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

their journey had been successfully

consummated, and standing over his luggage watched the maimed vehicle

limp miserably off through the teeming mists.

 

Now in normal course his plight should have been relieved within two

minutes. But it wasn’t. For some time all such taxis as did pass

displayed scornfully inverted flags. Also, their drivers jeered in

their pleasing Parisian way at the lonely outlander occupying a

position of such uncommon distinction in the heart of the storm and the

precise middle of the Pont St. Michel.

 

Over to the left, on the Quai de March� Neuf, the fa�ade of the

Pr�fecture frowned portentously—“La Tour Pointue,” as the Parisian

loves to term it. Lanyard forgot his annoyance long enough to salute

that grim pile with a mocking bow, thinking of the men therein who

would give half their possessions to lay hands on him who was only a

few hundred yards distant, marooned in the rain!…

 

In its own good time a night-prowling fiacre ambled up and veered over

to his hail. He viewed this stroke of good-fortune with intense

disgust: the shambling, weather-beaten animal between the shafts

promised a long, damp crawl to the Lutetia.

 

And on this reflection he yielded to impulse.

 

Heaving in his luggage—“Troyon’s!” he told the

cocher….

 

The fiacre lumbered off into that dark maze of streets, narrow and

tortuous, which backs up from the Seine to the Luxembourg, while its

fare reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if

Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind

to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this

chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the

detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, at worst, several

hours’ leeway.

 

When at length his conveyance drew up at the historic corner, Lanyard

alighting could have rubbed his eyes to see the windows of Troyon’s all

bright with electric light.

 

Somehow, and most unreasonably, he had always believed the place would

go to the hands of the house-wrecker unchanged.

 

A smart portier ducked out, seized his luggage, and offered an

umbrella. Lanyard composed his features to immobility as he entered the

hotel, of no mind to let the least flicker of recognition be detected

in his eyes when they should re-encounter familiar faces.

 

And this was quite as well: for—again—the first he saw was Roddy.

III A POINT OF INTERROGATION

The man from Scotland Yard had just surrendered hat, coat, and umbrella

to the vestiaire and was turning through swinging doors to the

dining-room. Again, embracing Lanyard, his glance seemed devoid of any

sort of intelligible expression; and if its object needed all his

self-possession in that moment, it was to dissemble relief rather than

dismay. An accent of the fortuitous distinguished this second encounter

too persuasively to excuse further misgivings. What the adventurer

himself hadn’t known till within the last ten minutes, that he was

coming to Troyon’s, Roddy couldn’t possibly have anticipated; ergo,

whatever the detective’s business, it had nothing to do with Lanyard.

 

Furthermore, before quitting the lobby, Roddy paused long enough to

instruct the vestiaire to have a fire laid in his room.

 

So he was stopping at Troyon’s—and didn’t care who knew it!

 

His doubts altogether dissipated by this incident, Lanyard followed his

natural enemy into the dining-room with an air as devil-may-care as one

could wish and so impressive that the maitred’hotel abandoned the

detective to the mercies of one of his captains and himself hastened to

seat Lanyard and take his order.

 

This last disposed of; Lanyard surrendered himself to new

impressions—of which the first proved a bit disheartening.

 

However impulsively, he hadn’t resought Troyon’s without definite

intent, to wit, to gain some clue, however slender, to the mystery of

that wretched child, Marcel. But now it appeared he had procrastinated

fatally: Time and Change had left little other than the shell of the

Troyon’s he remembered. Papa Troyon was gone; Madame no longer occupied

the desk of the caisse; enquiries, so discreetly worded as to be

uncompromising, elicited from the maitred’h�tel the information that

the house had been under new management these eighteen months; the old

proprietor was dead, and his widow had sold out lock, stock and barrel,

and retired to the country—it was not known exactly where. And with

the new administration had come fresh decorations and furnishings as

well as a complete change of personnel: not even one of the old waiters

remained.

 

“‘All, all are gone, the old familiar faces,’” Lanyard quoted in

vindictive melancholy—“damn ‘em!”

 

Happily, it was soon demonstrated that the cuisine was being maintained

on its erstwhile plane of excellence: one still had that comfort….

 

Other impressions, less ultimate, proved puzzling, disconcerting, and

paradoxically reassuring.

 

Lanyard commanded a fair view of Roddy across the waist of the room.

The detective had ordered a meal that matched his aspect well—both

of true British simplicity. He was a square-set man with a square jaw,

cold blue eyes, a fat nose, a thin-lipped trap of a mouth, a face as

red as rare beefsteak. His dinner comprised a cut from the joint,

boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts, a bit of cheese, a bottle of Bass.

He ate slowly, chewing with the doggedness of a strong character

hampered by a weak digestion, and all the while kept eyes fixed to an

issue of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail, with an effect of

concentration quite too convincing.

 

Now one doesn’t read the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail with

tense excitement. Humanly speaking, it can’t be done.

 

Where, then, was the object of this so sedulously dissembled interest?

 

Lanyard wasn’t slow to read this riddle to his satisfaction—in as far,

that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy’s

quarry was another than himself.

 

Despite the lateness of the hour, which had by now turned ten o’clock,

the restaurant had a dozen tables or so in the service of guests

pleasantly engaged in lengthening out an agreeable evening with

dessert, coffee, liqueurs and cigarettes. The majority of these were in

couples, but at a table one removed from Roddy’s sat a party of three;

and Lanyard noticed, or fancied, that the man from Scotland Yard turned

his newspaper only during lulls in the conversation in this quarter.

 

Of the three, one might pass for an American of position and wealth: a

man of something more than sixty years, with an execrable accent, a

racking cough, and a thin, patrician cast of features clouded darkly by

the expression of a soul in torment, furrowed, seamed, twisted—a mask

of mortal anguish. And once, when this one looked up and casually

encountered Lanyard’s gaze, the adventurer was shocked to find himself

staring into eyes like those of a dead man: eyes of a grey so light

that at a little distance the colour of the irises blended

indistinguishably with their whites, leaving visible only the round

black points of pupils abnormally distended and staring, blank, fixed,

passionless, beneath lashless lids.

 

For the instant they seemed to explore Lanyard’s very soul with a look

of remote and impersonal curiosity; then they fell away; and when next

the adventurer looked, the man had turned to attend to some observation

of one of his companions.

 

On his right sat a girl who might be his daughter; for not only was

she, too, hall-marked American, but she was far too young to be the

other’s wife. A demure, old-fashioned type; well-poised but unassuming;

fetchingly gowned and with sufficient individuality of taste but not

conspicuously; a girl with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes; pretty,

not extravagantly so when her face was in repose, but with a slow smile

that rendered her little less than beautiful: in all (Lanyard thought)

the kind of woman that is predestined to comfort mankind, whose

strongest instinct is the maternal.

 

She took little part in the conversation, seldom interrupting what was

practically a duologue between her putative father and the third of

their party.

 

This last was one, whom Lanyard was sure he knew, though he could see

no more than the back of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan.

 

And he wondered with a thrill of amusement if it were possible that

Roddy was on the trail of that tremendous buck. If so, it would be a

chase worth following—a diversion rendered the more exquisite to

Lanyard by the spice of novelty, since for once he would figure as a

dispassionate bystander.

 

The name of Comte Remy de Morbihan, although unrecorded in the Almanach

de Gotha, was one to conjure with in the Paris of his day and

generation. He claimed the distinction of being at once the homeliest,

one of the wealthiest, and the most-liked man in France.

 

As to his looks, good or bad, they were said to prove infallibly fatal

with women, while not a few men, perhaps for that reason, did their

possessor the honour to imitate them. The revues burlesqued him; Sem

caricatured him; Forain counterfeited him extensively in that

inimitable series of Monday morning cartoons for Le Figaro: one said

“De Morbihan” instinctively at sight of that stocky figure, short and

broad, topped by a chubby, moon-like mask with waxed moustaches,

womanish eyes, and never-failing grin.

 

A creature of proverbial good-nature and exhaustless vitality, his

extraordinary popularity was due to the equally extraordinary

extravagance with which he supported that latest Gallic fad,

“le Sport.” The Parisian Rugby team was his pampered prot�g�, he was an

active member of the Tennis Club, maintained not only a flock of

automobiles but a famous racing stable, rode to hounds, was a good

field gun, patronized aviation and motor-boat racing, risked as many

maximums during the Monte Carlo season as the Grand Duke Michael

himself, and was always ready to whet rapiers or burn a little harmless

powder of an early morning in the Parc aux Princes.

 

But there were ugly whispers current with respect to the sources of his

fabulous wealth. Lanyard, for one, wouldn’t have thought him the

properest company or the best Parisian cicerone for an ailing American

gentleman blessed with independent means and an attractive daughter.

 

Paris, on the other hand—Paris who forgives everything to him who

contributes to her amusement—adored Comte Remy de Morbihan …

 

But perhaps Lanyard was prejudiced by his partiality for Americans, a

sentiment the outgrowth of the years spent in New York with Bourke. He

even fancied that between his spirit and theirs existed some subtle

bond of sympathy. For all he knew he might himself be American…

 

For some time Lanyard strained to catch something of the conversation

that seemed to hold so much of interest for Roddy, but without success

because of the hum of voices that filled the room. In time, however,

the gathering began to thin out, until at length there remained only

this party of three, Lanyard enjoying a most delectable salad, and

Roddy puffing a cigar (with such a show of enjoyment that Lanyard

suspected him of the sin of smuggling) and slowly gulping down a second

bottle of Bass.

 

Under these conditions the talk between De Morbihan and the Americans

became public property.

 

The first remark overheard by Lanyard came from the elderly American,

following a pause and a consultation of his watch.

 

“Quarter to eleven,” he announced.

 

“Plenty of time,” said De Morbihan cheerfully. “That is,” he amended,

“if mademoiselle isn’t bored …”

 

The girl’s reply, accompanied by a pretty inclination of her head

toward the Frenchman, was lost in the accents of the first speaker—a

strong and sonorous voice, in strange contrast with his ravaged

appearance and distressing cough.

 

“Don’t let that worry