The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Thank God!” Liane breathed—and instantly found a new question to fret about. “But your men, Captain Monk—your officers and crew—can you be sure of them?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You haven’t signed on any new men here in Cherbourg?” Lanyard asked.

  Monk worked his eyebrows to signify that the question was ridiculous. “No such fool, thanks,” he added.

  “Yet they may have been corrupted while here in port,” Liane insisted.

  “No fear.”

  “That is what I would have said of my maid and footman, twenty-four hours ago. Yet I now know better.”

  “I tell you only what I know, mademoiselle. If any of my officers and crew have been tampered with, I don’t know anything about it, and can’t and won’t until the truth comes out.”

  “And you sit there calmly to tell me that!” Liane rolled her lovely eyes in appeal to the deck beams overhead. “But you are impossible!”

  “But, my dear lady,” Monk protested, “I am perfectly willing to go into hysterics if you think it will do any good. As it happens, I don’t. I haven’t been idle or fatuous in that matter, I have taken every possible precaution against miscarriage of our plans. If anything goes wrong now, it can’t be charged to my discredit.”

  “It will be an act of God,” Phinuit declared: “one of the unavoidable risks of the business.”

  “The business!” Liane echoed with scorn. “I assure you I wish I were well out of ‘the business’!”

  “And so say we all of us,” Phinuit assured her patiently; and Monk intoned a fervent “Amen!”

  “But who is Dupont?” Lanyard reiterated stubbornly.

  “An Apache, monsieur,” Liane responded sulkily—“a leader of Apaches.”

  “Thank you for nothing.”

  “Patience: I am telling you all I know. I recognised him this morning, when you were struggling with him. His name is Popinot.”

  “Ah!”

  “Why do you say ‘Ah!’ monsieur?”

  “There was a Popinot in Paris in my day; they nicknamed him the Prince of the Apaches. But he was an older man, and died by the guillotine. This Popinot who calls himself Dupont, then, must be his son.”

  “That is true, monsieur.”

  “Well, then, if he has inherited his father’s power—!”

  “It is not so bad as all that. I have heard that the elder Popinot was a true prince, in his way, I mean as to his power with the Apaches. His son is hardly that; he has a following, but new powers were established with his father’s death, and they remain stronger than he.”

  “All of which brings us to the second part of my question, Liane: Why Dupont?”

  Liane shrugged and studied her bedizened fingers. The heavy black brows circumflexed Monk’s eyes, and he drew down the corners of his wide mouth. Phinuit fixed an amused gaze on a distant corner of the room and chewed his cigar.

  “Why did Dupont—or Popinot,” Lanyard persisted—“murder de Lorgnes? Why did he try to murder Mademoiselle Delorme? Why did he seek to prevent our reaching Cherbourg?”

  “Give you three guesses,” Phinuit offered amiably. “But I warn you if you use more than one you’ll forfeit my respect forever. And just to show what a good sport I am, I’ll ask you a few leading questions. Why did Popinot pull off that little affair at Montpellier-le-Vieux? Why did he try to put you out of his way a few days later?”

  “Because he wanted to steal the jewels of Madame de Montalais, naturally.”

  “I knew you’d guess it.”

  “You admit, then, you have the jewels?”

  “Why not?” Phinuit enquired coolly. “We took trouble enough to get them, don’t you think? You’re taking trouble enough to get them away from us, aren’t you? You don’t want us to think you so stupid as to be wasting your time, do you?” His imperturbable effrontery was so amusing that Lanyard laughed outright. Then, turning to Liane, he offered her a grateful inclination of the head.

  “Mademoiselle, you have kept your promise. Many thanks.”

  “Hello!” cried Phinuit. “What promise?”

  “Monsieur Lanyard desired a favour of me,” Liane explained, her good humour restored; “in return for saving me from assassination by Popinot this morning, he begged me to help him find the jewels of Madame de Montalais. It appears that he—or Andre Duchemin—is accused of having stolen those jewels; so it becomes a point of honour with him to find and restore them to Madame de Montalais.”

  “He told you that?” Monk queried, studiously eliminating from his tone the jeer implied by the words alone.

  “But surely. And what could I do? He spoke so earnestly, I was touched. Regard, moreover, how deeply I am indebted to him. So I promised I would do my best. Et voila! I have brought him to the jewels; the rest is—how do you say—up to him. Are you satisfied with the way I keep my word, monsieur?”

  “It’s hard to see how he can have any kick coming,” Phinuit commented with some acidity.

  Lanyard addressed himself to Liane: “Do I understand the jewels are on this vessel?”

  “In this room.”

  Lanyard sat up and took intelligent notice of the room. Phinuit chuckled, and consulted Monk in the tone of one reasonable man to his peer.

  “I say, skipper: don’t you think we ought to be liberal with Monsieur Lanyard? He’s an awfully good sort—and look’t all the services he has done us.”

  Monk set the eyebrows to consider the proposition.

  “I am emphatically of your mind, Phin,” he pronounced at length, oracular.

  “It’s plain to be seen he wants those jewels—means to have ’em. Do you know any way we can keep them from him?”

  Monk moved his head slowly from side to side: “None.”

  “Then you agree with me, it would save us all a heap of trouble to let him have them without any more stalling?”

  By way of answer Monk bent over and quietly opened a false door, made to resemble the fronts of three drawers, in a pedestal of his desk. Lanyard couldn’t see the face of the built-in safe, but he could hear the spinning of the combination manipulated by Monk’s long and bony fingers. And presently he saw Monk straighten up with a sizable steel dispatch-box in his hands, place this upon the desk, and unlock it with a key on his pocket ring.

  “There,” he announced with an easy gesture.

  Lanyard rose and stood over the desk, investigating the contents of the dispatch-box. The collection of magnificent stones seemed to tally accurately with his mental memoranda of the descriptions furnished by Eve de Montalais.

  “This seems to be right,” he said quietly, and closed the box. The automatic lock snapped fast.

  “Now what do you say, brother dear?”

  “Your debt to me is fully discharged, Liane. But, messieurs, one question: Knowing I am determined to restore these jewels to their owner, why this open handedness?”

  “Cards on the table,” said Phinuit. “It’s the only way to deal with the likes of you.”

  “In other words,” Monk interpreted: “you have under your hand proof of our bona fides.”

  “And what is to prevent me from going ashore with these at once?”

  “Nothing,” said Phinuit.

  “But this is too much!”

  “Nothing,” Phinuit elaborated, “but your own good sense.”

  “Ah!” said Lanyard—“ah!”—and looked from face to face.

  Monk adjusted his eyebrows to an angle of earnestness and sincerity.

  “The difficulty is, Mr. Lanyard,” he said persuasively, “they have cost us so much, those jewels, in time and money and exertion, we can hardly be expected to sit still and see you walk off with them and say never a word in protection of our own interests. Therefore I must warn
you, in the most friendly spirit: if you succeed in making your escape from the Sybarite with the jewels, as you quite possibly may, it will be my duty as a law-abiding man to inform the police that André Duchemin is at large with his loot from the Château de Montalais. And I don’t think you’d get very far, then, or that your fantastic story about meaning to return them would gain much credence. D’ye see?”

  “But distinctly! If, however, I leave the jewels and lay an information against you with the police—?”

  “To do that you would have to go ashore.…”

  “Do I understand I am to consider myself your prisoner?”

  “Oh, dear, no!” said Captain Monk, inexpressibly pained by such crudity. “But I do wish you’d consider favourably an invitation to be our honoured guest on the voyage to New York. You won’t? It would be so agreeable of you.”

  “Sorry I must decline. A prior engagement.…”

  “But you see, Lanyard,” Phinuit urged earnestly, “we’ve taken no end of a fancy to you. We like you, really, for yourself alone. And with that feeling the outgrowth of our very abbreviated acquaintance—think what a friendship might come of a real opportunity to get to know one another well.”

  “Some other time, messieurs.…”

  “But please!” Phinuit persisted—“just think for one moment—and do forget that pistol I know you’ve got in a handy pocket. We’re all unarmed here, Mademoiselle Delorme, the skipper and I. We can’t stop your going, if you insist, and we know too much to try. But there are those aboard who might. Jules, for instance: if he saw you making a getaway and knew it might mean a term in a French prison for him.… And if I do say it as shouldn’t of my kid brother, Jules is a dead shot. Then there are others. There’d surely be a scrimmage on the decks; and how could we explain that to the police, who, I am able to assure you from personal observation, are within hail? Why, that you had been caught trying to stow away with your loot, which you dropped in making your escape. D’ye see how bad it would look for you?”

  To this there was no immediate response. Sitting with bowed head and sombre eyes, Lanyard thought the matter over a little, indifferent to the looks of triumph being exchanged above his head.

  “Obviously, it would seem, you have not gone to all this trouble—lured me aboard this yacht—merely to amuse yourselves at my expense and then knock me on the head.”

  “Absurd!” Liane declared indignantly. “As if I would permit such a thing, who owe you so much!”

  “Or look at it this way, monsieur,” Monk put in with a courtly gesture: “When one has an adversary whom one respects, one wisely prefers to have him where one can watch him.”

  “That’s just it,” Phinuit amended: “Out of our sight, you’d be on our nerves, forever pulling the Popinot stunt, springing some dirty surprise on us. But here, as our guest—!”

  “More than that,” said Liane with her most killing glance for Lanyard: “a dear friend.”

  But Lanyard was not to be put off by fair words and flattery.

  “No,” he said gravely: “but there is some deeper motive…”

  He sought Phinuit’s eyes, and Phinuit unexpectedly gave him an open-faced return.

  “There is,” he stated frankly.

  “Then why not tell me—?”

  “All in good time. And there’ll be plenty of that; the Sybarite is no Mauretania. When you know us better and have learned to like us…”

  “I make no promises.”

  “We ask none. Only your pistol…”

  “Well, monsieur: my pistol?”

  “It makes our association seem so formal—don’t you think?—so constrained. Come, Mr. Lanyard! be reasonable. What is a pistol between friends?”

  Lanyard shrugged, sighed, and produced the weapon.

  “Really!” he said, handing it over to Monk—“how could anyone resist such disarming expressions?”

  The captain thanked him solemnly and put the weapon away in his safe, together with the steel despatch-box and Liane Delorme’s personal treasure of precious stones.

  CHAPTER XXI

  SOUNDINGS

  With characteristic abruptness Liane Delorme announced that she was sleepy, it had been for her a most fatiguing day. Captain Monk rang for the stewardess and gallantly escorted the lady to her door. Lanyard got up with Phinuit to bow her out, but instead of following her suit helped himself to a long whiskey and soda, with loving deliberation selected, trimmed and lighted a cigar, and settled down into his chair as one prepared to make a night of it.

  “You never sleep, no?” Phinuit enquired in a spirit of civil solicitude.

  “Desolated if I discommode you, monsieur,” Lanyard replied with entire amiability—“but not tonight, not at least until I know those jewels have no more chance to go ashore without me.”

  He tasted his drink with open relish. “Prime Scotch,” he judged. “One grows momentarily more reconciled to the prospect of a long voyage.”

  “Make the most of it,” Phinuit counselled. “Remember our next port of call is the Great American Desert. After all, the despised camel seems to have had the right idea all along.”

  He gaped enormously behind a superstitious hand. Monk, returning, published an elaborate if silent superciliary comment on the tableau.

  “He has no faith at all in our good intentions,” Phinuit explained, eyeing Lanyard with mild reproach. “It’s most discouraging.”

  “Monsieur suffers from insomnia?” Monk asked in his turn.

  “Under certain circumstances.”

  “Ever take anything for it?”

  “Tonight it would require nothing less than possession of the Montalais jewels to put me to sleep.”

  “Well, if you manage to lay hands on them without our consent,” Phinuit promised genially, “you’ll be put to sleep all right.”

  “But don’t let me keep you up, messieurs.”

  Captain Monk consulted the chronometer. “It’s not worth while turning in,” he said: “we sail soon after day-break.”

  “Far be it from me to play the giddy crab, then.” Phinuit busied himself with the decanter, glasses and siphon. “Let’s make it a regular party; we’ll have all tomorrow to sleep it off in. If I try to hop on your shoulder and sing, call a steward and have him lead me to my innocent white cot; but take a fool’s advice, Lanyard, and don’t try to drink the skipper under the table. On the word of one who’s tried and repented, it can not be done.”

  “But it is I who would go under the table,” Lanyard said. “I have a poor head for whiskey.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I mean to say,” Phinuit explained, “I’m glad to have another weakness of yours to bear in mind.”

  “You are interested in the weaknesses of others, monsieur?”

  “They’re my hobby.”

  “Knowledge,” Monk quoted, sententious, “is power.”

  “May I ask what other entries you have made in my dossier, Mr. Phinuit?”

  “You won’t get shirty?”

  “But surely not.”

  “Well…can’t be positive till I know you better.… I’m afraid you’ve got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in general. It’s either that, or.… No: I don’t believe you’re intentionally hypocritical, or self-deceived, either.”

  “But I don’t understand.…”

  “Remember your promise.… But you seem to think it easy to put it over on us, mademoiselle, the skipper and me.”

  “But I assure you I have never had any such thought.”

  “Then why this funny story of yours—told with a straight face, too!—about wanting to get hold of the Montalais loot simply to slip it back to its owner?”

  Lanyard felt with a spasm of anger
constrict his throat; and knew that the restraint he imposed upon his temper was betrayed in a reddened face. Nevertheless his courteous smile persisted, his polite conversational tone was unchanged.

  “Now you remind me of something. I presume, Captain Monk, it’s not too late to send a note ashore to be posted?”

  “Oh!” Monk’s eyebrows protested violently—“a note!”

  “On plain paper, in a plain envelope—and I don’t in the least mind your reading it.”

  The eyebrows appealed to Phinuit, and that worthy ruled: “Under those conditions, I don’t see we can possibly object.”

  Monk shrugged his brows back into place, found paper of the sort desired, even went so far as to dip the pen for Lanyard.

  “You will sit at my desk, monsieur?”

  “Many thanks.”

  Under no more heading than the date, Lanyard wrote:

  “Dear Madame de Montalais:”

  “I have not forgotten my promise, but my days have been full since I left the château. And even now I must be brief: within an hour I sail for America, within a fortnight you may look for telegraphic advices from me, stating that your jewels are in my possession, and when I hope to be able to restore them to you.”

  “Believe me, dear madame,”

  “Devotedly your servant,

  “Michael Lanyard.”

  Monk read and in silence passed this communication over to Phinuit, while Lanyard addressed the envelope.

  “Quite in order,” was Phinuit’s verdict, accompanied by a yawn.

  Lanyard folded the note, sealed it in the envelope, and affixed a stamp supplied by Monk, who meanwhile rang for a steward.

  “Take this ashore and post it at once,” he told the man who answered his summons.

  “But seriously, Lanyard!” Phinuit protested with a pained expression.… “No: I don’t get you at all. What’s the use?”