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

suited better a man of

unblemished honour and integrity subjected to the insolent addresses of

a contemptible blackguard, emotions that might well have been expected

of the man Lanyard had once dreamed to become.

 

But now, since he had resigned that infatuate ambition and turned

apostate to all his vows, his part in character had been to laugh in

Wertheimer’s face and bid him go to the devil ere a worse thing befall

him. Instead of which, he had flown into fury. And as he sat brooding

over the wheel, he knew that, were the circumstances to be duplicated,

his demeanour would be the same.

 

Was it possible he had changed so absolutely in the course of that

short-lived spasm of reform?

 

He cried no to that: knowing well what he contemplated, that all his

plans were laid and serious mischance alone could prevent him from

putting them into effect, feeling himself once more quick with the

wanton, ruthless spirit of the Lone Wolf, invincibly self-sufficient,

strong and cunning.

 

When at length he roused from his reverie, it was to discover that his

haphazard course had taken him back toward the heart of Paris; and

presently, weary with futile cruising and being in the neighbourhood

of the Madeleine, he sought the cab-rank there, silenced his motor,

and relapsed into morose reflections so profound that nothing objective

had any place in his consciousness.

 

Thus it was that without his knowledge a brace of furtive thugs were

able to slouch down the rank, scrutinizing it covertly but in detail,

pause opposite Lanyard’s car under pretext of lighting cigarettes,

identify him to their satisfaction, and hastily take themselves off.

 

Not until they were quite disappeared did the driver of the cab ahead

dare warn him.

 

Lounging back, this last looked the adventurer over inquisitively.

 

“Is it, then,” he enquired civilly, when Lanyard at length looked

round, “that you are in the bad books of the good General Popinot, my

friend?”

 

“Eh—what’s that you say?” Lanyard asked, with a stare of blank

misapprehension.

 

The man nodded wisely. “He who is at odds with Popinot,” he observed,

sententious, “does well not to sleep in public. You did not see those

two who passed just now and took your number—rats of Montmartre, if I

know my Paris! You were dreaming, my friend, and it is my impression

that only the presence of those two flies over the way prevented your

immediate assassination. If I were you, I should go away very quickly,

and never stop till I had put stout walls between myself and Popinot.”

 

A chill of apprehension sent a shiver stealing down Lanyard’s spine.

 

“You’re sure?”

 

“But of a certainty, my old one!”

 

“A thousand thanks!”

 

Jumping down, the adventurer cranked the motor, sprang back to his

seat, and was off like a hunted hare….

 

And when, more than an hour later, he brought his panting car to a

pause in a quiet and empty back-street of the Auteuil quarter, after

a course that had involved the better part of Paris, it was with the

conviction that he had beyond question shaken off pursuit—had there

in fact been any attempt to follow him.

 

He took advantage of that secluded spot to substitute false numbers for

those he was licensed to display; then at a more sedate pace followed

the line of the fortifications northward as far as La Muette, where,

branching off, he sought and made a circuit of two sides of the private

park enclosing the h�tel of Madame Omber.

 

But the mansion showed no lights, and there was nothing in the aspect

of the property to lead him to believe that the chatelaine had as yet

returned to Paris.

 

Now the night was still young, but Lanyard had his cab to dispose of

and not a few other essential details to arrange before he could take

definite steps toward the reincarnation of the Lone Wolf.

 

Picking a most circumspect route across the river—via the Pont

Mirabeau—to the all-night telegraph bureau in the rue de Grenelle he

despatched a cryptic message to the Minister of War, then with the

same pains to avoid notice made back toward the rue des Acacias. But

it wasn’t possible to recross the Seine secretly—in effect, at least

—without returning the way he had come—a long detour that irked his

impatient spirit to contemplate.

 

Unwisely he elected to cross by way of the Pont des Invalides—how

unwisely was borne in upon him almost as soon as he turned from the

brilliant Quai de la Conf�rence into the darkling rue Fran�ois

Premier. He had won scarcely twenty yards from the corner when, with

a rush, its motor purring like some great tiger-cat, a powerful

touring-car swept up from behind, drew abreast, but instead of passing

checked speed until its pace was even with his own.

 

Struck by the strangeness of this manoeuvre, he looked quickly round,

to recognize the moon-like mask of De Morbihan grinning sardonically

at him over the steering-wheel of the black car.

 

A second hasty glance discovered four men in the tonneau. Lacking time

to identify them, Lanyard questioned their character as little as their

malign intent: Belleville bullies, beyond doubt, drafted from Popinot’s

batallions, with orders to bring in the Lone Wolf, dead or alive.

 

He had instant proof that his apprehensions were not exaggerated. Of a

sudden De Morbihan cut out the muffler and turned loose, full strength,

the electric horn. Between the harsh detonations of the exhaust and the

mad, blatant shrieks of the warning, a hideous clamour echoed and

re-echoed in that quiet street—a din in which the report of a

revolver-shot was drowned out and went unnoticed. Lanyard himself might

have been unaware of it, had he not caught out of the corner of his eye

a flash that spat out at him like a fiery serpent’s tongue, and heard

the crash of the window behind him as it fell inward, shattered.

 

That the shot had no immediate successor was due almost wholly to

Lanyard’s instant and instinctive action.

 

Even before the clash of broken glass registered on his consciousness,

he threw in the high-speed and shot away like a frightened greyhound.

 

So sudden was this move that it caught De Morbihan himself unprepared.

In an instant Lanyard had ten yards’ lead. In another he was spinning

on two wheels round an acute corner, into the rue Jean Goujon; and in

a third, as he shot through that short block to the avenue d’Antin,

had increased his lead to fifteen yards. But he could never hope to

better that: rather, the contrary. The pursuit had the more powerful

car, and it was captained by one said to be the most daring and

skilful motorist in France.

 

The considerations that dictated Lanyard’s simple strategy were sound

if unformulated: barring interference on the part of the

police—something he dared not count upon—his sole hope lay in open

flight and in keeping persistently to the better-lighted,

main-travelled thoroughfares, where a repetition of the attempt would

be inadvisable—at least, less probable. There was always a bare chance

of an accident—that De Morbihan’s car would burst a tire or be

pocketed by the traffic, enabling Lanyard to strike off into some maze

of dark side-streets, abandon the cab, and take to cover in good earnest.

 

But that was a forlorn hope at best, and he knew it. Moreover, an

accident was as apt to happen to him as to De Morbihan: given an

unsound tire or a puncture, or let him be delayed two seconds by

some traffic hindrance, and nothing short of a miracle could save

him….

 

As he swung from the avenue d’Antin into Rond Point des Champs �lys�es,

the nose of the pursuing car inched up on his right, effectually

blocking any attempt to strike off toward the east, to the Boulevards

and the centre of the city’s life by night. He had no choice but to fly

westwards.

 

He cut an arc round the sexpartite circle of the Rond Point that lost

no inch of advantage, and straightened out, ventre-�-terre, up the avenue

for the place de l’�toile, shooting madly in and out of the tide of more

leisurely traffic—and ever the motor of the touring-car purred

contentedly just at his elbow.

 

If there were police about, Lanyard saw nothing of them: not that he

would have dreamed of stopping or even of checking speed for anything

less than an immovable obstacle….

 

But as minutes sped it became apparent that there was to be no renewed

attempt upon his life for the time being. The pursuers could afford to

wait. They could afford to ape the patience of Death itself.

 

And it came then to Lanyard that he drove no more alone: Death was his

passenger.

 

Absorbed though he was with the control of his machine and the

ever-shifting problems of the road, he still found time to think quite

clearly of himself, to recognize the fact that he was very likely

looking his last on Paris … on life….

 

But a little longer, and the name of Michael Lanyard would be not even

a memory to those whose lives composed the untiring life of this broad

avenue.

 

Before him the Arc de Triomphe loomed ever larger and more darkly

beautiful against the field of midnight stars He wondered, would he

reach it alive….

 

He did: still the pursuit bided its time. But the hood of the

touring-car nosed him inexorably round the arch, away from the avenue

de la Grande Arm�e and into the avenue du Bois.

 

Only when in full course for Porte Dauphine did he appreciate De

Morbihan’s design. He was to be rushed out into the midnight

solitudes of the Bois de Boulogne and there run down and slain.

 

But now he began to nurse a feeble thrill of hope.

 

Once inside the park enclosure, he reckoned vaguely on some

opportunity to make sudden halt, abandon the car and, taking refuge

in the friendly obscurity of trees and shrubbery, either make good

his escape afoot or stand off the Apaches until police came to his

aid. With night to cloak his movements and with a clump of trees to

shelter in, he dared believe he would have a chance for his

life—whereas in naked streets any such attempt would prove simply

suicidal.

 

Infrequent glances over-shoulder showed no change in the gap between

his own and the car of the assassins. But his motor ran sweet and true:

humouring it, coaxing it, he contrived a little longer to hold his own.

 

Approaching the Porte Dauphine he became aware of two sergents de ville

standing in the middle of the way and wildly brandishing their arms. He

held on toward them relentlessly—it was their lives or his—and they

leaped aside barely in time to save themselves.

 

And as he slipped into the park like a hunted shadow, he fancied that

he heard a pistol-shot—whether directed at himself by the Apaches, or

fired by the police to emphasize their indignation, he couldn’t say.

But he was grateful enough it was a taxicab he drove, not a touring-car:

lacking the body of his vehicle to shield him, he little doubted that

a bullet would long since have found him.

 

In that dead hour the drives of the Bois were almost deserted. Between

the porte and the first carrefour he passed only one motor-car, a

limousine whose driver shouted something inarticulate as Lanyard

hummed past. The freedom from traffic dangers was a relief: but the

pursuit was creeping up, inch by inch, as he swung down the roadway

along the eastern border of the lake; and still he had found no

opening, had recognized no invitation in the