The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  For the present, however, Lanyard wasn’t taking any. He met that challenge with a look of utter stupidity, folded his arms, lounged against the desk, and watched Madame Omber acknowledge, none too cordially, the other sergent’s query.

  “I am Madame Omber—yes. What can I do for you?”

  The sergent gaped. “Pardon!” he stammered, then laughed as one who tardily appreciates a joke. “It is well we are arrived in time, madame,” he added—“though it would seem you have not had great trouble with this miscreant. Where is the woman?”

  He moved a pace toward Lanyard: hand-cuffs jingled in his grasp.

  “But a moment!” madame interposed. “Woman? What woman?”

  Pausing, the older sergent explained in a tone of surprise:

  “But his accomplice, naturally! Such were our instructions—to proceed at once to madame’s hôtel, come in quietly by the servants’ entrance—which would be open—and arrest a burglar with his female accomplice.”

  Again the stout sergent moved toward Lanyard; again Madame Omber stopped him.

  “But one moment more, if you please!”

  Her eyes, dense with suspicion, questioned Lanyard; who, with a significant nod toward the jewel-case still in her hands, gave her a glance of dumb entreaty.

  After brief hesitation, “It is a mistake,” madame declared; “there is no woman in this house, to my certain knowledge, who has no right to be here… But you say you received a message? I sent none!”

  The fat sergent shrugged. “That is not for me to dispute, madame. I have only my orders to go by.”

  He glared sullenly at Lanyard; who returned a placid smile that (despite such hope as he might derive from madame’s irresolute manner) masked a vast amount of trepidation. He felt tolerably sure Madame Omber had not sent for police on prior knowledge of his presence in the library. All this, then, would seem to indicate a new form of attack on the part of the Pack. He had probably been followed and seen to enter; or else the girl had been caught attempting to steal away and the information wrung from her by force majeure…. Moreover, he could hear two more pair of feet tramping through the salons.

  Pending the arrival of these last, Madame Omber said nothing more.

  And, unceremoniously enough, the newcomers shouldered into the library—one pompous uniformed body, of otherwise undistinguished appearance, promptly identified by the sergents de ville as monsieur le commissaire of that quarter; the other, a puffy mediocrity, known to Lanyard at least (if apparently to no one else) as Popinot.

  At this confirmation of his darkest fears, the adventurer abandoned hope of aid from Madame Omber and began quietly to reckon his chances of escape through his own efforts.

  But he was quite unarmed, and the odds were heavy: four against one, all four no doubt under arms, and two at least—the sergents—men of sound military training.

  “Madame Omber?” enquired the commissaire, saluting that lady with immense dignity. “One trusts that this intrusion may be pardoned, the circumstances remembered. In an affair of this nature, involving this repository of so historic treasures—”

  “That is quite well understood, monsieur le commissaire,” madame replied distantly. “And this monsieur is, no doubt, your aide?”

  “Pardon!” the official hastened to identify his companion: “Monsieur

  Popinot, agent de la Sûreté, who lays these informations!”

  With a profound obeisance to Madame Omber, Popinot strode dramatically over to confront Lanyard and explore his features with his small, keen, shifty eyes of a pig; a scrutiny which the adventurer suffered with superficial calm.

  “It is he!” Popinot announced with a gesture. “Messieurs, I call upon you to arrest this man, Michael Lanyard, alias ‘The Lone Wolf.’”

  He stepped back a pace, expanding his chest in vain effort to eclipse his abdomen, and glanced triumphantly at his respectful audience.

  “Accused,” he added with intense relish, “of the murder of Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard at Troyon’s, as well as of setting fire to that establishment—”

  “For this, Popinot,” Lanyard interrupted in an undertone, “I shall some day cut off your ears!” He turned to Madame Omber: “Accept, if you please, madame, my sincere regrets … but this charge happens to be one of which I am altogether innocent.”

  Instantly, from lounging against the desk, Lanyard straightened up: and the heavy humidor of brass and mahogany, on which his right hand had been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent.

  Before that one, wholly unprepared, could more than gasp, the humidor caught him a blow like a kick just below the breastbone. He reeled, the breath left him in one great gust, he sat down abruptly—blue eyes wide with a look of aggrieved surprise—clapped both hands to his middle, blinked, turned pale, and keeled over on his side.

  But Lanyard hadn’t waited to note results. He was busy. The fat sergent had leaped snarling upon his arm, and was struggling to hold it still long enough to snap a hand-cuff round the wrist; while the commissaire had started forward with a bellow of rage and two hands extended and itching for the adventurer’s throat.

  The first received a half-arm jab on the point of his chin that jarred his entire system, and without in the least understanding how it happened, found himself whirled around and laid prostrate in the commissaire’s path. The latter tripped, fell, and planted two hard knees, with the bulk of his weight atop them, on the apex of the sergent’s paunch.

  At the same time Lanyard, leaping toward the doorway, noticed Popinot tugging at something in his hip-pocket.

  Followed a vivid flash, then complete darkness: with a well-aimed kick—an elementary movement of la savate—Lanyard had dislocated the switch of the electric lights, knocking its porcelain box from the wall, breaking the connection, and creating a short-circuit which extinguished every light in that part of the house.

  With his way thus apparently cleared, the police in confusion, darkness aiding him, Lanyard plunged on; but in mid-stride, as he crossed the threshold, his ankle was caught by the still prostrate younger sergent and jerked from under him.

  His momentum threw him with a crash—and may have spared him a worse mishap; for in the same breath he heard the report of a pistol and knew that Popinot had fired at his fugitive shadow.

  As he brought one heel down with crushing force on the sergent’s wrist, freeing his foot, he was dimly conscious of the voice of the commissaire shouting frantic prayers to cease firing. Then the pain-maddened sergent crawled to his knees, lunged blindly forward, knocked the adventurer back in the act of rising, and fell on top of him.

  Hampered by two hundred pounds of fighting Frenchman, Lanyard felt his cause was lost, yet battled on—and would while breath was in him.

  With a heave, a twist and a squirm, he slipped from under, and swinging a fist at random barked his knuckles against the mouth of the sergent. Momentarily that one relaxed his hold, and Lanyard struggled to his knees, only to go down as the indomitable Frenchman grappled yet a second time.

  Now, however, as they fell, Lanyard was on top: and shifting both hands to his antagonist’s left forearm, he wrenched it up and around. There was a cry of pain, and he jumped clear of one no longer to be reckoned with.

  Nevertheless, as he had feared, the delay had proved ruinous. He had only found his feet when an unidentified person hurled himself bodily through the gloom and wrapped his arms round Lanyard’s thighs. And as both went down, two others piled up on top….

  For the next minute or two, Lanyard fought blindly, madly, viciously, striking and kicking at random. For all that—even with one sergent hors de combat—they were three to one; and though with the ferocity of sheer desperation he shook them all off, at one time, and gained a few yards more, it wa
s only again to be overcome and borne down, crushed beneath the weight of three.

  His wind was going, his strength was leaving him. He mustered up every ounce of energy, all his wit and courage, for one last effort: fought like a cat, tooth and nail; toiled once more to his knees, with two clinging to him like wolves to the flanks of a stag; shook one off, regained his feet, swayed; and in one final gust of ferocity dashed both fists repeatedly into the face of him who still clung to him.

  That one was Popinot; he knew instinctively that this was so; and a grim joy filled him as he felt the man’s clutches relax and fall away, and guessed how brutal was the damage he had done that fat, evil face.

  At length free, he made off, running, stumbling, reeling: gained the hall; flung open the door; and heedless of the picket who had fired on him from below the window, dashed down the steps and away….

  Three shots sped him through that intricate tangle of night-bound park. But all went wide; the pursuit—what little there was—blundered off at hap-hazard and lost itself, as well.

  He came to the wall, crept along in shelter of its shadow until he found a tree with a low-swung branch that jutted out over the street, climbed this, edged out over the wall, and dropped to the sidewalk.

  A shout from the quarter of the carriage gates greeted his appearance. He turned and ran again. Flying footsteps for a time pursued him; and once, with a sinking heart, he heard the rumble of a motor. But he recovered quickly, regained his wind, and ran well, with long, steady, ground-consuming strides; and he doubled, turned and twisted in a manner to wake the envy of the most subtle fox.

  In time he felt warranted in slowing down to a rapid walk.

  Weariness was now a heavy burden upon him, and his spirit numb with desperate need of rest; but his pace did not flag, nor his purpose falter from its goal.

  It was a long walk if a direct one to which he set himself as soon as confident the pursuit had failed once more. He plodded on, without faltering, to the one place where he might feel sure of finding his beloved, if she lived and were free. He knew that she had not forgotten, and in his heart he knew that she would never again of her own will fail him….

  Nor had she: when—weary and spent from that heartbreaking climb up the merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre—he staggered rather than walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacré-Cour, he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost and lonely in the long ranks of empty chairs that filled the nave.

  Slowly, almost fearfully, he went to her, and silently he slipped into the chair by her side.

  She knew, without looking up, that it was he….

  After a little her hand stole out, closed round his fingers, and drew him forward with a gentle, insistent pressure. He knelt then with her, hand in hand—filled with the wonder of it, that he to whom religion had been nothing should have been brought to this by a woman’s hand.

  He knelt for a long time, for many minutes, profoundly intrigued, his sombre gaze questioning the golden shadows and ancient mystery of the distant choir and shining altar: and there was no question in his heart but that, whatever should ensue of this, the unquiet spirit of the Lone Wolf was forevermore at rest.

  CHAPTER XXV

  WINGS OF THE MORNING

  About half-past six Lanyard left the dressing-room assigned him in the barracks at Port Aviation and, waddling quaintly in the heavy wind-resisting garments supplied him at the instance of Ducroy, made his way between two hangars toward the practice field.

  Now the eastern skies were pulsing with fitful promise of the dawn; but within the vast enclosure of the aerodrome the gloom of night lingered so stubbornly that two huge search-lights had been pressed into the service of those engaged in tuning up the motor of the Parrott biplane.

  In the intense, white, concentrated glare—that rippled oddly upon the wrinkled, oily garments of the dozen or so mechanics busy about the machine—the under sides of those wide, motionless planes hung against the dark with an effect of impermanence: as though they were already afloat and needed but a breath to send them winging skyward….

  To one side a number of young and keen-faced Frenchmen, officers of the corps, were lounging and watching the preparations with alert and intelligent interest.

  To the other, all the majesty of Mars was incarnate in the person of Monsieur Ducroy, posing valiantly in fur-lined coat and shining top-hat while he chatted with an officer whose trim, athletic figure was well set off by his aviating uniform.

  As Lanyard drew near, this last brought his heels together smartly, saluted the Minister of War, and strode off toward the flying-machine.

  “Captain Vauquelin informs me he will be ready to start in five minutes, monsieur,” Ducroy announced. “You are in good time.”

  “And mademoiselle?” the adventurer asked, peering anxiously round.

  Almost immediately the girl came forward from the shadows, with a smile apologetic for the strangeness of her attire.

  She had donned, over her street dress, an ample leather garment which enveloped her completely, buttoning tight at throat and wrists and ankles. Her small hat had been replaced by a leather helmet which left only her eyes, nose, mouth and chin exposed, and even these were soon to be hidden by a heavy veil for protection against spattering oil.

  “Mademoiselle is not nervous?” Ducroy enquired politely.

  Lucy smiled brightly.

  “I? Why should I be, monsieur?”

  “I trust mademoiselle will permit me to commend her courage. But pardon! I have one last word for the ear of Captain Vauquelin.”

  Lifting his hat, the Frenchman joined the group near the machine.

  Lanyard stared unaffectedly at the girl, unable to disguise his wonder at the high spirits advertised by her rekindled colour and brilliant eyes.

  “Well?” she demanded gaily. “Don’t tell me I don’t look like a fright!

  I know I do!”

  “I daren’t tell you how you look to me,” Lanyard replied soberly. “But

  I will say this, that for sheer, down right pluck, you—”

  “Thank you, monsieur! And you?”

  He glanced with a deprecatory smile at the flimsy-looking contrivance to which they were presently to entrust their lives.

  “Somehow,” said he doubtfully, “I don’t feel in the least upset or exhilarated. It seems little out of the average run of life—all in the day’s work!”

  “I think,” she said, judgmatical, “that you’re very like the other lone wolf, the fictitious one—Lupin, you know—a bit of a blagueur. If you’re not nervous, why keep glancing over there?—as if you were rather expecting somebody—as if you wouldn’t be surprised to see Popinot or De Morbihan pop out of the ground—or Ekstrom!”

  “Hum!” he said gravely. “I don’t mind telling you now, that’s precisely what I am afraid of.”

  “Nonsense!” the girl cried in open contempt. “What could they do?”

  “Please don’t ask me,” Lanyard begged seriously. “I might try to tell you.”

  “But don’t worry, my dear!” Fugitively her hand touched his. “We’re ready.”

  It was true enough: Ducroy was moving impressively back toward them.

  “All is prepared,” he announced in sonorous accents.

  A bit sobered, in silence they approached the machine.

  Vauquelin kept himself aloof while Lanyard and a young officer helped the girl to the seat to the right of the pilot, and strapped her in. When Lanyard had been similarly secured in the place on the left, the two sat, imprisoned, some six feet above the ground.

  Lanyard found his perch comfortable enough. A broad band of webbing furnished suppo
rt for his back; another crossed his chest by way of provision against forward pitching; there were rests for his feet, and for his hands cloth-wound grips fixed to struts on either side.

  He smiled at Lucy across the empty seat, and was surprised at the clearness with which her answering smile was visible. But he wasn’t to see it again for a long and weary time; almost immediately she began to adjust her veil.

  The morning had grown much lighter within the last few minutes.

  A long wait ensued, during which the swarm of mechanics, assistants and military aviators buzzed round their feet like bees.

  The sky was now pale to the western horizon. A fleet of heavy clouds was drifting off into the south, leaving in their wake thin veils of mist that promised soon to disappear before the rays of the sun. The air seemed tolerably clear and not unseasonably cold.

  The light grew stronger still: features of distant objects defined themselves; traces of colour warmed the winter landscape.

  At length their pilot, wearing his wind-mask, appeared and began to climb to his perch. With a cool nod for Lanyard and a civil bow to his woman passenger, he settled himself, adjusted several levers, and flirted a gay hand to his brother-officers.

  There was a warning cry. The crowd dropped back rapidly to either side. Ducroy lifted his hat in parting salute, cried “Bon voyage!” and scuttled clear like a startled rooster before a motor-car. And the motor and propeller broke loose with a mighty roar comparable only, in Lanyard’s fancy, to the chant of ten thousand rivetting locusts.

  He felt momentarily as if his ear-drums must burst with the incessant and tremendous concussions registered upon them; but presently this sensation passed, leaving him with that of permanent deafness.