The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  Finally Bourke drilled into his apprentice the three cardinal principles of successful cracksmanship: to know his ground thoroughly before venturing upon it; to strike and retreat with the swift precision of a hawk; to be friendless.

  And the last of these was the greatest.

  “You’re a promising lad,” he said—so often that Lanyard would almost wince from that formula of introduction—“a promising lad, though it’s sad I should be to say it, instead of proud as I am. For I’ve made you: but for me you’d long since have matriculated at La Tour Pointue and graduated with the canaille of the Santé. And in time you may become a first-chop operator, which I’m not and never will be; but if you do, ’twill be through fighting shy of two things. The first of them’s Woman, and the second is Man. To make a friend of a man you must lower your guard. Ordinarily ’tis fatal. As for Woman, remember this, m’lad: to let love into your life you must open a door no mortal hand can close. And God only knows what’ll follow in. If ever you find you’ve fallen in love and can’t fall out, cut the game on the instant, or you’ll end wearing stripes or broad arrows—the same as myself would, if this cursed cough wasn’t going to be the death of me…. No, m’lad: take a fool’s advice (you’ll never get better) and when you’re shut of me, which will be soon, I’m thinking, take the Lonesome Road and stick to the middle of it. ‘He travels the fastest that travels alone’ is a true saying, but ’tis only half the truth: he travels the farthest into the bargain…. Yet the Lonesome Road has its drawbacks, lad—it’s damned lonely!”

  Bourke died in Switzerland, of consumption, in the winter of 1910—Lanyard at his side till the end.

  Then the boy set his face against the world: alone, lonely, and remembering.

  CHAPTER II

  RETURN

  His return to Troyon’s, whereas an enterprise which Lanyard had been contemplating for several years—in fact, ever since the death of Bourke—came to pass at length almost purely as an affair of impulse.

  He had come through from London by the afternoon service—via Boulogne—travelling light, with nothing but a brace of handbags and his life in his hands. Two coups to his credit since the previous midnight had made the shift advisable, though only one of them, the later, rendered it urgent.

  Scotland Yard would, he reckoned, require at least twenty-four hours to unlimber for action on the Omber affair; but the other, the theft of the Huysman plans, though not consummated before noon, must have set the Chancelleries of at least three Powers by the ears before Lanyard was fairly entrained at Charing Cross.

  Now his opinion of Scotland Yard was low; its emissaries must operate gingerly to keep within the laws they serve. But the agents of the various Continental secret services have a way of making their own laws as they go along: and for these Lanyard entertained a respect little short of profound.

  He would not have been surprised had he ran foul of trouble on the pier at Folkestone. Boulogne, as well, figured in his imagination as a crucial point: its harbour lights, heaving up over the grim grey waste, peered through the deepening violet dusk to find him on the packet’s deck, responding to their curious stare with one no less insistently inquiring…. But it wasn’t until in the gauntlet of the Gare du Nord itself that he found anything to shy at.

  Dropping from train to platform, he surrendered his luggage to a ready facteur, and followed the man through the crush, elbowed and shouldered, offended by the pervasive reek of chilled steam and coal-gas, and dazzled by the brilliant glare of the overhanging electric arcs.

  Almost the first face he saw turned his way was that of Roddy.

  The man from Scotland Yard was stationed at one side of the platform gates. Opposite him stood another known by sight to Lanyard—a highly decorative official from the Préfecture de Police. Both were scanning narrowly every face in the tide that churned between them.

  Wondering if through some fatal freak of fortuity these were acting under late telegraphic advice from London, Lanyard held himself well in hand: the first sign of intent to hinder him would prove the signal for a spectacular demonstration of the ungentle art of not getting caught with the goods on. And for twenty seconds, while the crowd milled slowly through the narrow exit, he was as near to betraying himself as he had ever been—nearer, for he had marked down the point on Roddy’s jaw where his first blow would fall, and just where to plant a coup-de-savate most surely to incapacitate the minion of the Préfecture; and all the while was looking the two over with a manner of the most calm and impersonal curiosity.

  But beyond an almost imperceptible narrowing of Roddy’s eyes when they met his own, as if the Englishman were struggling with a faulty memory, neither police agent betrayed the least recognition.

  And then Lanyard was outside the station, his facteur introducing him to a ramshackle taxicab.

  No need to speculate whether or not Roddy were gazing after him; in the ragged animal who held the door while Lanyard fumbled for his facteur’s tip, he recognized a runner for the Préfecture; and beyond question there were many such about. If any lingering doubt should trouble Roddy’s mind he need only ask, “Such-and-such an one took what cab and for what destination?” to be instantly and accurately informed.

  In such case to go directly to his apartment, that handy little rez-de-chaussée near the Trocadéro, was obviously inadvisable. Without apparent hesitation Lanyard directed the driver to the Hotel Lutetia, tossed the ragged spy a sou, and was off to the tune of a slammed door and a motor that sorely needed overhauling….

  The rain, which had welcomed the train a few miles from Paris, was in the city torrential. Few wayfarers braved the swimming sidewalks, and the little clusters of chairs and tables beneath permanent café awnings were one and all neglected. But in the roadways an amazing concourse of vehicles, mostly motor-driven, skimmed, skidded, and shot over burnished asphalting all, of course, at top-speed—else this were not Paris. Lanyard thought of insects on the surface of some dark forest pool….

  The roof of the cab rang like a drumhead; the driver blinked through the back-splatter from his rubber apron; now and again the tyres lost grip on the treacherous going and provided instants of lively suspense. Lanyard lowered a window to release the musty odour peculiar to French taxis, got well peppered with moisture, and promptly put it up again. Then insensibly he relaxed, in the toils of memories roused by the reflection that this night fairly duplicated that which had welcomed him to Paris, twenty years ago.

  It was then that, for the first time in several months, he thought definitely of Troyon’s.

  And it was then that Chance ordained that his taxicab should skid. On the point of leaving the Ile de la Cité by way of the Pont St. Michel, it suddenly (one might pardonably have believed) went mad, darting crabwise from the middle of the road to the right-hand footway with evident design to climb the rail and make an end to everything in the Seine. The driver regained control barely in time to avert a tragedy, and had no more than accomplished this much when a bit of broken glass gutted one of the rear tyres, which promptly gave up the ghost with a roar like that of a lusty young cannon.

  At this the driver (apparently a person of religious bias) said something heartfelt about the sacred name of his pipe and, crawling from under the apron, turned aft to assess damages.

  On his own part Lanyard swore in sound Saxon, opened the door, and delivered himself to the pelting shower.

  “Well?” he enquired after watching the driver muzzle the eviscerated tyre for some eloquent moments.

  Turning up a distorted face, the other gesticulated with profane abandon, by way of good measure interpolating a few disconnected words and phrases. Lanyard gathered that this was the second accident of the same nature since noon that the cab consequently lacked a spare tyre, and that short of a trip to the garage the accident was irremediable. So he said (intelligently) it couldn’t be helped, paid
the man and over tipped precisely as though their journey had been successfully consummated, and standing over his luggage watched the maimed vehicle limp miserably off through the teeming mists.

  Now in normal course his plight should have been relieved within two minutes. But it wasn’t. For some time all such taxis as did pass displayed scornfully inverted flags. Also, their drivers jeered in their pleasing Parisian way at the lonely outlander occupying a position of such uncommon distinction in the heart of the storm and the precise middle of the Pont St. Michel.

  Over to the left, on the Quai de Marché Neuf, the façade of the Préfecture frowned portentously—“La Tour Pointue,” as the Parisian loves to term it. Lanyard forgot his annoyance long enough to salute that grim pile with a mocking bow, thinking of the men therein who would give half their possessions to lay hands on him who was only a few hundred yards distant, marooned in the rain!…

  In its own good time a night-prowling fiacre ambled up and veered over to his hail. He viewed this stroke of good-fortune with intense disgust: the shambling, weather-beaten animal between the shafts promised a long, damp crawl to the Lutetia.

  And on this reflection he yielded to impulse.

  Heaving in his luggage—“Troyon’s!” he told the cocher….

  The fiacre lumbered off into that dark maze of streets, narrow and tortuous, which backs up from the Seine to the Luxembourg, while its fare reflected that Fate had not served him so hardly after all: if Roddy had really been watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, at worst, several hours’ leeway.

  When at length his conveyance drew up at the historic corner, Lanyard alighting could have rubbed his eyes to see the windows of Troyon’s all bright with electric light.

  Somehow, and most unreasonably, he had always believed the place would go to the hands of the house-wrecker unchanged.

  A smart portier ducked out, seized his luggage, and offered an umbrella. Lanyard composed his features to immobility as he entered the hotel, of no mind to let the least flicker of recognition be detected in his eyes when they should re-encounter familiar faces.

  And this was quite as well: for—again—the first he saw was Roddy.

  CHAPTER III

  A POINT OF INTERROGATION

  The man from Scotland Yard had just surrendered hat, coat, and umbrella to the vestiaire and was turning through swinging doors to the dining-room. Again, embracing Lanyard, his glance seemed devoid of any sort of intelligible expression; and if its object needed all his self-possession in that moment, it was to dissemble relief rather than dismay. An accent of the fortuitous distinguished this second encounter too persuasively to excuse further misgivings. What the adventurer himself hadn’t known till within the last ten minutes, that he was coming to Troyon’s, Roddy couldn’t possibly have anticipated; ergo, whatever the detective’s business, it had nothing to do with Lanyard.

  Furthermore, before quitting the lobby, Roddy paused long enough to instruct the vestiaire to have a fire laid in his room.

  So he was stopping at Troyon’s—and didn’t care who knew it!

  His doubts altogether dissipated by this incident, Lanyard followed his natural enemy into the dining-room with an air as devil-may-care as one could wish and so impressive that the maitre-d’hotel abandoned the detective to the mercies of one of his captains and himself hastened to seat Lanyard and take his order.

  This last disposed of; Lanyard surrendered himself to new impressions—of which the first proved a bit disheartening.

  However impulsively, he hadn’t resought Troyon’s without definite intent, to wit, to gain some clue, however slender, to the mystery of that wretched child, Marcel. But now it appeared he had procrastinated fatally: Time and Change had left little other than the shell of the Troyon’s he remembered. Papa Troyon was gone; Madame no longer occupied the desk of the caisse; enquiries, so discreetly worded as to be uncompromising, elicited from the maitre-d’hôtel the information that the house had been under new management these eighteen months; the old proprietor was dead, and his widow had sold out lock, stock and barrel, and retired to the country—it was not known exactly where. And with the new administration had come fresh decorations and furnishings as well as a complete change of personnel: not even one of the old waiters remained.

  “‘All, all are gone, the old familiar faces,’” Lanyard quoted in vindictive melancholy—“damn ’em!”

  Happily, it was soon demonstrated that the cuisine was being maintained on its erstwhile plane of excellence: one still had that comfort….

  Other impressions, less ultimate, proved puzzling, disconcerting, and paradoxically reassuring.

  Lanyard commanded a fair view of Roddy across the waist of the room. The detective had ordered a meal that matched his aspect well—both of true British simplicity. He was a square-set man with a square jaw, cold blue eyes, a fat nose, a thin-lipped trap of a mouth, a face as red as rare beefsteak. His dinner comprised a cut from the joint, boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts, a bit of cheese, a bottle of Bass. He ate slowly, chewing with the doggedness of a strong character hampered by a weak digestion, and all the while kept eyes fixed to an issue of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail, with an effect of concentration quite too convincing.

  Now one doesn’t read the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail with tense excitement. Humanly speaking, it can’t be done.

  Where, then, was the object of this so sedulously dissembled interest?

  Lanyard wasn’t slow to read this riddle to his satisfaction—in as far, that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy’s quarry was another than himself.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, which had by now turned ten o’clock, the restaurant had a dozen tables or so in the service of guests pleasantly engaged in lengthening out an agreeable evening with dessert, coffee, liqueurs and cigarettes. The majority of these were in couples, but at a table one removed from Roddy’s sat a party of three; and Lanyard noticed, or fancied, that the man from Scotland Yard turned his newspaper only during lulls in the conversation in this quarter.

  Of the three, one might pass for an American of position and wealth: a man of something more than sixty years, with an execrable accent, a racking cough, and a thin, patrician cast of features clouded darkly by the expression of a soul in torment, furrowed, seamed, twisted—a mask of mortal anguish. And once, when this one looked up and casually encountered Lanyard’s gaze, the adventurer was shocked to find himself staring into eyes like those of a dead man: eyes of a grey so light that at a little distance the colour of the irises blended indistinguishably with their whites, leaving visible only the round black points of pupils abnormally distended and staring, blank, fixed, passionless, beneath lashless lids.

  For the instant they seemed to explore Lanyard’s very soul with a look of remote and impersonal curiosity; then they fell away; and when next the adventurer looked, the man had turned to attend to some observation of one of his companions.

  On his right sat a girl who might be his daughter; for not only was she, too, hall-marked American, but she was far too young to be the other’s wife. A demure, old-fashioned type; well-poised but unassuming; fetchingly gowned and with sufficient individuality of taste but not conspicuously; a girl with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes; pretty, not extravagantly so when her face was in repose, but with a slow smile that rendered her little less than beautiful: in all (Lanyard thought) the kind of woman that is predestined to comfort mankind, whose strongest instinct is the maternal.

  She took little part in the conversation, seldom interrupting what was practically a duologue between her putative father and the third of their party.

  This last was one, whom
Lanyard was sure he knew, though he could see no more than the back of Monsieur le Comte Remy de Morbihan.

  And he wondered with a thrill of amusement if it were possible that Roddy was on the trail of that tremendous buck. If so, it would be a chase worth following—a diversion rendered the more exquisite to Lanyard by the spice of novelty, since for once he would figure as a dispassionate bystander.

  The name of Comte Remy de Morbihan, although unrecorded in the Almanach de Gotha, was one to conjure with in the Paris of his day and generation. He claimed the distinction of being at once the homeliest, one of the wealthiest, and the most-liked man in France.