was possessed by the thought that she had forsaken him. And he could
well guess why: impossible for such an one as she to contemplate
without a shudder association with the man who had been what he had
been! Infatuate!--to have dreamed that she would tolerate the devotion
of a criminal, that she could ever forget his identity with the Lone
Wolf. Inevitably--soon or late--she must have fled that ignominious
thought in dread and horror, daring whatever consequences to escape and
forget both it and him. And better now, perhaps, than later....
XVIII
ENIGMA
He found no reason to believe she had left him other than voluntarily,
or that their adventures since the escape from the impasse Stanislas
had been attended upon by spies of the Pack. He could have sworn they
hadn't been followed either to or from the rue des Acacias; their way
had been too long and purposely too roundabout, his vigilance too
lively, for any sort of surveillance to have been practised without his
remarking some indication thereof, at one time or another.
On the other hand (he told himself) there was every reason to believe
she hadn't left him to go back to Bannon; concerning whom she had
expressed herself too forcibly to excuse a surmise that she had
preferred his protection to the Lone Wolf's.
Reasoning thus, he admitted, one couldn't blame her. He could readily
see how, illuded at first by a certain romantic glamour, she had not,
until left to herself in the garden, come to clear perception of the
fact that she was casting her lot with a common criminal's. Then,
horror overmastering her of a sudden she had fled--wildly, blindly, he
didn't doubt. But whither? He looked in vain for her at their agreed
rendezvous, the Sacré Coeur. She had neither money nor friends in Paris.
True: she had mentioned some personal jewellery she planned to
hypothecate. Her first move, then, would be to seek the
mont-de-piété--not to force himself again upon her, but to follow at a
distance and ward off interference on Bannon's part.
The Government pawn-shop had its invitation for Lanyard himself: he was
there before the doors were open for the day; and fortified by loans
negotiated on his watch, cigarette-case, and a ring or two, retired to
a café commanding a view of the entrance on the rue des
Blancs-Manteaux, and settled himself against a day-long vigil.
It wasn't easy; drowsiness buzzed in his brain and weighted his
eyelids; now and again, involuntarily, he nodded over his glass of
black coffee. And when evening came and the mont-de-piété closed for
the night, he rose and stumbled off, wondering if possibly he had
napped a little without his knowledge and so missed her visit.
Engaging obscure lodgings close by the rue des Acacias, he slept till
nearly noon of the following day, then rose to put into execution a
design which had sprung full-winged from his brain at the instant of
wakening.
He had not only his car but a chauffeur's license of long standing in
the name of Pierre Lamier--was free, in short, to range at will the
streets of Paris. And when he had levied on the stock of a second-hand
clothing shop and a chemist's, he felt tolerably satisfied it would
need sharp eyes--whether the Pack's or the Préfecture's--to identify
"Pierre Lamier" with either Michael Lanyard or the Lone Wolf.
His face, ears and neck he stained a weather-beaten brown, a discreet
application of rouge along his cheekbones enhancing the effect of daily
exposure to the winter winds and rains of Paris; and he gave his hands
an even darker shade, with the added verisimilitude of finger-nails
inked into permanent mourning. Also, he refrained from shaving: a
stubble of two days' neglect bristled upon his chin and jowls. A rusty
brown ulster with cap to match, shoddy trousers boasting conspicuous
stripes of leaden colour, and patched boots completed the disguise.
Monsieur and madame of the conciergerie he deceived with a yarn of
selling his all to purchase the motor-car and embark in business for
himself; and with their blessing, sallied forth to scout Paris
diligently for sight or sign of the woman to whom his every heart-beat
was dedicated.
By the close of the third day he was ready to concede that she had
managed to escape without his aid.
And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the
most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements
of the American following the fire at Troyon's.
As for Troyon's, it was now nothing more than a gaping excavation
choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of
police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the
papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His
disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death
in the holocaust; the fact that their bodies hadn't been recovered was
no longer a matter for comment.
In short, Paris had already lost interest in the affair.
Even so, it seemed, had the Pack lost interest in the Lone Wolf; or
else his disguise was impenetrable. Twice he saw De Morbihan "flânning"
elegantly on the Boulevards, and once he passed close by Popinot; but
neither noticed him.
Toward midnight of the third day, Lanyard, driving slowly westward on
the boulevard de la Madeleine, noticed a limousine of familiar aspect
round a corner half a block ahead and, drawing up in front of Viel's,
discharge four passengers.
The first was Wertheimer; and at sight of his rather striking figure,
decked out in evening apparel from Conduit street and Bond, Lanyard
slackened speed.
Turning as he alighted, the Englishman offered his hand to a young
woman. She jumped down to the sidewalk in radiant attire and a laughing
temper.
Involuntarily Lanyard stopped his car; and one immediately to the rear,
swerving out to escape collision, shot past, its driver cursing him
freely; while a sergent de ville scowled darkly and uttered an
imperative word.
He pulled himself together, somehow, and drove on.
The girl was entering the restaurant by way of the revolving door,
Wertheimer in attendance; while De Morbihan, having alighted, was
lending a solicitous arm to Bannon.
Quite automatically the adventurer drove on, rounded the Madeleine, and
turned up the boulevard Malesherbes. Paris and all its brisk midnight
traffic swung by without claiming a tithe of his interest: he was
mainly conscious of lights that reeled dizzily round him like a
multitude of malicious, mocking eyes....
At the junction with the boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville
roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely
thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a
dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as
though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts.
So, it seemed, he had all along been her dupe; all the while that he
had been ostentatiously shielding her from harm and diffidently
discovering every evidence of devotion, she had been laughing in her
sleeve and planning to return to the service she pretended to despise,
with her report of a fool self-duped.
A great anger welled in his bosom.
Turning round, he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on
one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel's
until the party reappeared, something after one o'clock.
It was plain that they had supped merrily; the girl seemed in the
gayest humour, Wertheimer a bit exhilarated, De Morbihan much amused;
even Bannon--bearing heavily on the Frenchman's arm--was chuckling
contentedly. The party piled back into De Morbihan's limousine and was
driven up the avenue des Champs Élysées, pausing at the Élysée Palace
Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl--his daughter?--whoever she was!
Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn't trouble to ascertain. He
drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many
hours: bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart.
But for all his anguish, he continued in an uncertain temper. He had
turned his back on the craft of which he was acknowledged master--for a
woman's sake; for nothing else (he argued) had he dedicated himself to
poverty and honest effort; and what little privation he had already
endured was hopelessly distasteful to him. The art of the Lone Wolf,
his consummate cunning and subtlety, was still at his command; with
only himself to think of, he was profoundly contemptuous of the
antagonism of the Pack; while none knew better than he with what ease
the riches of careless Paris might be diverted to his own pockets. A
single step aside from the path he had chosen--and tomorrow night he
might dine at the Ritz instead of in some sordid cochers' cabaret!
And since no one cared--since _she_ had betrayed his faith--what
mattered?
Why not...?
Yet he could not come to a decision; the next day saw him obstinately,
even a little stupidly, pursuing the course he had planned before his
disheartening disillusionment.
Because his money was fast ebbing and motives of prudence alone--if
none more worthy--forbade an attempt to replenish his pocketbook by
revisiting the little rez-de-chaussée in the rue Roget and realizing on
its treasures, he had determined to have a taximeter fitted to his car
and ply for hire until time or chance should settle the question of his
future.
Already, indeed, he had complied with the police regulations, and
received permission to convert his voiture de remise into a taxicab;
and leaving it before noon at the designated dépôt, he was told it
would be ready for him at four with the "clock" installed. Returning at
that hour, he learned that it couldn't be ready before six; and too
bored and restless to while away two idle hours in a café, he wandered
listlessly through the streets and boulevards--indifferent, in the
black melancholy oppressing him, whether or not he were recognized--and
eventually found himself turning from the rue St. Honoré through the
place Vendôme to the rue de la Paix.
This was not wise, a perilous business, a course he had no right to
pursue. And Lanyard knew it. None the less, he persisted.
It was past five o'clock--deep twilight beneath a cloudless sky--the
life of that street of streets fluent at its swiftest. All that Paris
knew of wealth and beauty, fashion and high estate, moved between the
curbs. One needed the temper of a Stoic to maintain indifference to the
allure of its pageant.
Trudging steadily, he of the rusty brown ulster all but touched
shoulders with men who were all that he had been but a few days
since--hale, hearty, well-fed, well-dressed symbols of prosperity--and
with exquisite women, exquisitely gowned, extravagantly be-furred and
be-jewelled, of glowing faces and eyes dark with mystery and promise:
spirited creatures whose laughter was soft music, whose gesture was
pride and arrogance.
One and all looked past, over, and through him, unaffectedly unaware
that he existed.
The roadway, its paving worn as smooth as glass, and tonight by grace
of frost no less hard, rang with a clatter of hoofs high and clear
above the resonance of motors. A myriad lights filled the wide channel
with diffused radiance. Two endless ranks of shop-windows, facing one
another--across the tide, flaunted treasures that kings might
pardonably have coveted--and would.
Before one corner window, Lanyard paused instinctively.
The shop was that of a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the
thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that
display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to
which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of
valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the
safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent of sardonic
bias. It wore all the grim appearance of a strong-box that, once
locked, would prove impregnable to everything save acquaintance with
the combination and the consent of the time-lock. But give the Lone
Wolf twenty minutes alone with it, twenty minutes free from
interruption--he, the one man living who could seduce a time-lock and
leave it apparently inviolate!...
To one side of that window stood a mirror, set at an angle, and
suddenly Lanyard caught its presentment of himself--a gaunt and hungry
apparition, with a wolfish air he had never worn when rejoicing in his
sobriquet, staring with eyes of predaceous lustre.
Alarmed and fearing lest some passer-by be struck by this betrayal, he
turned and moved on hastily.
But his mind was poisoned by this brutal revelation of the wide, deep
gulf that yawned between the Lone Wolf of yesterday and Pierre Lamier
of today; between Michael Lanyard the debonnaire, the amateur of fine
arts and fine clothing, the beau sabreur of gentlemen-cracksmen and
that lean, worn, shabby and dispirited animal who had glared back at
him from the jeweller's mirror.
He quickened his pace, with something of that same instinct of
self-preservation that bids the dipsomaniac avert his eyes and hurry
past the corner gin-mill, and turned blindly off into the rue Danou,
toward the avenue de l'Opéra.
But this only made it worse for him, for he could not avoid recognition
of the softly glowing windows of the Café de Paris that knew him so
well, or forget the memory of its shining rich linen, its silver and
crystal, its perfumed atmosphere and luxury of warmth and music and
shaded lights, its cuisine that even Paris cannot duplicate.
And the truth came home to him, that he was hungry not with that brute
appetite he had money enough in his pocket to satisfy, but with the
lust of flesh-pots, for rare viands and old vintage wines, to know once
more the snug embrace of a dress-coat and to breathe again the
atmosphere of ease and station.
In sudden panic he darted across the avenue and hurried north,
determined to tantalize himself no longer with sights and sounds so
provocative and so disturbing.
Half-way across the boulevard des Capucines, to the east of the Opéra,
he leapt for his life from a man-killing taxi, found himself
temporarily marooned upon one of those isles of safety which Paris has
christened "thank-Gods," and stood waiting for an opening in the
congestion of traffic to permit passage to the farther sidewalk.
And presently the policeman in the middle of the boulevard signalled
with his little white wand; the stream of east-bound vehicles checked
and began to close up to the right of the crossing, upon which they
encroached jealously; and a taxi on the outside, next the island,
overshot the mark, pulled up sharply, and began to back into place.
Before Lanyard could stir, its window was opposite him, and he was
looking in, transfixed.
There was sufficient light to enable him to see clearly the face of the
passenger--its pale oval and the darkness of eyes whose gaze clung to
his with an effect of confused fascination....
She sat quite motionless until one white-gloved hand moved uncertainly
toward her bosom.
That brought him to; unconsciously lifting his cap, he stepped back a
pace and started to move on.
At this, she bent quickly forward and unlatched the door. It swung wide
to him.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, he accepted the dumb invitation,
stepped in, took the empty seat, and closed the door.
Almost at once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into
her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to
seem composed had been almost too much for her strength.
Her face, turned toward Lanyard, seemed wan in the half light, but
immobile, expressionless; only her eyes were darkly quick with
anticipation.
On his part, Lanyard felt himself hopelessly confounded, in the grasp
of emotions that would scarce suffer him to speak. A great wonder
obsessed him that she should have opened that door to him no less than
that he should have entered through it. Dimly he understood that each
had acted without premeditation; and asked himself, was she already
regretting that momentary weakness.
"Why did you do that?" he heard himself demand abruptly, his voice
harsh, strained, and unnatural.
She stiffened slightly, with a nervous movement of her shoulders.
"Because I saw you... I was surprised; I had hoped--believed--you had
left Paris."
"Without you? Hardly!"
"But you must," she insisted--"you _must_ go, as quickly as possible.
It isn't safe--"
"I'm all right," he insisted--"able-bodied--in full possession of my
senses!"
"But any moment you may be recognized--"
"In this rig? It isn't likely.... Not that I care."
She surveyed his costume curiously, perplexed.
"Why are you dressed that way? Is it a disguise?"
"A pretty good one. But in point of fact, it's the national livery of
my present station in life."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Simply that, out of my old job, I've turned to the first resort of the
incompetent: I'm driving a taxi."
"Isn't it awfully--risky?"
"You'd think so; but it isn't. Few people ever bother to look at a
chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they're in a hurry, as a
rule--preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are
a disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many
Chinamen!"
"But you're mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn't I? And those
others--they're as keen-witted as I--certainly. Oh, you should not have
stopped on in Paris!"
"I couldn't go without knowing what had become of you."
"I was afraid of that," she confessed.
"Then why--?"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say! Why did I run away from you?" And
then, since he said nothing, she continued unhappily: "I can't tell
you... I mean, I don't know how to tell you!"
She kept her face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but
when he sat on, mute and unresponsive--in point of fact not knowing
what to say--she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp
showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows
knotted, eyes clouded with perplexity and appeal.
And of a sudden, seeing her so tormented and so piteous, his
indignation ebbed, and with it all his doubts of her were dissipated;
dimly he divined that something behind this dark fabric of mystery and
inconsistency, no matter how inexplicable to him, excused all her
apparent faithlessness and instability of character and purpose. He
could not look upon this girl and hear her voice and believe that she
was not at heart as sound and sweet, tender and loyal, as any that ever
breathed.
A wave of tenderness and compassion brimmed his heart; he realized that
he didn't matter, that his amour propre was of no account--that nothing
mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach.
He said, gently: "I wouldn't have you distress yourself on my account,
Miss Shannon... I quite understand there must be things I _can't_
understand--that you must have had your reasons for acting as you did."
"Yes," she said unevenly, but again with eyes averted--"I had; but
they're not easy, they're impossible to explain--to you."
"Yet--when all's said and done--I've no right to exact any explanation."
"Ah, but how can you say that, remembering what we've been through
together?"
"You owe me nothing," he insisted; "whereas I owe you everything, even
unquestioning faith. Even though I fail, I have this to thank you
for--this one not-ignoble impulse my life has known."
"You mustn't say that, you mustn't think it. I don't deserve it. You
wouldn't say it--if you knew--"
"Perhaps I can guess enough to satisfy myself."
She gave him a swift, sidelong look of challenge, instinctively on the
defensive.
"Why," she almost gasped--"what do you think--?"
"Does it matter what I think?"
"It does, to me: I wish to know!"
"Well," he conceded reluctantly, "I think that, when you had a chance
to consider things calmly, waiting back there in the garden, you made
up your mind it would be better to--to use your best judgment
and--extricate yourself from an embarrassing position--"
"You think that!" she interrupted bitterly. "You think that, after you
had confided in me; after you'd confessed--when I made you, led you on
to it--that you cared for me; after you'd told me how much my faith
meant to you--you think that, after all that, I deliberately abandoned
you because I suddenly realized you had been the Lone Wolf--!"
"I'm sorry if I hurt you. But what can I think?"
"But you are wrong!" she protested vehemently--"quite, quite wrong! I
ran away from myself--not from you--and with another motive, too, that
I can't explain."
"You ran away from yourself--not from me?" he repeated, puzzled.
"Don't you understand? Why make it so hard for me? Why make me say
outright what pains me so?"
"Oh, I beg of you--"
"But if you won't understand otherwise--I must tell you, I suppose."
She checked, breathless, flushed, trembling. "You recall our talk after
dinner, that night--how I asked what if you found out you'd been
mistaken in me, that I had deceived you; and how I told you it would be
impossible for me ever to marry you?"
"I remember."
"It was because of that," she said--"I ran away; because I hadn't been
talking idly; because you _were_ mistaken in me, because I _was_
deceiving you, because I could never marry you, and
because--suddenly--I came to know that, if I didn't go then and there,
I might never find the strength to leave you, and only suffering and
unhappiness could come of it all. I had to go, as much for your sake as
for my own."
"You mean me to understand, you found you were beginning to--to care a
little for me?"
She made an effort to speak, but in the end answered only with a dumb
inclination of her head.
"And ran away because love wasn't possible between us?"
Again she nodded silently.
"Because I had been a criminal, I presume!"
"You've no right to say that--"
"What else can I think? You tell me you were afraid I might persuade
you to become my wife--something which, for some inexplicable reason,
you claim is impossible. What other explanation can I infer? What other
explanation is needed? It's ample, it covers everything, and I've no
warrant to complain--God knows!"
She tried to protest, but he cut her short.
"There's one thing I don't understand at all! If that is so, if your
repugnance for criminal associations made you run away from me--why did
you go back to Bannon?"
She started and gave him a furtive, frightened glance.
"You knew that?"
"I saw you--last night--followed you from Viel's to your hotel."
"And you thought," she flashed in a vibrant voice--"you thought I was
in his company of my own choice!"
"You didn't seem altogether downcast," he countered, "Do you wish me to
understand you were with him against your will?"
"No," she said slowly.... "No: I returned to him voluntarily, knowing
perfectly what I was about."
"Through fear of him--?"
"No. I can't claim that."
"Rather than me--?"
"You'll never understand," she told him a little wearily--"never. It
was a matter of duty. I had to go back--I had to!"
Her voice trailed off into a broken little sob. But as, moved beyond
his strength to resist, Lanyard put forth a hand to take the
white-gloved one resting on the cushion beside her, she withdrew it
with a swift gesture of denial.
"No!" she cried. "Please! You mustn't do that... You only make it
harder..."
"But you love me!"
"I can't. It's impossible. I would--but I may not!"
"Why?"
"I can't tell you."
"If you love me, you must tell me."
She was silent, the white hands working nervously with her handkerchief.
"Lucy!" he insisted--"you must say what stands between you and my love.
It's true, I've no right to ask, as I had no right to speak to you of
love. But when we've said as much as we have said--we can't stop there.
You will tell me, dear?"
She shook her head: "It--it's impossible."
"But you can't ask me to be content with that answer!"
"Oh!" she cried--"_how_ can I make you understand?... When you said
what you did, that night--it seemed as if a new day were dawning in my
life. You made me believe it was because of me. You put me above
you--where I'd no right to be; but the fact that you thought me worthy
to be there, made me proud and happy: and for a little, in my
blindness, I believed I could be worthy of your love and your respect.
I thought that, if I could be as strong as you during that year you
asked in which to prove your strength, I might listen to you, tell you
everything, and be forgiven.... But I was wrong, how wrong I soon
learned.... So I had to leave you at whatever cost!"
She ceased to speak, and for several minutes there was silence. But for
her quick, convulsive breathing, the girl sat like a woman of stone,
staring dry-eyed out of the window. And Lanyard sat as moveless, the
heart in his bosom as heavy and cold as a stone.