The Lone Wolf - Louis Joseph Vance (year 7 reading list txt) 📗
- Author: Louis Joseph Vance
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“You know well,” Ekstrom muttered. “After what happened in London …
it’s your life or mine!”
“Spoken like a true villain! But it seems to me you overlooked a
conspicuous chance to accomplish your hellish design, back there in the
side streets.”
“Would I be such a fool as to shoot you down before finding out what
you’ve done with those plans?”
“You might as well have,” Lanyard informed him lightly … “For you
won’t know otherwise.”
With an infuriated oath the German stopped short: but he dared not
ignore the readiness with which his tormentor imitated the manoeuvre
and kept the pistol trained through the fabric of his raincoat.
“Yes—?” the adventurer enquired with an exasperating accent of
surprise.
“Understand me,” Ekstrom muttered vindictively: “next time I’ll show
you no mercy—”
“But if there is no next time? We’re not apt to meet again, you know.”
“That’s something beyond your knowledge—”
“You think so? … But shan’t we resume our stroll? People might
notice us standing here—you with your teeth bared like an
ill-tempered dog…. Oh, thank you!”
And as they moved on, Lanyard continued: “Shall I explain why we’re
not apt to meet again?”
“If it amuses you.”
“Thanks once more! … For the simple reason that Paris satisfies me;
so here I stop.”
“Well?” the spy asked with a blank sidelong look.
“Whereas you are leaving Paris tonight.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you value your thick hide too highly to remain, my dear
captain.” Having gained the corner of the boulevard St. Denis, Lanyard
pulled up. “One moment, by your leave. You see yonder the entrance to
the Metro—don’t you? And here, a dozen feet away, a perfectly
able-bodied sergent de ville? Let this fateful conjunction impress you
properly: for five minutes after you have descended to the M�tro—or as
soon as the noise of a train advises me you’ve had one chance to get
away—I shall mention casually to the sergo—that I have seen Captain
Ek—”
“Hush!” the German protested in a hiss of fright.
“But certainly: I’ve no desire to embarrass you: publicity must be
terribly distasteful to one of your sensitive and retiring
disposition…. But I trust you understand me? On the one hand, there’s
the M�tro; on the other, there’s the flic; while here, you must admit,
am I, as large as life and very much on the job! … And inasmuch as I
shall certainly mention my suspicions to the minion of the law—as
aforesaid—I’d advise you to be well out of Paris before dawn!”
There was murder in the eyes of the spy as he lingered, truculently
glowering at the smiling adventurer; and for an instant Lanyard was
well-persuaded he had gone too far, that even there, even on that busy
junction of two crowded thoroughfares, Ekstrom would let his temper get
the better of his judgment and risk everything in an attempt upon the
life of his despoiler.
But he was mistaken.
With a surly shrug the spy swung about and marched straight to the kiosk
of the underground railway, into which, without one backward glance, he
disappeared.
Two minutes later the earth beneath Lanyard’s feet quaked with the crash
and rumble of a north-bound train.
He waited three minutes longer; but Ekstrom didn’t reappear; and at
length convinced that his warning had proved effectual, Lanyard turned
and made off.
XVI RESTITUTIONFor all that success had rewarded his effrontery, Lanyard’s mind was
far from easy during the subsequent hour that he spent before
attempting to rejoin Lucy Shannon, dodging, ducking and doubling across
Paris and back again, with design to confuse and confound any jackals
of the Pack that might have picked up his trail as adventitiously as
Ekstrom had.
His delight, indeed, in discomfiting his dupe was chilled by
apprehension that it were madness, simply because the spy had proved
unexpectedly docile, to consider the affaire Ekstrom closed. In the
very fact of that docility inhered something strange and ominous, a
premonition of evil which was hardly mitigated by finding the girl safe
and sound under the wing of madame la concierge, in the little court of
private stables, where he rented space for his car, off the rue des
Acacias.
Monsieur le concierge, it appeared, was from home; and madame,
thick-witted, warm-hearted, simple body that she was, discovered a
phase of beaming incuriosity most grateful to the adventurer, enabling
him as it did to dispense with embarrassing explanations, and to whisk
the girl away as soon as he liked.
This last was just as soon as personal examination had reassured him
with respect to his automobile—superficially an ordinary motor-cab of
the better grade, but with an exceptionally powerful engine hidden
beneath its hood. A car of such character, passing readily as the
town-car of any family in modest circumstances, or else as what Paris
calls a voiture de remise (a hackney car without taximeter) was a
tremendous convenience, enabling its owner to scurry at will about
cab-ridden Paris free of comment. But it could not be left standing in
public places at odd hours, or for long, without attracting the
interest of the police, and so was useless in the present emergency.
Lanyard, however, entertained a shrewd suspicion that his plans might
all miscarry and the command of a fast-travelling car soon prove
essential to his salvation; and he cheerfully devoted a good half-hour
to putting the motor in prime trim for the road.
With this accomplished—and the facts established through discreet
interrogation of madame la concierge that no enquiries had been made
for “Pierre Lamier,” and that she had noticed no strange or otherwise
questionable characters loitering in the neighbourhood of late—he was
ready for his first real step toward rehabilitation….
It was past one in the morning when, with the girl on his arm, he
issued forth into the dark and drowsy rue des Acacias and, moving
swiftly, crossed the avenue de la Grande Arm�e. Thereafter, avoiding
main-travelled highways, they struck southward through tangled side
streets to aristocratic Passy, skirted the boulevards of the
fortifications, and approached the private park of La Muette.
The h�tel particulier of that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame
H�l�ne Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban.
A survival of the Revolution, a vast, dour pile that had known few
changes since the days of its construction, it occupied a large, unkempt
park, irregularly triangular in shape, bounded by two streets and an
avenue, and rendered private by high walls crowned with broken glass.
Carriage gates opened on the avenue, guarded by a porter’s lodge; while
of three posterns that pierced the walls on the side streets, one only
was in general use by the servants of the establishment; the other two
were presumed to be permanently sealed.
Lanyard, however, knew better.
When they had turned off from the avenue, he slackened pace and moved at
caution, examining the prospect narrowly.
On the one hand rose the wall of the park, topped by naked, soughing
limbs of neglected trees; on the other, across the way, a block of tall
old dwellings, withdrawn behind jealous garden walls, showed stupid,
sleepy faces and lightless eyes.
Within the perspective of the street but three shapes stirred; Lanyard
and the girl in the shadow of the wall, and a disconsolate, misprized
cat that promptly decamped like a terror-stricken ghost.
Overhead the sky was breaking and showing ebon patches and infrequent
stars through a wind-harried wrack of cloud. The night had grown
sensibly colder, and noisy with the rushing sweep of a new-sprung wind.
Several yards from the postern-gate, Lanyard paused definitely, and
spoke for the first time in many minutes; for the nature of their
errand had oppressed the spirits of both and enjoined an unnatural
silence, ever since their departure from the rue des Acacias.
“This is where we stop,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the
wall; “but it’s not too late—”
“For what?” the girl asked quickly.
“I promised you no danger; but now I’ve thought it over, I can’t
promise that: there’s always danger. And I’m afraid for you. It’s not
yet too late for you to turn back and wait for me in a safer place.”
“You asked me to accompany you for a special purpose,” she argued; “you
begged me to come with you, in fact…. Now that I have agreed and come
this far, I don’t mean to turn back without good reason.”
His gesture indicated uneasy acquiescence. “I should never have asked
this of you. I think I must have been a little mad. If anything should
come of this to injure you…!”
“If you mean to do what you promised—”
“Do you doubt my sincerity?”
“It was your own suggestion that you leave me no excuse for doubt…”
Without further remonstrance, if with a mind beset with misgivings, he
led on to the gate—a blank door of wood, painted a dark green, deeply
recessed in the wall.
In proof of his assertion that he had long since made every preparation
to attack the premises, Lanyard had a key ready and in the lock almost
before they reached it.
And the door swung back easily and noiselessly as though on well-greased
hinges. As silently it shut them in.
They stood upon a weed-grown gravel path, hedged about with thick masses
of shrubbery; but the park was as black as a pocket; and the heavy
effluvia of wet mould, decaying weeds and rotting leaves that choked the
air, seemed only to render the murk still more opaque.
But Lanyard evidently knew his way blindfold: though motives of prudence
made him refrain from using his flash-lamp, he betrayed not the least
incertitude in his actions.
Never once at loss for the right turning, he piloted the girl swiftly
through a bewildering black labyrinth of paths, lawns and thickets….
In due course he pulled up, and she discovered that they had come out
upon a clear space of lawn, close beside the featureless, looming bulk of
a dark and silent building.
An admonitory grasp tightened upon her fingers, and she caught his
singularly penetrating yet guarded whisper:
“This is the back of the house—the service-entrance. From this door a
broad path runs straight to the main service gateway; you can’t mistake
it; and the gate itself has a spring lock, easy enough to open from the
inside. Remember this in event of trouble. We might become separated in
the darkness and confusion….”
Gently returning the pressure, “I understand,” she said in a whisper.
Immediately he drew her on to the house, pausing but momentarily before a
wide doorway; one half of which promptly swung open, and as soon as they
had passed through, closed with no perceptible jar or click. And then
Lanyard’s flash-lamp was lancing the gloom on every hand, swiftly raking
the bounds of a large, panelled servants’ hall, until it picked out the
foot of a flight of steps at the farther end. To this they moved
stealthily over a tiled flooring.
The ascent of the staircase was accomplished, however, only with infinite
care, Lanyard testing each rise before trusting it with his weight or the
girl’s. Twice he bade her skip one step lest the complaints of the ancient
woodwork betray them. In spite of all this, no less than three hideous
squeals were evoked before they gained the top; each indicating a pause
and wait of several breathless seconds.
But it would seem that such servants as had been left in the house, in
the absence of its chatelaine, either
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