The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance

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And there he found De Morbihan--again!--standing all garmented for the
street, mouthing a huge cigar and wearing a look of impatient
discontent.

"At last!" he cried in an aggrieved tone as Lanyard appeared in the
offing. "You do take your time, my friend!"

Lanyard smothered with a smile whatever emotion was his of the moment.

"I didn't imagine you really meant to wait for me," he parried with
double meaning, both to humour De Morbihan and hoodwink the attendant.

"What do you think?" retorted the Count with asperity--"that I'm
willing to stand by and let you moon round Paris at this hour of the
morning, hunting for a taxicab that isn't to be found and running
God-knows-what risk of being stuck up by some misbegotten Apache? But I
should say not! I mean to take you home in my car, though it cost me a
half-hour of beauty sleep not lightly to be forfeited at my age!"

The significance that underlay the semi-humourous petulance of the
little man was not wasted.

"You're most amiable, Monsieur le Comte!" Lanyard observed
thoughtfully, while the attendant produced his hat and coat. "So now,
if you're ready, I won't delay you longer."

In another moment they were outside the club-house, its doors shut
behind them, while before them, at the curb, waited that same handsome
black limousine which had brought the adventurer from L'Abbaye.

Two swift glances, right and left, showed him an empty street, bare of
hint of danger.

"One moment, monsieur!" he said, detaining the Count with a touch on
his sleeve. "It's only right that I should advise you ... I'm armed."

"Then you're less foolhardy than one feared. If such things interest
you, I don't mind admitting I carry a life-preserver of my own. But
what of that? Is one eager to go shooting at this time of night, for
the sheer fun of explaining to sergents de ville that one has been
attacked by Apaches? ... Providing always one lives to explain!"

"It's as bad as that, eh?"

"Enough to make me loath to linger at your side in a lighted doorway!"

Lanyard laughed in his own discomfiture. "Monsieur le Comte," said he,
"there's a dash in you of what your American pal, Mysterious Smith,
would call sporting blood, that commands my unstinted admiration. I
thank you for your offered courtesy, and beg leave to accept."

De Morbihan replied with a grunt of none too civil intonation,
instructed the chauffeur "To Troyon's," and followed Lanyard into the
car.

"Courtesy!" he repeated, settling himself with a shake. "That makes
nothing. If I regarded my own inclinations, I'd let you go to the devil
as quick as Popinot's assassins could send you there!"

"This is delightful!" Lanyard protested. "First you must see me home to
save my life, and then you tell me your inclinations consign me to a
premature grave. Is there an explanation, possibly?"

"On your person," said the Count, sententious.

"Eh?"

"You carry your reason with you, my friend--in the shape of the Omber
loot."

"Assuming you are right--"

"You never went to the rue du Bac, monsieur, without those jewels: and
I have had you under observation ever since."

"What conceivable interest," Lanyard pursued evenly, "do you fancy
you've got in the said loot?"

"Enough, at least, to render me unwilling to kiss it adieu by leaving
you to the mercies of Popinot. You don't imagine I'd ever hear of it
again, when his Apaches had finished with you?"

"Ah!... So, after all, your so-called organization isn't founded on
that reciprocal trust so essential to the prosperity of
such--enterprises!"

"Amuse yourself as you will with your inferences, my friend," the Count
returned, unruffled; "but don't forget my advice: pull wide of Popinot!"

"A vindictive soul, eh?"

"One may say that."

"You can't hold him?"

"That one? No fear! You were anything but wise to bait him as you did."

"Perhaps. It's purely a matter of taste in associates."

"If I were the fool you think me," mused the Count "I'd resent that
innuendo. As it happens, I'm not. At least, I can wait before calling
you to account."

"And meantime profit by your patience?"

"But naturally. Haven't I said as much?"

"Still, I'm perplexed. I can't imagine how you reckon to declare
yourself in on the Omber loot."

"All in good time: if you were wise, you'd hand the stuff over to me
here and now, and accept what I chose to give you in return. But
inasmuch as you're the least wise of men, you must have your lesson."

"Meaning--?"

"The night brings counsel: you'll have time to think things over. By
to-morrow you'll be coming to offer me those jewels in exchange for
what influence I have in certain quarters."

"With your famous friend, the Chief of the Surete, eh?"

"Possibly. I am known also at La Tour Pointue."

"I confess I don't follow you, unless you mean to turn informer."

"Never that."

"It's a riddle, then?"

"For the moment only.... But I will say this: it will be futile, your
attempting to escape Paris; Popinot has already picketted every outlet.
Your one hope resides in me; and I shall be at home to you until midnight
to-morrow--to-day, rather."

Impressed in spite of himself, Lanyard stared. But the Count maintained
an imperturbable manner, looking straight ahead. Such calm assurance
would hardly be sheer bluff.

"I must think this over," Lanyard mused aloud.

"Pray don't let me hinder you," the Count begged with mild sarcasm. "I
have my own futile thoughts...."

Lanyard laughed quietly and subsided into a reverie which, undisturbed
by De Morbihan, endured throughout the brief remainder of their drive;
for, thanks to the smallness of the hour, the streets were practically
deserted and offered no obstacle to speed; while the chauffeur was
doubtless eager for his bed.

As they drew near Troyon's, however, Lanyard sat up and jealously
reconnoitered both sides of the way.

"Surely you don't expect to be kept out?" the Count asked dryly. "But
that just shows how little you appreciate our good Popinot. He'll never
object to your locking yourself up where he knows he can find you--but
only to your leaving without permission!"

"Something in that, perhaps. Still, I make it a rule to give myself
the benefit of every doubt."

There was, indeed, no sign of ambush that he could detect in any
quarter, nor any indication that Popinot's Apaches were posted
thereabouts. Nevertheless, Lanyard produced his automatic and freed
the safety-catch before opening the door.

"A thousand thanks, my dear Count!"

"For what? Doing myself a service? But you make me feel ashamed!"

"I know," agreed Lanyard, depreciatory; "but that's the way I am--a
little devil--you really can't trust me! Adieu, Monsieur le Comte."

"Au revoir, monsieur!"

Lanyard saw the car round the corner before turning to the entrance of
Troyon's, keeping his weather-eye alert the while. But when the car was
gone, the street seemed quite deserted and as soundless as though it
had been the thoroughfare of some remote village rather than an artery
of the pulsing old heart of Paris.

Yet he wasn't satisfied. He was as little susceptible to psychic
admonition as any sane and normal human organism, but he was just then
strongly oppressed by intuitive perception that there was something
radically amiss in his neighbourhood. Whether or not the result of the
Count's open intimations and veiled hints working upon a nature
sensitized by excitement and fatigue, he felt as though he had stepped
from the cab into an atmosphere impregnated to saturation with nameless
menace. And he even shivered a bit, perhaps because of the chill in
that air of early morning, perhaps because a shadow of premonition had
fallen athwart his soul....

Whatever its cause, he could find no reason for this; and shaking
himself impatiently, pressed a button that rang a bell by the ear of
the concierge, heard the latch click, thrust the door wide, and
re-entered Troyon's.

Here reigned a silence even more marked than that of the street, a
silence as heavy and profound as the grave's, so that sheer instinct
prompted Lanyard to tread lightly as he made his way down the passage
and across the courtyard toward the stairway; and in that hush the
creak of a greaseless hinge, when the concierge opened the door of his
quarters to identify this belated guest, seemed little less than a
profanity.

Lanyard paused and delved into his pockets, nodding genially to the
blowsy, sleepy old face beneath the guardian's nightcap.

"Sorry to disturb monsieur," he said politely, further impoverishing
himself in the sum of five francs in witness to the sincerity of his
regret.

"I thank monsieur; but what need to consider me? It's my duty. And what
is one interruption more or less? All night they come and go...."

"Good night, monsieur," Lanyard cut short the old man's garrulity; and
went on up the stairs, now a little wearily, of a sudden newly
conscious of his vast and enervating fatigue.

He thought longingly of bed, yawned involuntarily and, reaching his
door, fumbled the key in a most unprofessional way; there were weights
upon his eyelids, a heaviness in his brain....

But the key met with no resistance from the wards; and in a trice,
appreciating this fact, Lanyard was wide-awake again.

No question but that he had locked the door securely, on leaving after
his adventure with the charming somnambulist....

Had she, then, taken a whim to his room?

Or was this but proof of what he had anticipated in the beginning--a
bit of sleuthing on the part of Roddy?

He entertained little doubt as to the correctness of this latter
surmise, as he threw the door open and stepped into the room, his first
action being to grasp the electric switch and twist it smartly.

But no light answered.

"Hello!" he exclaimed softly, remembering that the lights could readily
have been turned off at the bulbs. "What's the good of that?"

In the same breath he started violently, and swung about.

The door had closed behind him, swiftly but gently, eclipsing the faint
light from the hall, leaving what amounted to stark darkness.

His first impression was that the intruder--Roddy or whoever--had
darted past him and out, pulling the door to in that act.

Before he could consciously revise this misconception he was fighting
for his life.

So unexpected, so swift and sudden fell the assault, that he was caught
completely off guard: between the shutting of the door and an onslaught
whose violence sent him reeling to the wall, the elapsed time could
have been measured by the fluttering of an eyelash.

And then two powerful arms were round him, pinioning his hands to his
sides, his feet were tripped up, and he was thrown with a force that
fairly jarred his teeth, half-stunning him.

For a breath he lay dazed, struggling feebly; not long, but long enough
to enable his antagonist to shift his hold and climb on top of his body,
where he squatted, bearing down heavily with a knee on either of
Lanyard's forearms, hands encircling his neck, murderous thumbs digging
into his windpipe.

He revived momentarily, pulled himself together, and heaved mightily in
futile effort to unseat the other.

The sole outcome of this was a tightening pressure on his throat.

The pain grew agonizing; Lanyard's breath was almost completely shut
off; he gasped vainly, with a rattling noise in his gullet; his
eyeballs started; a myriad coruscant lights danced and interlaced
blindingly before them; in his ears there rang a roaring like the voice
of heavy surf breaking upon a rock-bound coast.

And of a sudden he ceased to struggle and lay slack, passive in the
other's hands.

Only an instant longer was the clutch on his throat maintained. Both
hands left it quickly, one shifting to his head to turn and press it
roughly cheek to floor. Simultaneously he was aware of the other hand
fumbling about his neck, and then of a touch of metal and the sting of
a needle driven into the flesh beneath his ear.

That galvanized him; he came to life again in a twinkling, animate with
threefold strength and cunning. The man on his chest was thrown off as
by a young earthquake; and Lanyard's right arm was no sooner free than
it shot out with blind but deadly accuracy to the point of his
assailant's jaw. A click of teeth was followed by a sickish grunt as
the man lurched over....

Lanyard found himself scrambling to his feet, a bit giddy perhaps, but
still sufficiently master of his wits to get his pistol out before
making another move.

X

TURN ABOUT

The thought of Lanyard's pocket flash-lamp offering itself, immediately
its wide circle of light enveloped his late antagonist.

That one was resting on a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite
without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than
half-turned to the floor, and masked into the bargain.

Incredulously Lanyard stirred the body with a foot, holding his weapon
poised as though half-expecting it to quicken with instant and violent
action; but it responded in no way.

With a nod of satisfaction, he shifted the light until it marked down
the nearest electric bulb, which proved, in line with his inference, to
have been extinguished by the socket key, while the heat of its bulb
indicated that the current had been shut off only an instant before his
entrance.

The light full up, he went back to the thug, knelt and, lifting the
body, turned it upon its back.

Recognition immediately rewarded this manoeuvre: the masked face
upturned to the glare was that of the American who had made a fourth in
the concert of the Pack--"Mr. Smith," Quickly unlatching the mask,
Lanyard removed it; but the countenance thus exposed told little more
than he knew; he could have sworn he had never seen it before. None the
less, something in its evil cast persistently troubled his memory, with
the same provoking and baffling effect that had attended their first
encounter.

Already the American was struggling toward consciousness. His lips and
eyelids twitched spasmodically, he shuddered, and his flexed muscles
began to relax. In this process something fell from between the fingers
of his right hand--something small and silver-bright that caught
Lanyard's eye.

Picking it up, he examined with interest a small hypodermic syringe
loaded to the full capacity of its glass cylinder, plunger drawn
back--all ready for instant service.

It was the needle of this instrument that had pricked the skin of
Lanyard's neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if
not exactly a killing dose of some narcotic drug--cocaine, at a
venture.

So it appeared that this agent of the Pack had been commissioned to put
the Lone Wolf to sleep for an hour or two or more--_perhaps_ not
permanently!--that he might be out of the way long enough for their
occult purposes.

He smiled grimly, fingering the hypodermic and eyeing the prostrate man.

"Turn about," he reflected, "is said to be fair play.... Well, why not?"

He bent forward, dug the needle into the wrist of the American and shot
the plunger home, all in a single movement so swift and deft that the
drug was delivered before the pain could startle the victim from his
coma.

As for that, the man came to quickly enough; but only to have his
clearing senses met and dashed by the muzzle of a pistol stamping a
cold ring upon his temple.

"Lie perfectly quiet, my dear Mr. Smith," Lanyard advised; "don't speak
above a whisper! Give the good dope a chance: it'll only need a moment,
or I'm no judge and you're a careless highbinder! I'd like to know,
however--if it's all the same to you--"

But already the injection was taking effect; the look of panic, which
had drawn the features of the American and flickered from his eyes with
dawning appreciation of his plight, was clouding, fading, blending into
one of daze and stupour. The eyelids flickered and lay still; the lips
moved as if with urgent desire to speak, but were dumb; a long
convulsive sigh shook the American's body; and he rested with the
immobility of the dead, save for the slow but steady rise and fall of
his bosom.

Lanyard thoughtfully reviewed these phenomena.

"Must kick like a mule, that dope!" he reflected. "Lucky it didn't get
me before I guessed what was up! If I'd even suspected its strength,
however, I'd have been less hasty: I could do with a little information
from Mr. Mysterious Stranger here!"

Suddenly conscious of a dry and burning throat, he rose and going to
the washstand drank deep and thirstily from a water-bottle; then set
himself resolutely to repair the disarray of his wits and consider what
was best to be done.

In his abstraction he wandered to a chair over whose back hung a light
dressing-gown of wine-coloured silk, which, because it would pack in
small compass, was in the habit of carrying with him on his travels.
Lanyard had left this thrown across his bed; and he was wondering
subconsciously what use the man had thought to make of it, that he
should have taken the trouble to shift it to the chair.

But even as he laid hold of it, Lanyard dropped the garment in sheer
surprise to find it damp and heavy in his grasp, sodden with viscid
moisture. And when, in a swift flash of intuition, he examined his
fingers, he discovered them discoloured with a faint reddish stain.

Had the dye run? And how had the American come to dabble the garment
in water--to what end?

Then the shape of an object on the floor near his feet arrested
Lanyard's questing vision. He stared, incredulous, moved forward, bent
over and picked it up, clipping it gingerly between finger-tips.

It was one of his razors--a heavy hollow-ground blade--and it was foul
with blood.

With a low cry, smitten with awful understanding, Lanyard wheeled and
stared fearfully at the door communicating with Roddy's room.

It stood ajar an inch or two, its splintered lock accounted for by a
small but extremely efficient jointed steel jimmy which lay near the
threshold.

Beyond the door ... darkness ... silence...

Mustering up all his courage, the adventurer strode determinedly into
the adjoining room.

The first flash of his hand-lamp discovered to him sickening
verification of his most dreadful apprehensions.

Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned--to protect a
butcher's clothing.

After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it,
as if to bar out that reeking shambles.

He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully
shaken with nausea.

The plot was damnably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and
requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the
blame for it should be laid at Lanyard's door. Hence the attempt to
drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find
him there.

He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the
Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and
afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the
second victim.

And the plot had succeeded despite its partial failure, despite the
swift reverse chance and Lanyard's cunning had meted out to the Pack's
agent. It was _his_ dressing-gown that was saturate with Roddy's blood,
just as they were his gloves, pilfered from his luggage, which had
measurably protected the killer's hands, and which Lanyard had found in
the next room, stripped hastily off and thrown to the floor--twin
crumpled wads of blood-stained chamois-skin.

He had now little choice; he must either flee Paris and trust to his
wits to save him, or else seek De Morbihan and solicit his protection,
his boasted influence in high quarters.

But to give himself into the hands, to become an associate, of one who
could be party to so cowardly a Crime as this ... Lanyard told himself
he would sooner pay the guillotine the penalty....

Consulting his watch, he found the hour to be no later than half-past
four: so swiftly (truly treading upon one another's heels) events had
moved since the incident of the somnambulist.

This left at his disposal a fair two hours more of darkness: November
nights are long and black in Paris; it would hardly be even moderately
light before seven o'clock. But that were a respite none too long for
Lanyard's necessity; he must think swiftly in contemplation of instant
action were he to extricate himself without the Pack's knowledge and
consent.

Granted, then, he must fly this stricken field of Paris. But how? De
Morbihan had promised that Popinot's creatures would guard every
outlet; and Lanyard didn't doubt him. An attempt to escape the city by
any ordinary channel would be to invite either denunciation to the
police on the charge of murder, or one of those fatally expeditious
forms of assassination of which the Apaches are past-masters.

He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully
hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket
were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency.

True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable--not at
least in Paris.

And the Huysman plans?

He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans.

In his fretting, pacing softly to and fro, at each turn he 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 Regie 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
wash-stand 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.

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