promise a fair night of moonlight, the skies had been thickening slowly
over Paris. While still at the Ambassadeurs Lanyard had noticed that
the moon was being blotted out. By midnight its paling disk had become
totally eclipsed, the clouds hung low over the city, a dense blanket
imprisoning heat which was oppressive even in the open and stifling in
the ill-ventilated restaurants.
Now from the shelter of the café canopy Lanyard and Athenais Reneaux
looked out upon a pave like a river of jet ribboned with gently glowing
lights and running between the low banks of sidewalks no less black:
both deserted but for a few belated prowlers lurching homeward through
the drizzle, and a rank of private cars waiting near the entrance.
The bedizened porter whistled fatuously at a passing taxicab, which
though fareless held steadfast to its way, while the driver
acknowledged the signal only with jeers and disgraceful gestures, after
the manner of his kind. So that Lanyard, remembering how frequently
similar experiences had befallen him in pre-War Paris, reflected sadly
that the great conflict had, after all, worked little change in human
hearts--charitably assuming the bosoms of French taxi-bandits to be so
furnished.
Presently, however, the persistent whistle conjured from round a corner
a rakish hansom that--like the creature between its shafts and the
driver on its lofty box, with his face in full bloom and his bleary
eyes, his double-breasted box-coat and high hat of oilcloth--had
doubtless been brisk with young ambition in the golden time of the
Nineteen-Naughties.
But unmistakably of the vintage of the Nineteen-Twenties was the
avarice of the driver. For when he had been given the address of the
Athenais' apartment, he announced with vinous truculence that his whim
inclined to precisely the opposite direction, gathered up the reins,
clucked in peremptory fashion to the nag (which sagely paid no
attention to him whatsoever) and consented only to change his mind when
promised a fabulous fare.
Even then he grumbled profanely while Lanyard helped Athenais to climb
in and took the place by her side.
The rue Pigalle was as dark and still as any street in a deserted
village. From its gloomy walls the halting clatter of hoofs struck
empty echoes that rang in Lanyard's heart like a refrain from some old
song. To that very tune had the gay world gone about its affaires in
younger years, when the Lone Wolf was a living fact and not a fading
memory in the minds of men...
He sighed heavily.
"Monsieur is sentimental," commented Athenais Reneaux lightly. "Beware!
Sentimentalists come always to some sad end."
"One has found that true ... But you are young to know it, Athenais."
"A woman is never young--after a certain age--save when she loves, my
friend."
"That, too, is true. But still you are overyoung to have learned it."
"One learns life's lessons not in any fixed and predetermined order,
Paul, with no sort of sequence whatever, but as and when Life chooses
to teach them."
"Quel dommage!" Lanyard murmured, and subsided into another silence.
The girl grew restive. "But tell me, my dear Don Juan," she protested:
"Do all your conquests affect you in this morbid fashion?"
"Conquests?"
"You seemed to get on very well with Liane Delorme."
"Pardon. If I am sentimental, it is because old memories have been
awakened to-night, memories of forfeit days when one thought well of
oneself, here in Paris."
"Days in which, no doubt, Liane played a part?"
"A very minor rôle, Athenais ... But are you doing me the honour to be
jealous?"
"Perhaps, petit Monsieur Paul..."
In the broken light of passing lamps her quiet smile was as illegible
as her shadowed eyes.
After a moment Lanyard laughed a little, caught up her hand, patted it
indulgently, and with gentle decision replaced it in her lap.
"It isn't fair, my dear, to be putting foolish notions into elderly
heads merely because you know you can do it. Show a little respect for
my grey hairs, of which there are far too many."
"They're most becoming," said Athenais Reneaux demurely. "But tell me
about Liane, if it isn't a secret."
"Oh! that was so long ago and such a trifling thing, one wonders at
remembering it at all.... I happened, one night, to be where I had no
right to be. That was rather a habit of mine, I'm afraid. And so I
discovered, in another man's apartment, a young woman, hardly more than
a child, trying to commit suicide. You may believe I put a stop to
that.... Later, for in those days I had some little influence in
certain quarters, I got her place in the chorus at the Variétés. She
made up a name for the stage: Liane Delorme. And that is all. You see,
it was very simple."
"And she was grateful?"
"Not oppressively. She was quite normal about it all."
"Still, she has not forgotten."
"But remind yourself that the chemistry of years is such that
inevitably a sense of obligation in due course turns into a grudge. It
is true, Liane has not forgotten, but I am by no means sure she has
forgiven me for saving her to life."
"There may be something in that, seeing what she has made of her life."
"Now there is where you can instruct me. I have been long in exile."
"But you know how Liane graduated from the chorus of the Variétés,
became first a principal there, then the rage of all the music halls
with her way of singing rhymed indecencies."
"One has heard something of that."
"On the peak of her success she retired, saying she had worked long
enough, made enough money. That, too, knows itself. But Liane retired
only from the stage... You understand?"
"Perfectly."
"She continued to make many dear friends, some of them among the
greatest personages of Europe. So that gradually she became what she is
to-day," Athenais Reneaux pronounced soberly: "as I think, the most
dangerous woman on the Continent."
"How--'dangerous'?"
"Covetous, grasping, utterly unscrupulous and corrupt, and weirdly
powerful. She has a strange influence in the highest places."
"Blackmail?"
"God knows! It was, at all events, strong enough to save her from being
shot during the war. I was assigned to watch her then. There was a
suspicion in England that she was in communication with the enemy. I
found it to be quite true. She knew Bolo Pasha intimately, Caillaux,
too. Other women, many of them, fled the country, or went to St. Lazare
for the duration of the war, or faced firing squads at dawn for doing
infinitely less than she did to betray France and her Allies; but Liane
Delorme got off scot-free. I happen to know that England made the
strongest representations to the French government about her. I know
personally of two young French officers who had been on friendly terms
with Liane, and who shot themselves, one dramatically on her very
doorstep. And why did they do that, if not in remorse for betraying to
her secrets which afterwards somehow found their way to the enemy?...
But nothing was ever done about it, she was never in the least
molested, and nightly you might see her at Maxim's or L'Abbaye, making
love to officers, while at the Front men were being slaughtered by the
hundreds, thanks to her treachery.... Ah, monsieur, I tell you I know
that woman too well!"
The girl's voice quavered with indignation.
"So that was how you came to know her," Lanyard commented as if he had
found nothing else of interest. "I wondered..."
"Yes: we were bosom friends--almost--for a time. It wasn't nice, but
the job had to be done. Then Liane grew suspicious, and our friendship
cooled. One night I had a narrow escape from some Apaches. I recognised
Liane's hand in that. She was afraid I knew something. So I did. But
she didn't dream how much I knew. If she had there would have been a
second attempt of that sort minus the escape. Then the armistice came
to cool our passions, and Liane found other things to think about ...
God knows what other mischief to do in time of peace!"
"I think," Lanyard suggested, recalling that conversation in the grand
salon of the Château de Montalais, "you had better look to yourself,
Athenais, as far as Liane is concerned, after to-night. She only needed
to see you with me to have confirmed any suspicions she may previously
have had concerning your relations with the B. S. S."
"I will remember that," the girl said calmly. "Many thanks, dear
friend.... But what is it you are doing all the time? What is it you
see?"
As the hansom swung round the dark pile of the Trinité, Lanyard had for
the third time twisted round in his seat, to peep back up the rue
Pigalle through the little window in the rear.
"As I thought!" He let the leather flap fall over the peep-hole and sat
back. "Liane doesn't trust me," he sighed, disconsolate.
"We are followed?"
"By a motor-car of some sort, creeping along without lights, probably
one of the private cars that were waiting when we came out."
"I have a pistol, if you need one," Athenais offered, matter-of-fact.
"Then you were more sensible than I."
Lanyard held a thoughtful silence for some minutes, while the cab
jogged sedately down the rue St. Lazare, then had another look back
through the little window.
"No mistake about that," he reported; and bending forward began to peer
intently right and left into the dark throats of several minor streets
they passed after leaving the Hôtel Terminus behind and heading down
the rue de la Pépinière. "The deuce of it is," he complained, "this
inhuman loneliness! If there were only something like a crowd in the
streets as there must have been earlier in the evening..."
"What are you thinking of, monsieur?"
"But naturally of ridding you of an embarrassing and perhaps dangerous
companion."
"If you mean you're planning to jump down and run for it," Athenais
replied, "you're a fool. You'll not get far with a motor car pursuing
you and sergents de ville abnormally on the qui vive because the crime
wave that followed demobilisation as yet shows no signs of subsiding."
"But, mademoiselle, it makes me so unhappy to have any shadow but my
own."
"Then rest tranquil here with me. It isn't much farther to my
apartment."
"Possibly it would be better to drop you there first--"
"Nothing of the sort; but positively the contrary."
"My dear child! if I were to do as you wish they would think--"
"My dear Paul, I don't give a damn what they think. Remember I am
specially charged with the preservation of your life while in Paris.
Besides, my apartment is the most discreet little rez-de-chaussée one
could wish. There is more than one way in and out. And once they think
you are placed for the night, it's more than likely they won't even set
a watch, but will trot off to report. Then you can slip away when you
will...." He stared, knowing a moment of doubt to which a hard little
laugh put a period.
"Oh, you needn't be so thoughtful of my reputation! If this were the
worst that could be said of me--"
Lanyard laughed in turn, quietly tolerant, and squeezed her hand again.
"You are a dear," he said, "but you need to be a far better actress to
deceive me about such matters."
"Don't be stupid!" her sulky voice retorted.
"I'm not."
He bent forward again, folding his arms on the ledge of the apron,
studying the streets and consulting an astonishingly accurate mental
map of Paris which more than once had stood him in good stead in other
times.
After a little the girl's hand crept along his arm, took possession of
his hand and used it as a lever to swing him back to face her.
In the stronger lighting of the Boulevard Haussmann her face seemed
oddly childlike, oddly luminous with appeal.
"Please, petit Monsieur Paul! I ask it of you, I wish it.... To please
me?"
"O Lord!" Lanyard sighed--"how is one to resist when you plead so
prettily to be compromised?"
"Since that's settled"--of a sudden the imploring child was replaced by
self-possessed Mademoiselle Athenais Reneaux--"you may have your hand
back again. I assure you I have no more use for it."
The hansom turned off the boulevard, affording Lanyard an opportunity
to look back through the side window.
"Still on the trail," he announced. "But they've got the lights on
now."
With a profound sigh from the heart the horse stopped in front of a
corner apartment building and later, with a groan almost human,
responded to the whip and jingled the hansom away, leaving Lanyard the
poorer by the exorbitant fare he had promised and something more.
Athenais was already at the main entrance, ringing for the concierge.
Lanyard hastened to join her, but before he could cross the sidewalk a
motor-car poked its nose round the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann, a
short block away, and bore swiftly their way, seeming to search the
street suspiciously with its blank, lidless eyes of glare.
"Peste!" breathed the girl. "I have a private entrance and my own key.
We could have used that had I imagined this sacred pig of a
concierge--!"
The latch clicked. She thrust the door open and slipped into dense
darkness. Lanyard lingered another instant. The car was slowing down,
and the street lamp on the corner revealed plainly a masculine arm
resting on its window-sill; but the spying face above the arm was only
a blur.
"Come, monsieur!"
Lanyard stepped in and shut the door. A hand with which he was
beginning to feel fairly well acquainted found his and led him through
the dead obscurity to another pause. A key grated in a lock, the hand
drew him on again, a second door closed behind him.
"We are chez moi," said a voice in the dark.
"One could do with a light."
"Wait. This way."
The hand guided him across a room of moderate size, avoiding its
furniture with almost uncanny ease, then again brought him to a halt.
Brass rings clashed softly on a pole, a gap opened in heavy draperies
curtaining a window, a shaft of street light threw the girl's profile
into soft relief. She drew him to her till their shoulders touched.
"You see..."
He bent his head close to hers, conscious of a caressing tendril of
hair that touched his cheek, and the sweet warmth and fragrance of her;
and peering through the draperies saw their pursuing motor car at
pause, not at the curb, but in the middle of the street before the
house. The man's arm still rested on the sill of the window; the pale
oval of the face above it was still vague. Abruptly both disappeared, a
door slammed on the far side of the car, and the car itself, after a
moment's wait, gathered way with whining gears and vanished, leaving
nothing human visible in the quiet street.
"What did that mean? Did they pick somebody up?"
"But quite otherwise, mademoiselle."
"Then what has become of him?"
"In the shadow of the door across the way: don't you see the deeper
shadow of his figure in the corner, to this side. And there ... Ah,
dolt!"
The man in the doorway had moved, cautiously thrusting one hand out of
the shadow far enough for the street lights to shine upon the dial of
his wrist-watch. Instantly it was withdrawn; but his betrayal was
accomplished.
"That's enough," said Lanyard, drawing the draperies close again. "No
trouble to make a fool of that one, God has so nobly prepared the
soil." The girl said nothing. They no longer touched, and she was for
the time so still that he might almost have fancied himself alone. But
in that quiet room he could hear her breathing close beside him, not
heavily but with a rapid accent hinting at an agitation which her voice
bore out when she answered his wondering: "Mademoiselle?" "J'y suis,
petit Monsieur Paul."
"Is anything the matter?"
"No ... no: there is nothing the matter."
"I'm afraid I have tired you out to-night."
"I do not deny I am a little weary."
"Forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive, not yet, petit Monsieur Paul." A trace of
hard humour crept into her tone: "It is all in the night's work, as the
saying should be in Paris."
"Three favours more; then I will do you one in return."
"Ask..."
"Be so kind as to make a light and find me a pocket flash-lamp if you
have one."
"I can do the latter without the former. It is better that we show no
light; one stray gleam through the curtains would tell too much. Wait."
A noise of light footsteps muffled by a rug, high heels tapping on
uncovered floor, the scrape of a drawer pulled out: and she returned to
give him a little nickelled electric torch.
"And then--?"
"Liane's address, if you know it."
The girl named a number on an avenue not far distant. Lanyard remarked
this.
"Yes; you can walk there in less than five minutes. And finally?"
"Show me the way out." Again she made no response. He pursued in some
constraint: "Thus you will enable me to make you my only inadequate
return--leave you to your rest."
Yet another space of silence; then a gusty little laugh. "That is a
great favour, truly, petit Monsieur Paul! So give me your hand once
more." But she no longer clung to it as before; the clasp of her
fingers was light, cool, impersonal to the point of indifference.
Vexed, resentful of her resentment, Lanyard suffered her guidance
through the darkness of another room, a short corridor, and then a
third room, where she left him for a moment.
He heard again the clash of curtain rings. The dim violet rectangle of
a window appeared in the darkness, the figure of the woman in vague
silhouette against it. A sash was lifted noiselessly, rain-sweet air
breathed into the apartment. Athenais returned to his side, pressed
into his palm a key.
"That window opens on a court. The drop from the sill is no more than
four feet. In the wall immediately opposite you will find a door. This
key opens it. Lock the door behind you, and at your first opportunity
throw away the key: I have several copies. You will find yourself in a
corridor leading to the entrance of the apartment house in the rear of
this, facing on the next street. Demand the cordon of the concierge as
if you were a late guest leaving one of the apartments. He will make no
difficulty about opening.... I think that is all."
"Not quite. There remains for me to attempt the impossible, to prove my
gratitude, Athenais, in mere, unmeaning words."
"Don't try, Paul." The voice was softened once more, its accents
broken. "Words cannot serve us, you and me! There is one way only, and
that, I know, is ... rue Barré!" Her sad laugh fluttered, she crept
into his arms. "But still, petit Monsieur Paul, _she_ will not care
if ... only once!"
She clung to him for a long, long moment, then released his lips.
"Men have kissed me, yes, not a few," she whispered, resting her face
on his bosom, "but you alone have known my kiss. Go now, my dear, while
I have strength to let you go, and ... make me one little promise..."
"Whatever you ask, Athenais...."
"Never come back, unless you need me; for I shall not have so much
strength another time."
Alone, she rested a burning forehead against the lifted window-sash,
straining her vision to follow his shadow as it moved through the murk
of the court below and lost itself in the deeper gloom of the opposing
wall.
XVI
THE HOUSE OF LILITH
It stood four-square and massive on a corner between the avenues de
Friedland et des Champs-Elysées, near their junction at the Place de
l'Etoile: a solid stone pile of a town-house in the most modern mode,
without architectural beauty, boasting little attempt at exterior
embellishment, but smelling aloud of Money; just such a maison de ville
as a decent bourgeois banker might be expected to build him when he
contemplates retiring after doing the Rothschilds a wicked one in the
eye.
It was like Liane's impudence, too. Lanyard smiled at the thought as he
studied the mansion from the backwards of a dark doorway in the
diagonally opposed block of dwellings. Her kind was always sure to
seek, once its fortunes were on firm footing, to establish itself, as
here, in the very heart of an exclusive residential district; as if
thinking to absorb social sanctity through the simple act of rubbing
shoulders with it; or else, as was more likely to be the case with a
woman of Liane Delorme's temper, desiring more to affront a world from
which she was outcast than to lay siege to its favour.
It seemed, however, truly deplorable that Liane should have proved so
conventional-minded in this particular respect. It rendered one's pet
project much too difficult of execution. Earnestly as one desired to
have a look at the inside of that house without the knowledge of its
inmates, its aspect was forbidding and discouraging in the utmost
extreme.
Heavy gates of wrought bronze guarded the front doors. The single side
or service-door was similarly protected if more simply. And stout
grilles of bronze barred every window on the level of the street.
Now none of these could have withstood the attack of a man of ingenuity
with a little time at his disposal. But Lanyard could count on only the
few remaining minutes of true night. Retarded though it might be by
shrouded skies, dawn must come all too soon for his comfort. Yet he was
conscious of no choice in the matter: he must and in spite of
everything would know to-night what was going on behind that blank
screen of stone. To-morrow night would be too late. Tonight, if there
were any warrant for his suspicions, the jewels of Eve de Montalais lay
in the dwelling of Liane Delorme; or if they were not there, the secret
of their hiding was. But to-morrow both, and more than likely Liane as
well, would be on the wing; or Lanyard had been sorely mistaken in
seeing in her as badly frightened a woman as he had ever known, when
she had learned of the assassination of de Lorgnes.
It was possible, he thought it extremely probable, that Liane Delorme
was as powerful as Athenais Reneaux had asserted; influential, that is,
with the State, with the dealers in its laws and the dispensers of its
protection. But now she had not to reckon with such as these, but with
enemies of her own sort, with an antagonism as reckless of law and
order as she herself. And she was afraid of that, infinitely more
disturbed in mind and spirit than she would have been in the face of
any threat on the part of the police. The Préfecture was a known and
measured force, an engine that ran as it were on mapped lines of rail;
its moves might be forecast, guarded against, watched, evaded. But this
other force worked in the dark, this hostile power personified in the
creature who had called himself Albert Dupont; the very composition of
its being was cloaked in a secrecy impenetrable and terrifying, its
intentions and its workings could not be surmised or opposed until it
struck and the success or failure of the stroke revealed its origin and
aim.
Liane--or one misjudged her--would never sit still and wait for the
blow to fall. She was too high-strung, too much in love with life. She
must either strike first in self-defence--and, in such case, strike at
what?--or remove beyond the range of the enemy's malice. Lanyard was
confident she would choose the latter course.
But confidence was not knowledge....
He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower
storey to the second. Here all the windows were of the type called
french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze
railings. Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for
such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions,
provided he stood upon one of those balconies. Nor did he count it a
difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the
front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded
of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between
each tier. These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could
hardly ask for better footholds. A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet
to the balcony: one should be able to make that within two minutes,
granted freedom from interruption. The rub was there; the quarter
seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since
Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed,
not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort
had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned
automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one
dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky
showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful
watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin.
Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences....
Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point
of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with
consideration of steps to follow--he checked and fell still farther
back into the shadow. Something was happening in the house across the
way.