The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “My negligence,” he admitted gloomily. “I might have known that wide spread of glass with the studio electrics on, full-blaze, would give the show away completely. The house is known to be unoccupied; and it wasn’t to be expected that both the police and Popinot’s crew would overlook so shining a mark…. And it’s all my fault, my oversight: I should have thought of it before…. High time I was quitting a game I’ve no longer the wit to play by the rules!”

  “But the police would never…!”

  “Certainly not. This is Popinot’s gentle method of letting us know he’s on the job. But I’ll just have a look, to make sure…. No: stop where you are, please. I’d rather go alone.”

  He swung alertly through to the hall window, pausing there only long enough for an instantaneous glance through the draperies—a fugitive survey that discovered the impasse Stanislas no more abandoned to the wind and rain, but tenanted visibly by one at least who lounged beneath the lonely lamp-post, a shoulder against it: a featureless civilian silhouette with attention fixed to the little house.

  But Lanyard didn’t doubt this one had a dozen fellows stationed within call….

  Springing up the stairs, he paused prudently at the top-most step, one quick glance showing him the huge rent gaping black in the skylight, the second the missile of destruction lying amid a litter of broken glass—a brick wrapped in newspaper, by the look of it.

  Swooping forward, he retrieved this, darted back from the exposed space beneath the shattered skylight, and had no more than cleared the threshold than a second something fell through the gap and buried itself in the parquetry. This was a bullet fired from the roof of one of the adjoining buildings: confirming his prior reasoning that the first missile must have fallen from a height, rather than have been thrown up from the street, to have wrought such destruction with those tough, thick panes of clouded glass….

  Swearing softly to himself, he descended to the kitchen.

  “As I thought,” he said coolly, exhibiting his find.

  “They’re on the roof of the next house—though they’ve posted a sentry in the street, of course.”

  “But that second thump—?” the girl demanded.

  “A bullet,” he said, placing the bundle on the table and cutting the string that bound it: “they were on the quivive and fired when I showed myself beneath the skylight.”

  “But I heard no report,” she objected.

  “A Maxim silencer on the gun, I fancy,” he explained, unwrapping the brick and smoothing out the newspaper…. “Glad you thought to put on your hat before you came down,” he added, with an approving glance for the girl; “it won’t be safe to go up to the studio again—of course.”

  His nonchalance was far less real than it seemed, but helped to steady one who was holding herself together with a struggle, on the verge of nervous collapse.

  “But what are we to do now?” she stammered. “If they’ve surrounded the house—!”

  “Don’t worry: there’s more than one way out,” he responded, frowning at the newspaper; “I wouldn’t have picked this place out, otherwise. Nor would Solon have rented it in the first instance had it lacked an emergency exit, in event of creditors…. Ah—thought so!”

  “What—?”

  “Troyon’s is gone,” he said, without looking up. “This is tonight’s Presse…. ‘Totally destroyed by a fire which started at six-thirty this morning and in less than half an hour had reduced the ancient structure to a heap of smoking ashes’! …” He ran his eye quickly down the column, selecting salient phrases: “‘Believed to have been of incendiary origin though the premises were uninsured’—that’s an intelligent guess!… ‘Narrow escape of guests in their’ whatyemaycallems…. ‘Three lives believed to have been lost … one body recovered charred almost beyond recognition’—but later identified as Roddy—poor devil! … ‘Two guests missing, Monsieur Lanyard, the well-known connoisseur of art, who occupied the room adjoining that of the unfortunate detective, and Mademoiselle Bannon, daughter of the American millionaire, who himself escaped only by a miracle with his secretary Monsieur Greggs, the latter being overcome by fumes’—what a shame!… ‘Police and firemen searching the ruins’—hm-hm—‘extraordinary interest manifested by the Préfecture indicates a suspicion that the building may have been fired to conceal some crime of a political nature.’”

  Crushing the newspaper between his hands, he tossed it into a corner. “That’s all of importance. Thoughtful of Popinot to let me know, this way! The Préfecture, of course, is humming like a wasp’s-nest with the mystery of that telegram, signed with Roddy’s name and handed in at the Bourse an hour or so before he was ‘burned to death.’ Too bad I didn’t know then what I do now; if I’d even remotely suspected Greggs’ association with the Pack was via Bannon…. But what’s the use? I did my possible, knowing the odds were heavy against success.”

  “What was written on the paper?” the girl demanded obliquely.

  He made his eyes blank: “Written on the paper—?”

  “I saw something in red ink at the head of the column. You tried to hide it from me, but I saw…. What was it?”

  “Oh—that!” he laughed contemptuously: “just Popinot’s impudence—an invitation to come out and be a good target.”

  She shook her head impatiently: “You’re not telling me the truth. It was something else, or you wouldn’t have been so anxious to hide it.”

  “Oh, but I assure you—!”

  “You can’t. Be honest with me, Mr. Lanyard. It was an offer to let you off if you’d give me up to Bannon—wasn’t it?”

  “Something like that,” he assented sheepishly—“too absurd for consideration…. But now we’re due to clear out of this before they find a way in. Not that they’re likely to risk a raid until they’ve tried starving us out; but it would be as well to put a good distance between us before they find out we’ve decamped.”

  He shrugged into his borrowed raincoat, buttoned it to his chin, and turned down the brim of his felt hat; but when he looked up at the girl again, he found she hadn’t moved; rather, she remained as one spellbound, staring less at than through him, her expression inscrutable.

  “Well,” he ventured—“if you’re quite ready, Miss Shannon—?”

  “Mr. Lanyard,” she demanded almost sharply—“what was the full wording of that message?”

  “If you must know—”

  “I must!”

  He lifted a depreciative shoulder. “If you like, I’ll read it to you—or, rather, translate it from the thieves’ argot Popinot complimented me by using.”

  “Not necessary,” she said tersely. “I’ll take your word for it…. But you must tell me the truth.”

  “As you will…. Popinot delicately suggested that if I leave you here, to be reunited to your alleged parent—if I’ll trust to his word of honour, that is, and walk out of the house alone, he’ll give me twenty-four hours in which to leave Paris.”

  “Then only I stand between you and—”

  “My dear young woman!” he protested hastily. “Please don’t run away with any absurd notion like that. Do you imagine I’d consent to treat with such canaille under any circumstances?”

  “All the same,” she continued stubbornly, “I’m the stumbling-block.

  You’re risking your life for me—”

  “I’m not,” he insisted almost angrily.

  “You are,” she returned with quiet conviction.

  “Well!” he laughed—“have it your own way!…”

  “But it’s my life, isn’t it? I really don’t see how you’re going to prevent my risking it for anything that may seem to me worth the risk!”

  But she wouldn’t laugh; only her countenance, suddenly bereft of its mutinous expression, softened winningly—and her eyes grew very kind to him.
r />   “As long as it’s understood I understand—very well,” she said quietly;

  “I’ll do as you wish, Mr. Lanyard.”

  “Good!” he cried cheerfully. “I wish, by your leave, to take you out to dinner…. This way, please!”

  Leading through the scullery, he unbarred a low, arched door in one of the walls, discovering the black mouth of a narrow and tunnel-like passageway.

  With a word of caution, flash-lamp in his left hand, pistol in right,

  Lanyard stepped out into the darkness.

  In two minutes he was back, with a look of relief.

  “All clear,” he reported; “I felt pretty sure Popinot knew nothing of this way out—else we’d have entertained uninvited guests long since. Now, half a minute….”

  The electric meter occupied a place on the wall of the scullery not far from the door. Prying open its cover, he unscrewed and removed the fuse plug, plunging the entire house in complete darkness.

  “That’ll keep ’em guessing a while!” he explained with a chuckle. “They’ll hesitate a long time before rushing a dark house infested by a desperate armed man—if I know anything about that mongrel lot!…Besides, when they do get their courage up, the lack of light will stave off discovery of this way of escape…. And now, one word more.”

  A flash of the lamp located her hand. Calmly he possessed himself of it, if without opposition.

  “I’ve brought you into trouble enough, as it is, through my stupidity,” he said; “but for that, this place should have been a refuge to us until we were quite ready to leave Paris. So now we mustn’t forget, before we go out to run God-only-knows-what gauntlet, to fix a rendezvous in event of separation…. Popinot, for instance, may have drawn a cordon around the block; we can’t tell until we’re in the street; if he has, you must leave me to entertain them until you’re safe beyond their reach…. Oh, don’t worry: I’m perfectly well able to take care of myself….But afterwards, we must know where to find each other. Hotels, cafés and restaurants are out of the question: in the first place, we’ve barely money enough for our dinner; besides, they’ll be watched closely; as for our embassies and consulates, they aren’t open at all hours, and will likewise be watched. There remain—unless you can suggest something—only the churches; and I can think of none better suited to our purposes than the Sacré-Cour.”

  Her fingers tightened gently upon his.

  “I understand,” she said quietly; “if we’re obliged to separate, I’m to go direct to the Sacré-Cour and await you there.”

  “Right! …But let’s hope there’ll be no such necessity.”

  Hand-in-hand like frightened children, these two stole down the tunnel-like passageway, through a forlorn little court cramped between two tall old tenements, and so came out into the gloomy, sinuous and silent rue d’Assas.

  Here they encountered few wayfarers; and to these, preoccupied with anxiety to gain shelter from the inclement night, they seemed, no doubt, some student of the Quarter with his sweetheart—Lanyard in his shabby raincoat, striding rapidly, head and shoulders bowed against the driving mist, the girl in her trim Burberry clinging to his arm….

  Avoiding the nearer stations as dangerous, Lanyard steered a roundabout course through by-ways to the rue de Sèvres station of the Nord-Sud subway; from which in due course they came to the surface again at the place de la Concorde, walked several blocks, took a taxicab, and in less than half an hour after leaving the impasse Stanislas were comfortably ensconced in a cabinet particulier of a little restaurant of modest pretensions just north of Les Halles.

  They feasted famously: the cuisine, if bourgeois, was admirable and, better still, well within the resources of Lanyard’s emaciated purse. Nor did he fret with consciousness that, when the bill had been paid and the essential tips bestowed, there would remain in his pocket hardly more than cab fare. Supremely self-confident, he harboured no doubts of a smiling future—now that the dark pages in his record had been turned and sealed by a resolution he held irrevocable.

  His spirits had mounted to a high pitch, thanks to their successful evasion. He was young, he was in love, he was hungry, he was—in short—very much alive. And the consciousness of common peril knitted an enchanting intimacy into their communications. For the first time in his history Lanyard found himself in the company of a woman with whom he dared—and cared—to speak without reserve: a circumstance intrinsically intoxicating. And stimulated by her unquestionable interest and sympathy, he did talk without reserve of old Troyon’s and its drudge, Marcel; of Bourke and his wanderings; of the education of the Lone Wolf and his career, less in pride than in relief that it was ended; of the future he must achieve for himself.

  And sitting with chin cradled on the backs of her interlaced fingers, the girl listened with such indulgence as women find always for their lovers. Of herself she had little to say: Lanyard filled in to his taste the outlines of the simple history of a young woman of good family obliged to become self-supporting.

  And if at times her grave eyes clouded and her attention wandered, it was less in ennui than because of occult trains of thought set astir by some chance word or phrase of Lanyard’s.

  “I’m boring you,” he surmised once with quick contrition, waking up to the fact that he had monopolized the conversation for many minutes on end.

  She shook a pensive head. “No, again…. But I wonder, do you appreciate the magnitude of the task you’ve undertaken?”

  “Possibly not,” he conceded arrogantly; “but it doesn’t matter. The heavier the odds, the greater the incentive to win.”

  “But,” she objected, “you’ve told me a curious story of one who never had a chance or incentive to ‘go straight’—as you put it. And yet you seem to think that an overnight resolution to reform is all that’s needed to change all the habits of a life-time. You persuade me of your sincerity of today; but how will it be with you tomorrow—and not so much tomorrow as six months from tomorrow, when you’ve found the going rough and know you’ve only to take one step aside to gain a smooth and easy way?”

  “If I fail, then, it will be because I’m unfit—and I’ll go under, and never be heard of again…. But I shan’t fail. It seems to me the very fact that I want to go straight is proof enough that I’ve something inherently decent in me to build on.”

  “I do believe that, and yet…” She lowered her head and began to trace a meaningless pattern on the cloth before she resumed. “You’ve given me to understand I’m responsible for your sudden awakening, that it’s because of a regard conceived for me you’re so anxious to become an honest man. Suppose … suppose you were to find out … you’d been mistaken in me?”

  “That isn’t possible,” he objected promptly.

  She smiled upon him wistfully—and leniently from her remote coign of superior intuitive knowledge of human nature.

  “But if it were—?”

  “Then—I think,” he said soberly—“I think I’d feel as though there were nothing but emptiness beneath my feet!”

  “And you’d backslide—?”

  “How can I tell?” he expostulated. “It’s not a fair question. I don’t know what I’d do, but I do know it would need something damnable to shake my faith in you!”

  “You think so now,” she said tolerantly. “But if appearances were against me—”

  “They’d have to be black!”

  “If you found I had deceived you—?”

  “Miss Shannon!” He threw an arm across the table and suddenly imprisoned her hand. “There’s no use beating about the bush. You’ve got to know—”

  She drew back suddenly with a frightened look and a monosyllable of sharp protest: “No!”

  “But you must listen to me. I want you to understand…. Bourke used to say to me: ‘The man who lets love into his life opens a door no mortal hand can clo
se—and God only knows what will follow in!’ And Bourke was right…. Now that door is open in my heart, and I think that whatever follows in won’t be evil or degrading…. Oh, I’ve said it a dozen different ways of indirection, but I may as well say it squarely now: I love you; it’s love of you makes me want to go straight—the hope that when I’ve proved myself you’ll maybe let me ask you to marry me….Perhaps you’re in love with a better man today; I’m willing to chance that; a year brings many changes. Perhaps there’s something I don’t fathom in your doubting my strength and constancy. Only the outcome can declare that. But please understand this: if I fail to make good, it will be no fault of yours; it will be because I’m unfit and have proved it…. All I ask is what you’ve generously promised me: opportunity to come to you at the end of the year and make my report…. And then, if you will, you can say no to the question I’ll ask you and I shan’t resent it, and it won’t ruin me; for if a man can stick to a purpose for a year, he can stick to it forever, with or without the love of the woman he loves.”

  She heard him out without attempt at interruption, but her answer was prefaced by a sad little shake of her head.

  “That’s what makes it so hard, so terribly hard,” she said…. “Of course I’ve understood you. All that you’ve said by indirection, and much besides, has had its meaning to me. And I’m glad and proud of the honour you offer me. But I can’t accept it; I can never accept it—not now nor a year from now. It wouldn’t be fair to let you go on hoping I might some time consent to marry you…. For that’s impossible.”

  “You—forgive me—you’re not already married?”

  “No….”

  “Or promised?”

  “No….”

  “Or in love with someone else?”

  Again she told him, gently, “No.”

  His face cleared. He squared his shoulders. He even mustered up a smile.

  “Then it isn’t impossible. No human obstacle exists that time can’t overthrow. In spite of all you say, I shall go on hoping with all my heart and soul and strength.”