-awake at that hour, and always
after acknowledging Marcel's "bon jour" rolled over and snored for
Glory and the Saints, it was against human nature to resist the allure
of that dressing-table. Marcel seldom departed without a coin or two.
He had yet to learn that Bourke's habits were those of an Englishman,
who never goes to bed without leaving all his pocket-money in plain
sight and--carefully catalogued in his memory....
One morning in the spring of 1904 Marcel served Bourke his last
breakfast at Troyon's.
The Irishman had been on the prowl the previous night, and his rasping
snore was audible even through the closed door when Marcel knocked and,
receiving no answer, used the pass-key and entered.
At this the snore was briefly interrupted; Bourke, visible at first
only as a flaming shock of hair protruding from the bedclothes,
squirmed an eye above his artificial horizon, opened it, mumbled
inarticulate acknowledgment of Marcel's salutation, and passed
blatantly into further slumbers.
Marcel deposited his tray on a table beside the bed, moved quietly to
the windows, closed them, and drew the lace curtains together. The
dressing-table between the windows displayed, amid the silver and
copper, more gold coins than it commonly did--some eighteen or twenty
louis altogether. Adroitly abstracting en passant a piece of ten
francs, Marcel went on his way rejoicing, touched a match to the fire
all ready-laid in the grate, and was nearing the door when, casting one
casual parting glance at the bed, he became aware of a notable
phenomenon: the snoring was going on lustily, but Bourke was watching
him with both eyes wide and filled with interest.
Startled and, to tell the truth, a bit indignant, the boy stopped as
though at word of command. But after the first flash of astonishment
his young face hardened to immobility. Only his eyes remained constant
to Bourke's.
The Irishman, sitting up in bed, demanded and received the piece of ten
francs, and went on to indict the boy for the embezzlement of several
sums running into a number of louis.
Marcel, reflecting that Bourke's reckoning was still some louis shy,
made no bones about pleading guilty. Interrogated, the culprit deposed
that he had taken the money because he needed it to buy books. No, he
wasn't sorry. Yes, it was probable that, granted further opportunity,
he would do it again. Advised that he was apparently a case-hardened
young criminal, he replied that youth was not his fault; with years and
experience he would certainly improve.
Puzzled by the boy's attitude, Bourke agitated his hair and wondered
aloud how Marcel would like it if his employers were informed of his
peculations.
Marcel looked pained and pointed out that such a course on the part of
Bourke would be obviously unfair; the only real difference between
them, he explained, was that where he filched a louis Bourke filched
thousands; and if Bourke insisted on turning him over to the mercy of
Madame and Papa Troyon, who would certainly summon a sergent de ville,
he, Marcel, would be quite justified in retaliating by telling the
Préfecture de Police all he knew about Bourke.
This was no chance shot, and took the Irishman between wind and water;
and when, dismayed, he blustered, demanding to know what the boy meant
by his damned impudence, Marcel quietly advised him that one knew what
one knew: if one read the English newspaper in the café, as Marcel did,
one could hardly fail to remark that monsieur always came to Paris
after some notable burglary had been committed in London; and if one
troubled to follow monsieur by night, as Marcel had, it became evident
that monsieur's first calls in Paris were invariably made at the
establishment of a famous fence in the rue des Trois Frères; and,
finally, one drew one's own conclusions when strangers dining in the
restaurant--as on the night before, by way of illustration--strangers
who wore all the hall-marks of police detectives from
England--catechised one about a person whose description was the
portrait of Bourke, and promised a hundred-franc note for information
concerning the habits and whereabouts of that person, if seen.
Marcel added, while Bourke gasped for breath, that the gentleman in
question had spoken to him alone, in the absence of other waiters, and
had been fobbed off with a lie.
But why--Bourke wanted to know--had Marcel lied to save him, when the
truth would have earned him a hundred francs?
"Because," Marcel explained coolly, "I, too, am a thief. Monsieur will
perceive it was a matter of professional honour."
Now the Irish have their faults, but ingratitude is not of their number.
Bourke, packing hastily to leave Paris, France and Europe by the
fastest feasible route, still found time to question Marcel briefly;
and what he learned from the boy about his antecedents so worked with
gratitude upon the sentimental nature of the Celt, that when on the
third day following the Cunarder Carpathia left Naples for New York,
she carried not only a gentleman whose brilliant black hair and glowing
pink complexion rendered him a bit too conspicuous among her
first-cabin passengers for his own comfort, but also in the second
cabin his valet--a boy of sixteen who looked eighteen.
The gentleman's name on the passenger-list didn't, of course, in the
least resemble Bourke. His valet's was given as Michael Lanyard.
The origin of this name is obscure; Michael being easily corrupted into
good Irish Mickey may safely be attributed to Bourke; Lanyard has a
tang of the sea which suggests a reminiscence of some sea-tale prized
by the pseudo Marcel Troyon.
In New York began the second stage in the education of a professional
criminal. The boy must have searched far for a preceptor of more sound
attainments than Bourke. It is, however, only fair to say that Bourke
must have looked as far for an apter pupil. Under his tutelage, Michael
Lanyard learned many things; he became a mathematician of considerable
promise, an expert mechanician, a connoisseur of armour-plate and
explosives in their more pacific applications, and he learned to grade
precious stones with a glance. Also, because Bourke was born of
gentlefolk, he learned to speak English, what clothes to wear and when
to wear them, and the civilized practice with knife and fork at table.
And because Bourke was a diplomatist of sorts, Marcel acquired the
knack of being at ease in every grade of society: he came to know that
a self-made millionaire, taken the right way, is as approachable as one
whose millions date back even unto the third generation; he could order
a dinner at Sherry's as readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most valuable
accomplishment of all, he learned to laugh. In the way of by-products
he picked up a working acquaintance with American, English and German
slang--French slang he already knew as a mother-tongue--considerable
geographical knowledge of the capitals of Europe, America and Illinois,
a taste that discriminated between tobacco and the stuff sold as such
in France, and a genuine passion for good paintings.
Finally Bourke drilled into his apprentice the three cardinal
principles of successful cracksmanship: to know his ground thoroughly
before venturing upon it; to strike and retreat with the swift
precision of a hawk; to be friendless.
And the last of these was the greatest.
"You're a promising lad," he said--so often that Lanyard would almost
wince from that formula of introduction--"a promising lad, though it's
sad I should be to say it, instead of proud as I am. For I've made you:
but for me you'd long since have matriculated at La Tour Pointue and
graduated with the canaille of the Santé. And in time you may become a
first-chop operator, which I'm not and never will be; but if you do,
'twill be through fighting shy of two things. The first of them's
Woman, and the second is Man. To make a friend of a man you must lower
your guard. Ordinarily 'tis fatal. As for Woman, remember this, m'lad:
to let love into your life you must open a door no mortal hand can
close. And God only knows what'll follow in. If ever you find you've
fallen in love and can't fall out, cut the game on the instant, or
you'll end wearing stripes or broad arrows--the same as myself would,
if this cursed cough wasn't going to be the death of me.... No, m'lad:
take a fool's advice (you'll never get better) and when you're shut of
me, which will be soon, I'm thinking, take the Lonesome Road and stick
to the middle of it. 'He travels the fastest that travels alone' is a
true saying, but 'tis only half the truth: he travels the farthest into
the bargain.... Yet the Lonesome Road has its drawbacks, lad--it's
_damned_ lonely!"
Bourke died in Switzerland, of consumption, in the winter of
1910--Lanyard at his side till the end.
Then the boy set his face against the world: alone, lonely, and
remembering.
II
RETURN
His return to Troyon's, whereas an enterprise which Lanyard had been
contemplating for several years--in fact, ever since the death of
Bourke--came to pass at length almost purely as an affair of impulse.
He had come through from London by the afternoon service--via
Boulogne--travelling light, with nothing but a brace of handbags and
his life in his hands. Two coups to his credit since the previous
midnight had made the shift advisable, though only one of them, the
later, rendered it urgent.
Scotland Yard would, he reckoned, require at least twenty-four hours to
unlimber for action on the Omber affair; but the other, the theft of
the Huysman plans, though not consummated before noon, must have set
the Chancelleries of at least three Powers by the ears before Lanyard
was fairly entrained at Charing Cross.
Now his opinion of Scotland Yard was low; its emissaries must operate
gingerly to keep within the laws they serve. But the agents of the
various Continental secret services have a way of making their own laws
as they go along: and for these Lanyard entertained a respect little
short of profound.
He would not have been surprised had he ran foul of trouble on the pier
at Folkestone. Boulogne, as well, figured in his imagination as a
crucial point: its harbour lights, heaving up over the grim grey waste,
peered through the deepening violet dusk to find him on the packet's
deck, responding to their curious stare with one no less insistently
inquiring.... But it wasn't until in the gauntlet of the Gare du Nord
itself that he found anything to shy at.
Dropping from train to platform, he surrendered his luggage to a ready
facteur, and followed the man through the crush, elbowed and
shouldered, offended by the pervasive reek of chilled steam and
coal-gas, and dazzled by the brilliant glare of the overhanging
electric arcs.
Almost the first face he saw turned his way was that of Roddy.
The man from Scotland Yard was stationed at one side of the platform
gates. Opposite him stood another known by sight to Lanyard--a highly
decorative official from the Préfecture de Police. Both were scanning
narrowly every face in the tide that churned between them.
Wondering if through some fatal freak of fortuity these were acting
under late telegraphic advice from London, Lanyard held himself well in
hand: the first sign of intent to hinder him would prove the signal for
a spectacular demonstration of the ungentle art of not getting caught
with the goods on. And for twenty seconds, while the crowd milled
slowly through the narrow exit, he was as near to betraying himself as
he had ever been--nearer, for he had marked down the point on Roddy's
jaw where his first blow would fall, and just where to plant a
coup-de-savate most surely to incapacitate the minion of the
Préfecture; and all the while was looking the two over with a manner of
the most calm and impersonal curiosity.
But beyond an almost imperceptible narrowing of Roddy's eyes when they
met his own, as if the Englishman were struggling with a faulty memory,
neither police agent betrayed the least recognition.
And then Lanyard was outside the station, his facteur introducing him
to a ramshackle taxicab.
No need to speculate whether or not Roddy were gazing after him; in the
ragged animal who held the door while Lanyard fumbled for his facteur's
tip, he recognized a runner for the Préfecture; and beyond question
there were many such about. If any lingering doubt should trouble
Roddy's mind he need only ask, "Such-and-such an one took what cab and
for what destination?" to be instantly and accurately informed.
In such case to go directly to his apartment, that handy little
rez-de-chaussée near the Trocadéro, was obviously inadvisable. Without
apparent hesitation Lanyard directed the driver to the Hotel Lutetia,
tossed the ragged spy a sou, and was off to the tune of a slammed door
and a motor that sorely needed overhauling....
The rain, which had welcomed the train a few miles from Paris, was in
the city torrential. Few wayfarers braved the swimming sidewalks, and
the little clusters of chairs and tables beneath permanent café awnings
were one and all neglected. But in the roadways an amazing concourse of
vehicles, mostly motor-driven, skimmed, skidded, and shot over
burnished asphalting all, of course, at top-speed--else this were not
Paris. Lanyard thought of insects on the surface of some dark forest
pool....
The roof of the cab rang like a drumhead; the driver blinked through
the back-splatter from his rubber apron; now and again the tyres lost
grip on the treacherous going and provided instants of lively suspense.
Lanyard lowered a window to release the musty odour peculiar to French
taxis, got well peppered with moisture, and promptly put it up again.
Then insensibly he relaxed, in the toils of memories roused by the
reflection that this night fairly duplicated that which had welcomed
him to Paris, twenty years ago.
It was then that, for the first time in several months, he thought
definitely of Troyon's.
And it was then that Chance ordained that his taxicab should skid. On
the point of leaving the Ile de la Cité by way of the Pont St. Michel,
it suddenly (one might pardonably have believed) went mad, darting
crabwise from the middle of the road to the right-hand footway with
evident design to climb the rail and make an end to everything in the
Seine. The driver regained control barely in time to avert a tragedy,
and had no more than accomplished this much when a bit of broken glass
gutted one of the rear tyres, which promptly gave up the ghost with a
roar like that of a lusty young cannon.
At this the driver (apparently a person of religious bias) said
something heartfelt about the sacred name of his pipe and, crawling
from under the apron, turned aft to assess damages.
On his own part Lanyard swore in sound Saxon, opened the door, and
delivered himself to the pelting shower.
"Well?" he enquired after watching the driver muzzle the eviscerated
tyre for some eloquent moments.
Turning up a distorted face, the other gesticulated with profane
abandon, by way of good measure interpolating a few disconnected words
and phrases. Lanyard gathered that this was the second accident of the
same nature since noon that the cab consequently lacked a spare tyre,
and that short of a trip to the garage the accident was irremediable.
So he said (intelligently) it couldn't be helped, paid the man and over
tipped precisely as though their journey had been successfully
consummated, and standing over his luggage watched the maimed vehicle
limp miserably off through the teeming mists.
Now in normal course his plight should have been relieved within two
minutes. But it wasn't. For some time all such taxis as did pass
displayed scornfully inverted flags. Also, their drivers jeered in
their pleasing Parisian way at the lonely outlander occupying a
position of such uncommon distinction in the heart of the storm and the
precise middle of the Pont St. Michel.
Over to the left, on the Quai de Marché Neuf, the façade of the
Préfecture frowned portentously--"La Tour Pointue," as the Parisian
loves to term it. Lanyard forgot his annoyance long enough to salute
that grim pile with a mocking bow, thinking of the men therein who
would give half their possessions to lay hands on him who was only a
few hundred yards distant, marooned in the rain!...
In its own good time a night-prowling fiacre ambled up and veered over
to his hail. He viewed this stroke of good-fortune with intense
disgust: the shambling, weather-beaten animal between the shafts
promised a long, damp crawl to the Lutetia.
And on this reflection he yielded to impulse.
Heaving in his luggage--"Troyon's!" he told the cocher....
The fiacre lumbered off into that dark maze of streets, narrow and
tortuous, which backs up from the Seine to the Luxembourg, while its
fare reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if
Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind
to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this
chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the
detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, at worst, several
hours' leeway.
When at length his conveyance drew up at the historic corner, Lanyard
alighting could have rubbed his eyes to see the windows of Troyon's all
bright with electric light.
Somehow, and most unreasonably, he had always believed the place would
go to the hands of the house-wrecker unchanged.
A smart portier ducked out, seized his luggage, and offered an
umbrella. Lanyard composed his features to immobility as he entered the
hotel, of no mind to let the least flicker of recognition be detected
in his eyes when they should re-encounter familiar faces.
And this was quite as well: for--again--the first he saw was Roddy.
III
A POINT OF INTERROGATION
The man from Scotland Yard had just surrendered hat, coat, and umbrella
to the vestiaire and was turning through swinging doors to the
dining-room. Again, embracing Lanyard, his glance seemed devoid of any
sort of intelligible expression; and if its object needed all his
self-possession in that moment, it was to dissemble relief rather than
dismay. An accent of the fortuitous distinguished this second encounter
too persuasively to excuse further misgivings. What the adventurer
himself hadn't known till within the last ten minutes, that he was
coming to Troyon's, Roddy couldn't possibly have anticipated; ergo,
whatever the detective's business, it had nothing to do with Lanyard.
Furthermore, before quitting the lobby, Roddy paused long enough to
instruct the vestiaire to have a fire laid in his room.
So he was stopping at Troyon's--and didn't care who knew it!
His doubts altogether dissipated by this incident, Lanyard followed his
natural enemy into the dining-room with an air as devil-may-care as one
could wish and so impressive that the maitre-d'hotel abandoned the
detective to the mercies of one of his captains and himself hastened to
seat Lanyard and take his order.
This last disposed of; Lanyard surrendered himself to new
impressions--of which the first proved a bit disheartening.
However impulsively, he hadn't resought Troyon's without definite
intent, to wit, to gain some clue, however slender, to the mystery of
that wretched child, Marcel. But now it appeared he had procrastinated
fatally: Time and Change had left little other than the shell of the
Troyon's he remembered. Papa Troyon was gone; Madame no longer occupied
the desk of the caisse; enquiries, so discreetly worded as to be
uncompromising, elicited from the maitre-d'hôtel the information that
the house had been under new management these eighteen months; the old
proprietor was dead, and his widow had sold out lock, stock and barrel,
and retired to the country--it was not known exactly where. And with
the new administration had come fresh decorations and furnishings as
well as a complete change of personnel: not even one of the old waiters
remained.
"'All, all are gone, the old familiar faces,'" Lanyard quoted in
vindictive melancholy--"damn 'em!"
Happily, it was soon demonstrated that the cuisine was being maintained
on its erstwhile plane of excellence: one still had that comfort....
Other impressions, less ultimate, proved puzzling, disconcerting, and
paradoxically reassuring.
Lanyard commanded a fair view of Roddy across the waist of the room.
The detective had ordered a meal that matched his aspect well--both of
true British simplicity. He was a square-set man with a square jaw,
cold blue eyes, a fat nose, a thin-lipped trap of a mouth, a face as
red as rare beefsteak. His dinner comprised a cut from the joint,
boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts, a bit of cheese, a bottle of Bass.
He ate slowly, chewing with the doggedness of a strong character
hampered by a weak digestion, and all the while kept eyes fixed to an
issue of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail, with an effect of
concentration quite too convincing.
Now one doesn't read the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail with
tense excitement. Humanly speaking, it can't be done.
Where, then, was the object of this so sedulously dissembled interest?
Lanyard wasn't slow to read this riddle to his satisfaction--in as far,
that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy's
quarry was another than himself.
Despite the lateness of the hour, which had by now turned ten o'clock,
the restaurant had a dozen tables or so in the service of guests
pleasantly engaged in lengthening out an agreeable evening with
dessert, coffee, liqueurs and cigarettes. The majority of these were in
couples, but at a table one removed from Roddy's sat a party of three;
and Lanyard noticed, or fancied, that the man from Scotland Yard turned
his newspaper only during lulls in the conversation in this quarter.
Of the three, one might pass for an American of position and wealth: a
man of something more than sixty years, with an execrable accent, a
racking cough, and a thin, patrician cast of features clouded darkly by
the expression of a soul in torment, furrowed, seamed, twisted--a mask
of mortal anguish. And once, when this one looked up and casually
encountered Lanyard's gaze, the adventurer was shocked to find himself
staring into eyes like those of a dead man: eyes of a grey so light
that at a little distance the colour of the irises blended
indistinguishably with their whites, leaving visible only the round
black points of pupils abnormally distended and staring, blank, fixed,
passionless, beneath lashless lids.
For the instant they seemed to explore Lanyard's very soul with a look
of remote and impersonal curiosity; then they fell away; and when next
the adventurer looked, the man had turned to attend to some observation
of one of his companions.
On his right sat a girl who might be his daughter; for not only was
she, too, hall-marked American, but she was far too young to be the
other's wife. A demure, old-fashioned type; well-poised but unassuming;
fetchingly gowned and with sufficient individuality of taste but not
conspicuously; a girl with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes; pretty,
not extravagantly so when her face was in repose, but with a slow smile
that rendered her little less than beautiful: in all (Lanyard thought)
the kind of woman that is predestined to comfort mankind, whose
strongest instinct is the maternal.
She took little part in the conversation, seldom interrupting what was
practically a duologue between her putative father and the third of
their party.
This last was one, whom Lanyard was sure he knew, though he could see
no more than the back of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan.
And he wondered with a thrill of amusement if it were possible that
Roddy was on the trail of that tremendous buck. If so, it would be a
chase worth following--a diversion rendered the more exquisite to
Lanyard by the spice of novelty, since for once he would figure as a
dispassionate bystander.
The name of Comte Remy de Morbihan, although unrecorded in the Almanach
de Gotha, was one to conjure with in the Paris of his day and
generation. He claimed the distinction of being at once the homeliest,
one of the wealthiest, and the most-liked man in France.
As to his looks, good or bad, they were said to prove infallibly fatal
with women, while not a few men, perhaps for that reason, did their
possessor the honour to imitate them. The revues burlesqued him; Sem
caricatured him; Forain counterfeited him extensively in that
inimitable series of Monday morning cartoons for Le Figaro: one said
"De Morbihan" instinctively at sight of that stocky figure, short and
broad, topped by a chubby, moon-like mask with waxed moustaches,
womanish eyes, and never-failing grin.
A creature of proverbial good-nature and exhaustless vitality, his
extraordinary popularity was due to the equally extraordinary
extravagance with which he supported that latest Gallic fad, "le
Sport." The Parisian Rugby team was his pampered protégé, he was an
active member of the Tennis Club, maintained not only a flock of
automobiles but a famous racing stable, rode to hounds, was a good
field gun, patronized aviation and motor-boat racing, risked as many
maximums during the Monte Carlo season as the Grand Duke Michael
himself, and was always ready to whet rapiers or burn a little harmless
powder of an early morning in the Parc aux Princes.
But there were ugly whispers current with respect to the sources of his
fabulous wealth. Lanyard, for one, wouldn't have thought him the
properest company or the best Parisian cicerone for an ailing American
gentleman blessed with independent means and an attractive daughter.
Paris, on the other hand--Paris who forgives everything to him who
contributes to her amusement--adored Comte Remy de Morbihan ...
But perhaps Lanyard was prejudiced by his partiality for Americans, a
sentiment the outgrowth of the years spent in New York with Bourke. He
even fancied that between his spirit and theirs existed some subtle
bond of sympathy. For all he knew he might himself be American...
For some time Lanyard strained to catch something of the conversation
that seemed to hold so much of interest for Roddy, but without success
because of the hum of voices that filled the room. In time, however,
the gathering began to thin out, until at length there remained only
this party of three, Lanyard enjoying a most delectable salad, and
Roddy puffing a cigar (with such a show of enjoyment that Lanyard
suspected him of the sin of smuggling) and slowly gulping down a second
bottle of Bass.
Under these conditions the talk between De Morbihan and the Americans
became public property.
The first remark overheard by Lanyard came from the elderly American,
following a pause and a consultation of his watch.
"Quarter to eleven," he announced.
"Plenty of time," said De Morbihan cheerfully. "That is," he amended,
"if mademoiselle isn't bored ..."
The girl's reply, accompanied by a pretty inclination of her head
toward the Frenchman, was lost in the accents of the first speaker--a
strong and sonorous voice, in strange contrast with his ravaged
appearance and distressing cough.
"Don't let that worry you," he advised cheerfully. "Lucia's accustomed
to keeping late hours with me; and who ever heard of a young and pretty
woman being bored on the third day of her first visit to Paris?"
He pronounced the name with the hard C of the Italian tongue, as though
it were spelled Luchia.
"To be sure," laughed the Frenchman; "one suspects it will be long
before mademoiselle loses interest in the rue de la Paix."
"You may well, when such beautiful things come from it," said the girl.
"See what we found there to-day."
She slipped a ring from her hand and passed it to De Morbihan.
There followed silence for an instant, then an exclamation from the
Frenchman:
"But it is superb! Accept, mademoiselle, my compliments. It is worthy
even of you."
She flushed prettily as she nodded smiling acknowledgement.
"Ah, you Americans!" De Morbihan sighed. "You fill us with envy: you
have the souls of poets and the wealth of princes!"
"But we must come to Paris to find beautiful things for our women-folk!"
"Take care, though, lest you go too far, Monsieur Bannon."
"How so--too far?"
"You might attract the attention of the Lone Wolf. They say he's on the
prowl once more."
The American laughed a trace contemptuously. Lanyard's fingers
tightened on his knife and fork; otherwise he made no sign. A sidelong
glance into a mirror at his elbow showed Roddy still absorbed in the
Daily Mail.
The girl bent forward with a look of eager interest.
"The Lone Wolf? Who is that?"
"You don't know him in America, mademoiselle?"
"No...."
"The Lone Wolf, my dear Lucia," the valetudinarian explained in a dryly
humourous tone, "is the sobriquet fastened by some imaginative French
reporter upon a celebrated criminal who seems to have made himself
something of a pest over here, these last few years. Nobody knows
anything definite about him, apparently, but he operates in a most
individual way and keeps the police busy trying to guess where he'll
strike next."
The girl breathed an incredulous exclamation.
"But I assure you!" De Morbihan protested. "The rogue has had a
wonderfully successful career, thanks to his dispensing with
confederates and confining his depredations to jewels and similar
valuables, portable and easy to convert into cash. Yet," he added,
nodding sagely, "one isn't afraid to predict his race is almost run."
"You don't tell me!" the older man exclaimed. "Have they picked up the
scent--at last?"
"The man is known," De Morbihan affirmed.
By now the conversation had caught the interest of several loitering
waiters, who were listening open-mouthed. Even Roddy seemed a bit
startled, and for once forgot to make business with his newspaper; but
his wondering stare was exclusively for De Morbihan.
Lanyard put down knife and fork, swallowed a final mouthful of Haut
Brion, and lighted a cigarette with the hand of a man who knew not the
meaning of nerves.
"Garçon!" he called quietly; and ordered coffee and cigars, with a
liqueur to follow....
"Known!" the American exclaimed. "They've caught him, eh?"
"I didn't say that," De Morbihan laughed; "but the mystery is no
more--in certain quarters."
"Who is he, then?"
"That--monsieur will pardon me--I'm not yet free to state. Indeed, I
may be indiscreet in saying as much as I do. Yet, among friends..."
His shrug implied that, as far as _he_ was concerned, waiters were
unhuman and the other guests of the establishment non-existent.
"But," the American persisted, "perhaps you can tell us how they got on
his track?"