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

But you, my friend—now if you would consent

to make our third, it would be most amiable of you.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Lanyard excused himself; “but as you see, I am only just

in from the railroad, a long and tiresome journey. You are very good,

but I—”

 

“Good!” De Morbihan exclaimed with violence. “I? On the contrary, I am

a very selfish man; I seek but to afford myself the pleasure of your

company. You lead such a busy life, my friend, romping about Europe,

here one day, God-knows-where the next, that one must make one’s best

of your spare moments. You will join us, surely?”

 

“Really I cannot tonight. Another time perhaps, if you’ll excuse me.”

 

“But it is always this way!” De Morbihan explained to his friends with

a vast show of mock indignation. “‘Another time, perhaps’—his

invariable excuse! I tell you, not two men in all Paris have any real

acquaintance with this gentleman whom all Paris knows! His reserve is

proverbial—‘as distant as Lanyard,’ we say on the boulevards!” And

turning again to the adventurer, meeting his cold stare with the De

Morbihan grin of quenchless effrontery—“As you will, my friend!” he

granted. “But should you change your mind—well, you’ll have no trouble

finding us. Ask any place along the regular route. We see far too

little of one another, monsieur—and I am most anxious to have a

little chat with you.”

 

“It will be an honour,” Lanyard returned formally….

 

In his heart he was pondering several most excruciating methods of

murdering the man. What did he mean? How much did he know? If he knew

anything, he must mean ill, for assuredly he could not be ignorant of

Roddy’s business, or that every other word he uttered was rivetting

suspicion on Lanyard of identity with the Lone Wolf, or that Roddy was

listening with all his ears and staring into the bargain!

 

Decidedly something must be done to silence this animal, should it turn

out he really did know anything!

 

It was only after profound reflection over his liqueur (while Roddy

devoured his Daily Mail and washed it down with a third bottle of Bass)

that Lanyard summoned the maitred’h�tel and asked for a room.

 

It would never do to fix the doubts of the detective by going elsewhere

that night. But, fortunately, Lanyard knew that warren which was

Troyon’s as no one else knew it; Roddy would find it hard to detain

him, should events seem to advise an early departure.

IV A STRATAGEM

When the maitred’h�tel had shown him all over the establishment

(innocently enough, en route, furnishing him with a complete list of

his other guests and their rooms: memoranda readily registered by a

retentive memory) Lanyard chose the bedchamber next that occupied by

Roddy, in the second storey.

 

The consideration influencing this selection was—of course—that, so

situated, he would be in position not only to keep an eye on the man

from Scotland Yard but also to determine whether or no Roddy were

disposed to keep an eye on him.

 

In those days Lanyard’s faith in himself was a beautiful thing. He

could not have enjoyed the immunity ascribed to the Lone Wolf as long

as he had without gaining a power of sturdy self-confidence in addition

to a certain amount of temperate contempt for spies of the law and all

their ways.

 

Against the peril inherent in this last, however, he was self-warned,

esteeming it the most fatal chink in the armour of the lawbreaker, this

disposition to underestimate the acumen of the police: far too many

promising young adventurers like himself were annually laid by the

heels in that snare of their own infatuate weaving. The mouse has every

right, if he likes, to despise the cat for a heavy-handed and

bloodthirsty beast, lacking wit and imagination, a creature of simple

force-majeure; but that mouse will not advisedly swagger in cat-haunted

territory; a blow of the paw is, when all’s said and done, a blow of

the paw—something to numb the wits of the wiliest mouse.

 

Considering Roddy, he believed it to be impossible to gauge the

limitations of that essentially British intelligence—something as

self-contained as a London flat. One thing only was certain: Roddy

didn’t always think in terms of beef and Bass; he was nobody’s facile

fool; he could make a shrewd inference as well as strike a shrewd blow.

 

Reviewing the scene in the restaurant, Lanyard felt measurably

warranted in assuming not only that Roddy was interested in De

Morbihan, but that the Frenchman was well aware of that interest. And

he resented sincerely his inability to feel as confident that the

Count, with his gossip about the Lone Wolf, had been merely seeking to

divert Roddy’s interest to putatively larger game. It was just possible

that De Morbihan’s identification of Lanyard with that mysterious

personage, at least by innuendo, had been unintentional. But somehow

Lanyard didn’t believe it had.

 

The two questions troubled him sorely: Did De Morbihan know, did he

merely suspect, or had he only loosed an aimless shot which chance had

sped to the right goal? Had the mind of Roddy proved fallow to that

suggestion, or had it, with its simple national tenacity, been

impatient of such side issues, or incredulous, and persisted in

focusing its processes upon the personality and activities of Monsieur

le Comte Remy de Morbihan? However, one would surely learn something

illuminating before very long. The business of a sleuth is to sleuth,

and sooner or later Roddy must surely make some move to indicate the

quarter wherein his real interest lay.

 

Just at present, reasoning from noises audible through the bolted door

that communicated with the adjoining bedchamber, the business of a

sleuth seemed to comprise going to bed. Lanyard, shaving and dressing,

could distinctly hear a tuneless voice contentedly humming “Sally in

our Alley,” a rendition punctuated by one heavy thump and then another

and then by a heartfelt sigh of relief—as Roddy kicked off his

boots—and followed by the tapping of a pipe against grate-bars, the

squeal of a window lowered for ventilation, the click of an

electric-light, and the creaking of bed-springs.

 

Finally, and before Lanyard had finished dressing, the man from

Scotland Yard began placidly to snore.

 

Of course, he might well be bluffing; for Lanyard had taken pains to

let Roddy know that they were neighbours, by announcing his selection

in loud tones close to the communicating door.

 

But this was a question which the adventurer meant to have answered

before he went out….

 

It was hard upon twelve o’clock when the mirror on the dressing-table

assured him that he was at length point-device in the habit and apparel

of a gentleman of elegant nocturnal leisure. But if he approved the

figure he cut, it was mainly because clothes interested him and he

reckoned his own impeccable. Of their tenant he was feeling just then a

bit less sure than he had half-an-hour since; his regard was louring

and mistrustful. He was, in short, suffering reaction from the high

spirits engendered by his cross-Channel exploits, his successful

get-away, and the unusual circumstances attendant upon his return to

this memory-haunted mausoleum of an unhappy childhood. He even shivered

a trifle, as if under premonition of misfortune, and asked himself

heavily: Why not?

 

For, logically considered, a break in the run of his luck was due. Thus

far he had played, with a success almost too uniform, his dual r�le, by

day the amiable amateur of art, by night the nameless mystery that

prowled unseen and preyed unhindered. Could such success be reasonably

expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan’s yarn a

warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every

gambler knows as much. And what was Michael Lanyard but a common

gambler, who persistently staked life and liberty against the blindly

impartial casts of Chance?

 

With one last look round to make certain there was nothing in the

calculated disorder of his room to incriminate him were it to be

searched in his absence, Lanyard enveloped himself in a long

full-skirted coat, clapped on an opera hat, and went out, noisily

locking the door. He might as well have left it wide, but it would

do no harm to pretend he didn’t know the bedchamber keys at

Troyon’s were interchangeable—identically the same keys, in fact,

that had been in service in the days of Marcel the wretched.

 

A single half-power electric bulb now modified the gloom of the

corridor; its fellow made a light blot on the darkness of the

courtyard. Even the windows of the conciergerie were black.

 

None the less, Lanyard tapped them smartly.

 

“Cordon!” he demanded in a strident voice. “_Cordon, s’il vous

plait! _”

 

“Eh? ” A startled grunt from within the lodge was barely audible.

Then the latch clicked loudly at the end of the passageway.

 

Groping his way in the direction of this last sound, Lanyard found the

small side door ajar. He opened it, and hesitated a moment, looking out

as though questioning the weather; simultaneously his deft fingers

wedged the latch back with a thin slip of steel.

 

No rain, in fact, had fallen within the hour; but still the sky was

dense with a sullen rack, and still the sidewalks were inky wet.

 

The street was lonely and indifferently lighted, but a swift searching

reconnaissance discovered nothing that suggested a spy skulking in the

shelter of any of the nearer shadows.

 

Stepping out, he slammed the door and strode briskly round the corner,

as if making for the cab-rank that lines up along the Luxembourg

Gardens side of the rue de Medicis; his boot-heels made a cheerful

racket in that quiet hour; he was quite audibly going away from

Troyon’s.

 

But instead of holding on to the cab-rank, he turned the next corner,

and then the next, rounding the block; and presently, reapproaching the

entrance to Troyon’s, paused in the recess of a dark doorway and,

lifting one foot after another, slipped rubber caps over his heels.

Thereafter his progress was practically noiseless.

 

The smaller door yielded to his touch without a murmur. Inside, he

closed it gently, and stood a moment listening with all his senses—not

with his ears alone but with every nerve and fibre of his being—with

his imagination, to boot. But there was never a sound or movement in

all the house that he could detect.

 

And no shadow could have made less noise than he, slipping cat-footed

across the courtyard and up the stairs, avoiding with super-developed

sensitiveness every lift that might complain beneath his tread. In a

trice he was again in the corridor leading to his bedchamber.

 

It was quite as gloomy and empty as it had been five minutes ago, yet

with a difference, a something in its atmosphere that made him nod

briefly in confirmation of that suspicion which had brought him back so

stealthily.

 

For one thing, Roddy had stopped snoring. And Lanyard smiled over the

thought that the man from Scotland Yard might profitably have copied

that trick of poor Bourke’s, of snoring like the Seven Sleepers when

most completely awake….

 

It was naturally no surprise to find his bedchamber door unlocked and

slightly ajar. Lanyard made sure of the readiness of his automatic,

strode into the room, and shut the door quietly but by no means

soundlessly.

 

He had left the shades down and the hangings drawn at both windows; and

since these had not been disturbed, something nearly approaching

complete darkness reigned in the room. But though promptly on entering

his fingers closed upon the wall-switch near the door, he refrained

from turning up the lights immediately, with a fancy