Alias The Lone Wolf - Louis Joseph Vance
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Phinuit gave his whiskey and soda a reminiscent grin.
"And we thought we were being bright, at that! We'd figured every move
to the third decimal point. The only uncertain factor in our
calculations, as we thought, was you. But with you disposed of, dead to
the world, and Madame de Montalais off in another part of the chateau
calling the servants to help, leaving her rooms wide open to us--the
job didn't take five minutes. The way de Lorgnes made that safe give up
all its secrets, you'd have thought he had raised it by hand! We
stuffed the loot into a grip I'd brought for the purpose, and beat
it--slipped out through the drawing-room window one second before
Madame de Montalais came back with that doddering footman of hers. But
they never even looked our way. I bet they never knew there'd been a
robbery till the next morning. Do I lose?"
"No, monsieur; you are quite right."
"Well, then: We had left our machine--we had driven over from
Millau--just over the brow of the hill, standing on the down-grade,
headed for Nant, with the gears meshed in third, so she would start
without a sound as soon as we released the emergency brake. But when we
got there, it wasn't. The frantic way we looked for it made me think of
you pawing that table for your candle, after de Lorgnes had lifted it
behind your back. And then of a sudden they jumped us, Popinot and his
crew; though we didn't know who in hell; it might have been the chateau
people. In fact, at first I thought it was....
"I lost de Lorgnes in the shuffle immediately, never did know what had
become of him till we got Liane's wire this morning. I was having all I
could do to take care of myself, thank you. I happened to be carrying
the grip, and that helped a bit. Somebody's head got in the way of its
swings, and I guess the guy hasn't forgotten it yet. Then I slipped
through their fingers--I'll never tell you how; it was black as pitch,
that night--and beat it blind. I'd lost my flashlamp and had no more
idea where I was heading than an owl at noon of a sunny day. But
they--the Popinot outfit--seemed to be able to see in the dark all
right; or else I was looney with fright. Every once in a while somebody
or something would make a pass at me in the night, and I'd duck and
double and run another way.
"After a while I found myself climbing a steep, rocky slope, and
guessed it must be the cliff behind the chateau. It was a sort of
zig-zag path, which I couldn't see, only guess at. I was scared stiff;
but they were still after me, or I thought they were, so I floundered
on. The path, if it was a path, was slimy with mud, and about every
third step I'd slip and go sprawling. I can't tell you how many times I
felt my legs shoot out into nothing, and dug my fingers into the muck,
or broke my nails on rocks and caught clumps of grass with my teeth, to
keep from going over ... and all the while that all-gone feeling in the
pit of my stomach....
"However, I got to the top in the end, and crawled into a hollow and
lay down behind some bushes, and panted as if my heart would break, and
hoped I'd die and get over with it. But nobody came to bother me, so I
got up when the first streak of light showed in the sky--there'd been a
young cloud-burst just before that, and I was soaked to my skin--and
struck off across the cause for God-knew-where. De Lorgnes and I had
fixed that, if anything did happen to separate us, we'd each strike for
Lyons and the one who got there first would wait for the other at the
Hotel Terminus. But before I could do that, I had to find a railroad,
and I didn't dare go Millau-way, I thought, because the chances were
the gendarmes would be waiting there to nab the first bird that blew in
all covered with mud and carrying a bag full of diamonds.
"I'd managed to hold onto the grip through it all, you see; but before
that day was done I wished I'd lost it. The damned thing got heavier
and heavier till it must have weighed a gross ton. It galled my hands
and rubbed my legs till they were sore.... I was sore all over, anyway,
inside and out....
"Sometime during the morning I climbed one of those bum mounds they
call couronnes to see if I could sight any place to get food and drink,
preferably drink. The sun had dried my clothes on my back and then gone
on to make it a good job by soaking up all the moisture in my system. I
figured I was losing eleven pounds an hour by evaporation alone, and
expected to arrive wherever I did arrive, if I ever arrived anywhere
looking like an Early Egyptian prune....
"The view from the couronne didn't show me anything I wanted to see,
only a number of men in the distance, spread out over the face of the
causse and quartering it like beagles. I reckoned I knew what sort of
game they were hunting, and slid down from that couronne and travelled.
But they'd seen me, and somebody sounded the view-halloo. It was grand
exercise for me and great sport for them. When I couldn't totter
another yard I fell into a hole into the ground--one of those
avens--and crawled into a sort of little cave, and lay there listening,
to the suck and gurgle of millions of gallons of nice cool water
running to waste under my feet, and me dying the death of a dog with
thirst.
"After a while I couldn't stand it any longer. I crawled out, prepared
to surrender, give up the plunder, and lick the boots of any man who'd
slip me a cup of water. But for some reason they'd given up the chase.
I saw no more of them, whoever they were. And a little later I found a
peasant's hut, and watered myself till I swelled up like a poisoned
pup. They gave me a brush-down, there, and something to eat besides,
and put me on my way to Millau. It seemed that I was a hundred miles
from anywhere else, so it was Millau for mine if it meant a life
sentence in a French prison.
"I sneaked into the town after dark, and took the first train north.
Nobody took any notice of me. I couldn't see the use of going all round
Robin Hood's barn, as I'd have had to in order to make Lyons. By the
time I'd got there, de Lorgnes would have given up and gone on to
Paris."
Phinuit finished his drink. "I'll say it was a gay young party. The
next time I feel the call to crime, believe me! I'm going out and
snatch nursing bottles from kids asleep in their prams.... But they
_must_ be asleep."
Monk lifted himself by sections from his chair.
"It was a good yarn first time I heard it," he mused aloud. "But now, I
notice, even the Sybarite is getting restless."
In the course of Phinuit's narrative the black disks of night framed by
the polished brass circles of the stern ports had faded out into dusky
violet, then into a lighter lilac, finally into a warm yet tender blue.
Now the main deck overhead was a sounding-board for thumps and rustle
of many hurried feet.
"Pilot come aboard, you think?" Phinuit enquired; and added, as Monk
nodded and cast about for the visored white cap of his office: "Didn't
know pilots were such early birds."
"They're not, as a rule. But if you treat 'em right, they'll listen to
reason."
The captain graphically rubbed a thumb over two fingers, donned his
cap, buttoned up his tunic, and strode forth with an impressive gait.
"Still wakeful?" Phinuit hinted hopefully.
"And shall be till we drop the pilot, thanks."
"If I hadn't seen de Lorgnes make that safe sit up and speak, and didn't
know you were his master, I'd be tempted to bat an eye or two.
However...." Phinuit sighed despondently. "What can I do now to entertain
you, dear sir?"
"You might have pity on my benighted curiosity...."
"Meaning this outfit?" Lanyard assented, and Phinuit deliberated over
the question. "I don't know as I ought in the absence of my esteemed
associates.... But what's bothering you most?"
"I have seen something of the world, monsieur, and as you are aware not
a little of the underside of it; but never have I met with a
combination of such peculiar elements as this possesses. Regard it, if
you will, from my view-point, that of an outsider, for one moment."
Phinuit grinned. "It must give you furiously to think--as you'd say."
"But assuredly! Take, for example, yourself, a man of unusual
intelligence, such as one is not accustomed to find lending himself to
the schemes of ordinary criminals."
"But you have just admitted that we're anything but ordinary."
"Then Mademoiselle Delorme. One knows what the world knows of her, that
she has for many years meddled with high affairs, that she had been for
many years more a sort of queen of the demi-monde of Paris; but now you
tell me she has stopped to profit by association with a professional
burglar."
"Profit? I'll say she did. According to my information, it was she who
mapped out the campaigns for de Lorgnes; she was G.H.Q. and he merely
the high private in the front line trenches; with this difference, that
in this instance G.H.Q. was perfectly willing to let the man at the
front cop all the glory.... She took the cash and let the credit go,
nor heeded rumblings of the distant drum!"
"Then your picturesque confrere, Captain Monk; and the singular
circumstance that he owns a wealthy cousin of the same name; and this
beautiful little yacht which you seem so free to utilize for the
furtherance of your purposes. Is it strange, then, that one's curiosity
is provoked, one's imagination alternately stimulated and baffled?"
"No; I suppose not," Phinuit conceded thoughtfully. "Still, it's far
simpler than you'd think."
"One has found that true of most mysteries, monsieur."
"I don't mind telling you all I feel at liberty to.... You seem to have
a pretty good line on mademoiselle, and I've told you what I know about
de Lorgnes. As for the skipper, he's the black sheep of a good old New
England family. Ran away to sea as a boy, and was disowned, and grew up
in a rough school. It would take all night to name half the jobs he's
had a hand in, mostly of a shady nature, in every quarter of the seven
seas: gun running, pearl poaching, what not--even a little slaving, I
suspect, in his early days. He's a pompous old bluff in repose, but
nobody's fool, and a bad actor when his mad is up. He tells me he fell
in with the Delorme a long time ago, while acting as personal escort
for a fugitive South American potentate who crossed the borders of his
native land with the national treasury in one hand and his other in
Monk's, and of course--they all do--made a bee line for Paris. That's
how we came to make her acquaintance, my revered employer, Mister Monk,
and I--through the skipper, I mean."
Phinuit paused to consider, and ended with a whimsical grimace.
"I'm talking too much; but it doesn't matter, seein's it's you.
Strictly between ourselves, the said revered employer is an annointed
fraud. Publicly he's the pillar of the respectable house of Monk.
Privately, he's not above profiteering, foreclosing the mortgage on the
old homestead, and swearing to an odoriferous income-tax return. And
when he thinks he's far enough away from home--my land, how that little
man do carry on!
"The War made him more money than he ever thought there was; so he
bought this yacht ready-made and started on the grand tour, but never
got any farther than Paris--naturally his first stop. News from home to
the effect that somebody was threatening to do him out of a few nickels
sent him hightailing back to put a stop to it. But before that
happened, he wanted to see life with a large L; and Cousin Whitaker
gave him a good start by introducing him to little ingenue Liane. And
then she put the smuggling bee in his bonnet."
"Smuggling!"
Lanyard began to experience glimpses....
"Champagne. If ever all the truth comes out, I fancy it will transpire
that Liane's getting a rake-off from some vintner. You see, Friend
Employer was displaying a cultivated taste in vintage champagnes, but
he'd been culpably negligent in not laying down a large stock for
private consumption before the Great Drought set in. The Delorme found
that out, then that his ancestral acres bordered on Long Island Sound,
and finally that the Sybarite was loafing its head off. What could be
more simple, she suggested, than that monsieur should ballast his
private yacht with champagne on the homeward voyage, make his landfall
some night in the dark of the moon, and put the stuff ashore on his own
property before morning. Did he fall for it? Well, I just guess he
did!"
"This is all most interesting, monsieur, but...." "Where do Monk and I
come in? Oh, like master, like men. Liane was too wise to crab her act
by proposing anything really wicked to the Owner, and wise enough to
know nothing could shock the skipper. And I was wise enough not to let
him get away with anything unless I sat in on the deal.
"Mademoiselle played all her cards face upwards with us. She and de
Lorgnes, she said, were losing money by disposing of their loot this
side, especially with European currency at its present stage of
depreciation. And so long as the owner was doing a little dirty work,
why shouldn't we get together and do something for ourselves on the
side? If champagne could be so easily smuggled into the States, why not
diamonds? We formed a joint-stock company on the spot."
"And made your first coup at the Chateau de Montalais!"
"Not the first, but the biggest. De Lorgnes' mouth had been watering
for the Montalais stuff for a long time, it seems. My boss had private
business of a nature we won't enter into, in London, and gave me a week
off and the use of his car. We made up the party, toured down the Rhone
valley, and then back by way of the Cevennes, just to get the lay of
the land. I don't think there can be much more you need to know."
"Monsieur is too modest."
"Oh, about me? Why, I guess I'm not an uncommon phenomenon of the
times. I was a good citizen before the War, law-abiding and everything.
If you'd told me then I'd be in this galley to-day, I'd probably have
knocked you for a goal. I had a flourishing young business of my own
and was engaged to be married... When I got back from hell over here, I
found my girl married to another man, my business wrecked, what was
left of it crippled by extortionate taxation to support a government
that was wasting money like a drunken sailor and too cynical to keep
its solemn promises to the men who had fought for it. I had to take a
job as secretary to a man I couldn't respect, and now... Well, if I can
get a bit of my own back by defrauding the government or classing
myself with the unorganised leeches on Society, nothing I know is going
to stop my doing it!"
Phinuit knocked the ashes out of a cold pipe at which he had been
sucking for some time, rose, and stretched.
"The worst of it is," he said in a serious turn--"I mean, looking at
the thing from my bourgeois viewpoint of 1914--the War, but more
particularly the antics of the various governments after the War,
turned out several million of men in my frame of mind the world over.
We went into the thing deluded by patriotic bunk and the promise that
it was a war to end war; we came out to find the old men more firmly
entrenched in the seats of the mighty than ever and stubbornly bent on
perpetuating precisely the same rotten conditions that make wars
inevitable. What Germany did to the treaty that guaranteed Belgium's
neutrality was child's-play compared to what the governments of the
warring nations have done to their covenants with their own people. And
if anybody should ask you, you can safely promise them that several
million soreheads like myself are what the politicians call 'a menace
to the established social order'."
Clear daylight filled the ports. The traffic on deck nearly deserved
the name of din. Commands and calls were being bawled in English,
French, and polyglot profanity. A donkey-engine was rumbling, a winch
clattering, a capstan-pawl clanking. Alongside a tug was panting
hoarsely. The engine room telegraph jangled furiously, the fabric of
the Sybarite shuddered and gathered way.
"We're off," yawned Phinuit. "Now will you be reasonable and go to
bed?"
"You may, monsieur," said Lanyard, getting up. "For my part, I shall go
on deck, if you don't mind, and stop there till the pilot leaves us."
"Fair enough!"
"But one moment more. You have been extraordinarily frank, but you have
forgotten one element, to me of some importance: you have not told me
what my part is in this insane adventure."
"That's not my business to tell you," Phinuit replied promptly. "When
anything as important as that comes out, it won't be through my
babbling. Anyhow, Liane may have changed her mind since last reports.
And so, as far as I'm concerned, your present status is simply that of
her pet protege. What it is to be hereafter you'll learn from her, I
suppose, soon enough.... Le's go!"
XXII
OUT OF SOUNDINGS
When finally Lanyard did consent to seek his stateroom--with the pilot
dropped and the Sybarite footing it featly over Channel waters to airs
piped by a freshening breeze--it was to sleep once round the clock and
something more; for it was nearly six in the afternoon when he came on
deck again.
The quarterdeck, a place of Epicurean ease for idle passengers, was
deserted but for a couple of deckhands engaged in furling the awning.
Lanyard lounged on the rail, revelling in a sense of perfect physical
refreshment intensified by the gracious motion of the vessel, the
friendly, rhythmic chant of her engines, the sweeping ocean air and the
song it sang in the rigging, the vision of blue seas snow-plumed and
mirroring in a myriad facets the red gold of the westering sun, and the
lift and dip of a far horizon whose banks of violet mist were the
fading shores of France.
In these circumstances of the sea he loved so well there was certain
anodyne for those twinges of chagrin which he must suffer when reminded
of the sorry figure he had cut overnight.
Still there were compensations--of a more material nature, too, than
this delight which he had of being once again at sea. To have cheapened
himself in the estimation of Liane Delorme and Phinuit and Monk was
really to his advantage; for to persuade an adversary to under-estimate
one is to make him almost an ally. Also, Lanyard now had no more need
to question the fate of the Montalais jewels, no more blank spaces
remained to be filled in his hypothetical explanation of the intrigues
which had enmeshed the Chateau de Montalais, its lady and his honour.
He knew now all he needed to know, he could put his hand on the jewels
when he would; and he had a fair fortnight (the probable duration of
their voyage, according to Monk) in which to revolve plans for making
away with them at minimum cost to himself in exertion and exposure to
reprisals.
Plans? He had none as yet, he would begin to formulate and ponder them
only when he had better acquaintance with the ship and her company and
had learned more about that ambiguous landfall which she was to make
(as Phinuit had put it) "in the dark of the moon."
Not that he made the mistake of despising those two social malcontents,
Phinuit and Jules, that rogue adventurer Monk, that grasping courtesan
Liane Delorme.
Individually and collectively Lanyard accounted that quartet uncommonly
clever, resourceful, audacious, unscrupulous, and potentially ruthless,
utterly callous to compunctions when their interests were jeopardised.
But it was inconceivable that he should fail to outwit and frustrate
them, who had the love and faith of Eve de Montalais to honour,
cherish, and requite.
Growing insight into the idiosyncrasies of the men left him undismayed.
He perceived the steel of inflexible purpose beneath the windy egotism
of Phinuit. The pompous histrionism of Monk, he knew, was merely a
shell for the cold, calculating, undeviating selfishness that too
frequently comes with advancing years. Nevertheless these two were
factors whose functionings might be predicted.
It was Liane Delorme who provided the erratic equation. Her woman's
mind was not only the directing intelligence, it was as eccentric as
quicksilver, infinitely supple and corrupt, Oriental in its
trickishness and impenetrability. Already it had conceived some project
involving him which he could by no means divine or even guess at
without a sense of wasting time.
Trying to put himself in her place, Lanyard believed that he would
never have neglected the opportunity that, so far as she knew, had been
hers, to steal away from Paris while he slept and leave an enemy in his
way quite as dangerous as "Dupont" to gnaw his nails in the
mortification of defeat. Why she had not done so, why she had permitted
Monk and Phinuit to play their comedy of offering him the jewels,
passed understanding.
But of one thing Lanyard felt reasonably assured: now that she had him
to all intents and purposes her foiled and harmless captive aboard the
Sybarite, Liane would not keep him waiting long for enlightenment as to
her intentions.
He had to wait, however, that night and the next three before the woman
showed herself. She was reported ill with mal-de-mer. Lanyard thought
it quite likely that she was; before she was out of the Channel the
Sybarite was contesting a moderate gale from the Southwest. On the
other hand, he imagined that Liane might sensibly be making seasickness
an excuse to get thoroughly rested and settled in her mind as to her
course with him.
So he schooled himself to be patient, and put in his time to good
profit taking the measures of his shipmates and learning his way about
ship.
The Sybarite seemed unnecessarily large for a pleasure boat. Captain
Monk had designated her a ship of nine hundred tons. Certainly she had
room and to spare on deck as well as below for the accommodation of
many guests in addition to the crew of thirty required for her
navigation and their comfort. A good all-weather boat, very steady in a
seaway, her lines were nevertheless fine, nothing in her appearance in
the least suggested a vessel of commercial character--"all yacht" was
what Monk called her.
The first mate, a Mr. Swain, was a sturdy Britisher with a very red
face and cool blue eyes, not easily impressed; if Lanyard were not in
error, Mr. Swain entertained a private opinion of the lot of them,
Captain Monk included, decidedly uncomplimentary. But he was a civil
sort, though deficient in sense of humour and inclined to be a bit
abrupt in a preoccupied fashion.
Mr. Collison, the second mate, was another kind entirely, an American
with the drawl of the South in his voice, a dark, slender man with eyes
quick and shrewd. His manners were excellent, his reserve notable,
though he seemed to derive considerable amusement from what he saw of
the passengers, going on his habit of indulging quiet smiles as he
listened to their communications. He talked very little and played an
excellent game of poker.
The chief engineer was a Mr. Mussey, stout, affable, and cynic, a heavy
drinker, untidy about his person and exacting about his engine-room, a
veteran of his trade and--it was said--an ancient croney of Monk's.
There was, at all events, a complete understanding evident between
these two, though now and again, especially at table, when Monk was
putting on something more than his customary amount of side, Lanyard
would observe Mussey's eyes fixed in contemplation upon his superior
officer, with a look in them that wanted reading. He was nobody's fool,
certainly not Monk's, and at such times Lanyard would have given more
than a penny for Mussey's thoughts.
Existing in daily contact, more or less close, with these gentlemen,
observing them as they went to and fro upon their lawful occasions,
Lanyard often speculated as to their attitude toward this lawless
errand of the Sybarite's, of which they could hardly be unsuspicious
even if they were not intimate with its true nature. And remembering
what penalties attach to apprehension in the act of smuggling, even
though it be only a few cases of champagne, he thought it a wild risk
for them to run for the sake of their daily wage.
Something to this effect he intimated to Phinuit.
"Don't worry about this lot," that one replied. "They're wise birds,
tough as they make 'em, ready for anything; hand-picked down to the
last coal-passer. The skipper isn't a man to take fool chances, and
when he recruited this crew, he took nobody he couldn't answer for.
They're more than well paid, and they'll do as they're told and keep
their traps as tight as clams'."
"But, I take it, they were signed on before this present voyage was
thought of; while you seem to imply that Captain Monk anticipated
having to depend upon these good fellows in unlawful enterprises."
"Maybe he did, at that," Phinuit promptly surmised, with a bland eye.
"I wouldn't put it past him. The skipper's deep, and I'll never tell
you what he had in the back of his mind when he let Friend Boss
persuade him to take command of a pleasure yacht. Because I don't know.
If it comes to that, the owner himself never confided in me just what
the large idea was in buying this ark for a plaything. Yachting for fun
is one thing; running a young floating hotel is something else again."