The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  There was murder in the eyes of the spy as he lingered, truculently glowering at the smiling adventurer; and for an instant Lanyard was well-persuaded he had gone too far, that even there, even on that busy junction of two crowded thoroughfares, Ekstrom would let his temper get the better of his judgment and risk everything in an attempt upon the life of his despoiler.

  But he was mistaken.

  With a surly shrug the spy swung about and marched straight to the kiosk of the underground railway, into which, without one backward glance, he disappeared.

  Two minutes later the earth beneath Lanyard’s feet quaked with the crash and rumble of a north-bound train.

  He waited three minutes longer; but Ekstrom didn’t reappear; and at length convinced that his warning had proved effectual, Lanyard turned and made off.

  CHAPTER XVI

  RESTITUTION

  For all that success had rewarded his effrontery, Lanyard’s mind was far from easy during the subsequent hour that he spent before attempting to rejoin Lucy Shannon, dodging, ducking and doubling across Paris and back again, with design to confuse and confound any jackals of the Pack that might have picked up his trail as adventitiously as Ekstrom had.

  His delight, indeed, in discomfiting his dupe was chilled by apprehension that it were madness, simply because the spy had proved unexpectedly docile, to consider the affaire Ekstrom closed. In the very fact of that docility inhered something strange and ominous, a premonition of evil which was hardly mitigated by finding the girl safe and sound under the wing of madame la concierge, in the little court of private stables, where he rented space for his car, off the rue des Acacias.

  Monsieur le concierge, it appeared, was from home; and madame, thick-witted, warm-hearted, simple body that she was, discovered a phase of beaming incuriosity most grateful to the adventurer, enabling him as it did to dispense with embarrassing explanations, and to whisk the girl away as soon as he liked.

  This last was just as soon as personal examination had reassured him with respect to his automobile—superficially an ordinary motor-cab of the better grade, but with an exceptionally powerful engine hidden beneath its hood. A car of such character, passing readily as the town-car of any family in modest circumstances, or else as what Paris calls a voiture de remise (a hackney car without taximeter) was a tremendous convenience, enabling its owner to scurry at will about cab-ridden Paris free of comment. But it could not be left standing in public places at odd hours, or for long, without attracting the interest of the police, and so was useless in the present emergency. Lanyard, however, entertained a shrewd suspicion that his plans might all miscarry and the command of a fast-travelling car soon prove essential to his salvation; and he cheerfully devoted a good half-hour to putting the motor in prime trim for the road.

  With this accomplished—and the facts established through discreet interrogation of madame la concierge that no enquiries had been made for “Pierre Lamier,” and that she had noticed no strange or otherwise questionable characters loitering in the neighbourhood of late—he was ready for his first real step toward rehabilitation….

  It was past one in the morning when, with the girl on his arm, he issued forth into the dark and drowsy rue des Acacias and, moving swiftly, crossed the avenue de la Grande Armée. Thereafter, avoiding main-travelled highways, they struck southward through tangled side streets to aristocratic Passy, skirted the boulevards of the fortifications, and approached the private park of La Muette.

  The hôtel particulier of that wealthy and amiable eccentric, Madame Hélène Omber, was a souvenir of those days when Passy had been suburban. A survival of the Revolution, a vast, dour pile that had known few changes since the days of its construction, it occupied a large, unkempt park, irregularly triangular in shape, bounded by two streets and an avenue, and rendered private by high walls crowned with broken glass. Carriage gates opened on the avenue, guarded by a porter’s lodge; while of three posterns that pierced the walls on the side streets, one only was in general use by the servants of the establishment; the other two were presumed to be permanently sealed.

  Lanyard, however, knew better.

  When they had turned off from the avenue, he slackened pace and moved at caution, examining the prospect narrowly.

  On the one hand rose the wall of the park, topped by naked, soughing limbs of neglected trees; on the other, across the way, a block of tall old dwellings, withdrawn behind jealous garden walls, showed stupid, sleepy faces and lightless eyes.

  Within the perspective of the street but three shapes stirred; Lanyard and the girl in the shadow of the wall, and a disconsolate, misprized cat that promptly decamped like a terror-stricken ghost.

  Overhead the sky was breaking and showing ebon patches and infrequent stars through a wind-harried wrack of cloud. The night had grown sensibly colder, and noisy with the rushing sweep of a new-sprung wind.

  Several yards from the postern-gate, Lanyard paused definitely, and spoke for the first time in many minutes; for the nature of their errand had oppressed the spirits of both and enjoined an unnatural silence, ever since their departure from the rue des Acacias.

  “This is where we stop,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward the wall; “but it’s not too late—”

  “For what?” the girl asked quickly.

  “I promised you no danger; but now I’ve thought it over, I can’t promise that: there’s always danger. And I’m afraid for you. It’s not yet too late for you to turn back and wait for me in a safer place.”

  “You asked me to accompany you for a special purpose,” she argued; “you begged me to come with you, in fact…. Now that I have agreed and come this far, I don’t mean to turn back without good reason.”

  His gesture indicated uneasy acquiescence. “I should never have asked this of you. I think I must have been a little mad. If anything should come of this to injure you…!”

  “If you mean to do what you promised—”

  “Do you doubt my sincerity?”

  “It was your own suggestion that you leave me no excuse for doubt…”

  Without further remonstrance, if with a mind beset with misgivings, he led on to the gate—a blank door of wood, painted a dark green, deeply recessed in the wall.

  In proof of his assertion that he had long since made every preparation to attack the premises, Lanyard had a key ready and in the lock almost before they reached it.

  And the door swung back easily and noiselessly as though on well-greased hinges. As silently it shut them in.

  They stood upon a weed-grown gravel path, hedged about with thick masses of shrubbery; but the park was as black as a pocket; and the heavy effluvia of wet mould, decaying weeds and rotting leaves that choked the air, seemed only to render the murk still more opaque.

  But Lanyard evidently knew his way blindfold: though motives of prudence made him refrain from using his flash-lamp, he betrayed not the least incertitude in his actions.

  Never once at loss for the right turning, he piloted the girl swiftly through a bewildering black labyrinth of paths, lawns and thickets….

  In due course he pulled up, and she discovered that they had come out upon a clear space of lawn, close beside the featureless, looming bulk of a dark and silent building.

  An admonitory grasp tightened upon her fingers, and she caught his singularly penetrating yet guarded whisper:

  “This is the back of the house—the service-entrance. From this door a broad path runs straight to the main service gateway; you can’t mistake it; and the gate itself has a spring lock, easy enough to open from the inside. Remember this in event of trouble. We might become separated in the darkness and confusion….”

  Gently returning the pressure, “I understand,” she said in a whisper.

  Immediately he drew her on to the house, pausing but momentarily before a w
ide doorway; one half of which promptly swung open, and as soon as they had passed through, closed with no perceptible jar or click. And then Lanyard’s flash-lamp was lancing the gloom on every hand, swiftly raking the bounds of a large, panelled servants’ hall, until it picked out the foot of a flight of steps at the farther end. To this they moved stealthily over a tiled flooring.

  The ascent of the staircase was accomplished, however, only with infinite care, Lanyard testing each rise before trusting it with his weight or the girl’s. Twice he bade her skip one step lest the complaints of the ancient woodwork betray them. In spite of all this, no less than three hideous squeals were evoked before they gained the top; each indicating a pause and wait of several breathless seconds.

  But it would seem that such servants as had been left in the house, in the absence of its chatelaine, either slept soundly or were accustomed to the midnight concert of those age-old timbers; and without mischance, at length, they entered the main reception-hall, revealed by the dancing spot-light as a room of noble proportions furnished with sombre magnificence.

  Here the girl was left alone for a few minutes, while Lanyard darted above-stairs for a review of the state bedchambers and servants’ quarters.

  With a sensation of being crushed and suffocated by the encompassing dark mystery, she nerved herself against a protracted vigil. The obscurity on every hand seemed alive with stealthy footfalls, whisperings, murmurings, the passage of shrouded shapes of silence and of menace. Her eyes ached, her throat and temples throbbed, her skin crept, her scalp tingled. She seemed to hear a thousand different noises of alarm. The only sounds she did not hear were those—if any—that accompanied Lanyard’s departure and return. Had he not been thoughtful enough, when a few feet distant, to give warning with the light, she might well have greeted with a cry of fright the consciousness of a presence near her: so silently he moved about. As it was, she was startled, apprehensive of some misadventure, to find him back so soon; for he hadn’t been gone three minutes.

  “It’s quite all right,” he announced in hushed accents—no longer whispering. “There are just five people in the house aside from ourselves—all servants, asleep in the rear wing. We’ve got a clear field—if no excuse for taking foolish chances! However, we’ll be finished and off again in less than ten minutes. This way.”

  That way led to a huge and gloomy library at one extreme of a chain of great salons, a veritable treasure-gallery of exquisite furnishings and authentic old masters. As they moved slowly through these chambers Lanyard kept his flash-lamp busy; involuntarily, now and again, he checked the girl before some splendid canvas or extraordinary antique.

  “I’ve always meant to happen in some day with a moving-van and loot this place properly!” he confessed with a little affected sigh. “Considered from the viewpoint of an expert practitioner in my—ah—late profession, it’s a sin and a shame to let all this go neglected, when it’s so poorly guarded. The old lady—Madame Omber, you know—has all the money there is, approximately, and when she dies all these beautiful things go to the Louvre; for she’s without kith or kin.”

  “But how did she manage to accumulate them all?” the girl wondered. “It’s the work of generations of passionate collectors,” he explained. “The late Monsieur Omber was the last of his dynasty; he and his forebears brought together the paintings and the furniture; madame added the Orientals gathered together by her first husband, and her own collection of antique jewellery and precious stones—her particular fad….”

  As he spoke the light of the flash-lamp was blotted out. An instant later the girl heard a little clashing noise, of curtain rings sliding along a pole; and this was thrice repeated.

  Then, following another brief pause, a switch clicked; and streaming from the hood of a portable desk-lamp, a pool of light flooded the heart of a vast place of shadows, an apartment whose doors and windows alike were cloaked with heavy draperies that hung from floor to ceiling in long and shining folds. Immense black bookcases lined the walls, their shelves crowded with volumes in rich bindings; from their tops pallid marble masks peered down inquisitively, leering and scowling at the intruders. A huge mantelpiece of carved marble, supporting a great, dark mirror, occupied the best of one wall, beneath it a wide, deep fireplace yawned, partly shielded by a screen of wrought brass and crystal. In the middle of the room stood a library table of mahogany; huge leather chairs and couches encumbered the remainder of its space. And the corner to the right of the fireplace was shut off by a high Japanese screen of cinnabar and gold.

  To this Lanyard moved confidently, carrying the lamp. Placing it on the floor, he grasped one wing of the screen with both hands, and at cost of considerable effort swung it aside, uncovering the face of a huge, old-style safe built into the wall.

  For several seconds—but not for many—Lanyard studied this problem intently, standing quite motionless, his head lowered and thrust forward, hands resting on his hips. Then turning, he nodded an invitation to draw nearer.

  “My last job,” he said with a smile oddly lighted by the lamp at his feet—“and my easiest, I fancy. Sorry, too, for I’d rather have liked to show off a bit. But this old-fashioned tin bank gives no excuse for spectacular methods!”

  “But,” the girl objected, “You’ve brought no tools!”

  “Oh, but I have!” And fumbling in a pocket, Lanyard produced a pencil.

  “Behold!” he laughed, brandishing it.

  She knitted thoughtful brows: “I don’t understand.”

  “All I need—except this.”

  Crossing to the desk, he found a sheet of note-paper and, folding it, returned.

  “Now,” he said, “give me five minutes….”

  Kneeling, he gave the combination-knob a smart preliminary twirl, then rested a shoulder against the sheet of painted iron, his cheek to its smooth, cold cheek, his ear close beside the dial; and with the practised fingers of a master locksmith began to manipulate the knob.

  Gently, tirelessly, to and fro he twisted, turned, raced, and checked the combination, caressing it, humouring it, wheedling it, inexorably questioning it in the dumb language his fingers spoke so deftly. And in his ear the click and whir and thump of shifting wards and tumblers murmured articulate response in the terms of their cryptic code.

  Now and again, releasing the knob and sitting back on his heels, he would bend intent scrutiny to the dial; note the position of the combination, and with the pencil jot memoranda on the paper. This happened perhaps a dozen times, at intervals of irregular duration.

  He worked diligently, in a phase of concentration that apparently excluded from his consciousness the near proximity of the girl, who stood—or rather stooped, half-kneeling—less than a pace from his shoulder, watching the process with interest hardly less keen than his own.

  Yet when one faint, odd sound broke the slumberous silence of the salons, instantly he swung around and stood erect in a single movement, gaze to the curtains.

  But it had only been a premonitory rumble in the throat of a tall old clock about to strike in the room beyond. And as its sonorous chimes heralded two deep-toned strokes, Lanyard laughed quietly, intimately, to the girl’s startled eyes, and sank back before the safe.

  And now his task was nearly finished. Within another minute he sat back with face aglow, uttered a hushed exclamation of satisfaction, studied his memoranda for a space, then swiftly and with assured movements threw the knob and dial into the several positions of the combination, grasped the lever-handle, turned it smartly, and swung the door wide open.

  “Simple, eh?” he chuckled, with a glance aside to the girl’s eager face, bewitchingly flushed and shadowed by the lamp’s up-thrown glow—“when one knows the trick, of course! And now … if one were not an honest man!”

  A wave of his hand indicated the pigeonholes with which the body of the safe was fitted: wide space
s and deep, stored tight with an extraordinary array of leather jewel-cases, packets of stout paper bound with tape and sealed, and boxes of wood and pasteboard of every shape and size.

  “They were only her finest pieces, her personal jewels, that Madame Omber took with her to England,” he explained; “she’s mad about them… never separated from them…. Perhaps the finest collection in the world, for size and purity of water…. She had the heart to leave these—all this!”

  Lifting a hand he chose at random, dislodged two leather cases, placed them on the floor, and with a blade of his pen-knife forced their fastenings.

  From the first the light smote radiance in blinding, coruscant welter.

  Here was nothing but diamond jewellery, mostly in antique settings.

  He took up a piece and offered it to the girl. She drew back her hand involuntarily.

  “No!” she protested in a whisper of fright.

  “But just look!” he urged. “There’s no danger … and you’ll never see the like of this again!”

  Stubbornly she withheld her hand. “No, no!” she pleaded. “I—I’d rather not touch it. Put it back. Let’s hurry. I—I’m frightened.”

  He shrugged and replaced the jewel; then yielded again to impulse of curiosity and lifted the lid of the second case.

  It contained nothing but pieces set with coloured stones of the first order—emeralds, amethysts, sapphires, rubies, topaz, garnets, lapis-lazuli, jacinthes, jades, fashioned by master-craftsmen into rings, bracelets, chains, brooches, lockets, necklaces, of exquisite design: the whole thrown heedlessly together, without order or care.

  For a moment the adventurer stared down soberly at this priceless hoard, his eyes narrowing, his breathing perceptibly quickened. Then with a slow gesture, he reclosed the case, took from his pocket that other which he had brought from London, opened it, and held it aside beneath the light, for the girl’s inspection.