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

meaning to

drug and leave me insensible to be found by the police. Fortunately—I

was beforehand with him. I had just left him drugged, insensible in my

place, when I met you in the corridor…. You didn’t know?”

 

“How can you ask?” the girl moaned.

 

Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together

until their knuckles shone white through the skin—but not as white as

the face from which her eyes sought his with a look of dumb horror,

dazed, pitiful, imploring.

 

“You’re not deceiving me? But no—why should you?” she faltered. “But

how terrible, how unspeakably awful! …”

 

“I’m sorry,” Lanyard mumbled—“I’d have held my tongue if I hadn’t

thought you knew—”

 

“You thought I knew—and didn’t lift a finger to save the man?” She

jumped up with a blazing face. “Oh, how could you?”

 

“No—not that—I never thought that. But, meeting you then and there,

so opportunely—I couldn’t ignore the coincidence; and when you

admitted you were running away from your father, considering all the

circumstances, I was surely justified in thinking it was realization,

in part at least, of what had happened that was driving you away.”

She shook her head slowly, her indignation ebbing as quickly as it had

risen. “I understand,” she said; “you had some excuse, but you were

mistaken. I ran away—yes—but not because of that. I never

dreamed …”

 

She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and twisting her hands

together in a manner he found it painful to watch.

 

“But please,” he implored, “don’t take it so much to heart, Miss

Bannon. If you knew nothing, you couldn’t have prevented it.”

 

“No,” she said brokenly—“I could have done nothing … But I

didn’t know. It isn’t that—it’s the horror and pity of it. And that

you could think—!”

 

“But I didn’t!” he protested—“truly I did not. And for what I did

think, for the injustice I did do you, believe me, I’m truly sorry.”

 

“You were quite justified,” she said—“not only by circumstantial

evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know … now I must tell

you …”

 

“Nothing you don’t wish to!” he interrupted. “The fact that I

practically kidnapped you under pretence of doing you a service, and

suspected you of being in the pay of that Pack, gives me no title to

your confidence.”

 

“Can I blame you for thinking what you did?” She went on slowly,

without looking up—gaze steadfast to her interlaced fingers: “Now for

my own sake I want you to know what otherwise, perhaps, I shouldn’t

have told you—not yet, at all events. I’m no more Bannon’s daughter

than you’re his son. Our names sound alike—people frequently make

the same mistake. My name is Shannon—Lucy Shannon. Mr. Bannon

called me Lucia because he knew I didn’t like it, to tease me; for

the same reason he always kept up the pretence that I was his daughter

when people misunderstood.”

 

“But—if that is so—then what—?”

 

“Why—it’s very simple.” Still she didn’t look up. “I’m a trained

nurse. Mr. Bannon is consumptive—so far gone, it’s a wonder he

didn’t die years ago: for months I’ve been haunted by the thought that

it’s only the evil in him keeps him alive. It wasn’t long after I took

the assignment to nurse him that I found out something about him….

He’d had a haemorrhage at his desk; and while he lay in coma, and I

was waiting for the doctor, I happened to notice one of the papers he’d

been working over when he fell. And then, just as I began to appreciate

the sort of man I was employed by, he came to, and saw—and knew. I

found him watching me with those dreadful eyes of his, and though he

was unable to speak, knew my life wasn’t safe if ever I breathed a word

of what I had read. I would have left him then, but he was too cunning

for me, and when in time I found a chance to escape—I was afraid I’d

not live long if ever I left him. He went about it deliberately; to

keep me frightened, and though he never mentioned the matter directly,

let me know plainly, in a hundred ways, what his power was and what

would happen if I whispered a word of what I knew. It’s nearly a year

now—nearly a year of endless terror and…”

 

Her voice fell; she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of

that year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly

moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this

woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and

courageous; and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in

enforced association with a creature of Bannon’s ruthless stamp, he was

rent with compassion and swore to himself he’d stand by her and see her

through and free and happy if he died for it—or ended in the Sant�!

 

“Poor child!” he heard himself murmuring—“poor child!”

 

“Don’t pity me!” she insisted, still with face averted. “I don’t

deserve it. If I had the spirit of a mouse, I’d have defied him; it

needed only courage enough to say one word to the police—”

 

“But who is he, then?” Lanyard demanded. “What is he, I mean?”

 

“I hardly know how to tell you. And I hardly dare: I feel as if these

walls would betray me if I did…. But to me he’s the incarnation of

all things evil….” She shook herself with a nervous laugh. “But why

be silly about it? I don’t really know what or who he is: I only

suspect and believe that he is a man whose life is devoted to planning

evil and ordering its execution through his lieutenants. When the

papers at home speak of ‘The Man Higher Up’ they mean Archer Bannon,

though they don’t know it—or else I’m merely a hysterical woman

exaggerating the impressions of a morbid imagination…. And that’s all

I know of him that matters.”

 

“But why, if you believe all this—how did you at length find

courage—?”

 

“Because I no longer had courage to endure; because I was more afraid

to stay than to go—afraid that my own soul would be forfeit. And then,

last night, he ordered me to go to your room and search it for evidence

that you were the Lone Wolf. It was the first time he’d ever asked

anything like that of me. I was afraid, and though I obeyed, I was glad

when you interrupted—glad even though I had to lie the way I did….

And all that worked on me, after I’d gone back to my room, until I felt

I could stand it no longer; and after a long time, when the house

seemed all still, I got up, dressed quietly and … That is how I came

to meet you—quite by accident.”

 

“But you seemed so frightened at first when you saw me—”

 

“I was,” she confessed simply; “I thought you were

Mr. Greggs.”

 

“Greggs?”

 

“Mr. Bannon’s private secretary—his right-hand man. He’s about your

height and has a suit like the one you wear, and in that poor light—at

the distance I didn’t notice you were clean-shaven—Greggs wears a

moustache—”

 

“Then it was Greggs murdered Roddy and tried to drug me! … By George,

I’d like to know whether the police got there before Bannon, or

somebody else, discovered the substitution. It was a telegram to the

police, you know, I sent from the Bourse last night!”

 

In his excitement Lanyard began to pace the floor rapidly; and now that

he was no longer staring at her, the girl lifted her head and watched

him closely as he moved to and fro, talking aloud—more to himself than

to her.

 

“I wish I knew! … And what a lucky thing, you did meet me! For if

you’d gone on to the Gare du Nord and waited there….Well, it isn’t

likely Bannon didn’t discover your flight before eight o’clock this

morning, is it?”

 

“I’m afraid not….”

 

“And they’ve drawn the dead-line for me round every conceivable exit

from Paris: Popinot’s Apaches are picketed everywhere. And if Bannon

had found out about you in time, it would have needed only a word…”

 

He paused and shuddered to think what might have ensued had that word

been spoken and the girl been found waiting for her train in the Gare

du Nord.

 

“Mercifully, we’ve escaped that. And now, with any sort of luck, Bannon

ought to be busy enough, trying to get his precious Mr. Greggs out of

the Sant�, to give us a chance. And a fighting chance is all I ask.”

 

“Mr. Lanyard”—the girl bent toward him across the table with a gesture

of eager interest—“have you any idea why he—why Mr. Bannon hates you

so?”

 

“But does he? I don’t know!”

 

“If he doesn’t, why should he plot to cast suspicion of murder on you,

and why be so anxious to know whether you were really the Lone Wolf? I

saw his eyes light up when De Morbihan mentioned that name, after

dinner; and if ever I saw hatred in a man’s face, it was in his as he

watched you, when you weren’t looking.”

 

“As far as I know, I never heard of him before,” Lanyard said

carelessly. “I fancy it’s nothing more than the excitement of a

man-hunt. Now that they’ve found me out, De Morbihan and his crew won’t

rest until they’ve got my scalp.”

 

“But why?”

 

“Professional jealousy. We’re all crooks, all in the same boat, only I

won’t row to their stroke. I’ve always played a lone hand successfully;

now they insist on coming into the game and sharing my winnings. And

I’ve told them where they could go.”

 

“And because of that, they’re willing to–-”

 

“There’s nothing they wouldn’t do, Miss Shannon, to bring me to my

knees or see me put out of the way, where my operations couldn’t hurt

their pocketbooks. Well … all I ask is a fighting chance, and they

shall have their way!”

 

Her brows contracted. “I don’t understand…. You want a fighting

chance—to surrender—to give in to their demands?”

 

“In a way—yes. I want a fighting chance to do what I’d never in the

world get them to credit—give it all up and leave them a free field.”

 

And when still she searched his face with puzzled eyes, he insisted:

“I mean it; I want to get away—clear out—chuck the game for good and

all!”

 

A little silence greeted this announcement. Lanyard, at pause near the

table, resting a hand on it, bent to the girl’s upturned face a grave

but candid regard. And the deeps of her eyes that never swerved from

his were troubled strangely in his vision. He could by no means account

for the light he seemed to see therein, a light that kindled while he

watched like a tiny flame, feeble, fearful, vacillant, then as the

moments passed steadied and grew stronger but ever leaped and danced;

so that he, lost in the wonder of it and forgetful of himself, thought

of it as the ardent face of a happy child dancing in the depths of some

brown autumnal woodland….

 

“You,” she breathed incredulously—“you mean, you’re going to stop—?”

 

“I have stopped, Miss Shannon. The Lone Wolf has prowled for the last

time. I didn’t know it until I woke up, an hour or so ago, but I’ve

turned my last job.”

 

He remarked her hands were small, in keeping with the slightness of her

person, but somehow didn’t seem so—wore a look of strength and

capability, befitting hands trained to a