narrowly escaped death by strangulation one may be pardoned some slight
mental haziness. Besides, it makes to retain sympathy, not to be too
confoundedly clear-headed.
"Fatal hour?"
"The dear man promised to turn in his answer to our unselfish little
proposition at six bells to-night and not later."
"Really?" The voice was interested, and so were the eyebrows; but Monk
was at pains not to move. "And has he?"
"Not yet, old egg."
Monk opened expectant eyes and fixed them upon Lanyard's face, the
eyebrows acquiring a slant of amiable enquiry.
"There is much to be said," Lanyard temporised. "That is, if you feel
strong enough..."
"Oh, quite," Monk assured him in tones barely audible.
"Must it be a blow to the poor dear?" Phinuit enquired.
"I hope not, very truly."
(The tell-tale now betrayed a course northwest-by-north. Had the
binnacle compass, then, gone out of its head altogether, on finding
itself bereft of its accustomed court of counter-attractions?)
"Well, here we all are, sitting forward on the edges of our chairs,
holding onto the seats with both hands, ears pricked forward, eyes
shining... The suspense," Phinuit avowed, "is something fierce!"
"I am sorry."
"What d'you mean, you're sorry? You're not going to back out?"
"Having never walked into the arrangement you propose, it would be
difficult to back out--would it not?"
Monk forgot that he was suffering acutely, forgot even the beautiful
and precious hand that was soothing his fevered brow, and rudely
shaking it off, sat up suddenly. The eyebrows were distinctly minatory
above eyes that loosed ugly gleams.
"You refuse?"
Lanyard slowly inclined his head: "I regret I must beg to be excused."
"You damned fool!"
"Pardon, monsieur?"
A look of fury convulsed Liane's face. Phinuit, too, was glaring, no
longer a humourist. Monk's mouth was working, and his eyebrows had got
out of hand altogether.
"I said you were a damned fool--"
"But is not that a matter of personal viewpoint? At least, the question
would seem to be open to debate."
"If you think arguments will satisfy us--!"
"But, my dear Captain Monk, I am really not at all concerned to satisfy
you. However, if you wish to know my reasons for declining the honour
you would thrust upon me, they are at your service."
"I'll be glad to hear them," said Monk grimly.
"One, I fancy, will do as well as a dozen. It is, then, my considered
judgment that, were I in the least inclined to resume the evil ways of
my past--as I am not--I would be, as you so vividly put it, a damned
fool to associate myself with people of a low grade of intelligence,
wanting even enough to hold fast that which they have thieved!"
"By God!" Monk brought down a thumping fist. "What are you getting at?"
"Your hopeless inefficiency, monsieur.... Forgive my bluntness."
"Come through," Phinuit advised in a dangerous voice. "Just what do you
mean?"
"I mean that you, knowing I have but one object in submitting to
association with you in any way, to wit, the recovery of the jewels of
Madame de Montalais and their restoration to that lady, have not had
sufficient wit to prevent my securing those jewels under your very
noses."
"You mean to say you've stolen them?"
Lanyard nodded. "They are at present in my possession--if that
confesses an act of theft."
Monk laughed discordantly. "Then I say you're a liar, Monsieur the Lone
Wolf, as well as a fool!" His fist smote the desk again. "The Montalais
jewels are here."
Lanyard shrugged.
"When did you lift them?" Phinuit demanded with sarcasm. "Tell us
that!"
Lanyard smiled an exasperating smile, lounged low in his chair, and
looked at the deck beams--taking occasion to note that the tell-tale
had swung to true northwest. Ça va bien!
"Why, you insane impostor!" Monk stormed--"I had that box in my own
hands no later than this afternoon."
Without moving, Lanyard directed his voice toward the ceiling.
"Did you by any chance open it and see what was inside?"
There was no answer, and though he was careful not to betray any
interest by watching them, he was well aware that looks of alarm and
suspicion were being exchanged by those three. So much for enjoying the
prestige of a stupendously successful criminal past! A single thought
was in the mind of Liane Delorme, Captain Monk, and Mr. Phinuit: With
the Lone Wolf, nothing was impossible.
Liane Delorme said abruptly, in a choking voice: "Open the safe,
please, Captain Monk."
"I'll do nothing of the sort."
"Go on," Phinuit advised--"make sure. If it's true, we get them back,
don't we? If it isn't, we show him up for a pitiful bluff."
"It's a dodge," Monk declared, "to get the jewels where he can lay
hands on them. The safe stays shut."
"Open it, I beg you!" Liane implored in tremulous accents.
"No--"
"Why not?" Phinuit argued. "What can he do? I've got him covered."
"And I," Lanyard interjected softly, "as you all know, am unarmed."
"Please!" Liane insisted.
There was a pause which ended in a sullen grunt from Monk. Lanyard
smiled cheerfully and sat up in his chair, watching the captain while
he unlocked the door in the pedestal and with shaking fingers
manipulated the combination dial. Liane Delorme left her chair to stand
nearby, in undissembled anxiety. Only Phinuit remained as he had been,
lounging back and watching Lanyard narrowly, his automatic pistol
dangling between his knees.
Lanyard offered him a pleasant smile. Phinuit scowled forbiddingly in
response.
Monk swung open the safe-door, seized the metal despatch-box by the
handle, and set it upon the desk with a bang. Then, extracting his
pocket key-ring, he selected the proper key and made several attempts
to insert it in the slot of the lock. But his confidence was so shaken,
his morale so impaired by Lanyard's sublime effrontery added to his
recent shocking experience, that the gaunt hands trembled beyond his
control, and it was several seconds before he succeeded.
Lanyard gave no sign, but his heart sank. He had exhausted his last
resource to gain time, he was now at his wits' ends. Only his star
could save him now....
Monk turned the keys, but all at once forgot his purpose, and with
hands stayed upon the lid of the box paused and cocked his ears
attentively to rumours of excitement and confusion on the deck. The
instinct of the seafaring man uppermost, Monk stiffened, grew rigid
from head to foot.
One heard hurried feet, outcries, a sudden jangle of the engine-room
telegraph...
"Monsieur! monsieur!" Liane implored. "Open that box!"
The words were on her lips when she was thrown off her feet by a
frightful shock which stopped the Sybarite dead in full career, before
the screw, reversed in obedience to the telegraph, could grip the water
and lessen her momentum. The woman cannoned against Monk, shouldering
him bodily aside. Instinctively snatching at the box, Monk succeeded
only in dragging it to the edge of the desk before a second shock,
accompanied by a grinding crash of steel and timbers, seemed to make
the yacht leap like a live thing stricken mortally. She heeled heavily
to starboard, the despatch-box went to the floor with a thump lost in
the greater din, Liane Delorme was propelled headlong into a corner,
Monk thrown to his knees, Phinuit lifted out of his chair and flung
sprawling into the arms of Lanyard, who, pinned down by the other's
weight in his own chair, felt this last slide backwards to starboard
and bring up against a partition with a bang that drove the breath out
of him in one enormous gust.
He retained, however, sufficient presence of mind neatly to disarm
Phinuit before that one guessed what he was about.
After that second blow, the Sybarite remained at a standstill, but the
continued beating of her engines caused her to quiver painfully from
trucks to keelson, as if in agonies of death such as those which had
marked the end of Popinot. Of a sudden the engines ceased, and there
was no more movement of any sort, only an appalling repose with silence
more dreadful still.
Lanyard had no means to measure how long that dumb suspense lasted
which was imposed by the stunned faculties of all on board. It seemed
interminable. Eventually he saw Monk pick himself up and, making
strange moaning noises, like a wounded animal, throw himself upon the
door, jerk it open, and dash out.
As if he had only needed that vision of action to animate him, Lanyard
threw Phinuit off, so that he staggered across the slanting floor
toward the door. When he brought himself up by catching hold of its
frame, he was under the threat of his own pistol in Lanyard's hands. He
lingered for a moment, showing Lanyard a distraught and vacant face,
then apparently realising his danger faded away into the saloon.
With a roughness dictated by the desperate extremity, Lanyard strode
over to Liane Delorme, where she still crouched in her corner, staring
witlessly, caught her by one arm, fairly jerked her to her feet, and
thrust her stumbling out into the saloon. Closing the door behind her,
he shot its bolts.
He went to work swiftly then, in a fever of haste. In his ears the
clamour of the shipwrecked men upon the decks was only a distant
droning, hardly recognised for what it was by him who had not
one thought other than to make all possible advantage of every precious
instant; and so with the roar of steam from the escape-valves.
Stripping off coat and waistcoat, he took from the pocket of the latter
the wallet that held his papers, then ripped open his shirt and
unbuckled the money belt round his waist. Its pockets were ample and
fitted with trustworthy fastenings; and all but one, that held a few
English sovereigns, were empty. The jewels of Madame de Montalais went
into them as rapidly as his fingers could move.
Thus engaged, he heard a pistol explode in the saloon, and saw the
polished writing-bed of the captain's desk scored by a bullet. His gaze
shifting to the door, he discovered a neat round hole in one of its
rosewood panels. At the same time, to the tune of another report, a
second hole appeared, and the bullet, winging above the desk, buried
itself in the after-bulkhead, between the dead-lights. A stream of
bullets followed, one after another boring the stout panels as if their
consistency had been that of cheese.
Lanyard stepped out of their path and hugged the partition while he
finished stuffing the jewels into the belt and, placing the thin wallet
beneath it, strapped it tightly round him once more....
That would be Phinuit out there, no doubt, disdaining to waste time
breaking in the door, or perhaps fearing his reception once it was
down. An innocent and harmless amusement, if he enjoyed it, that it
seemed a pity to interrupt. At the same time it grew annoying. The door
was taking on the look of a sieve, and the neighbourhood of the
deadlights, Lanyard's sole avenue of escape, was being well peppered.
Something would have to be done about it...
Lanyard completed his preparations by kicking off his shoes and taking
up another notch in the belt that supported his trousers. If the swim
before him proved a long one, he could get rid of his garments in the
water readily enough; if on the other hand the shore proved to be close
at hand, it would be more convenable to land at least half clothed.
Then--the fusillade continuing without intermission save when the man
outside stopped long enough to extract an empty clip and replace it
with one loaded--Lanyard edged along the partition to the door,
calculated the stand of the lunatic in the saloon from the angle at
which the bullets were coming through, and emptied the pistol he had
taken from Phinuit at the panels as fast as he could pull trigger.
There was no more firing...
He tossed aside the empty weapon, made sure of Popinot's on his hip,
approached one of the deadlights, placed a chair, climbed upon it, and
with infinite pains managed to wriggle and squirm head and shoulders
through the opening. It was very fortunate for him indeed that the
Sybarite happened to have been built for pleasure yachting, with
deadlights uncommonly large for the sake of air and light, else he
would have been obliged to run the risk of opening the door to the
saloon and fighting his way out and up to the deck.
As it was, the business was difficult enough. He had to work one of his
arms out after his shoulders and then, twisting round, strain and claw
at the smooth overhang of the stern until able to catch the outer lip
of the scuppers above.
After that he had to lift and drag the rest of him out through the
deadlight and, hanging by fingertips, work his way round, inch by inch,
until it seemed possible to drop into the sea and escape hitting the
screw.
In point of fact, he barely missed splitting himself in two on the
thing, and on coming to the surface clung to it while taking such
observations as one might in that befogged blackness.
Impossible to guess which way to strike out: the fog hung low upon the
water, greying its smooth, gently heaving black surface, he could see
nothing on either beam.
At length, however, he heard through the hissing uproar of escaping
steam a mournful bell somewhere off to port, which he at first took for
a buoy, then perceived to be tolling with a regularity inconsistent
with the eccentric action of waves. Timed by pulsebeats, it struck once
every fifteen seconds or thereabouts: undoubtedly the fog signal of some
minor light-house.
In confirmation of this conclusion, Lanyard heard, from the deck above,
the resonant accents of Captain Monk, clearly articulate in that riot
of voices, apparently storming at hapless Mr. Swain.
"Don't you hear that bell, you ass? Doesn't that tell you what you've
done? You've piled us on the rocks off the eastern end of Plum Island.
And God in Heaven only knows how you managed to get so far off the
course!"
Breathing to the night air thanks which would have driven Captain Monk
mad could he have heard them, Lanyard let go the bronze blade and
struck out for the melancholy bell.
Ten minutes later the fingers of one hand--he was swimming on his
side--at the bottom of its stroke touched pebbles.
He lowered his feet and waded through extensive shallows to a wide and
sandy beach.
XXVIII
FINALE
The window of the living-room in his suite at the Walpole, set high in
cliff-like walls, commanded a southward vista of Fifth Avenue whose
enchantment, clothed in ever changing guises of light and shade, was so
potent that Lanyard, on the first day of his tenancy, thought it could
never tire. Yet by noon of the third he was viewing it with the eyes of
soul-destroying ennui, though the disfavour it had so quickly won in
his sight was, he knew, due less to cloying familiarity than to the
uncertainty and discontent that were eating out his heart.
Three days before, immediately on arriving in New York and installing
himself in this hotel, to whose management he was well known from other
days, he had cabled Eve de Montalais and Wertheimer.
The response to the latter--a cheerful request that credit be arranged
for him by cable--was as prompt and satisfactory as he had expected it
to be.
But from Madame de Montalais he heard nothing.
"Mission successful," he had wired--"returning France by La Savoie in
five days having arranged safe transportation your property--please
advise if you can meet me in Paris to receive same or your commands
otherwise."
And to this, silence only!--silence to him to whom words of her
dictation, however few and terse and filtered through no matter how
many indifferent mediums of intelligence, would have been precious
beyond expression.
So it was that, as hour followed hour and the tale of them lengthened
into days, he fell into a temper of morbid brooding that was little
like the man, and instead of faring abroad and seeking what amusement
he might find in the most carefree city of the post-War world, shut
himself up in his rooms and moped, indifferent to all things but the
knocks at his door, the stridulation of the telephone bell that might
announce the arrival of the desired message.
And so it was that, when the telephone did ring--at last!--towards noon
of that third day, he fairly stumbled over himself in his haste to
reach the instrument. But the animation with which he answered the
professional voice at the other end of the wire faded very quickly, the
look of weariness returned, his accents voiced an indifference fairly
desolating.
"Yes?...Oh, yes...Very well...Yes, at once."
He returned to his view from the window, and was hating it with all his
heart when a stout knuckling on his door announced his callers.
They filed into the room with a cheerfulness of mien in striking
contrast to the weary courtesy with which Lanyard received them: Liane
Delorme first, then Monk, then Phinuit, rather bleached of colour and
wearing one arm in a sling; all very smart in clothes conspicuously new
and as costly as the Avenue afforded, striking figures of contentment
in prosperity.
"It is a pleasure indeed," Lanyard gravely acknowledged their several
salutations--"not, I must confess, altogether unexpected, but a
pleasure none the less."
"So you didn't think we'd be long spotting you in the good little old
town?" Phinuit enquired. "Had a notion you thought the best way to lose
us would be to put up at this well-known home of the highest prices."
"No," Lanyard replied. "I never thought to be rid of you without one
more meeting--"
"Then there's good in the old bean yet," Phinuit interrupted in wasted
irony.
"One cherishes that hope, monsieur....But the trail I left for you to
follow! I would be an ass indeed if I thought you would fail to find
it. When one borrows a rowboat at Plum Island Light without asking
permission--government property, too--and leaves it moored to a dock
on the Greenport waterfront; when one arrives in Greenport clothed in
shirt and trousers only, and has to bribe its pardonably suspicious
inhabitants with handfuls of British gold--which they are the more
loath to accept in view of its present depreciation--in order to secure
a slopchest coat and shoes and transportation by railway to New York;
when a taxicab chauffeur refuses a sovereign for his fare from the
Pennsylvania Station to this hotel, and one is constrained to borrow
from the management--why, I should say the trail was fairly broad and
well blazed, mes amis."
"Be that as it may," said Phinuit--"here in a manner of speaking we all
are, at least, the happy family reunited and ready to talk business."
"And no hard feelings, Monsieur Phinuit?"
"There will be none"--Monk's eyebrows were at once sardonic and
self-satisfied; which speaks volumes for their versatility--"at least,
none on our side--when we are finished."
"That makes me more happy still. And you, Liane?"
The woman gave a negligent movement of pretty shoulders.
"One begins to see how very right you are, Michael," she said
wearily--"and always were, for that matter. If one wishes to do wrong,
one should do it all alone... and escape being bored to death by the...
Oh! the unpardonable stupidity of associates.
"But no, messieurs!" she insisted with temper as Monk and Phinuit
simultaneously flew signals of resentment. "I mean what I say. I wish I
had never seen any of you, I am sick of you all! What did I tell you
when you insisted on coming here to see Monsieur Lanyard? That you
would gain nothing and perhaps lose much. But you would not listen to
me, you found it impossible to believe there could be in all the world
a man who keeps his word, not only to others but to himself. You are so
lost in admiration of your own cleverness in backing that poor little
ship off the rocks and letting her fill and sink, so that there could
be no evidence of wrong-doing against you, that you must try to prove
your wits once more where they have always failed"--she illustrated
with a dramatic gesture--"against his! You say to yourselves: Since we
are wrong, he must be wrong; and since that is now clearly proved, that
he is as wrong in every way as we, then it follows naturally that he
will heed our threats and surrender to us those jewels...Those jewels!"
she declared bitterly, "which we would have been fortunate never to
have heard of!"
She threw herself back in her chair and showed them a scornful
shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and
beating out the devil's tattoo with her slipper.
Lanyard watched her with a puzzled smile. How much of this was acting?
How much, if anything, an expression of true feeling? Was she actually
persuaded it was waste of time to contend against him? Or was she
shrewdly playing upon his not unfriendly disposition toward her in the
hope that it would spare her in the hour of the grand débâcle?
He could be sure of one thing only: since she was a woman, he would
never know...
Monk had been making ominous motions with the eyebrows, but Phinuit
made haste to be beforehand with him.
"You said one thing, mademoiselle, one thing anyway that meant
something: that Monsieur Lanyard would give up those jewels to us.
That's all arranged."
Lanyard turned to him with genuine amusement. "Indeed, monsieur?"
"Indeed and everything! We don't want to pull any rough stuff on you,
Lanyard, and we won't unless you force us to--"
"Rough stuff, monsieur? You mean, physical force?"
"Not exactly. But I think you'll recall my telling you I stand in well
with the Police Department in the old home town. Maybe you thought that
was swank. Likely you did. But it wasn't. I've got a couple of friends
of mine from Headquarters waiting downstairs this very minute, ready
and willing to cop out the honour of putting the Lone Wolf under arrest
for stealing the Montalais jewels."
"But is it possible," Lanyard protested, "you still do not understand
me? Is it possible you still believe I am a thief at heart and
interested in those jewels only to turn them to my own profit?"
He stared unbelievingly at the frosty eyes of Monk beneath their
fatuously stubborn brows, at the hard, unyielding eyes of Phinuit.
"You said it," this last replied with brevity.
"It was a good bluff while it lasted, Monsieur Lanyard," Monk added;
"but it couldn't last forever. You can't get away with it. Why not give
in gracefully, admit you're licked for once, be a good fellow?"
"My God!" Lanyard pronounced in comic despair--"it passes
understanding! It is true, then--and true especially of such as you are
to-day, as I was in my yesterday--that 'Whom Fortune wishes to destroy
she first makes mad'! For, I give you my word of honour, you seem to me
quite mad, messieurs, too mad to be allowed at large. And in proof of
my sincerity, I propose that you shall not longer remain at large."
"What's that?" Monk demanded, startled.
"Why, you have not hesitated to threaten me with the police. So now I,
in my turn, have the honour to inform you that, anticipating this call,
I have had relays of detectives waiting in this hotel day and night,
with instructions to guard the doors as soon as you were shown up to my
rooms. Be advised, Mr. Phinuit, and forget your pistol. Even to show it
in this city would make matters infinitely worse for you than they
are."
"He's lying," Monk insisted, putting a restraining hand on Phinuit's
arm as that one started from his chair in rage and panic. "He wouldn't
dare."
"Would I not? Then, since you believe nothing till it is proved to you,
messieurs, permit me..."
Lanyard crossed rapidly to the hall door and flung it open--and fell
back a pace with a cry of amazement.
At the threshold stood, not the detective whom he had expected to see,
but a woman with a cable message form in one hand, the other lifted to
knock.
"Madame!" Lanyard gasped--"Madame de Montalais!"
The cable-form fluttered to the floor as she entered with a gladness
in her face that was carried out by the impulsive gesture with which
she gave him her hands.
"My dear friend!" she cried happily--"I am so glad! And to think we
have been guests of the same hotel for three livelong days and never
knew it. I arrived by La Touraine Saturday, but your message,
telegraphed back from Combe-Redonde, reached me not five minutes ago. I
telephoned the desk, they told me the number of your room and--here I
am!"
"But I cannot believe my senses!"