The Lone Wolf Part 31

But she was no more there: the bench was vacant, the garden deserted, the gateway yawning on the street.

With a low, stifled cry, Lanyard turned from the bench and stumbled out to the junction of the cross-street. But nowhere in their several perspectives could he see anything that moved.

After some time he returned to the garden and quartered it with the thoroughness of a pointer beating a covert. But he did this hopelessly, bitterly aware that the outcome would be precisely what it eventually was, that is to say, nothing....

He was kneeling beside the bench--scrutinizing the turf with microscopic attention by aid of his flash-lamp, seeking some sign of struggle to prove she had not left him willingly, and finding none--when a voice brought him momentarily out of his distraction.

He looked up wildly, to discover Ducroy standing over him, his stout person chastely swathed in a quilted dressing-gown and trousers, his expression one of stupefaction.

"Well, monsieur--well?" the Minister of War demanded irritably.

"What--I repeat--what are you doing there?"

Lanyard essayed response, choked up, and gulped. He rose and stood swaying, showing a stricken face.

"Eh?" Ducroy insisted with an accent of exasperation. "Why do you stand glaring at me like that--eh? Come, monsieur: what ails you? I have arranged everything, I say. Where is mademoiselle?"

Lanyard made a broken gesture.

"Gone!" he muttered forlornly.

Instantly the countenance of the stout Frenchman was lightened with a gleam of eager interest--inveterate romantic that he was!--and he stepped nearer, peering closely into the face of the adventurer.

"Gone?" he echoed. "Mademoiselle? Your sweetheart, eh?"

Lanyard a.s.sented with a disconsolate nod and sigh. Impatiently Ducroy caught him by the sleeve.

"Come!" he insisted, tugging--"but come at once into the house. Now, monsieur--now at length you enlist all one's sympathies! Come, I say!

Is it your desire that I catch my death of cold?"

Indifferently Lanyard suffered himself to be led away.

He was, indeed, barely conscious of what was happening. All his being was possessed by the thought that she had forsaken him. And he could well guess why: impossible for such an one as she to contemplate without a shudder a.s.sociation with the man who had been what he had been! Infatuate!--to have dreamed that she would tolerate the devotion of a criminal, that she could ever forget his ident.i.ty with the Lone Wolf. Inevitably--soon or late--she must have fled that ignominious thought in dread and horror, daring whatever consequences to escape and forget both it and him. And better now, perhaps, than later....

XVIII

ENIGMA

He found no reason to believe she had left him other than voluntarily, or that their adventures since the escape from the impa.s.se Stanislas had been attended upon by spies of the Pack. He could have sworn they hadn't been followed either to or from the rue des Acacias; their way had been too long and purposely too roundabout, his vigilance too lively, for any sort of surveillance to have been practised without his remarking some indication thereof, at one time or another.

On the other hand (he told himself) there was every reason to believe she hadn't left him to go back to Bannon; concerning whom she had expressed herself too forcibly to excuse a surmise that she had preferred his protection to the Lone Wolf's.

Reasoning thus, he admitted, one couldn't blame her. He could readily see how, illuded at first by a certain romantic glamour, she had not, until left to herself in the garden, come to clear perception of the fact that she was casting her lot with a common criminal's. Then, horror overmastering her of a sudden she had fled--wildly, blindly, he didn't doubt. But whither? He looked in vain for her at their agreed rendezvous, the Sacre Coeur. She had neither money nor friends in Paris.

True: she had mentioned some personal jewellery she planned to hypothecate. Her first move, then, would be to seek the mont-de-piete--not to force himself again upon her, but to follow at a distance and ward off interference on Bannon's part.

The Government p.a.w.n-shop had its invitation for Lanyard himself: he was there before the doors were open for the day; and fortified by loans negotiated on his watch, cigarette-case, and a ring or two, retired to a cafe commanding a view of the entrance on the rue des Blancs-Manteaux, and settled himself against a day-long vigil.

It wasn't easy; drowsiness buzzed in his brain and weighted his eyelids; now and again, involuntarily, he nodded over his gla.s.s of black coffee. And when evening came and the mont-de-piete closed for the night, he rose and stumbled off, wondering if possibly he had napped a little without his knowledge and so missed her visit.

Engaging obscure lodgings close by the rue des Acacias, he slept till nearly noon of the following day, then rose to put into execution a design which had sprung full-winged from his brain at the instant of wakening.

He had not only his car but a chauffeur's license of long standing in the name of Pierre Lamier--was free, in short, to range at will the streets of Paris. And when he had levied on the stock of a second-hand clothing shop and a chemist's, he felt tolerably satisfied it would need sharp eyes--whether the Pack's or the Prefecture's--to identify "Pierre Lamier" with either Michael Lanyard or the Lone Wolf.

His face, ears and neck he stained a weather-beaten brown, a discreet application of rouge along his cheekbones enhancing the effect of daily exposure to the winter winds and rains of Paris; and he gave his hands an even darker shade, with the added verisimilitude of finger-nails inked into permanent mourning. Also, he refrained from shaving: a stubble of two days' neglect bristled upon his chin and jowls. A rusty brown ulster with cap to match, shoddy trousers boasting conspicuous stripes of leaden colour, and patched boots completed the disguise.

Monsieur and madame of the conciergerie he deceived with a yarn of selling his all to purchase the motor-car and embark in business for himself; and with their blessing, sallied forth to scout Paris diligently for sight or sign of the woman to whom his every heart-beat was dedicated.

By the close of the third day he was ready to concede that she had managed to escape without his aid.

And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements of the American following the fire at Troyon's.

As for Troyon's, it was now nothing more than a gaping excavation choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death in the holocaust; the fact that their bodies hadn't been recovered was no longer a matter for comment.

In short, Paris had already lost interest in the affair.

Even so, it seemed, had the Pack lost interest in the Lone Wolf; or else his disguise was impenetrable. Twice he saw De Morbihan "flanning"

elegantly on the Boulevards, and once he pa.s.sed close by Popinot; but neither noticed him.

Toward midnight of the third day, Lanyard, driving slowly westward on the boulevard de la Madeleine, noticed a limousine of familiar aspect round a corner half a block ahead and, drawing up in front of Viel's, discharge four pa.s.sengers.

The first was Wertheimer; and at sight of his rather striking figure, decked out in evening apparel from Conduit street and Bond, Lanyard slackened speed.

Turning as he alighted, the Englishman offered his hand to a young woman. She jumped down to the sidewalk in radiant attire and a laughing temper.

Involuntarily Lanyard stopped his car; and one immediately to the rear, swerving out to escape collision, shot past, its driver cursing him freely; while a sergent de ville scowled darkly and uttered an imperative word.

He pulled himself together, somehow, and drove on.

The girl was entering the restaurant by way of the revolving door, Wertheimer in attendance; while De Morbihan, having alighted, was lending a solicitous arm to Bannon.

Quite automatically the adventurer drove on, rounded the Madeleine, and turned up the boulevard Malesherbes. Paris and all its brisk midnight traffic swung by without claiming a t.i.the of his interest: he was mainly conscious of lights that reeled dizzily round him like a mult.i.tude of malicious, mocking eyes....

At the junction with the boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts.

So, it seemed, he had all along been her dupe; all the while that he had been ostentatiously shielding her from harm and diffidently discovering every evidence of devotion, she had been laughing in her sleeve and planning to return to the service she pretended to despise, with her report of a fool self-duped.

A great anger welled in his bosom.

Turning round, he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel's until the party reappeared, something after one o'clock.

It was plain that they had supped merrily; the girl seemed in the gayest humour, Wertheimer a bit exhilarated, De Morbihan much amused; even Bannon--bearing heavily on the Frenchman's arm--was chuckling contentedly. The party piled back into De Morbihan's limousine and was driven up the avenue des Champs elysees, pausing at the elysee Palace Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl--his daughter?--whoever she was!

Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn't trouble to ascertain. He drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many hours: bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart.

But for all his anguish, he continued in an uncertain temper. He had turned his back on the craft of which he was acknowledged master--for a woman's sake; for nothing else (he argued) had he dedicated himself to poverty and honest effort; and what little privation he had already endured was hopelessly distasteful to him. The art of the Lone Wolf, his consummate cunning and subtlety, was still at his command; with only himself to think of, he was profoundly contemptuous of the antagonism of the Pack; while none knew better than he with what ease the riches of careless Paris might be diverted to his own pockets. A single step aside from the path he had chosen--and tomorrow night he might dine at the Ritz instead of in some sordid cochers' cabaret!

And since no one cared--since _she_ had betrayed his faith--what mattered?