darkness, just as if I had jumped out of bed at some alarm; and then I
heard somebody enter the room and shut the door stealthily...Oh, please
understand me!"
"But I do, Miss Bannon--quite."
"I am so ashamed--"
"Please don't consider it that way."
"But now that you know--you don't think--"
"My dear Miss Bannon!"
"But it must be so hard to credit! Even I... Why, it's more than a year
since this last happened. Of course, as a child, it was almost a habit;
they had to watch me all the time. Once... But that doesn't matter. I
_am_ so sorry."
"You really mustn't worry," Lanyard insisted. "It's all quite
natural--such things do happen--are happening all the time--"
"But I don't want you--"
"I am nobody, Miss Bannon. Besides I shan't mention the matter to a
soul. And if ever I am fortunate enough to meet you again, I shall have
forgotten it completely--believe me."
There was convincing sincerity in his tone. The girl looked down, as
though abashed.
"You are very good," she murmured, moving toward the door.
"I am very fortunate."
Her glance of surprise was question enough.
"To be able to treasure this much of your confidence," he explained
with a tentative smile.
She was near the door; he opened it for her, but cautioned her with a
gesture and a whispered word: "Wait. I'll make sure nobody's about."
He stepped noiselessly into the hall and paused an instant, looking
right and left, listening.
The girl advanced to the threshold and there checked, hesitant, eyeing
him anxiously.
He nodded reassurance: "All right--coast's clear!"
But she delayed one moment more.
"It's you who are mistaken," she whispered, colouring again beneath his
regard, in which admiration could not well be lacking, "It is I who am
fortunate--to have met a--gentleman."
Her diffident smile, together with the candour of her eyes, embarrassed
him to such extent that for the moment he was unable to frame a reply.
"Good night," she whispered--"and thank you, thank you!"
Her room was at the far end of the corridor. She gained its threshold
in one swift dash, noiseless save for the silken whisper of her
garments, turned, flashed him a final look that left him with the
thought that novelists did not always exaggerate, that eyes could shine
like stars....
Her door closed softly.
Lanyard shook his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts,
and went back into his own bed-chamber.
He was quite content with the explanation the girl had given, but being
the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five
busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a
perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a
mislaid sou.
If pressed, he would have been put to it to name what he sought or
thought to find. What he did find was that nothing had been tampered
with and nothing more--not even so much as a dainty, lace-trimmed wisp
of sheer linen bearing the lady's monogram and exhaling a faint but
individual perfume.
Which, when he came to consider it, seemed hardly playing the game by
the book.
As for Roddy, Lanyard wasted several minutes, off and on, listening
attentively at the communicating door; but if the detective had stopped
snoring, his respiration was loud enough in that quiet hour, a sound of
harsh monotony.
True, that proved nothing; but Lanyard, after the fiasco of his first
attempt to catch his enemy awake, was no more disposed to be
hypercritical; he had his fill of being ingenious and profound. And
when presently he again left Troyon's (this time without troubling the
repose of the concierge) it was with the reflection that, if Roddy were
really playing 'possum, he was welcome to whatever he could find of
interest in the quarters of Michael Lanyard.
VI
THE PACK GIVES TONGUE
Lanyard's first destination was that convenient little rez-de-chaussée
apartment near the Trocadéro, at the junction of the rue Roget and the
avenue de l'Alma; but his way thither was so roundabout that the best
part of an hour was required for what might have been less than a
twenty-minute taxicab course direct from Troyon's. It was past one when
he arrived, afoot, at the corner.
Not that he grudged the time; for in Lanyard's esteem Bourke's epigram
had come to have the weight and force of an axiom: "The more trouble
you make for yourself, the less the good public will make for you."
Paradoxically, he hadn't the least intention of attempting to deceive
anybody as to his permanent address in Paris, where Michael Lanyard,
connoisseur of fine paintings, was a figure too conspicuous to permit
his making a secret of his residence. De Morbihan, moreover, through
recognizing him at Troyon's, had rendered it impossible for Lanyard to
adopt a nom-de-guerre there, even had he thought that ruse advisable.
But he had certain businesses to attend to before dawn, affairs
demanding privacy; and while by no means sure he was followed, one can
seldom be sure of anything, especially in Paris, where nothing is
impossible; and it were as well to lose a spy first as last. And his
mind could not be at ease with respect to Roddy, thanks to De
Morbihan's gasconade in the presence of the detective and also to that
hint which the Count had dropped concerning some fatal blunder in the
course of Lanyard's British campaign.
The adventurer could recall leaving no step uncovered. Indeed, he had
prided himself on conducting his operations with a degree of
circumspection unusually thorough-going, even for him. Yet he was
unable to rid himself of those misgivings roused by De Morbihan's
declaration that the theft of the Omber jewels had been accomplished
only at cost of a clue to the thief's identity.
Now the Count's positive information concerning the robbery proved that
the news thereof had anticipated the arrival of its perpetrator in
Paris; yet Roddy unquestionably had known nothing of it prior to its
mention in his presence, after dinner. Or else the detective was a
finer actor than Lanyard credited.
But how could De Morbihan have come by his news?
Lanyard was really and deeply perturbed....
Pestered to distraction by such thoughts, he fitted key to latch and
quietly let himself into his flat by a private street-entrance which,
in addition to the usual door opening on the court and under the eye of
the concierge, distinguished this from the ordinary Parisian apartment
and rendered it doubly suited to the adventurer's uses.
Then he turned on the lights and moved quickly from room to room of the
three comprising his quarters, with comprehensive glances reviewing
their condition.
But, indeed, he hadn't left the reception-hall for the salon without
recognizing that things were in no respect as they ought to be: a hat
he had left on the hall rack had been moved to another peg; a chair had
been shifted six inches from its ordained position; and the door of a
clothes-press, which he had locked on leaving, now stood ajar.
Furthermore, the state of the salon, which he had furnished as a lounge
and study, and of the tiny dining-room and the bed-chamber adjoining,
bore out these testimonies to the fact that alien hands had thoroughly
ransacked the apartment, leaving no square inch unscrutinized.
Yet the proprietor missed nothing. His rooms were a private gallery of
valuable paintings and antique furniture to poison with envy the mind
of any collector, and housed into the bargain a small museum of rare
books, manuscripts, and articles of exquisite workmanship whose
individuality, aside from intrinsic worth, rendered them priceless. A
burglar of discrimination might have carried off in one coat-pocket
loot enough to foot the bill for a twelve-month of profligate
existence. But nothing had been removed, nothing at least that was
apparent in the first tour of inspection; which, if sweeping, was by no
means superficial.
Before checking off more elaborately his mental inventory, Lanyard
turned attention to the protective device, a simple but exhaustive
system of burglar-alarm wiring so contrived that any attempt to enter
the apartment save by means of a key which fitted both doors and of
which no duplicate existed would alarm both the concierge and the
burglar protective society. Though it seemed to have been in no way
tampered with, to test the apparatus he opened a window on the court.
The lodge of the concierge was within earshot. If the alarm had been in
good order, Lanyard could have heard the bell from his window. He heard
nothing.
With a shrug, he shut the window. He knew well--none better--how such
protection could be rendered valueless by a thoughtful and fore-handed
housebreaker.
Returning to the salon, where the main body of his collection was
assembled, he moved slowly from object to object, ticking off items and
noting their condition; with the sole result of justifying his first
conclusion, that whereas nothing had escaped handling, nothing had been
removed.
By way of a final test, he opened his desk (of which the lock had been
deftly picked) and went through its pigeon-holes.
His scanty correspondence, composed chiefly of letters exchanged with
art dealers, had been scrutinized and replaced carelessly, in disorder:
and here again he missed nothing; but in the end, removing a small
drawer and inserting a hand in its socket, he dislodged a rack of
pigeon-holes and exposed the secret cabinet that is almost inevitably
an attribute of such pieces of period furniture.
A shallow box, this secret space contained one thing only, but that one
of considerable value, being the leather bill-fold in which the
adventurer kept a store of ready money against emergencies.
It was mostly for this, indeed, that he had come to his apartment; his
London campaign having demanded an expenditure far beyond his
calculations, so that he had landed in Paris with less than one hundred
francs in pocket. And Lanyard, for all his pride of spirit,
acknowledged one haunting fear that of finding himself strapped in the
face of emergency.
The fold yielded up its hoard to a sou: Lanyard counted out five notes
of one thousand francs and ten of twenty pounds: their sum, upwards of
two thousand dollars.
But if nothing had been abstracted, something had been added: the back
of one of the Bank of England notes had been used as a blank for
memorandum.
Lanyard spread it out and studied it attentively.
The handwriting had been traced with no discernible attempt at
disguise, but was quite strange to him. The pen employed had been one
of those needle-pointed nibs so popular in France; the hand was that of
an educated Frenchman. The import of the memorandum translated
substantially as follows:
_"To the Lone Wolf--
"The Pack sends Greetings
"and extends its invitation
"to participate in the benefits
"of its Fraternity.
"One awaits him always at
"L'Abbaye Thêléme."_
A date was added, the date of that very day...
Deliberately, having conned this communication, Lanyard produced his
cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, found his briquet, struck a
light, twisted the note of twenty pounds into a rude spill, set it
afire, lighted his cigarette there from and, rising, conveyed the
burning paper to a cold and empty fire-place wherein he permitted it to
burn to a crisp black ash.
When this was done, his smile broke through his clouding scowl.
"Well, my friend!" he apostrophized the author of that document which
now could never prove incriminating--"at all events, I have you to
thank for a new sensation. It has long been my ambition to feel
warranted in lighting a cigarette with a twenty-pound note, if the whim
should ever seize me!"
His smile faded slowly; the frown replaced it: something far more
valuable to him than a hundred dollars had just gone up in smoke ...
VII
L'ABBAYE
His secret uncovered, that essential incognito of his punctured, his
vanity touched to the quick--all that laboriously constructed edifice
of art and chicane which yesterday had seemed so substantial, so
impregnable a wall between the Lone Wolf and the World, to-day rent,
torn asunder, and cast down in ruins about his feet--Lanyard wasted
time neither in profitless lamentation or any other sort of repining.
He had much to do before morning: to determine, as definitely as might
in discretion be possible, who had fathomed his secret and how; to
calculate what chance he still had of pursuing his career without
exposure and disaster; and to arrange, if investigation verified his
expectations, which were of the gloomiest, to withdraw in good order,
with all honours of war, from that dangerous field.
Delaying only long enough to revise plans disarranged by the
discoveries of this last bad quarter of an hour, he put out the lights
and went out by the courtyard door; for it was just possible that those
whose sardonic whim it had been to name themselves "the Pack" might
have stationed agents in the street to follow their dissocial brother
in crime. And now more than ever Lanyard was firmly bent on going his
own way unwatched. His own way first led him stealthily past the door
of the conciergerie and through the court to the public hall in the
main body of the building. Happily, there were no lights to betray him
had anyone been awake to notice. For thanks to Parisian notions of
economy even the best apartment houses dispense with elevator-boys and
with lights that burn up real money every hour of the night. By
pressing a button beside the door on entering, however, Lanyard could
have obtained light in the hallways for five minutes, or long enough to
enable any tenant to find his front-door and the key-hole therein; at
the end of which period the lamps would automatically have extinguished
themselves. Or by entering a narrow-chested box of about the dimensions
of a generous coffin, and pressing a button bearing the number of the
floor at which he wished to alight, he could have been comfortably
wafted aloft without sign of more human agency. But he prudently
availed himself of neither of these conveniences. Afoot and in complete
darkness he made the ascent of five flights of winding stairs to the
door of an apartment on the sixth floor. Here a flash from a pocket
lamp located the key-hole; the key turned without sound; the door swung
on silent hinges.
Once inside, the adventurer moved more freely, with less precaution
against noise. He was on known ground, and alone; the apartment, though
furnished, was untenanted, and would so remain as long as Lanyard
continued to pay the rent from London under an assumed name.
It was the convenience of this refuge and avenue of retreat, indeed
which had dictated his choice of the rez-de-chaussée; for the
sixth-floor flat possessed one invaluable advantage--a window on a
level with the roof of the adjoining building.
Two minutes' examination sufficed to prove that here at least the Pack
had not trespassed....
Five minutes later Lanyard picked the common lock of a door opening
from the roof of an apartment house on the farthest corner of the
block, found his way downstairs, tapped the door of the conciergerie,
chanted that venerable Open Sesame of Paris, "_Cordon, s'il vous
plait!_" and was made free of the street by a worthy guardian too
sleepy to challenge the identity of this late-departing guest.
He walked three blocks, picked up a taxicab, and in ten minutes more
was set down at the Gare des Invalides.
Passing through the station without pause, he took to the streets
afoot, following the boulevard St. Germain to the rue du Bac; a brief
walk up this time-worn thoroughfare brought him to the ample, open and
unguarded porte-cochére of a court walled with beetling ancient
tenements.
When he had made sure that the courtyard was deserted, Lanyard
addressed himself to a door on the right; which to his knock swung
promptly ajar with a clicking latch. At the same time the adventurer
whipped from beneath his cloak a small black velvet visor and adjusted
it to mask the upper half of his face. Then entering a narrow and
odorous corridor, whose obscurity was emphasized by a lonely guttering
candle, he turned the knob of the first door and walked into a small,
ill-furnished room.
A spare-bodied young man, who had been reading at a desk by the light
of an oil-lamp with a heavy green shade, rose and bowed courteously.
"Good morning, monsieur," he said with the cordiality of one who greets
an acquaintance of old standing. "Be seated," he added, indicating an
arm-chair beside the desk. "It seems long since one has had the honour
of a call from monsieur."
"That is so," Lanyard admitted, sitting down.
The young man followed suit. The lamplight, striking across his face
beneath the greenish penumbra of the shade, discovered a countenance of
Hebraic cast.
"Monsieur has something to show me, eh?"
"But naturally."
Lanyard's reply just escaped a suspicion of curtness: as who should
say, what did you expect? He was puzzled by something strange and new
in the attitude of this young man, a trace of reserve and constraint....
They had been meeting from time to time for several years, conducting
their secret and lawless business according to a formula invented by
Bourke and religiously observed by Lanyard. A note or telegram of
innocent superficial intent, addressed to a certain member of a leading
firm of jewellers in Amsterdam, was the invariable signal for
conferences such as this; which were invariably held in the same place,
at an hour indeterminate between midnight and dawn, between on the one
hand this intelligent, cultivated and well-mannered young Jew, and on
the other hand the thief in his mask.
In such wise did the Lone Wolf dispose of his loot, at all events of
the bulk thereof; other channels were, of course, open to him, but none
so safe; and with no other receiver of stolen goods could he hope to
make such fair and profitable deals.
Now inevitably in the course of this long association, though each
remained in ignorance of his confederate's identity, these two had come
to feel that they knew each other fairly well. Not infrequently, when
their business had been transacted, Lanyard would linger an hour with
the agent, chatting over cigarettes: both, perhaps, a little thrilled
by the piquancy of the situation; for the young Jew was the only man
who had ever wittingly met the Lone Wolf face to face....
Why then this sudden awkwardness and embarrassment on the part of the
agent?
Lanyard's eyes narrowed with suspicion.
In silence he produced a jewel-case of morocco leather and handed it
over to the Jew, then settled back in his chair, his attitude one of
lounging, but his mind as quick with distrust as the fingers that,
under cover of his cloak, rested close to a pocket containing his
automatic.
Accepting the box with a little bow, the Jew pressed the catch and
discovered its contents. But the richness of the treasure thus
disclosed did not seem to surprise him; and, indeed, he had more than
once been introduced with no more formality to plunder of far greater
value. Fitting a jeweller's glass to his eye, he took up one after
another of the pieces and examined them under the lamplight. Presently
he replaced the last, shut down the cover of the box, turned a
thoughtful countenance to Lanyard, and made as if to speak, but
hesitated.
"Well?" the adventurer demanded impatiently.
"This, I take it," said the Jew absently, tapping the box, "is the
jewellery of Madame Omber."
"_I_ took it," Lanyard retorted good-naturedly--"not to put too fine a
point upon it!"
"I am sorry," the other said slowly.
"Yes?"
"It is most unfortunate..."
"May one enquire what is most unfortunate?"
The Jew shrugged and with the tips of his fingers gently pushed the box
toward his customer. "This makes me very unhappy," he admitted: "but I
have no choice in the matter, monsieur. As the agent of my principals I
am instructed to refuse you an offer for these valuables."
"Why?"
Again the shrug, accompanied by a deprecatory grimace: "That is
difficult to say. No explanation was made me. My instructions were
simply to keep this appointment as usual, but to advise you it will be
impossible for my principals to continue their relations with you as
long as your affairs remain in their present status."
"Their present status?" Lanyard repeated. "What does that mean, if you
please?"
"I cannot say monsieur. I can only repeat that which was said to me."
After a moment Lanyard rose, took the box, and replaced it in his
pocket. "Very well," he said quietly. "Your principals, of course,
understand that this action on their part definitely ends our
relations, rather than merely interrupts them at their whim?"
"I am desolated, monsieur, but ... one must assume that they have
considered everything. You understand, it is a matter in which I am
wholly without discretion, I trust?"
"O quite!" Lanyard assented carelessly. He held out his hand.
"Good-bye, my friend."
The Jew shook hands warmly.
"Good night, monsieur--and the best of luck!"
There was significance in his last words that Lanyard did not trouble
to analyze. Beyond doubt, the man knew more than he dared admit. And
the adventurer told himself he could shrewdly surmise most of that
which the other had felt constrained to leave unspoken.
Pressure from some quarter had been brought to bear upon that eminently
respectable firm of jewel dealers in Amsterdam to induce them to
discontinue their clandestine relations with the Lone Wolf, profitable
though these must have been.
Lanyard believed he could name the quarter whence this pressure was
being exerted, but before going further or coming to any momentous
decision, he was determined to know to a certainty who were arrayed
against him and how much importance he need attach to their antagonism.
If he failed in this, it would be the fault of the other side, not his
for want of readiness to accept its invitation.
In brief, he didn't for an instant contemplate abandoning either his
rigid rule of solitude or his chosen career without a fight; but he
preferred not to fight in the dark.
Anger burned in him no less hotly than chagrin. It could hardly be
otherwise with one who, so long suffered to go his way without let or
hindrance, now suddenly, in the course of a few brief hours, found
himself brought up with a round turn--hemmed in and menaced on every
side by secret opposition and hostility.
He no longer feared to be watched; and the very fact that, as far as he
could see, he wasn't watched, only added fuel to his resentment,
demonstrating as it did so patently the cynical assurance of the Pack
that they had him cornered, without alternative other than to supple
himself to their will.
To the driver of the first taxicab he met, Lanyard said "L'Abbaye,"
then shutting himself within the conveyance, surrendered to the most
morose reflections.
Nothing of this mood was, however, apparent in his manner on alighting.
He bore a countenance of amiable insouciance through the portals of
this festal institution whose proudest boast and--incidentally--sole
claim to uniquity is that it never opens its doors before midnight nor
closes them before dawn.
He had moved about with such celerity since entering his flat on the
rue Roget that it was even now only two o'clock; an hour at which
revelry might be expected to have reached its apogee in this, the
soi-disant "smartest" place in Paris.
A less sophisticated adventurer might have been flattered by the
cordiality of his reception at the hands of that arbiter elegantiarum
the maitre-d'hôtel.
"Ah-h, Monsieur Lanya_rrr_! But it is long since we have been so
favoured. However, I have kept your table for you."
"Have you, though?"
"Could it be otherwise, after receipt of your honoured order?"
"No," said Lanyard coolly, "I presume not, if you value your peace of
mind."
"Monsieur is alone?" This with an accent of disappointment.
"Temporarily, it would seem so."
"But this way, if you please...."
In the wake of the functionary, Lanyard traversed that frowsy anteroom
where doubtful wasters are herded on suspicion in company with the
corps of automatic Bacchanalians and figurantes, to the main
restaurant, the inner sanctum toward which the naïve soul of the
travel-bitten Anglo-Saxon aspires so ardently.