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

of impish

inspiration that it would be amusing to learn what move Roddy would

make when the tension became too much even for his trained nerves.

 

Several seconds passed without the least sound disturbing the stillness.

 

Lanyard himself grew a little impatient, finding that his sight failed

to grow accustomed to the darkness because that last was too absolute,

pressing against his staring eyeballs like a black fluid impenetrably

opaque, as unbroken as the hush.

 

Still, he waited: surely Roddy wouldn’t be able much longer to endure

such suspense….

 

And, surely enough, the silence was abruptly broken by a strange and

moving sound, a hushed cry of alarm that was half a moan and half a sob.

 

Lanyard himself was startled: for that was never Roddy’s voice!

 

There was a noise of muffled and confused footsteps, as though someone

had started in panic for the door, then stopped in terror.

 

Words followed, the strangest he could have imagined, words spoken in a

gentle and tremulous voice:

 

“In pity’s name! who are you and what do you want?”

 

Thunderstruck, Lanyard switched on the lights.

 

At a distance of some six paces he saw, not Roddy, but a woman, and not

a woman merely, but the girl he had met in the restaurant.

V ANTICLIMAX

The surprise was complete; none, indeed, was ever more so; but it’s a

question which party thereto was the more affected.

 

Lanyard stared with the eyes of stupefaction. To his fancy, this thing

passed the compass of simple incredulity: it wasn’t merely improbable,

it was preposterous; it was anticlimax exaggerated to the proportions

of the grotesque.

 

He had come prepared to surprise and bully rag the most astute police

detective of whom he had any knowledge; he found himself surprised and

discountenanced by this…!

 

Confusion no less intense informed the girl’s expression; her eyes were

fixed to his with a look of blank enquiry; her face, whose colouring

had won his admiration two hours since, was colourless; her lips were

just ajar; the fingers of one hand touched her cheek, indenting it.

 

The other hand caught up before her the long skirts of a pretty

robe-de-chambre, beneath whose edge a hand’s-breadth of white silk

shimmered and the toe of a silken mule was visible. Thus she stood,

poised for flight, attired only in a dressing-gown over what, one

couldn’t help suspecting, was her night-dress: for her hair was down,

and she was unquestionably all ready for her bed….But Bourke’s

patient training had been wasted if this man proved one to remain long

at loss. Rallying his wits quickly from their momentary rout, he

reasserted command over them, and if he didn’t in the least understand,

made a brave show of accepting this amazing accident as a commonplace.

 

“I beg your pardon, Miss Bannon—” he began with a formal bow.

 

She interrupted with a gasp of wondering recognition:

“Mr. Lanyard!”

 

He inclined his head a second time: “Sorry to disturb you—”

 

“But I don’t understand—”

 

“Unfortunately,” he proceeded smoothly, “I forgot something when I went

out, and had to come back for it.”

 

“But—but—”

 

“Yes?”

 

Suddenly her eyes, for the first time detached from his, swept the room

with a glance of wild dismay.

 

“This room,” she breathed—“I don’t know it—”

 

“It is mine.”

 

“Yours! But—”

 

“That is how I happened to—interrupt you.”

 

The girl shrank back a pace—two paces—uttering a low-toned

monosyllable of understanding, an “O!” abruptly gasped.

Simultaneously her face and throat flamed scarlet.

 

“Your room, Mr. Lanyard!”

 

Her tone so convincingly voiced shame and horror that his heart misgave

him. Not that alone, but the girl was very good to look upon. “I’m

sure,” he began soothingly; “it doesn’t matter. You mistook a door—”

 

“But you don’t understand!” She shuddered….

“This dreadful habit! And I was hoping I had outgrown it! How can I ever

explain—?”

 

“Believe me, Miss Bannon, you need explain nothing.”

 

“But I must…I wish to…I can’t bear to let you think…But surely

you can make allowances for sleepwalking!”

 

To this appeal he could at first return nothing more intelligent than a

dazed repetition of the phrase.

 

So that was how…Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Ever since he had

turned on the lights, he had been subjectively busy trying to invest her

presence there with some plausible excuse. But somnambulism had never

once entered his mind. And in his stupidity, at pains though he had

been to render his words inoffensive, he had been guilty of

constructive incivility.

 

In his turn, Lanyard coloured warmly.

 

“I beg your pardon,” he muttered.

 

The girl paid no attention; she seemed self-absorbed, thinking only of

herself and the anomalous position into which her infirmity had tricked

her. When she did speak, her words came swiftly:

 

“You see…I was so frightened! I found myself suddenly standing up in

darkness, just as if I had jumped out of bed at some alarm; and then I

heard somebody enter the room and shut the door stealthily…Oh, please

understand me!”

 

“But I do, Miss Bannon—quite.”

 

“I am so ashamed—”

 

“Please don’t consider it that way.”

 

“But now that you know—you don’t think—”

 

“My dear Miss Bannon!”

 

“But it must be so hard to credit! Even I… Why, it’s more than a year

since this last happened. Of course, as a child, it was almost a habit;

they had to watch me all the time. Once… But that doesn’t matter. I

am so sorry.”

 

“You really mustn’t worry,” Lanyard insisted. “It’s all quite

natural—such things do happen—are happening all the time—”

 

“But I don’t want you—”

 

“I am nobody, Miss Bannon. Besides I shan’t mention the matter to a

soul. And if ever I am fortunate enough to meet you again, I shall have

forgotten it completely—believe me.”

 

There was convincing sincerity in his tone. The girl looked down, as

though abashed.

 

“You are very good,” she murmured, moving toward the door.

 

“I am very fortunate.”

 

Her glance of surprise was question enough.

 

“To be able to treasure this much of your confidence,” he explained

with a tentative smile.

 

She was near the door; he opened it for her, but cautioned her with a

gesture and a whispered word: “Wait. I’ll make sure nobody’s about.”

 

He stepped noiselessly into the hall and paused an instant, looking

right and left, listening.

 

The girl advanced to the threshold and there checked, hesitant, eyeing

him anxiously.

 

He nodded reassurance: “All right—coast’s clear!”

 

But she delayed one moment more.

 

“It’s you who are mistaken,” she whispered, colouring again beneath his

regard, in which admiration could not well be lacking, “It is I who am

fortunate—to have met a—gentleman.”

 

Her diffident smile, together with the candour of her eyes, embarrassed

him to such extent that for the moment he was unable to frame a reply.

 

“Good night,” she whispered—“and thank you, thank you!”

 

Her room was at the far end of the corridor. She gained its threshold

in one swift dash, noiseless save for the silken whisper of her

garments, turned, flashed him a final look that left him with the

thought that novelists did not always exaggerate, that eyes could shine

like stars….

 

Her door closed softly.

 

Lanyard shook his head as if to dissipate a swarm of annoying thoughts,

and went back into his own bedchamber.

 

He was quite content with the explanation the girl had given, but being

the slave of a methodical and pertinacious habit of mind, spent five

busy minutes examining his room and all that it contained with a

perseverance that would have done credit to a Frenchman searching for a

mislaid sou.

 

If pressed, he would have been put to it to name what he sought or

thought to find. What he did find was that nothing had been tampered

with and nothing more—not even so much as a dainty, lace-trimmed wisp

of sheer linen bearing the lady’s monogram and exhaling a faint but

individual perfume.

 

Which, when he came to consider it, seemed hardly playing the game by

the book.

 

As for Roddy, Lanyard wasted several minutes, off and on, listening

attentively at the communicating door; but if the detective had stopped

snoring, his respiration was loud enough in that quiet hour, a sound of

harsh monotony.

 

True, that proved nothing; but Lanyard, after the fiasco of his first

attempt to catch his enemy awake, was no more disposed to be

hypercritical; he had his fill of being ingenious and profound. And

when presently he again left Troyon’s (this time without troubling the

repose of the concierge) it was with the reflection that, if Roddy were

really playing ‘possum, he was welcome to whatever he could find of

interest in the quarters of Michael Lanyard.

VI THE PACK GIVES TONGUE

Lanyard’s first destination was that convenient little rez-de-chauss�e

apartment near the Trocad�ro, at the junction of the rue Roget and the

avenue de l’Alma; but his way thither was so roundabout that the best

part of an hour was required for what might have been less than a

twenty-minute taxicab course direct from Troyon’s. It was past one when

he arrived, afoot, at the corner.

 

Not that he grudged the time; for in Lanyard’s esteem Bourke’s epigram

had come to have the weight and force of an axiom: “The more trouble

you make for yourself, the less the good public will make for you.”

 

Paradoxically, he hadn’t the least intention of attempting to deceive

anybody as to his permanent address in Paris, where Michael Lanyard,

connoisseur of fine paintings, was a figure too conspicuous to permit

his making a secret of his residence. De Morbihan, moreover, through

recognizing him at Troyon’s, had rendered it impossible for Lanyard to

adopt a nom-de-guerre there, even had he thought that ruse advisable.

 

But he had certain businesses to attend to before dawn, affairs

demanding privacy; and while by no means sure he was followed, one can

seldom be sure of anything, especially in Paris, where nothing is

impossible; and it were as well to lose a spy first as last. And his

mind could not be at ease with respect to Roddy, thanks to De

Morbihan’s gasconade in the presence of the detective and also to that

hint which the Count had dropped concerning some fatal blunder in the

course of Lanyard’s British campaign.

 

The adventurer could recall leaving no step uncovered. Indeed, he had

prided himself on conducting his operations with a degree of

circumspection unusually thorough-going, even for him. Yet he was

unable to rid himself of those misgivings roused by De Morbihan’s

declaration that the theft of the Omber jewels had been accomplished

only at cost of a clue to the thief’s identity.

 

Now the Count’s positive information concerning the robbery proved that

the news thereof had anticipated the arrival of its perpetrator in

Paris; yet Roddy unquestionably had known nothing of it prior to its

mention in his presence, after dinner. Or else the detective was a

finer actor than Lanyard credited.

 

But how could De Morbihan have come by his news?

 

Lanyard was really and deeply perturbed….

 

Pestered to distraction by such thoughts, he fitted key to latch and

quietly let himself into his flat by a private street-entrance which,

in addition to the usual door opening on the court and under the eye of

the concierge, distinguished this from the ordinary Parisian apartment

and rendered it doubly suited to the adventurer’s uses.

 

Then he turned on the lights and moved quickly from room to room of the

three comprising his