He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency.
True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable—not at least in Paris.
And the Huysman plans?
He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans.
In his fretting, pacing softly to and fro, at each turn he passed his dressing-table, and chancing once to observe himself in its mirror, he stopped short, thunderstruck by something he thought to detect in the counterfeit presentment of his countenance, heavy with fatigue as it was, and haggard with contemplation of this appalling contretemps.
And instantly he was back beside the American, studying narrowly the contours of that livid mask. Here, then, was that resemblance which had baffled him; and now that he saw it, he could not deny that it was unflatteringly close: feature for feature the face of the murderer reproduced his face, coarsened perhaps but recognizably a replica of that Michael Lanyard who confronted him every morning in his shaving-glass, almost the only difference residing in the scrubby black moustache that shadowed the American’s upper lip.
After all, there was nothing wonderful in this; Lanyard’s type was not uncommon; he would never have thought himself a distinguished figure.
Before rising he turned out the pockets of his counterfeit. But this profited him little: the assassin had dressed for action with forethought to evade recognition in event of accident. Lanyard collected only a cheap American watch in a rolled-gold case of a sort manufactured by wholesale, a briquet, a common key that might fit any hotel door, a broken paper of Régie cigarettes, an automatic pistol, a few francs in silver—nothing whatever that would serve as a mark of identification; for though the grey clothing was tailor-made, the maker’s labels had been ripped out of its pockets, while the man’s linen and underwear alike lacked even a laundry’s hieroglyphic.
With this harvest of nothing for his pains, Lanyard turned again to the wash-stand and his shaving kit, mixed a stiff lather, stropped another razor to the finest edge he could manage, fetched a pair of keen scissors from his dressing-case, and went back to the murderer.
He worked rapidly, at a high pitch of excitement—as much through sheer desperation as through any appeal inherent in the scheme either to his common-sense or to his romantic bent.
In two minutes he had stripped the moustache clean away from that stupid, flaccid mask.
Unquestionably the resemblance was now most striking; the American would readily pass for Michael Lanyard.
This much accomplished, he pursued his preparations in feverish haste. In spite of this, he overlooked no detail. In less than twenty minutes he had exchanged clothing with the American in detail, even down to shirts, collars and neckties; had packed in his own pockets the several articles taken from the other, together with the jointed jimmy and a few of his personal effects, and was ready to bid adieu to himself, to that Michael Lanyard whom Paris knew.
The insentient masquerader on the floor had called himself “good-enough Smith”; he must serve now as good-enough Lanyard, at least for the Lone Wolf’s purposes; the police at all events would accept him as such. And if the memory of Michael Lanyard must needs wear the stigma of brutal murder, he need not repine in his oblivion, since through this perfunctory decease the Lone Wolf would gain a freedom even greater than before.
The Pack had contrived only to eliminate Michael Lanyard, the amateur of fine paintings; remained the Lone Wolf with not one faculty impaired, but rather with a deadlier purpose to shape his occult courses….
Under the influence of his methodical preparations, his emotions had cooled appreciably, taking on a cast of cold malignant vengefulness.
He who never in all his criminal record had so much as pulled trigger in self-defence, was ready now to shoot to kill with the most cold-blooded intent—given one of three targets; while Popinot’s creatures, if they worried him, he meant to exterminate with as little compunction as though they were rats in fact as well as in spirit….
Extinguishing the lights, he stepped quickly to a window and from one edge of its shade looked down into the street.
He was in time to see a stunted human silhouette detach itself from the shadow of a doorway on the opposite walk, move to the curb, and wave an arm—evidently signaling another sentinel on a corner out of Lanyard’s range of vision.
Herein was additional proof, if any lacked, that De Morbihan had not exaggerated the disposition of Popinot. This animal in the street, momentarily revealed by the corner light as he darted across to take position by the door, this animal with sickly face and pointed chin, with dirty muffler round its chicken-neck, shoddy coat clothing its sloping shoulders, baggy corduroy trousers flapping round its bony shanks—this was Popinot’s, and but one of a thousand differing in no essential save degree of viciousness.
It wasn’t possible to guess how thoroughly Popinot had picketed the house, in co-operation with Roddy’s murderer, by way of provision against mischance; but the adventurer was satisfied that, in his proper guise as himself, he needed only to open that postern door at the street end of the passage, to feel a knife slip in between his ribs—most probably in his back, beneath the shoulder-blade….
He nodded grimly, moved back from the window, and used the flash-lamp to light him to the door.
CHAPTER XI
FLIGHT
Now when Lanyard had locked the door, he told himself that the gruesome peace of those two bed-chambers was ensured, barring mischance, for as long as the drug continued to hold dominion over the American; and he felt justified in reckoning that period apt to be tolerably protracted; while not before noon at earliest would any hôtelier who knew his business permit the rest of an Anglo-Saxon guest to be disturbed—lacking, that is, definite instructions to the contrary.
For a full minute after withdrawing the key the adventurer stood at alert attention; but the heavy silence of that sinister old rookery sang in his ears untroubled by any untoward sound….
That wistful shadow of his memories, that cowering Marcel of the so-dead yesterday in acute terror of the hand of Madame Troyon, had never stolen down that corridor more quietly: yet Lanyard had taken not five paces from his door when that other opened, at the far end, and Lucia Bannon stepped out.
He checked then, and shut his teeth upon an involuntary oath: truly it seemed as though this run of the devil’s own luck would never end!
Astonishment measurably modified his exasperation.
What had roused the girl out of bed and dressed her for the street at that unholy hour? And why her terror at sight of him?
For that the surprise was no more welcome to her than to him was as patent as the fact that she was prepared to leave the hotel forthwith, enveloped in a business-like Burberry rainproof from her throat to the hem of a tweed walking-skirt, and wearing boots both stout and brown. And at sight of him she paused and instinctively stepped back, groping blindly for the knob of her bed-chamber door; while her eyes, holding to his with an effect of frightened fascination, seemed momentarily to grow more large and dark in her face of abnormal pallor.
But these were illegible evidences, and Lanyard was intent solely on securing her silence before she could betray him and ruin incontinently that grim alibi which he had prepared at such elaborate pains. He moved toward her swiftly, with long and silent strides, a lifted hand enjoining rather than begging her attention, aware as he drew nearer that a curious change was colouring the complexion of her temper: she passed quickly from dread to something oddly like relief, from repulsion to something strangely like welcome; and dropping the hand that had sought the door-knob, in her turn moved quietly to meet him.
He was grateful for this consideration, this tacit indulgence of the wish he had as yet to voic
e; drew a little hope and comfort from it in an emergency which had surprised him without resource other than to throw himself upon her generosity. And as soon as he could make himself heard in the clear yet concentrated whisper that was a trick of his trade, a whisper inaudible to ears a yard distant from those to which it was pitched, he addressed her in a manner at once peremptory and apologetic.
“If you please, Miss Bannon—not a word, not a whisper!”
She paused and nodded compliance, questioning eyes steadfast to his.
Doubtfully, wondering that she betrayed so little surprise, he pursued as one committed to a forlorn hope:
“It’s vitally essential that I leave this hotel without it becoming known. If I may count on you to say nothing—”
She gave him reassurance with a small gesture. “But how?” she breathed in the least of whispers. “The concierge—!”
“Leave that to me—I know another way. I only need a chance—”
“Then won’t you take me with you?”
“Eh?” he stammered, dashed.
Her hands moved toward him in a flutter of entreaty: “I too must leave unseen—I must! Take me with you—out of this place—and I promise you no one shall ever know—”
He lacked time to weigh the disadvantages inherent in her proposition; though she offered him a heavy handicap, he had no choice but to accept it without protest.
“Come, then,” he told her—“and not a sound—”
She signified assent with another nod; and on this he turned to an adjacent door, opened it gently, whipped out his flash-lamp, and passed through. Without sign of hesitancy, she followed; and like two shadows they dogged the dancing spot-light of the flash-lamp, through a linen-closet and service-room, down a shallow well threaded by a spiral of iron steps and, by way of the long corridor linking the kitchen-offices, to a stout door secured only by huge, old-style bolts of iron.
Thus, in less than two minutes from the instant of their encounter, they stood outside Troyon’s back door, facing a cramped, malodorous alley-way—a dark and noisome souvenir of that wild mediaeval Paris whose effacement is an enduring monument to the fame of the good Baron Haussmann.
Now again it was raining, a thick drizzle that settled slowly, lacking little of a fog’s opacity; and the faint glimmer from the street lamps of that poorly lighted quarter, reflected by the low-swung clouds, lent Lanyard and the girl little aid as they picked their way cautiously, and always in complete silence, over the rude and slimy cobbles of the foul back way. For the adventurer had pocketed his lamp, lest its beams bring down upon them some prowling creature of Popinot’s; though he felt passably sure that the alley had been left unguarded in the confidence that he would never dream of its existence, did he survive to seek escape from Troyon’s.
For all its might and its omniscience, Lanyard doubted if the Pack had as yet identified Michael Lanyard with that ill-starred Marcel who once had been as intimate with this forgotten way as any skulking tom of the quarter.
But with the Lone Wolf confidence was never akin to foolhardiness; and if on leaving Troyon’s he took the girl’s hand without asking permission and quite as a matter-of-course, and drew it through his arm—it was his left arm that he so dedicated to gallantry; his right hand remained unhampered, and never far from the grip of his automatic.
Nor was he altogether confident of his companion. The weight of her hand upon his arm, the fugitive contacts of her shoulder, seemed to him, just then, the most vivid and interesting things in life; the consciousness of her personality at his side was like a shaft of golden light penetrating the darkness of his dilemma. But as minutes passed and their flight was unchallenged, his mood grew dark with doubts and quick with distrust. Reviewing it all, he thought to detect something too damnably adventitious in the way she had nailed him, back there in the corridor of Troyon’s. It was a bit too coincidental—“a bit thick!”—like that specious yarn of somnambulism she had told to excuse her presence in his room. Come to examine it, that excuse had been far too clumsy to hoodwink any but a man bewitched by beauty in distress.
Who was she, anyway? And what her interest in him? What had she been after in his room?—this American girl making a first visit to Paris in company with her venerable ruin of a parent? Who, for that matter, was Bannon? If her story of sleep-walking were untrue, then Bannon must have been at the bottom of her essay in espionage—Bannon, the intimate of De Morbihan, and an American even as the murderer of poor Roddy was an American!
Was this singularly casual encounter, then, but a cloak for further surveillance? Had he in his haste and desperation simply played into her hands, when he burdened himself with the care of her?
But it seemed absurd; to think that she… a girl like her, whose every word and gesture was eloquent of gentle birth and training…!
Yet—what had she wanted in his room? Somnambulists are sincere indeed in the indulgence of their failing when they time their expeditions so opportunely—and arm themselves with keys to fit strange doors. Come to think of it, he had been rather willfully blind to that flaw in her excuse…. Again, why should she be up and dressed and so madly bent on leaving Troyon’s at half-past four in the morning? Why couldn’t she wait for daylight at least? What errand, reasonable duty or design could have roused her out into the night and the storm at that weird hour? He wondered!
And momentarily he grew more jealously heedful of her, critical of every nuance in her bearing. The least trace of added pressure on his arm, the most subtle suggestion that she wasn’t entirely indifferent to him or regarded him in any way other than as the chance-found comrade of an hour of trouble, would have served to fix his suspicions. For such, he told himself, would be the first thought of one bent on beguiling—to lead him on by some intimation, the more tenuous and elusive the more provocative, that she found his person not altogether objectionable.
But he failed to detect anything of this nature in her manner.
So, what was one to think? That she was mental enough to appreciate how ruinous to her design would be any such advances? …
In such perplexity he brought her to the end of the alley and there pulled up for a look round before venturing out into the narrow, dark, and deserted side street that then presented itself.
At this the girl gently disengaged her hand and drew away a pace or two; and when Lanyard had satisfied himself that there were no Apaches in the offing, he turned to see her standing there, just within the mouth of the alley, in a pose of blank indecision.
Conscious of his regard, she turned to his inspection a face touched with a fugitive, uncertain smile.
“Where are we?” she asked.
He named the street; and she shook her head. “That doesn’t mean much to me,” she confessed; “I’m so strange to Paris, I know only a few of the principal streets. Where is the boulevard St. Germain?”
Lanyard indicated the direction: “Two blocks that way.”
“Thank you.” She advanced a step or two, but paused again. “Do you know, possibly, just where I could find a taxicab?”
“I’m afraid you won’t find any hereabouts at this hour,” he replied. “A fiacre, perhaps—with luck: I doubt if there’s one disengaged nearer than Montmartre, where business is apt to be more brisk.”
“Oh!” she cried in dismay. “I hadn’t thought of that…. I thought
Paris never went to sleep!”
“Only about three hours earlier than most of the world’s capitals….
But perhaps I can advise you—”
“If you would be so kind! Only, I don’t like to be a nuisance—”
He smiled deceptively: “Don’t worry about that. Where do you wish to go?”
“To the Gare du Nord.”
That made him open his eyes. “The Gare du Nord!” he echoed. “But—I beg your pardon—”
“I wish to take the first train for London,” the girl informed him calmly.
“You’ll have a while to wait,” Lanyard suggested. “The first train leaves about half-past eight, and it’s now not more than five.”
“That can’t be helped. I can wait in the station.”
He shrugged: that was her own look-out—if she were sincere in asserting that she meant to leave Paris; something which he took the liberty of doubting.
“You can reach it by the Métro,” he suggested—“the Underground, you know; there’s a station handy—St. Germain des Prés. If you like, I’ll show you the way.”
Her relief seemed so genuine, he could have almost believed in it. And yet—!
“I shall be very grateful,” she murmured.
He took that for whatever worth it might assay, and quietly fell into place beside her; and in a mutual silence—perhaps largely due to her intuitive sense of his bias—they gained the boulevard St. Germain. But here, even as they emerged from the side street, that happened which again upset Lanyard’s plans: a belated fiacre hove up out of the mist and ranged alongside, its driver loudly soliciting patronage.
Beneath his breath Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Métropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or—share it with her…. But why not? He could readily drop out at his destination, and bid the driver continue to the Gare du Nord; and the Métro was neither quick nor direct enough for his design—which included getting under cover well before daybreak.
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 96