"I have forgotten nothing."
She made a pretty mouth of doubt. "Would it not have been more kind to
forget?"
"Such compliments are not easily forgotten."
"You are sure, quite sure it was a compliment?"
"No-o; by no means sure. Still, I am a man, and I am giving you the
full benefit of every doubt."
She laughed, not ill-pleased. "But what a man! how blessed of the gods
to be able to laugh at yourself as well as at me."
"Undeceive yourself: I could never laugh at you, Liane. Even if one did
not believe you to be a great natural comedienne at will, one would
always wonder what your purpose was--oh yes! with deep respect one
would wonder about that."
"And you have been wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what
you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and
throwing myself at your head."
"Why," said Lanyard with a look of childlike candour, "you might, you
know, have been uncontrollably swayed by some passionate impulses of
the heart."
"But otherwise--?" she prompted, hugely amused.
"Oh, if you had a low motive in trying to make a fool of me, you know
too well how to hide your motive from such a fool."
In a fugitive seizure of thoughtfulness the violet eyes lost all their
impishness. She sighed, the bright head drooped a little toward the
gleaming bosom, a hand stole out to rest lightly upon his once again.
"It was not acting, Michael--I tell you that frankly--at least, not all
acting."
"Meaning, I take it, you know love too well to make it artlessly."
"I'm afraid so, my dear," said Liane Delorme with another sigh. "You
know: I am afraid of you. You see everything so clearly..."
"It's a vast pity. I wish I could outgrow it. One misses so many
amusing emotions when one sees too clearly."
During another brief pause, Lanyard saw Monk come on deck, pause, and
search them out, in the chairs they occupied near the taffrail, much as
on that other historic night. Not that he experienced any difficulty in
locating them; for this time the decklights were burning clearly.
Nevertheless, Captain Monk confessed emotion at sight of those two in a
quite perceptible start; and Lanyard saw the eyebrows tremendously
agitated as their manipulator moved aft.
Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning
toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his
and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm.
"Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless,
Michael?"
"There's so much to be said about that, Liane," he evaded.
Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most
forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen.
"Might one suggest," he did suggest in iced accents, "that the
quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of
family affection?"
Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an
impatience which all at once proved too much for her.
"Oh, go to the devil!" she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks
which she was able to use and discard at will.
For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious
quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real
trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being
shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond
his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse.
It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one
want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could
merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was
fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was
out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been
precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. As
it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril
that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to
parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis
to his words.
"So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought
worth while," he said with infuriated condescension, "it might be
judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of
affection within view of my officers and crew. Suppose we..." He choked
a little. "In short, I came to invite you to a little conference in my
rooms, with Mr. Phinuit."
"Conference?" Liane enquired coolly, without stirring. "I know nothing
of this conference."
"Mr. Phinuit and I are agreed that Monsieur Lanyard is entitled to know
more about our intentions while he has time to weigh them carefully. We
have only four more days at sea..."
Unable longer to contain himself, Lanyard left his chair with alacrity.
"But this is so delightful! You've no idea, really, monsieur, how I
have looked forward to this moment." And to Liane: "Do come, and see
how I take it, this revelation of my preordained fate. It will be, I
trust sincerely, like a man."
With momentary hesitation, and in a temper precluding any sympathy,
with his humour, the woman rose and silently followed with him that
long-legged figure whose stalk held so much dramatic significance as he
led to the companionway.
After that it was refreshing to find unromantic Mr. Phinuit lounging
beside the captain's desk with crossed feet overhanging one corner of
it and mind intent on the prosaic business of paring his fingernails.
Lanyard nodded to him with great good temper and--while Phinuit lowered
his feet and put away his penknife--considerately placed a chair for
Liane in the position in which she preferred to sit, with her face
turned a little from the light. Nor would his appreciation of the
formality which seemed demanded by Monk's solemn manner, permit him to
sit before the captain had taken his own chair behind the desk.
Then, however, he discovered the engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at
a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed
himself with unaffected eagerness to the most portentous eyebrows in
captivity.
"Now," he announced with a little bow, "for what, one imagines, Mr.
Phinuit would term the Elaborate Idea!"
XXIV
HISTORIC REPETITION
Phinuit grinned, then smothered a little yawn. Liane Delorme gave a
small, disdainful movement of shoulders, and posed herself becomingly,
resting an elbow on the arm of her chair and inclining her cheek upon
two fingers of a jewelled hand. Thus she sat somewhat turned from Monk
and Phinuit, but facing Lanyard, to whom her grave but friendly eyes
gave undivided heed, for all the world as if there were no others
present: she seemed to wait to hear him speak again rather than to care
in the least what Monk would find to say.
Captain Monk filled in that pause with an impressive arrangement of
eyebrows. Then, fixing his gaze, not upon Lanyard, but upon the point
of a pencil with which his incredibly thin fingers traced elaborate but
empty designs upon the blotter, he opened his lips, hemmed in warning
that he was about to speak, and seemed tremendously upset to find that
Liane was inconsiderately forestalling him.
Her voice was at its most musical pitch, rather low for her, fluting,
infinitely disarming and seductive.
"Let me say to you, mon ami, that--naturally I know what is coming--I
disapprove absolutely of this method of treating with you."
"But it is such an honour to be considered important enough to be
treated with at all!"
"You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience
two-thirds incapable of appreciation."
"Oh, you're wrong!" Phinuit declared earnestly. "I'm appreciative, I
think the dear man's immense."
"Might I suggest"--the unctuous tones of Captain Monk issued from under
mildly wounded eyebrows--"if any one of us were unappreciative of
Monsieur Lanyard's undoubted talents, he would not be with us tonight."
"You might suggest it," Phinuit assented, "but that wouldn't make it
so, it is to mademoiselle's appreciation that you and I owe this treat,
and you know it. Now quit cocking those automatic eyebrows at me;
you've been doing that ever since we met, and they haven't gone off
yet, not once."
Irrepressible, Liane's laughter pealed; and though he couldn't help
smiling, Lanyard hastened to offer up himself on the altar of peace.
"But--messieurs!--you interest me so much. Won't you tell me quickly
what possible value my poor talents can have found in your sight?"
"You tell him, Monk," Phinuit said irreverently--"I'm no tale-bearer."
Monk elevated his eyebrows above recognition of the impertinence, and
offered Lanyard a bow of formidable courtesy.
"They are such, monsieur," he said with that deliberation which becomes
a diplomatic personage--"your talents are such that you can, if you
will, become invaluable to us."
Phinuit chuckled outright at Lanyard's look of polite obtuseness.
"Never sail a straight course--can you skipper?--when you can get there
by tacking. Here: I'm a plain-spoken guy, let me act as an interpreter.
Mr. Lanyard: this giddy association of malefactors here present has the
honour to invite you to become a full-fledged working member and
stockholder of equal interest with the rest of us, participating in all
benefits of the organization, including police protection. And as added
inducement we're willing to waive initiation fee and dues. Do I make
myself clear?"
"But perfectly."
"It's like this: I've told you how we came together, the five of us,
including Jules and Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes. Now we expect this
venture, our first, to pan out handsomely. There'll be a juicy melon
cut when we get to New York. There's a lot more--I think you
understand--than the Montalais plunder to whack up on. We'll make the
average get-rich-quick scheme look like playing store in the back-yard
with two pins the top price for anything on the shelves. And there
isn't any sane reason why we need stop at that. In fact, we don't mean
to. The Sybarite will make more voyages, and if anything should happen
to stop it, there are other means of making the U. S. Customs look
foolish. Each of us contributes valuable and essential services,
mademoiselle, the skipper, my kid-brother, even I--and I pull a strong
oar with the New York Police Department into the bargain. But there's a
vacancy in our ranks, the opening left by the death of de Lorgnes, an
opening that nobody could hope to fill so well as you. So we put it up
to you squarely: If you'll sign on and work with us, we'll turn over to
you a round fifth share of the profits of this voyage as well as
everything that comes after. That's fair enough, isn't it?"
"But more than fair, monsieur."
"Well, it's true you've done nothing to earn a fifth interest in the
first division..."
"Then, too, I am here, quite helpless in your hands."
"Oh, we don't look at it that way----"
"Which," Liane sweetly interrupted, "is the one rational gesture you
have yet offered in this conference, Monsieur Phinuit."
"Meaning, I suppose, Mr. Lanyard is far from being what he says,
helpless in our hands."
"Nor ever will be, my poor friend, while he breathes and thinks."
"But, Liane!" Lanyard deprecated, modestly casting down his eyes--"you
overwhelm me."
"I don't believe you," Liane retorted coolly.
For some moments Lanyard continued to stare reflectively at his feet.
Nothing whatever of his thought was to be gathered from his
countenance, though eyes more shrewd to read than those of Phinuit or
Monk were watching it intently.
"Well, Mr. Lanyard, what do you say?"
Lanyard lifted his meditative gaze to the face of Phinuit. "But surely
there is more...." he suggested in a puzzled way.
"More what?"
"I find something lacking.... You have shown me but one side of the
coin. What is the reverse? I appreciate the honour you do me, I
comprehend fully the strong inducements I am offered. But you have
neglected--an odd oversight on the part of the plain-spoken man you
profess to be--you have forgotten to name the penalty which would
attach to a possible refusal."
"I guess it's safe to leave that to your imagination."
"There would be a penalty, however?"
"Well, naturally, if you're not with us, you're against us. And to take
that stand would oblige us, as a simple matter of self-preservation, to
defend ourselves with every means at our command."
"Means which," Lanyard murmured, "you prefer not to name."
"Well, one doesn't like to be crude."
"I have my answer, monsieur--and many thanks. The parallel is
complete."
With a dim smile playing in his eyes and twitching at the corners of
his lips, Lanyard leaned back and studied the deck beams. Liane Delorme
sat up with a movement of sharp uneasiness.
"Of what, my friend, are you thinking?"
"I am marvelling at something everybody knows--that history does repeat
itself."
The woman made a sudden hissing sound, of breath drawn shortly between
closed teeth. "I hope not!" she sighed.
Lanyard opened his eyes wide at her. "You hope not, Liane?"
"I hope this time history will not altogether repeat itself. You see,
my friend, I think I know what is in your mind, memories of old
times...."
"True: I am thinking of those days when the Pack hunted the Lone Wolf
in Paris, ran him to earth at last, and made him much the same offer as
you have made to-night.... The Pack, you should know, messieurs, was
the name assumed by an association of Parisian criminals, ambitious
like you, who had grown envious of the Lone Wolf's success, and wished
to persuade him to run with them."
"And what happened?" Phinuit enquired.
"Why it so happened that they chose the time when I had made up my mind
to be good for the rest of my days. It was all most unfortunate."
"What answer did you give them, then?"
"As memory serves, I told them they could all go plumb to hell."
"So I hope history will not repeat, this time," Liane interjected.
"And did they go?" Monk asked.
"Presently, some of them, ultimately all; for some lingered a few years
in French prisons, like that great Popinot, the father of monsieur who
has caused us so much trouble."
"And you----?"
"Why," Lanyard laughed, "I have managed to keep out of jail, so I
presume I must have kept my vow to be good."
"And no backsliding?" Phinuit suggested with a leer.
"Ah! you must not ask me to tell you everything. That is a matter
between me and my conscience."
"Well," Phinuit hazarded with a good show of confidence, "I guess you
won't tell us to go plumb to hell, will you?"
"No; I promise to be more original than that."
"Then you refuse!" Liane breathed tensely.
"Oh, I haven't said that! You must give me time to think this over."
"I knew that would be his answer," Monk proclaimed, pride in his
perspicuity shaping the set of his eyebrows. "That is why I was firm
that we should wait no longer. You have four days in which to make up
your mind, monsieur."
"I shall need them."
"I don't see why," Phinuit argued: "it's an open and shut proposition,
if ever there was one."
"But you are asking me to renounce something upon which I have set much
store for many years, monsieur. I can't be expected to do that in an
hour or even a day."
You shall have your answer, I promise you, by the time we make our
landfall--perhaps before."
"The sooner, the better."
"Are you sure, monsieur? But one thought it was the tortoise who won
the famous race."
"Take all the time you need," Captain Monk conceded generously, "to
come to a sensible decision."
"But how good you are to me, monsieur!"
XXV
THE MALCONTENT
Singular though the statement may seem, when one remembers the
conditions that circumscribed his freedom of action on board the
Sybarite, that he stood utterly alone in that company of conspirators
and their creatures, alone and unarmed, with never a friend to guard
his back or even to whisper him one word of counsel, warning or
encouragement, with only his naked wits and hands to fortify and
sustain his heart: it is still no exaggeration to say that Lanyard got
an extraordinary amount of private diversion out of those last few
days.
From the hour when Liane Delorme, Phinuit and Captain Monk, in conclave
solemnly assembled at the instance of the one last-named, communicated
their collective mind in respect of his interesting self, the man was
conscious of implicit confidence in a happy outcome of the business,
with a conscientiousness less rational than simply felt, a sort of
bubbling exhilaration in his mood that found its most intelligible
expression in the phrase, which he was wont often to iterate to
himself: Ça va bien--that goes well!
That--the progressive involution of this insane imbroglio--went very
well indeed, in Lanyard's reckoning; he could hardy wish, he could not
reasonably demand that it should go better.
He knew now with what design Liane Delorme had made him a party to this
sea adventure and intimate with every detail of the conspiracy; and he
knew to boot why she had offered him the free gift of her love; doubt
as to the one, scruples inspired by the other--that reluctance which
man cannot but feel to do a hurt to a heart that holds him dear,
however scanty his response to its passion--could no longer influence
him to palter in dealing with the woman. The revelation had in effect
stricken shackles from Lanyard's wrists, now when he struck it would be
with neither hesitation nor compunction.
As to that stroke alone, its hour and place and fashion, he remained
without decision. He had made a hundred plans for its delivery, and one
of them, that seemed the wildest, he thought of seriously, as something
really feasible. But single-handed! That made it difficult. If only one
could devise some way to be in two places at one time and the same! An
impossibility? He wouldn't deny that. But Lanyard had never been one to
be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility. He had known
too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when
subjected to a bold and resolute assault. He wouldn't say die.
Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so
long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to
and did. What imbecility! What an escape had been his when, in that
time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once
and for all time! But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve
he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his
contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the
everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility
foredoomed them to farcical failure.
Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an
answer to the question: What made the Law by whose decree man may
garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity?
That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings,
through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse
shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained....
But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons
were for himself alone. He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly,
giving nowhere any manner of offense: for could he tell in what
unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work
out his unfaltering purpose?
And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his
mind. Well, he gave no sign. Let them watch and wonder to their heart's
content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the
rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall.
Winds blew and fell, the sea rose and subsided, the Sybarite trudged on
into dull weather. The sky grew overcast; and Lanyard, daily scanning
the very heavens for a sign, accepted this for one, and prayed it might
hold. Nothing could be more calculated to nullify his efforts than to
have the landfall happen on a clear, calm night of stars.
He went to bed, the last night out, leaving a noisy gathering in the
saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept.
Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with
a clear head and every faculty on the qui vive--much as a man might
grope for a time in a dark strange room, then find a door and step out
into broad daylight.
Only there was no light other than in the luminous clarity of his mind.
Even the illumination in the saloon had been dimmed down for the night,
as he could tell by the tarnished gleam beneath his stateroom door.
Still, not everyone had gone to bed. The very manner of his waking
informed him that he was not alone; for the life Lanyard had led had
taught him to need no better alarm than the entrance of another person
into the place where he lay sleeping. All animals are like that, whose
lives hang on their vigilance.
Able to see nothing, he still felt a presence, and knew that it waited,
stirless, within arm's-length of his head. Without much concern, he
thought of Popinot, that "phantom Popinot" of Monk's derisive naming.
Well, if the vision Liane had seen on deck had taken material form here
in his stateroom, Lanyard presumed it meant another fight, and the
last, to a finish, that is to say, to a death.
Without making a sound, he gathered himself together, ready for a trap,
and as noiselessly lifted a hand toward the switch for the electric
light, set in the wall near the head of the bed. But in the same breath
he heard a whisper, or rather a mutter, a voice he could not place in
its present pitch.
"Awake, Monsieur Delorme?" it said. "Hush! Don't make a row, and never
mind the light."
His astonishment was so overpowering that instinctively his tensed
muscles relaxed and his hand fell back upon the bedding.
"Who the deuce----?"
"Not so loud. It's me--Mussey."
Lanyard echoed witlessly: "Mussey?"
"Yes. I don't wonder you're surprised, but if you'll be easy you'll
understand pretty soon why I had to have a bit of a talk with you
without anybody's catching on."
"Well," Lanyard said, "I'm damned!"
"I say!" The subdued mutter took on a note of anxiety. "It's all right,
isn't it? I mean, you aren't going to kick up a rumpus and spill the
beans? I guess you must think I've got a hell of a gall, coming in on
you like this, and I don't know as I blame you, but... Well, time's
getting short, only two more days at sea, and I couldn't wait any
longer for a chance to have a few minutes' chin with you."
The mutter ceased and held an expectant pause. Lanyard said nothing.
But he was conscious that the speaker occupied a chair by the bed, and
knew that he was bending near to catch his answer; for the air was
tainted with vinous breath. Yes: one required no stronger
identification, it was beyond any doubt the chief engineer of the
Sybarite.
"Say it's all right, won't you?" the mutter pleaded.
"I am listening," Lanyard replied--"as you perceive."
"I'll say it's decent of you--damned decent. Blowed if I'd take it as
calm as you, if I waked up to find somebody in my room."
"I believe," said Lanyard pointedly, "you stipulated for a few minutes'
chin with me. Time passes, Mr. Mussey. Get to your business, or let me
go to sleep again."
"Sharp, you are," commented the mutter. "I've noticed it in you. You'd
be surprised if you knew how much notice I've been taking of you."
"And flattered, I'm sure."
"Look here..." The mutter stumbled. "I want to ask a personal question.
Daresay you'll think it impertinent."
"If I do, be sure I shan't answer it."
"Well... it's this: Is or isn't your right name Lanyard, Michael
Lanyard?"
This time it was Lanyard who, thinking rapidly, held the pause so long
that his querist's uneasiness could not contain itself.
"Is that my answer? I mean, does your silence--?"
"That's an unusual name, Michael Lanyard," cautiously replied its
proprietor. "How did you get hold of it?"
"They say it's the right name of the Lone Wolf. Guess I don't have to
tell you who the Lone Wolf is."
"'They say'? Who, please, are 'they'?"
"Oh, there's a lot of talk going around the ship. You know how it is, a
crew will gossip. And God knows they've got enough excuse this cruise."