Within the hour thought flagged for sheer weariness of beating to no
purpose against that wall of oblivion whose featureless façade
sequestered seven mortal months of forfeit yesterdays, nerves grew weary
of the zooming wind, incessant slap and slash of broken water streaming
down the side, the tuneless crooning of the engines: Lanyard slept.
A noise of light knuckles on the door awakened him when the afternoon
was old and wind and sea had both abated, as the muting of their deep
diapason affirmed and that horizontal beam of rusty light which bored in
through the port to flail with slow and steady strokes the dusk whose
blue it strengthened.
Without waiting to receive permission, Liane Delorme turned the knob and
entered.
Most adept of actresses, she carried herself now with an air of delicate
audacity that would have graced a virtuous lady of a sudden turned so
venturesome as to call on a man in his lodgings alone. Almost anybody
else it would surely have taken in, even Lanyard found himself for a
moment at loss to account for this revolutionary innovation, a change of
rôle made the more confounding by the fact that Liane had gone to the
length of dressing it with garments of a semi-negligée sort whose
circumspection, though they were dainty and costly enough to delight
any woman, was hardly akin to the spirit that sported them.
But one glimpse of Lanyard's eyes, one flash of their reclaimed
intelligence, made plain the poverty of objective artifice as an aid to
Liane's intentions. It indeed did more, it struck pale glints of panic
from her own eyes, or something very like that emotion in the sight of
one who knew as yet no reason why it should discountenance the woman to
find him, whom she had sought of her own accord, awake and in his proper
mind.
She held a dead wait with a hand on the door-knob behind her, the other
unconsciously plucking at lace which, in this novel modesty of raiment,
clothed chastely that bosom of fine fullness--dusky eyes quick in a face
that wanted a shade or so of its habitually high illumination, lips a
trace apart as if with a cry unsounded.
But the pause imposed by her illegible emotion was brief of life, with
her next breath Liane recollected herself and, uttering a low sound of
compassion crossed the room to kneel by the head of the berth.
"No, no, my friend!" She spoke in French, her arms lightly forced back
to the pillow the shoulders which Lanyard was lifting. "Rest
tranquil--with that poor head! Thou dost still suffer greatly, my old
one?"
Lanyard mumbled a dashed negative with lips that were muffled, before he
could object, by lips ardent and tender, whose clinging intimacy he
escaped at length only by moving his head aside.
Happily, that movement excited only a grumble of pain, entirely
bearable; he was able to muster a smile by way of redressing the rebuff.
"I say!" he remonstrated in his most British English--"we are getting
on, rather--aren't we?"
The woman drew back sharply and, half-kneeling, half resting on her
heels, showed a face sad with reproach. "Hast thou forgotten, then?"
"More than I guessed, going on this bit of business, my dear." Lanyard
was firm in his stand against French; it was easier to be unsentimental
in sound Anglo-Saxon, a tongue that enabled one to avoid using the too
personal "thou" without administering an affront unpardonable. "What
bothers me most is this," he proceeded in querulous vein, a
self-conscious smile accounting for his neglect of the stricken eyes
staring into his: "I've remembered and forgotten much too much, all at
once. It's damned discouraging--you may be interested to know--to wake
up from what amounted to a sound long nap and find that seven perfectly
useful months have been stolen while one slept."
"It is true, then, what I feared!"
"Afraid it is, Liane, if what you feared was that a blow on the head had
bumped my right mind back to its throne."
Slowly and with a bitter smile the woman repeated the English phrase:
"'A blow on the head!' . . ."
"That's what did the trick for me--and I don't mind telling you it hurt
like the devil."
"But what of the blow to my heart?" Her closed hand smote Liane's
breast. "You complain with reason of having been robbed of seven months
of memory; but what of me, who stand to lose seven months of memories?"
"Pardon?" Lanyard queried, politely dense.
"You loved me well in that time while you were your old, true self."
"Loved you, Liane? And forgot! Ah, no! you ask me to believe too much."
"You jest--and my heart is breaking!"
"It's no joke to forget an experience like that, something which one man
in a million would be lucky to know once in his lifetime."
"One in a million!"
"I beg your pardon: I was counting in your unsuccessful lovers as well."
"But this is too much!"
With an abrupt movement the woman started up, to pause with face averted
and hands fast laced. As promptly Lanyard tumbled out of the berth.
"Forgive me, Liane," he said contritely. "I daresay I am a bit
light-headed, it would be surprising if I weren't, considering that I've
experienced something of a shock today, and not by any means a physical
shock merely--and am still shaken from it. You can hardly demand
rational behaviour of a revenant lately spewed back into life by a
psychic earthquake. That it was a strictly private earthquake doesn't
make its after-effects any the less unsettling."
"True: it is you rather who have me to forgive." With a spontaneous
generosity that shamed him, Liane swung back to Lanyard and caught both
his hands to her bosom. "In my sadness and pain I forget you cannot
understand . . ."
"Then make me understand. I've no one else to look to--and it would be
unkindness to leave me in the dark."
"But give me time to consider . . ." She let go his hands and sank into
the room's one chair. "It is going to hurt me to tell you, Michael, even
more than it will hurt you."
"And how is that?"
"Because, I think" . . . She studied him a while with troubled
gaze . . . "I think you have gone back to the ways of thought that
were yours seven months ago."
"And what is so deplorable in that? Ways of thought about what?"
The woman leaned forward to bend her head to his in confidence, but gave
a slight start instead and drew back with a veering glance, as if
disturbed by some noise unheard by Lanyard, then laid a finger to her
lips, sprang up lightly, and went to the port to look out. From this, in
agreeable disappointment, she crossed back to the door, inclining to it
an attentive ear for some seconds before opening it furtively to peer
out, and concluding the performance with an expression of alarms
allayed.
"I was mistaken," she announced, shooting the bolt--"there is nobody."
"Madame la comtesse was expecting--?"
She gave her head a shake of irritation excited by his levity, and
without warning whipped from the folds of her négligé an automatic
pistol, which she pressed into Lanyard's hand regardless of his efforts
to refuse it.
"No, take it--take it, I say, while there is time."
"But what the deuce--!"
"Take it, I tell you--you may need it soon." And then as Lanyard
humoured her for the sake of peace, she proceeded with every appearance
of offering a complete explanation: "That dolt of a doctor told me you
were unarmed."
"Bright? But how does he know? And why should he care?"
"Your effects were searched this morning, while you were at breakfast,
and the steward who picked you up after your fall took the trouble to
find out that you had no weapon about you."
"Thoughtful of all hands, I'm sure!" Lanyard muttered in amazement. "But
do tell me what I have done to deserve so much respect?"
"Presently," Liane promised in a hushed voice. She moved nearer and held
out an open hand. "No!" she insisted, and brusquely brushed aside the
pistol when he tried to return it--"the necklace! Give me that now--we
can come to an explanation later. Let me hide it away before they come
to put you under arrest--they may, at any moment."
"Indeed?" Impatience with all this, as it seemed, determined effort to
mystify him to no end, resulted in the pistol being flirted into the
berth, and peremptory imprisonment of the woman's wrists. "Now!"
Lanyard demanded--"come to your senses, Liane, be intelligible if you
can. Why should I be in danger of arrest? What is this necklace you are
raving about?"
"Give it to me first--"
"I know nothing of any necklace."
"You have forgotten; nevertheless, you have it. You told me you would
never let it leave your person, you must have it hidden somewhere about
you now. Find and give it to me before it is too late."
Her agitation was too truly rendered to seem put on for a purpose; and
though he had not the least inkling of its cause, Lanyard reflected that
in those seven months anything might have happened, the amplest reason
might all too possibly exist for the distress of mind which Liane was so
vividly portraying. Half-persuaded, he released her wrists and, stepping
back, ran the hands of old cunning through his garments, locating every
spot which in former days he had been accustomed to use as a temporary
cache for purloined property--and drawing every one blank. Winding up
with a shrug of fatigued incredulity: "There is nothing," he declared
shortly. "Now be so kind--"
"Nothing!" Consternation rang in that guarded cry. "They must have it
already, then, they must have searched you and found it while you slept!
The doctor spoke of having given you a sleeping powder--enough, he said,
to keep you quiet till morning."
"I didn't take it."
"They must have thought you had, or you wouldn't have been left
unwatched, I would have found it impossible to see you. You have been
asleep?" Lanyard nodded. "You have slept all afternoon, and soundly?" He
confessed that he had. Liane subsided, crushed by despair, upon the
cushioned transom beneath the port. "It was the same to them as if you
had taken their drug--the opportunity they needed. Now they have found
the necklace--you are lost!"
"But I have often been 'lost' in my life," Lanyard retorted, unmoved
more than by impatience with this everlasting beating about the bush.
"And at present I feel less lost than quite newly found, and so prefer
to think myself--until, at least, you consent to become more coherent."
Beneath the sheer silk perfect shoulders stirred disconsolately. "There
is nothing one can do now--one can only wait."
"Let me recommend you to study myself, then: to my mind, a perfect
pattern of patience."
Lanyard offered the cigarettes in an unfamiliar case which he had found
in his pockets, and when they were disdained philosophically helped
himself, while the woman sat glowering at the door as if to wither the
object of her spite, wherever he might lurk beyond those walls.
"That animal of a doctor! how dare he be so sly with me and at the same
time such an imbecile?"
"Oh, very well!" said Lanyard, settling into the chair: "by all means
let us begin with that good Dr. Bright. What has he done?"
"He came to me an hour ago, Michael, to put me on my guard against
you."
"Considerate beggar. But do go on . . ."
"The idiot would like to make love to me. He thought he might worm into
my good graces by warning me to keep an eye on my jewels, since it has
transpired that you were the Lone Wolf."
"And since when has that transpired--?"
"He told me that the captain had been advised by wireless, early this
morning, to keep you under observation until we arrive at Nassau; where
officers will board the vessel with a warrant for your arrest."
"Something to do with the missing necklace, of course."
"You're wanted in New York for stealing it. Your last great coup, my
friend--and you bungled it!"
"I did? Then I trust devoutly you are right, it was my last. From what
you hint, Liane, I would seem to have been leading a busy life of late.
If you would only be a little less vague . . ."
"If I hesitate to speak plainly," the woman gently reminded him, "it is
because you are dear to me, Michael, I find it not easy to say anything
that will give you pain."
"Console yourself by observing that I am prepared. You have told me so
much already, a word here and a hint there, I could almost foretell this
revelation you shrink from making." Lanyard shot a quizzical grin
through cigarette smoke. "I am accused of stealing a valuable necklace
and making such an unworkman-like job of it that I had to fly the States
incognito. It would further appear that I wasn't very clever about
making my escape, since my presence aboard this vessel is known and
steps have been taken by the authorities to have me detained at her
first port of call. For all of which, I presume, I have to thank that
persevering hater of mine--and friend of yours--Morphew. What a memory
the man must have! what a genius for bearing a grudge!"
"All that is good guesswork and substantially true"--the woman nodded
regretfully--"all but your suspicions of Morphew. There you are wrong:
he had nothing to do with this affair, Michael, it is all of your own
contriving."
"You tell me that," Lanyard laughed--"and in the same breath that I am
'dear' to you! It's no good, Liane: you can't be Morphew's friend and
mine."
"I tell you nothing but what of a certainty and my own knowledge I know.
Morphew is nothing to me, you are everything; notwithstanding, your
suspicions do him an injustice--he would have saved you in New York had
you permitted. But you wouldn't listen to me when I prayed you to accept
his offer of intervention . . ."
"That at least one finds easy to believe."
"And even now he would be your friend--yours as well as mine--if you
would consent: Morphew stands prepared to save you yet, if we can find a
way to slip through their fingers who await you at Nassau."
"But tell me how . . ."
"The last thing before we sailed, Morphew sent Peter Pagan to promise
me, if I could persuade you to go ashore at Nassau and apply to his
factors there, the agents who have charge of his bootlegging interests
in the Bahamas, he would have us both conveyed secretly to France, in
his own yacht."
"Truly?" Lanyard laughed again, flipped his cigarette through the port,
and sat up. "How charming of the man--but how strange! Who would ever
suspect that rude and unlovely exterior disguised so much goodness and
simplicity of heart?"
"You laugh because you do not trust me," Liane sullenly complained. "I
have for months devoted myself to you--this is my reward!"
"Prove me ungrateful, my dear," Lanyard lightly offered--"prove me
skeptical without sound cause and provocation--and you can ask nothing
of me that I will refuse you in testimony to my penitence."
A stare of new intensity enveloped him. He saw her countenance overcast
with petulance, an odd frame for eyes of singular wistfulness.
"You are wrong to tempt me with such a promise . . ."
"Why?" Lanyard parried. "Are you afraid of the test? or that I won't
make good my word?"
"What makes me hesitate is fear lest you try to make your word good
against your will. It's your love I want, Michael, not your
duty--another name for hatred!"
"Do you truly believe you'd find me so contemptible, Liane? You should
know me better than that."
"I know men better than you do, my dear friend; and when all's said, I
know, you are but little different from any other; only, it is my lot to
see you different . . ."
"Believe me," Lanyard began in some constraint, "I am not insensible--"
"No! say nothing now. When you have heard me out it shall be for you to
say then whether or not I deserve better than mockery from you. But I
prophesy you will end by forgetting the fine promise you have just now
made . . ."
Impressed against his bias, Lanyard gave a nod and nothing more; and
then, seeing that she still faltered as if distressed by his direct
attention, he crossed to the port and stood with his lean, worn face
ruddled by the sun's last rays.
It was going down in a flaming welter of rose and gold beyond a violet
smudge to starboard, a blind loom of land at a distance difficult to
guess, because of the glare, though its relative nearness was manifest
in the moderate sea that was running in its lee, all that was left to
tell of that morning's fury; for while Lanyard looked, a small schooner
swam astern, midway between the steamer and that dim shore, with
slatting sails all black against the glare that burned the waters . . .
"Proceed, then," Lanyard prompted at length, watching the sun dip and
vanish.
The woman's voice responded in a weary key from out the shadow at his
elbow: "First of all, you must know you were mistaken about Mallison. He
was a wretch, I don't dispute, capable of any infamy you please; but it
was not he who made away with Folly's emeralds."
"You say that, no doubt, because he contrived to establish some sort of
an alibi that resulted in his acquittal."
"He was never tried, he was granted liberty under bail and disappeared."
"And you reckon that proof of his innocence? Or is one to understand you
absolve the fellow on Morphew's say-so?"
"But on your own, Michael."
"Mine!"
"You can not know everything you confided to me after your accident; the
many curious secrets you told me, such as that you remembered clearly
having broken into Folly's and stolen her emeralds, beside yourself as
you were that night with drink, and rebellious into the bargain against
a social order that kept you poor and so forbade your marrying Madame de
Montalais."
The brief sub-tropic twilight was ebbing fast, night was sweeping
swiftly over the face of the waters to blot out the last lingering
souvenir of the routed sun. Lanyard looked down as it were into a well
of gloom in which a blur of spectral pallor swam, source of those
accents which were enunciating proofs of an intimacy with his mind and
heart that passed all believing.
"I told you that!"