It was hardly possible to watch Mr. Blensop functioning in his vocational
capacity without reflecting on that cruel injustice which Nature only too
often practises upon her offspring in secreting most praiseworthy qualities
within fleshy envelopes of hopelessly frivolous cast.
The flowing gestures of this young man, his fluting accents, poetic eyes,
and modestly ingratiating moustache, the preciosity of his taste in dress,
assorted singularly with an austere devotion to duty rare if unaffected.
Beyond question, whether or not naturally a man of studious and
conscientious temper, Mr. Blensop figured to admiration in the role of such
an one.
Seated, the shaded lamplight an aureole for his fair young head, he wrought
industriously with a beautiful gold-mounted fountain pen for fully five
minutes after Lanyard had stolen into the draped recess of the French
window, pausing only now and again to take a fresh sheet of paper or
consult one of the sheaves of documents that lay before him.
At length, however, he hesitated with pen lifted and abstracted gaze
focussed upon vacancy, shook a bewildered head, and rose, moving directly
toward the windows.
For as long as thirty breathless seconds Lanyard remained in doubt; there
was the barest chance that in his preoccupation Blensop might pass through
to the garden without noticing that dark figure flattened against the
inswung half of the window, in the dense shadow of the portière. Otherwise
the game was altogether up; Lanyard could see no way to avoid the necessity
of staggering Blensop with a blow, racing for freedom, abandoning utterly
further effort to learn the motive of "Karl's" impersonation of Duchemin.
He gathered himself together, waited poised in readiness for any
eventuality--and blessed his lucky stars to find his apprehensions idle.
Three paces from the windows, Mr. Blensop made it plain that he was after
all not minded to stroll in the garden. Pausing, he swung a high-backed
wing chair round to face the corner of the room, switched on a reading
lamp, sat down and selected a volume of some work of reference from the
well-stocked book shelves.
For several minutes, seated within arm's length of the trespasser, he
studied intently, then with a cluck of satisfaction replaced the volume,
extinguished the light, and went back to his writing.
But presently he checked with a vexed little exclamation, shook his pen
impatiently, and fixed it with a frown of pained reproach.
But that did no good. The cussedness of the inanimate was strong in this
pen: since its reservoir was quite empty it mulishly refused more service
without refilling.
With a long-suffering sigh, Mr. Blensop found a filler in one of the desk
drawers, and unscrewed the nib of the pen.
This accomplished, he paused, listened for a moment with head cocked
intelligently to one side, dropped the dismembered implement, and got up
alertly. At the same moment the door to the hallway opened, and two women
entered, apparently sisters: one a lady of mature and distinguished charm,
the other an equally prepossessing creature much her junior, the one
strongly animated with intelligent interest in life, the other a listless
prey to habitual ennui.
To these fluttered Mr. Blensop, offering to relieve them of their wraps.
"Permit me, Mrs. Arden," he addressed the elder woman, who tolerated him
dispassionately. "And Mrs. Stanistreet ... I say, aren't you a bit late?"
"Frightfully," assented Mrs. Stanistreet in a weary voice. "It must be all
of midnight."
"Hardly that, Adele," said Mrs. Arden with a humorous glance.
"Dinner, the play, supper, and home before twelve!" commented Blensop,
shocked. "I say, that is going some, you know."
"George would insist on hurrying home," the young wife complained.
"Frightfully tiresome. We were so comfy at the Ritz, too...."
"The Crystal Room?" Dissembled envy poisoned Blensop's accents.
"Frightfully interestin'--everybody was there. I did so want to
dance--missed you, Arthur."
"I say, you didn't, did you, really?"
"Poor Mr. Blensop!" Mrs. Arden interjected with just a hint of malice.
"What a pity you must be chained down by inexorable duty, while we fly
round and amuse ourselves."
"I must not complain," Blensop stated with humility becoming in a dutiful
martyr, a pose which he saw fit quickly to discard as another man came
briskly into the room. "Ah, good evening, Colonel Stanistreet."
"Evening, Blensop."
With a brusque nod, Colonel Stanistreet went straightway to the desk,
stopping there to take up and examine the work upon which his secretary had
been engaged: a gentleman considerably older than his wife, of grave and
sturdy cast, with the habit of standing solidly on his feet and giving
undivided attention to the matter in hand.
"Anything of consequence turned up?" he enquired abstractedly, running
through the sheets of pen-blackened paper.
"Three persons called," Blensop admitted discreetly. "One returns at
midnight."
Stanistreet threw him a keen look. "Eh!" he said, making swift inference,
and turned to his wife and sister-in-law. "It is nearly twelve now. Forgive
me if I hurry you off."
"Patience," said Mrs. Arden indulgently. "Not for worlds would I hinder
your weighty affairs, dear old thing, but I sleep more sound o' nights when
I know my trinkets are locked up securely in your safe."
With a graceful gesture she unfastened a magnificent necklace and deposited
it on the desk.
"Frightful rot," her sister commented from the doorway. "As if anybody
would dare break in here."
"Why not?" Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her fingers of their
rings.
"With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night--"
"Letty is sensible," Stanistreet interrupted. "Howson's faithful enough,
and these American police dependable, but second-storey men happen in the
best-guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave your things here with
Letty's."
"No fear," his wife returned coolly. "Too frightfully weird...."
She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a pretty figure of
disdainful discontent.
"But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right," Blensop interposed vivaciously.
"What do you imagine I heard to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!"
"What is that you say?" Mrs. Arden demanded sharply.
"The Lone Wolf ... Fact. Have it on most excellent authority."
"The Lone Wolf!" Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. "If you ask me, I think the Lone
Wolf nothing in the world but a scapegoat for police stupidity."
"You wouldn't say that," Mrs. Arden retorted, "if you had lived in Paris as
long as I. There, in the dear old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax
not to believe in him."
"Frightful nonsense," insisted the other. "I'm off. 'Night, Arthur. Shall
you be long, George?"
"Oh, half an hour or so," her husband responded absently as she
disappeared.
With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped upon the desk, to
the care of her brother-in-law, Mrs. Arden uttered good-nights and followed
her sister.
Blensop bowed her out respectfully, shut the door and returned to the desk.
"What's this about the Lone Wolf?" Stanistreet enquired, sitting down to
con the papers more intently.
"Oh!" Blensop laughed lightly. "I was merely repeating the blighter's own
assertion. I mean to say, he boasted he was the Lone Wolf."
"Who boasted he was the Lone Wolf?"
"Chap who called to-night, giving the name of Duchemin--André Duchemin. Had
French passports, and letters from the Home Office recommending him rather
highly. Useful creature, one would fancy, with his knowledge of the right
way to go about the wrong thing. What? Ought to be especially helpful to us
in hunting down the Hun over here."
"Is this the man who returns at midnight?"
"Yes, sir. I thought it best to make the appointment."
"Why?"
"He said he had crossed on the _Assyrian_, said it significantly, you know.
I fancied he might be the person you have been expecting."
Stanistreet looked up with a frown. "Hardly," he said--"if, that is, he is
really what he claims to be. I wonder how he came by those letters."
"Does seem odd, doesn't it, sir? A confessed criminal!"
"An extraordinary man, by all accounts.... Those other callers--?"
"Nobody of importance, I should say. A man who gave his name as Ember and
got a bit shirty when I asked his business. Told him you might consent to
see him at nine in the morning."
"And the other?"
"A young woman--deuced pretty girl--also reticent. What was her name?
Brooke--that was it: Cecelia Brooke."
"The devil!" Stanistreet exclaimed, dropping the papers. "What did you say
to her?"
"What could I say, sir? She refused to divulge a word about her business
with us. I told her--"
Warned by a gesture from Colonel Stanistreet, Blensop broke off. Walker was
opening the door.
"Well, Walker?"
"A Mr. Duchemin, sir, says Mr. Blensop made an appointment with you for
twelve to-night."
"Show him in, please."
The footman shut himself out. Blensop clutched nervously at Mrs. Arden's
jewels.
"Hadn't I better put these in the safe first?"
"No--no time." Stanistreet opened a drawer of the desk--"Here!"--and closed
it as Blensop hastily swept the jewellery into it. "Safe enough there--as
long as he doesn't know, at all events. But don't forget to put them away
after he goes."
"No, sir."
Again the door opened. Walker announced: "Mr. Duchemin." Stanistreet rose
in his place. A man strode in with the assurance of one who has discounted
a cordial welcome.
Through the gap which he had quietly created between the portière and the
side of the window, Lanyard stared hungrily, and for the second time that
night damned heartily the inadequate light in the library.
The impostor's face, barely distinguishable in the up-thrown penumbra
of the lampshade, wore a beard--a rather thick, dark beard of negligent
abundance, after a mode popular among Frenchmen--above which his features
were an indefinite blur.
Lanyard endeavoured with ill success to identify the fellow by his
carriage; there was a perceptible suggestion of a military strut, but that
is something hardly to be termed distinctive in these days. Otherwise, he
was tall, quite as tall as Lanyard, and had much the same character of
body, slender and lithe.
But he was "Karl" beyond question, confederate and murderer of Baron von
Harden, the man who had thrown the light bomb to signal the U-boat,
the brute with whom Lanyard had struggled on the boat deck of the
_Assyrian_--though the latter, in the confusion of that struggle, had
thought the German's beard a masking handkerchief of black silk.
Now by that same token he was no member of that smoking-room coterie upon
which Lanyard's suspicions had centered.
On the other hand, any number of passengers had worn beards, not a few of
much the same mode as that sported by this nonchalant fraud.
Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits to aid a laggard memory, haunted by a
feeling that he ought to know this man instantly, even in so poor a light.
Something in his habit, something in that insouciance which so narrowly
escaped insolence, was at once strongly reminiscent and provokingly
elusive....
Pausing a little ways within the room, the fellow clicked heels and bowed
punctiliously in Continental fashion, from the hips.
"Colonel Stanistreet, I believe," he said in a sonorous voice--"Karl's"
unmistakable voice--"chief of the American bureau of the British Secret
Service?"
"I am Colonel Stanistreet," that gentleman admitted. "And you, sir--?"
"I have adopted the name of André Duchemin," the impostor stated. "With
permission I retain it."
Colonel Stanistreet inclined his head slightly. "As you will. Pray be
seated."
He dropped back into his chair, while "Karl" with a murmur of
acknowledgment again took the armchair on the far side of the desk, where
the lamp stood between him and the secret watcher.
"My secretary tells me you have letters of introduction...."
"Here." Calmly "Karl" produced and offered those purloined papers.
"You will smoke?" Stanistreet indicated a cigarette-box and leaned back to
glance through the letters.
During a brief pause Blensop busied himself with collecting together the
documents which had occupied him and began reassorting them, while "Karl,"
helping himself to a cigarette, smoked with manifest enjoyment.
"These seem to be in order," Stanistreet observed. "I note from this code
letter that your true name is Michael Lanyard, you were once a professional
French thief known as 'The Lone Wolf', but have since displayed every
indication of desire to reform your ways, and have been of considerable
use to the Intelligence Office. I am desired to employ your services in my
discretion, contingent--pardon me--upon your continued good behaviour."
"Precisely," assented "Karl."
"Proceed, Monsieur Duchemin."
"It is an affair of some delicacy.... Do we speak alone, Colonel
Stanistreet?"
"Mr. Blensop is my confidential secretary...."
"Oh, no objection. Still--if I may venture the suggestion--those windows
open upon a garden, I take it?"
"Yes. Blensop, be good enough to close the windows."
"Certainly, sir."
Stepping delicately, Blensop moved toward the end of the room.
Again Lanyard was confronted with the alternatives of incontinent flight or
attempting to remain undetected through the adoption of an expedient of the
most desperate audacity. He had prepared against such contingency, he did
not mean to go; but the feasibility of his contemplated manoeuvre depended
entirely upon chance, its success in any event was forlornly problematic.
"Karl" remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he from "Karl." Colonel
Stanistreet, facing his caller, sat half turned away from the windows.
Everything rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows he would
elect first to close.
A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had foreseen, to the right, and
momentarily disappeared in the recess of the farther window.
In the same instant Lanyard slipped noiselessly from behind the portière,
and dropped into that capacious wing chair which Blensop had thoughtfully
placed for him some time since.
Thus seated, making himself as small and still as possible, he was wholly
concealed from all other occupants of the library but Blensop; and even
this last was little likely to discover him.
He did not. He closed and latched the farther window, then that wherein
Lanyard had lurked, and ambled back into the room with never a glance
toward that shadowed corner which held the wing chair.
And Lanyard drew a deep breath, if a quiet one. Behind him the conversation
had continued without break. It was true, he could see nothing; but he
could hear all that was said, he had missed no syllable, and now every
second was informing him to his profit....
"Your secretary, no doubt, has told you I am a survivor of the _Assyrian_
disaster."
"Yes...."
"You were, I believe, expecting a certain communication of extraordinary
character by the _Assyrian_, to be brought, that is, by an agent of the
British Secret Service."
After an almost imperceptible pause Stanistreet said evenly: "It is
possible."
"A communication, in fact, of such character that it was impossible to
entrust it to the mails or to cable transmission, even in code."
"And if so, sir...?"
"And you are aware that, of the two gentlemen entrusted with the care of
this document, one was drowned when the _Assyrian_ went down, and the other
so seriously injured that he has not yet recovered consciousness, but
was transferred directly from the pier to a hospital when the _Saratoga_
docked."
"What then, Monsieur Duchemin?"
"Colonel Stanistreet," said the impostor deliberately, "I have that
communication. I will ask you not to question me too closely as to how it
came into my possession. I have it: that is sufficient."
"If you possess any document which you conceive to be so valuable to the
British Government, monsieur, and consequently to the Allied cause, I have
every confidence in your intention to deliver it to me without delay."