The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance

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Alarmed and fearing lest some passer-by be struck by this betrayal, he
turned and moved on hastily.

But his mind was poisoned by this brutal revelation of the wide, deep
gulf that yawned between the Lone Wolf of yesterday and Pierre Lamier
of today; between Michael Lanyard the debonnaire, the amateur of fine
arts and fine clothing, the beau sabreur of gentlemen-cracksmen and
that lean, worn, shabby and dispirited animal who had glared back at
him from the jeweller's mirror.

He quickened his pace, with something of that same instinct of
self-preservation that bids the dipsomaniac avert his eyes and hurry
past the corner gin-mill, and turned blindly off into the rue Danou,
toward the avenue de l'Opera.

But this only made it worse for him, for he could not avoid recognition
of the softly glowing windows of the Cafe de Paris that knew him so
well, or forget the memory of its shining rich linen, its silver and
crystal, its perfumed atmosphere and luxury of warmth and music and
shaded lights, its cuisine that even Paris cannot duplicate.

And the truth came home to him, that he was hungry not with that brute
appetite he had money enough in his pocket to satisfy, but with the
lust of flesh-pots, for rare viands and old vintage wines, to know once
more the snug embrace of a dress-coat and to breathe again the
atmosphere of ease and station.

In sudden panic he darted across the avenue and hurried north,
determined to tantalize himself no longer with sights and sounds so
provocative and so disturbing.

Half-way across the boulevard des Capucines, to the east of the Opera,
he leapt for his life from a man-killing taxi, found himself
temporarily marooned upon one of those isles of safety which Paris has
christened "thank-Gods," and stood waiting for an opening in the
congestion of traffic to permit passage to the farther sidewalk.

And presently the policeman in the middle of the boulevard signalled
with his little white wand; the stream of east-bound vehicles checked
and began to close up to the right of the crossing, upon which they
encroached jealously; and a taxi on the outside, next the island,
overshot the mark, pulled up sharply, and began to back into place.
Before Lanyard could stir, its window was opposite him, and he was
looking in, transfixed.

There was sufficient light to enable him to see clearly the face of the
passenger--its pale oval and the darkness of eyes whose gaze clung to
his with an effect of confused fascination....

She sat quite motionless until one white-gloved hand moved uncertainly
toward her bosom.

That brought him to; unconsciously lifting his cap, he stepped back a
pace and started to move on.

At this, she bent quickly forward and unlatched the door. It swung wide
to him.

Hardly knowing what he was doing, he accepted the dumb invitation,
stepped in, took the empty seat, and closed the door.

Almost at once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into
her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to
seem composed had been almost too much for her strength.

Her face, turned toward Lanyard, seemed wan in the half light, but
immobile, expressionless; only her eyes were darkly quick with
anticipation.

On his part, Lanyard felt himself hopelessly confounded, in the grasp
of emotions that would scarce suffer him to speak. A great wonder
obsessed him that she should have opened that door to him no less than
that he should have entered through it. Dimly he understood that each
had acted without premeditation; and asked himself, was she already
regretting that momentary weakness.

"Why did you do that?" he heard himself demand abruptly, his voice
harsh, strained, and unnatural.

She stiffened slightly, with a nervous movement of her shoulders.

"Because I saw you... I was surprised; I had hoped--believed--you had
left Paris."

"Without you? Hardly!"

"But you must," she insisted--"you _must_ go, as quickly as possible.
It isn't safe--"

"I'm all right," he insisted--"able-bodied--in full possession of my
senses!"

"But any moment you may be recognized--"

"In this rig? It isn't likely.... Not that I care."

She surveyed his costume curiously, perplexed.

"Why are you dressed that way? Is it a disguise?"

"A pretty good one. But in point of fact, it's the national livery of
my present station in life."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Simply that, out of my old job, I've turned to the first resort of the
incompetent: I'm driving a taxi."

"Isn't it awfully--risky?"

"You'd think so; but it isn't. Few people ever bother to look at a
chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they're in a hurry, as a rule--
preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are a
disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many
Chinamen!"

"But you're mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn't I? And those
others--they're as keen-witted as I--certainly. Oh, you should
not have stopped on in Paris!"

"I couldn't go without knowing what had become of you."

"I was afraid of that," she confessed.

"Then why--?"

"Oh, I know what you're going to say! Why did I run away from you?"
And then, since he said nothing, she continued unhappily: "I can't
tell you... I mean, I don't know how to tell you!"

She kept her face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but
when he sat on, mute and unresponsive--in point of fact not knowing
what to say--she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp
showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows
knotted, eyes clouded with perplexity and appeal.

And of a sudden, seeing her so tormented and so piteous, his
indignation ebbed, and with it all his doubts of her were dissipated;
dimly he divined that something behind this dark fabric of mystery and
inconsistency, no matter how inexplicable to him, excused all her
apparent faithlessness and instability of character and purpose. He
could not look upon this girl and hear her voice and believe that she
was not at heart as sound and sweet, tender and loyal, as any that ever
breathed.

A wave of tenderness and compassion brimmed his heart; he realized that
he didn't matter, that his amour propre was of no account--that nothing
mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach.

He said, gently: "I wouldn't have you distress yourself on my account,
Miss Shannon... I quite understand there must be things I _can't_
understand--that you must have had your reasons for acting as you did."

"Yes," she said unevenly, but again with eyes averted--"I had; but
they're not easy, they're impossible to explain--to you."

"Yet--when all's said and done--I've no right to exact any explanation."

"Ah, but how can you say that, remembering what we've been through
together?"

"You owe me nothing," he insisted; "whereas I owe you everything, even
unquestioning faith. Even though I fail, I have this to thank you
for--this one not-ignoble impulse my life has known."

"You mustn't say that, you mustn't think it. I don't deserve it. You
wouldn't say it--if you knew--"

"Perhaps I can guess enough to satisfy myself."

She gave him a swift, sidelong look of challenge, instinctively on the
defensive.

"Why," she almost gasped--"what do you think--?"

"Does it matter what I think?"

"It does, to me: I wish to know!"

"Well," he conceded reluctantly, "I think that, when you had a chance
to consider things calmly, waiting back there in the garden, you made
up your mind it would be better to--to use your best judgment
and--extricate yourself from an embarrassing position--"

"You think that!" she interrupted bitterly. "You think that, after you
had confided in me; after you'd confessed--when I made you, led you on
to it--that you cared for me; after you'd told me how much my faith
meant to you--you think that, after all that, I deliberately abandoned
you because I suddenly realized you had been the Lone Wolf--!"

"I'm sorry if I hurt you. But what can I think?"

"But you are wrong!" she protested vehemently--"quite, quite wrong! I
ran away from myself--not from you--and with another motive, too, that
I can't explain."

"You ran away from yourself--not from me?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Don't you understand? Why make it so hard for me? Why make me say
outright what pains me so?"

"Oh, I beg of you--"

"But if you won't understand otherwise--I must tell you, I suppose."
She checked, breathless, flushed, trembling. "You recall our talk after
dinner, that night--how I asked what if you found out you'd been
mistaken in me, that I had deceived you; and how I told you it would be
impossible for me ever to marry you?"

"I remember."

"It was because of that," she said--"I ran away; because I hadn't been
talking idly; because you _were_ mistaken in me, because I _was_
deceiving you, because I could never marry you, and because--suddenly--
I came to know that, if I didn't go then and there, I might never find
the strength to leave you, and only suffering and unhappiness could
come of it all. I had to go, as much for your sake as for my own."

"You mean me to understand, you found you were beginning to--to care a
little for me?"

She made an effort to speak, but in the end answered only with a dumb
inclination of her head.

"And ran away because love wasn't possible between us?"

Again she nodded silently.

"Because I had been a criminal, I presume!"

"You've no right to say that--"

"What else can I think? You tell me you were afraid I might persuade
you to become my wife--something which, for some inexplicable reason,
you claim is impossible. What other explanation can I infer? What
other explanation is needed? It's ample, it covers everything, and
I've no warrant to complain--God knows!"

She tried to protest, but he cut her short.

"There's one thing I don't understand at all! If that is so, if your
repugnance for criminal associations made you run away from me--why
did you go back to Bannon?"

She started and gave him a furtive, frightened glance.

"You knew that?"

"I saw you--last night--followed you from Viel's to your hotel."

"And you thought," she flashed in a vibrant voice--"you thought I was
in his company of my own choice!"

"You didn't seem altogether downcast," he countered, "Do you wish me to
understand you were with him against your will?"

"No," she said slowly.... "No: I returned to him voluntarily, knowing
perfectly what I was about."

"Through fear of him--?"

"No. I can't claim that."

"Rather than me--?"

"You'll never understand," she told him a little wearily--"never. It
was a matter of duty. I had to go back--I had to!"

Her voice trailed off into a broken little sob. But as, moved beyond
his strength to resist, Lanyard put forth a hand to take the
white-gloved one resting on the cushion beside her, she withdrew it
with a swift gesture of denial.

"No!" she cried. "Please! You mustn't do that... You only make it
harder..."

"But you love me!"

"I can't. It's impossible. I would--but I may not!"

"Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"If you love me, you must tell me."

She was silent, the white hands working nervously with her
handkerchief.

"Lucy!" he insisted--"you must say what stands between you and my love.
It's true, I've no right to ask, as I had no right to speak to you of
love. But when we've said as much as we have said--we can't stop there.
You will tell me, dear?"

She shook her head: "It--it's impossible."

"But you can't ask me to be content with that answer!"

"Oh!" she cried--"_how_ can I make you understand?... When you said
what you did, that night--it seemed as if a new day were dawning in my
life. You made me believe it was because of me. You put me above
you--where I'd no right to be; but the fact that you thought me worthy
to be there, made me proud and happy: and for a little, in my blindness,
I believed I could be worthy of your love and your respect. I thought
that, if I could be as strong as you during that year you asked in
which to prove your strength, I might listen to you, tell you
everything, and be forgiven.... But I was wrong, how wrong I soon
learned.... So I had to leave you at whatever cost!"

She ceased to speak, and for several minutes there was silence. But for
her quick, convulsive breathing, the girl sat like a woman of stone,
staring dry-eyed out of the window. And Lanyard sat as moveless, the
heart in his bosom as heavy and cold as a stone.

At length, lifting his head, "You leave me no alternative," he said in a
voice dull and hollow even in his own hearing: "I can only think one
thing..."

"Think what you must," she said lifelessly: "it doesn't matter, so long
as you renounce me, put me out of your heart and--leave me."

Without other response, he leaned forward and tapped the glass; and as
the cab swung in toward the curb, he laid hold of the door-latch.

"Lucy," he pleaded, "don't let me go believing--"

She seemed suddenly infused with implacable hostility. "I tell you,"
she said cruelly--"I don't care what you think, so long as you go!"

The face she now showed him was ashen; its mouth was hard; her eyes
shone feverishly.

And then, as still he hesitated, the cab pulled up and the driver,
leaning back, unlatched the door and threw it open. With a curt,
resigned nod, Lanyard rose and got out.

Immediately the girl bent forward and grasped the speaking-tube; the
door slammed; the cab drew away and left him standing with the pose,
with the gesture of one who has just heard his sentence of death
pronounced.

When he roused to know his surroundings, he found himself standing on a
corner of the avenue du Bois.

It was bitter cold in the wind sweeping down from the west, and it had
grown very dark. Only in the sky above the Bois a long reef of crimson
light hung motionless, against which leafless trees lifted gnarled,
weird silhouettes.

While he watched, the pushing crimson ebbed swiftly and gave way to
mauve, to violet, to black.

XIX

UNMASKED

When there was no more light in the sky, a profound sigh escaped
Lanyard's lips; and with the gesture of one signifying submission to an
omen, he turned and tramped heavily back across-town.

More automaton than sentient being, he plodded on along the second
enceinte of flaring, noisy boulevards, now and again narrowly escaping
annihilation beneath the wheels of some coursing motor-cab or ponderous,
grinding omnibus.

Barely conscious of such escapes, he was altogether indifferent to them:
it would have required a mortal hurt to match the dumb, sick anguish of
his soul; more than merely a sunset sky had turned black for him within
that hour.

The cold was now intense, and he none too warmly clothed; yet there was
sweat upon his brows.

Dully there recurred to him a figure he had employed in one of his talks
with Lucy Shannon: that, lacking his faith in her, there would be only
emptiness beneath his feet.

And now that faith was wanting in him, had been taken from him for all
his struggles to retain it; and now indeed he danced on emptiness, the
rope of temptation tightening round his neck, the weight of criminal
instincts pulling it taut--strangling every right aspiration in him,
robbing him of the very breath of that new life to which he had thought
to give himself.

If she were not worthy, of what worth the fight?...

At one stage of his journey, he turned aside and, more through habit
than desire or design, entered a cheap eating-place and consumed his
customary evening meal without the slightest comprehension of what he
ate or whether the food were good or poor.

When he had finished, he hurried away like a haunted man. There was
little room in his mood for sustained thought: his wits were fathoming
a bottomless pit of black despair. He felt like a man born blind,
through skilful surgery given the boon of sight for a day or two, and
suddenly and without any warning thrust back again into darkness.

He knew only that his brief struggle had been all wasted, that behind
the flimsy barrier of his honourable ambition, the Lone Wolf was
ravening. And he felt that, once he permitted that barrier to be broken
down, it could never be repaired.

He had set it up by main strength of will, for love of a woman. He must
maintain it now for no incentive other than to retain his own good
will--or resign himself utterly to that darkness out of which he had
fought his way, to its powers that now beset his soul.

And ... he didn't care.

Quite without purpose he sought the machine-shop where he had left his
car.

He had no plans; but it was in his mind, a murderous thought, that
before another dawn he might encounter Bannon.

Interim, he would go to work. He could think out his problem while
driving as readily as in seclusion; whatever he might ultimately elect
to do, he could accomplish little before midnight.

Toward seven o'clock, with his machine in perfect running order, he
took the seat and to the streets in a reckless humour, in the temper of
a beast of prey.

The barrier was down: once more the Lone Wolf was on the prowl.

But for the present he controlled himself and acted perfectly his
temporary role of taxi-bandit, fellow to those thousands who infest
Paris. Half a dozen times in the course of the next three hours people
hailed him from sidewalks and restaurants; he took them up, carried
them to their several destinations, received payment, and acknowledged
their gratuities with perfunctory thanks--thoroughly in character--but
all with little conscious thought.

He saw but one thing, the face of Lucy Shannon, white, tense,
glimmering wanly in shadow--the countenance with which she had
dismissed him.

He had but one thought, the wish to read the riddle of her bondage. To
accomplish this he was prepared to go to any extreme; if Bannon and his
crew came between him and his purpose, so much the worse for them--and,
incidentally, so much the better for society. What might befall himself
was of no moment.

He entertained but one design, to become again what he had been, the
supreme adventurer, the prince of plunderers, to lose himself once more
in the delirium of adventurous days and peril-haunted nights, to
reincarnate the Lone Wolf and in his guise loot the world anew, to
court forgetfulness even at the prison's gates....

It was after ten when, cruising purposelessly, without a fare, he swung
through the rue Auber into the place de l'Opera and, approaching the
Cafe de la Paix, was hailed by a door-boy of that restaurant.

Drawing in to the curb with the careless address that had distinguished
his every action of that evening, he waited, with a throbbing motor,
and with mind detached and gaze remote from the streams of foot and
wheeled traffic that brawled past on either hand.

After a moment two men issued from the revolving door of the cafe, and
approached the cab. Lanyard paid them no attention. His thoughts were
now engaged with a certain hotel particulier in the neighbourhood of
La Muette and, in his preoccupation, he would need only the name of a
destination and the sound of the cab-door slammed, to send him off like
a shot.

Then he heard one of the men cough heavily, and in a twinkling
stiffened to rigidity in his seat. If he had heard that cough but once
before, that once had been too often. Without a glance aside,
hardening his features to perfect immobility, he knew that the cough
was shaking the slighter of those two figures.

And of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the clearness of the
frosty atmosphere, of the merciless glare of electricity beating upon
him from every side from the numberless street lamps and cafe lights.
And poignantly he regretted neglecting to mask himself with his
goggles.

He wasn't left long in suspense. The coughing died away by spasms;
followed the unmistakable, sonorous accents of Bannon.

"Well, my dear boy! I have to thank you for an excellent dinner and a
most interesting evening. Pity to break it up so early. Still, les
affaires--you know! Sorry you're not going my way--but that's a
handsome taxi you've drawn. What's its number--eh?"

"Haven't the faintest notion," a British voice drawled in response.
"Never fret about a taxi's number until it has run over me."

"Great mistake," Bannon rejoined cheerfully. "Always take the number
before entering. Then, if anything happens ... However, that's a
good-looking chap at the wheel--doesn't look as if he'd run you into
any trouble."

"Oh, I fancy not," said the Englishman, bored.

"Well, you never can tell. The number's on the lamp. Make a note of it
and be on the safe side. Or trust me--I never forget numbers."

With this speech Bannon ranged alongside Lanyard and looked him over,
keenly malicious enjoyment gleaming in his evil old eyes.

"You are an honest-looking chap," he observed with a mocking smile but
in a tone of the most inoffensive admiration--"honest and--ah--what
shall I say?--what's the word we're all using now-a-days?--efficient!
Honest and efficient-looking, capable of better things, or I'm no
judge! Forgive an old man's candour, my friend--and take good care of
our British cousin here. He doesn't know his way around Paris very
well. Still, I feel confident he'll come to no harm in _your_ company.
Here's a franc for you." With matchless effrontery, he produced a
coin from the pocket of his fur-lined coat.

Unhesitatingly, permitting no expression to colour his features,
Lanyard extended his palm, received the money, dropped it into his
own pocket, and carried two fingers to the visor of his cap.

"Merci, monsieur," he said evenly.

"Ah, that's the right spirit!" the deep voice jeered. "Never be above
your station, my man--never hesitate to take a tip! Here, I'll give
you another, gratis: get out of this business: you're too good for
it. Don't ask me how I know; I can tell by your face--Hello! Why do
you turn down the flag? You haven't started yet!"

"Conversation goes up on the clock," Lanyard replied stolidly in
French. He turned and faced Bannon squarely, loosing a glance of
venomous hatred into the other's eyes. "The longer I have to stop
here listening to your senile monologue, the more you'll have to pay.
What address, please?" he added, turning back to get a glimpse of his
passenger.

"Hotel Astoria," the porter supplied.

"Very good."

The porter closed the door.

"But remember my advice," Bannon counselled coolly, stepping back and
waving his hand to the man in the cab. "Good night."

Lanyard took his car smartly away from the curb, wheeled round the
corner into the boulevard des Capucines, and toward the rue Royale.

He had gone but a block when the window at his back was lowered and his
fare observed pleasantly:

"That you, Lanyard?"

The adventurer hesitated an instant; then, without looking round,
responded:

"Wertheimer, eh?"

"Right-O! The old man had me puzzled for a minute with his silly
chaffing. Stupid of me, too, because we'd just been talking about you."

"Had you, though!"

"Rather. Hadn't you better take me where we can have a quiet little
talk?"

"I'm not conscious of the necessity--"

"Oh, I say!" Wertheimer protested amiably--"don't be shirty, old top.
Give a chap a chance. Besides, I have a bit of news from Antwerp that I
guarantee will interest you."

"Antwerp?" Lanyard iterated, mystified.

"Antwerp, where the ships sail from," Wertheimer laughed: "not
Amsterdam, where the diamonds flock together, as you may know."

"I don't follow you, I'm afraid."

"I shan't elucidate until we're under cover."

"All right. Where shall I take you?"

"Any quiet cafe will do. You must know one--"

"Thanks--no," said Lanyard dryly. "If I must confabulate with gentlemen
of your kidney, I prefer to keep it dark. Even dressed as I am, I might
be recognized, you know."

But it was evident that Wertheimer didn't mean to permit himself to be
ruffled.

"Then will my modest diggings do?" he suggested pleasantly. "I've taken
a suite in the rue Vernet, just back of the Hotel Astoria, where we can
be as private as you please, if you've no objection."

"None whatever."

Wertheimer gave him the number and replaced the window....

His rooms in the rue Vernet proved to be a small ground-floor apartment
with private entrance to the street.

"Took the tip from you," he told Lanyard as he unlocked the door. "I
daresay you'd be glad to get back to that rez-de-chaussee of yours.
Ripping place, that.... By the way--judging from your apparently robust
state of health, you haven't been trying to live at home of late."

"Indeed?"

"Indeed yes, monsieur! If I may presume to advise--I'd pull wide of the
rue Roget for a while--for as long, at least, as you remain in your
present intractable temper."

"Daresay you're right," Lanyard assented carelessly, following, as
Wertheimer turned up the lights, into a modest salon cosily furnished.
"You live here alone, I understand?"

"Quite: make yourself perfectly at ease; nobody can hear us. And," the
Englishman added with a laugh, "do forget your pistol, Mr. Lanyard. I'm
not Popinot, nor is this Troyon's."

"Still," Lanyard countered, "you've just been dining with Bannon."

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