"Well, I don't know about that. They done their damnedest to fix it for us
to drown somewhere out there in the nice, cold English Channel. I'm just as
satisfied it's them, instead, with their backs to a stone wall in the
warm sunlight, getting their needin's. That's only justice. Eh, Monsieur
Duchemin?"
"It is war," said Lanyard with a shrug.
"And war is ... No: Sherman was all wrong. Hell's got perfectly good
grounds for a libel suit against William Tecumseh for what he up and said
about it and war, all in the same breath."
Lanyard smiled faintly, but Dressler pondered this obscure reference with
patent distress. Crane champed his cigar reflectively.
"What's more to our purpose," he said presently: "I shouldn't be surprised
if this meant the wind-up of our rest-cure here. That's the third
mine-layer they've collected this week--two subs, and now this benevolent
nootral. Am I right, Monsieur Duchemin?"
"Who knows?" Lanyard replied with a smile. "Even now the mine-sweeping
flotilla is coming home, as you see; which means, the neighbouring waters
have been cleared. It is altogether a possibility that we may be permitted
to depart this night."
Even so the event: as that day's sun declined amid a portentous welter of
crimson and purple and gold, the moorings were cast off and the _Assyrian_
warped out into mid-channel and anchored there for the night.
Inasmuch as she was to sail as the tide served, some time before sunrise,
the passengers were advised to seek their berths at an early hour. Thirty
minutes before the steamship entered the danger zone (as she would soon
after leaving the harbour) they would be roused and were expected promptly
to assemble on deck, with life-preservers, and station themselves near the
boats to which they were individually assigned.
For their further comforting they were treated, in the ebb of the chill
blue twilight, to boat-drill and final instructions in the right adjustment
of life-belts.
A preoccupied company assembled in the dining saloon for what might be
its last meal. In the shadow of the general apprehension, conversation
languished; expressions of relief on the part of those who had been loudest
in complaining at the delays were notably unheard; even Crane, Lanyard's
nearest neighbour at table, was abnormally subdued. Reviewing that array of
sobered and anxious faces, Lanyard remarked--not for the first time, but
with renewed gratitude--that in all the roster of passengers none were
children and but two were women: the American widow of an English officer
and her very English daughter, an angular and superior spinster.
Avoiding the customary post-prandial symposium in the smoking room, Lanyard
slipped away with his cigar for a lonely turn on deck.
Beneath a sky heavily canopied, the night was stark black and loud with
clashing waters. A fitful wind played in gusts now grim, now groping, like
a lost thing blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore a
few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly, withdrawn in vast
remoteness; those near at hand, of the anchored shipping, skipped and
swayed and flickered in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who paced those
vacant, darkened decks, the sense of dissociation from all the common,
kindly phenomena of civilization was something intimate and inescapable.
Melancholy as well rode upon that black-winged wind.
At pause beneath the bridge, the adventurer rested elbows upon the teakwood
rail and with importunate eyes searched the masked face of his destiny.
There was great fear in his heart, not of death, but lest death overtake
him before that scarlet hour when he should encounter the man whom he must
always think of as "Ekstrom."
After that, nothing would matter: let Death come then as swiftly as it
willed....
He was not even middle-aged, on the hither side of thirty; yet his attitude
was that of one who had already crossed the great divide of the average
mortal span: he looked backward upon a life, never forward to one. To him
his history seemed a thing written, lacking the one word Finis: he had
lived and loved and lost--had arrayed himself insolently against God and
Man, had been lifted toward the light a little way by a woman's love, had
been thrust relentlessly back into the black pit of his damnation. He made
no pretense that it was otherwise with him: remained now merely the thing
he had been in the beginning, minus that divine spark which love had once
kindled into consuming aspiration toward the right; the Lone Wolf prowled
again to-day and would henceforth forevermore, the beast of prey callous
to every human emotion, animated by one deadly purpose, existing but to
destroy and be in turn destroyed....
Two decks below, about amidships, a cargo port was thrust open to the
night. A thick, broad beam of light leaped out, buffeting the murk,
striking evanescent glimmers from the rocking facets of the waters.
Deckhands busied themselves rigging out an accommodation ladder. A tender
of little tonnage panted nervously up out of nowhere and was made fast
alongside. The light raked its upper deck, picking out in passing a group
of men in uniforms. Fugitively something resembling a petticoat snapped
in the wind. Then several persons moved toward the accommodation ladder,
climbed it, disappeared through the cargo port. The wearer of the petticoat
did not accompany them.
Lanyard noted these matters subconsciously, for the time altogether
preoccupied, casting forward his thoughts along those dim trails his feet
must tread who followed his dark star....
Ten minutes later a deck-steward found him, and paused, touching his cap.
"Beg pardon, sir, but all passingers is requested to report immedately in
the music room."
Indifferently Lanyard thanked the man and went below, to find the music
room tenanted by a full muster of his fellow passengers, all more or less
indignantly waiting to be cross-examined by the party of port officials
from the tender--the ship's purser standing by together with the second and
third officers and a number of stewards.
Resentment was not unwarranted: already, before being suffered to take up
quarters on board the _Assyrian_, each passenger had submitted to a most
comprehensive survey of his credentials, his mental, moral, and social
status, his past record, present affairs, and future purposes. A formality
to be expected by all such as travel in war time, it had been rigid but
mild in contrast with this eleventh-hour inquisition--a proceeding so
drastic and exhaustive that the only plausible inference was official
determination to find excuse for ordering somebody ashore in irons. Nothing
was overlooked: once passports and other proofs of identity had been
scrutinized, each passenger was conducted to his stateroom and his person
and luggage subjected to painstaking search. None escaped; on the other
hand, not one was found guilty of flagitious peculiarity. In the upshot the
inquisitors, baffled and betraying every symptom of disappointment, were
fain to give over and return to their tender.
By this time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and passed, found
himself as little inclined for sleep as the most timorous soul on board.
Selecting an American novel from the ship's library, he repaired to
the smoking room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an
involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eavesdropper upon an
animated debate involving some eight or ten gentlemen at a table in the
middle of the saloon--its subject, the recent visitation.
Measures so extraordinary were generally held to indicate an incentive more
extraordinary still.
"You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort of
funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't
held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they come
aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer voluptuousness.
There's a reason."
"And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that reason to
be?"
"Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British Intelligence
Office are a long sight past finding out."
"It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the
_Assyrian_ is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares."
"Monsieur means--?" the Swiss enquired.
"I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe some one of us a
questionable character."
"German spy?"
"Possibly."
"Or an English traitor?"
"Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There is to-day no such
thing in England. Two years ago the supposition might have been plausible.
But that breed has long since been stamped out--in England."
"Another guess," Crane cut in: "they've taken considerable trouble to clear
the track for us. Maybe it occurred to somebody at the last moment to make
sure none of us was likely to pull off an inside job."
"'Inside job?'" Dressler pleaded.
"Planting bombs in the coal bunkers--things like that--anything to crab our
getting through the barred zone in spite of mines and U-boats."
"Any such attempt would mean almost certain death!"
"What of it? It's been tried before--and got away with. You've got to hand
it to Fritz, he'll risk hell-for-breakfast cheerful any time he gets it in
his bean he's serving Gott und Vaterland."
"Granted," said the Englishman. "But I fancy such an one would find it far
from easy to secure passage upon this or any other vessel."
"How so? You may have haltered all your traitors, but there's still
a-plenty German spies living in England. Even you admit that. And if they
can get by your Secret Service, to say nothing of Scotland Yard, what's to
prevent their fixing to leave the country?"
"Nothing, certainly. But I still contend it is hardly likely."
"Of course it's hardly likely. Look at these guys to-night--dead set on
making an awful example of anybody that couldn't come clean. I didn't
notice them missing any bets. They combed me to the Queen's taste; for
a while I was sure scared they'd extract my pivot tooth to see if there
wasn't something incriminating and degrading secreted inside it. And nobody
got off any easier. _I_ say the good ship _Assyrian_ has a pretty clean
bill of health to go sailing with."
"On the other hand"--yet another American voice was speaking--"no spy or
criminal worth his salt would try to ship without preparations thorough
enough to insure success, barring accidents."
"Criminal?" drawled the Briton incredulously.
"The enterprisin' burglar keeps a-burglin', even in war time. There have
been notable burglaries in London of late, according to your newspapers."
"And you think the thief would attempt to smuggle his loot out of the
country aboard such a ship as this?"
"Why not?"
"Scotland Yard to the contrary notwithstanding?"
"If Scotland Yard is as efficient as you think, sir, certainly any sane
thief would make every effort to leave a country it was making too hot for
him."
"Considerable criminal!" Crane jeered.
"Undeceive yourself, señor." This was a Brazilian, a quiet little dark body
who commonly contented himself with a listening rôle in the smoking-room
discussions. "There are truly criminals of intelligence. And war conditions
are driving them out of Europe."
Of a sudden Lanyard--stretched out at length upon the leather cushions,
in full view of these gossips--became aware that he was being closely
scrutinised. By whom, with what reason or purpose, he could not surmise;
and it were unwise to look up from that printed page. But that sixth sense
of his--intuition, what you will--that exquisitively sensitive sentinel
admonished that at least one person in the room was watching him narrowly.
Though he made no move other than to turn a page, his glance followed
blindly blurring lines of text, and his quickened wits overlooked no shade
of meaning or intonation as that talk continued.
"A criminal of intelligence," some one observed, "is a giddy paradox whose
fatuous existence is quite fittingly confined to the realm of fable."
"You took the identical words right out of my mouth," Crane complained
bitterly.
"Your pardon, señores: history confutes your incredulity."
"But we are talking about to-day."
"Even to-day--can you deny it?--men attain high places by means which the
law would construe as criminal, were they not intelligent enough to outwit
it."
"Big game," Crane objected; "something else again. What we contend is no
man of ordinary common sense could get his own consent to crack a safe, or
pick a pocket, or do second-story work, or pull any rough stuff like that."
"Again you overlook living facts," persisted the Brazilian.
"Name one--just one."
"The Lone Wolf, then."
"Unnatural history is out of my line," Crane objected. "Why is a lone wolf,
anyway?"
The Brazilian's voice took on an accent of exasperation. "Señores, I do not
jest. I am a student of psychology, more especially of criminal psychology.
I lived long in Paris before this war, and took deep interest in the case
of the Lone Wolf."
"Well, you've got me all excited. Go on with your story."
"With much pleasure.... This gentleman, then, this Michael Lanyard, as he
called himself, was a distinguished Parisian figure, a man of extraordinary
attainment, esteemed the foremost connoisseur d'art in all Europe.
Suddenly, at the zenith of his career, he disappeared. Subsequently it
became known that he had been identical with that great Parisian criminal,
the Lone Wolf, a superman of thieves who had plundered all Europe with
unvarying success for almost a decade."
"Then what made the silly ass quit?"
"According to my information, he won the love of a young woman--"
"And reformed for her sake, of course?"
"To the contrary, señor; Lanyard renounced his double life because of a
theory on which he had founded his astonishing success. According to this
theory, any man of intelligence may defy society as long as he will, always
providing he has no friend, lover, or confederate in whom to confide. A man
self-contained can never be betrayed; the stupid police seldom apprehend
even the most stupid criminal, save through the treachery of some intimate.
This Lanyard proved his theory by confounding not only the utmost
efforts of the police but even the jealous enmity of that association of
Continental criminals known as the Bande Noire--until he became a lover.
Then he proved his intelligence: in one stroke he flouted the police,
delivered into their hands the inner circle of the Bande Noire, and
vanished with the woman he loved."
"And then--?"
"The rest," said the Brazilian, "is silence."
"It is for to-night, anyway," Crane observed, yawning. "It's bedtime. Here
comes the busy steward to put the lights and us out."
There was a general stir; men drained glasses, knocked out pipes, got up,
murmured good-nights. Lanyard closed the American novel upon a forefinger,
looked up abstractedly, rose, moved toward the door. The utmost effort of
exceptional powers of covert observation assured him that, at the moment,
none of the company favoured him with especial attention; the author of
that interest whose intensity had so weighed upon his consciousness had
been swift to dissemble.
On his way forward he exchanged bows and smiles with Crane and one or two
others, his gesture completely casual. Yet when he entered the starboard
alleyway he carried with him a complete catalogue of those who had
contributed to the conversation. With all, thanks to seven days'
association, he stood on terms of shipboard acquaintance. Not one, in his
esteem, was more potentially mischievous than any other--not even the
Brazilian Velasco, though he had been the first to name the Lone Wolf.
It was, furthermore, quite possible that the mention of his erstwhile
sobriquet had been utterly fortuitous.
And yet, one might not forget that sensation of being under intent
surveillance....
In his stateroom Lanyard stood for several minutes gravely peering into the
mirror above the washstand.
The face he scanned was lean and worn in feature, darkly weathered, framed
in hair whose jet already boasted an accent of silver at either temple--the
face of a man inured to hardship, seasoned in suffering, strong in
self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence coldly dispassionate,
quick and shrewd, lighted those dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic
cast, three years of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from
it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social freebooter of
ante-bellum Paris and that undesirable alien whom the authorities had
sought to deport from the States. Amazing facility in impersonation had
done the rest; unrecognisable as what he had been, he was to-day flawlessly
the incarnation of what he elected to seem--Monsieur Duchemin, gentleman,
of Paris.
Impossible to believe his disguise had been so soon penetrated....
And yet, again, that gossip of the smoking room....
Police work? Or had Ekstrom's creatures picked up his trail once more?
Beneath that urbane mask of his, a hunted, wild thing poised in question,
mistrustful of the very wind, prick-eared, fangs agleam, eyes grimly
apprehensive....
A little sound, the least of metallic clicks, breaking the hush of his
solitude, froze the adventurer to attention. Only his glance swerved
swiftly to a fastened door in the forward partition--his stateroom being
the aftermost of three that might be thrown together to form a suite. The
nickeled knob was being tried with infinite precaution. On the half turn it
checked with a faint repetition of the click. Then the door itself quivered
almost imperceptibly to pressure, though it yielded not a fraction of an
inch.
Lanyard's eyes hardened. He did not stir from where he stood, but one hand
whipped an automatic from his pocket while the other darted out to the
switch-box by the head of his berth and extinguished the light.
Instantly a glimmer of light in the forward stateroom showed through
a narrow strip of iron grill-work set in the top of the partition for
ventilating purposes.
Simultaneously the door-knob was gently released, and with another louder
click the light in the adjoining cubicle was blotted out.
Mystified, Lanyard undressed and turned in, but not to sleep--not for a
little, at least.
Who might this neighbour be who tried his door so stealthily? Before
to-night that room had had no tenant. Apparently one of the passengers had
seen fit to shift his quarters. To what end? To keep a jealous eye on
the Lone Wolf, perhaps? So much the better, then: Lanyard need only make
enquiry in the morning to identify his enemy.
Deliberately closing his eyes, he dismissed the enigma. He possessed in
marked degree that attribute of genius, ability to command slumber at will.
Swiftly the troubled deeps of thought grew calm; on their placid surface
inconsequent visions were mirrored darkly, fugitive scenes from the store
of subconscious memory: Crane's lantern-jawed physiognomy, keen eyes
semi-veiled by humorously drooping lids, the extreme corner of his mouth
bulging round his everlasting cigar ... grimy lions in Trafalgar Square of
a rainy afternoon ... the octagonal room of L'Abbaye Thêléme at three in
the morning, a swirl of Bacchanalian shapes ... Wertheimer's soldierly
figure beside the telegraphers' table in that noisome cave at the Front ...
the deck of a tender in darkness swept by a shaft of yellow light which
momentarily revealed a group of folk with upturned faces, a petticoat
fluttering in its midst....