question: Knowing I am determined to restore these jewels to their
owner, why this open handedness?"
"Cards on the table," said Phinuit. "It's the only way to deal with the
likes of you."
"In other words," Monk interpreted: "you have under your hand proof of
our bona fides."
"And what is to prevent me from going ashore with these at once?"
"Nothing," said Phinuit.
"But this is too much!"
"Nothing," Phinuit elaborated, "but your own good sense."
"Ah!" said Lanyard--"ah!"--and looked from face to face.
Monk adjusted his eyebrows to an angle of earnestness and sincerity.
"The difficulty is, Mr. Lanyard," he said persuasively, "they have cost
us so much, those jewels, in time and money and exertion, we can hardly
be expected to sit still and see you walk off with them and say never a
word in protection of our own interests. Therefore I must warn you, in
the most friendly spirit: if you succeed in making your escape from the
Sybarite with the jewels, as you quite possibly may, it will be my duty
as a law-abiding man to inform the police that André Duchemin is at
large with his loot from the Château de Montalais. And I don't think
you'd get very far, then, or that your fantastic story about meaning to
return them would gain much credence. D'ye see?"
"But distinctly! If, however, I leave the jewels and lay an information
against you with the police----?"
"To do that you would have to go ashore...."
"Do I understand I am to consider myself your prisoner?"
"Oh, dear, no!" said Captain Monk, inexpressibly pained by such
crudity. "But I do wish you'd consider favourably an invitation to be
our honoured guest on the voyage to New York. You won't? It would be so
agreeable of you."
"Sorry I must decline. A prior engagement...."
"But you see, Lanyard," Phinuit urged earnestly, "we've taken no end of
a fancy to you. We like you, really, for yourself alone. And with that
feeling the outgrowth of our very abbreviated acquaintance--think what
a friendship might come of a real opportunity to get to know one
another well."
"Some other time, messieurs...."
"But please!" Phinuit persisted--"just think for one moment--and do
forget that pistol I know you've got in a handy pocket. We're all
unarmed here, Mademoiselle Delorme, the skipper and I. We can't stop
your going, if you insist, and we know too much to try. But there are
those aboard who might. Jules, for instance: if he saw you making a
getaway and knew it might mean a term in a French prison for him....
And if I do say it as shouldn't of my kid brother, Jules is a dead
shot. Then there are others. There'd surely be a scrimmage on the
decks; and how could we explain that to the police, who, I am able to
assure you from personal observation, are within hail? Why, that you
had been caught trying to stow away with your loot, which you dropped
in making your escape. D'ye see how bad it would look for you?"
To this there was no immediate response. Sitting with bowed head and
sombre eyes, Lanyard thought the matter over a little, indifferent to
the looks of triumph being exchanged above his head.
"Obviously, it would seem, you have not gone to all this trouble--lured
me aboard this yacht--merely to amuse yourselves at my expense and then
knock me on the head."
"Absurd!" Liane declared indignantly. "As if I would permit such a
thing, who owe you so much!"
"Or look at it this way, monsieur," Monk put in with a courtly gesture:
"When one has an adversary whom one respects, one wisely prefers to
have him where one can watch him."
"That's just it," Phinuit amended: "Out of our sight, you'd be on our
nerves, forever pulling the Popinot stunt, springing some dirty
surprise on us. But here, as our guest--!"
"More than that," said Liane with her most killing glance for Lanyard:
"a dear friend."
But Lanyard was not to be put off by fair words and flattery.
"No," he said gravely: "but there is some deeper motive..."
He sought Phinuit's eyes, and Phinuit unexpectedly gave him an open-faced
return.
"There is," he stated frankly.
"Then why not tell me--?"
"All in good time. And there'll be plenty of that; the Sybarite is no
Mauretania. When you know us better and have learned to like us..."
"I make no promises."
"We ask none. Only your pistol..."
"Well, monsieur: my pistol?"
"It makes our association seem so formal--don't you think?--so
constrained. Come, Mr. Lanyard! be reasonable. What is a pistol between
friends?"
Lanyard shrugged, sighed, and produced the weapon.
"Really!" he said, handing it over to Monk--"how could anyone resist
such disarming expressions?"
The captain thanked him solemnly and put the weapon away in his safe,
together with the steel despatch-box and Liane Delorme's personal
treasure of precious stones.
XXI
SOUNDINGS
With characteristic abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was
sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for
the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got
up with Phinuit to bow her out, but instead of following her suit
helped himself to a long whiskey and soda, with loving deliberation
selected, trimmed and lighted a cigar, and settled down into his chair
as one prepared to make a night of it.
"You never sleep, no?" Phinuit enquired in a spirit of civil
solicitude.
"Desolated if I discommode you, monsieur," Lanyard replied with entire
amiability--"but not to-night, not at least until I know those jewels
have no more chance to go ashore without me."
He tasted his drink with open relish. "Prime Scotch," he judged. "One
grows momentarily more reconciled to the prospect of a long voyage."
"Make the most of it," Phinuit counselled. "Remember our next port of
call is the Great American Desert. After all, the despised camel seems
to have had the right idea all along."
He gaped enormously behind a superstitious hand. Monk, returning,
published an elaborate if silent superciliary comment on the tableau.
"He has no faith at all in our good intentions," Phinuit explained,
eyeing Lanyard with mild reproach. "It's most discouraging."
"Monsieur suffers from insomnia?" Monk asked in his turn.
"Under certain circumstances."
"Ever take anything for it?"
"To-night it would require nothing less than possession of the
Montalais jewels to put me to sleep."
"Well, if you manage to lay hands on them without our consent," Phinuit
promised genially, "you'll be put to sleep all right."
"But don't let me keep you up, messieurs."
Captain Monk consulted the chronometer. "It's not worth while turning
in," he said: "we sail soon after day-break."
"Far be it from me to play the giddy crab, then." Phinuit busied
himself with the decanter, glasses and siphon. "Let's make it a regular
party; we'll have all to-morrow to sleep it off in. If I try to hop on
your shoulder and sing, call a steward and have him lead me to my
innocent white cot; but take a fool's advice, Lanyard, and don't try to
drink the skipper under the table. On the word of one who's tried and
repented, it can not be done."
"But it is I who would go under the table," Lanyard said. "I have a
poor head for whiskey."
"Thanks for the tip."
"Pardon?"
"I mean to say," Phinuit explained, "I'm glad to have another weakness
of yours to bear in mind."
"You are interested in the weaknesses of others, monsieur?"
"They're my hobby."
"Knowledge," Monk quoted, sententious, "is power."
"May I ask what other entries you have made in my dossier, Mr.
Phinuit?"
"You won't get shirty?"
"But surely not."
"Well ... can't be positive till I know you better.... I'm afraid
you've got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in
general. It's either that, or.... No: I don't believe you're
intentionally hypocritical, or self-deceived, either."
"But I don't understand...."
"Remember your promise.... But you seem to think it easy to put it over
on us, mademoiselle, the skipper and me."
"But I assure you I have never had any such thought."
"Then why this funny story of yours--told with a straight face,
too!--about wanting to get hold of the Montalais loot simply to slip it
back to its owner?"
Lanyard felt with a spasm of anger constrict his throat; and knew that
the restraint he imposed upon his temper was betrayed in a reddened
face. Nevertheless his courteous smile persisted, his polite
conversational tone was unchanged.
"Now you remind me of something. I presume, Captain Monk, it's not too
late to send a note ashore to be posted?"
"Oh!" Monk's eyebrows protested violently--"a note!"
"On plain paper, in a plain envelope--and I don't in the least mind
your reading it."
The eyebrows appealed to Phinuit, and that worthy ruled: "Under those
conditions, I don't see we can possibly object."
Monk shrugged his brows back into place, found paper of the sort
desired, even went so far as to dip the pen for Lanyard.
"You will sit at my desk, monsieur?"
"Many thanks."
Under no more heading than the date, Lanyard wrote:
"Dear Madame de Montalais:"
"I have not forgotten my promise, but my days have been full since I
left the château. And even now I must be brief: within an hour I sail
for America, within a fortnight you may look for telegraphic advices
from me, stating that your jewels are in my possession, and when I hope
to be able to restore them to you."
"Believe me, dear madame,"
"Devotedly your servant,
"Michael Lanyard."
Monk read and in silence passed this communication over to Phinuit,
while Lanyard addressed the envelope.
"Quite in order," was Phinuit's verdict, accompanied by a yawn.
Lanyard folded the note, sealed it in the envelope, and affixed a stamp
supplied by Monk, who meanwhile rang for a steward.
"Take this ashore and post it at once," he told the man who answered
his summons.
"But seriously, Lanyard!" Phinuit protested with a pained
expression.... "No: I don't get you at all. What's the use?"
"I have not deceived you, then?"
"Not so's you'd notice it."
"Alas!"--Lanyard affected a sigh--"for misspent effort!"
"Oh, all's fair outside the law. We don't blame you for trying it on.
Only we value your respect too much to let you go on thinking we have
fallen for that hokum."
"You see," Monk expounded--solemn ass that he was beneath his thin
veneer of pretentiousness--"when we know how the British Government
kicked you out of its Secret Service as soon as it had no further use
for you, we can understand and sympathise with your natural reaction to
such treatment at the hands of Society."
"But one didn't know you knew so much, monsieur le capitaine."
"And then," said Phinuit, "when we know you steered a direct course
from London for the Château de Montalais, and made yourself persona
grata there--Oh, persona very much grata, if I'm any judge!--you can
hardly ask us to believe you didn't mean to do it, it all just happened
so."
"Monsieur sees too clearly...."
"Why, if it comes to that--what were you up to that night, pussyfooting
about the château at two in the morning?"
"But this is positively uncanny! Monsieur knows everything."
"Why shouldn't I know about that?" Vanity rang in Phinuit's
self-conscious chuckle. "Who'd you think laid you out that night?"
"Monsieur is not telling me----!"
"I guess I owe you an apology," Phinuit admitted. "But you'll admit
that in our situation there was nothing else for it. I'd have given
anything if we'd been able to get by any other way; but you're such an
unexpected customer.... Well! when I felt you catch hold of my shirt
sleeve, that night, I thought we were done for and struck out blindly.
It was a lucky blow, no credit to me. Hope I didn't jar you too much."
"No," said Lanyard, reflective--"no, I was quite all right in the
morning. But I think I owe you one."
"Afraid you do; and it's going to be my duty and pleasure to cheat you
out of your revenge if fast footwork will do it."
"But where was Captain Monk all the while?"
"Right here," Monk answered for himself; "sitting tight and saying
nothing, and duly grateful that the blue prints and specifications of
the Great Architect didn't design me for second-storey work."
"Then it was Jules----?"
"No; Jules doesn't know enough. It was de Lorgnes, of course. I thought
you'd guess that."
"How should I?"
"Didn't you know he was the premier cracksman of France? That is, going
on Mademoiselle Delorme's account of him; she says there was never
anybody like that poor devil for putting the comether on a
safe--barring yourself, Monsieur le Loup Seul, in your palmy days. And
she ought to know; those two have been working together since the Lord
knows when. A sound, conservative bird, de Lorgnes; very discreet,
tight-mouthed even when drunk--which was too often."
"But--this is most interesting--how did you get separated, you and de
Lorgnes?"
"Bad luck, a black night, and--I guess there's no more question about
this--your friend, Popinot-Dupont. I'll say this for that blighter: as
a self-made spoil-sport, he sure did give service!"
Phinuit gave his whiskey and soda a reminiscent grin.
"And we thought we were being bright, at that! We'd figured every move
to the third decimal point. The only uncertain factor in our
calculations, as we thought, was you. But with you disposed of, dead to
the world, and Madame de Montalais off in another part of the château
calling the servants to help, leaving her rooms wide open to us--the
job didn't take five minutes. The way de Lorgnes made that safe give up
all its secrets, you'd have thought he had raised it by hand! We
stuffed the loot into a grip I'd brought for the purpose, and beat
it--slipped out through the drawing-room window one second before
Madame de Montalais came back with that doddering footman of hers. But
they never even looked our way. I bet they never knew there'd been a
robbery till the next morning. Do I lose?"
"No, monsieur; you are quite right."
"Well, then: We had left our machine--we had driven over from
Millau--just over the brow of the hill, standing on the down-grade,
headed for Nant, with the gears meshed in third, so she would start
without a sound as soon as we released the emergency brake. But when we
got there, it wasn't. The frantic way we looked for it made me think of
you pawing that table for your candle, after de Lorgnes had lifted it
behind your back. And then of a sudden they jumped us, Popinot and his
crew; though we didn't know who in hell; it might have been the château
people. In fact, at first I thought it was....
"I lost de Lorgnes in the shuffle immediately, never did know what had
become of him till we got Liane's wire this morning. I was having all I
could do to take care of myself, thank you. I happened to be carrying
the grip, and that helped a bit. Somebody's head got in the way of its
swings, and I guess the guy hasn't forgotten it yet. Then I slipped
through their fingers--I'll never tell you how; it was black as pitch,
that night--and beat it blind. I'd lost my flashlamp and had no more
idea where I was heading than an owl at noon of a sunny day. But
they--the Popinot outfit--seemed to be able to see in the dark all
right; or else I was looney with fright. Every once in a while somebody
or something would make a pass at me in the night, and I'd duck and
double and run another way.
"After a while I found myself climbing a steep, rocky slope, and
guessed it must be the cliff behind the château. It was a sort of
zig-zag path, which I couldn't see, only guess at. I was scared stiff;
but they were still after me, or I thought they were, so I floundered
on. The path, if it was a path, was slimy with mud, and about every
third step I'd slip and go sprawling. I can't tell you how many times I
felt my legs shoot out into nothing, and dug my fingers into the muck,
or broke my nails on rocks and caught clumps of grass with my teeth, to
keep from going over ... and all the while that all-gone feeling in the
pit of my stomach....
"However, I got to the top in the end, and crawled into a hollow and
lay down behind some bushes, and panted as if my heart would break, and
hoped I'd die and get over with it. But nobody came to bother me, so I
got up when the first streak of light showed in the sky--there'd been a
young cloud-burst just before that, and I was soaked to my skin--and
struck off across the cause for God-knew-where. De Lorgnes and I had
fixed that, if anything did happen to separate us, we'd each strike for
Lyons and the one who got there first would wait for the other at the
Hôtel Terminus. But before I could do that, I had to find a railroad,
and I didn't dare go Millau-way, I thought, because the chances were
the gendarmes would be waiting there to nab the first bird that blew in
all covered with mud and carrying a bag full of diamonds.
"I'd managed to hold onto the grip through it all, you see; but before
that day was done I wished I'd lost it. The damned thing got heavier
and heavier till it must have weighed a gross ton. It galled my hands
and rubbed my legs till they were sore.... I was sore all over, anyway,
inside and out....
"Sometime during the morning I climbed one of those bum mounds they
call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink,
preferably drink. The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone
on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system. I
figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, and
expected to arrive wherever I did arrive, if I ever arrived anywhere
looking like an Early Egyptian prune....
"The view from the couronne didn't show me anything I wanted to see,
only a number of men in the distance, spread out over the face of the
causse and quartering it like beagles. I reckoned I knew what sort of
game they were hunting, and slid down from that couronne and travelled.
But they'd seen me, and somebody sounded the view-halloo. It was grand
exercise for me and great sport for them. When I couldn't totter
another yard I fell into a hole into the ground--one of those
avens--and crawled into a sort of little cave, and lay there listening,
to the suck and gurgle of millions of gallons of nice cool water
running to waste under my feet, and me dying the death of a dog with
thirst.
"After a while I couldn't stand it any longer. I crawled out, prepared
to surrender, give up the plunder, and lick the boots of any man who'd
slip me a cup of water. But for some reason they'd given up the chase.
I saw no more of them, whoever they were. And a little later I found a
peasant's hut, and watered myself till I swelled up like a poisoned
pup. They gave me a brush-down, there, and something to eat besides,
and put me on my way to Millau. It seemed that I was a hundred miles
from anywhere else, so it was Millau for mine if it meant a life
sentence in a French prison.
"I sneaked into the town after dark, and took the first train north.
Nobody took any notice of me. I couldn't see the use of going all round
Robin Hood's barn, as I'd have had to in order to make Lyons. By the
time I'd got there, de Lorgnes would have given up and gone on to
Paris."
Phinuit finished his drink. "I'll say it was a gay young party. The
next time I feel the call to crime, believe me! I'm going out and
snatch nursing bottles from kids asleep in their prams.... But they
_must_ be asleep."
Monk lifted himself by sections from his chair.
"It was a good yarn first time I heard it," he mused aloud. "But now, I
notice, even the Sybarite is getting restless."
In the course of Phinuit's narrative the black disks of night framed by
the polished brass circles of the stern ports had faded out into dusky
violet, then into a lighter lilac, finally into a warm yet tender blue.
Now the main deck overhead was a sounding-board for thumps and rustle
of many hurried feet.
"Pilot come aboard, you think?" Phinuit enquired; and added, as Monk
nodded and cast about for the visored white cap of his office: "Didn't
know pilots were such early birds."
"They're not, as a rule. But if you treat 'em right, they'll listen to
reason."
The captain graphically rubbed a thumb over two fingers, donned his
cap, buttoned up his tunic, and strode forth with an impressive gait.
"Still wakeful?" Phinuit hinted hopefully.
"And shall be till we drop the pilot, thanks."
"If I hadn't seen de Lorgnes make that safe sit up and speak, and didn't
know you were his master, I'd be tempted to bat an eye or two.
However...." Phinuit sighed despondently. "What can I do now to entertain
you, dear sir?"
"You might have pity on my benighted curiosity...."
"Meaning this outfit?" Lanyard assented, and Phinuit deliberated over
the question. "I don't know as I ought in the absence of my esteemed
associates.... But what's bothering you most?"
"I have seen something of the world, monsieur, and as you are aware not
a little of the underside of it; but never have I met with a
combination of such peculiar elements as this possesses. Regard it, if
you will, from my view-point, that of an outsider, for one moment."
Phinuit grinned. "It must give you furiously to think--as you'd say."
"But assuredly! Take, for example, yourself, a man of unusual
intelligence, such as one is not accustomed to find lending himself to
the schemes of ordinary criminals."
"But you have just admitted that we're anything but ordinary."
"Then Mademoiselle Delorme. One knows what the world knows of her, that
she has for many years meddled with high affairs, that she had been for
many years more a sort of queen of the demi-monde of Paris; but now you
tell me she has stopped to profit by association with a professional
burglar."
"Profit? I'll say she did. According to my information, it was she who
mapped out the campaigns for de Lorgnes; she was G.H.Q. and he merely
the high private in the front line trenches; with this difference, that
in this instance G.H.Q. was perfectly willing to let the man at the
front cop all the glory.... She took the cash and let the credit go,
nor heeded rumblings of the distant drum!"
"Then your picturesque confrère, Captain Monk; and the singular
circumstance that he owns a wealthy cousin of the same name; and this
beautiful little yacht which you seem so free to utilize for the
furtherance of your purposes. Is it strange, then, that one's curiosity
is provoked, one's imagination alternately stimulated and baffled?"
"No; I suppose not," Phinuit conceded thoughtfully. "Still, it's far
simpler than you'd think."
"One has found that true of most mysteries, monsieur."
"I don't mind telling you all I feel at liberty to.... You seem to have
a pretty good line on mademoiselle, and I've told you what I know about
de Lorgnes. As for the skipper, he's the black sheep of a good old New
England family. Ran away to sea as a boy, and was disowned, and grew up
in a rough school. It would take all night to name half the jobs he's
had a hand in, mostly of a shady nature, in every quarter of the seven
seas: gun running, pearl poaching, what not--even a little slaving, I
suspect, in his early days. He's a pompous old bluff in repose, but
nobody's fool, and a bad actor when his mad is up. He tells me he fell
in with the Delorme a long time ago, while acting as personal escort
for a fugitive South American potentate who crossed the borders of his
native land with the national treasury in one hand and his other in
Monk's, and of course--they all do--made a bee line for Paris. That's
how we came to make her acquaintance, my revered employer, Mister Monk,
and I--through the skipper, I mean."
Phinuit paused to consider, and ended with a whimsical grimace.
"I'm talking too much; but it doesn't matter, seein's it's you.
Strictly between ourselves, the said revered employer is an annointed
fraud. Publicly he's the pillar of the respectable house of Monk.
Privately, he's not above profiteering, foreclosing the mortgage on the
old homestead, and swearing to an odoriferous income-tax return. And
when he thinks he's far enough away from home--my land, how that little
man do carry on!
"The War made him more money than he ever thought there was; so he
bought this yacht ready-made and started on the grand tour, but never
got any farther than Paris--naturally his first stop. News from home to
the effect that somebody was threatening to do him out of a few nickels
sent him hightailing back to put a stop to it. But before that
happened, he wanted to see life with a large L; and Cousin Whitaker
gave him a good start by introducing him to little ingénue Liane. And
then she put the smuggling bee in his bonnet."
"Smuggling!"