The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  Somewhat sulkily, then, if without betraying his temper, he signalled the cocher, opened the door, and handed the girl in.

  “If you don’t mind dropping me en route…”

  “I shall be very glad,” she said … “anything to repay, even in part, the courtesy you’ve shown me!”

  “Oh, please don’t fret about that….”

  He gave the driver precise directions, climbed in, and settled himself beside the girl. The whip cracked, the horse sighed, the driver swore; the aged fiacre groaned, stirred with reluctance, crawled wearily off through the thickening drizzle.

  Within its body a common restraint held silence like a wall between the two.

  The girl sat with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Pères, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her strange Parisian experience.

  And in his turn, Lanyard reviewed those well-remembered ways in vast weariness of spirit—disgusted with himself in consciousness that the girl had somehow divined his distrust….

  “The Lone Wolf, eh?” he mused bitterly. “Rather, the Cornered Rat—if people only knew! Better still, the Errant—no!—the Arrant Ass!”

  They were skirting the Palais Royal when suddenly she turned to him in an impulsive attempt at self-justification.

  “What must you be thinking of me, Mr. Lanyard?”

  He was startled: “I? Oh, don’t consider me, please. It doesn’t matter what I think—does it?”

  “But you’ve been so kind; I feel I owe you at least some explanation—”

  “Oh, as for that,” he countered cheerfully, “I’ve got a pretty definite notion you’re running away from your father.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t stand it any longer—”

  She caught herself up in full voice, as though tempted but afraid to say more. He waited briefly before offering encouragement.

  “I hope I haven’t seemed impertinent….”

  “No, no!”

  Than this impatient negative his pause of invitation evoked no other recognition. She had subsided into her reserve, but—he fancied—not altogether willingly.

  Was it, then, possible that he had misjudged her?

  “You’ve friends in London, no doubt?” he ventured.

  “No—none.”

  “But—”

  “I shall manage very well. I shan’t be there more than a day or two—till the next steamer sails.”

  “I see.” There had sounded in her tone a finality which signified desire to drop the subject. None the less, he pursued mischievously: “Permit me to wish you bon voyage, Miss Bannon… and to express my regret that circumstances have conspired to change your plans.”

  She was still eyeing him askance, dubiously, as if weighing the question of his acquaintance with her plans, when the fiacre lumbered from the rue Vivienne into the place de la Bourse, rounded that frowning pile, and drew up on its north side before the blue lights of the all-night telegraph bureau.

  “With permission,” Lanyard said, unlatching the door, “I’ll stop off here. But I’ll direct the cocher very carefully to the Gare du Nord. Please don’t even tip him—that’s my affair. No—not another word of thanks; to have been permitted to be of service—it is a unique pleasure, Miss Bannon. And so, good night!”

  With an effect that seemed little less than timid, the girl offered her hand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lanyard,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I am sorry—”

  But she didn’t say what it was she regretted; and Lanyard, standing with bared head in the driving mist, touched her fingers coolly, repeated his farewells, and gave the driver both money and instructions, and watched the cab lurch away before he approached the telegraph bureau….

  But the enigma of the girl so deeply intrigued his imagination that it was only with difficulty that he concocted a non-committal telegram to Roddy’s friend in the Prefecture—that imposing personage who had watched with the man from Scotland Yard at the platform gates in the Gare du Nord.

  It was couched in English, when eventually composed and submitted to the telegraph clerk with a fervent if inaudible prayer that he might be ignorant of the tongue.

  “Come at once to my room at Troyon’s. Enter via adjoining room prepared for immediate action on important development. Urgent. Roddy.”

  Whether or not this were Greek to the man behind the wicket, it was accepted with complete indifference—or, rather, with an interest that apparently evaporated on receipt of the fees. Lanyard couldn’t see that the clerk favoured him with as much as a curious glance before he turned away to lose himself, to bury his identity finally and forever under the incognito of the Lone Wolf.

  He couldn’t have rested without taking that one step to compass the arrest of the American assassin; now with luck and prompt action on the part of the Préfecture, he felt sure Roddy would be avenged by Monsieur de Paris…. But it was very well that there should exist no clue whereby the author of that mysterious telegram might be traced….

  It was, then, not an ill-pleased Lanyard who slipped oft into the night and the rain; but his exasperation was elaborate when the first object that met his gaze was that wretched fiacre, back in place before the door, Lucia Bannon leaning from its lowered window, the cocher on his box brandishing an importunate whip at the adventurer.

  He barely escaped choking on suppressed profanity; and for two sous would have swung on his heel and ignored the girl deliberately. But he didn’t dare: close at hand stood a sergent de ville, inquisitive eyes bright beneath the dripping visor of his kepi, keenly welcoming this diversion of a cheerless hour.

  With at least outward semblance of resignation, Lanyard approached the window.

  “I have been guilty of some stupidity, perhaps?” he enquired with lip-civility that had no echo in his heart. “But I am sorry—”

  “The stupidity is mine,” the girl interrupted in accents tense with agitation. “Mr. Lanyard, I—I—”

  Her voice faltered and broke off in a short, dry sob, and she drew back with an effect of instinctive distaste for public emotion. Lanyard smothered an impulse to demand roughly “Well, what now?” and came closer to the window.

  “Something more I can do, Miss Bannon?”

  “I don’t know…. I’ve just found it out—I came away so hurriedly I never thought to make sure; but I’ve no money—not a franc!”

  After a little pause he commented helpfully: “That does complicate matters, doesn’t it?”

  “What am I to do? I can’t go back—I won’t! Anything rather. You may judge how desperate I am, when I prefer to throw myself on your generosity—and already I’ve strained your patience—”

  “Not much,” he interrupted in a soothing voice. “But—half a moment—we must talk this over.”

  Directing the cocher to drive to the place Pigalle, he reentered the cab, suspicion more than ever rife in his mind. But as far as he could see—with that confounded sergo staring!—there was nothing else for it. He couldn’t stand there in the rain forever, gossiping with a girl half-hysterical—or pretending to be.

  “You see,” she explained when the fiacre was again under way, “I thought I had a hundred-franc note in my pocketbook; and so I have—but the pocketbook’s back there, in my room at Troyon’s.”

  “A hundred francs wouldn’t see you far toward New York,” he observed thoughtfully.

  “Oh, I hope you don’t think—!”

  She drew back into her corner with a little shudder of humiliation.

  As if he hadn’t noticed, L
anyard turned to the window, leaned out, and redirected the driver sharply: “Impasse Stanislas!”

  Immediately the vehicle swerved, rounded a corner, and made back toward the Seine with a celerity which suggested that the stables were on the Rive Gauche.

  “Where?” the girl demanded as Lanyard sat back. “Where are you taking me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lanyard said with every appearance of sudden contrition;

  “I acted impulsively—on the assumption of your complete confidence.

  Which, of course, was unpardonable. But, believe me; you have only to

  say no and it shall be as you wish.”

  “But,” she persisted impatiently—“you haven’t answered me: what is this impasse Stanislas?”

  “The address of an artist I know—Solon, the painter. We’re going to take possession of his studio in his absence. Don’t worry; he won’t mind. He is under heavy obligation to me—I’ve sold several canvasses for him; and when he’s away, as now, in the States, he leaves me the keys. It’s a sober-minded, steady-paced neighbourhood, where we can rest without misgivings and take our time to think things out.”

  “But—” the girl began in an odd tone.

  “But permit me,” he interposed hastily, “to urge the facts of the case upon your consideration.”

  “Well?” she said in the same tone, as he paused.

  “To begin with—I don’t doubt you’ve good reason for running away from your father.”

  “A very real, a very grave reason,” she affirmed quietly.

  “And you’d rather not go back—”

  “That is out of the question!”—with a restrained passion that almost won his credulity.

  “But you’ve no friends in Paris—?”

  “Not one!”

  “And no money. So it seems, if you’re to elude your father, you must find some place to hide pro tem. As for myself, I’ve not slept in forty-eight hours and must rest before I’ll be able to think clearly and plan ahead….And we won’t accomplish much riding round forever in this ark. So I offer the only solution I’m capable of advancing, under the circumstances.”

  “You are quite right,” the girl agreed after a moment. “Please don’t think me unappreciative. Indeed, it makes me very unhappy to think I know no way to make amends for your trouble.”

  “There may be a way,” Lanyard informed her quietly; “but we’ll not discuss that until we’ve rested up a bit.”

  “I shall be only too glad—” she began, but fell silent and, in a silence that seemed almost apprehensive, eyed him speculatively throughout the remainder of the journey.

  It wasn’t a long one; in the course of the next ten minutes they drew up at the end of a shallow pocket of a street, a scant half-block in depth; where alighting, Lanyard helped the girl out, paid and dismissed the cocher, and turned to an iron gate in a high stone wall crowned with spikes.

  The grille-work of that gate afforded glimpses of a small, dark garden and a little house of two storeys. Blank walls of old tenements shouldered both house and garden on either side.

  Unlocking the gate, Lanyard refastened it very carefully, repeated the business at the front door of the house, and when they were securely locked and bolted within a dark reception-hall, turned on the electric light.

  But he granted the girl little more than time for a fugitive survey of this ante-room to an establishment of unique artistic character.

  “These are living-rooms, downstairs here,” he explained hurriedly. “Solon’s unmarried, and lives quite alone—his studio-devil and femme-de-ménage come in by the day only—and so he avoids that pest a concierge. With your permission, I’ll assign you to the studio—up here.”

  And leading the way up a narrow flight of steps, he made a light in the huge room that was the upper storey.

  “I believe you’ll be comfortable,” he said—“that divan yonder is as easy a couch as one could wish—and there’s this door you can lock at the head of the staircase; while I, of course, will be on guard below…. And now, Miss Bannon… unless there’s something more I can do—?”

  The girl answered with a wan smile and a little broken sigh. Almost involuntarily, in the heaviness of her fatigue, she had surrendered to the hospitable arms of a huge lounge-chair.

  Her weary glance ranged the luxuriously appointed studio and returned to Lanyard’s face; and while he waited he fancied something moving in those wistful eyes, so deeply shadowed with distress, perplexity, and fatigue.

  “I’m very tired indeed,” she confessed—“more than I guessed. But I’m sure I shall be comfortable…. And I count myself very fortunate, Mr. Lanyard. You’ve been more kind than I deserved. Without you, I don’t like to think what might have become of me….”

  “Please don’t!” he pleaded and, suddenly discountenanced by consciousness of his duplicity, turned to the stairs. “Good night, Miss Bannon,” he mumbled; and was half-way down before he heard his valediction faintly echoed.

  As he gained the lower floor, the door was closed at the top of the stairs and its bolt shot home with a soft thud.

  But turning to lock the lower door, he stayed his hand in transient indecision.

  “Damn it!” he growled uneasily—“there can’t be any harm in that girl! Impossible for eyes like hers to lie!… And yet … And yet!… Oh, what’s the matter with me? Am I losing my grip? Why stick at ordinary precaution against treachery on the part of a woman who’s nothing to me and of whom I know nothing that isn’t conspicuously questionable?…All because of a pretty face and an appealing manner!”

  And so he secured that door, if very quietly; and having pocketed the key and made the round of doors and windows, examining their locks, he stumbled heavily into the bedroom of his friend the artist.

  Darkness overwhelmed him then: he was stricken down by sleep as an ox falls under the pole.

  CHAPTER XII

  AWAKENING

  It was late afternoon when Lanyard wakened from sleep so deep and dreamless that nothing could have induced it less potent than sheer systemic exhaustion, at once nervous, muscular and mental.

  A profound and stifling lethargy benumbed his senses. There was stupor in his brain, and all his limbs ached dully. He opened dazed eyes upon blank darkness. In his ears a vast silence pulsed.

  And in that strange moment of awakening he was conscious of no individuality: it was, for the time, as if he had passed in slumber from one existence to another, sloughing en passant all his three-fold personality as Marcel Troyon, Michael Lanyard, and the Lone Wolf. Had any one of these names been uttered in his hearing just then it would have meant nothing to him—or little more than nothing: he was for the time being merely himself, a shell of sensations enclosing dull embers of vitality.

  For several minutes he lay without moving, curiously intrigued by this riddle of identity: it was but slowly that his mind, like a blind hand groping round a dark chamber, picked up the filaments of memory.

  One by one the connections were renewed, the circuits closed….

  But, singularly enough in his understanding, his first thought was of the girl upstairs in the studio, unconsciously his prisoner and hostage—rather than of himself, who lay there, heavy with loss of sleep, languidly trying to realize himself.

  For he was no more as he had been. Wherein the difference lay he couldn’t say, but that a difference existed he was persuaded—that he had changed, that some strange reaction in the chemistry of his nature had taken place during slumber. It was as if sleep had not only repaired the ravages of fatigue upon the tissues of his brain and body, but had mended the tissues of his soul as well. His thoughts were fluent in fresh channels, his interests no longer the interests of the Michael Lanyard he had known, no longer self-centred, the interests of the absolute ego. He was concerned less for himself, even now wh
en he should be most gravely so, than for another, for the girl Lucia Bannon, who was nothing to him, whom he had yet to know for twenty-four hours, but of whom he could not cease to think if he would.

  It was her plight that perturbed him, from which he sought an outlet—never his own.

  Yet his own was desperate enough….

  Baffled and uneasy, he at length bethought him of his watch. But its testimony seemed incredible: surely the hour could not be five in the afternoon!—surely he could not have slept so close upon a full round of the clock!

  And if it were so, what of the girl? Had she, too, so sorely needed sleep that the brief November day had dawned and waned without her knowledge?

  That question was one to rouse him: in an instant he was up and groping his way through the gloom that enshrouded bed-chamber and dining-room to the staircase door in the hall. He found this fast enough, its key still safe in his pocket, and unlocking it quietly, shot the beam of his flash-lamp up that dark well to the door at the top; which was tight shut.

  For several moments he attended to a taciturn silence broken by never a sound to indicate that he wasn’t a lonely tenant of the little dwelling, then irresolutely lifted a foot to the first step—and withdrew it. If she continued to sleep, why disturb her? He had much to do in the way of thinking things out; and that was a process more easily performed in solitude.

  Leaving the door ajar, then, he turned to one of the front windows, parted its draperies, and peered out, over the little garden and through the iron ribs of the gate, to the street, where a single gas-lamp, glimmering within a dull golden halo of mist, made visible the scant length of the impasse Stanislas, empty, rain-swept, desolate.

  The rain persisted with no hint of failing purpose….

  Something in the dreary emptiness of that brief vista deepened the shadow in his mood and knitted a careworn frown into his brows.