The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  De Morbihan rapped, turned the knob, and stood aside, bowing politely.

  With a nod acknowledging the courtesy, Lanyard consented to precede him, and entered a room of intimate proportions, furnished chiefly with a green-covered card-table and five easy-chairs, of which three were occupied—two by men in evening dress, the third by one in a well-tailored lounge suit of dark grey.

  Now all three men wore visors of black velvet.

  Lanyard looked from one to the other and chuckled quietly.

  With an aggrieved air De Morbihan launched into introductions:

  “Messieurs, I have the honour to present to you our confrère, Monsieur Lanyard, best known as ‘The Lone Wolf.’ Monsieur Lanyard—the Council of our Association, known to you as ‘The Pack.’”

  The three rose and bowed ceremoniously, Lanyard returned a cool, good-natured nod. Then he laughed again and more openly:

  “A pack of knaves!”

  “Monsieur doubtless feels at ease?” one retorted acidly.

  “In your company, Popinot? But hardly!” Lanyard returned in light contempt.

  The fellow thus indicated, a burly rogue of a Frenchman in rusty and baggy evening clothes, started and flushed scarlet beneath his mask; but the man next him dropped a restraining hand upon his arm, and Popinot, with a shrug, sank back into his chair.

  “Upon my word!” Lanyard declared gracelessly, “it’s as good as a play! Are you sure, Monsieur le Comte, there’s no mistake—that these gay masqueraders haven’t lost their way to the stage of the Grand Guignol?”

  “Damn!” muttered the Count. “Take care, my friend! You go too far!”

  “You really think so? But you amaze me! You can’t in reason expect me to take you seriously, gentlemen!”

  “If you don’t, it will prove serious business for you!” growled the one he had called Popinot.

  “You mean that? But you are magnificent, all of you! We lack only the solitary illumination of a candle-end—a grinning skull—a cup of blood upon the table—to make the farce complete! But as it is…. Messieurs, you must be rarely uncomfortable, and feeling as foolish as you look, into the bargain! Moreover, I’m no child. … Popinot, why not disembarrass your amiable features? And you, Mr. Wertheimer, I’m sure, will feel more at ease with an open countenance—as the saying runs,” he said, nodding to the man beside Popinot. “As for this gentleman,” he concluded, eyeing the third, “I haven’t the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

  With a short laugh, Wertheimer unmasked and exposed a face of decidedly English type, fair and well-modelled, betraying only the faintest traces of Semitic cast to account for his surname. And with this example, Popinot snatched off his own black visor—and glared at Lanyard: in his shabby dress, the incarnate essence of bourgeoisie outraged. But the third, he of the grey lounge suit, remained motionless; only his eyes clashed coldly with the adventurer’s.

  He seemed a man little if at all Lanyard’s senior, and built upon much the same lines. A close-clipped black moustache ornamented his upper lip. His chin was square and strong with character. The cut of his clothing was conspicuously neither English nor Continental.

  “I don’t know you, sir,” Lanyard continued slowly, puzzled to account for a feeling of familiarity with this person, whom he could have sworn he had never met before.

  “But you won’t let your friends here outdo you in civility, I trust?”

  “If you mean you want me to unmask, I won’t,” the other returned brusquely, in fair French but with a decided transatlantic intonation.

  “American, eh?”

  “Native-born, if it interests you.”

  “Have I ever met you before?”

  “You have not.”

  “My dear Count,” Lanyard said, turning to De Morbihan, “do me the favour to introduce this gentleman.”

  “Your dear Count will do nothing like that, Mr. Lanyard. If you need a name to call me by, Smith’s good enough.”

  The incisive force of his enunciation assorted consistently with the general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with this one….

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat down. “If it did, I should insist—or else decline the honour of receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly, messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends the Apaches; and the well-known Mr. Goodenough Smith, ambassador of the gun-men of New York—no doubt. I presume one is to understand you wait upon me as representing the fine flower of the European underworld?”

  “You’re to understand that I, for one, don’t relish your impudence,” the stout Popinot snapped.

  “Sorry…. But I have already indicated my inability to take you seriously.”

  “Why not?” the American demanded ominously. “You’d be sore enough if we took you as a joke, wouldn’t you?”

  “You misapprehend, Mr.—ah—Smith: it is my first aim and wish that you do not take me in any manner, shape or form. It is you, remember, who requested this interview and—er—dressed your parts so strikingly!”

  “What are we to understand by that?” De Morbihan interposed.

  “This, messieurs—if you must know.” Lanyard dropped for the moment his tone of raillery and bent forward, emphasizing his points by tapping the table with a forefinger. “Through some oversight of mine or cleverness of yours—I can’t say which—perhaps both—you have succeeded in penetrating my secret. What then? You become envious of my success. In short, I stand in your light: I’m always getting away with something you might have lifted if you’d only had wit enough to think of it first. As your American accomplice, Mr. Mysterious Smith, would say, I ‘cramp your style.’”

  “You learned that on Broadway,” the American commented shrewdly.

  “Possibly…. To continue: so you get together, and bite your nails until you concoct a plan to frighten me into my profits. I’ve no doubt you’re prepared to allow me to retain one-half the proceeds of my operations, should I elect to ally myself with you?”

  “That’s the suggestion we are empowered to make,” De Morbihan admitted.

  “In other words, you need me. You say to yourselves: ‘We’ll pretend to be the head of a criminal syndicate, such as the silly novelists are forever writing about, and we’ll threaten to put him out of business unless he comes to our terms.’ But you overlook one important fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits of a gigantic criminal system—you, Popinot, who live by standing between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you, Wertheimer, sneak-thief and black-mailer of timid women, or you, De Morbihan, because you eke out your income by showing a handful of second-storey men where to seek plunder in the homes of your friends!”

  He made a gesture of impatience, and lounged back to wait the answer to this indictment. His gaze, ranging the four faces, encountered but one that was not darkly flushed with resentment; and this was the American’s.

  “Aren’t you overlooking me?” this last suggested gently.

  “On the contrary: I refuse to recognize you as long as you lack courage to show your face.”

  “As you will, my friend,” the American chuckled. “Make your profit out of that any way you like.”

  Lanyard sat up again: “Well, I’ve stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I’m to split my earnings with you, or you’ll denounce me to the police. That’s about it, isn’t it?”

  “Not of necessity,” De Morbihan softly purred, twisting his moustache.

  “For my part,” Popinot declared hotl
y, “I engage that Monsieur of the High Hand, here, will either work with us or conduct no more operations in Paris.”

  “Or in New York,” the American amended.

  “England is yet to be heard from,” Lanyard suggested mockingly.

  To this Wertheimer replied, almost with diffidence: “If you ask me, I don’t think you’d find it so jolly pleasant over there, if you mean to cut up nasty at this end.”

  “Then what am I to infer? If you’re afraid to lay an information against me—and it wouldn’t be wise, I admit—you’ll merely cause me to be assassinated, eh?”

  “Not of necessity,” the Count murmured in the same thoughtful tone and manner—as one holding a hidden trump.

  “There are so many ways of arranging these matters,” Wertheimer ventured.

  “None the less, if I refuse, you declare war?”

  “Something like that,” the American admitted.

  “In that case—I am now able to state my position definitely.” Lanyard got up and grinned provokingly down at the group. “You can—all four of you—go plumb to hell!”

  “My dear friend!” the Count cried, shocked—“you forget—”

  “I forget nothing!” Lanyard cut in coldly—“and my decision is final. Consider yourselves at liberty to go ahead and do your damnedest! But don’t forget that it is you who are the aggressors. Already you’ve had the insolence to interfere with my arrangements: you began offensive operations before you declared war. So now if you’re hit beneath the belt, you mustn’t complain: you’ve asked for it!”

  “Now just what do you mean by that?” the American drawled ironically.

  “I leave you to figure it out for yourselves. But I will say this: I confidently expect you to decide to live and let live, and shall be sorry, as you’ll certainly be sorry, if you force my hand.”

  He opened the door, turned, and saluted them with sarcastic punctilio.

  “I have the honour to bid adieu to Messieurs the Council of—‘The

  Pack’!”

  CHAPTER IX

  DISASTER

  Having fulfilled his purpose of making himself acquainted with the personnel of the opposition, Lanyard slammed the door in its face, thrust his hands in his pockets, and sauntered down stairs, chuckling, his nose in the air, on the best of terms with himself.

  True, the fat was in the fire and well a-blaze: he had to look to himself now, and go warily in the shadow of their enmity. But it was something to have faced down those four, and he wasn’t seriously impressed by any one of them.

  Popinot, perhaps, was the most dangerous in Lanyard’s esteem; a vindictive animal, that Popinot; and the creatures he controlled, a murderous lot, drug-ridden, drink bedevilled, vicious little rats of Belleville, who’d knife a man for the price of an absinthe. But Popinot wouldn’t move without leave from De Morbihan, and unless Lanyard’s calculations were seriously miscast, De Morbihan would restrain both himself and his associates until thoroughly convinced Lanyard was impregnable against every form of persuasion. Murder was something a bit out of De Morbihan’s line—something, at least, which he might be counted on to hold in reserve. And by the time he was ready to employ it, Lanyard would be well beyond his reach. Wertheimer, too, would deprecate violence until all else failed; his half-caste type was as cowardly as it was blackguard; and cowards kill only impulsively, before they’ve had time to weigh consequences. There remained “Smith,” enigma; a man apparently gifted with both intelligence and character…. But if so, what the deuce was he doing in such company?

  Still, there he was: and the association damned him beyond consideration. His sorts were all of a piece, beneath the consideration of men of spirit….

  At this point, the self-complacence bred of his contempt for Messrs. de Morbihan et Cie. bred in its turn a thought that brought the adventurer up standing.

  The devil! Who was he, Michael Lanyard, that held himself above such vermin, yet lived in such a way as practically to invite their advances? What right was his to resent their opening the door to confraternity, as long as he trod paths so closely parallel to theirs that only a sophist might discriminate them? What comforting distinction was to be drawn between on the one hand a blackmailer like Wertheimer, a chevalier-d’industrie like De Morbihan, or a patron of Apaches like Popinot, and on the other himself whose bread was eaten in the sweat of thievery?

  He drew a long face; whistled softly; shook his head; and smiled a wry smile.

  “Glad I didn’t think of that two minutes ago, or I’d never have had the cheek…”

  Without warning, incongruously and, in his understanding, inexplicably, he found himself beset by recurrent memory of the girl, Lucia Bannon.

  For an instant he saw her again, quite vividly, as last he had seen her: turning at the door of her bed-chamber to look back at him, a vision of perturbing charm in her rose-silk dressing-gown, with rich hair loosened, cheeks softly glowing, eyes brilliant with an emotion illegible to her one beholder….

  What had been the message of those eyes, flashed down the dimly lighted length of that corridor at Troyon’s, ere she vanished?

  Adieu? Or au revoir? …

  She had termed him, naïvely enough, and a gentleman.

  But if she knew—suspected—even dreamed—that he was what he was?…

  He shook his head again, but now impatiently, with a scowl and a grumble:

  “What’s the matter with me anyway? Mooning over a girl I never saw before tonight! As if it matters a whoop in Hepsidam what she thinks!… Or is it possible I’m beginning to develop a rudimentary conscience, at this late day? Me!…”

  If there were anything in this hypothesis, the growing-pains of that late-blooming conscience were soon enough numbed by the hypnotic spell of clattering chips, an ivory ball singing in an ebony race, and croaking croupiers.

  For Lanyard’s chair at the table of chemin-de-fer had been filled by another and, too impatient to wait a vacancy, he wandered on to the salon dedicated to roulette, tested his luck by staking a note of five hundred francs on the black, won, and incontinently subsided into a chair and an oblivion that endured for the space of three-quarters of an hour.

  At the end of that period he found himself minus his heavy winnings at chemin-de-fer and ten thousand francs of his reserve fund to boot.

  By way of lining for his pockets there remained precisely the sum which he had brought into Paris that same evening, less subsequent general disbursements.

  The experience was nothing novel in his history. He rose less resentful than regretful that his ill-luck obliged him to quit just when play was most interesting, and resignedly sought the cloak-room for his coat and hat.

  And there he found De Morbihan—again!—standing all garmented for the street, mouthing a huge cigar and wearing a look of impatient discontent.

  “At last!” he cried in an aggrieved tone as Lanyard appeared in the offing. “You do take your time, my friend!”

  Lanyard smothered with a smile whatever emotion was his of the moment.

  “I didn’t imagine you really meant to wait for me,” he parried with double meaning, both to humour De Morbihan and hoodwink the attendant.

  “What do you think?” retorted the Count with asperity—“that I’m willing to stand by and let you moon round Paris at this hour of the morning, hunting for a taxicab that isn’t to be found and running God-knows-what risk of being stuck up by some misbegotten Apache? But I should say not! I mean to take you home in my car, though it cost me a half-hour of beauty sleep not lightly to be forfeited at my age!”

  The significance that underlay the semi-humourous petulance of the little man was not wasted.

  “You’re most amiable, Monsieur le Comte!” Lanyard observed thoughtfully, while the attendant produced his hat and coat. “So now, if you’re ready, I won�
�t delay you longer.”

  In another moment they were outside the club-house, its doors shut behind them, while before them, at the curb, waited that same handsome black limousine which had brought the adventurer from L’Abbaye.

  Two swift glances, right and left, showed him an empty street, bare of hint of danger.

  “One moment, monsieur!” he said, detaining the Count with a touch on his sleeve. “It’s only right that I should advise you … I’m armed.”

  “Then you’re less foolhardy than one feared. If such things interest you, I don’t mind admitting I carry a life-preserver of my own. But what of that? Is one eager to go shooting at this time of night, for the sheer fun of explaining to sergents de ville that one has been attacked by Apaches? … Providing always one lives to explain!”

  “It’s as bad as that, eh?”

  “Enough to make me loath to linger at your side in a lighted doorway!”

  Lanyard laughed in his own discomfiture. “Monsieur le Comte,” said he, “there’s a dash in you of what your American pal, Mysterious Smith, would call sporting blood, that commands my unstinted admiration. I thank you for your offered courtesy, and beg leave to accept.”

  De Morbihan replied with a grunt of none too civil intonation, instructed the chauffeur “To Troyon’s,” and followed Lanyard into the car.

  “Courtesy!” he repeated, settling himself with a shake. “That makes nothing. If I regarded my own inclinations, I’d let you go to the devil as quick as Popinot’s assassins could send you there!”

  “This is delightful!” Lanyard protested. “First you must see me home to save my life, and then you tell me your inclinations consign me to a premature grave. Is there an explanation, possibly?”

  “On your person,” said the Count, sententious.