Alias The Lone Wolf - Louis Joseph Vance
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"It is not necessary, messieurs," she said. "I regret very much to have
inconvenienced you, although of course it will make no difference in
your bill; but I have brought you here to no purpose. The necessity for
my contemplated journey no longer exists."
There were expressions of surprise to which she put an end with the
words, accompanied by a charming smile: "Frankly, messieurs, I am
afraid you will have to make allowances for the traditional
inconsistency of my sex: I have simply changed my mind."
There was nothing more to be said. Openly more than a little mystified,
the men withdrew.
The smile with which she dismissed them lingered, delightful and
enigmatic, as Eve recognised the stupefaction with which Duchemin moved
to remonstrate with her.
"Madame!" he cried in a low voice of wonder and protest--"why did you
do that? Why let them go without telling them--?"
"I must have had a reason, don't you think, Monsieur Duchemin?"
"I don't understand you, madame. You treat the loss of jewels as if it
must be a secret private to ourselves, to you and to me!"
"Possibly that is my wish, monsieur." He gave a gesture of
bewilderment. "Perhaps," she continued, meeting his blank stare with
eyes in which amusement gave place to a look almost apologetic yet
utterly kind--"perhaps I have more faith in you..."
Duchemin bowed his head over hands so tightly knitted that the knuckles
were white with strain.
"You would not have faith," he said in a low voice, "if you knew--"
She interrupted in a gentle voice: "Are you sure?"
"--What I must tell you!"
"My friend," she said: "tell me nothing that would distress you."
He did not immediately reply; the struggle going on within him was only
too plainly betrayed by engorged veins upon his forehead and exceeding
pallor of countenance.
"If you had told those detectives," he said at length, without looking
up, "you must have known very soon. They must have found me out without
too much delay. And who in the world would ever believe anybody else
guilty when they learned that Andre Duchemin, your guest for three
weeks, was only an alias for Michael Lanyard, otherwise the Lone Wolf?"
"But you are wrong, monsieur," she replied, without the long pause of
surprise he had anticipated. "I should not have believed you guilty."
Dumb with wonder, he showed her a haggard face. And she had for him, in
the agony and the abasement of his soul, still quivering from the rack
of emotion that alone could have extorted his confession--she had for
him the half-smile, tender and compassionate, that it is given to most
men to see but once in a lifetime on the lips and in the eyes of the
woman beloved. "Then you knew--!"
"I suspected."
"How long--?"
"Since the night those strange people were here and tried to make you
unhappy with their stupid talk of the Lone Wolf. I suspected, then; and
when I came to know you better, I felt quite sure..."
"And now you _know_--yet hesitate to turn me over to the police!"
"No such thought has ever entered my head. You see--I'm afraid you
don't quite understand me--I have faith in you."
"But why?"
She shook her head. "You mustn't ask me that."
At the end of a long moment he said in a broken voice: "Very well: I
won't ... Not yet awhile ... But this great gift of faith in me--I
can't accept that without trying to repay it."
"If you accept, my friend, you repay."
"No," said Michael Lanyard--"that's not enough. Your jewels must come
back to you, if I go to the ends of the earth to find them. And"--man's
undying vanity would out--"if there's anyone living who can find them
for you, it is I."
XI
AU REVOIR
Early in the afternoon Eve de Montalais made it possible for Lanyard to
examine the safe in her boudoir without exciting comment in the
household. He was nearly an hour thus engaged, but brought back to the
drawing-room, in addition to the heavy magnifying glass which he had
requisitioned to eke out his eyesight, only a face of disappointment.
"Nothing," he retorted to Eve. "Evidently a gentleman of rigidly formal
habits, our friend of last night--wouldn't dream of calling at any hour
without his gloves on.... I've been over every inch of the safe,
outside and in, and the frame of the screen too, but--nothing. However,
I've been thinking a bit as well, I hope to some purpose."
The woman nodded intently as he drew up his chair and sat down.
"You have made a plan," she stated rather than enquired.
"I won't call it that, not yet. We've got too little to go on. But one
or two things seem fairly obvious, therefore must not be left out of
consideration. Assuming for the sake of argument that Mr. Whitaker Monk
and his lot had a hand in this--"
"Ah! you think that?"
"I admit I'm unfair. But first they quarrel with my sense of the normal
by being too confoundedly picturesque, too rich and brilliant, too
sharp and smart and glib, too--well!--theatrical; like characters from
the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And
then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what
right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?"
"Leading the talk up to my jewels, you mean?"
"I mean every move they made: all too suspiciously smooth, too well
rehearsed in effect. That stop to dine in Nant with the storm coming
on, when they could easily have made Millau before it broke: what else
was that for but to stage a 'break-down' at your door at a time when it
would be reasonable to beg the shelter and hospitality of your roof?
Then Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes--whoever _she_ is--must get her feet
wet, an excellent excuse for asking to be introduced to your boudoir,
so she may change her shoes and stockings and incidentally spy out the
precise location of your safe. And when their ear is hauled into the
garage, Mr. Phinuit must go to help, which gives him a chance to stroll
at leisure through the lower part of the house and note every easy way
of breaking in. Mr. Monk casually notes your likeness to the little
girl he once met, _he_ says, in your father's office; something you
tell me you don't recall at all. And that places you as the veritable
owner of the Anstruther jewels, and no mistake. Then--Madame de Lorgnes
guiding the conversation by secret signals which I intercept--somebody
recognises me as the Lone Wolf, in spite of the work of years and a
new-grown beard; and you are obliquely warned that, if your jewels
should happen to disappear it's more than likely the Lone Wolf will
prove to be the guilty party. At any rate, they will be ever so much
obliged if you'll believe he is, it'll save so much trouble all around.
Finally: when your ex-chauffeur--what's his name--?" "Albert Dupont."
"A name as unique in France as John Smith is in England ... When Albert
Dupont tries to take my life, as a simple and natural act of
vendetta--"
"You really think it was that?"
"I recognised the beast when he let off that pistol at my head. I was
in his way here, and he owed me one besides for my interference at
Montpellier that night.... When Dupont half murders me and I'm laid up
on your hands for nearly a month, our friends with designs on your
jewels thoughtfully wait before they strike till I am able to be up and
about, consequently in a position to be accused of a crime which no one
would put past the Lone Wolf. Oh, I think we can fairly count Mr. Monk
and his friends in on this coup!"
"I am sure of it," said Eve de Montalais. "But Albert: is he one of
them, their employee or confrere?"
"Dupont? I fancy not. I may be wrong, but I believe he is entirely on
his own--quite independent of the Monk party."
"But his attack on us at Montpellier, and later on you here, coming at
about the same time as their visit--"
"Coincidence, if you ask me. The weight of probability is against any
collusion between the two parties."
"Please explain..."
"Dupont is an Apache of Paris. The language he used to me when we
fought in that carriage at Montpellier was the slang of the lowest
order of Parisian criminal, used spontaneously, under stress of great
excitement, with no intent to mislead. These other people were--if
anything but poor misjudged lambs--swell mobsmen, the elite of the
criminal world. The two castes never work together because they can't
trust each other. The swell mobsman works with his head and only kills
when cornered. The Apache kills first, as a matter of instinct, and
then thinks--to the best of his ability. The Apache knows the swell
mobsman can outwit him. The swell mobsman knows the Apache will
assassinate him at the first hint of a suspicion of his good faith. So
they rarely if ever make use of each other."
"You say 'rarely.' But possibly in this instance?"
"I think not. Dupont was employed as your chauffeur, you've told me,
upwards of a month. He had ample opportunity to familiarise himself
with the premises and pass the information on, if acting in connivance
with those others. But we know he didn't, or they would never have
shown themselves here in order to secure information they couldn't have
got otherwise."
"I see, monsieur," said the woman. "Then you think the thief may have
been any one of the Monk party--"
"Or several of them acting in concert," Lanyard interrupted, smiling.
"Or Albert."
"Not Dupont. Unless I underestimate him gravely he is incapable of such
finesse. He is a thug first, a thief afterwards. He would have killed
me out of hand if it had been he who had me at his mercy, down here, in
the dark. Nor would he have been able to open the safe without using an
explosive. That, indeed, is why, as I understand him, Dupont attacked
you at Montpellier. If he could have disposed of you there, he would
have returned here to work upon the safe and blow it at his leisure,
fobbing the servants off with some yarn, or if they proved too
troublesome intimidating them, killing one or two if necessary."
"But why has he made no other attempt--?"
"You forget the police have been making the neighbourhood fairly warm
for him. Besides, he wanted me out of the way before he tried
housebreaking. If he had succeeded in murdering me that night, I don't
doubt he would have burglarised the chateau soon after. But he failed;
the police were stirred up to renewed activity; and if Monsieur Dupont
is not now safely back in Paris, hiding in some warren of Montmartre or
Belleville, I am much mistaken in the man--a type I know well."
"Eliminating Albert then--"
"There remains the Monk lot."
"You are satisfied that one or all of its members committed the theft
last night?"
"Not less than two, probably; say Phinuit, at a venture, and his
alleged brother, Jules, the chauffeur, both Americans, adventurous,
intelligent and resourceful. Yes; I believe that."
"And your plan of campaign is based on this conclusion?"
"That's a big name"--Lanyard's smile was diffident, a plea for
suspended judgment on his lack of inventiveness--"for a lame idea. I
believe our only course is to let them believe they have been
successful in every way, and so lull them into carelessness with a
false sense of security."
A wrinkle appeared between the woman's eyebrows. "How do you propose to
accomplish that?" she asked in a voice that betrayed ready antagonism
to what her intuition foresaw.
"Very simply. They hoped to shift suspicion on to my shoulders. Well,
let them believe they have done so."
The waiting hostility developed in a sharp negative: "Ah, no!"
"But yes," Lanyard insisted. "It's so simple. Nobody here knows as yet
that your jewels have been stolen, only you and I. Very well: you will
not discover your loss and announce it till to-morrow morning. By that
time Andre Duchemin will have disappeared mysteriously. The room to
which he will retire to-night will be found vacant in the morning, his
bed unslept in. Obviously the scoundrel would not fly the chateau
between two suns without a motive. Inform the police of the fact and
let them draw their own conclusions: before evening all France will
know that Andre Duchemin is suspected of stealing the Montalais jewels,
and is a fugitive from justice."
"No, monsieur," the woman iterated decidedly.
"You will observe," he continued, lightly persuasive, "it is Andre
Duchemin who will be accused, madame, not Michael Lanyard, never the
Lone Wolf! The heart of man is in truth a dark forest, and vanity the
only light to guide us through its mazes. I confess I am jealous of my
reputation as a reformed character. But Andre Duchemin is merely a
name, a nom de guerre; you may saddle him with all the crimes in the
calendar if you like, and welcome. For when I say he will disappear
to-night, I mean it quite literally: Andre Duchemin will nevermore be
heard of in this world."
She had a smile quivering on her lips, yet shook her head.
"Monsieur forgets I learned to know him under the name of Duchemin."
"Ah, madame! do not make me think too kindly of the poor fellow; for
whether we like it or not, he is doomed. And if madame, in her charity,
means to continue to know me, it must be Michael Lanyard whom she
suffers to claim a little portion of her friendship."
Her smile grew wistful, with a tenderness he had the grace not to
recognise. Abashed, incredulous, he turned aside his gaze. Then without
warning he found her hand at rest in his. "More than a little,
monsieur, more than a little friendship only!"
He closed the hand in both his own.
"Then be kind to me, madame, be still more kind; give me this chance to
find and restore your jewels. It is the only way, this plan of mine. If
we adopt it no one will suffer, only an old alias that is no longer
useful. If we do not adopt it, I may not succeed, for the true authors
of this crime may prove too wary for me; and the end will be that my
best friends will believe the worst of me; even you, madame, even you
will not be sure your faith was not misplaced."
"Enough!" the woman begged in a stifled voice. "It shall be as you
wish--if you will have it so."
She sought to take away her hand; but Lanyard kissed it before he let
it go. And immediately she rose with a murmured, half articulate
excuse, and went from the room, leaving him to struggle with himself
and that which was in him which was stronger than himself, his hunger
for her love, to deny stubbornly the evidence of his senses and end by
persuading himself against his will that he was nothing to her more
than an object of common kindness such as she would extend to anyone in
similar plight.
Because he never could be more....
Those few last hours in the chateau passed swiftly enough, most of them
in making plans for his "escape," something which demanded a deal of
puzzling over maps and railway guides in the seclusion of his room.
Since the next noon must find Andre Duchemin a criminal published and
proscribed, he had need to utilise every shred of cunning at his
command if he were to reach Paris without being arrested and without
undue loss of time.
To take a train at Millau would be simply to invite pursuit; for that
was the likeliest point an escaping criminal would strike for, a
stopping place for all trains north and southbound. Telegraphic advices
would cause every such train to be searched to a certainty.
Furthermore, Lanyard had no desire to enter Paris by the direct route
from Millau. Not the police alone, but others, enemies even more
dangerous, might be expecting him by that route.
On the other hand, the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde, was
equally out of the question, since to gain it one must pass through
Nant, where Andre Duchemin was known, and risk being seen, while at
Combe-Redonde itself the station people would be apt to remember the
monsieur who had recently created a sensation by despatching a code
telegram to London.
There was nothing for it, then, but a twenty-mile walk due west across
the Causse Larzac by night to Tournemire, where one could get trains in
any one of four directions.
Constraint marked that last dinner with Eve de Montalais. They were
alone. Louise was dining by the bedside of Madame de Sevenie, who
remained indisposed, a shade more so than yesterday. The ill health of
this poor lady, indeed, was the excuse Eve had given for putting off
her trip to Paris.
Their talk was framed in stilted phrases, inconsecutive. They dared not
converse naturally, each fearing to say too little or too much. For the
memory of that surge of emotion, transient though it had been, in which
their discussion had culminated, that afternoon, stood between them
like a warning ghost, an implacable finger sealing its lips and theirs
with the sign of silence.
But talk they must, for the benefit of the servants, and talk they did
after an uneasy fashion, making specious arrangements for Lanyard's
departure on the morrow, when Eve was to drive him to Millau to catch
the afternoon rapide for Paris.
Nor was it much better after dinner in the drawing-room. Consciousness
of each other and consciousness of self, as each fought to master the
emotions inspired by thoughts of their near parting, drove both into
the refuge of a dry, insincere, cool impersonality. Lanyard
communicated nothing of his plans, though aware his failure to do so
might be misconstrued, instil an instinctive if possibly unconscious
resentment to render the situation still more difficult. The truth was,
he could barely trust himself to speak lest mere words work on his
guard like tiny streams that sap the strength of the dike till it
breaks and looses the pent and devastating seas.
At half past nine, ending a long silence, Lanyard sat forward in his
chair, hesitated, and covered his hesitation by lighting a cigarette.
"I must go now," he said, puffing out the match.
He was aware of her almost imperceptible start of surprise.
"So soon?" she breathed.
"The moon rises not long after ten, and I want to get away without
being seen either by the servants or by--anybody who might happen to be
passing. You understand."
She nodded. He lingered, frowning at his cigarette.
"With permission, I will write..."
"Please."
"When I have anything to report."
She turned her head full face to him, letting him see her fluttering,
indulgent smile.
"You must wait for that?"
"Perhaps," he faltered--"at least, I hope--it won't be long."
"You must wait for that?"
"Perhaps," he faltered--"at least, I hope--it won't be long." "I shall
be waiting," she told him simply--"watching every post for word from
you. I shan't worry, only for you."
He got up slowly from his chair, and stood half choking with
unutterable words.
"I know no way to thank you," he managed to say at last.
"For what?"
"For everything--kindness, charity, sympathy--"
"What are those things?" she demanded with a nervous little laugh.
"Words! Just words that you and I use to hide behind, like timid
children..." She rose suddenly and offered him her hand. "But I don't
think it's any use, my friend, I'm quite sure that neither of us is
deceived. No: say nothing more; the time is not yet and--we both can
wait. Only know I understand ... Go now"--her fingers tightened round
his--"but don't stay away any longer than you must, don't be influenced
by silly traditions, false and foolish standards when you think of me.
Go now"--she freed her hand and turned away--"but oh, come safely back
to me, my dear!"
XII
TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN
Under a sky whose misty silver pulsed with waves of violet light and
dim glimmerings of gold, Lanyard, grey with the dust and weariness of
twenty leagues of heavy walking, trudged into the sleeping streets of
the town of Tournemire.
In the railway station--whose buvette served him such listless
refreshment as one may find at railway lunch-counters and nowhere else
the world over--a train was waiting with an apathetic crew and a
sprinkling of sleepy passengers, for the most part farm and village
folk of the department. There was nowhere in evidence any figure
resembling that of an agent de police.
Lanyard made enquiry, found that the train was destined for Le Vigan,
on the eastern slope of the Cevennes, and purchased a ticket for that
point.
Making himself as comfortable as might be in a depressingly third-rate
second-class compartment (there was no first class, and the third was
far too richly flavoured for his stomach) he cultivated a doze as the
train pulled out. But, driven as provincial trains habitually are, in a
high spirit of devil-may-care, its first stop woke him up with a series
of savage, back-breaking jolts which were translated into jerks when it
started on again and fiendishly reiterated at every suspicion of a
way-station on the course. So that he presently abandoned all hope of
sleep and sought solace in tobacco and the shifting views afforded by
the windows. Penetrating the upper valley of the Cernon, the railroad
skirted the southern boundary of the Causse Larzac, then laboriously
climbed up to the plateau itself; and Lanyard roused to the fact that
he was approaching familiar ground from a new angle: the next stop
would be Combe-Redonde.
The day was still in its infancy when that halt was made. Aside from
the station agent, not a soul waited upon the platform. But one or two
passengers were set down and, as the engine began to snort anew, a man
darted from behind the tiny structure that housed ticket-office and
waiting-room, galloped heavily across the platform, and with nothing to
spare threw himself into the compartment immediately behind that
wherein Lanyard sat alone.
This manoeuvre was performed so briskly and unexpectedly that Lanyard
caught barely a glimpse of the fellow; but one glimpse was enough to
convince him he had been wrong in assuming that Monsieur Albert Dupont
had sneaked back to Paris to hide from the authorities after failing to
assassinate Andre Duchemin more than three weeks ago.
But why--assuming one were not misled by a chance likeness to that
heavy but athletic figure so well-remembered--why had Dupont lingered
so long in the neighbourhood, in hourly peril of arrest? And why this
sudden departure in the chill break of dawn, a move so timed and
executed that it wore every sign of haste and fear?
No reasonable explanation offered in solution of either of these
riddles; unless, indeed, it were reasonable to believe that lust for
vengeance was the ruling passion in the Dupont nature, that the
creature had hung about the chateau in hope of getting another chance
at Duchemin, and had decided to give it up only on discovering
--inexplicably, at this hour--that the latter had stolen
away under cover of night. But Lanyard didn't believe that. Neither did
he believe that Dupont had had any hand in the robbery of night before
last, and was now in tardy flight. In truth, he didn't know what to
think, and the wildest flights of an imagination provoked by this
mystery were tame and timid in contrast with the truth as he was later
to learn it.
To an amateur in sensations there was true piquancy in the thought that
one was travelling in company with a thug who had already had two tries
for one's life and would not hesitate to essay a third; in the same
coach, separated only by the thin partition between the compartments,
safe only in the thug's unconsciousness of one's proximity! And this
without the privilege of denouncing the man to the police; for to do so
now would be to enmesh in the toils of the law not only Albert Dupont,
would-be assassin, but Andre Duchemin, charged with stealing the
Montalais jewels.
Lanyard would have given something for a peep-hole in the partition, to
be able to study the countenance of Dupont unaware that he was under
scrutiny. But he had to content himself with keeping vigil at the
windows, making sure that Dupont did not drop off at some one of those
many way-stations which the train was so scrupulous never to slight.
Monsieur Dupont, however, did not budge a foot out of his compartment
before the end of the run; and then Lanyard, purposely delaying, saw
Dupont get down from the compartment astern and make for the
booking-office at Le Vigan without a glance to right or
left--evidencing not the remotest interest in his late company on the
train, but rather a complete indifference, an absolute assurance that
he had nothing now to fear, and with this a preoccupation of mind so
thoroughgoing that Lanyard was able to edge up behind him, when he
paused at the guichet, and eavesdrop on his consultation with the clerk
of the ticket bureau.
Dupont desired ardently to proceed to Lyons with the least avoidable
delay. Under such conditions, according to the Indicateur des Chemins
de Fer, his best available route was via Nimes, where the next express
from Le Vigan made close connection with a northbound train rapide, due
to arrive in Lyons late in the afternoon.
There was, however, this drawback; or so the clerk declared after a
dubious summing up of the disreputable Dupont ensemble: whereas one
might travel any class as far as Nimes, the rapide for Lyons carried
only passengers of the first class.