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

of Government a

certain amount of education was compulsory. So Marcel learned among

other things to read, and thereby took his first blind step toward

salvation.

 

Reading being the one pastime which could be practiced without making a

noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it

in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by

stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird m�lange of

newspapers, illustrated Parisian weeklies, magazines, novels:

cullings from the d�bris of guest-chambers.

 

Before Marcel was eleven he had read “Les Mis�rables” with intense

appreciation.

 

His reading, however, was not long confined to works in the French

language. Now and again some departing guest would leave an English

novel in his room, and these Marcel treasured beyond all other books;

they seemed to him, in a way, part of his birthright. Secretly he

called himself English in those days, because he knew he wasn’t French:

that much, at least, he remembered. And he spent long hours poring over

the strange words until; at length, they came to seem less strange in

his eyes. And then some accident threw his way a small English-French

dictionary.

 

He was able to read English before he could speak it.

 

Out of school hours a drudge and scullion, the associate of scullions

and their immediate betters, drawn from that caste of loose tongues and

looser morals which breeds servants for small hotels, Marcel at eleven

(as nearly as his age can be computed) possessed a comprehension of

life at once exact, exhaustive and appalling.

 

Perhaps it was fortunate that he lived without friendship. His concept

of womanhood was incarnate in Madame Troyon; so he gave all the hotel

women a wide berth.

 

The men-servants he suffered in silence when they would permit it; but

his nature was so thoroughly disassociated from anything within their

experience that they resented him: a circumstance which exposed him to

a certain amount of baiting not unlike that which the village idiot

receives at the hands of rustic boors—until Marcel learned to defend

himself with a tongue which could distil vitriol from the vernacular,

and with fists and feet as well. Thereafter he was left severely to

himself and glad of it, since it furnished him with just so much more

time for reading and dreaming over what he read.

 

By fifteen he had developed into a long, lank, loutish youth, with a

face of extraordinary pallor, a sullen mouth, hot black eyes, and dark

hair like a mane, so seldom was it trimmed. He looked considerably

older than he was and the slightness of his body was deceptive,

disguising a power of sinewy strength. More than this, he could care

very handily for himself in a scrimmage: la savate had no secrets from

him, and he had picked up tricks from the Apaches quite as effectual as

any in the manual of jiu-jitsu. Paris he knew as you and I know the

palms of our hands, and he could converse with the precision of the

native-born in any one of the city’s several odd argots.

 

To these accomplishments he added that of a thoroughly practised petty

thief.

 

His duties were by day those of valet-de-chambre on the third floor;

by night he acted as omnibus in the restaurant. For these services he

received no pay and less consideration from his employers (who would

have been horrified by the suggestion that they countenanced slavery)

only his board and a bed in a room scarcely larger, if somewhat better

ventilated, than the boudoir-closet from which he had long since been

ousted. This room was on the ground floor, at the back of the house,

and boasted a small window overlooking a narrow alley.

 

He was routed out before daylight, and his working day ended as a rule

at ten in the evening—though when there were performances on at the

Od�on, the restaurant remained open until an indeterminate hour for the

accommodation of the supper trade.

 

Once back in his kennel, its door closed and bolted, Marcel was free to

squirm out of the window and roam and range Paris at will. And it was

thus that he came by most of his knowledge of the city.

 

But for the most part Marcel preferred to lie abed and read himself

half-blind by the light of purloined candle-ends. Books he borrowed as

of old from the rooms of guests or else pilfered from quai-side stalls

and later sold to dealers in more distant quarters of the city. Now and

again, when he needed some work not to be acquired save through

outright purchase, the guests would pay further if unconscious tribute

through the sly abstraction of small coins. Your true Parisian,

however, keeps track of his money to the ultimate sou, an idiosyncrasy

which obliged the boy to practise most of his peculations on the

fugitive guest of foreign extraction.

 

In the number of these, perhaps the one best known to Troyon’s was

Bourke.

 

He was a quick, compact, dangerous little Irishman who had fallen into

the habit of “resting” at Troyon’s whenever a vacation from London

seemed a prescription apt to prove wholesome for a gentleman of his

kidney; which was rather frequently, arguing that Bourke’s professional

activities were fairly onerous.

 

Having received most of his education in Dublin University, Bourke

spoke the purest English known, or could when so minded, while his

facile Irish tongue had caught the trick of an accent which passed

unchallenged on the Boulevardes. He had an alert eye for pretty women,

a heart as big as all out-doors, no scruples worth mentioning, a secret

sorrow, and a pet superstition.

 

The colour of his hair, a clamorous red, was the spring of his secret

sorrow. By that token he was a marked man. At irregular intervals he

made frantic attempts to disguise it; but the only dye that would serve

at all was a jet-black and looked like the devil in contrast with his

high colouring. Moreover, before a week passed, the red would crop up

again wherever the hair grew thin, lending him the appearance of a

badly-singed pup.

 

His pet superstition was that, as long as he refrained from practising

his profession in Paris, Paris would remain his impregnable Tower of

Refuge. The world owed Bourke a living, or he so considered; and it must

be allowed that he made collections on account with tolerable regularity

and success; but Paris was tax-exempt as long as Paris offered him

immunity from molestation.

 

Not only did Paris suit his tastes excellently, but there was no place,

in Bourke’s esteem, comparable with Troyon’s for peace and quiet.

Hence, the continuity of his patronage was never broken by trials of

rival hostelries; and Troyon’s was always expecting Bourke for the

simple reason that he invariably arrived unexpectedly, with neither

warning nor ostentation, to stop as long as he liked, whether a day or

a week or a month, and depart in the same manner.

 

His daily routine, as Troyon’s came to know it, varied but slightly: he

breakfasted abed, about half after ten, lounged in his room or the caf�

all day if the weather were bad, or strolled peacefully in the gardens

of the Luxembourg if it were good, dined early and well but always

alone, and shortly afterward departed by cab for some well-known bar

on the Rive Droit; whence, it is to be presumed, he moved on to other

resorts, for he never was home when the house was officially closed for

the night, the hours of his return remaining a secret between himself

and the concierge.

 

On retiring, Bourke would empty his pockets upon the dressing-table,

where the boy Marcel, bringing up Bourke’s petit d�jeuner the next

morning, would see displayed a tempting confusion of gold and silver

and copper, with a wad of banknotes, and the customary assortment of

personal hardware.

 

Now inasmuch as Bourke was never wide-awake at that hour, and always

after acknowledging Marcel’s “bon jour” rolled over and snored for

Glory and the Saints, it was against human nature to resist the allure

of that dressing-table. Marcel seldom departed without a coin or two.

 

He had yet to learn that Bourke’s habits were those of an Englishman,

who never goes to bed without leaving all his pocket-money in plain

sight and—carefully catalogued in his memory….

 

One morning in the spring of 1904 Marcel served Bourke his last

breakfast at Troyon’s.

 

The Irishman had been on the prowl the previous night, and his rasping

snore was audible even through the closed door when Marcel knocked and,

receiving no answer, used the pass-key and entered.

 

At this the snore was briefly interrupted; Bourke, visible at first

only as a flaming shock of hair protruding from the bedclothes,

squirmed an eye above his artificial horizon, opened it, mumbled

inarticulate acknowledgment of Marcel’s salutation, and passed

blatantly into further slumbers.

 

Marcel deposited his tray on a table beside the bed, moved quietly to

the windows, closed them, and drew the lace curtains together. The

dressing-table between the windows displayed, amid the silver and

copper, more gold coins than it commonly did—some eighteen or twenty

louis altogether. Adroitly abstracting en passant a piece of ten francs,

Marcel went on his way rejoicing, touched a match to the fire all

ready-laid in the grate, and was nearing the door when, casting one

casual parting glance at the bed, he became aware of a notable

phenomenon: the snoring was going on lustily, but Bourke was watching

him with both eyes wide and filled with interest.

 

Startled and, to tell the truth, a bit indignant, the boy stopped as

though at word of command. But after the first flash of astonishment

his young face hardened to immobility. Only his eyes remained constant

to Bourke’s.

 

The Irishman, sitting up in bed, demanded and received the piece of ten

francs, and went on to indict the boy for the embezzlement of several

sums running into a number of louis.

 

Marcel, reflecting that Bourke’s reckoning was still some louis shy,

made no bones about pleading guilty. Interrogated, the culprit deposed

that he had taken the money because he needed it to buy books. No, he

wasn’t sorry. Yes, it was probable that, granted further opportunity,

he would do it again. Advised that he was apparently a case-hardened

young criminal, he replied that youth was not his fault; with years and

experience he would certainly improve.

 

Puzzled by the boy’s attitude, Bourke agitated his hair and wondered

aloud how Marcel would like it if his employers were informed of his

peculations.

 

Marcel looked pained and pointed out that such a course on the part of

Bourke would be obviously unfair; the only real difference between

them, he explained, was that where he filched a louis Bourke filched

thousands; and if Bourke insisted on turning him over to the mercy of

Madame and Papa Troyon, who would certainly summon a sergent de ville,

he, Marcel, would be quite justified in retaliating by telling the

Pr�fecture de Police all he knew about Bourke.

 

This was no chance shot, and took the Irishman between wind and water;

and when, dismayed, he blustered, demanding to know what the boy meant

by his damned impudence, Marcel quietly advised him that one knew what

one knew: if one read the English newspaper in the caf�, as Marcel did,

one could hardly fail to remark that monsieur always came to Paris

after some notable burglary had been committed in London; and if one

troubled to follow monsieur by night, as Marcel had, it became evident

that monsieur’s first calls in Paris were invariably made at the

establishment of a famous fence in the rue des Trois Fr�res; and,

finally, one drew one’s own