"But you have not."
"If madame will do me the favour to open her safe, she will find them
there--conspicuously placed."
"What nonsense----!"
"Am I wrong in assuming that madame didn't return from England until
quite recently?"
"But today, in fact----"
"And you haven't troubled to investigate your safe since returning?"
"It had not occurred to me----"
"Then why not test my statement before denying it?"
With an incredulous shrug Madame Omber terminated a puzzled scrutiny of
Lanyard's countenance, and turned to the safe.
"But to have done what you declare you have," she argued, "you must
have known the combination--since it appears you haven't broken this
open."
The combination ran glibly off Lanyard's tongue. And at this, with
every evidence of excitement, at length beginning to hope if not to
believe, the woman set herself to open the safe. Within a minute she
had succeeded, the morocco-bound jewel-case was in her hand, and a
hasty examination had assured her its treasure was intact.
"But why----?" she stammered, pale with emotion--"why, monsieur, _why_?"
"Because I decided to leave off stealing for a livelihood."
"When did you bring these jewels here?"
"Within the week--four or five nights since----"
"And then--repented, eh?"
"I own it."
"But came here again tonight, to steal a second time what you had
stolen once?"
"That's true, too."
"And I interrupted you----"
"Pardon, madame: not you, but my better self. I came to steal--I could
not."
"Monsieur--you do not convince. I fail to fathom your motives, but----"
A sudden shock of heavy trampling feet in the reception-hall,
accompanied by a clash of excited voices, silenced her and brought
Lanyard instantly to the face-about.
Above that loud wrangle--of which neither had received the least
warning, so completely had their argument absorbed them--Sidonie's
accents were audible:
"Madame--madame!"--a cry of protest.
"What is it?" madame demanded of Lanyard.
He threw her the word "Police!" as he turned and flung himself into the
recess of the window.
But when he wrenched it open the voice of a picket on the lawn saluted
him in sharp warning; and when, involuntarily, he stepped out upon the
balcony, a flash of flame split the gloom below, a loud report rang in
the quiet of the park, and a bullet slapped viciously the stone facing
of the window.
XXIV
RENDEZVOUS
With as little ceremony as though the bullet had lodged in himself,
Lanyard tumbled back into the room, tripped, and fell sprawling; while
to a tune of clattering boots two sergents de ville lumbered valiantly
into the library and pulled up to discover Madame Omber standing
calmly, safe and sound, beside her desk, and Lanyard picking himself up
from the floor by the open window.
Behind them Sidonie trotted, wringing her hands.
"Madame!" she bleated--"they wouldn't listen to me, madame--I couldn't
stop them!"
"All right, Sidonie. Go back to the hall. I'll call you when needed....
Messieurs, good morning!"
One of the sergents advanced with an uncertain salute and a superfluous
question: "Madame Omber----?" The other waited on the threshold,
barring the way.
Lanyard measured the two speculatively: the spokesman seemed a bit old
and fat, ripe for his pension, little apt to prove seriously effective
in a rough-and-tumble; but the other was young, sturdy, and
broad-chested, with the poise of an athlete, and carried in addition to
his sword a pistol naked in his hand, while his clear blue eyes,
meeting the adventurer's, lighted up with a glint of invitation.
For the present, however, Lanyard wasn't taking any. He met that
challenge with a look of utter stupidity, folded his arms, lounged
against the desk, and watched Madame Omber acknowledge, none too
cordially, the other sergent's query.
"I am Madame Omber--yes. What can I do for you?"
The sergent gaped. "Pardon!" he stammered, then laughed as one who
tardily appreciates a joke. "It is well we are arrived in time,
madame," he added--"though it would seem you have not had great trouble
with this miscreant. Where is the woman?"
He moved a pace toward Lanyard: hand-cuffs jingled in his grasp.
"But a moment!" madame interposed. "Woman? What woman?"
Pausing, the older sergent explained in a tone of surprise:
"But his accomplice, naturally! Such were our instructions--to proceed
at once to madame's hôtel, come in quietly by the servants'
entrance--which would be open--and arrest a burglar with his female
accomplice."
Again the stout sergent moved toward Lanyard; again Madame Omber
stopped him.
"But one moment more, if you please!"
Her eyes, dense with suspicion, questioned Lanyard; who, with a
significant nod toward the jewel-case still in her hands, gave her a
glance of dumb entreaty.
After brief hesitation, "It is a mistake," madame declared; "there is
no woman in this house, to my certain knowledge, who has no right to be
here... But you say you received a message? I sent none!"
The fat sergent shrugged. "That is not for me to dispute, madame. I
have only my orders to go by."
He glared sullenly at Lanyard; who returned a placid smile that
(despite such hope as he might derive from madame's irresolute manner)
masked a vast amount of trepidation. He felt tolerably sure Madame
Omber had not sent for police on prior knowledge of his presence in the
library. All this, then, would seem to indicate a new form of attack on
the part of the Pack. He had probably been followed and seen to enter;
or else the girl had been caught attempting to steal away and the
information wrung from her by _force majeure_.... Moreover, he could
hear two more pair of feet tramping through the salons.
Pending the arrival of these last, Madame Omber said nothing more.
And, unceremoniously enough, the newcomers shouldered into the
library--one pompous uniformed body, of otherwise undistinguished
appearance, promptly identified by the sergents de ville as monsieur le
commissaire of that quarter; the other, a puffy mediocrity, known to
Lanyard at least (if apparently to no one else) as Popinot.
At this confirmation of his darkest fears, the adventurer abandoned
hope of aid from Madame Omber and began quietly to reckon his chances
of escape through his own efforts.
But he was quite unarmed, and the odds were heavy: four against one,
all four no doubt under arms, and two at least--the sergents--men of
sound military training.
"Madame Omber?" enquired the commissaire, saluting that lady with
immense dignity. "One trusts that this intrusion may be pardoned, the
circumstances remembered. In an affair of this nature, involving this
repository of so historic treasures--"
"That is quite well understood, monsieur le commissaire," madame
replied distantly. "And this monsieur is, no doubt, your aide?"
"Pardon!" the official hastened to identify his companion: "Monsieur
Popinot, agent de la Sûreté, who lays these informations!"
With a profound obeisance to Madame Omber, Popinot strode dramatically
over to confront Lanyard and explore his features with his small, keen,
shifty eyes of a pig; a scrutiny which the adventurer suffered with
superficial calm.
"It is he!" Popinot announced with a gesture. "Messieurs, I call upon
you to arrest this man, Michael Lanyard, alias 'The Lone Wolf.'"
He stepped back a pace, expanding his chest in vain effort to eclipse
his abdomen, and glanced triumphantly at his respectful audience.
"Accused," he added with intense relish, "of the murder of Inspector
Roddy of Scotland Yard at Troyon's, as well as of setting fire to that
establishment--"
"For this, Popinot," Lanyard interrupted in an undertone, "I shall some
day cut off your ears!" He turned to Madame Omber: "Accept, if you
please, madame, my sincere regrets ... but this charge happens to be
one of which I am altogether innocent."
Instantly, from lounging against the desk, Lanyard straightened up: and
the heavy humidor of brass and mahogany, on which his right hand had
been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of
his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent.
Before that one, wholly unprepared, could more than gasp, the humidor
caught him a blow like a kick just below the breastbone. He reeled, the
breath left him in one great gust, he sat down abruptly--blue eyes wide
with a look of aggrieved surprise--clapped both hands to his middle,
blinked, turned pale, and keeled over on his side.
But Lanyard hadn't waited to note results. He was busy. The fat sergent
had leaped snarling upon his arm, and was struggling to hold it still
long enough to snap a hand-cuff round the wrist; while the commissaire
had started forward with a bellow of rage and two hands extended and
itching for the adventurer's throat.
The first received a half-arm jab on the point of his chin that jarred
his entire system, and without in the least understanding how it
happened, found himself whirled around and laid prostrate in the
commissaire's path. The latter tripped, fell, and planted two hard
knees, with the bulk of his weight atop them, on the apex of the
sergent's paunch.
At the same time Lanyard, leaping toward the doorway, noticed Popinot
tugging at something in his hip-pocket.
Followed a vivid flash, then complete darkness: with a well-aimed
kick--an elementary movement of la savate--Lanyard had dislocated the
switch of the electric lights, knocking its porcelain box from the
wall, breaking the connection, and creating a short-circuit which
extinguished every light in that part of the house.
With his way thus apparently cleared, the police in confusion, darkness
aiding him, Lanyard plunged on; but in mid-stride, as he crossed the
threshold, his ankle was caught by the still prostrate younger sergent
and jerked from under him.
His momentum threw him with a crash--and may have spared him a worse
mishap; for in the same breath he heard the report of a pistol and knew
that Popinot had fired at his fugitive shadow.
As he brought one heel down with crushing force on the sergent's wrist,
freeing his foot, he was dimly conscious of the voice of the
commissaire shouting frantic prayers to cease firing. Then the
pain-maddened sergent crawled to his knees, lunged blindly forward,
knocked the adventurer back in the act of rising, and fell on top of
him.
Hampered by two hundred pounds of fighting Frenchman, Lanyard felt his
cause was lost, yet battled on--and would while breath was in him.
With a heave, a twist and a squirm, he slipped from under, and swinging
a fist at random barked his knuckles against the mouth of the sergent.
Momentarily that one relaxed his hold, and Lanyard struggled to his
knees, only to go down as the indomitable Frenchman grappled yet a
second time.
Now, however, as they fell, Lanyard was on top: and shifting both hands
to his antagonist's left forearm, he wrenched it up and around. There
was a cry of pain, and he jumped clear of one no longer to be reckoned
with.
Nevertheless, as he had feared, the delay had proved ruinous. He had
only found his feet when an unidentified person hurled himself bodily
through the gloom and wrapped his arms round Lanyard's thighs. And as
both went down, two others piled up on top....
For the next minute or two, Lanyard fought blindly, madly, viciously,
striking and kicking at random. For all that--even with one sergent
hors de combat--they were three to one; and though with the ferocity of
sheer desperation he shook them all off, at one time, and gained a few
yards more, it was only again to be overcome and borne down, crushed
beneath the weight of three.
His wind was going, his strength was leaving him. He mustered up every
ounce of energy, all his wit and courage, for one last effort: fought
like a cat, tooth and nail; toiled once more to his knees, with two
clinging to him like wolves to the flanks of a stag; shook one off,
regained his feet, swayed; and in one final gust of ferocity dashed
both fists repeatedly into the face of him who still clung to him.
That one was Popinot; he knew instinctively that this was so; and a
grim joy filled him as he felt the man's clutches relax and fall away,
and guessed how brutal was the damage he had done that fat, evil face.
At length free, he made off, running, stumbling, reeling: gained the
hall; flung open the door; and heedless of the picket who had fired on
him from below the window, dashed down the steps and away....
Three shots sped him through that intricate tangle of night-bound park.
But all went wide; the pursuit--what little there was--blundered off at
hap-hazard and lost itself, as well.
He came to the wall, crept along in shelter of its shadow until he
found a tree with a low-swung branch that jutted out over the street,
climbed this, edged out over the wall, and dropped to the sidewalk.
A shout from the quarter of the carriage gates greeted his appearance.
He turned and ran again. Flying footsteps for a time pursued him; and
once, with a sinking heart, he heard the rumble of a motor. But he
recovered quickly, regained his wind, and ran well, with long, steady,
ground-consuming strides; and he doubled, turned and twisted in a
manner to wake the envy of the most subtle fox.
In time he felt warranted in slowing down to a rapid walk.
Weariness was now a heavy burden upon him, and his spirit numb with
desperate need of rest; but his pace did not flag, nor his purpose
falter from its goal.
It was a long walk if a direct one to which he set himself as soon as
confident the pursuit had failed once more. He plodded on, without
faltering, to the one place where he might feel sure of finding his
beloved, if she lived and were free. He knew that she had not
forgotten, and in his heart he knew that she would never again of her
own will fail him....
Nor had she: when--weary and spent from that heartbreaking climb up the
merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre--he staggered rather than
walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding
shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacré-Cour,
he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the
back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost and
lonely in the long ranks of empty chairs that filled the nave.
Slowly, almost fearfully, he went to her, and silently he slipped into
the chair by her side.
She knew, without looking up, that it was he....
After a little her hand stole out, closed round his fingers, and drew
him forward with a gentle, insistent pressure. He knelt then with her,
hand in hand--filled with the wonder of it, that he to whom religion
had been nothing should have been brought to this by a woman's hand.
He knelt for a long time, for many minutes, profoundly intrigued, his
sombre gaze questioning the golden shadows and ancient mystery of the
distant choir and shining altar: and there was no question in his heart
but that, whatever should ensue of this, the unquiet spirit of the Lone
Wolf was forevermore at rest.
XXV
WINGS OF THE MORNING
About half-past six Lanyard left the dressing-room assigned him in the
barracks at Port Aviation and, waddling quaintly in the heavy
wind-resisting garments supplied him at the instance of Ducroy, made
his way between two hangars toward the practice field.
Now the eastern skies were pulsing with fitful promise of the dawn; but
within the vast enclosure of the aerodrome the gloom of night lingered
so stubbornly that two huge search-lights had been pressed into the
service of those engaged in tuning up the motor of the Parrott biplane.
In the intense, white, concentrated glare--that rippled oddly upon the
wrinkled, oily garments of the dozen or so mechanics busy about the
machine--the under sides of those wide, motionless planes hung against
the dark with an effect of impermanence: as though they were already
afloat and needed but a breath to send them winging skyward....
To one side a number of young and keen-faced Frenchmen, officers of the
corps, were lounging and watching the preparations with alert and
intelligent interest.
To the other, all the majesty of Mars was incarnate in the person of
Monsieur Ducroy, posing valiantly in fur-lined coat and shining top-hat
while he chatted with an officer whose trim, athletic figure was well
set off by his aviating uniform.
As Lanyard drew near, this last brought his heels together smartly,
saluted the Minister of War, and strode off toward the flying-machine.
"Captain Vauquelin informs me he will be ready to start in five
minutes, monsieur," Ducroy announced. "You are in good time."
"And mademoiselle?" the adventurer asked, peering anxiously round.
Almost immediately the girl came forward from the shadows, with a smile
apologetic for the strangeness of her attire.
She had donned, over her street dress, an ample leather garment which
enveloped her completely, buttoning tight at throat and wrists and
ankles. Her small hat had been replaced by a leather helmet which left
only her eyes, nose, mouth and chin exposed, and even these were soon
to be hidden by a heavy veil for protection against spattering oil.
"Mademoiselle is not nervous?" Ducroy enquired politely.
Lucy smiled brightly.
"I? Why should I be, monsieur?"
"I trust mademoiselle will permit me to commend her courage. But
pardon! I have one last word for the ear of Captain Vauquelin."
Lifting his hat, the Frenchman joined the group near the machine.
Lanyard stared unaffectedly at the girl, unable to disguise his wonder
at the high spirits advertised by her rekindled colour and brilliant
eyes.
"Well?" she demanded gaily. "Don't tell me I don't look like a fright!
I know I do!"
"I daren't tell you how you look to me," Lanyard replied soberly. "But
I will say this, that for sheer, down right pluck, you--"
"Thank you, monsieur! And you?"
He glanced with a deprecatory smile at the flimsy-looking contrivance
to which they were presently to entrust their lives.
"Somehow," said he doubtfully, "I don't feel in the least upset or
exhilarated. It seems little out of the average run of life--all in the
day's work!"
"I think," she said, judgmatical, "that you're very like the other lone
wolf, the fictitious one--Lupin, you know--a bit of a blagueur. If
you're not nervous, why keep glancing over there?--as if you were
rather expecting somebody--as if you wouldn't be surprised to see
Popinot or De Morbihan pop out of the ground--or Ekstrom!"
"Hum!" he said gravely. "I don't mind telling you now, that's precisely
what I am afraid of."
"Nonsense!" the girl cried in open contempt. "What could they do?"
"Please don't ask me," Lanyard begged seriously. "I might try to tell
you."
"But don't worry, my dear!" Fugitively her hand touched his. "We're
ready."
It was true enough: Ducroy was moving impressively back toward them.
"All is prepared," he announced in sonorous accents.
A bit sobered, in silence they approached the machine.
Vauquelin kept himself aloof while Lanyard and a young officer helped
the girl to the seat to the right of the pilot, and strapped her in.
When Lanyard had been similarly secured in the place on the left, the
two sat, imprisoned, some six feet above the ground.
Lanyard found his perch comfortable enough. A broad band of webbing
furnished support for his back; another crossed his chest by way of
provision against forward pitching; there were rests for his feet, and
for his hands cloth-wound grips fixed to struts on either side.
He smiled at Lucy across the empty seat, and was surprised at the
clearness with which her answering smile was visible. But he wasn't to
see it again for a long and weary time; almost immediately she began to
adjust her veil.
The morning had grown much lighter within the last few minutes.
A long wait ensued, during which the swarm of mechanics, assistants and
military aviators buzzed round their feet like bees.
The sky was now pale to the western horizon. A fleet of heavy clouds
was drifting off into the south, leaving in their wake thin veils of
mist that promised soon to disappear before the rays of the sun. The
air seemed tolerably clear and not unseasonably cold.
The light grew stronger still: features of distant objects defined
themselves; traces of colour warmed the winter landscape.
At length their pilot, wearing his wind-mask, appeared and began to
climb to his perch. With a cool nod for Lanyard and a civil bow to his
woman passenger, he settled himself, adjusted several levers, and
flirted a gay hand to his brother-officers.
There was a warning cry. The crowd dropped back rapidly to either side.
Ducroy lifted his hat in parting salute, cried "Bon voyage!" and
scuttled clear like a startled rooster before a motor-car. And the
motor and propeller broke loose with a mighty roar comparable only, in
Lanyard's fancy, to the chant of ten thousand rivetting locusts.
He felt momentarily as if his ear-drums must burst with the incessant
and tremendous concussions registered upon them; but presently this
sensation passed, leaving him with that of permanent deafness.
Before he could recover and regain control of his startled wits the
aviator had thrown down a lever, and the great fabric was in motion.
It swept down the field like a frightened swan; and the wheels of its
chassis, registering every infinitesimal irregularity in the surface of
the ground, magnified them all a hundred-fold. It was like riding in a
tumbril driven at top-speed over the Giant's Causeway. Lanyard was
shaken violently to the very marrow of his bones; he believed that even
his eyes must be rattling in their sockets....
Then the Parrott began to ascend. Singularly enough, this change was
marked, at first, by no more than slight lessening of the vibration:
still the machine seemed to be dashing over a cobbled thoroughfare at
breakneck speed; and Lanyard found it difficult to appreciate that they
were afloat, even when he looked down and discovered a hundred feet of
space between himself and the practice-field.
In another breath they were soaring over housetops.
Momentarily, now, the shocks became less frequent. And presently they
ceased almost altogether, to be repeated only at rare intervals, when
the drift of air opposing the planes developed irregularities in its
velocity. There succeeded, in contrast, the sublimest peace; even the
roaring of the propeller dwindled to a sustained drone; the biplane
seemed to float without an effort upon a vast, still sea, flawed only
occasionally by inconsiderable ripples.
Still rising, they surprised the earliest rays of the sun; and in their
virgin light the aeroplane was transformed into a thing of gossamer
gold.
Continually the air buffeted their faces like a flood of icy water.
Below, the scroll of the world unrolled like some vast and intricately
illuminated missal, or like some strange mosaic, marvellously minute....
Lanyard could see the dial of the compass, fixed to a strut on the
pilot's left. By that telltale their course lay nearly due northeast.
Already the weltering roofs of Paris were in sight, to the right, the
Eiffel Tower spearing up like a fairy pillar of gold lace-work, the
Seine looping the cluttered acres like a sleek brown serpent, the
Sacré-Coeur a dream-palace of opalescent walls.
Versailles broke the horizon to port and slipped astern. Paris closed
up, telescoped its panorama, became a mere blur, a smoky smudge. But it
was long before the distance eclipsed that admonitory finger of the
Eiffel.
Vauquelin manipulating the levers, the plane tilted its nose and swam
higher and yet higher. The song of the motor dropped an octave to a
richer tone. The speed was sensibly increased.
Lanyard contemplated with untempered wonder the fact of his equanimity:
there seemed nothing at all strange in this extraordinary experience;
he was by no means excited, remained merely if deeply interested. And
he could detect in his physical sensations no trace of that qualmish
dread he always experienced in high places: the sense he had of
security, of solidity, was and ever remained wholly unaccountable in
his understanding.