The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance

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Lanyard trembled visibly....

"Well!"--the word boomed like the opening gun of an engagement--"Well,
my man!"--the shrewd eyes swerved to the closed door of the safe and
quickly back again--"you don't seem to have accomplished much!"

"For God's sake, madame!" Lanyard blurted in a husky, shaken voice,
nothing like his own--"don't have me arrested! Give me a chance! I
haven't taken anything. Don't call the flics!"

He checked, moving an uncertain hand towards his throat as if his
tongue had gone dry.

"Come, come!" the woman answered, with a look almost of pity. "I
haven't called anyone--as yet."

The fingers of one strong white hand were drumming gently on the top of
the desk; then, with a movement so quick and sure that Lanyard himself
could hardly have bettered it, they slipped down to a handle of a
drawer, jerked it open, closed round the butt of a revolver, and
presented it at the adventurer's head.

Automatically he raised both hands.

"Don't shoot!" he cried. "I'm not armed----"

"Is that the truth?"

"You've only to search me, madame!"

"Thanks!" Madame's accents now discovered a trace of dry humour. "I'll
leave that to you. Turn out your pockets on the desk there--and,
remember, I'll stand no nonsense!"

The weapon covered Lanyard steadily, leaving him no choice but to obey.
As it happened, he was glad of the excuse to listen for sounds to tell
how the girl was faring in her flight, and made a pretence of trembling
fingers cover the slowness with which he complied.

But he heard nothing.

When he had visibly turned every pocket inside out, and their contents
lay upon the desk, the woman looked the exhibits over incuriously.

"Put them back," she said curtly. "And then fetch that chair over
there--the one in the corner. I've a notion I'd like to talk to you.
That's the usual thing, isn't it?"

"How?" Lanyard demanded with a vacant stare.

"In all the criminal novels I've ever read, the law-abiding householder
always sits down and has a sociable chat with the house-breaker--before
calling in the police. I'm afraid that's part of the price you've got
to pay for my hospitality."

She paused, eyeing Lanyard inquisitively while he restored his
belongings to his pockets. "Now, get that chair!" she ordered; and
waited, standing, until she had been obeyed. "That's it--there!
Sit down."

Leaning against the desk, her revolver held negligently, the speaker
favoured Lanyard with a more leisurely inspection; the harshness of
her stare was softened, and the anger which at first had darkened her
countenance was gone by the time she chose to pursue her catechism.

"What's your name? No--don't answer! I saw your eyes waver, and I'm
not interested in a makeshift alias. But it's the stock question, you
know.... Do you care for a cigar?"

She opened a mahogany humidor on the desk.

"No, thanks."

"Right--according to Hoyle: the criminal always refuses to smoke in
these scenes. But let's forget the book and write our own lines. I'll
ask you an original question: Why were you acting just now?"

"Acting?" Lanyard repeated, intrigued by the acuteness of this
masterful woman's mentality.

"Precisely--pretending you were a common thief. For a moment you
actually made me think you afraid of me. But you're neither the one
nor the other. How do I know? Because you're unarmed, your voice has
changed in the last two minutes to that of a cultivated man, you've
stopped cringing and started thinking, and the way you walked across
the floor and handled that chair showed how powerfully you're made. If
I didn't have this revolver, you could overpower me in an instant--and
I'm no weakling, as women go. So--why the acting?"

Studying his captor with narrow interest, Lanyard smiled faintly and
shrugged, but made no answer. He could do no more than this--no more
than spare for time: the longer he indulged madame in her whim, the
better Lucy's chances of scot-free escape. By this time, he reckoned,
she would have found her way through the service gate to the street.
But he was on edge with unending apprehension of mischance.

"Come, come!" Madame Omber insisted. "You're hardly civil, my man.
Answer my question!"

"You don't expect me to--do you?"

"Why not? You owe me at least satisfaction of my curiosity, in return
for breaking into my house."

"But if, as you suggest, I am--or was--acting with a purpose, why
expect me to give the show away?"

"That's logic. I knew you could think. More's the pity!"

"Pity I can think?"

"Pity you can get your own consent to waste yourself like this. I'm
an old woman, and I know men better than most; I can see ability in
you. So I say, it's a pity you won't use yourself to better advantage.
Don't misunderstand me: this isn't the conventional act; I don't hold
with encouraging a fool in his folly. You're a fool, for all your
intelligence, and the only cure I can see for you is drastic
punishment."

"Meaning the Sante, madame?"

"Quite so. I tell you frankly, when I'm finished lecturing you, off you
go to prison."

"If that's the case I don't see I stand to gain much by retailing the
history of my life. This seems to be your cue to ring for servants to
call the police."

A trace of anger shone in the woman's eyes. "You're right," she said
shortly; "I dare say Sidonie isn't asleep yet. I'll get her to
telephone while I keep an eye on you."

Bending over the desk, without removing her gaze from the adventurer,
his captor groped for, found, and pressed a call-button.

From some remote quarter of the house sounded the grumble of an
electric bell.

"Pity you're so brazen," she observed. "Just a little less side, and
you'd be a rather engaging person!"

Lanyard made no reply. In fact he wasn't listening.

Under the strain of that suspense, the iron control which had always
been his was breaking down--since now it was for another he was
concerned. And he wasted no strength trying to enforce it. The stress
of his anxiety was both undisguised and undisguisable. Nor did Madame
Omber overlook it.

"What's the trouble, eh? Is it that already you hear the cell door
clang in your ears?"

As she spoke, Lanyard left his chair with a movement in the execution
of which all his wits co-operated, with a spring as lithe and sure
and swift as an animal's, that carried him like a shot across the two
yards or so between them.

The slightest error in his reckoning would have finished him: for the
other had been watching for just such a move, and the revolver was
nearly level with Lanyard's head when he grasped it by the barrel,
turned that to the ceiling, imprisoned the woman's wrist with his
other hand, and in two movements had captured the weapon without
injuring its owner.

"Don't be alarmed," he said quietly. "I'm not going to do anything
more violent than to put this weapon out of commission."

Breaking it smartly, he shot a shower of cartridges to the door, and
tossed the now-useless weapon into a wastebasket beneath the desk.

"Hope I didn't hurt you," he added abstractedly--"but your pistol was
in my way!"

He took a stride toward the door, pulled up, and hung in hesitation,
frowning absently at the woman; who, without moving, laughed quietly
and watched him with a twinkle of malicious diversion.

He repaid this with a stare of thoughtful appraisal; from the first he
had recognized in her a character of uncommon tolerance and amiability.

"Pardon, madame, but----" he began abruptly--and checked in constrained
appreciation of his impudence.

"If that's permission to interrupt your reverie," Madame Omber remarked,
"I don't mind telling you, you're the most extraordinary burglar I ever
heard of!"

Footfalls became audible on the staircase--the hasty scuffling of
slippered feet.

"Is that you, Sidonie?" madame called.

The voice of the maid replied: "Yes, madame--coming!"

"Well--don't, just yet--not till I call you."

"Very good, madame."

The woman returned complete attention to Lanyard.

"Now, monsieur-of-two-minds, what is it you wish to say to me?"

"Why did you do that?" the adventurer asked, with a jerk of his head
toward the hall.

"Tell Sidonie to wait instead of calling for help? Because--well,
because you interest me strangely. I've got a theory you're in a
desperate quandary and are about to throw yourself on my mercy."

"You are right," Lanyard admitted tersely.

"Ah! Now you do begin to grow interesting! Would you mind explaining
why you think I'll be merciful?"

"Because, madame, I've done you a great service, and feel I can count
upon your gratitude."

The Frenchwoman's eyebrows lifted at this. "Doubtless, monsieur knows
what he's talking about----"

"Listen, madame: I am in love with a young woman, an American, a
stranger and friendless in Paris. If anything happens to me
tonight, if I am arrested or assassinated----"

"Is that likely?"

"Quite likely, madame: I have enemies among the Apaches, and in my own
profession as well; and I have reason to believe that several of them
are in this neighbourhood tonight. I may possibly not escape their
attentions. In that event, this young lady of whom I speak will need
a protector."

"And why must I interest myself in her fate, pray?"

"Because, madame, of this service I have done you ... Recently, in
London, you were robbed----"

The woman started and coloured with excitement: "You know something of
my jewels?"

"Everything, madame: it was I who stole them."

"You? You are, then, that Lone Wolf?"

"I was, madame."

"Why the past tense?" the woman demanded, eyeing him with a portentous
frown.

"Because I am done with thieving."

She threw back her head and laughed, but without mirth: "A likely story,
monsieur! Have you reformed since I caught you here----?"

"Does it matter when? I take it that proof, visible, tangible proof of
my sincerity, more than a meaningless date, would be needed to convince
you."

"No doubt of that, Monsieur the Lone Wolf!"

"Could you ask better proof than the restoration of your stolen
property?"

"Are you trying to bribe me to let you off with an offer to return my
jewels?"

"I'm afraid emergency reformation wouldn't persuade you----"

"You may well be afraid, monsieur!"

"But if I can prove I've already restored your jewels----?"

"But you have not."

"If madame will do me the favour to open her safe, she will find them
there--conspicuously placed."

"What nonsense----!"

"Am I wrong in assuming that madame didn't return from England until
quite recently?"

"But today, in fact----"

"And you haven't troubled to investigate your safe since returning?"

"It had not occurred to me----"

"Then why not test my statement before denying it?"

With an incredulous shrug Madame Omber terminated a puzzled scrutiny
of Lanyard's countenance, and turned to the safe.

"But to have done what you declare you have," she argued, "you must
have known the combination--since it appears you haven't broken this
open."

The combination ran glibly off Lanyard's tongue. And at this, with
every evidence of excitement, at length beginning to hope if not to
believe, the woman set herself to open the safe. Within a minute she
had succeeded, the morocco-bound jewel-case was in her hand, and a
hasty examination had assured her its treasure was intact.

"But why----?" she stammered, pale with emotion--"why, monsieur, _why_?"

"Because I decided to leave off stealing for a livelihood."

"When did you bring these jewels here?"

"Within the week--four or five nights since----"

"And then--repented, eh?"

"I own it."

"But came here again tonight, to steal a second time what you had
stolen once?"

"That's true, too."

"And I interrupted you----"

"Pardon, madame: not you, but my better self. I came to steal--I could
not."

"Monsieur--you do not convince. I fail to fathom your motives, but----"

A sudden shock of heavy trampling feet in the reception-hall,
accompanied by a clash of excited voices, silenced her and brought
Lanyard instantly to the face-about.

Above that loud wrangle--of which neither had received the least
warning, so completely had their argument absorbed them--Sidonie's
accents were audible:

"Madame--madame!"--a cry of protest.

"What is it?" madame demanded of Lanyard.

He threw her the word "Police!" as he turned and flung himself into the
recess of the window.

But when he wrenched it open the voice of a picket on the lawn saluted
him in sharp warning; and when, involuntarily, he stepped out upon the
balcony, a flash of flame split the gloom below, a loud report rang in
the quiet of the park, and a bullet slapped viciously the stone facing
of the window.

XXIV

RENDEZVOUS

With as little ceremony as though the bullet had lodged in himself,
Lanyard tumbled back into the room, tripped, and fell sprawling; while
to a tune of clattering boots two sergents de ville lumbered valiantly
into the library and pulled up to discover Madame Omber standing
calmly, safe and sound, beside her desk, and Lanyard picking himself
up from the floor by the open window.

Behind them Sidonie trotted, wringing her hands.

"Madame!" she bleated--"they wouldn't listen to me, madame--I couldn't
stop them!"

"All right, Sidonie. Go back to the hall. I'll call you when needed....
Messieurs, good morning!"

One of the sergents advanced with an uncertain salute and a superfluous
question: "Madame Omber----?" The other waited on the threshold,
barring the way.

Lanyard measured the two speculatively: the spokesman seemed a bit old
and fat, ripe for his pension, little apt to prove seriously effective
in a rough-and-tumble; but the other was young, sturdy, and
broad-chested, with the poise of an athlete, and carried in addition to
his sword a pistol naked in his hand, while his clear blue eyes, meeting
the adventurer's, lighted up with a glint of invitation.

For the present, however, Lanyard wasn't taking any. He met that
challenge with a look of utter stupidity, folded his arms, lounged
against the desk, and watched Madame Omber acknowledge, none too
cordially, the other sergent's query.

"I am Madame Omber--yes. What can I do for you?"

The sergent gaped. "Pardon!" he stammered, then laughed as one who
tardily appreciates a joke. "It is well we are arrived in time,
madame," he added--"though it would seem you have not had great trouble
with this miscreant. Where is the woman?"

He moved a pace toward Lanyard: hand-cuffs jingled in his grasp.

"But a moment!" madame interposed. "Woman? What woman?"

Pausing, the older sergent explained in a tone of surprise:

"But his accomplice, naturally! Such were our instructions--to proceed
at once to madame's hotel, come in quietly by the servants' entrance--
which would be open--and arrest a burglar with his female accomplice."

Again the stout sergent moved toward Lanyard; again Madame Omber
stopped him.

"But one moment more, if you please!"

Her eyes, dense with suspicion, questioned Lanyard; who, with a
significant nod toward the jewel-case still in her hands, gave her a
glance of dumb entreaty.

After brief hesitation, "It is a mistake," madame declared; "there is
no woman in this house, to my certain knowledge, who has no right to be
here... But you say you received a message? I sent none!"

The fat sergent shrugged. "That is not for me to dispute, madame. I
have only my orders to go by."

He glared sullenly at Lanyard; who returned a placid smile that
(despite such hope as he might derive from madame's irresolute manner)
masked a vast amount of trepidation. He felt tolerably sure Madame
Omber had not sent for police on prior knowledge of his presence in
the library. All this, then, would seem to indicate a new form of
attack on the part of the Pack. He had probably been followed and seen
to enter; or else the girl had been caught attempting to steal away and
the information wrung from her by _force majeure_.... Moreover, he
could hear two more pair of feet tramping through the salons.

Pending the arrival of these last, Madame Omber said nothing more.

And, unceremoniously enough, the newcomers shouldered into the
library--one pompous uniformed body, of otherwise undistinguished
appearance, promptly identified by the sergents de ville as monsieur
le commissaire of that quarter; the other, a puffy mediocrity, known
to Lanyard at least (if apparently to no one else) as Popinot.

At this confirmation of his darkest fears, the adventurer abandoned
hope of aid from Madame Omber and began quietly to reckon his chances
of escape through his own efforts.

But he was quite unarmed, and the odds were heavy: four against one,
all four no doubt under arms, and two at least--the sergents--men of
sound military training.

"Madame Omber?" enquired the commissaire, saluting that lady with
immense dignity. "One trusts that this intrusion may be pardoned, the
circumstances remembered. In an affair of this nature, involving this
repository of so historic treasures--"

"That is quite well understood, monsieur le commissaire," madame
replied distantly. "And this monsieur is, no doubt, your aide?"

"Pardon!" the official hastened to identify his companion: "Monsieur
Popinot, agent de la Surete, who lays these informations!"

With a profound obeisance to Madame Omber, Popinot strode dramatically
over to confront Lanyard and explore his features with his small, keen,
shifty eyes of a pig; a scrutiny which the adventurer suffered with
superficial calm.

"It is he!" Popinot announced with a gesture. "Messieurs, I call upon
you to arrest this man, Michael Lanyard, alias 'The Lone Wolf.'"

He stepped back a pace, expanding his chest in vain effort to eclipse
his abdomen, and glanced triumphantly at his respectful audience.

"Accused," he added with intense relish, "of the murder of Inspector
Roddy of Scotland Yard at Troyon's, as well as of setting fire to that
establishment--"

"For this, Popinot," Lanyard interrupted in an undertone, "I shall some
day cut off your ears!" He turned to Madame Omber: "Accept, if you
please, madame, my sincere regrets ... but this charge happens to be
one of which I am altogether innocent."

Instantly, from lounging against the desk, Lanyard straightened up: and
the heavy humidor of brass and mahogany, on which his right hand had
been resting, seemed fairly to leap from its place as, with a sweep of
his arm, he sent it spinning point-blank at the younger sergent.

Before that one, wholly unprepared, could more than gasp, the humidor
caught him a blow like a kick just below the breastbone. He reeled, the
breath left him in one great gust, he sat down abruptly--blue eyes wide
with a look of aggrieved surprise--clapped both hands to his middle,
blinked, turned pale, and keeled over on his side.

But Lanyard hadn't waited to note results. He was busy. The fat sergent
had leaped snarling upon his arm, and was struggling to hold it still
long enough to snap a hand-cuff round the wrist; while the commissaire
had started forward with a bellow of rage and two hands extended and
itching for the adventurer's throat.

The first received a half-arm jab on the point of his chin that jarred
his entire system, and without in the least understanding how it
happened, found himself whirled around and laid prostrate in the
commissaire's path. The latter tripped, fell, and planted two hard
knees, with the bulk of his weight atop them, on the apex of the
sergent's paunch.

At the same time Lanyard, leaping toward the doorway, noticed Popinot
tugging at something in his hip-pocket.

Followed a vivid flash, then complete darkness: with a well-aimed
kick--an elementary movement of la savate--Lanyard had dislocated the
switch of the electric lights, knocking its porcelain box from the
wall, breaking the connection, and creating a short-circuit which
extinguished every light in that part of the house.

With his way thus apparently cleared, the police in confusion, darkness
aiding him, Lanyard plunged on; but in mid-stride, as he crossed the
threshold, his ankle was caught by the still prostrate younger sergent
and jerked from under him.

His momentum threw him with a crash--and may have spared him a worse
mishap; for in the same breath he heard the report of a pistol and knew
that Popinot had fired at his fugitive shadow.

As he brought one heel down with crushing force on the sergent's wrist,
freeing his foot, he was dimly conscious of the voice of the commissaire
shouting frantic prayers to cease firing. Then the pain-maddened sergent
crawled to his knees, lunged blindly forward, knocked the adventurer
back in the act of rising, and fell on top of him.

Hampered by two hundred pounds of fighting Frenchman, Lanyard felt his
cause was lost, yet battled on--and would while breath was in him.

With a heave, a twist and a squirm, he slipped from under, and swinging
a fist at random barked his knuckles against the mouth of the sergent.
Momentarily that one relaxed his hold, and Lanyard struggled to his
knees, only to go down as the indomitable Frenchman grappled yet a
second time.

Now, however, as they fell, Lanyard was on top: and shifting both hands
to his antagonist's left forearm, he wrenched it up and around. There
was a cry of pain, and he jumped clear of one no longer to be reckoned
with.

Nevertheless, as he had feared, the delay had proved ruinous. He had
only found his feet when an unidentified person hurled himself bodily
through the gloom and wrapped his arms round Lanyard's thighs. And as
both went down, two others piled up on top....

For the next minute or two, Lanyard fought blindly, madly, viciously,
striking and kicking at random. For all that--even with one sergent
hors de combat--they were three to one; and though with the ferocity of
sheer desperation he shook them all off, at one time, and gained a few
yards more, it was only again to be overcome and borne down, crushed
beneath the weight of three.

His wind was going, his strength was leaving him. He mustered up every
ounce of energy, all his wit and courage, for one last effort: fought
like a cat, tooth and nail; toiled once more to his knees, with two
clinging to him like wolves to the flanks of a stag; shook one off,
regained his feet, swayed; and in one final gust of ferocity dashed
both fists repeatedly into the face of him who still clung to him.

That one was Popinot; he knew instinctively that this was so; and a
grim joy filled him as he felt the man's clutches relax and fall away,
and guessed how brutal was the damage he had done that fat, evil face.

At length free, he made off, running, stumbling, reeling: gained the
hall; flung open the door; and heedless of the picket who had fired on
him from below the window, dashed down the steps and away....

Three shots sped him through that intricate tangle of night-bound park.
But all went wide; the pursuit--what little there was--blundered off
at hap-hazard and lost itself, as well.

He came to the wall, crept along in shelter of its shadow until he
found a tree with a low-swung branch that jutted out over the street,
climbed this, edged out over the wall, and dropped to the sidewalk.

A shout from the quarter of the carriage gates greeted his appearance.
He turned and ran again. Flying footsteps for a time pursued him; and
once, with a sinking heart, he heard the rumble of a motor. But he
recovered quickly, regained his wind, and ran well, with long, steady,
ground-consuming strides; and he doubled, turned and twisted in a
manner to wake the envy of the most subtle fox.

In time he felt warranted in slowing down to a rapid walk.

Weariness was now a heavy burden upon him, and his spirit numb with
desperate need of rest; but his pace did not flag, nor his purpose
falter from its goal.

It was a long walk if a direct one to which he set himself as soon as
confident the pursuit had failed once more. He plodded on, without
faltering, to the one place where he might feel sure of finding his
beloved, if she lived and were free. He knew that she had not
forgotten, and in his heart he knew that she would never again of her
own will fail him....

Nor had she: when--weary and spent from that heartbreaking climb up the
merciless acclivity of the Butte Montmartre--he staggered rather than
walked past the sleepy verger and found his way through the crowding
shadows to the softly luminous heart of the basilica of the Sacre-Cour,
he found her there, kneeling, her head bowed upon hands resting on the
back of the chair before her: a slight and timid figure, lost and lonely
in the long ranks of empty chairs that filled the nave.

Slowly, almost fearfully, he went to her, and silently he slipped into
the chair by her side.

She knew, without looking up, that it was he....

After a little her hand stole out, closed round his fingers, and drew
him forward with a gentle, insistent pressure. He knelt then with her,
hand in hand--filled with the wonder of it, that he to whom religion
had been nothing should have been brought to this by a woman's hand.

He knelt for a long time, for many minutes, profoundly intrigued, his
sombre gaze questioning the golden shadows and ancient mystery of the
distant choir and shining altar: and there was no question in his heart
but that, whatever should ensue of this, the unquiet spirit of the Lone
Wolf was forevermore at rest.

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