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

young

woman. She jumped down to the sidewalk in radiant attire and a laughing

temper.

 

Involuntarily Lanyard stopped his car; and one immediately to the rear,

swerving out to escape collision, shot past, its driver cursing him

freely; while a sergent de ville scowled darkly and uttered an

imperative word.

 

He pulled himself together, somehow, and drove on.

 

The girl was entering the restaurant by way of the revolving door,

Wertheimer in attendance; while De Morbihan, having alighted, was

lending a solicitous arm to Bannon.

 

Quite automatically the adventurer drove on, rounded the Madeleine, and

turned up the boulevard Malesherbes. Paris and all its brisk midnight

traffic swung by without claiming a tithe of his interest: he was

mainly conscious of lights that reeled dizzily round him like a

multitude of malicious, mocking eyes….

 

At the junction with the boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville

roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely

thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a

dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as

though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts.

 

So, it seemed, he had all along been her dupe; all the while that he

had been ostentatiously shielding her from harm and diffidently

discovering every evidence of devotion, she had been laughing in her

sleeve and planning to return to the service she pretended to despise,

with her report of a fool self-duped.

 

A great anger welled in his bosom.

 

Turning round, he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on

one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel’s

until the party reappeared, something after one o’clock.

 

It was plain that they had supped merrily; the girl seemed in the

gayest humour, Wertheimer a bit exhilarated, De Morbihan much amused;

even Bannon—bearing heavily on the Frenchman’s arm—was chuckling

contentedly. The party piled back into De Morbihan’s limousine and was

driven up the avenue des Champs �lys�es, pausing at the �lys�e Palace

Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl—his daughter?—whoever she was!

 

Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn’t trouble to ascertain. He

drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many hours:

bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart.

 

But for all his anguish, he continued in an uncertain temper. He had

turned his back on the craft of which he was acknowledged master—for a

woman’s sake; for nothing else (he argued) had he dedicated himself to

poverty and honest effort; and what little privation he had already

endured was hopelessly distasteful to him. The art of the Lone Wolf,

his consummate cunning and subtlety, was still at his command; with only

himself to think of, he was profoundly contemptuous of the antagonism of

the Pack; while none knew better than he with what ease the riches of

careless Paris might be diverted to his own pockets. A single step aside

from the path he had chosen—and tomorrow night he might dine at the

Ritz instead of in some sordid cochers’ cabaret!

 

And since no one cared—since she had betrayed his faith—what

mattered?

 

Why not…?

 

Yet he could not come to a decision; the next day saw him obstinately,

even a little stupidly, pursuing the course he had planned before his

disheartening disillusionment.

 

Because his money was fast ebbing and motives of prudence alone—if

none more worthy—forbade an attempt to replenish his pocketbook by

revisiting the little rez-de-chauss�e in the rue Roget and realizing on

its treasures, he had determined to have a taximeter fitted to his car

and ply for hire until time or chance should settle the question of his

future.

 

Already, indeed, he had complied with the police regulations, and

received permission to convert his voiture de remise into a taxicab;

and leaving it before noon at the designated d�p�t, he was told it

would be ready for him at four with the “clock” installed. Returning at

that hour, he learned that it couldn’t be ready before six; and too

bored and restless to while away two idle hours in a caf�, he wandered

listlessly through the streets and boulevards—indifferent, in the

black melancholy oppressing him, whether or not he were recognized—and

eventually found himself turning from the rue St. Honor� through the

place Vend�me to the rue de la Paix.

 

This was not wise, a perilous business, a course he had no right to

pursue. And Lanyard knew it. None the less, he persisted.

 

It was past five o’clock—deep twilight beneath a cloudless sky—the

life of that street of streets fluent at its swiftest. All that Paris

knew of wealth and beauty, fashion and high estate, moved between the

curbs. One needed the temper of a Stoic to maintain indifference to the

allure of its pageant.

 

Trudging steadily, he of the rusty brown ulster all but touched

shoulders with men who were all that he had been but a few days since—

hale, hearty, well-fed, well-dressed symbols of prosperity—and with

exquisite women, exquisitely gowned, extravagantly be-furred and

be-jewelled, of glowing faces and eyes dark with mystery and promise:

spirited creatures whose laughter was soft music, whose gesture was

pride and arrogance.

 

One and all looked past, over, and through him, unaffectedly unaware

that he existed.

 

The roadway, its paving worn as smooth as glass, and tonight by grace

of frost no less hard, rang with a clatter of hoofs high and clear

above the resonance of motors. A myriad lights filled the wide channel

with diffused radiance. Two endless ranks of shop-windows, facing one

another—across the tide, flaunted treasures that kings might

pardonably have coveted—and would.

 

Before one corner window, Lanyard paused instinctively.

 

The shop was that of a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the

thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that

display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to

which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of

valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the

safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent of sardonic

bias. It wore all the grim appearance of a strong-box that, once locked,

would prove impregnable to everything save acquaintance with the

combination and the consent of the time-lock. But give the Lone Wolf

twenty minutes alone with it, twenty minutes free from interruption—he,

the one man living who could seduce a time-lock and leave it apparently

inviolate!…

 

To one side of that window stood a mirror, set at an angle, and

suddenly Lanyard caught its presentment of himself—a gaunt and hungry

apparition, with a wolfish air he had never worn when rejoicing in his

sobriquet, staring with eyes of predaceous lustre.

 

Alarmed and fearing lest some passer-by be struck by this betrayal, he

turned and moved on hastily.

 

But his mind was poisoned by this brutal revelation of the wide, deep

gulf that yawned between the Lone Wolf of yesterday and Pierre Lamier

of today; between Michael Lanyard the debonnaire, the amateur of fine

arts and fine clothing, the beau sabreur of gentlemen-cracksmen and

that lean, worn, shabby and dispirited animal who had glared back at

him from the jeweller’s mirror.

 

He quickened his pace, with something of that same instinct of

self-preservation that bids the dipsomaniac avert his eyes and hurry

past the corner gin-mill, and turned blindly off into the rue Danou,

toward the avenue de l’Op�ra.

 

But this only made it worse for him, for he could not avoid recognition

of the softly glowing windows of the Caf� de Paris that knew him so

well, or forget the memory of its shining rich linen, its silver and

crystal, its perfumed atmosphere and luxury of warmth and music and

shaded lights, its cuisine that even Paris cannot duplicate.

 

And the truth came home to him, that he was hungry not with that brute

appetite he had money enough in his pocket to satisfy, but with the

lust of flesh-pots, for rare viands and old vintage wines, to know once

more the snug embrace of a dress-coat and to breathe again the

atmosphere of ease and station.

 

In sudden panic he darted across the avenue and hurried north,

determined to tantalize himself no longer with sights and sounds so

provocative and so disturbing.

 

Half-way across the boulevard des Capucines, to the east of the Op�ra,

he leapt for his life from a man-killing taxi, found himself

temporarily marooned upon one of those isles of safety which Paris has

christened “thank-Gods,” and stood waiting for an opening in the

congestion of traffic to permit passage to the farther sidewalk.

 

And presently the policeman in the middle of the boulevard signalled

with his little white wand; the stream of east-bound vehicles checked

and began to close up to the right of the crossing, upon which they

encroached jealously; and a taxi on the outside, next the island,

overshot the mark, pulled up sharply, and began to back into place.

Before Lanyard could stir, its window was opposite him, and he was

looking in, transfixed.

 

There was sufficient light to enable him to see clearly the face of the

passenger—its pale oval and the darkness of eyes whose gaze clung to

his with an effect of confused fascination….

 

She sat quite motionless until one white-gloved hand moved uncertainly

toward her bosom.

 

That brought him to; unconsciously lifting his cap, he stepped back a

pace and started to move on.

 

At this, she bent quickly forward and unlatched the door. It swung wide

to him.

 

Hardly knowing what he was doing, he accepted the dumb invitation,

stepped in, took the empty seat, and closed the door.

 

Almost at once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into

her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to

seem composed had been almost too much for her strength.

 

Her face, turned toward Lanyard, seemed wan in the half light, but

immobile, expressionless; only her eyes were darkly quick with

anticipation.

 

On his part, Lanyard felt himself hopelessly confounded, in the grasp

of emotions that would scarce suffer him to speak. A great wonder

obsessed him that she should have opened that door to him no less than

that he should have entered through it. Dimly he understood that each

had acted without premeditation; and asked himself, was she already

regretting that momentary weakness.

 

“Why did you do that?” he heard himself demand abruptly, his voice

harsh, strained, and unnatural.

 

She stiffened slightly, with a nervous movement of her shoulders.

 

“Because I saw you… I was surprised; I had hoped—believed—you had

left Paris.”

 

“Without you? Hardly!”

 

“But you must,” she insisted—“you must go, as quickly as possible.

It isn’t safe—”

 

“I’m all right,” he insisted—“able-bodied—in full possession of my

senses!”

 

“But any moment you may be recognized—”

 

“In this rig? It isn’t likely…. Not that I care.”

 

She surveyed his costume curiously, perplexed.

 

“Why are you dressed that way? Is it a disguise?”

 

“A pretty good one. But in point of fact, it’s the national livery of

my present station in life.”

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

“Simply that, out of my old job, I’ve turned to the first resort of the

incompetent: I’m driving a taxi.”

 

“Isn’t it awfully—risky?”

 

“You’d think so; but it isn’t. Few people ever bother to look at a

chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they’re in a hurry, as a rule—

preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are a

disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many

Chinamen!”

 

“But you’re mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn’t I? And