The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “What is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? Why don’t you tell me—if there is anything to tell—?”

  “I was hesitating to shock you, Liane.”

  “Never mind me. What has happened to de Lorgnes?”

  “It is in all the evening newspapers—the murder mystery of the Lyons rapide.”

  “De Lorgnes—?”

  Lanyard inclined his head. The woman breathed an invocation to the Deity and sank back against the wall, her face ghastly beneath its paint.

  “You know this?”

  “I was a passenger aboard the rapide, and saw the body before it was removed.”

  Liane Delorme made an effort to speak, but only her breath rustled harshly on her dry lips. She swallowed convulsively, turned to her glass, and found it empty. Lanyard hastened to refill it. She took the wine at a gulp, muttered a word of thanks, and offered the glass to be filled anew; but when this had been done sat unconscious of it, staring witlessly at nothing, so lost to her surroundings that all the muscles of her face relaxed and her years peered out through that mask of artifice which alone preserved for her the illusion and repute of beauty.

  Thus the face of an evil woman of middle-age, debauched beyond hope of redemption, was hideously revealed. Lanyard knew a qualm at seeing it, and looked hastily away.

  Beyond the rank of tables which stood between him and the dancing floor he saw Athenais Reneaux with Le Brun sweeping past in the suave movement of a waltz. The girl’s face wore a startled expression, her gaze was direct to the woman at Lanyard’s side; then it shifted enquiringly to him. With a look Lanyard warned her to compose herself, then lifted an eyebrow and glanced meaningly toward the doors. The least of nods answered him before Le Brun swung Athenais toward the middle of the floor and other couples intervened.

  Liane Delorme stirred abruptly.

  “The assassin?” she demanded—“is there any clue?”

  “I believe he is known by description, but missing.”

  “But you, my friend—what do you know?”

  “As much as anybody, I fancy—except the author of the murder.”

  “Tell me.”

  Quietly, briefly, Lanyard told her of seeing the Comte de Lorgnes at dinner in Lyons; of the uneasiness he manifested, and the cumulative feeling of frustration and failure he so plainly betrayed as the last hours of his life wore on; of the Apaches who watched de Lorgnes in the café and the fact that one of them had contrived to secure a berth in the same carriage with his victim; of seeing the presumptive murderer slinking away from the train at Laroche; and of the discovery of the body, on the arrival of the rapide at the Gare de Lyon.

  Absorbed, with eyes abstracted and intent, and a mouth whose essential selfishness and cruelty was unconsciously stressed by the compression of her lips: the woman heard him as he might have been a disembodied voice. Now and again, however, she nodded intently and, when he finished, had a pertinent question ready.

  “You say a description of this assassin exists?”

  “Have I not communicated it to you?”

  “But to the police—?”

  “Is it likely?” The woman gave him a blank stare.

  “Pardon, mademoiselle: but is it likely that the late André Duchemin would have more to do with the police than he could avoid?”

  “You would see a cold-blooded crime go unavenged—?”

  “Rather than dedicate the remainder of my days to seeing the world through prison bars? I should say yes!—seeing that this assassination does not concern me, and I am guiltless of the crime with which I myself am charged. But you who were a friend to de Lorgnes know the facts, and nothing hinders your communicating them to the Préfecture.… Though I will confess it would be gracious of you to keep my name out of the affair.”

  But Lanyard was not dicing with Chance when he made this suggestion: he knew very well Liane Delorme would not go to the police.

  “That for the Préfecture!” She clicked a finger-nail against her teeth. “What does it know? What does it do when it knows anything?”

  “I agree with mademoiselle entirely.”

  “Ah!” she mused bitterly—“if only we knew the name of that sale cochon!”

  “We do.”

  “We—monsieur?”

  “I, at least, know one of the many names doubtless employed by the assassin.”

  “And you hesitate to tell me!”

  “Why should I? No, but an effort of memory…” Lanyard measured a silence, seeming lost in thought, in reality timing the blow and preparing to note its effect. Then, snapping his fingers as one who says: I have it!—“Albert Dupont,” he announced abruptly.

  Unquestionably the name meant nothing to the woman. She curled a lip: “But that is any name!” Then thoughtfully: “You heard his companion of the café call him that?”

  “No, mademoiselle. But I recognised the animal as Albert Dupont when he boarded the train at Combe-Rendonde that morning and, unnoticed by him, travelled with him all the way to Lyons.”

  “You recognised him?”

  “I believe it well.”

  “When had you known him?”

  “First when I fought with him at Montpellier-le-Vieux, later when he sought to do me in on the outskirts of Nant. He was the fugitive chauffeur of the Château de Montalais.”

  “But—name of a sacred name!—what had that one to do with de Lorgnes?”

  “If you will tell me that, there will be no more mystery in this sad affair.”

  The woman brooded heavily for a moment. “But if it had been you he was after, I might understand…” He caught the sidelong glimmer of her eye upon him, dark with an unuttered question.

  But the waltz was at an end, Athenais and Le Brun were threading their way through the intervening tables.

  The interruption could not have been better timed; Lanyard was keen to get away. He had learned all that he could reasonably have hoped to learn from Liane Delorme in one night. He knew that she and de Lorgnes had been mutually interested in the business that took the latter to Lyons. He had the testimony of his own perceptions to prove that news of the murder had come as a great shock to her. On that same testimony he was prepared to swear that, whatever the part, if any, she had played in the robbery, she knew nothing of “Albert Dupont,” at least by that name, and nothing of his activities as chauffeur at the Château de Montalais.

  Yet one thing more Lanyard knew: that Liane suspected him of knowing more than he had told her. But he wasn’t sorry she should think that; it gave him a continuing claim upon her interest. Henceforth she might be wary of him, but she would never lose touch with him if she could help it.

  Now Athenais was pausing beside the table, and saying with a smile as weary as it was charming:

  “Come, Monsieur Paul, if you please, and take me home! I’ve danced till I’m ready to drop.”

  Annoyed by the prospect of being obliged to let Lanyard out of her sight so soon, before she had time to mature her plans with respect to him, Liane Delorme pulled herself together.

  “Go home?” she protested with a vivacity so forced it drew a curious stare even from the empty Le Brun. “So early! My dear! what are you thinking of?”

  “I’ve been on the go all day long,” Athenais explained sweetly; “and now I’ve got nothing left to keep up on.”

  “Zut!” the Delorme insisted. “Have more champagne and—”

  “Thank you, no, dearest. My head is swimming with it already. I really must go. Surely you don’t mind?”

  But Liane did mind, and the wine she had drunk had left her only a remnant of sobriety, not enough for good control of her temper.

  “Mind?” she echoed rudely. “Why should I mind whether you stay or go? It’s your affair, not mine.” She made a scornful mo
uth; and the look with which she coupled Lanyard and Athenais in innuendo was in itself almost actionable. “But me,” she pursued with shrill vivacity—“I shan’t go yet, I’m not drunk enough by half. Get more champagne, Fred”—this to Le Brun as she turned a gleaming shoulder to the others—“quantities of it—and tell Chu-chu to bring Angele over, and Constance and Victor, too. Thanks to the good God, they at least know they are still alive!”

  CHAPTER XV

  ADIEU

  Ever since the fall of evening, whose clear gloaming had seemed to promise a fair night of moonlight, the skies had been thickening slowly over Paris. While still at the Ambassadeurs Lanyard had noticed that the moon was being blotted out. By midnight its paling disk had become totally eclipsed, the clouds hung low over the city, a dense blanket imprisoning heat which was oppressive even in the open and stifling in the ill-ventilated restaurants.

  Now from the shelter of the café canopy Lanyard and Athenais Reneaux looked out upon a pave like a river of jet ribboned with gently glowing lights and running between the low banks of sidewalks no less black: both deserted but for a few belated prowlers lurching homeward through the drizzle, and a rank of private cars waiting near the entrance.

  The bedizened porter whistled fatuously at a passing taxicab, which though fareless held steadfast to its way, while the driver acknowledged the signal only with jeers and disgraceful gestures, after the manner of his kind. So that Lanyard, remembering how frequently similar experiences had befallen him in pre-War Paris, reflected sadly that the great conflict had, after all, worked little change in human hearts—charitably assuming the bosoms of French taxi-bandits to be so furnished.

  Presently, however, the persistent whistle conjured from round a corner a rakish hansom that—like the creature between its shafts and the driver on its lofty box, with his face in full bloom and his bleary eyes, his double-breasted box-coat and high hat of oilcloth—had doubtless been brisk with young ambition in the golden time of the Nineteen-Naughties.

  But unmistakably of the vintage of the Nineteen-Twenties was the avarice of the driver. For when he had been given the address of the Athenais’ apartment, he announced with vinous truculence that his whim inclined to precisely the opposite direction, gathered up the reins, clucked in peremptory fashion to the nag (which sagely paid no attention to him whatsoever) and consented only to change his mind when promised a fabulous fare.

  Even then he grumbled profanely while Lanyard helped Athenais to climb in and took the place by her side.

  The rue Pigalle was as dark and still as any street in a deserted village. From its gloomy walls the halting clatter of hoofs struck empty echoes that rang in Lanyard’s heart like a refrain from some old song. To that very tune had the gay world gone about its affaires in younger years, when the Lone Wolf was a living fact and not a fading memory in the minds of men…

  He sighed heavily.

  “Monsieur is sentimental,” commented Athenais Reneaux lightly. “Beware! Sentimentalists come always to some sad end.”

  “One has found that true… But you are young to know it, Athenais.”

  “A woman is never young—after a certain age—save when she loves, my friend.”

  “That, too, is true. But still you are overyoung to have learned it.”

  “One learns life’s lessons not in any fixed and predetermined order, Paul, with no sort of sequence whatever, but as and when Life chooses to teach them.”

  “Quel dommage!” Lanyard murmured, and subsided into another silence.

  The girl grew restive. “But tell me, my dear Don Juan,” she protested: “Do all your conquests affect you in this morbid fashion?”

  “Conquests?”

  “You seemed to get on very well with Liane Delorme.”

  “Pardon. If I am sentimental, it is because old memories have been awakened tonight, memories of forfeit days when one thought well of oneself, here in Paris.”

  “Days in which, no doubt, Liane played a part?”

  “A very minor rôle, Athenais… But are you doing me the honour to be jealous?”

  “Perhaps, petit Monsieur Paul…”

  In the broken light of passing lamps her quiet smile was as illegible as her shadowed eyes.

  After a moment Lanyard laughed a little, caught up her hand, patted it indulgently, and with gentle decision replaced it in her lap.

  “It isn’t fair, my dear, to be putting foolish notions into elderly heads merely because you know you can do it. Show a little respect for my grey hairs, of which there are far too many.”

  “They’re most becoming,” said Athenais Reneaux demurely. “But tell me about Liane, if it isn’t a secret.”

  “Oh! that was so long ago and such a trifling thing, one wonders at remembering it at all.… I happened, one night, to be where I had no right to be. That was rather a habit of mine, I’m afraid. And so I discovered, in another man’s apartment, a young woman, hardly more than a child, trying to commit suicide. You may believe I put a stop to that.… Later, for in those days I had some little influence in certain quarters, I got her place in the chorus at the Variétés. She made up a name for the stage: Liane Delorme. And that is all. You see, it was very simple.”

  “And she was grateful?”

  “Not oppressively. She was quite normal about it all.”

  “Still, she has not forgotten.”

  “But remind yourself that the chemistry of years is such that inevitably a sense of obligation in due course turns into a grudge. It is true, Liane has not forgotten, but I am by no means sure she has forgiven me for saving her to life.”

  “There may be something in that, seeing what she has made of her life.”

  “Now there is where you can instruct me. I have been long in exile.”

  “But you know how Liane graduated from the chorus of the Variétés, became first a principal there, then the rage of all the music halls with her way of singing rhymed indecencies.”

  “One has heard something of that.”

  “On the peak of her success she retired, saying she had worked long enough, made enough money. That, too, knows itself. But Liane retired only from the stage… You understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “She continued to make many dear friends, some of them among the greatest personages of Europe. So that gradually she became what she is today,” Athenais Reneaux pronounced soberly: “as I think, the most dangerous woman on the Continent.”

  “How—‘dangerous’?”

  “Covetous, grasping, utterly unscrupulous and corrupt, and weirdly powerful. She has a strange influence in the highest places.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “God knows! It was, at all events, strong enough to save her from being shot during the war. I was assigned to watch her then. There was a suspicion in England that she was in communication with the enemy. I found it to be quite true. She knew Bolo Pasha intimately, Caillaux, too. Other women, many of them, fled the country, or went to St. Lazare for the duration of the war, or faced firing squads at dawn for doing infinitely less than she did to betray France and her Allies; but Liane Delorme got off scot-free. I happen to know that England made the strongest representations to the French government about her. I know personally of two young French officers who had been on friendly terms with Liane, and who shot themselves, one dramatically on her very doorstep. And why did they do that, if not in remorse for betraying to her secrets which afterwards somehow found their way to the enemy?… But nothing was ever done about it, she was never in the least molested, and nightly you might see her at Maxim’s or L’Abbaye, making love to officers, while at the Front men were being slaughtered by the hundreds, thanks to her treachery.… Ah, monsieur, I tell you I know that woman too well!”

  The girl’s voice quavered with indignation.

  “So
that was how you came to know her,” Lanyard commented as if he had found nothing else of interest. “I wondered…”

  “Yes: we were bosom friends—almost—for a time. It wasn’t nice, but the job had to be done. Then Liane grew suspicious, and our friendship cooled. One night I had a narrow escape from some Apaches. I recognised Liane’s hand in that. She was afraid I knew something. So I did. But she didn’t dream how much I knew. If she had there would have been a second attempt of that sort minus the escape. Then the armistice came to cool our passions, and Liane found other things to think about… God knows what other mischief to do in time of peace!”

  “I think,” Lanyard suggested, recalling that conversation in the grand salon of the Château de Montalais, “you had better look to yourself, Athenais, as far as Liane is concerned, after tonight. She only needed to see you with me to have confirmed any suspicions she may previously have had concerning your relations with the B. S. S.”

  “I will remember that,” the girl said calmly. “Many thanks, dear friend.… But what is it you are doing all the time? What is it you see?”

  As the hansom swung round the dark pile of the Trinité, Lanyard had for the third time twisted round in his seat, to peep back up the rue Pigalle through the little window in the rear.

  “As I thought!” He let the leather flap fall over the peep-hole and sat back. “Liane doesn’t trust me,” he sighed, disconsolate.

  “We are followed?”

  “By a motor-car of some sort, creeping along without lights, probably one of the private cars that were waiting when we came out.”

  “I have a pistol, if you need one,” Athenais offered, matter-of-fact.

  “Then you were more sensible than I.”

  Lanyard held a thoughtful silence for some minutes, while the cab jogged sedately down the rue St. Lazare, then had another look back through the little window.

  “No mistake about that,” he reported; and bending forward began to peer intently right and left into the dark throats of several minor streets they passed after leaving the Hôtel Terminus behind and heading down the rue de la Pépinière. “The deuce of it is,” he complained, “this inhuman loneliness! If there were only something like a crowd in the streets as there must have been earlier in the evening…”