Alias The Lone Wolf - Louis Joseph Vance
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"But you are asking me to renounce something upon which I have set much
store for many years, monsieur. I can't be expected to do that in an
hour or even a day."
You shall have your answer, I promise you, by the time we make our
landfall--perhaps before."
"The sooner, the better."
"Are you sure, monsieur? But one thought it was the tortoise who won
the famous race."
"Take all the time you need," Captain Monk conceded generously, "to
come to a sensible decision."
"But how good you are to me, monsieur!"
XXV
THE MALCONTENT
Singular though the statement may seem, when one remembers the
conditions that circumscribed his freedom of action on board the
Sybarite, that he stood utterly alone in that company of conspirators
and their creatures, alone and unarmed, with never a friend to guard
his back or even to whisper him one word of counsel, warning or
encouragement, with only his naked wits and hands to fortify and
sustain his heart: it is still no exaggeration to say that Lanyard got
an extraordinary amount of private diversion out of those last few
days.
From the hour when Liane Delorme, Phinuit and Captain Monk, in conclave
solemnly assembled at the instance of the one last-named, communicated
their collective mind in respect of his interesting self, the man was
conscious of implicit confidence in a happy outcome of the business,
with a conscientiousness less rational than simply felt, a sort of
bubbling exhilaration in his mood that found its most intelligible
expression in the phrase, which he was wont often to iterate to
himself: Ca va bien--that goes well!
That--the progressive involution of this insane imbroglio--went very
well indeed, in Lanyard's reckoning; he could hardy wish, he could not
reasonably demand that it should go better.
He knew now with what design Liane Delorme had made him a party to this
sea adventure and intimate with every detail of the conspiracy; and he
knew to boot why she had offered him the free gift of her love; doubt
as to the one, scruples inspired by the other--that reluctance which
man cannot but feel to do a hurt to a heart that holds him dear,
however scanty his response to its passion--could no longer influence
him to palter in dealing with the woman. The revelation had in effect
stricken shackles from Lanyard's wrists, now when he struck it would be
with neither hesitation nor compunction.
As to that stroke alone, its hour and place and fashion, he remained
without decision. He had made a hundred plans for its delivery, and one
of them, that seemed the wildest, he thought of seriously, as something
really feasible. But single-handed! That made it difficult. If only one
could devise some way to be in two places at one time and the same! An
impossibility? He wouldn't deny that. But Lanyard had never been one to
be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility. He had known
too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when
subjected to a bold and resolute assault. He wouldn't say die.
Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so
long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to
and did. What imbecility! What an escape had been his when, in that
time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once
and for all time! But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve
he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his
contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the
everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility
foredoomed them to farcical failure.
Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an
answer to the question: What made the Law by whose decree man may
garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity?
That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings,
through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse
shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained....
But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons
were for himself alone. He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly,
giving nowhere any manner of offense: for could he tell in what
unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work
out his unfaltering purpose?
And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his
mind. Well, he gave no sign. Let them watch and wonder to their heart's
content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the
rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall.
Winds blew and fell, the sea rose and subsided, the Sybarite trudged on
into dull weather. The sky grew overcast; and Lanyard, daily scanning
the very heavens for a sign, accepted this for one, and prayed it might
hold. Nothing could be more calculated to nullify his efforts than to
have the landfall happen on a clear, calm night of stars.
He went to bed, the last night out, leaving a noisy gathering in the
saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept.
Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with
a clear head and every faculty on the qui vive--much as a man might
grope for a time in a dark strange room, then find a door and step out
into broad daylight.
Only there was no light other than in the luminous clarity of his mind.
Even the illumination in the saloon had been dimmed down for the night,
as he could tell by the tarnished gleam beneath his stateroom door.
Still, not everyone had gone to bed. The very manner of his waking
informed him that he was not alone; for the life Lanyard had led had
taught him to need no better alarm than the entrance of another person
into the place where he lay sleeping. All animals are like that, whose
lives hang on their vigilance.
Able to see nothing, he still felt a presence, and knew that it waited,
stirless, within arm's-length of his head. Without much concern, he
thought of Popinot, that "phantom Popinot" of Monk's derisive naming.
Well, if the vision Liane had seen on deck had taken material form here
in his stateroom, Lanyard presumed it meant another fight, and the
last, to a finish, that is to say, to a death.
Without making a sound, he gathered himself together, ready for a trap,
and as noiselessly lifted a hand toward the switch for the electric
light, set in the wall near the head of the bed. But in the same breath
he heard a whisper, or rather a mutter, a voice he could not place in
its present pitch.
"Awake, Monsieur Delorme?" it said. "Hush! Don't make a row, and never
mind the light."
His astonishment was so overpowering that instinctively his tensed
muscles relaxed and his hand fell back upon the bedding.
"Who the deuce----?"
"Not so loud. It's me--Mussey."
Lanyard echoed witlessly: "Mussey?"
"Yes. I don't wonder you're surprised, but if you'll be easy you'll
understand pretty soon why I had to have a bit of a talk with you
without anybody's catching on."
"Well," Lanyard said, "I'm damned!"
"I say!" The subdued mutter took on a note of anxiety. "It's all right,
isn't it? I mean, you aren't going to kick up a rumpus and spill the
beans? I guess you must think I've got a hell of a gall, coming in on
you like this, and I don't know as I blame you, but... Well, time's
getting short, only two more days at sea, and I couldn't wait any
longer for a chance to have a few minutes' chin with you."
The mutter ceased and held an expectant pause. Lanyard said nothing.
But he was conscious that the speaker occupied a chair by the bed, and
knew that he was bending near to catch his answer; for the air was
tainted with vinous breath. Yes: one required no stronger
identification, it was beyond any doubt the chief engineer of the
Sybarite.
"Say it's all right, won't you?" the mutter pleaded.
"I am listening," Lanyard replied--"as you perceive."
"I'll say it's decent of you--damned decent. Blowed if I'd take it as
calm as you, if I waked up to find somebody in my room."
"I believe," said Lanyard pointedly, "you stipulated for a few minutes'
chin with me. Time passes, Mr. Mussey. Get to your business, or let me
go to sleep again."
"Sharp, you are," commented the mutter. "I've noticed it in you. You'd
be surprised if you knew how much notice I've been taking of you."
"And flattered, I'm sure."
"Look here..." The mutter stumbled. "I want to ask a personal question.
Daresay you'll think it impertinent."
"If I do, be sure I shan't answer it."
"Well... it's this: Is or isn't your right name Lanyard, Michael
Lanyard?"
This time it was Lanyard who, thinking rapidly, held the pause so long
that his querist's uneasiness could not contain itself.
"Is that my answer? I mean, does your silence--?"
"That's an unusual name, Michael Lanyard," cautiously replied its
proprietor. "How did you get hold of it?"
"They say it's the right name of the Lone Wolf. Guess I don't have to
tell you who the Lone Wolf is."
"'They say'? Who, please, are 'they'?"
"Oh, there's a lot of talk going around the ship. You know how it is, a
crew will gossip. And God knows they've got enough excuse this cruise."
This was constructively evasive. Lanyard wondered who had betrayed him.
Phinuit? The tongue of that plain-spoken man was hinged in the middle;
but one couldn't feel certain. Liane Delorme had made much of the chief
engineer; though she seemed less likely to talk too much than anyone of
the ship's company but Lanyard himself. But then (one remembered of a
sudden) Monk and Mussey were by reputation old cronies; it wasn't
inconceivable that Monk might have let something slip...
"And what, Mr. Mussey, if I should admit I am Michael Lanyard?"
"Then I'll have something to say to you, something I think'll interest
you."
"Why not run the risk of interesting me, whoever I may be?"
Mussey breathed heavily in the stillness: the breathing of a cautious
man loath to commit himself.
"No," he said at length, in the clearest enunciation he had thus far
used. "No. If you're not Lanyard, I'd rather say nothing more--I'll
just ask you to pardon me for intruding and clear out."
"But you say there is some gossip. And where there is smoke, there must
be fire. It would seem safe to assume I am the man gossip says I am."
"Michael Lanyard?" the mutter persisted--"the Lone Wolf?"
"Yes, yes! What then?"
"I suppose the best way's to put it to you straight..."
"I warn you, you'll gain nothing if you don't."
"Then... to begin at the beginning... I've known Whit Monk a good long
time. Years I've known him. We've sailed together off and on ever since
we took to the sea; we've gone through some nasty scrapes together, and
done things that don't bear telling, and always shared the thick and
the thin of everything. Before this, if anybody had ever told me Whit
Monk would do a pal dirt, I'd've punched his head and thought no more
about it. But now..."
The mutter faltered. Lanyard preserved a sympathetic silence--a
silence, at least, which he hoped would pass as sympathetic. In
reality, he was struggling to suppress any betrayal of the exultation
that was beginning to take hold of him. Premature this might prove to
be, but it seemed impossible to misunderstand the emotion under which
the chief engineer was labouring or to underestimate its potential
value to Lanyard. Surely it would seem that his faith in his star had
been well-placed: was it not now--or all signs failed--delivering into
his hand the forged tool he had so desperately needed, for which he had
so earnestly prayed?
A heavy sigh issued upon the stillness, freighted with a deep and
desolating melancholy. For, it appeared, like all cynics, Mr. Mussey
was a sentimentalist at heart. And in the darkness that disembodied
voice took up its tale anew.
"I don't have to tell you what's going on between Whit and that lot
he's so thick with nowadays. You know, or you wouldn't be here."
"Isn't that conclusion what you Americans would call a little
previous?"
"Previous?" The mutter took a moment to con the full significance of
that adjective. "No: I wouldn't call it that. You see, on a voyage like
this--well, talk goes on, things get about, things are said aloud that
shouldn't be and get overheard and passed along; and the man who sits
back and listens and sifts what he hears is pretty likely to get a
tolerably good line on what's what. Of course there's never been any
secret about what the owner means to do with all this wine he's
shipped. We all know we're playing a risky game, but we're for the
owner--he isn't a bad sort, when you get to know him--and we'll go
through with it and take what's coming to us win or lose. Partly, of
course, because it'll mean something handsome for every man if we make
it without getting caught. But if you want to know what I think... I'll
tell you something..."
"But truly I am all attention."
"I think Whit Monk and Phinuit and mam'selle have framed the owner
between them."
"Can't say I quite follow..."
"I think they cooked up this smuggling business and kidded him into it
just to get the use of his yacht for their own purposes and at the same
time get him where he can't put up a howl if he finds out the truth.
Suppose he does..." The mutter became momentarily a deep-throated
chuckle of malice. "He's in so deep on the booze smuggling side he
dassent say a word, and that puts him in worse yet, makes him accessory
before the fact of criminal practices that'd made his hair stand on
end. Then, suppose they want to go on with the game, looting in Europe
and sneaking the goods into America with the use of his yacht: what's
he going to say, how's he going to stop them?"
Accepting these questions as purely rhetorical, Lanyard offered no
comment. After a moment the mutter resumed:
"Well, what do you think? Am I right or am I wrong?"
"Who knows, Mr. Mussey? One can only say, you seem to know something."
"I'll say I know something! A sight more than Whit Monk dreams I
know--as he'll find out to his sorrow before he's finished with Tom
Mussey."
"But"--obliquely Lanyard struck again at the heart of the mystery which
he found so baffling--"you seem so well satisfied with the bona fides
of your informant?"
There was a sound of stertorous breathing as the intelligence behind
the mutter grappled with this utterance. Then, as if the hint had
proved too fine--"I'm playing my hand face up with you, Mr. Lanyard. I
guess you can tell I know what I'm talking about."
"But what I cannot see is why you should talk about it to me,
monsieur."
"Why, because I and you are both in the same boat, in a manner of
speaking. We're both on the outside--shut out--looking in."
In a sort of mental aside, Lanyard reflected that mixed bathing for
metaphors was apparently countenanced under the code of cynics.
"Does one gather that you feel aggrieved with Captain Monk for not
making you a partner in his new associations?"
"For trying to put one over on me, an old pal... stood by him through
thick and thin... would've gone through fire for Whit Monk, and in my
way I have, many's the time. And now he hooks up with Phinuit and this
Delorme woman, and leaves me to shuffle my feet on the doormat... and
thinks I'll let him get away with it."
The voice in the dark gave a grunt of infinite contempt: "Like hell..."
"I understand your feelings, monsieur; and I ask you to believe in my
sympathy. But you said--if I remember--that we were in the same boat,
you and I; whereas I assure you Captain Monk has not abused my
friendship, since he has never had it."
"I know that well enough," said the mutter. "I don't mean you've got my
reasons for feeling sore; but I do mean you've got reason enough of
your own--"
"On what grounds do you say that?"
Another deliberate pause prefaced the reply: "You said a while ago I
knew something. Well--you said it. I and you've both been frozen out of
this deal and we're both meaning to take a hand whether they like it or
not. If that don't put us in the same boat I don't know..."
Perceiving he would get no more satisfaction, Lanyard schooled himself
to be politic for the time being.
"Say it is so, then... But I think you have something to propose."
"It's simple enough: When two people find themselves in the same boat
they've got to pull together if they want to get anywhere."
"You propose, then, an alliance?"
"That's the answer. Without you I can't do anything but kick over the
applecart for Whit Monk; and that sort of revenge is mighty
unsatisfactory. Without me--well: what can you do? I know you can get
that tin safe of Whit's open, when you feel like it, get the jewels and
all; but what show do you stand to get away with them? That is, unless
you've got somebody working in with you on board the ship. See here..."
The mutter sank into a husky whisper, and in order to be heard the
speaker bent so low over Lanyard that fumes of whiskey almost
suffocated the poor man in his bed.
"You've got a head, you've had experience, you know how... Well, go to
it: make your plans, consult with me, get everything fixed, lift the
loot; I'll stand by, fix up everything so's your work will go through
slick, see that you don't get hurt, stow the jewels where they won't be
found; and when it's all over, we'll split fifty-fifty. What d'you say?"
"Extremely ingenious, monsieur, but unfortunately impracticable."
"That's the last thing," stated the disappointed whisper, "I ever
thought a man like you would say."
"But it is obvious. We do not know each other."
"You mean, you can't trust me?"
"For that matter: how can you be sure you can trust me?"
"Oh, I guess I can size up a square guy when I see him."
"Many thanks. But why should I trust you, when you will not even be
quite frank with me?"
"How's that? Haven't I----"
"One moment: you refuse to name the source of your astonishingly
detailed information concerning this affair--myself included. You wish
me to believe you simply assume I am at odds with Captain Monk and his
friends. I admit it is true. But how should you know it? Ah, no, my
friend! either you will tell me how you learned this secret, or I must
beg you to let me get my sleep."
"That's easy. I heard Whit and Phinuit talking about you the other
night, on deck, when they didn't think anybody was listening."
Lanyard smiled into the darkness: no need to fret about fair play
toward this one! The truth was not in him, and by the same token the
traditional honour that obtains among thieves could not be.
He said, as if content, in the manner of a practical man dismissing all
immaterial considerations:
"As you say, the time is brief..."
"It'll have to be pulled off to-morrow night or not at all," the mutter
urged with an eager accent.
"My thought, precisely. For then we come to land, do we not?"
"Yes, and it'll have to be not long after dark. We ought to drop the
hook at midnight. Then"--the mutter was broken with hopeful
anxiety--"then you've decided you'll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?"
"But of course! What else can one do? As you have so fairly pointed
out: what is either of us without the other?"
"And it's understood: you're to lift the stuff, I'm to take care of it
till we can slip ashore, we're to make our getaway together--and the
split's to be fifty-fifty, fair and square?"
"I ask nothing better."
"Where's your hand?"
Two hands found each other blindly and exchanged a firm and inspiring
clasp--while Lanyard gave thanks for the night that saved his face from
betraying his mind.
Another deep sigh sounded a note of apprehensions at an end. A gruff
chuckle followed.
"Whit Monk! He'll learn something about the way to treat old friends."
And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss: "Him with his
airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the
lah-de-dah over them that's stood by him when he hadn't a red and was
glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like the Colonel's at
Colon--him!"
But Lanyard had been listening only with his ears; he hadn't the
slightest interest in Mr. Mussey's resentment of the affectations of
Captain Monk. For now his mad scheme had suddenly assumed a complexion
of comparative simplicity; given the co-operation of the chief
engineer, all Lanyard would need to contribute would be a little
headwork, a little physical exertion, a little daring--and complete
indifference, which was both well warranted and already his, to abusing
the confidence of Mr. Mussey.
"But about this affair to-morrow night," he interrupted impatiently:
"attend to me a little, if you please, my friend. Can you give me any
idea where we are, or will, approximately, at midnight to-night?"
"What's that go to do----?"
"Perhaps I ask only for my own information. But it may be that I have a
plan. If we are to work together harmoniously, Mr. Mussey, you must
learn to have a little confidence in me."
"Beg your pardon," said an humble mutter. "We ought to be somewhere off
Nantucket Shoals Lightship."
"And the weather: have you sufficient acquaintance with these latitudes
to foretell it, even roughly?"
"Born and brought up in Edgartown, made my first voyage on a tramp out
of New Bedford: guess I know something about the weather in these
latitudes! The wind's been hauling round from sou'west to south all
day. If it goes on to sou'east, it'll likely be thick to-morrow, with
little wind, no sea to speak of, and either rain or fog."
"So! Now to do what I will have to do, I must have ten minutes of
absolute darkness. Can that be arranged?"
"Absolute darkness?" The mutter had a rising inflexion of dubiety. "How
d'you mean?"
"Complete extinguishing of every light on the ship."
"My God!" the mutter protested. "Do you know what that means? No lights
at night, under way, in main-travelled waters! Why, by nightfall we ought
to be off Block Island, in traffic as heavy as on Fifth Avenue! No: that's
too much."
"Too bad," Lanyard uttered, philosophic. "And the thing could have been
done."
"Isn't there some other way?"
"Not with lights to hamper my operations. But if some temporary
accident were to put the dynamoes out of commission--figure to yourself
what would happen."
"There'd be hell to pay."
"Ah! but what else?"
"The engines would have to be slowed down so as to give no more than
steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle,
masthead, and side-lights, also for the engine room."
"And there would be excitement and confusion, eh? Everybody would make
for the deck, even the captain would leave his cabin unguarded long
enough..."
"I get you"--with a sigh. "It's wrong, all wrong, but--well, I suppose
it's got to be done."
Lanyard treated himself to a smile of triumph, there in the darkness.
XXVI
THE BINNACLE
It would have been ungrateful (Lanyard reflected over his breakfast) to
complain of a life so replete with experiences of piquant contrast.
It happened to one to lie for hours in a cubicle of blinding night,
hearkening to a voice like that of some nightmare weirdly become
articulate, a ghostly mutter that rose and fell and droned, broken by
sighs, grunts, stifled oaths, mean chuckles, with intervals of husky
whispering and lapses filled with a noise of wheezing respiration, all
wheedling and cajoling, lying, intimating and evading, complaining,
snarling, rambling, threatening, protesting, promising, and in the end
proposing an unholy compact for treachery and evil-doing--a voice that
might have issued out of some damned soul escaped for a little space of
time from the Pits of Torment, so utterly inhuman it sounded, so
completely discarnate and divorced from all relationship to any mortal
personality that even that reek of whiskey in the air, even that one
contact with a hard, hot hand, could not make it seem real.
And then it ceased and was no more but as a thing of dream that had
passed. And one came awake to a light and wholesome world furnished
with such solidly comforting facts as soaps and razors and hot and cold
saltwater taps; and subsequently one left one's stateroom to see, at
the breakfast table, leaden-eyed and flushed of countenance, an
amorphous lump of humid flesh in shapeless garments of soiled white
duck, the author of that mutter in the dark; who, lounging over a plate
of broken food and lifting a coffee cup in the tremulous hand of an
alcoholic, looked up with lacklustre gaze, gave a surly nod, and
mumbled the customary matutinal greeting:
"'Morning, Monseer Delorme."
It was all too weird....
To add to this, the chief engineer paid Lanyard no further heed at all,
though they were alone at table, and having noisily consumed his
coffee, rubbed his stubbled lips and chin with an egg-stained napkin,
rose, and without word or glance rolled heavily up the companionway.
The conduct of a careful man, accustomed to mind his eye. And
indisputably correct. One never knew who might be watching, what
slightest sign of secret understanding might not be seized upon and
read. Furthermore, Mr. Mussey had not stilled his mutter in the night
until their joint and individual lines of action had been elaborately
mapped out and agreed upon down to the smallest detail. It now remained
only for Lanyard to fill in somehow the waste time that lay between
breakfast and the hour appointed, then take due advantage of the
opportunity promised him.