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

windows,

parted its draperies, and peered out, over the little garden and

through the iron ribs of the gate, to the street, where a single

gas-lamp, glimmering within a dull golden halo of mist, made visible

the scant length of the impasse Stanislas, empty, rain-swept, desolate.

 

The rain persisted with no hint of failing purpose….

 

Something in the dreary emptiness of that brief vista deepened the

shadow in his mood and knitted a careworn frown into his brows.

 

Abstractedly he sought the kitchen and, making a light, washed up at

the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a

spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or

two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the

artist’s stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he

made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to

believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the

nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and

found an old raincoat of Solon’s, Lanyard decided against leaving the

girl alone. Pending her appearance, he filled the spirit-stove, put the

kettle on to boil, and lighting a cigarette, sat himself down to watch

the pot and excogitate his several problems.

 

In a fashion uncommonly clear-headed, even for him, he assembled all

the facts bearing upon their predicament, his and Lucia Bannon’s,

jointly and individually, and dispassionately pondered them….

 

But insensibly his thoughts reverted to their exotic phase of his

awakening, drifting into such introspection as he seldom indulged, and

led him far from the immediate riddle, by strange ways to a revelation

altogether unpresaged and a resolve still more revolutionary.

 

A look of wonder flickered in his brooding eyes; and clipped between

two fingers, his cigarette grew a long ash, let it fall, and burned

down to a stump so short that the coal almost scorched his flesh. He

dropped it and crushed out the fire with his heel, all unwittingly.

 

Slowly but irresistibly his world was turning over beneath his feet….

 

The sound of a footfall recalled him as from an immeasurable remove; he

looked up to see Lucia at pause upon the threshold, and rose slowly,

with effort recollecting himself and marshalling his wits against the

emergency foreshadowed by her attitude.

 

Tense with indignation, quick with disdain, she demanded, without any

preface whatever: “Why did you lock me in?”

 

He stammered unhappily: “I beg your pardon—”

 

“Why did you lock me in?”

 

“I’m sorry—”

 

“Why did you—”

 

But she interrupted herself to stamp her foot emphatically; and he

caught her up on the echo of that:

 

“If you must know, because I wasn’t trusting you.”

 

Her eyes darkened ominously: “Yet you insisted I should trust you!”

 

“The circumstances aren’t parallel: you’re not a notorious malefactor,

wanted by the police of every capital in Europe, hounded by rivals to

boot—fighting for life, liberty and”—he laughed shortly—“the

pursuit of happiness!”

 

She caught her breath sharply—whether with dismay or mere surprise at

his frankness he couldn’t tell.

 

“Are you?” she demanded quickly.

 

“Am I what?”

 

“What you’ve just said—”

 

“A crook—and all that? Miss Bannon, you know it!”

 

“The Lone Wolf?”

 

“You’ve known it all along. De Morbihan told you—or else your father.

Or, it may be, you were shrewd enough to guess it from De Morbihan’s

bragging in the restaurant. At all events, it’s plain enough, nothing

but desire to find proof to identify me with the Lone Wolf took you to

my room last night—whether for your personal satisfaction or at the

instigation of Bannon—just as nothing less than disgust with what was

going on made you run away from such intolerable associations….

Though, at that, I don’t believe you even guessed how unspeakably

vicious those were!”

 

He paused and waited, anticipating furious denial or refutation; such

would, indeed, have been the logical development of the temper in which

she had come down to confront him.

 

Rather than this, she seemed calmed and sobered by his charge; far from

resenting it, disposed to concede its justice; anger deserted her

expression, leaving it intent and grave. She came quietly into the room

and faced him squarely across the table.

 

“You thought all that of me—that I was capable of spying on you—yet

were generous enough to believe I despised myself for doing it?”

 

“Not at first…. At first, when we met back there in the corridor, I

was sure you were bent on further spying. Only since waking up here,

half an hour ago, did I begin to understand how impossible it would be

for you to lend yourself to such villainy as last night’s.”

 

“But if you thought that of me then, why did you—?”

 

“It occurred to me that it would be just as well to prevent your

reporting back to headquarters.”

 

“But now you’ve changed your mind about me?”

 

He nodded: “Quite.”

 

“But why?” she demanded in a voice of amazement. “Why?”

 

“I can’t tell you,” he said slowly—“I don’t know why. I can only presume

it must be because—I can’t help believing in you.”

 

Her glance wavered: her colour deepened. “I don’t understand…” she

murmured.

 

“Nor I,” he confessed in a tone as low….

 

A sudden grumble from the teakettle provided welcome distraction.

Lanyard lifted it off the flames and slowly poured boiling water on a

measure of tea in an earthenware pot.

 

“A cup of this and something to eat’ll do us no harm,” he ventured,

smiling uneasily—“especially if we’re to pursue this psychological

enquiry into the whereforeness of the human tendency to change one’s

mind!”

XIII CONFESSIONAL

And then, when the girl made no response, but remained with troubled

gaze focused on some remote abstraction, “You will have tea, won’t

you?” he urged.

 

She recalled her thoughts, nodded with the faintest of smiles—“Yes,

thank you!”—and dropped into a chair.

 

He began at once to make talk in effort to dissipate that constraint

which stood between them like an unseen alien presence: “You must be

very hungry?”

 

“I am.”

 

“Sorry I’ve nothing better to offer you. I’d have run out for something

more substantial, only—”

 

“Only—?” she prompted, coolly helping herself to biscuit and potted

ham.

 

“I didn’t think it wise to leave you alone.”

 

“Was that before or after you’d made up your mind about me—the latest

phase, I mean?” she persisted with a trace of malice.

 

“Before,” he returned calmly—“likewise, afterwards. Either way you

care to take it, it wouldn’t have been wise to leave you here. Suppose

you had waked up to find me gone, yourself alone in this strange

house—”

 

“I’ve been awake several hours,” she interposed—“found myself locked

in, and heard no sound to indicate that you were still here.”

 

“I’m sorry: I was overtired and slept like a log…. But assuming the

case: you would have gone out, alone, penniless—”

 

“Through a locked door, Mr. Lanyard?”

 

“I shouldn’t have left it locked,” he explained patiently…. “You

would have found yourself friendless and without resources in a city to

which you are a stranger.”

 

She nodded: “True. But what of that?”

 

“In desperation you might have been forced to go back—”

 

“And report the outcome of my investigation!”

 

“Pressure might have been brought to induce admissions damaging to me,”

Lanyard submitted pleasantly. “Whether or no, you’d have been obliged

to renew associations you’re well rid of.”

 

“You feel sure of that?”

 

“But naturally.”

 

“How can you be?” she challenged. “You’ve yet to know me twenty-four

hours.”

 

“But perhaps I know the associations better. In point of fact, I do.

Even though you may have stooped to play the spy last night, Miss

Bannon—you couldn’t keep it up. You had to fly further contamination

from that pack of jackals.”

 

“Not—you feel sure—merely to keep you under observation?”

 

“I do feel sure of that. I have your word for it.”

 

The girl deliberately finished her tea, and sat back, regarding him

steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: “You

have your own way of putting one on honour!”

 

“I don’t need to—with you.”

 

She analyzed this with gathering perplexity. “What do you mean by

that?”

 

“I mean, I don’t need to put you on your honour—because I’m sure of

you. Even were I not, still I’d refrain from exacting any pledge, or

attempting to.” He paused and shrugged before continuing: “If I thought

you were still to be distrusted, Miss Bannon, I’d say: ‘There’s a free

door; go when you like, back to the Pack, turn in your report, and let

them act as they see fit.’… Do you think I care for them? Do you

imagine for one instant that I fear any one—or all—of that gang?”

 

“That rings suspiciously of egoism!”

 

“Let it,” he retorted. “It’s pride of caste, if you must know. I hold

myself a grade better than such cattle; I’ve intelligence, at least….

I can take care of myself!”

 

If he might read her countenance, it expressed more than anything else

distress and disappointment.

 

“Why do you boast like this—to me?”

 

“Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of

murderous mongrels—impatience that I have to consider such creatures

as Popinot, Wertheimer, De Morbiban and—all their crew.”

 

“And Bannon,” she corrected calmly—“you meant to say!”

 

“Wel-l—” he stammered, discountenanced.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “I quite understand, and strange

as it may sound, I’ve very little feeling in the matter.” And then she

acknowledged his stupefied stare with a weary smile. “I know what I

know,” she added, with obscure significance….

 

“I’d give a good deal to know how much you know,”

he muttered in his confusion.

 

“But what do you know?” she caught him up—“against Mr.

Bannon—against my father, that is—that makes you so ready to suspect

both him and me?”

 

“Nothing,” he confessed—“I know nothing; but I suspect everything and

everybody…. And the more I think of it, the more closely I examine

that brutal business of last night, the more I seem to sense his will

behind it all—as one might glimpse a face in darkness through a

lighted lattice…. Oh, laugh if you like! It sounds high-flown, I

know. But that’s the effect I get…. What took you to my room, if not

his orders? Why does he train with De Morbihan, if he’s not blood-kin

to that breed? Why are you running away from him if not because you’ve

found out his part in that conspiracy?”

 

His pause and questioning look evoked no answer; the girl sat moveless

and intent, meeting his gaze inscrutably. And something in her

impassive attitude worked a little exasperation into his temper.

 

“Why,” he declared hotly—“if I dare trust to intuition—forgive me if

I pain you—”

 

She interrupted with impatience: “I’ve already begged you not to

consider my feelings, Mr. Lanyard! If you dared trust to your

intuition—what then?”

 

“Why, then, I could believe that Mr. Bannon, your father … I could

believe it was his order that killed poor Roddy!”

 

There could be no doubting her horrified and half-incredulous surprise.

 

“Roddy?” she iterated in a whisper almost inaudible, with face fast

blanching. “Roddy—!”

 

“Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard,” he told her mercilessly, “was

murdered in his sleep last night at Troyon’s. The murderer broke into

his room by way of mine—the two adjoin. He used my razor, wore my

dressing-gown to shield his clothing, did everything he could think of

to cast suspicion on me, and when I came in assaulted me,