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

is on schedule, is it not, that Captain Vauquelin of the Aviation

Corps is to attempt a non-stop flight from Paris to London this morning,

with two passengers, in a new Parrott biplane?”

 

“That is so…. Well?”

 

“I must be one of those passengers; and I have a companion, a young

lady, who will take the place of the other.”

 

“It isn’t possible, monsieur. Those arrangements are already fixed.”

 

“You will countermand them.”

 

“There is no time—”

 

“You can get into telephonic communication with Port Aviation in two

minutes.”

 

“But the passengers have been promised—”

 

“You will disappoint them.”

 

“The start is to be made in the first flush of daylight. How could you

reach Port Aviation in time?”

 

“In your motor-car, monsieur.”

 

“It cannot be done.”

 

“It must! If the start must be delayed till we arrive, you will give

orders that it shall be so delayed.”

 

For a minute the Minister of War hesitated; then he shook his head

definitely.

 

“The difficulties are insuperable—”

 

“There is no such thing, monsieur.”

 

“I am sorry: it can’t be done.”

 

“That is your answer?”

 

“It is regrettable, monsieur…”

 

“Very well!” Lanyard bent forward again, took a match from the stand on

the bedside table, and struck it. Very calmly he advanced the flame

toward the cigarette containing the roll of inflammable films.

 

“Monsieur!” Ducroy cried in horror. “What are you doing?”

 

Lanyard favoured him with a look of surprise.

 

“I am about to destroy these films and prints.”

 

“You must never do that!”

 

“Why not? They are mine, to do with as I like. If I cannot dispose of

them at my price, I shall destroy them!”

 

“But—my God!—what you demand is impossible! Stay, monsieur! Think

what your action means to France!”

 

“I have already thought of that. Now I must think of myself.”

 

“But—one moment!”

 

Ducroy sat up in bed and dangled hairy fat legs over the side.

 

“But one moment only, monsieur. Don’t make me waste your matches!”

 

“Monsieur, it shall be as you desire, if it lies in my power to

accomplish it.”

 

With this the Minister of War stood up and made for the telephone, in

his agitation forgetful of dressing-gown and slippers.

 

“You must accomplish it, Monsieur Ducroy,” Lanyard advised him gravely,

puffing out the flame; “for if you fail, you make yourself the

instrument of my death. Here are the plans.”

 

“You trust them to me?” Ducroy asked in astonishment.

 

“But naturally: that makes it an affair of your honour,” Lanyard

explained suavely.

 

With a gesture of graceful capitulation the Frenchman accepted the

little roll of film.

 

“Permit me,” he said, “to acknowledge the honour of monsieur’s

confidence!”

 

Lanyard bowed low: “One knows with whom one deals, monsieur!… And now,

if you will be good enough to excuse me….”

 

He turned to the door.

 

“But—eh—where are you going?” Ducroy demanded.

 

“Mademoiselle,” Lanyard said, pausing on the threshold—“that is, the

young lady who is to accompany me—is waiting anxiously in the garden,

out yonder. I go to find and reassure her and—with your permission—to

bring her in to the library, where we will await monsieur when he has

finished telephoning and—ah—repaired the deficiencies in his attire;

which one trusts he will forgive one’s mentioning!”

 

He bowed again, impudently, gaily, and—when the Minister of War looked

up again sheepishly from contemplation of his naked shanks—had

vanished.

 

In high feather Lanyard made his way to a door at the rear of the house

which gave upon the garden—in his new social status of Governmental

prot�g� disdaining any such a commonplace avenue as that conservatory

window whose fastenings he had forced on entering. And boldly unbolting

the door, he ran out into the night, to rejoin his beloved, like a man

waking to new life.

 

But she was no more there: the bench was vacant, the garden deserted,

the gateway yawning on the street.

 

With a low, stifled cry, Lanyard turned from the bench and stumbled out

to the junction of the cross-street. But nowhere in their several

perspectives could he see anything that moved.

 

After some time he returned to the garden and quartered it with the

thoroughness of a pointer beating a covert. But he did this hopelessly,

bitterly aware that the outcome would be precisely what it eventually

was, that is to say, nothing….

 

He was kneeling beside the bench—scrutinizing the turf with

microscopic attention by aid of his flash-lamp, seeking some sign of

struggle to prove she had not left him willingly, and finding

none—when a voice brought him momentarily out of his distraction.

 

He looked up wildly, to discover Ducroy standing over him, his stout

person chastely swathed in a quilted dressing-gown and trousers, his

expression one of stupefaction.

 

“Well, monsieur—well?” the Minister of War demanded irritably. “What—I

repeat—what are you doing there?”

 

Lanyard essayed response, choked up, and gulped. He rose and stood

swaying, showing a stricken face.

 

“Eh?” Ducroy insisted with an accent of exasperation. “Why do you stand

glaring at me like that—eh? Come, monsieur: what ails you? I have

arranged everything, I say. Where is mademoiselle?”

 

Lanyard made a broken gesture.

 

“Gone!” he muttered forlornly.

 

Instantly the countenance of the stout Frenchman was lightened with a

gleam of eager interest—inveterate romantic that he was!—and he

stepped nearer, peering closely into the face of the adventurer.

 

“Gone?” he echoed. “Mademoiselle? Your sweetheart,

eh?”

 

Lanyard assented with a disconsolate nod and sigh.

Impatiently Ducroy caught him by the sleeve.

 

“Come!” he insisted, tugging—“but come at once into the house. Now,

monsieur—now at length you enlist all one’s sympathies! Come, I say!

Is it your desire that I catch my death of cold?”

 

Indifferently Lanyard suffered himself to be led away.

 

He was, indeed, barely conscious of what was happening. All his being

was possessed by the thought that she had forsaken him. And he could

well guess why: impossible for such an one as she to contemplate

without a shudder association with the man who had been what he had

been! Infatuate!—to have dreamed that she would tolerate the devotion

of a criminal, that she could ever forget his identity with the Lone

Wolf. Inevitably—soon or late—she must have fled that ignominious

thought in dread and horror, daring whatever consequences to escape

and forget both it and him. And better now, perhaps, than later….

XVIII ENIGMA

He found no reason to believe she had left him other than voluntarily,

or that their adventures since the escape from the impasse Stanislas

had been attended upon by spies of the Pack. He could have sworn they

hadn’t been followed either to or from the rue des Acacias; their way

had been too long and purposely too roundabout, his vigilance too

lively, for any sort of surveillance to have been practised without his

remarking some indication thereof, at one time or another.

 

On the other hand (he told himself) there was every reason to believe

she hadn’t left him to go back to Bannon; concerning whom she had

expressed herself too forcibly to excuse a surmise that she had

preferred his protection to the Lone Wolf’s.

 

Reasoning thus, he admitted, one couldn’t blame her. He could readily

see how, illuded at first by a certain romantic glamour, she had not,

until left to herself in the garden, come to clear perception of the

fact that she was casting her lot with a common criminal’s. Then,

horror overmastering her of a sudden she had fled—wildly, blindly, he

didn’t doubt. But whither? He looked in vain for her at their agreed

rendezvous, the Sacr� Coeur. She had neither money nor friends in

Paris.

 

True: she had mentioned some personal jewellery she planned to

hypothecate. Her first move, then, would be to seek the mont-de-pi�t�—

not to force himself again upon her, but to follow at a distance and

ward off interference on Bannon’s part.

 

The Government pawn-shop had its invitation for Lanyard himself: he was

there before the doors were open for the day; and fortified by loans

negotiated on his watch, cigarette-case, and a ring or two, retired to

a caf� commanding a view of the entrance on the rue des

Blancs-Manteaux, and settled himself against a day-long vigil.

 

It wasn’t easy; drowsiness buzzed in his brain and weighted his eyelids;

now and again, involuntarily, he nodded over his glass of black coffee.

And when evening came and the mont-de-pi�t� closed for the night, he

rose and stumbled off, wondering if possibly he had napped a little

without his knowledge and so missed her visit.

 

Engaging obscure lodgings close by the rue des Acacias, he slept till

nearly noon of the following day, then rose to put into execution a

design which had sprung full-winged from his brain at the instant of

wakening.

 

He had not only his car but a chauffeur’s license of long standing in

the name of Pierre Lamier—was free, in short, to range at will the

streets of Paris. And when he had levied on the stock of a second-hand

clothing shop and a chemist’s, he felt tolerably satisfied it would

need sharp eyes—whether the Pack’s or the Pr�fecture’s—to identify

“Pierre Lamier” with either Michael Lanyard or the Lone Wolf.

 

His face, ears and neck he stained a weather-beaten brown, a discreet

application of rouge along his cheekbones enhancing the effect of daily

exposure to the winter winds and rains of Paris; and he gave his hands

an even darker shade, with the added verisimilitude of finger-nails

inked into permanent mourning. Also, he refrained from shaving: a

stubble of two days’ neglect bristled upon his chin and jowls. A

rusty brown ulster with cap to match, shoddy trousers boasting

conspicuous stripes of leaden colour, and patched boots completed the

disguise.

 

Monsieur and madame of the conciergerie he deceived with a yarn of

selling his all to purchase the motor-car and embark in business for

himself; and with their blessing, sallied forth to scout Paris

diligently for sight or sign of the woman to whom his every heart-beat

was dedicated.

 

By the close of the third day he was ready to concede that she had

managed to escape without his aid.

 

And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the

most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements

of the American following the fire at Troyon’s.

 

As for Troyon’s, it was now nothing more than a gaping excavation

choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of

police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the

papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His

disappearance and Lucy Shannon’s seemed to be accepted as due to

death in the holocaust; the fact that their bodies hadn’t

been recovered was no longer a matter for comment.

 

In short, Paris had already lost interest in the affair.

 

Even so, it seemed, had the Pack lost interest in the Lone Wolf; or

else his disguise was impenetrable. Twice he saw De Morbihan “fl�nning”

elegantly on the Boulevards, and once he passed close by Popinot; but

neither noticed him.

 

Toward midnight of the third day, Lanyard, driving slowly westward on

the boulevard de la Madeleine, noticed a limousine of familiar aspect

round a corner half a block ahead and, drawing up in front of Viel’s,

discharge four passengers.

 

The first was Wertheimer; and at sight of his rather striking figure,

decked out in evening apparel from Conduit street and Bond, Lanyard

slackened speed.

 

Turning as he alighted, the Englishman offered his hand to a