Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together
until their knuckles shone white through the skin--but not as white as
the face from which her eyes sought his with a look of dumb horror,
dazed, pitiful, imploring.
"You're not deceiving me? But no--why should you?" she faltered. "But
how terrible, how unspeakably awful! ..."
"I'm sorry," Lanyard mumbled--"I'd have held my tongue if I hadn't
thought you knew--"
"You thought I knew--and didn't lift a finger to save the man?" She
jumped up with a blazing face. "Oh, how could you?"
"No--not that--I never thought that. But, meeting you then and there,
so opportunely--I couldn't ignore the coincidence; and when you
admitted you were running away from your father, considering all the
circumstances, I was surely justified in thinking it was realization,
in part at least, of what had happened that was driving you away." She
shook her head slowly, her indignation ebbing as quickly as it had
risen. "I understand," she said; "you had some excuse, but you were
mistaken. I ran away--yes--but not because of that. I never dreamed ..."
She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and twisting her hands
together in a manner he found it painful to watch.
"But please," he implored, "don't take it so much to heart, Miss
Bannon. If you knew nothing, you couldn't have prevented it."
"No," she said brokenly--"I could have done nothing ... But I didn't
know. It isn't that--it's the horror and pity of it. And that you could
think--!"
"But I didn't!" he protested--"truly I did not. And for what I did
think, for the injustice I did do you, believe me, I'm truly sorry."
"You were quite justified," she said--"not only by circumstantial
evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know ... now I must tell you
..."
"Nothing you don't wish to!" he interrupted. "The fact that I
practically kidnapped you under pretence of doing you a service, and
suspected you of being in the pay of that Pack, gives me no title to
your confidence."
"Can I blame you for thinking what you did?" She went on slowly,
without looking up--gaze steadfast to her interlaced fingers: "Now for
my own sake I want you to know what otherwise, perhaps, I shouldn't
have told you--not yet, at all events. I'm no more Bannon's daughter
than you're his son. Our names sound alike--people frequently make the
same mistake. My name is Shannon--Lucy Shannon. Mr. Bannon called me
Lucia because he knew I didn't like it, to tease me; for the same
reason he always kept up the pretence that I was his daughter when
people misunderstood."
"But--if that is so--then what--?"
"Why--it's very simple." Still she didn't look up. "I'm a trained
nurse. Mr. Bannon is consumptive--so far gone, it's a wonder he didn't
die years ago: for months I've been haunted by the thought that it's
only the evil in him keeps him alive. It wasn't long after I took the
assignment to nurse him that I found out something about him.... He'd
had a haemorrhage at his desk; and while he lay in coma, and I was
waiting for the doctor, I happened to notice one of the papers he'd
been working over when he fell. And then, just as I began to appreciate
the sort of man I was employed by, he came to, and saw--and knew. I
found him watching me with those dreadful eyes of his, and though he
was unable to speak, knew my life wasn't safe if ever I breathed a word
of what I had read. I would have left him then, but he was too cunning
for me, and when in time I found a chance to escape--I was afraid I'd
not live long if ever I left him. He went about it deliberately; to
keep me frightened, and though he never mentioned the matter directly,
let me know plainly, in a hundred ways, what his power was and what
would happen if I whispered a word of what I knew. It's nearly a year
now--nearly a year of endless terror and..."
Her voice fell; she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of
that year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly
moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this
woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and
courageous; and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in
enforced association with a creature of Bannon's ruthless stamp, he was
rent with compassion and swore to himself he'd stand by her and see her
through and free and happy if he died for it--or ended in the Santé!
"Poor child!" he heard himself murmuring--"poor child!"
"Don't pity me!" she insisted, still with face averted. "I don't
deserve it. If I had the spirit of a mouse, I'd have defied him; it
needed only courage enough to say one word to the police--"
"But who is he, then?" Lanyard demanded. "What is he, I mean?"
"I hardly know how to tell you. And I hardly dare: I feel as if these
walls would betray me if I did.... But to me he's the incarnation of
all things evil...." She shook herself with a nervous laugh. "But why
be silly about it? I don't really know what or who he is: I only
suspect and believe that he is a man whose life is devoted to planning
evil and ordering its execution through his lieutenants. When the
papers at home speak of 'The Man Higher Up' they mean Archer Bannon,
though they don't know it--or else I'm merely a hysterical woman
exaggerating the impressions of a morbid imagination.... And that's all
I know of him that matters."
"But why, if you believe all this--how did you at length find
courage--?"
"Because I no longer had courage to endure; because I was more afraid
to stay than to go--afraid that my own soul would be forfeit. And then,
last night, he ordered me to go to your room and search it for evidence
that you were the Lone Wolf. It was the first time he'd ever asked
anything like that of me. I was afraid, and though I obeyed, I was glad
when you interrupted--glad even though I had to lie the way I did....
And all that worked on me, after I'd gone back to my room, until I felt
I could stand it no longer; and after a long time, when the house
seemed all still, I got up, dressed quietly and ... That is how I came
to meet you--quite by accident."
"But you seemed so frightened at first when you saw me--"
"I was," she confessed simply; "I thought you were Mr. Greggs."
"Greggs?"
"Mr. Bannon's private secretary--his right-hand man. He's about your
height and has a suit like the one you wear, and in that poor light--at
the distance I didn't notice you were clean-shaven--Greggs wears a
moustache--"
"Then it was Greggs murdered Roddy and tried to drug me! ... By George,
I'd like to know whether the police got there before Bannon, or
somebody else, discovered the substitution. It was a telegram to the
police, you know, I sent from the Bourse last night!"
In his excitement Lanyard began to pace the floor rapidly; and now that
he was no longer staring at her, the girl lifted her head and watched
him closely as he moved to and fro, talking aloud--more to himself than
to her.
"I wish I knew! ... And what a lucky thing, you did meet me! For if
you'd gone on to the Gare du Nord and waited there....Well, it isn't
likely Bannon didn't discover your flight before eight o'clock this
morning, is it?"
"I'm afraid not...."
"And they've drawn the dead-line for me round every conceivable exit
from Paris: Popinot's Apaches are picketed everywhere. And if Bannon
had found out about you in time, it would have needed only a word..."
He paused and shuddered to think what might have ensued had that word
been spoken and the girl been found waiting for her train in the Gare
du Nord.
"Mercifully, we've escaped that. And now, with any sort of luck, Bannon
ought to be busy enough, trying to get his precious Mr. Greggs out of
the Santé, to give us a chance. And a fighting chance is all I ask."
"Mr. Lanyard"--the girl bent toward him across the table with a gesture
of eager interest--"have you any idea why he--why Mr. Bannon hates you
so?"
"But does he? I don't know!"
"If he doesn't, why should he plot to cast suspicion of murder on you,
and why be so anxious to know whether you were really the Lone Wolf? I
saw his eyes light up when De Morbihan mentioned that name, after
dinner; and if ever I saw hatred in a man's face, it was in his as he
watched you, when you weren't looking."
"As far as I know, I never heard of him before," Lanyard said
carelessly. "I fancy it's nothing more than the excitement of a
man-hunt. Now that they've found me out, De Morbihan and his crew won't
rest until they've got my scalp."
"But why?"
"Professional jealousy. We're all crooks, all in the same boat, only I
won't row to their stroke. I've always played a lone hand successfully;
now they insist on coming into the game and sharing my winnings. And
I've told them where they could go."
"And because of that, they're willing to----"
"There's nothing they wouldn't do, Miss Shannon, to bring me to my
knees or see me put out of the way, where my operations couldn't hurt
their pocketbooks. Well ... all I ask is a fighting chance, and they
shall have their way!"
Her brows contracted. "I don't understand.... You want a fighting
chance--to surrender--to give in to their demands?"
"In a way--yes. I want a fighting chance to do what I'd never in the
world get them to credit--give it all up and leave them a free field."
And when still she searched his face with puzzled eyes, he insisted: "I
mean it; I want to get away--clear out--chuck the game for good and
all!"
A little silence greeted this announcement. Lanyard, at pause near the
table, resting a hand on it, bent to the girl's upturned face a grave
but candid regard. And the deeps of her eyes that never swerved from
his were troubled strangely in his vision. He could by no means account
for the light he seemed to see therein, a light that kindled while he
watched like a tiny flame, feeble, fearful, vacillant, then as the
moments passed steadied and grew stronger but ever leaped and danced;
so that he, lost in the wonder of it and forgetful of himself, thought
of it as the ardent face of a happy child dancing in the depths of some
brown autumnal woodland....
"You," she breathed incredulously--"you mean, you're going to stop--?"
"I _have_ stopped, Miss Shannon. The Lone Wolf has prowled for the last
time. I didn't know it until I woke up, an hour or so ago, but I've
turned my last job."
He remarked her hands were small, in keeping with the slightness of her
person, but somehow didn't seem so--wore a look of strength and
capability, befitting hands trained to a nurse's duties; and saw them
each tight-fisted but quivering as they rested on the table, as though
their mistress struggled to suppress the manifestation of some emotion
as powerful as unfathomable to him.
"But why?" she demanded in bewilderment. "But why do you say that? What
can have happened to make you--?"
"Not fear of that Pack!" he laughed--"not that, I promise you."
"Oh, I know!" she said impatiently--"I know that very well. But still I
don't understand...."
"If it won't bore you, I'll try to explain." He drew up his chair and
sat down again, facing her across the littered table. "I don't suppose
you've ever stopped to consider what an essentially stupid animal a
crook must be. Most of them are stupid because they practise clumsily
one of the most difficult professions imaginable, and inevitably fail
at it, yet persist. They wouldn't think of undertaking a job of civil
engineering with no sort of preparation, but they'll tackle a dangerous
proposition in burglary without a thought, and pay for failure with
years of imprisonment, and once out try it again. That's one kind of
criminal--the ninety-nine per-cent class--incurably stupid! There's
another class, men whose imagination forewarns them of dangers and
whose mental training, technical equipment and sheer manual dexterity
enable them to attack a formidable proposition like a modern safe--by
way of illustration--and force its secret. They're the successful
criminals, like myself--but they're no less stupid, no less failures,
than the other ninety-nine in our every hundred, because they never
stop to think. It never occurs to them that the same intelligence,
applied to any one of the trades they must be masters of, would not
only pay them better, but leave them their self-respect and rid them
forever of the dread of arrest that haunts us all like the memory of
some shameful act.... All of which is much more of a lecture than I
meant to inflict upon you, Miss Shannon, and sums up to just this:
_I_'ve stopped to think...."
With this he stopped for breath as well, and momentarily was silent,
his faint, twisted smile testifying to self-consciousness; but
presently, seeing that she didn't offer to interrupt, but continued to
give him her attention so exclusively that it had the effect of
fascination, he stumbled on, at first less confidently. "When I woke up
it was as if, without my will, I had been thinking all this out in my
sleep. I saw myself for the first time clearly, as I have been ever
since I can remember--a crook, thoughtless, vain, rapacious, ruthless,
skulking in shadows and thinking myself an amazingly fine fellow
because, between coups, I would play the gentleman a bit, venture into
the light and swagger in the haunts of the gratin! In my poor,
perverted brain I thought there was something fine and thrilling and
romantic in the career of a great criminal and myself a wonderful
figure--an enemy of society!"
"Why do you say this to me?" she demanded abruptly, out of a phase of
profound thoughtfulness.
He lifted an apologetic shoulder. "Because, I fancy, I'm no longer
self-sufficient. _I_ was all of that, twenty-four hours ago; but now
I'm as lonesome as a lost child in a dark forest. I haven't a friend in
the world. I'm like a stray pup, grovelling for sympathy. And you are
unfortunate enough to be the only person I can declare myself to. It's
going to be a fight--I know that too well!--and without something
outside myself to struggle toward, I'll be heavily handicapped. But if
..." He faltered, with a look of wistful earnestness. "If I thought
that you, perhaps, were a little interested, that I had your faith to
respect and cherish ... if I dared hope that you'd be glad to know I
had won out against odds, it would mean a great deal to me, it might
mean my salvation!"
Watching her narrowly, hanging upon her decision with the anxiety of a
man proscribed and hoping against hope for pardon, he saw her eyes
cloud and shift from his, her lips parted but hesitant; and before she
could speak, hastily interposed:
"Please don't say anything yet. First let me demonstrate my sincerity.
So far I've done nothing to persuade you but--talk and talk and talk!
Give me a chance to prove I mean what I say."
"How"--she enunciated only with visible effort and no longer met his
appeal with an open countenance--"how can you do that?"
"In the long run, by establishing myself in some honest way of life,
however modest; but now, and principally, by making reparation for at
least one crime I've committed that's not irreparable."
He caught her quick glance of enquiry, and met it with a confident nod
as he placed between them the morocco-bound jewel-case.
"In London, yesterday," he said quietly, "I brought off two big coups.
One was deliberate, the other the inspiration of a moment. The one I'd
planned for months was the theft of the Omber jewels--here."
He tapped the case and resumed in the same manner: "The other job needs
a diagram: Not long ago a Frenchman named Huysman, living in Tours, was
mysteriously murdered--a poor inventor, who had starved himself to
perfect a stabilizator, an attachment to render aeroplanes practically
fool-proof. His final trials created a sensation and he was on the eve
of selling his invention to the Government when he was killed and his
plans stolen. Circumstantial evidence pointed to an international spy
named Ekstrom--Adolph Ekstrom, once Chief of the Aviation Corps of the
German Army, cashiered for general blackguardism with a suspicion of
treason to boot. However, Ekstrom kept out of sight; and presently the
plans turned up in the German War Office. That was a big thing for
Germany; already supreme with her dirigibles, the acquisition of the
Huysman stabilizator promised her ten years' lead over the world in the
field of aeroplanes.... Now yesterday Ekstrom came to the surface in
London with those self-same plans to sell to England. Chance threw him
my way, and he mistook me for the man he'd expected to meet--Downing
Street's secret agent. Well--no matter how--I got the plans from him
and brought them over with me, meaning to turn them over to France, to
whom by rights they belong."
"Without consideration?" the girl enquired shrewdly.
"Not exactly. I had meant to make no profit of the affair--I'm a bit
squeamish about tainted money!--but under present conditions, if France
insists on rewarding me with safe conduct out of the country, I shan't
refuse it.... Do you approve?"
She nodded earnestly: "It would be worse than criminal to return them
to Ekstrom...."
"That's my view of the matter."
"But these?" The girl rested her hand upon the jewel-case.
"Those go back to Madame Omber. She has a home here in Paris that I
know very well. In fact, the sole reason why I didn't steal them here
was that she left for England unexpectedly, just as I was all set to
strike. Now I purpose making use of my knowledge to restore the jewels
without risk of falling into the hands of the police. That will be an
easy matter.... And that brings me to a great favour I would beg of
you."
She gave him a look so unexpectedly kind that it staggered him. But he
had himself well in hand.
"You can't now leave Paris before morning--thanks to my having
overslept," he explained. "There's no honest way I know to raise money
before the pawn-shops open. But I'm hoping that won't be necessary; I'm
hoping I can arrange matters without going to that extreme. Meanwhile,
you agree that these jewels must be returned?"
"Of course," she affirmed gently.
"Then ... will you accompany me when I replace them? There won't be any
danger: I promise you that. Indeed, it would be more hazardous for you
to wait for me elsewhere while I attended to the matter alone. And I'd
like you to be convinced of my good faith."
"Don't you think you can trust me for that as well?" she asked, with a
flash of humour.
"Trust you!"
"To believe ... Mr. Lanyard," she told him gently but earnestly, "I do
believe."
"You make me very happy," he said ... "but I'd like you to see for
yourself.... And I'd be glad not to have to fret about your safety in
my absence. As a bureau of espionage, Popinot's brigade of Apaches is
without a peer in Europe. I am positively afraid to leave you alone...."
She was silent.
"Will you come with me, Miss Shannon?" "That is your sole reason for
asking this of me?" she insisted, eyeing him steadily.
"That I wish you to believe in me--yes."
"Why?" she pursued, inexorable.
"Because ... I've already told you."
"That you want someone's good opinion to cherish.... But why, of all
people, me--whom you hardly know, of whom what little you do know is
hardly reassuring?"
He coloured, and boggled his answer.... "I can't tell you," he
confessed in the end.
"Why can't you tell me?"
He stared at her miserably.... "I've no right...."
"In spite of all I've said, in spite of the faith you so generously
promise me, in your eyes I must still figure as a thief, a liar, an
impostor--self-confessed. Men aren't made over by mere protestations,
nor even by their own efforts, in an hour, or a day, or a week. But
give me a year: if I can live a year in honesty, and earn my bread, and
so prove my strength--then, perhaps, I might find the courage, the--the
effrontery to tell you why I want your good opinion.... Now I've said
far more than I meant or had any right to. I hope," he ventured
pleadingly--"you're not offended."
Only an instant longer could she maintain her direct and unflinching
look. Then, his meaning would no more be ignored. Her lashes fell; a
tide of crimson flooded her face; and with a quick movement, pushing
her chair a little from the table, she turned aside. But she said
nothing.
He remained as he had been, bending eagerly toward her. And in the long
minute that elapsed before either spoke again, both became oddly
conscious of the silence brooding in that lonely little house, of their
isolation from the world, of their common peril and mutual dependence.
"I'm afraid," Lanyard said, after a time--"I'm afraid I know what you
must be thinking. One can't do your intelligence the injustice to
imagine that you haven't understood me--read all that was in my mind
and"--his voice fell--"in my heart. I own I was wrong to speak so
transparently, to suggest my regard for you, at such a time, under such
conditions. I am truly sorry, and beg you to consider unsaid all that I
should not have said.... After all, what earthly difference can it make
to you if one thief more decides suddenly to reform?"
That brought her abruptly to her feet, to show him a face of glowing
loveliness and eyes distractingly dimmed and softened.
"No!" she implored him breathlessly--"please--you mustn't spoil it!
You've paid me the finest of compliments, and one I'm glad and grateful
for ... and would I might think I deserved! ... You say you need a year
to prove yourself? Then--I've no right to say this--and you must please
not ask me what I mean--then I grant you that year. A year I shall wait
to hear from you from the day we part, here in Paris.... And to-night,
I will go with you, too, and gladly, since you wish it!"
And then as he, having risen, stood at loss, thrilled, and incredulous,
with a brave and generous gesture she offered him her hand.
"Mr. Lanyard, I promise...."
To every woman, even the least lovely, her hour of beauty: it had not
entered Lanyard's mind to think this woman beautiful until that moment.
Of her exotic charm, of the allure of her pensive, plaintive
prettiness, he had been well aware; even as he had been unable to deny
to himself that he was all for her, that he loved her with all the
strength that was his; but not till now had he understood that she was
the one woman whose loveliness to him would darken the fairness of all
others.
And for a little, holding her tremulous hand upon his finger-tips as
though he feared to bruise it with a ruder contact, he could not take
his eyes from her.
Then reverently he bowed his head and touched his lips to that hand ...
and felt it snatched swiftly away, and started back, aghast, the idyll
roughly dissipated, the castle of his dreams falling in thunders round
his ears.
In the studio-skylight overhead a pane of glass had fallen in with a
shattering crash as ominous as the Trump of Doom.
XIV
RIVE DROIT
Falling without presage upon the slumberous hush enveloping the little
house marooned in that dead back-water of Paris, the shock of that
alarm drove the girl back from the table to the nearest wall, and for a
moment held her there, transfixed in panic.
To the wide, staring eyes that questioned his so urgently, Lanyard
promptly nodded grave reassurance. He hadn't stirred since his first,
involuntary and almost imperceptible start, and before the last
fragment of splintered glass had tinkled on the floor above, he was
calming her in the most matter-of-fact manner.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "It's nothing--merely Solon's skylight
gone smash!"
"You call that nothing!" she cried gustily. "What caused it, then?"
"My negligence," he admitted gloomily. "I might have known that wide
spread of glass with the studio electrics on, full-blaze, would give
the show away completely. The house is known to be unoccupied; and it
wasn't to be expected that both the police and Popinot's crew would
overlook so shining a mark.... And it's all my fault, my oversight: I
should have thought of it before.... High time I was quitting a game
I've no longer the wit to play by the rules!"
"But the police would never...!"
"Certainly not. This is Popinot's gentle method of letting us know he's
on the job. But I'll just have a look, to make sure.... No: stop where
you are, please. I'd rather go alone."