"O Lord!" Lanyard sighed--"how is one to resist when you plead so prettily to be compromised?"
"Since that's settled"--of a sudden the imploring child was replaced by self-possessed Mademoiselle Athenais Reneaux--"you may have your hand back again. I assure you I have no more use for it."
The hansom turned off the boulevard, affording Lanyard an opportunity to look back through the side window.
"Still on the trail," he announced. "But they've got the lights on now."
With a profound sigh from the heart the horse stopped in front of a corner apartment building and later, with a groan almost human, responded to the whip and jingled the hansom away, leaving Lanyard the poorer by the exorbitant fare he had promised and something more.
Athenais was already at the main entrance, ringing for the concierge. Lanyard hastened to join her, but before he could cross the sidewalk a motor-car poked its nose round the corner of the Boulevard Haussmann, a short block away, and bore swiftly their way, seeming to search the street suspiciously with its blank, lidless eyes of glare.
"Peste!" breathed the girl. "I have a private entrance and my own key. We could have used that had I imagined this sacred pig of a concierge--!"
The latch clicked. She thrust the door open and slipped into dense darkness. Lanyard lingered another instant. The car was slowing down, and the street lamp on the corner revealed plainly a masculine arm resting on its window-sill; but the spying face above the arm was only a blur.
"Come, monsieur!"
Lanyard stepped in and shut the door. A hand with which he was beginning to feel fairly well acquainted found his and led him through the dead obscurity to another pause. A key grated in a lock, the hand drew him on again, a second door closed behind him.
"We are chez moi," said a voice in the dark.
"One could do with a light."
"Wait. This way."
The hand guided him across a room of moderate size, avoiding its furniture with almost uncanny ease, then again brought him to a halt. Brass rings clashed softly on a pole, a gap opened in heavy draperies curtaining a window, a shaft of street light threw the girl's profile into soft relief. She drew him to her till their shoulders touched.
"You see..."
He bent his head close to hers, conscious of a caressing tendril of hair that touched his cheek, and the sweet warmth and fragrance of her; and peering through the draperies saw their pursuing motor car at pause, not at the curb, but in the middle of the street before the house. The man's arm still rested on the sill of the window; the pale oval of the face above it was still vague. Abruptly both disappeared, a door slammed on the far side of the car, and the car itself, after a moment's wait, gathered way with whining gears and vanished, leaving nothing human visible in the quiet street.
"What did that mean? Did they pick somebody up?"
"But quite otherwise, mademoiselle."
"Then what has become of him?"
"In the shadow of the door across the way: don't you see the deeper shadow of his figure in the corner, to this side. And there ... Ah, dolt!"
The man in the doorway had moved, cautiously thrusting one hand out of the shadow far enough for the street lights to shine upon the dial of his wrist-watch. Instantly it was withdrawn; but his betrayal was accomplished.
"That's enough," said Lanyard, drawing the draperies close again. "No trouble to make a fool of that one, God has so nobly prepared the soil." The girl said nothing. They no longer touched, and she was for the time so still that he might almost have fancied himself alone. But in that quiet room he could hear her breathing close beside him, not heavily but with a rapid accent hinting at an agitation which her voice bore out when she answered his wondering: "Mademoiselle?" "J'y suis, petit Monsieur Paul."
"Is anything the matter?"
"No ... no: there is nothing the matter."
"I'm afraid I have tired you out to-night."
"I do not deny I am a little weary."
"Forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive, not yet, petit Monsieur Paul." A trace of hard humour crept into her tone: "It is all in the night's work, as the saying should be in Paris."
"Three favours more; then I will do you one in return."
"Ask..." "Be so kind as to make a light and find me a pocket flash-lamp if you have one."
"I can do the latter without the former. It is better that we show no light; one stray gleam through the curtains would tell too much. Wait."
A noise of light footsteps muffled by a rug, high heels tapping on uncovered floor, the scrape of a drawer pulled out: and she returned to give him a little nickelled electric torch.
"And then--?"
"Liane's address, if you know it."
The girl named a number on an avenue not far distant. Lanyard remarked this.
"Yes; you can walk there in less than five minutes. And finally?"
"Show me the way out." Again she made no response. He pursued in some constraint: "Thus you will enable me to make you my only inadequate return--leave you to your rest."
Yet another space of silence; then a gusty little laugh. "That is a great favour, truly, petit Monsieur Paul! So give me your hand once more." But she no longer clung to it as before; the clasp of her fingers was light, cool, impersonal to the point of indifference. Vexed, resentful of her resentment, Lanyard suffered her guidance through the darkness of another room, a short corridor, and then a third room, where she left him for a moment.
He heard again the clash of curtain rings. The dim violet rectangle of a window appeared in the darkness, the figure of the woman in vague silhouette against it. A sash was lifted noiselessly, rain-sweet air breathed into the apartment. Athenais returned to his side, pressed into his palm a key.
"That window opens on a court. The drop from the sill is no more than four feet. In the wall immediately opposite you will find a door. This key opens it. Lock the door behind you, and at your first opportunity throw away the key: I have several copies. You will find yourself in a corridor leading to the entrance of the apartment house in the rear of this, facing on the next street. Demand the cordon of the concierge as if you were a late guest leaving one of the apartments. He will make no difficulty about opening.... I think that is all."
"Not quite. There remains for me to attempt the impossible, to prove my gratitude, Athenais, in mere, unmeaning words."
"Don't try, Paul." The voice was softened once more, its accents broken. "Words cannot serve us, you and me! There is one way only, and that, I know, is ... rue Barré!" Her sad laugh fluttered, she crept into his arms. "But still, petit Monsieur Paul,shewill not care if ... only once!"
She clung to him for a long, long moment, then released his lips.
"Men have kissed me, yes, not a few," she whispered, resting her face on his bosom, "but you alone have known my kiss. Go now, my dear, while I have strength to let you go, and ... make me one little promise..."
"Whatever you ask, Athenais...."
"Never come back, unless you need me; for I shall not have so much strength another time."
Alone, she rested a burning forehead against the lifted window-sash, straining her vision to follow his shadow as it moved through the murk of the court below and lost itself in the deeper gloom of the opposing wall.
It stood four-square and massive on a corner between the avenues de Friedland et des Champs-Elysées, near their junction at the Place de l'Etoile: a solid stone pile of a town-house in the most modern mode, without architectural beauty, boasting little attempt at exterior embellishment, but smelling aloud of Money; just such a maison de ville as a decent bourgeois banker might be expected to build him when he contemplates retiring after doing the Rothschilds a wicked one in the eye.
It was like Liane's impudence, too. Lanyard smiled at the thought as he studied the mansion from the backwards of a dark doorway in the diagonally opposed block of dwellings. Her kind was always sure to seek, once its fortunes were on firm footing, to establish itself, as here, in the very heart of an exclusive residential district; as if thinking to absorb social sanctity through the simple act of rubbing shoulders with it; or else, as was more likely to be the case with a woman of Liane Delorme's temper, desiring more to affront a world from which she was outcast than to lay siege to its favour.
It seemed, however, truly deplorable that Liane should have proved so conventional-minded in this particular respect. It rendered one's pet project much too difficult of execution. Earnestly as one desired to have a look at the inside of that house without the knowledge of its inmates, its aspect was forbidding and discouraging in the utmost extreme.
Heavy gates of wrought bronze guarded the front doors. The single side or service-door was similarly protected if more simply. And stout grilles of bronze barred every window on the level of the street.
Now none of these could have withstood the attack of a man of ingenuity with a little time at his disposal. But Lanyard could count on only the few remaining minutes of true night. Retarded though it might be by shrouded skies, dawn must come all too soon for his comfort. Yet he was conscious of no choice in the matter: he must and in spite of everything would know to-night what was going on behind that blank screen of stone. To-morrow night would be too late. Tonight, if there were any warrant for his suspicions, the jewels of Eve de Montalais lay in the dwelling of Liane Delorme; or if they were not there, the secret of their hiding was. But to-morrow both, and more than likely Liane as well, would be on the wing; or Lanyard had been sorely mistaken in seeing in her as badly frightened a woman as he had ever known, when she had learned of the assassination of de Lorgnes.
It was possible, he thought it extremely probable, that Liane Delorme was as powerful as Athenais Reneaux had asserted; influential, that is, with the State, with the dealers in its laws and the dispensers of its protection. But now she had not to reckon with such as these, but with enemies of her own sort, with an antagonism as reckless of law and order as she herself. And she was afraid of that, infinitely more disturbed in mind and spirit than she would have been in the face of any threat on the part of the police. The Préfecture was a known and measured force, an engine that ran as it were on mapped lines of rail; its moves might be forecast, guarded against, watched, evaded. But this other force worked in the dark, this hostile power personified in the creature who had called himself Albert Dupont; the very composition of its being was cloaked in a secrecy impenetrable and terrifying, its intentions and its workings could not be surmised or opposed until it struck and the success or failure of the stroke revealed its origin and aim.
Liane--or one misjudged her--would never sit still and wait for the blow to fall. She was too high-strung, too much in love with life. She must either strike first in self-defence--and, in such case, strike at what?--or remove beyond the range of the enemy's malice. Lanyard was confident she would choose the latter course.
But confidence was not knowledge....
He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower storey to the second. Here all the windows were of the type called french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze railings. Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions, provided he stood upon one of those balconies. Nor did he count it a difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between each tier. These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could hardly ask for better footholds. A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet to the balcony: one should be able to make that within two minutes, granted freedom from interruption. The rub was there; the quarter seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed, not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin.
Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences....
Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with consideration of steps to follow--he checked and fell still farther back into the shadow. Something was happening in the house across the way.
A man had opened the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred by the gate.
Following a little wait, it swung slowly out, perhaps eighteen inches, the man advancing with it and again halting to peer up and down the street. Then quickly, as if alarmed, he withdrew, shut the gate, and disappeared, closing the service-door behind him.
Listening intently, Lanyard heard no click of latch, such as should have been audible in that dead hour of hush. Evidently the fellow had neglected to make fast the gate. Possibly he had been similarly remiss about fastening the door. But what was he up to? Why this furtive appearance, why the retreat so abruptly executed?
By way of answer came the soft drone of a high-powered motor; then the car itself rolled into view, a stately limousine coming from the direction of the avenue de Friedland. Before the corner house it stopped. A lackey alighted with an umbrella and ran to hold the door; but Liane Delorme would not wait for him. The car had not stopped when she threw the door open; on the instant when its wheels ceased to turn she jumped down and ran toward the house, heedless of the rain.
At the same time one side of the great front doors swung inward, and a footman ran out to open the gates. The lackey with the umbrella, though he moved briskly, failed to catch up with Liane before she sped up the steps. So he closed the umbrella and trotted back to his place beside the chauffeur. The footman shut gates and door as the limousine moved away: it had not been sixty seconds at rest. In fifteen more street and house were both as they had been, save that a light now shone through the plate glass of the latter's great doors. And that was soon extinguished.
Conceiving that the man who had appeared at the service entrance was the same who had admitted Liane, Lanyard told himself he understood: impatient for his bed, the fellow had gone to the service gate to spy out for signs of madame's return. Now if only it were true that he had failed to close it securely----!
It proved so. The gate gave readily to Lanyard's pull. The knob of the small door turned silently. He stepped across the threshold, and shut himself into an unlighted hall, thoughtfully apeing the negligence of the servant and leaving the door barely on the latch by way of provision against a forced retreat.
So far, good. He felt for his pocket torch, then sharply fell back into the nearest corner and made himself as inconspicuous as might be. Footsteps were sounding on the other side of an unseen wall. He waited, breathless, stirless.
A latch rattled, and at about three yards' distance a narrow door opened, marked by a widening glow of light. A liveried footman--beyond a doubt he who admitted the mistress of the house--entered, carrying an electric candle, yawned with a superstitious hand before his mouth and, looking to neither right nor left, turned away from Lanyard and trudged wearily back to the household offices. At the far end of the long hallway a door closed behind him--and Lanyard moved swiftly.
The door which had let the footman into the hall admitted to a spacious foyer which set apart the entrance and--as the play of the electric torch disclosed--a deep and richly furnished dining-room. To one side a broad flight of stairs ascended: Lanyard went up with the activity of a cat, making no more noise.
The second floor proved to be devoted mainly to a drawing-room, a lounge, and a library, all furnished in a weird, inchoate sort of magnificence, with money rather than with taste, if one might judge fairly by the fitful and guarded beam of the torch. The taste may have been less questionable than Lanyard thought; but the evidences of luxurious tendencies and wealth recklessly wasted in their gratification were irrefutable.
Lights were burning on the floor above, and a rumour of feminine voices drifted down, interrupted by an occasional sibilant rustle of silk, or a brief patter of high-heeled feet: noises which bore out the conjecture that madame's maid was undressing and putting her to bed; a ceremony apt to consume a considerable time with a woman of Liane's age and disposition, passionately bent on preserving to the grave a semblance of freshness in her charms. Lanyard reckoned on anything from fifteen minutes to an hour before her couching would be accomplished and the maid out of the way. Ten minutes more, and Liane ought to be asleep. If it turned out otherwise--well, one would have to deal with her awake. No need to be gravely concerned about that: to envisage the contingency was to be prepared against it.
Believing he must possess his soul in patience for an indeterminable wait, he was casting about for a place to secrete himself, when a change in the tenor of the talk between mistress and maid was conveyed by a sudden lift of half an octave in the latter's voice, sounding a sharp note of protest, to be answered by Liane in accent of overbearing anger.
One simply could not rest without knowing what that meant: Lanyard mounted the second flight of stairs as swiftly, surely, and soundlessly as he had the first. But just below a landing, where the staircase had an angle, he paused, crouching low, flat to the steps, his head lifted just enough to permit him to see, above the edge of the topmost, a section of glowing, rose-pink wall--it would be rose-pink!
He could see nothing more; and Liane had already silenced the maid, or rather reduced her to responses feebly submissive, and, consonant with the nature of her kind, was rubbing it in.
"And why should you not go with me to that America if I wish it?" Lanyard heard her say. "Is it likely I would leave you behind to spread scandal concerning me with that gabbling tongue in your head of an overgrown cabbage? It is some lover, then, who has inspired this folly in you? Tell him from me, if you please, the day you leave my service without my consent, it will be a sorry sweetheart that comes to him."
"It is well, madame. I say no more. I will go."
"I believe it well--you will go! You were mad ever to dream otherwise. Fetch my jewel-case--the large one, of steel, with the American lock."
"Madame takes all her jewels, then?" the maid enquired, moving about the room.
"But naturally. What do you think? That I leave them here for the scullery-maids to give their maquereaux? I shall pack them tonight, before I sleep."
("Damnation!"--from Lanyard, beneath his breath. More delay!)
"And we leave to-morrow, madame, at what time?"
"It matters not, so we are in Cherbourg by midnight. I may decide to make the trip by automobile."
"And madame's packing?"
"You know well what to pack, better than I. Get my boxes up the first thing in the morning and use your own judgment. If there are questions to be asked, save them until I wake up. I shall sleep till noon."
"That is all, madame?"
"That is all. You may go."
"Good-night, madame."
"Good-night, Marthe."
The stairway was no place to stop. Lanyard slipped like a shadow to the floor below, and took shelter behind a jog in the wall of the grand salon where, standing in deep darkness, he commanded a view of the hall.
The maid came down, carrying an electric candle like the footman's. Its rays illumined from below one of those faces of crude comeliness common to her class, the face of an animal not unintelligent but first and last an animal. With a hand on the lower newel-post she hesitated, looking up toward the room of her mistress, as if lost in thought. Poised thus, her lifted face partly turned away from Lanyard, its half-seen expression was hopelessly ambiguous. But some secret thought amused the woman, a shadow deepened in the visible corner of her full-lipped mouth. One fancied something sardonic in that covert smile.
She went on down. A latch on the ground floor clicked as the door to the service hallway was gently closed. Lanyard came out of hiding with a fresh enterprise abrew.
One must kill time somehow, Liane would be at least another half an hour busy with her jewellery, and the thought presented itself that the library, immediately beneath her room, should be worthy an investigation. In such establishments it is a tradition that the household safe shall be located somewhere in the library; and such strong-boxes are apt to be naïve contrivances. Lanyard did not hope to find the Montalais jewels stored away in such a place, Liane would surely take better care of them than that; assuming they were in her possession they would be under her hand, if not confused with her own treasures; still it could do no harm to make sure.
Confident of being warned at need by his hearing, which was normally supersensitive and, when he was engaged as now, keyed to preterhuman acuteness, he went coolly about the business, and at his first step found a portable reading-lamp on a long cord and coolly switched on its hooded light.
The library was furnished with bulky old Italian pieces of carved oak, not especially well selected, but suitable enough with one exception, a ponderous buffet, an exquisite bit of workmanship both in design and in detail but completely out of place in a room of that character. At least nine feet in length, it stood out four from the wall. Three heavy doors guarded by modern locks gave access to the body beneath its tier of drawers. But--this drew a frowning stare--there was a key in the lock of the middle door.
"There's such a thing as too much luck," Lanyard communed. "First the service gate and door, and now this, ready to my hand----!"
He swung sharply round and searched every shadow in the room with the glare of the portable lamp; but that was work of supererogation: he had already made sure he was alone on that floor.
Placing the lamp on the floor and adjusting its hood so that it focussed squarely upon the middle section of the buffet, he turned the key and discovered, behind the door, a small safe.
The run of luck did not hold in respect to this; there was no key; and the combination dial was smug with ill-grounded confidence in its own inviolable integrity. Still (Lanyard told it) it could hardly be expected to know, it had yet to be dealt with by the shade of the Lone Wolf.
Amused by the conceit, Lanyard laid hold of the knob with steady, delicate fingertips that had not yet, in spite of years of honourable idleness, forgotten their cunning. Then he flattened an ear to the cold face of the safe. To his informed manipulation the dial whirled, paused, reversed, turned all but imperceptibly, while the hidden mechanism clicked, ground and thudded softly, speaking a living language to his hearing. In three minutes he sat back on his heels, grasped the T-handle, turned it, had the satisfaction of hearing the bolts slide back into their sockets, and opened the door wide.
But the racked pigeonholes held nothing to interest him whose one aim was the recovery of the Montalais jewels. The safe was, in fact, dedicated simply to the storage of documents.
"Love letters!" Lanyard mused with a grimace of weariness. "And each believed, no doubt, she cared too much for him to hold her power to compromise him. Good Lord! what vanity is man's!"
Then the consideration offered that property of real value might be hidden behind those sheaves of papers. He selected a pigeonhole at hazard, and emptied it of several bundles of letters, all neatly bound with tape or faded ribbon and clearly docketed. It held nothing else whatever. But his eye was caught by a great name endorsed on the face of one of the packages; and reading what else was written there his brows rose high while his lips shaped a soundless whistle. If an inference were fair, Liane had kept not only such documents as gave her power over others. Lanyard wondered if it were possible he held in his hand an instrument to bend the woman to his will....
Suddenly he put out a hand and switched off the light, a gesture quite involuntary, simple reaction to the muffled thump of a chair overturned on the floor above.
Sounds of scuffling followed, as if Liane were dancing to no music with a heavy-footed partner. Then a groan....
His hands moved so rapidly and deftly that, although he seemed to rise without a second's delay, the safe was closed and the combination locked when he did so, the buffet door was shut and its key in his pocket.
This time Lanyard ascended the stairs without heeding what noise he made. Nevertheless his actions were never awkward or ill-timed; his approach was not heard, his arrival on the upper landing was unnoticed.
In an instantaneous pause he looked into the rose-pink room and saw Liane Delorme, in a negligee like a cobweb over a nightdress even more sheer, kneeling and clawing at her throat, round which a heavy silk handkerchief was slowly tightening; her face already purple with strangulation, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her tongue protruding between swollen lips.
A thick knee was planted between her shoulder-blades. The ends of the handkerchief were in the sinewy hands of Albert Dupont.
Conceivably even a journeyman strangler may know the thrill of professional pride in a good job well done: Dupont was grinning at his work, and so intent upon it that his first intimation of any interference came when Lanyard took him from behind, broke his hold upon the woman (and lamentably failed to break his back at the same time) whirled him round with a jerk that all but unsocketed an arm and, before the thug could regain his balance, placed surely on the heel of his jaw, just below the ear, a blow that, coming straight from the shoulder and carrying all Lanyard had of weight and force and will to punish, in spite of Dupont's heaviness fairly lifted him from his feet and dropped him backwards across a chaise-longue, from which he slipped senseless to the floor.
It was just like that, a crowded, breathless business....
With bruised and aching knuckles to prove that the blow had been one to stun an ox, Lanyard believed it safe to count Dupont hors de combat, for a time at least. In any event, the risk had to be chanced: Liane Delorme was in a plight demanding immediate relief.
In all likelihood she had lost consciousness some moments before Lanyard's intervention. Released, she had fallen positively inert, and lay semi-prostrate on a shoulder, with limbs grotesquely slack and awry, as if in unpleasant mimicry of a broken doll. Only the whites of bloodshot eyes showed in her livid and distorted countenance. Arms and legs twitched spasmodically, the ample torso was violently shaken by labouring lungs.
The twisted handkerchief round her throat had loosened, but not enough to give relief. Lanyard removed it, turned her over so that she lay supine, wedged silken pillows from the chaise-longue beneath her head and shoulders, then reached across her body, took from her dressing table a toilet-water flask of lovely Italian glass, and drenched her face and bosom with its pungent contents.
She gasped, started convulsively, and began to breathe with less effort. That dreadful rattling in her throat was stilled. Heavy lids curtained her eyes.
Lanyard continued to apply the scented water with a lavish hand. In time the woman shuddered, sighed profoundly, and looked up with a witless stare.
Man is measurably a creature of gestures stereotyped when the world was young: Lanyard patted the woman's hand as one might comfort an abused child. "It is all right now, Liane," he said in a reassuring voice. "Rest tranquilly. You will soon be yourself again. But wait: I will find you a drink."
She said nothing, her look continued cloudy; but the dazed eyes followed him as he got up and cast about for a glass of water.
But then he remembered Dupont, and decided that Liane could wait another minute while he made it impossible for the Apache to do more mischief.
He moved round the chaise-longue and paused, looking down thoughtfully. Since his fall Dupont had made neither moan nor stir. No crescent irides showed beneath the half-shut lids. He was so motionless, he seemed scarcely to breathe. Lanyard dug the toe of a boot into his ribs none too gently, but without satisfaction of any doubts. The fellow gave no sign of sensibility, but lay utterly relaxed, with the look of one dead.
Lanyard frowned uneasily. He had seen men drop dead from blows less powerful than his, and though this one had well earned a death swift and merciless, Lanyard experienced a twinge of horror at the thought. Often enough it had been his lot in times of peace and war to be forced to fight for life, and more than once to kill in defence of it; but that had never happened, never could happen, without his suffering the bitterest regret. Even now, in the case of this bloody-handed butcher, this ruthless garroter....
Dropping to his knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for symptoms of animation. He perceived them instantly. With inconceivable suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive. An arm like the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard's neck, clipped his head to Dupont's yearning bosom, ground his face into the flannel folds of a foul-scented shirt. Simultaneously the huge body heaved prodigiously, and after a brief interval of fantastic floppings, like a young mountain fell on top of Lanyard.
But that was the full measure of Dupont's success in this stratagem. If hopelessly victimized and taken by surprise, Lanyard should have been better remembered by the man who had fought him at Montpellier-le-Vieux and again, with others assisting, on the road to Nant; though it is quite possible, of course, that Dupont failed to recognise his ancient enemy in clean-shaven Monsieur Paul Martin of the damp and bedraggled evening clothes.
However that may have been, in the question of brute courage Dupont had yet to prove lacking. His every instinct was an Apache's: left to himself he would strike always from behind, and run like a cur to cover. But cornered, or exasperated by opposition to his vast powers--something which he seemed quite unable to understand--he could fight like a maniac. He was hardly better now, when he found himself thrown off and attacked in turn at a time when he believed his antagonist to be pinned down, helpless, at the mercy of the weapon for which he was fumbling. And the murderous fury which animated him then more than made up for want of science, cool-headedness and imagination.
They fought for their most deeply-rooted passions, he to kill, Lanyard to live, Dupont to batter Lanyard into conceding a moment of respite in which a weapon might be used, Lanyard to prevent that very thing from happening. Even as animals in a pit they fought, now on their knees straining each to break the other's hold, now wallowing together on the floor, now on their feet, slogging like bruisers of the old school.
Dupont took punishment in heroic doses, and asked for more. Shedding frightful blows with only an angry shake of his head, he would lower it and charge as a wild boar charges, while his huge arms flew like lunatic connecting-rods. The cleverest footwork could not always elude his tremendous rushes, the coolest ducking and dodging could not wholly escape that frantic shower of fists.
Time and again Lanyard suffered blows that jarred him to his heels, time and again was fain to give ground to an onslaught that drove him back till his shoulders touched a wall. And more than once toward the end he felt his knees buckle beneath him and saw his shrewdest efforts fail for want of force. The sweat of his brows stung and dimmed his eyes, his dry tongue tasted its salt. He staggered in the drunkenness of fatigue, and suffered agonies of pain; for his exertions had strained the newly knitted tissues of the wound in his side, and the hurt of this was wholly hellish.
But always he contrived somehow, strangely to him, to escape annihilation and find enough in reserve to fly back at Dupont's throat upon the first indication of desire on the part of the latter to yield the offensive. To do less were to permit him to find and use his weapon, whatever it might be--whether knife or pistol was besides the issue.
Chairs, the chaise-longue, tables were overturned and kicked about. Priceless bits of porcelain and glass, lamps, vases, the fittings of the dressing-table were cast down in fragments to the floor.
Constrained to look to herself or be trampled underfoot, and galvanized with terror, the woman struggled up and tottered hither and yon like a bewildered child, in the beginning too bemused to be able to keep out of the way of the combatants. If she crouched against a wall, battling bodies brushed her away from it. Did she take refuge in a corner she must abandon it else be crushed. Once she stumbled between the two, and before Lanyard could thrust her aside Dupont had fallen back half a dozen feet and worried a pistol out of his clothing.
He fired first from the hip, and the shot shattered the mirror of the dressing-table. Trying for better aim, he lifted and levelled the weapon with a trembling arm which he sought to steady by cupping the elbow in his left hand. But the second bullet ploughed into the ceiling as Lanyard in desperation executed a coup de pied in la savate, and narrowly succeeded in kicking the pistol from Dupont's grasp.
Bereft thus of his last hope--they were too evenly matched, and both too far spent for either to force a victory with his naked hands--the Apache swung round and ran, at the same time throwing a heavy chair over on its back in the path of pursuit. Unable to avoid it, Lanyard tried to hurdle it, caught a foot on one of its legs and, as Dupont threw himself headlong down the stairs, crashed to the floor with an impact that shook its beams.
Main will-power lifted him to his knees before he collapsed, his last ounce of endurance wasted. Then the woman, with flying draperies, a figure like a fury, sped to the banister rail and leaning over emptied the several shots remaining in Dupont's automatic down the well of the staircase. It is doubtful if she saw anything to aim at or accomplished more than to wing the Apache's flight. Dupont had gained the second storey while Lanyard was still fighting up from his fall. The last report and the crash of the front door slammed behind Dupont were as one heartbeat to the next.
Lanyard pillowed his head on a forearm and lay sobbing for breath. Liane Delorme turned and ran to the front of the house.
Presently she came back drooping, sank into a chair and with lacklustre eyes regarded the man at her feet.
"He got away," she said superfluously, in a faint voice. "I saw him in the street ... staggering like a sot..."
At that moment Lanyard could not have mustered a show of interest had he been told Dupont was returning at the head of a horde. He closed his tired eyes and envied the lucky dead whose rest was independent of bruised flesh and aching bones. Neither, he supposed, were dreams poisoned by chagrin when what was mortal no longer mattered.... Three times had he come to grips with Dupont and, though he had been outnumbered on the road to Nant, in Lanyard's sight the honours were far from easy. Neither would they be while yet the other lived or was at large...
The bitterness of failure and defeat had so rank a flavour in his thoughts that nothing else in life concerned him now. He had forgotten Liane Delorme for minutes when her arm passed beneath his shoulders and tried to lift them from the floor. He looked up then with listless eyes, and saw her on one knee by his side, giving him in his turn that confident and reassuring smile with which he had greeted her reviving senses ... a long, long time ago, it seemed.
"Come!" she said--"sit up, monsieur, and take this drink. It will lend you strength. You need it."
God knew he did! His throat was like a furnace flue, his mouth held the taste of leather. But for that thirst, indeed, he could hardly have found the energy to aid her efforts and lurch upon an elbow. A white-hot lancet pierced his wound, and though he locked his teeth against it a groan forced out between them. The woman cried out at the rapid ebb of colour from his face.
"But you are suffering!"
He forced a grey smile. "It is nothing," he whispered hoarsely--"it will pass. If you please--that drink----"
She put a knee behind his shoulders for support, and he rested his head back upon it and drank deep from the glass which she held to his lips. Nectar of Olympus was never more divine than that deep draught of brandy and soda. He thought he quaffed Life itself in its distilled quintessence, its pure elixir. His look of gratitude had almost the spirit and the vigour of himself renewed.
"My thanks, mademoiselle..."
"Your thanks!"--she laughed with indulgent scorn--"your thanks to me!"
He offered to rise, but was restrained by kindly hands.
"No: rest there a little longer, give yourself a little time before you try to get up."
"But I shall tire you..."
"No. And if you did, what of that? It seems to me, my friend, I owe to you my life."
"To me it seems you do," he agreed. "But such a debt is always the first to be forgotten, is it not?"
"You reproach me?"
"No, mademoiselle; not you, but the hearts of men... We are all very much alike, I think."
"No," the woman insisted: "you do reproach me. In your heart you have said: 'She has forgotten that, but for me, she would have been dead long years ago. This service, too, she will presently forget.' But you are wrong, my friend. It is true, the years between had made that other time a little vague with old remoteness in my memory; but to-night has brought it all back and--a renewed memory never fades."
"So one is told. But trust self-interest at need to black it out."
"You have no faith in me!" she said bitterly.
Lanyard gave her a weary smile. "Why should I not? And as for that: Why should I have faith in you, Liane? Our ways run leagues apart."
"They can be one."
She met his perplexed stare with an emphatic nod, with eyes that he could have sworn were abrim with tenderness. He shook his head as if to shake off a ridiculous plaguing notion, and grinned broadly. "That was a drink!" he declared. "I assure you, it was too much for my elderly head. Let me up."
The cruel agony stabbed his side again and again as he--not unaided--got upon his feet; and though he managed to gulp down his groans, no grinding of his teeth could mitigate his recurrent pallor or the pained contractions of his eyes. Furthermore, he wavered when he tried to walk, and was glad to subside into a chair to which the woman guided him. Then she fetched him another brandy and soda, put a lighted cigarette between his lips, picked up a chair for herself, and sat down, so close to him that their elbows almost touched.
"It is better, that pain, monsieur?"
He replied with an uncertain nod, pressing a careful hand to his side. "... wound that animal gave me a month ago."
"Which animal?"
"Monsieur of the garotte, Liane; recently the assassin of de Lorgnes; before that the ex-chauffeur of the Château de Montalais."
"Albert Dupont?"
"As you say, it is not a name."
"The same?" Her old terror revived. "My God! what have I ever done to that one that he should seek my life?"
"What had de Lorgnes?"
Her eyes turned away, she sat for a moment in silent thought, started suddenly to speak but checked the words before one passed her lips, and--as Lanyard saw quite plainly--hastened to substitute others.
"No: I do not understand at all! What do you think?"
Lanyard indicated a shrug with sufficient clearness, meaning to say, she probably knew as much as if not more than he.
"But how did he get in? I had not one suspicion I was not alone until that handkerchief----"
"Naturally."
"And you, my friend?"
"I saw him enter, and followed."
This was strictly within the truth: Lanyard had now no doubt Dupont and the man who had reconnoitered from the service-door were one. But it was no part of his mind to tell the whole truth to Liane. She might be as grateful as she ought to be, but she was still ... Liane Delorme ... a woman to be tested rather than trusted.
"I must tell you. But perhaps you knew there were agents de police in the restaurant to-night?"
Liane's head described a negative; her violet eyes were limpid pools of candour.
"I am so much a stranger in Paris," Lanyard pursued, "I would not know them. But I thought you, perhaps----"
"No, no, my friend, I have nothing to do with the police, I know little about them. Not only that, but I was so interested in our talk, and then inexpressibly shocked, I paid attention to nothing else."
"I understand. Otherwise you must have noticed who followed me."
"You were followed?"
And she had found the effrontery to chide him for lack of faith in her! He was in pain: for all that, the moment seemed amusing.
"We are followed, I assure you," Lanyard replied gravely. "One man or two--I don't know how many--in a town-car."
"But you are sure?"
"All we could get was a hansom drawn by a snail. The automobile, running without lights, went no faster, kept a certain distance behind us all the way from the Place Pigalle to the apartment of Mademoiselle Reneaux. What have you to say to that? Furthermore, when Mademoiselle Reneaux had persuaded me to take refuge in her apartment--who knew what they designed?--one man left the automobile as it passed her door and stood on watch across the way. Could one require proof that one was followed?"
"Then you think somebody of the Préfecture recognized Duchemin in you?"
"Who knows? I know I was followed, watched. If you ask me, I think Paris is not a healthy place for me."
"But all that," Liane objected, "does not bring you here!"
"Patience: I am well on my way."
Lanyard paused to sip his brandy and soda, and, under cover of that, summon ingenuity to the fore; here a little hand-made fabrication was indicated. "We waited till about half an hour ago. So did the spy. Mademoiselle Reneaux then let me out by a private way. I started to walk to my hotel, the Chatham. There wasn't a taxi to be had, you understand. Presently I looked back and saw I was being followed again. To make sure, I ran--and the spy ran after me. I twisted and doubled all through this quarter, and at last succeeded in shaking him off. Then I turned down this street, hoping to pick up a cab in the Champ-Élysées. Of a sudden I see Dupont. He is crossing the street toward this house. He does not know me, but quickens his pace, and hastily lets himself in at the service entrance.... Incidentally, if I were you, Liane, I would give my staff of servants a bad quarter of an hour in the morning. The door and gate were not locked; I am sure Dupont used no key. Some person of this establishment was careless or--worse."
"Trust me to look into that."
"Enfin! in his haste, Dupont leaves the door as he found it. I take a moment's thought; it is plain he is here for no good purpose. I follow him in... The state of this room tells the rest."
"It is no matter." The woman reviewed the ruins of her boudoir with an apathetic glance which was, however, anything but apathetic when she turned it back to Lanyard's face. Bending forward, she closed a hand upon his arm. Emotion troubled her accents. "My friend, my dear friend: tell me what I can do to repay you?"
"Help me," said Lanyard simply, holding her eyes.
"How is that--help you?"
"To make my honour clear." Speaking rapidly and with unfeigned feeling, he threw himself upon her generosity: "You know I am no more what I was once, in this Paris--when you first knew me. You know I have given up all that. For years I have fought an uphill fight to live down that evil fame in which I once rejoiced. Now I stand accused of two crimes."
"Two!"
"Two in one, I hardly know which is the greater: that of stealing, or that of violating the hospitality and confidence of those good ladies of the Château de Montalais. I cannot rest while they think me guilty... and not they alone, but all my friends, and I have made good friends, in France and England. So, if you think you owe me anything, Liane, help me to find and restore the Montalais jewels."
Liane Delorme sat back, her hand lifted from his arm and fell with a helpless gesture. Her eyes mirrored no more guile than a child's. Yet her accent was that of one who remonstrates, but with forbearance, against unreasonable demands.
"How can I do that?"
And she had protested her gratitude to him! He knew that she was lying. Anger welled in Lanyard's heart, but he was able to hold it in leash and let no sign of it show in manner or expression.
"You have much influence," he suggested, "here in Paris, with people of many classes. A word from you here, a question there, pressure exerted in certain quarters, will help me more than all the powers of Préfecture and Surété combined. You know that."
"Let me think." She was staring at the floor. "You must give me time. I will do what I can, I promise you that. Perhaps"--she met his gaze again, but he saw something crafty in her smile--"I have a scheme already in mind. We will discuss that in the morning, when I have slept on it."
"You give me new hope." Lanyard finished his drink and made as if to rise, but relapsed, a spasm of pain knotting his face. "Afraid I must have a cab," he said in a low voice. "And if you could lend me a coat of some sort to cover these rags...."
And indeed his ready-made evening clothes had fared badly in their first social adventure.
"But if you think I dream of letting you leave this house--in pain and perhaps to run into the arms of the police--you little know me, Monsieur Michael Lanyard!"
"Paul Martin, if you don't mind."
"The guest rooms are there." She waved a hand to indicate the front part of the house on that floor. "You will find everything you need to make you comfortable for to-night, and in the morning I will send to the Chatham for your things.... Or perhaps it would be wiser to wait till we are sure the police are not watching there for your return. But if they are, it will be a simple matter to find suitable clothing for you. Meanwhile we will have arrived at an understanding.... You comprehend, monsieur, I am resolved, this affair is now arranged?"
"I am well content, Liane."
And that was true enough; whatever she had in mind for him, she was only playing into his hands when she proposed to keep him near her. He managed to get out of the chair, and accepted the offer of her arm, but held back for a moment.
"But your servants..."
"Well, monsieur, what of them?"
"For one thing, they sleep sincerely."
"There are sound-proof walls between their part of the house and this. More than that, they are forbidden to intrude, no matter what may happen, unless I summon them."
"But in the morning, Liane, when they regard this wreckage... I am afraid they will think me a tempestuous lover!"
"They will find me a tempestuous mistress," promised Liane Delorme, "when I question them about that open door."
The storm had passed off, an ardent noonday sun was collaborating with a coquettish breeze to make gay the window awnings of the chamber where Lanyard, in borrowed pyjamas and dressing-gown of silk, lay luxuriously bedded, listening to the purr of wide-awake Paris and, with an excellent cigar to chew on, ruminating upon the problematic issue of his latest turn of fortune, and not in the least downhearted about it.
Before turning in he had soaked and steamed most of the ache out of bone and muscle in the hottest water his flesh would suffer; and six hours unbroken slumber had done wonders toward lessening the distress his exertions last night had occasioned in the frail new tissues of his wound. Now, fresh from a cold shower following a second hot bath, and further comforted by a petit déjeuner served in bed, he felt measurably sane again, and sound in wind and limb as well, barring a few deep bruises whose soreness would need several days to heal.
A pleasant languour, like a light opiate, infused his consciousness; yet he was by no means mentally inactive.
The morning papers were scattered over the counterpane. Lanyard had diligently scanned all the stories that told of the identification of the murdered man of the Lyons rapide as the Comte de Lorgnes; and inasmuch as these were of one voice in praising the Préfecture for that famous feat of detective work, and not one line suggested that it did not deserve undivided credit, Lanyard had nothing to complain of there.
As for the Montalais robbery it was not even mentioned. The restricted size imposed upon French newspapers by the paper shortage of those days crowded out of their columns everything but news in true sense, and there could be none of that in connection with the Montalais affair until either André Duchemin had been arrested or the jewels recovered from the real thief or thieves. And Lanyard was human enough to be almost as willing to have the first happen as the last, if it were not given to him to be the prime factor in their restoration.
For the time being--if he must confess the truth--he was actually rather enjoying himself, rather exhilarated than otherwise by the swiftly shifting scenes and characters of his unfolding investigations and by the brisk sword-play of wits in which he was called upon constantly to engage; both essential ingredients of the wine of life according to the one recipe he knew.
And then a review of recent events seemed to warrant the belief that, all things considered, he had thus far made fair progress toward his goal.
While it was true he did not as yet know what had become of the Montalais jewels, he had gathered together an accumulation of evidence which, however circumstantial and hypothetical, established acceptably to his intelligence a number of interesting inferences, to wit:
That Dupont had not left the neighbourhood of the Château de Montalais, after haunting it for upwards of a month, without definite knowledge that he would gain nothing by staying on, or without an equally definite objective, some motive more inspiring than such simple sensuousness as he might find in assassinating inoffensive folk indiscriminately.
That his attempt upon the life of Liane Delorme within twenty-four hours of the murder of de Lorgnes indicated conviction on his part that the two were coupled in some enterprise inimical to his personal interests.
That in spite of his mask of a stupid pig Dumont was proving himself mentally as well as physically an adversary worthy of all respect, and was--what was worse--still to be reckoned with.
That, as Lanyard had suspected all along, the Monk party had been visited upon the Château de Montalais through no vagary of chance whatever but as part of a deliberate design whose ulterior motive had transpired only with the disappearance of the jewels--to Dupont's vast but understandable vexation of spirit.
That the several members of the Monk party had been working in entire accord, as a close corporation; in which case the person whom the Comte de Lorgnes had expected to meet in Lyons must have been Monk Phinuit or Jules.
Consequently that at least one of the three last named had been the actual perpetrator of the robbery; and by the same token, that Liane had lied in asserting that Monk and retinue had sailed for America nearly a week prior to its commission.
That Liane herself had not so suddenly decided to leave France, where she was after a fashion somebody, and journey to America, where she would be nobody, except in stress of mortal fear lest the fate that had befallen de Lorgnes befall her in turn--as would surely have been the case last night but for Lanyard.
That she must therefore have had a tolerably accurate knowledge either of Dupont's identity or of the opposition interests which that one so ably represented; and thus was better informed than poor de Lorgnes, to whom Dupont had been unknown; which argued that Liane's rôle in the intrigue was that of a principal, whereas de Lorgnes had figured only as a subordinate.
That even if the woman did mean well toward Lanyard she was bound by stronger ties to others, whom she must consider first, and who were hardly likely to prove so well disposed; that her protestations of friendship and gratitude must be valued accordingly.
Summing up, Lanyard told himself he could hardly be said to have let grass grow under his feet since leaving Château de Montalais.
Now he found himself with a solitary care to nurse, the question: What had her pillow advised Liane Delorme?
He was going to be exceedingly interested to learn what she, in the maturity of her judgement, had decided to do about this man who ingenuously suggested that she requite him for saving her life by helping him recover the Montalais jewels.
On the other hand, since Lanyard had quite decided what he meant to do about Liane in any event, her decision really didn't matter much; and he refused to fret himself trying to forecast it. Whatever it might turn out to be, it would find him prepared, he couldn't be surprised. There Lanyard was wrong. Liane was amply able to surprise him, and did. Ultimately he felt constrained to concede a touch to genius in the woman; her methods were her own and never poor in boldness and imagination.
It was without ceremony that she walked in on him at length, having kept him waiting so long that he had begun to wonder if she meant to try on anything as crude as abandoning him, and posting off to Cherbourg without a word to seek fancied immunity in New York, while he remained in an empty house without money, papers of identification, or even fit clothing for the street; for, on coming out of his bath, Lanyard had found all of these things missing, the valet de chambre presumably having made off with his evening clothes, to have them pressed and repaired.
Liane was dressed for travelling, becomingly if with a sobriety that went oddly with her cultivated beauté du diable, and wore besides a habit of preoccupation which, one was left to assume, excused the informality of her unannounced entrance.
"Well, my dear friend!" she said gravely, halting by the bedside.
"It's about time," Lanyard retorted.
"I was afraid you might be growing impatient," she confessed. "I have had so much to do..."
"No doubt. But if you had neglected me much longer I should have come to look for you regardless of consequences."
"How is that?" she enquired with knitted brows--"regardless of what consequences?"
"Any damage one might do to the morale of your ménage by toddling about in the voluptuous déshabillé in which you behold me--my sole present apology for a wardrobe."
She found only the shadow of a smile for such frivolity. "I have sent for clothing for you," she said absently. "It should be here any minute now. We only wait for that."
"You mean you have sent to the Chatham for my things?"
"But certainly not, monsieur!" Liane Delorme lied without perceptible effort. "That would have been too injudicious. It appears you were not mistaken in thinking you were recognized as André Duchemin last night. Agents of the Préfecture have been all day watching at the Chatham, awaiting your return."
"How sad for them!" In as much as he had every reason to believe this to be outright falsehood, Lanyard didn't feel called upon to seem downcast. "But if my clothing there is unavailable, I hardly see..."
"But naturally I have commissioned a person of good judgement to outfit you from the shops. Your dress clothes--which seemed to suit you very well last night--gave us your measurements. The rest is simplicity; my orders were to get you everything you could possibly require."
"It's awfully sporting of you," Lanyard insisted. "Although it makes one feel--you know--not quite respectable. However, if you will be so gracious as to suggest that your valet de chambre return my pocketbook and passports..."
"I have them here." The woman turned over the missing articles. "But," she demanded with an interest which was undissembled if tardy in finding expression, "how are you feeling to-day?"
"Oh, quite fit, thank you."
"In good spirits, I know. But that wound--?"
Lanyard chose to make more of that than it deserved; one couldn't tell when an interesting disability might prove useful. "I have to be a bit careful," he confessed, covering the seat of injury with a tender hand, "but it's nothing like so troublesome as it was last night."
"I am glad. You feel able to travel?"
"Travel?" Lanyard made a face of dismay. "But one is so delightfully at ease here, and since the Prefecture cannot possibly suspect... Are you then in such haste to be rid of me, Liane?"
"Not at all. It is my wish and intention to accompany you."
"Well, let us trust the world will be broad-minded about it. And--pardon my not rising--won't you sit down and tell me what it is all about."
"I have so little time, so many things to attend to."
Nevertheless, Liane found herself a chair and accepted a cigarette.
"Does one infer that we start on our travels to-day?"
"Within the hour; in fact, as soon as you are decently clothed."
"And where do we go, mademoiselle?"
"To Cherbourg, there to take steamer for New York."
Fortunately it was Lanyard's cue to register shock; it would have cost him something to have kept secret his stupefaction. He sank back upon his pillows and waggled feeble hands, while his respect for Liane grew by bounds. She had succeeded in startling and mystifying him beyond expression.
What dodge was this that cloaked itself in such anomalous semblance of good faith? She had not known he was acquainted with her plan to leave France; he had discounted a hundred devices to keep it from his knowledge. And now she not only confessed it openly, but invited him to go with her! In the name of unreason--why? She knew, for he had owned, his possessing purpose. He did not for an instant believe Liane Delorme would fly France and leave behind the Montalais jewels. Did she think he did not suspect her of knowing more about them than she had chosen to admit? Did she imagine that he was one of those who can see only that which is in the distance? Did she do him the injustice to believe him incapable of actually smelling out the jewels if ever he got within range of them?
But conjecture was too idle, Liane was too deep for him; her intent would declare itself when she willed it, not before, unless he could lull her into a false sense of faith in him, trick her into betraying herself by inadvertence.
"But, my dear friend, why America?"
"You recall asking me to help you last night? Did I not promise to do what I could? Well, I am not one to forget my promise. I know something, monsieur."
"I believe you do!"
"You gave me credit for having some little influence in this world of Paris. I have used it. What I have learned--I shall not tell you how, specifically--enables me to assure you that the Montalais jewels are on their way to America."
"And I am to believe you make this journey to help me regain them?"
"What do you think, then?"
"I do not know what to think, mademoiselle. I am overwhelmed--abashed and humbled by contemplation of such generosity."
"You see, you do not know me, monsieur. But you shall know me better before we are finished."
"One does not question that." Nor did one! "But if I am to sail for America to-day--"
"To-morrow, from Cherbourg, at eight in the morning."
"Well, to-morrow, then: but how am I to get my passport vised?"
"I have seen to that. If you will look over your papers, monsieur, you will see that you are no longer Paul Martin alias André Duchemin, but Paul Delorme, my invalid brother, still suffering from honourable wounds sustained in the Great War and ordered abroad for his health."
To this Lanyard, hastily verifying her statement by running an eye through the passport, found nothing more appropriate than a wondering "Mon dieu!"
"So you see, everything is arranged. What have you to say?"
"Only that mademoiselle sweeps one off one's feet."
"Do you complain about that? You no longer doubt my devotion, my gratitude?"
"Do not believe me capable of such stupidity!"
"That is very well, then. Now I must run." Liane Delorme threw away her cigarette and rose. "I have a thousand things to do.... And, you understand, we leave as soon as you are dressed?"
"Perfectly. By what train?"
"By no train. Don't you know there is a strike to-day? What have you been reading in those newspapers? It is necessary that we motor to Cherbourg."
"That is no little journey, dear sister."
"Three hundred and seventy kilometres?" Liane Delorme held this equivalent of two-hundred and thirty English miles in supreme contempt. "We shall make it in eight hours. We leave at four at latest, possibly earlier; at midnight we are in Cherbourg. You shall see."
"If I survive..."
"Have no fear. My chauffeur drives superbly."
She was at the door when Lanyard stayed her with "One moment, Liane!" With fingers resting lightly on the knob she turned.
"Speak English," he requested briefly. "What about Dupont?"
Simple mention of the man was enough to make the woman wince and lose colour. Before she replied Lanyard saw the tip of her tongue furtively moisten her lips.
"Well, and what of him?"
"Do you imagine he has had enough?"
"Who knows? I for one shall feel safe from him only when I knew he is in the Santé or his grave."
"Suppose he tries to follow us to Cherbourg or to stop us on the way..."
"How should he know?"
"Tell me who left the doors open for him last night, and I will answer that question." The woman looked more than ever frightened, but shook her head. "You didn't fail to question the servants this morning, yet learned nothing?"
"It was impossible to fix the blame..."
"Have you used all your intelligence, I wonder?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you reflected that, since Dupont got in after you came home, his accomplice in your household is most probably one of those who were up at that hour. Who were they?"
"Only two. The footman, Leon..."
"You trust him?"
"Not altogether. Now you make me think, I shall discharge him when I leave, without notice."
"Wait. Who else?"
"Marthe, my maid."
"You have confidence in her loyalty?"
"Implicit. She has been with me for years."
Lanyard said "Open that door!" in a tone sharp with such authority that Liane Delorme instinctively obeyed, and the woman whom Lanyard had seen that morning coming down the stairs with the lighted candle entered rather precipitately, carrying over one arm an evening wrap of gold brocade and fur.
"Pardon, madame," she murmured, and paused. Aside from the awkwardness of her entrance, she betrayed no confusion. "I was about to knock and ask if madame wished me to pack this..."
"You know very well I shall need it," Liane said ominously. A look from Lanyard checked a tirade, or more exactly compressed it into a single word: "Imbécile!"
"Yes, madame."
Marthe hinted at rather than executed a courtesy and withdrew. Liane shut the door behind her, and reapproached the bed, trembling with an anger that rendered her forgetful, so that she relapsed into French.
"You think she was listening?"
"English, please!" To this Lanyard added a slight shrug..
"It is hard to believe," Liane averred unhappily. "After all these years... I have been kind to that one, too!"
"Ah, well! At least you know now she will bear watching. You mean to take her with you?"
"I did, until this happened. We quarrelled about it, last night. I think she has a lover here in Paris and doesn't want to leave him."
"And now will you tell me that Dupont knows nothing of your intention to motor to Cherbourg today?"
"No..." Disconsolate, Liane sank down into the chair and, resting an elbow on the arm, clipped her chin in one hand. "Now I dare not go," she mused aloud. "Yet I must!... What am I to do?"
"Courage, little sister! It is I who have an idea." Liane lifted a gaze of mute enquiry. "I think we are now agreed it rests between Marthe and the footman Leon, this treachery." She assented. "Very well. Then let them run the risks any further disloyalty may have prepared for us."
"I do not understand..."
"What automobile are you using for our trip this afternoon?"
"My limousine for you and me."
"And Marthe: how is she to make the journey?"
"In the touring car, which follows us with our luggage."
"It is fast, this touring car?"
"The best money can buy."
"Now tell me what you know about the chauffeur who drives the limousine?"
"He is absolutely to be trusted."
"You have had him long in your employ?"