The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance (ebook reader browser txt) 📖

the same breath he started violently, and swung about.

 

The door had closed behind him, swiftly but gently, eclipsing the faint

light from the hall, leaving what amounted to stark darkness.

 

His first impression was that the intruder—Roddy or whoever—had

darted past him and out, pulling the door to in that act.

 

Before he could consciously revise this misconception he was fighting

for his life.

 

So unexpected, so swift and sudden fell the assault, that he was caught

completely off guard: between the shutting of the door and an onslaught

whose violence sent him reeling to the wall, the elapsed time could

have been measured by the fluttering of an eyelash.

 

And then two powerful arms were round him, pinioning his hands to his

sides, his feet were tripped up, and he was thrown with a force that

fairly jarred his teeth, half-stunning him.

 

For a breath he lay dazed, struggling feebly; not long, but long enough

to enable his antagonist to shift his hold and climb on top of his body,

where he squatted, bearing down heavily with a knee on either of

Lanyard’s forearms, hands encircling his neck, murderous thumbs digging

into his windpipe.

 

He revived momentarily, pulled himself together, and heaved mightily in

futile effort to unseat the other.

 

The sole outcome of this was a tightening pressure on his throat.

 

The pain grew agonizing; Lanyard’s breath was almost completely shut

off; he gasped vainly, with a rattling noise in his gullet; his

eyeballs started; a myriad coruscant lights danced and interlaced

blindingly before them; in his ears there rang a roaring like the voice

of heavy surf breaking upon a rock-bound coast.

 

And of a sudden he ceased to struggle and lay slack, passive in the

other’s hands.

 

Only an instant longer was the clutch on his throat maintained. Both

hands left it quickly, one shifting to his head to turn and press it

roughly cheek to floor. Simultaneously he was aware of the other hand

fumbling about his neck, and then of a touch of metal and the sting of

a needle driven into the flesh beneath his ear.

 

That galvanized him; he came to life again in a twinkling, animate with

threefold strength and cunning. The man on his chest was thrown off as

by a young earthquake; and Lanyard’s right arm was no sooner free than

it shot out with blind but deadly accuracy to the point of his

assailant’s jaw. A click of teeth was followed by a sickish grunt as

the man lurched over….

 

Lanyard found himself scrambling to his feet, a bit giddy perhaps, but

still sufficiently master of his wits to get his pistol out before

making another move.

X TURN ABOUT

The thought of Lanyard’s pocket flash-lamp offering itself, immediately

its wide circle of light enveloped his late antagonist.

 

That one was resting on a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite

without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than

half-turned to the floor, and masked into the bargain.

 

Incredulously Lanyard stirred the body with a foot, holding his weapon

poised as though half-expecting it to quicken with instant and violent

action; but it responded in no way.

 

With a nod of satisfaction, he shifted the light until it marked down

the nearest electric bulb, which proved, in line with his inference, to

have been extinguished by the socket key, while the heat of its bulb

indicated that the current had been shut off only an instant before his

entrance.

 

The light full up, he went back to the thug, knelt and, lifting the

body, turned it upon its back.

 

Recognition immediately rewarded this manoeuvre: the masked face

upturned to the glare was that of the American who had made a fourth in

the concert of the Pack—“Mr. Smith,” Quickly unlatching the mask,

Lanyard removed it; but the countenance thus exposed told little more

than he knew; he could have sworn he had never seen it before. None the

less, something in its evil cast persistently troubled his memory, with

the same provoking and baffling effect that had attended their first

encounter.

 

Already the American was struggling toward consciousness. His lips and

eyelids twitched spasmodically, he shuddered, and his flexed muscles

began to relax. In this process something fell from between the fingers

of his right hand—something small and silver-bright that caught

Lanyard’s eye.

 

Picking it up, he examined with interest a small hypodermic syringe

loaded to the full capacity of its glass cylinder, plunger drawn

back—all ready for instant service.

 

It was the needle of this instrument that had pricked the skin of

Lanyard’s neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if

not exactly a killing dose of some narcotic drug—cocaine, at a

venture.

 

So it appeared that this agent of the Pack had been commissioned to put

the Lone Wolf to sleep for an hour or two or more—_perhaps_ not

permanently!—that he might be out of the way long enough for their

occult purposes.

 

He smiled grimly, fingering the hypodermic and eyeing the prostrate man.

 

“Turn about,” he reflected, “is said to be fair play…. Well, why not?”

 

He bent forward, dug the needle into the wrist of the American and shot

the plunger home, all in a single movement so swift and deft that the

drug was delivered before the pain could startle the victim from his

coma.

 

As for that, the man came to quickly enough; but only to have his

clearing senses met and dashed by the muzzle of a pistol stamping a

cold ring upon his temple.

 

“Lie perfectly quiet, my dear Mr. Smith,” Lanyard advised; “don’t speak

above a whisper! Give the good dope a chance: it’ll only need a moment,

or I’m no judge and you’re a careless highbinder! I’d like to know,

however—if it’s all the same to you—”

 

But already the injection was taking effect; the look of panic, which

had drawn the features of the American and flickered from his eyes with

dawning appreciation of his plight, was clouding, fading, blending into

one of daze and stupour. The eyelids flickered and lay still; the lips

moved as if with urgent desire to speak, but were dumb; a long

convulsive sigh shook the American’s body; and he rested with the

immobility of the dead, save for the slow but steady rise and fall of

his bosom.

 

Lanyard thoughtfully reviewed these phenomena.

 

“Must kick like a mule, that dope!” he reflected. “Lucky it didn’t get

me before I guessed what was up! If I’d even suspected its strength,

however, I’d have been less hasty: I could do with a little information

from Mr. Mysterious Stranger here!”

 

Suddenly conscious of a dry and burning throat, he rose and going to

the washstand drank deep and thirstily from a water-bottle; then set

himself resolutely to repair the disarray of his wits and consider what

was best to be done.

 

In his abstraction he wandered to a chair over whose back hung a light

dressing-gown of wine-coloured silk, which, because it would pack in

small compass, was in the habit of carrying with him on his travels.

Lanyard had left this thrown across his bed; and he was wondering

subconsciously what use the man had thought to make of it, that he

should have taken the trouble to shift it to the chair.

 

But even as he laid hold of it, Lanyard dropped the garment in sheer

surprise to find it damp and heavy in his grasp, sodden with viscid

moisture. And when, in a swift flash of intuition, he examined his

fingers, he discovered them discoloured with a faint reddish stain.

 

Had the dye run? And how had the American come to dabble the garment

in water—to what end?

 

Then the shape of an object on the floor near his feet arrested

Lanyard’s questing vision. He stared, incredulous, moved forward, bent

over and picked it up, clipping it gingerly between finger-tips.

 

It was one of his razors—a heavy hollow-ground blade—and it was foul

with blood.

 

With a low cry, smitten with awful understanding, Lanyard wheeled and

stared fearfully at the door communicating with Roddy’s room.

 

It stood ajar an inch or two, its splintered lock accounted for by a

small but extremely efficient jointed steel jimmy which lay near the

threshold.

 

Beyond the door … darkness … silence…

 

Mustering up all his courage, the adventurer strode determinedly into

the adjoining room.

 

The first flash of his hand-lamp discovered to him sickening

verification of his most dreadful apprehensions.

 

Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned—to protect a

butcher’s clothing.

 

After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it,

as if to bar out that reeking shambles.

 

He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully

shaken with nausea.

 

The plot was damnably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and

requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the

blame for it should be laid at Lanyard’s door. Hence the attempt to

drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find

him there.

 

He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the

Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and

afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the

second victim.

 

And the plot had succeeded despite its partial failure, despite the

swift reverse chance and Lanyard’s cunning had meted out to the Pack’s

agent. It was his dressing-gown that was saturate with Roddy’s blood,

just as they were his gloves, pilfered from his luggage, which had

measurably protected the killer’s hands, and which Lanyard had found in

the next room, stripped hastily off and thrown to the floor—twin

crumpled wads of blood-stained chamois-skin.

 

He had now little choice; he must either flee Paris and trust to his

wits to save him, or else seek De Morbihan and solicit his protection,

his boasted influence in high quarters.

 

But to give himself into the hands, to become an associate, of one who

could be party to so cowardly a Crime as this … Lanyard told himself

he would sooner pay the guillotine the penalty….

 

Consulting his watch, he found the hour to be no later than half-past

four: so swiftly (truly treading upon one another’s heels) events had

moved since the incident of the somnambulist.

 

This left at his disposal a fair two hours more of darkness: November

nights are long and black in Paris; it would hardly be even moderately

light before seven o’clock. But that were a respite none too long for

Lanyard’s necessity; he must think swiftly in contemplation of instant

action were he to extricate himself without the Pack’s knowledge and

consent.

 

Granted, then, he must fly this stricken field of Paris. But how? De

Morbihan had promised that Popinot’s creatures would guard every

outlet; and Lanyard didn’t doubt him. An attempt to escape the city by

any ordinary channel would be to invite either denunciation to the

police on the charge of murder, or one of those fatally expeditious

forms of assassination of which the Apaches are past-masters.

 

He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully

hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket

were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency.

 

True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable—not at

least in Paris.

 

And the Huysman plans?

 

He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans.

 

In his fretting, pacing softly to and fro, at each turn he