the car lunged and tore like a mad thing through the night, snoring up
grades, screaming down them, drumming across the levels, clattering
wildly through villages and hamlets; while the moon rose and gathered
strength and made the road a streaming river of milk and ink; while his
heart sank as minute succeeded minute, mile followed mile, and ever the
lights of the pursuing car, lost to sight from time to time, reappeared
with a brighter, fiercer glow, and conviction forced itself home that
they were being gradually but surely overhauled.
He took this intelligence to the ear of Jules. The chauffeur answered
only with a worried shake of his head that said too plainly he was
doing his best, extracting every ounce of power from the engine.
Ill luck ambushed them in the streets of a sizable town, its name
unknown to Lanyard, where another car, driven inexpertly, rolled out of
a side street and stalled in their path. The emergency brake saved them
a collision; but there were not six inches between the two when the
touring car stopped dead; and minutes were lost before the other got
under way and they were able to proceed.
Less than three hundred yards separated pursued and pursuer as they
raced out through open fields once more. And foot by foot this lead was
being inexorably cut down.
In the seat beside the driver of the grey car a man rose and, steadying
himself by holding onto the windshield, poured out the contents of an
automatic, presumably hoping to puncture the tires of the quarry. A
bullet bored a neat hole through the windshield between the heads of
Liane Delorme and Jules. The woman slipped down upon the floor and
Jules crouched over the wheel. Lanyard fingered his automatic but held
its fire against a moment when he could be more sure of his arm.
Instead, he turned to the lunch hamper and opened it. Liane's
provisioning had been ample for a party thrice their number. In the
bottom of the basket lay six pint bottles of champagne, four of them
unopened. Lanyard took them to the rear seat--and found the grey car
had drawn up to within fifty yards of its prey. Making a pace better
than seventy miles per hour, it would not dare swerve.
The first empty bottle broke to one side, the second squarely between
the front wheels. He grasped the first full bottle by the neck and felt
that its weight promised more accuracy, but ducked before attempting to
throw it as a volley of shots sought to discourage him. At the first
lull he rose and cast the bottle with the overhand action employed in
grenade throwing. It crashed fairly beneath the nearer forward wheel of
the grey car, but without effect, other than to draw another volley in
retaliation. This he risked; the emergency had grown too desperate for
more paltering; the lead had been abridged to thirty yards; in two
minutes more it would be nothing.
The fourth bottle went wild, but the fifth exploded six inches in front
of the offside wheel and its jagged fragments ripped out the heart of
the tire. On the instant of the accompanying blow-out the grey car
shied like a frightened horse and swerved off the road, hurtling
headlong into a clump of trees. The subsequent crash was like the
detonation of a great bomb. Deep shadows masked that tragedy beneath
the trees. Lanyard saw the beam of the headlights lift and drill
perpendicularly into the zenith before it was blacked out.
He turned and yelled in the ear of Jules: "Slow down! Take your time!
They've quit!"
Liane Delorme rose from her cramped position on the floor, and stared
incredulously back along the empty, moonlit road.
"What has become of them?"
Lanyard offered a vague gesture."... tried to climb a tree," he replied
wearily, and dropping back on the rear seat began to worry the cork out
of the last pint bottle of champagne.
He reckoned he had earned a drink if anybody ever had.
XX
THE SYBARITES
Without disclaiming any credit that was rightly his due for making the
performance possible, Lanyard felt obliged to concede that Liane's
Delorme's confidence had been well reposed in the ability of Jules to
drive by the clock. For when the touring car made, on a quayside of
Cherbourg's avant port, what was for its passengers its last stop of
the night, the hour of eight bells was being sounded aboard the
countless vessels that shouldered one another in the twin basins of the
commercial harbour or rode at anchor between its granite jetties and
the distant bulwark of the Digue.
Nor was Jules disposed to deny himself well-earned applause. Receiving
none immediately when he got down from his seat and indulged in one
luxurious stretch, "I'll disseminate the information to the terrestrial
universe," he volunteered, "that was travelling!"
"And now that you have done so," Liane Delorme suggested, "perhaps you
will be good enough to let the stewards know we are waiting."
If the grin was impudent, the salute she got in acknowledgment was
perfection; Jules faced about like a military automaton, strode off
briskly, stopped at some distance to light a cigarette, and in effect
faded out with the flame of the match.
Lanyard didn't try to keep track of his going. Committed as he stood to
follow the lead of Liane Delorme to the end of this chapter of intrigue
(and with his mind at ease as to Monsieur Dupont, for the time being at
least) he was largely indifferent to intervening developments.
He had asked no questions of Liane, and his knowledge of Cherbourg was
limited to a memory of passing through the place as a boy, with a
case-hardened criminal as guide and police at their heels. But assuming
that Liane had booked passages for New York by a Cunarder, a White Star
or American Line Boat--all three touched regularly at Cherbourg, west
bound from Southampton--he expected presently to go aboard a tender and
be ferried out to one of the steamers whose riding lights were to be
seen in the roadstead. Meanwhile he was lazily content....
Mellow voices of bell metal swelled and died on the midnight air while,
lounging against the motor car--with Liane at his side registering more
impatience than he thought the occasion called for--Lanyard listened,
stared, wondered, the breath of the sea sweet in his nostrils, its
flavour in his throat, his vision lost in the tangled web of masts and
cordage and funnels that stencilled the moon-pale sky: the witching
glamour of salt water binding all his senses with its time-old spell.
It was quiet there upon the quay. Somewhere a winch rattled drowsily
and weary tackle whined; more near at hand, funnels were snoring and
pumps chugging with a constant, monotonous noise of splashing. On the
landward side, from wine shops across the way, came blurred gusts of
laughter and the wailing of an accordeon. The footfalls of a watchman,
or perhaps a sergent de ville, had lonely echoes. The high electric
arcs were motionless, and the shadows cast by their steel-blue glare
lay on the pave as if painted in lampblack.
Dupont, the road to Paris, seemed figments of some dream dreamed long
ago...
The tip of a pretty slipper, tapping restlessly, continued to betray
Liane's temper. But she said nothing. Privately Lanyard yawned. Then
Jules, tagged by three men with the fair white jackets and shuffling
gait of stewards, sauntered into view from behind two mountains of
freight, and announced: "All ready, madame." Liane nodded curtly,
lingered to watch the stewards attack the jumble of luggage, saw her
jewel case shouldered, and followed the bearer, Lanyard at her elbow,
Jules remaining with the car.
The steward trotted through winding aisles of bales and crates, turned
a corner, darted up a gangplank to the main-deck of a small steam
vessel, so excessively neat and smart with shining brightwork that
Lanyard thought it one uncommon tender indeed, and surmised a martinet
in command. It seemed curious that there were not more passengers on
the tender's deck; but perhaps he and Liane were among the first to
come aboard; after all, they were not to sail before morning, according
to the women. He apprehended a tedious time of waiting before he gained
his berth. He noticed, too, a life ring lettered SYBARITE, and thought
this an odd name for a vessel of commercial utility. Then he found
himself descending a wide companionway to one of the handsomest saloons
he had ever entered, a living room that, aside from its concessions to
marine architecture, might have graced a residence on Park Lane or on
Fifth avenue in the Sixties.
Lanyard stopped short with his hand on the mahogany handrail.
"I say, Liane! haven't we stumbled into the wrong pew?"
"Wrong pew?" The woman subsided gracefully into a cushioned arm-chair,
crossed her knees, and smiled at his perplexity. "But I do not know
what is that 'wrong pew.'"
"I mean to say... this is no tender, and it unquestionably isn't an
Atlantic liner."
"I should hope not. Did I promise you a--what do you say?--tender or
Atlantic liner? But no: I do not think I told you what sort of vessel
we would sail upon for that America. You did not ask."
"True, little sister. But you might have prepared me. This is a private
yacht."
"Are you disappointed?"
"I won't say that..."
"It is the little ship of a dear friend, monsieur, who generously
permits... But patience! very soon you shall know."
To himself Lanyard commented: "I believe it well!" A door had opened in
the after partition, two men had entered. Above a lank, well-poised
body clothed in the white tunic and trousers of a ship's officer, he
recognised the tragicomic mask of the soi-disant Mr. Whitaker Monk. At
his shoulder shone the bland, intelligent countenance of Mr. Phinuit,
who seemed much at home in the blue serge and white flannels of the
average amateur yachtsman.
From this last Lanyard received a good-natured nod, while Monk, with a
great deal of empressement, proceeded directly to Liane Delorme and
bowed low over the hand which she languidly lifted to be saluted.
"My dear friend!" he said in his sonorous voice. "In another hour I
should have begun to grow anxious about you."
"You would have had good reason, monsieur. It is not two hours since
one has escaped death--and that for the second time in a single day--by
the slenderest margin, and thanks solely to this gentleman here."
Monk consented to see Lanyard, and immediately offered him a profound
salute, which was punctiliously returned. His eyebrows mounted to the
roots of his hair.
"Ah! that good Monsieur Duchemin."
"But no!" Liane laughed. "It is true, the resemblance is striking; I do
not say that, if Paul would consent to grow a beard, it would not be
extraordinary. But--permit me, Captain Monk, to present my brother,
Paul Delorme."
"Your brother, mademoiselle?" The educated eyebrows expressed any
number of emotions. Monk's hand was cordially extended. "But I am
enchanted, Monsieur Delorme, to welcome on board the Sybarite the
brother of your charming sister."
Lanyard resigned limp fingers to his clasp.
"And most public-spirited of you, I'm sure, Captain Monk... I believe I
understood Liane to say Captain Monk?" The captain bowed. "Captain
Whitaker Monk?" Another bow. Lanyard looked to Liane: "Forgive me if I
seem confused, but I thought you told me Mister Whitaker Monk had
sailed for America a week ago."
"And so he did," the captain agreed blandly, while Liane confirmed his
statement with many rapid and emphatic nods. "Mr. Monk, the owner, is
my first cousin. Fortune has been less kind to me in a worldly way;
consequently you see in me merely the skipper of my wealthy kinsman's
yacht."
"And your two names are the same--yours and your cousin's? You're both
Whitaker Monks?"
"It is a favourite name in our family, monsieur."
Lanyard wagged his head in solemn admiration.
Phinuit had come to his side, and was offering his hand in turn.
"It's all gospel, Mr. Lanyard," he declared, with a cheerful
informality which Lanyard found more engaging than Monk's sometimes
laboured mannerisms. "He's sure-enough Captain Whitaker Monk, skipper
of the good ship Sybarite, Mister Whitaker Monk, owner. And my name is
really Phinuit, and I'm honest-to-goodness secretary to Mr. Monk. You
see, the owner got a hurry call from New York, last week, and sailed
from Southampton, leaving us to bring his pretty ship safely home."
"That makes it all so clear!"
"Well, anyway, I'm glad to meet you to your bare face. I've heard a lot
about you, and--if it matters to you--thought a lot more."
"If it comes to that, Mr. Phinuit, I have devoted some thought to you."
"Oh, daresay. And now--if mademoiselle is agreeable--suppose we
adjourn to the skipper's quarters, where we can improve one another's
acquaintance without some snooping steward getting an unwelcome earful.
We need to know many things you alone can tell us--and I'll wager you
could do with a drink. What?"
"But I assure you, monsieur, I find your reception sufficiently
refreshing."
"Well," said Phinuit, momentarily but very slightly
discountenanced--"you've been uncommon' damn' useful, you know... I
mean, according to mademoiselle."
"Useful?" Lanyard enquired politely.
"He calls it that," Liane Delorme exclaimed, "when I tell him you have
saved my life!" She swept indignantly through the door by which Monk
and Phinuit had come to greet them. Two ceremonious bows induced
Lanyard to follow her. Monk and Phinuit brought up the rear. "Yes," the
woman pursued--"twice he has saved it!"
"In the same place?" Phinuit enquired innocently, shutting the door.
"But no! Once in my home in Paris, this morning, and again to-night on
the road to Cherbourg. The last time he saved his life, too, and
Jules's."
"It was nothing," said the modest hero.
"It was nothing!" Liane echoed tragically. "You save my life twice, and
he calls it 'useful,' and you call it 'nothing!' My God! I tell you, I
find this English a funny language!"
"But if you will tell us about it..." Monk suggested, placing a chair
for her at one end of a small table on which was spread an appetising
cold supper.
Lanyard remarked that there were places laid for four. He had been
expected, then. Or had the fourth place been meant for Jules? One
inclined to credit the first theory. It seemed highly probable that
Liane should have telegraphed her intentions before leaving Paris.
Indeed, there was every evidence that she had. Neither Monk nor Phinuit
had betrayed the least surprise on seeing Lanyard; and Phinuit had not
even troubled to recognise the fiction which Liane had uttered in
accounting for him. It was very much as if he had said: That long-lost
brother stuff is all very well for the authorities, for entry in the
ship's papers if necessary; but it's wasted between ourselves, we
understand one another; so let's get down to brass tacks... An
encouraging symptom; though one had already used the better word,
refreshing....
Spacious, furnished in a way of rich sobriety, tasteful in every
appointment, the captain's quarters were quite as sybaritic as the
saloon of the Sybarite. A bedroom and private bath adjoined, and the
open door enabled one to perceive that this rude old sea dog slept
in a real bed of massive brass. His sitting-room, or private office,
had a studious atmosphere. Its built-in-bookcases were stocked with
handsome bindings. The panels were, like those in the saloon,
sea-scapes from the hands of modern masters: Lanyard knew good
painting when he saw it. The captain's desk was a substantial affair in
mahogany. Most of the chairs were of the overstuffed lounge sort. The
rug was a Persian of rare lustre.
Monk was following with a twinkle the journeys of Lanyard's observant
eye.
"Do myself pretty well, don't you think?" he observed quietly, in a
break in Liane's dramatic narrative; perforce the lady must now and
again pause for breath.
Lanyard smiled in return. "I can't see you've much to complain of."
The captain nodded, but permitted a shade of gravity to become visible
in his expression. He sighed a philosophic sigh:
"But man is never satisfied..."
Liane had got her second wind and was playing variations on the theme
of the famous six bottles of champagne. Lanyard lounged in his easy
chair and let his bored thoughts wander. He was weary of being talked
about, wanted one thing only, fulfillment of the promise that had been
implicit in Phinuit's manner. He was aware of Phinuit's sympathetic
eye.
The woman sent the grey car crashing again into the tree, repeated
Lanyard's quaint report of the business, and launched into a vein of
panegyric.
"Regard him, then, sitting there, making nothing of it all--!"
"Sheer swank," Phinuit commented. "He's just letting on; privately he
thinks he's a heluva fellow. Don't you, Lanyard?"
"But naturally," Lanyard gave Phinuit a grateful look. "That is
understood. But what really interests me, at present, is the question:
Who is Dupont, and why?"
"If you're asking me," Monk replied, "I'll say--going on mademoiselle's
story--Monsieur Dupont is by now a ghost."
"One would be glad to be sure of that," Lanyard murmured.
"By all accounts," said Phinuit, "he takes a deal of killing."
"But all this begs my question," Lanyard objected. "Who is Dupont, and
why?"
"I think I can answer that question, monsieur." This was Liane Delorme.
"But first, I would ask Captain Monk to set guards to see that nobody
comes aboard this ship before she sails."
"Pity you didn't think of that sooner," Phinuit observed in friendly
sarcasm. "Better late than never, of course, but still--!"
The woman appealed to Monk directly, since he did not move. "But I
assure you, monsieur, I am afraid, I am terrified of that one! I shall
not sleep until I am sure he has not succeeded in smuggling himself on
board--"
"Be tranquil, mademoiselle," Monk begged. "What you ask is already
done. I gave the orders you ask as soon as I received your telegram,
this morning. You need not fear that even a rat has found his way
aboard since then, or can before we sail, without my knowledge."
"Thank God!" Liane breathed--and instantly found a new question to fret
about. "But your men, Captain Monk--your officers and crew--can you be
sure of them?"
"Absolutely."
"You haven't signed on any new men here in Cherbourg?" Lanyard asked.
Monk worked his eyebrows to signify that the question was ridiculous.
"No such fool, thanks," he added.
"Yet they may have been corrupted while here in port," Liane insisted.
"No fear."
"That is what I would have said of my maid and footman, twenty-four
hours ago. Yet I now know better."
"I tell you only what I know, mademoiselle. If any of my officers and
crew have been tampered with, I don't know anything about it, and can't
and won't until the truth comes out."
"And you sit there calmly to tell me that!" Liane rolled her lovely
eyes in appeal to the deck beams overhead. "But you are impossible!"
"But, my dear lady," Monk protested, "I am perfectly willing to go into
hysterics if you think it will do any good. As it happens, I don't. I
haven't been idle or fatuous in that matter, I have taken every
possible precaution against miscarriage of our plans. If anything goes
wrong now, it can't be charged to my discredit."
"It will be an act of God," Phinuit declared: "one of the unavoidable
risks of the business."
"The business!" Liane echoed with scorn. "I assure you I wish I were
well out of 'the business'!"
"And so say we all of us," Phinuit assured her patiently; and Monk
intoned a fervent "Amen!"
"But who is Dupont?" Lanyard reiterated stubbornly.
"An Apache, monsieur," Liane responded sulkily--"a leader of Apaches."
"Thank you for nothing."
"Patience: I am telling you all I know. I recognised him this morning,
when you were struggling with him. His name is Popinot."
"Ah!"
"Why do you say 'Ah!' monsieur?"
"There was a Popinot in Paris in my day; they nicknamed him the Prince
of the Apaches. But he was an older man, and died by the guillotine.
This Popinot who calls himself Dupont, then, must be his son."
"That is true, monsieur."
"Well, then, if he has inherited his father's power--!"
"It is not so bad as all that. I have heard that the elder Popinot was
a true prince, in his way, I mean as to his power with the Apaches. His
son is hardly that; he has a following, but new powers were established
with his father's death, and they remain stronger than he."
"All of which brings us to the second part of my question, Liane: Why
Dupont?"
Liane shrugged and studied her bedizened fingers. The heavy black brows
circumflexed Monk's eyes, and he drew down the corners of his wide
mouth. Phinuit fixed an amused gaze on a distant corner of the room and
chewed his cigar.
"Why did Dupont--or Popinot," Lanyard persisted--"murder de Lorgnes?
Why did he try to murder Mademoiselle Delorme? Why did he seek to
prevent our reaching Cherbourg?"
"Give you three guesses," Phinuit offered amiably. "But I warn you if
you use more than one you'll forfeit my respect forever. And just to
show what a good sport I am, I'll ask you a few leading questions. Why
did Popinot pull off that little affair at Montpellier-le-Vieux? Why
did he try to put you out of his way a few days later?"
"Because he wanted to steal the jewels of Madame de Montalais,
naturally."
"I knew you'd guess it."
"You admit, then, you have the jewels?"
"Why not?" Phinuit enquired coolly. "We took trouble enough to get
them, don't you think? You're taking trouble enough to get them away
from us, aren't you? You don't want us to think you so stupid as to be
wasting your time, do you?"
His imperturbable effrontery was so amusing that Lanyard laughed
outright. Then, turning to Liane, he offered her a grateful inclination
of the head.
"Mademoiselle, you have kept your promise. Many thanks."
"Hello!" cried Phinuit. "What promise?"
"Monsieur Lanyard desired a favour of me," Liane explained, her good
humour restored; "in return for saving me from assassination by Popinot
this morning, he begged me to help him find the jewels of Madame de
Montalais. It appears that he--or Andre Duchemin--is accused of having
stolen those jewels; so it becomes a point of honour with him to find
and restore them to Madame de Montalais."
"He told you that?" Monk queried, studiously eliminating from his tone
the jeer implied by the words alone.
"But surely. And what could I do? He spoke so earnestly, I was touched.
Regard, moreover, how deeply I am indebted to him. So I promised I
would do my best. Et voila! I have brought him to the jewels; the rest
is--how do you say--up to him. Are you satisfied with the way I keep
my word, monsieur?"
"It's hard to see how he can have any kick coming," Phinuit commented
with some acidity.
Lanyard addressed himself to Liane: "Do I understand the jewels are on
this vessel?"
"In this room."
Lanyard sat up and took intelligent notice of the room. Phinuit
chuckled, and consulted Monk in the tone of one reasonable man to his
peer.
"I say, skipper: don't you think we ought to be liberal with Monsieur
Lanyard? He's an awfully good sort--and look't all the services he has
done us."
Monk set the eyebrows to consider the proposition.
"I am emphatically of your mind, Phin," he pronounced at length,
oracular.
"It's plain to be seen he wants those jewels--means to have 'em. Do you
know any way we can keep them from him?"
Monk moved his head slowly from side to side: "None."
"Then you agree with me, it would save us all a heap of trouble to let
him have them without any more stalling?"
By way of answer Monk bent over and quietly opened a false door, made
to resemble the fronts of three drawers, in a pedestal of his desk.
Lanyard couldn't see the face of the built-in safe, but he could hear
the spinning of the combination manipulated by Monk's long and bony
fingers. And presently he saw Monk straighten up with a sizable steel
dispatch-box in his hands, place this upon the desk, and unlock it with
a key on his pocket ring.
"There," he announced with an easy gesture.
Lanyard rose and stood over the desk, investigating the contents of the
dispatch-box. The collection of magnificent stones seemed to tally
accurately with his mental memoranda of the descriptions furnished by
Eve de Montalais.
"This seems to be right," he said quietly, and closed the box. The
automatic lock snapped fast.
"Now what do you say, brother dear?"