Alias the Lone Wolf Part 15

Dumb with wonder, he showed her a haggard face. And she had for him, in the agony and the abas.e.m.e.nt 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 compa.s.sionate, 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 gla.s.s 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. a.s.suming 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 pa.s.s 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."