XVIII
ENIGMA
He found no reason to believe she had left him other than voluntarily, or that their adventures since the escape from the impasse Stanislas had been attended upon by spies of the Pack. He could have sworn they hadn't been followed either to or from the rue des Acacias; their way had been too long and purposely too roundabout, his vigilance too lively, for any sort of surveillance to have been practised without his remarking some indication thereof, at one time or another.
On the other hand (he told himself) there was every reason to believe she hadn't left him to go back to Bannon; concerning whom she had expressed herself too forcibly to excuse a surmise that she had preferred his protection to the Lone Wolf's.
Reasoning thus, he admitted, one couldn't blame her. He could readily see how, illuded at first by a certain romantic glamour, she had not, until left to herself in the garden, come to clear perception of the fact that she was casting her lot with a common criminal's. Then, horror overmastering her of a sudden she had fled—wildly, blindly, he didn't doubt. But whither? He looked in vain for her at their agreed rendezvous, the Sacré Cœur. She had neither money nor friends in Paris.
True: she had mentioned some personal jewellery she planned to hypothecate. Her first move, then, would be to seek the mont-de-piété—not to force himself again upon her, but to follow at a distance and ward off interference on Bannon's part.
The Government pawn-shop had its invitation for Lanyard himself: he was there before the doors were open for the day; and fortified by loans negotiated on his watch, cigarette-case, and a ring or two, retired to a café commanding a view of the entrance on the rue des Blancs-Manteaux, and settled himself against a day-long vigil.
It wasn't easy; drowsiness buzzed in his brain and weighted his eyelids; now and again, involuntarily, he nodded over his glass of black coffee. And when evening came and the mont-de-piété closed for the night, he rose and stumbled off, wondering if possibly he had napped a little without his knowledge and so missed her visit.
Engaging obscure lodgings close by the rue des Acacias, he slept till nearly noon of the following day, then rose to put into execution a design which had sprung full-winged from his brain at the instant of wakening.
He had not only his car but a chauffeur's license of long standing in the name of Pierre Lamier—was free, in short, to range at will the streets of Paris. And when he had levied on the stock of a second-hand clothing shop and a chemist's, he felt tolerably satisfied it would need sharp eyes—whether the Pack's or the Préfecture's—to identify "Pierre Lamier" with either Michael Lanyard or the Lone Wolf.
His face, ears and neck he stained a weather-beaten brown, a discreet application of rouge along his cheekbones enhancing the effect of daily exposure to the winter winds and rains of Paris; and he gave his hands an even darker shade, with the added verisimilitude of finger-nails inked into permanent mourning. Also, he refrained from shaving: a stubble of two days' neglect bristled upon his chin and jowls. A rusty brown ulster with cap to match, shoddy trousers boasting conspicuous stripes of leaden colour, and patched boots completed the disguise.
Monsieur and madame of the conciergerie he deceived with a yarn of selling his all to purchase the motor-car and embark in business for himself; and with their blessing, sallied forth to scout Paris diligently for sight or sign of the woman to whom his every heart-beat was dedicated.
By the close of the third day he was ready to concede that she had managed to escape without his aid.
And he began to suspect that Bannon had fled the town as well; for the most diligent enquiries failed to educe the least clue to the movements of the American following the fire at Troyon's.
As for Troyon's, it was now nothing more than a gaping excavation choked with ashes and charred timbers; and though still rumours of police interest in the origin of the fire persisted, nothing in the papers linked the name of Michael Lanyard with their activities. His disappearance and Lucy Shannon's seemed to be accepted as due to death in the holocaust; the fact that their bodies hadn't been recovered was no longer a matter for comment.
In short, Paris had already lost interest in the affair.
Even so, it seemed, had the Pack lost interest in the Lone Wolf; or else his disguise was impenetrable. Twice he saw De Morbihan "flânning" elegantly on the Boulevards, and once he passed close by Popinot; but neither noticed him.
Toward midnight of the third day, Lanyard, driving slowly westward on the boulevard de la Madeleine, noticed a limousine of familiar aspect round a corner half a block ahead and, drawing up in front of Viel's, discharge four passengers.
The first was Wertheimer; and at sight of his rather striking figure, decked out in evening apparel from Conduit street and Bond, Lanyard slackened speed.
Turning as he alighted, the Englishman offered his hand to a young woman. She jumped down to the sidewalk in radiant attire and a laughing temper.
Involuntarily Lanyard stopped his car; and one immediately to the rear, swerving out to escape collision, shot past, its driver cursing him freely; while a sergent de ville scowled darkly and uttered an imperative word.
He pulled himself together, somehow, and drove on.
The girl was entering the restaurant by way of the revolving door, Wertheimer in attendance; while De Morbihan, having alighted, was lending a solicitous arm to Bannon.
Quite automatically the adventurer drove on, rounded the Madeleine, and turned up the boulevard Malesherbes. Paris and all its brisk midnight traffic swung by without claiming a tithe of his interest: he was mainly conscious of lights that reeled dizzily round him like a multitude of malicious, mocking eyes….
At the junction with the boulevard Haussmann a second sergent de ville roused him with a warning about careless driving. He went more sanely thereafter, but bore a heart of utter misery; his eyes still wore a dazed expression, and now and again he shook his head impatiently as though to rid it of a swarm of tormenting thoughts.
So, it seemed, he had all along been her dupe; all the while that he had been ostentatiously shielding her from harm and diffidently discovering every evidence of devotion, she had been laughing in her sleeve and planning to return to the service she pretended to despise, with her report of a fool self-duped.
A great anger welled in his bosom.
Turning round, he made back to the boulevard de la Madeleine, and on one pretext and another contrived to haunt the neighbourhood of Viel's until the party reappeared, something after one o'clock.
It was plain that they had supped merrily; the girl seemed in the gayest humour, Wertheimer a bit exhilarated, De Morbihan much amused; even Bannon—bearing heavily on the Frenchman's arm—was chuckling contentedly. The party piled back into De Morbihan's limousine and was driven up the avenue des Champs Élysées, pausing at the Élysée Palace Hotel to drop Bannon and the girl—his daughter?—whoever she was!
Whither it went thereafter, Lanyard didn't trouble to ascertain. He drove morosely home and went to bed, though not to sleep for many hours: bitterness of disillusion ate like an acid in his heart.
But for all his anguish, he continued in an uncertain temper. He had turned his back on the craft of which he was acknowledged master—for a woman's sake; for nothing else (he argued) had he dedicated himself to poverty and honest effort; and what little privation he had already endured was hopelessly distasteful to him. The art of the Lone Wolf, his consummate cunning and subtlety, was still at his command; with only himself to think of, he was profoundly contemptuous of the antagonism of the Pack; while none knew better than he with what ease the riches of careless Paris might be diverted to his own pockets. A single step aside from the path he had chosen—and tomorrow night he might dine at the Ritz instead of in some sordid cochers' cabaret!
And since no one cared—since she had betrayed his faith—what mattered?
Why not …?
Yet he could not come to a decision; the next day saw him obstinately, even a little stupidly, pursuing the course he had planned before his disheartening disillusionment.
Because his money was fast ebbing and motives of prudence alone—if none more worthy—forbade an attempt to replenish his pocketbook by revisiting the little rez-de-chaussée in the rue Roget and realizing on its treasures, he had determined to have a taximeter fitted to his car and ply for hire until time or chance should settle the question of his future.
Already, indeed, he had complied with the police regulations, and received permission to convert his voiture de remise into a taxicab; and leaving it before noon at the designated dépôt, he was told it would be ready for him at four with the "clock" installed. Returning at that hour, he learned that it couldn't be ready before six; and too bored and restless to while away two idle hours in a café, he wandered listlessly through the streets and boulevards—indifferent, in the black melancholy oppressing him, whether or not he were recognized—and eventually found himself turning from the rue St. Honoré through the place Vendôme to the rue de la Paix.
This was not wise, a perilous business, a course he had no right to pursue. And Lanyard knew it. None the less, he persisted.
It was past five o'clock—deep twilight beneath a cloudless sky—the life of that street of streets fluent at its swiftest. All that Paris knew of wealth and beauty, fashion and high estate, moved between the curbs. One needed the temper of a Stoic to maintain indifference to the allure of its pageant.
Trudging steadily, he of the rusty brown ulster all but touched shoulders with men who were all that he had been but a few days since—hale, hearty, well-fed, well-dressed symbols of prosperity—and with exquisite women, exquisitely gowned, extravagantly be-furred and be-jewelled, of glowing faces and eyes dark with mystery and promise: spirited creatures whose laughter was soft music, whose gesture was pride and arrogance.
One and all looked past, over, and through him, unaffectedly unaware that he existed.
The roadway, its paving worn as smooth as glass, and tonight by grace of frost no less hard, rang with a clatter of hoofs high and clear above the resonance of motors. A myriad lights filled the wide channel with diffused radiance. Two endless ranks of shop-windows, facing one another across the tide, flaunted treasures that kings might pardonably have coveted—and would.
Before one corner window, Lanyard paused instinctively.
The shop was that of a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent of sardonic bias. It wore all the grim appearance of a strong-box that, once locked, would prove impregnable to everything save acquaintance with the combination and the consent of the time-lock. But give the Lone Wolf twenty minutes alone with it, twenty minutes free from interruption—he, the one man living who could seduce a time-lock and leave it apparently inviolate! …
To one side of that window stood a mirror, set at an angle, and suddenly Lanyard caught its presentment of himself—a gaunt and hungry apparition, with a wolfish air he had never worn when rejoicing in his sobriquet, staring with eyes of predaceous lustre.
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'Opéra.
But this only made it worse for him, for he could not avoid recognition of the softly glowing windows of the Café 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 Opéra, 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.