The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

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.

  CHAPTER XIX

  UNMASKED

  When there was no more light in the sky, a profound sigh escaped Lanyard’s lips; and with the gesture of one signifying submission to an omen, he turned and tramped heavily back across-town.

  More automaton than sentient being, he plodded on along the second enceinte of flaring, noisy boulevards, now and again narrowly escaping annihilation beneath the wheels of some coursing motor-cab or ponderous, grinding omnibus.

  Barely conscious of such escapes, he was altogether indifferent to them: it would have required a mortal hurt to match the dumb, sick anguish of his soul; more than merely a sunset sky had turned black for him within that hour.

  The cold was now intense, and he none too warmly clothed; yet there was sweat upon his brows.

  Dully there recurred to him a figure he had employed in one of his talks with Lucy Shannon: that, lacking his faith in her, there would be only emptiness beneath his feet.

  And now that faith was wanting in him, had been taken from him for all his struggles to retain it; and now indeed he danced on emptiness, the rope of temptation tightening round his neck, the weight of criminal instincts pulling it taut—strangling every right aspiration in him, robbing him of the very breath of that new life to which he had thought to give himself.

  If she were not worthy, of what worth the fight?…

  At one stage of his journey, he turned aside and, more through habit than desire or design, entered a cheap eating-place and consumed his customary evening meal without the slightest comprehension of what he ate or whether the food were good or poor.

  When he had finished, he hurried away like a haunted man. There was little room in his mood for sustained thought: his wits were fathoming a bottomless pit of black despair. He felt like a man born blind, through skilful surgery given the boon of sight for a day or two, and suddenly and without any warning thrust back again into darkness.

  He knew only that his brief struggle had been all wasted, that behind the flimsy barrier of his honourable ambition, the Lone Wolf was ravening. And he felt that, once he permitted that barrier to be broken down, it could never be repaired.

  He had set it up by main strength of will, for love of a woman. He must maintain it now for no incentive other than to retain his own good will—or resign himself utterly to that darkness out of which he had fought his way, to its powers that now beset his soul.

  And … he didn’t care.

  Quite without purpose he sought the machine-shop where he had left his car.

  He had no plans; but it was in his mind, a murderous thought, that before another dawn he might encounter Bannon.

  Interim, he would go to work. He could think out his problem while driving as readily as in seclusion; whatever he might ultimately elect to do, he could accomplish little before midnight.

  Toward seven o’clock, with his machine in perfect running order, he took the seat and to the streets in a reckless humour, in the temper of a beast of prey.

  The barrier was down: once more the Lone Wolf was on the prowl.

  But for the present he controlled himself and acted perfectly his temporary rôle of taxi-bandit, fellow to those thousands who infest Paris. Half a dozen times in the course of the next three hours people hailed him from sidewalks and restaurants; he took them up, carried them to their several destinations, received payment, and acknowledged their gratuities with perfunctory thanks—thoroughly in character—but all with little conscious thought.

  He
saw but one thing, the face of Lucy Shannon, white, tense, glimmering wanly in shadow—the countenance with which she had dismissed him.

  He had but one thought, the wish to read the riddle of her bondage. To accomplish this he was prepared to go to any extreme; if Bannon and his crew came between him and his purpose, so much the worse for them—and, incidentally, so much the better for society. What might befall himself was of no moment.

  He entertained but one design, to become again what he had been, the supreme adventurer, the prince of plunderers, to lose himself once more in the delirium of adventurous days and peril-haunted nights, to reincarnate the Lone Wolf and in his guise loot the world anew, to court forgetfulness even at the prison’s gates….

  It was after ten when, cruising purposelessly, without a fare, he swung through the rue Auber into the place de l’Opéra and, approaching the Café de la Paix, was hailed by a door-boy of that restaurant.

  Drawing in to the curb with the careless address that had distinguished his every action of that evening, he waited, with a throbbing motor, and with mind detached and gaze remote from the streams of foot and wheeled traffic that brawled past on either hand.

  After a moment two men issued from the revolving door of the café, and approached the cab. Lanyard paid them no attention. His thoughts were now engaged with a certain hôtel particulier in the neighbourhood of La Muette and, in his preoccupation, he would need only the name of a destination and the sound of the cab-door slammed, to send him off like a shot.

  Then he heard one of the men cough heavily, and in a twinkling stiffened to rigidity in his seat. If he had heard that cough but once before, that once had been too often. Without a glance aside, hardening his features to perfect immobility, he knew that the cough was shaking the slighter of those two figures.

  And of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the clearness of the frosty atmosphere, of the merciless glare of electricity beating upon him from every side from the numberless street lamps and café lights. And poignantly he regretted neglecting to mask himself with his goggles.