The Lone Wolf, Louis Joseph Vance [best historical fiction books of all time txt] 📗

declared gracelessly, “it’s as good as a play!

Are you sure, Monsieur le Comte, there’s no mistake—that these gay

masqueraders haven’t lost their way to the stage of the Grand Guignol?”

 

“Damn!” muttered the Count. “Take care, my friend! You go too far!”

 

“You really think so? But you amaze me! You can’t in reason expect me

to take you seriously, gentlemen!”

 

“If you don’t, it will prove serious business for you!” growled the one

he had called Popinot.

 

“You mean that? But you are magnificent, all of you! We lack only the

solitary illumination of a candle-end—a grinning skull—a cup of blood

upon the table—to make the farce complete! But as it is…. Messieurs,

you must be rarely uncomfortable, and feeling as foolish as you look,

into the bargain! Moreover, I’m no child. … Popinot, why not

disembarrass your amiable features? And you, Mr. Wertheimer, I’m sure,

will feel more at ease with an open countenance—as the saying runs,”

he said, nodding to the man beside Popinot. “As for this gentleman,”

he concluded, eyeing the third, “I haven’t the pleasure of his

acquaintance.”

 

With a short laugh, Wertheimer unmasked and exposed a face of decidedly

English type, fair and well-modelled, betraying only the faintest

traces of Semitic cast to account for his surname. And with this

example, Popinot snatched off his own black visor—and glared at

Lanyard: in his shabby dress, the incarnate essence of bourgeoisie

outraged. But the third, he of the grey lounge suit, remained

motionless; only his eyes clashed coldly with the adventurer’s.

 

He seemed a man little if at all Lanyard’s senior, and built upon much

the same lines. A close-clipped black moustache ornamented his upper

lip. His chin was square and strong with character. The cut of his

clothing was conspicuously neither English nor Continental.

 

“I don’t know you, sir,” Lanyard continued slowly, puzzled to account

for a feeling of familiarity with this person, whom he could have sworn

he had never met before.

 

“But you won’t let your friends here outdo you in civility, I trust?”

 

“If you mean you want me to unmask, I won’t,” the other returned

brusquely, in fair French but with a decided transatlantic intonation.

 

“American, eh?”

 

“Native-born, if it interests you.”

 

“Have I ever met you before?”

 

“You have not.”

 

“My dear Count,” Lanyard said, turning to De Morbihan, “do me the

favour to introduce this gentleman.”

 

“Your dear Count will do nothing like that, Mr. Lanyard. If you need a

name to call me by, Smith’s good enough.”

 

The incisive force of his enunciation assorted consistently with the

general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable

than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with this one….

 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat

down. “If it did, I should insist—or else decline the honour of

receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly,

messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing

the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the

gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends the Apaches; and

the well-known Mr. Goodenough Smith, ambassador of the gun-men of New

York—no doubt. I presume one is to understand you wait upon me as

representing the fine flower of the European underworld?”

 

“You’re to understand that I, for one, don’t relish your impudence,”

the stout Popinot snapped.

 

“Sorry…. But I have already indicated my inability to take you

seriously.”

 

“Why not?” the American demanded ominously. “You’d be sore enough if we

took you as a joke, wouldn’t you?”

 

“You misapprehend, Mr.—ah—Smith: it is my first aim and wish that you

do not take me in any manner, shape or form. It is you, remember, who

requested this interview and—er—dressed your parts so strikingly!”

 

“What are we to understand by that?” De Morbihan interposed.

 

“This, messieurs—if you must know.” Lanyard dropped for the moment his

tone of raillery and bent forward, emphasizing his points by tapping

the table with a forefinger. “Through some oversight of mine or

cleverness of yours—I can’t say which—perhaps both—you have

succeeded in penetrating my secret. What then? You become envious of my

success. In short, I stand in your light: I’m always getting away with

something you might have lifted if you’d only had wit enough to think

of it first. As your American accomplice, Mr. Mysterious Smith, would

say, I ‘cramp your style.’”

 

“You learned that on Broadway,” the American commented shrewdly.

 

“Possibly…. To continue: so you get together, and bite your nails

until you concoct a plan to frighten me into my profits. I’ve no

doubt you’re prepared to allow me to retain one-half the proceeds of

my operations, should I elect to ally myself with you?”

 

“That’s the suggestion we are empowered to make,” De Morbihan

admitted.

 

“In other words, you need me. You say to yourselves: ‘We’ll pretend

to be the head of a criminal syndicate, such as the silly novelists

are forever writing about, and we’ll threaten to put him out of

business unless he comes to our terms.’ But you overlook one important

fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing

impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits

of a gigantic criminal system—you, Popinot, who live by standing

between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you,

Wertheimer, sneak-thief and blackmailer of timid women, or you, De

Morbihan, because you eke out your income by showing a handful of

second-storey men where to seek plunder in the homes of your friends!”

 

He made a gesture of impatience, and lounged back to wait the answer

to this indictment. His gaze, ranging the four faces, encountered but

one that was not darkly flushed with resentment; and this was the

American’s.

 

“Aren’t you overlooking me?” this last suggested gently.

 

“On the contrary: I refuse to recognize you as long as you lack

courage to show your face.”

 

“As you will, my friend,” the American chuckled. “Make your profit out

of that any way you like.”

 

Lanyard sat up again: “Well, I’ve stated your case, messieurs. It

amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I’m to split my earnings with

you, or you’ll denounce me to the police. That’s about it, isn’t it?”

 

“Not of necessity,” De Morbihan softly purred, twisting his moustache.

 

“For my part,” Popinot declared hotly, “I engage that Monsieur of the

High Hand, here, will either work with us or conduct no more

operations in Paris.”

 

“Or in New York,” the American amended.

 

“England is yet to be heard from,” Lanyard suggested mockingly.

 

To this Wertheimer replied, almost with diffidence: “If you ask me, I

don’t think you’d find it so jolly pleasant over there, if you mean to

cut up nasty at this end.”

 

“Then what am I to infer? If you’re afraid to lay an information against

me—and it wouldn’t be wise, I admit—you’ll merely cause me to be

assassinated, eh?”

 

“Not of necessity,” the Count murmured in the same thoughtful tone and

manner—as one holding a hidden trump.

 

“There are so many ways of arranging these matters,”

Wertheimer ventured.

 

“None the less, if I refuse, you declare war?”

 

“Something like that,” the American admitted.

 

“In that case—I am now able to state my position definitely.” Lanyard

got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. “You can—all four of

you—go plumb to hell!”

 

“My dear friend!” the Count cried, shocked—“you forget—”

 

“I forget nothing!” Lanyard cut in coldly—“and my decision is final.

Consider yourselves at liberty to go ahead and do your damnedest! But

don’t forget that it is you who are the aggressors. Already you’ve had

the insolence to interfere with my arrangements: you began offensive

operations before you declared war. So now if you’re hit beneath the

belt, you mustn’t complain: you’ve asked for it!”

 

“Now just what do you mean by that?” the American drawled ironically.

 

“I leave you to figure it out for yourselves. But I will say this: I

confidently expect you to decide to live and let live, and shall be

sorry, as you’ll certainly be sorry, if you force my hand.”

 

He opened the door, turned, and saluted them with sarcastic punctilio.

 

“I have the honour to bid adieu to Messieurs the Council of—‘The

Pack’!”

IX DISASTER

Having fulfilled his purpose of making himself acquainted with the

personnel of the opposition, Lanyard slammed the door in its face,

thrust his hands in his pockets, and sauntered down stairs, chuckling,

his nose in the air, on the best of terms with himself.

 

True, the fat was in the fire and well a-blaze: he had to look to

himself now, and go warily in the shadow of their enmity. But it was

something to have faced down those four, and he wasn’t seriously

impressed by any one of them.

 

Popinot, perhaps, was the most dangerous in Lanyard’s esteem; a

vindictive animal, that Popinot; and the creatures he controlled, a

murderous lot, drug-ridden, drink bedevilled, vicious little rats of

Belleville, who’d knife a man for the price of an absinthe. But Popinot

wouldn’t move without leave from De Morbihan, and unless Lanyard’s

calculations were seriously miscast, De Morbihan would restrain both

himself and his associates until thoroughly convinced Lanyard was

impregnable against every form of persuasion. Murder was something a

bit out of De Morbihan’s line—something, at least, which he might be

counted on to hold in reserve. And by the time he was ready to employ

it, Lanyard would be well beyond his reach. Wertheimer, too, would

deprecate violence until all else failed; his half-caste type was as

cowardly as it was blackguard; and cowards kill only impulsively,

before they’ve had time to weigh consequences. There remained “Smith,”

enigma; a man apparently gifted with both intelligence and

character…. But if so, what the deuce was he doing in such company?

 

Still, there he was: and the association damned him beyond

consideration. His sorts were all of a piece, beneath the consideration

of men of spirit….

 

At this point, the self-complacence bred of his contempt for Messrs.

de Morbihan et Cie. bred in its turn a thought that brought the

adventurer up standing.

 

The devil! Who was he, Michael Lanyard, that held himself above such

vermin, yet lived in such a way as practically to invite their

advances? What right was his to resent their opening the door to

confraternity, as long as he trod paths so closely parallel to theirs

that only a sophist might discriminate them? What comforting

distinction was to be drawn between on the one hand a blackmailer like

Wertheimer, a chevalier-d’industrie like De Morbihan, or a patron of

Apaches like Popinot, and on the other himself whose bread was eaten in

the sweat of thievery?

 

He drew a long face; whistled softly; shook his head; and smiled a wry

smile.

 

“Glad I didn’t think of that two minutes ago, or I’d never have had the

cheek…”

 

Without warning, incongruously and, in his understanding, inexplicably,

he found himself beset by recurrent memory of the girl, Lucia Bannon.

 

For an instant he saw her again, quite vividly, as last he had seen

her: turning at the door of her bedchamber to look back at him, a

vision of perturbing charm in her rose-silk dressing-gown, with rich

hair loosened, cheeks softly glowing, eyes brilliant with an emotion

illegible to her one beholder….

 

What had been the message of those eyes, flashed down the dimly lighted

length of that corridor at Troyon’s, ere she vanished?

 

Adieu? Or au revoir? …

 

She had termed him, na�vely enough, and a gentleman.

 

But