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

passed his

dressing-table, and chancing once to observe himself in its mirror, he

stopped short, thunderstruck by something he thought to detect in the

counterfeit presentment of his countenance, heavy with fatigue as it

was, and haggard with contemplation of this appalling contretemps.

 

And instantly he was back beside the American, studying narrowly the

contours of that livid mask. Here, then, was that resemblance which had

baffled him; and now that he saw it, he could not deny that it was

unflatteringly close: feature for feature the face of the murderer

reproduced his face, coarsened perhaps but recognizably a replica of

that Michael Lanyard who confronted him every morning in his

shaving-glass, almost the only difference residing in the scrubby black

moustache that shadowed the American’s upper lip.

 

After all, there was nothing wonderful in this; Lanyard’s type was not

uncommon; he would never have thought himself a distinguished figure.

 

Before rising he turned out the pockets of his counterfeit. But this

profited him little: the assassin had dressed for action with

forethought to evade recognition in event of accident. Lanyard

collected only a cheap American watch in a rolled-gold case of a sort

manufactured by wholesale, a briquet, a common key that might fit any

hotel door, a broken paper of R�gie cigarettes, an automatic pistol, a

few francs in silver—nothing whatever that would serve as a mark of

identification; for though the grey clothing was tailor-made, the

maker’s labels had been ripped out of its pockets, while the man’s

linen and underwear alike lacked even a laundry’s hieroglyphic.

 

With this harvest of nothing for his pains, Lanyard turned again to the

washstand and his shaving kit, mixed a stiff lather, stropped another

razor to the finest edge he could manage, fetched a pair of keen

scissors from his dressing-case, and went back to the murderer.

 

He worked rapidly, at a high pitch of excitement—as much through sheer

desperation as through any appeal inherent in the scheme either to his

common-sense or to his romantic bent.

 

In two minutes he had stripped the moustache clean away from that

stupid, flaccid mask.

 

Unquestionably the resemblance was now most striking; the American

would readily pass for Michael Lanyard.

 

This much accomplished, he pursued his preparations in feverish haste.

In spite of this, he overlooked no detail. In less than twenty minutes

he had exchanged clothing with the American in detail, even down to

shirts, collars and neckties; had packed in his own pockets the several

articles taken from the other, together with the jointed jimmy and a

few of his personal effects, and was ready to bid adieu to himself, to

that Michael Lanyard whom Paris knew.

 

The insentient masquerader on the floor had called himself “good-enough

Smith”; he must serve now as good-enough Lanyard, at least for the Lone

Wolf’s purposes; the police at all events would accept him as such. And

if the memory of Michael Lanyard must needs wear the stigma of brutal

murder, he need not repine in his oblivion, since through this

perfunctory decease the Lone Wolf would gain a freedom even greater

than before.

 

The Pack had contrived only to eliminate Michael Lanyard, the amateur

of fine paintings; remained the Lone Wolf with not one faculty

impaired, but rather with a deadlier purpose to shape his occult

courses….

 

Under the influence of his methodical preparations, his emotions had

cooled appreciably, taking on a cast of cold malignant vengefulness.

 

He who never in all his criminal record had so much as pulled trigger

in self-defence, was ready now to shoot to kill with the most

cold-blooded intent—given one of three targets; while Popinot’s

creatures, if they worried him, he meant to exterminate with as little

compunction as though they were rats in fact as well as in spirit….

 

Extinguishing the lights, he stepped quickly to a window and from one

edge of its shade looked down into the street.

 

He was in time to see a stunted human silhouette detach itself from the

shadow of a doorway on the opposite walk, move to the curb, and wave an

arm—evidently signaling another sentinel on a corner out of Lanyard’s

range of vision.

 

Herein was additional proof, if any lacked, that De Morbihan had not

exaggerated the disposition of Popinot. This animal in the street,

momentarily revealed by the corner light as he darted across to take

position by the door, this animal with sickly face and pointed chin,

with dirty muffler round its chicken-neck, shoddy coat clothing its

sloping shoulders, baggy corduroy trousers flapping round its bony

shanks—this was Popinot’s, and but one of a thousand differing in no

essential save degree of viciousness.

 

It wasn’t possible to guess how thoroughly Popinot had picketed the

house, in co-operation with Roddy’s murderer, by way of provision

against mischance; but the adventurer was satisfied that, in his proper

guise as himself, he needed only to open that postern door at the

street end of the passage, to feel a knife slip in between his

ribs—most probably in his back, beneath the shoulder-blade….

 

He nodded grimly, moved back from the window, and used the flash-lamp

to light him to the door.

XI FLIGHT

Now when Lanyard had locked the door, he told himself that the gruesome

peace of those two bedchambers was ensured, barring mischance, for as

long as the drug continued to hold dominion over the American; and he

felt justified in reckoning that period apt to be tolerably protracted;

while not before noon at earliest would any h�telier who knew his

business permit the rest of an Anglo-Saxon guest to be disturbed—lacking,

that is, definite instructions to the contrary.

 

For a full minute after withdrawing the key the adventurer stood at

alert attention; but the heavy silence of that sinister old rookery

sang in his ears untroubled by any untoward sound….

 

That wistful shadow of his memories, that cowering Marcel of the

so-dead yesterday in acute terror of the hand of Madame Troyon, had

never stolen down that corridor more quietly: yet Lanyard had taken not

five paces from his door when that other opened, at the far end, and

Lucia Bannon stepped out.

 

He checked then, and shut his teeth upon an involuntary oath: truly it

seemed as though this run of the devil’s own luck would never end!

 

Astonishment measurably modified his exasperation.

 

What had roused the girl out of bed and dressed her for the street at

that unholy hour? And why her terror at sight of him?

 

For that the surprise was no more welcome to her than to him was as

patent as the fact that she was prepared to leave the hotel forthwith,

enveloped in a business-like Burberry rainproof from her throat to the

hem of a tweed walking-skirt, and wearing boots both stout and brown.

And at sight of him she paused and instinctively stepped back, groping

blindly for the knob of her bedchamber door; while her eyes, holding

to his with an effect of frightened fascination, seemed momentarily to

grow more large and dark in her face of abnormal pallor.

 

But these were illegible evidences, and Lanyard was intent solely on

securing her silence before she could betray him and ruin incontinently

that grim alibi which he had prepared at such elaborate pains. He moved

toward her swiftly, with long and silent strides, a lifted hand

enjoining rather than begging her attention, aware as he drew nearer

that a curious change was colouring the complexion of her temper: she

passed quickly from dread to something oddly like relief, from

repulsion to something strangely like welcome; and dropping the hand

that had sought the door-knob, in her turn moved quietly to meet him.

 

He was grateful for this consideration, this tacit indulgence of the

wish he had as yet to voice; drew a little hope and comfort from it in

an emergency which had surprised him without resource other than to

throw himself upon her generosity. And as soon as he could make himself

heard in the clear yet concentrated whisper that was a trick of his

trade, a whisper inaudible to ears a yard distant from those to which

it was pitched, he addressed her in a manner at once peremptory and

apologetic.

 

“If you please, Miss Bannon—not a word, not a whisper!”

 

She paused and nodded compliance, questioning eyes steadfast to his.

 

Doubtfully, wondering that she betrayed so little surprise, he pursued

as one committed to a forlorn hope:

 

“It’s vitally essential that I leave this hotel without it becoming

known. If I may count on you to say nothing—”

 

She gave him reassurance with a small gesture. “But how?” she breathed

in the least of whispers. “The concierge—!”

 

“Leave that to me—I know another way. I only need a chance—”

 

“Then won’t you take me with you?”

 

“Eh?” he stammered, dashed.

 

Her hands moved toward him in a flutter of entreaty: “I too must leave

unseen—I must! Take me with you—out of this place—and I promise

you no one shall ever know—”

 

He lacked time to weigh the disadvantages inherent in her proposition;

though she offered him a heavy handicap, he had no choice but to accept

it without protest.

 

“Come, then,” he told her—“and not a sound—”

 

She signified assent with another nod; and on this he turned to an

adjacent door, opened it gently, whipped out his flash-lamp, and passed

through. Without sign of hesitancy, she followed; and like two shadows

they dogged the dancing spot-light of the flash-lamp, through a

linen-closet and service-room, down a shallow well threaded by a spiral

of iron steps and, by way of the long corridor linking the

kitchen-offices, to a stout door secured only by huge, old-style bolts

of iron.

 

Thus, in less than two minutes from the instant of their encounter,

they stood outside Troyon’s back door, facing a cramped, malodorous

alley-way—a dark and noisome souvenir of that wild mediaeval Paris

whose effacement is an enduring monument to the fame of the good Baron

Haussmann.

 

Now again it was raining, a thick drizzle that settled slowly, lacking

little of a fog’s opacity; and the faint glimmer from the street lamps

of that poorly lighted quarter, reflected by the low-swung clouds, lent

Lanyard and the girl little aid as they picked their way cautiously,

and always in complete silence, over the rude and slimy cobbles of the

foul back way. For the adventurer had pocketed his lamp, lest its beams

bring down upon them some prowling creature of Popinot’s; though he

felt passably sure that the alley had been left unguarded in the

confidence that he would never dream of its existence, did he survive

to seek escape from Troyon’s.

 

For all its might and its omniscience, Lanyard doubted if the Pack had

as yet identified Michael Lanyard with that ill-starred Marcel who once

had been as intimate with this forgotten way as any skulking tom of the

quarter.

 

But with the Lone Wolf confidence was never akin to foolhardiness; and

if on leaving Troyon’s he took the girl’s hand without asking

permission and quite as a matter-of-course, and drew it through his

arm—it was his left arm that he so dedicated to gallantry; his right

hand remained unhampered, and never far from the grip of his automatic.

 

Nor was he altogether confident of his companion. The weight of her

hand upon his arm, the fugitive contacts of her shoulder, seemed to

him, just then, the most vivid and interesting things in life; the

consciousness of her personality at his side was like a shaft of

golden light penetrating the darkness of his dilemma. But as minutes

passed and their flight was unchallenged, his mood grew dark with

doubts and quick with distrust. Reviewing it