The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  A cry of triumph was echoed by exclamations of alarm as, disarmed, Duchemin was again left free, the thugs standing back to let the pistol do its work. In that instant a broad sword of light swung round a nearby corner and smote the group: the twin, glaring eyes of a motor car flooded with blue-white radiance that tableau of one man at bay in the middle of the road, in a ring of merciless enemies.

  Duchemin’s cry for help was uttered only an instant before his pistol exploded in alien hands. The headlights showed him distinctly the face of the man who fired, the same face of fat features black with soot that he had seen by moonlight at Montpellier-le-Vieux.

  But the bullet went wild, and the automobile did not stop, but drove directly at the group and so swiftly that the flash of the shot was still vivid in Duchemin’s vision when the car swept between him and those others, scattering them like chickens.

  Simultaneously the brakes were set, the dark bulk began to slide with locked wheels to a stop, and a voice cried: “Quickly, monsieur, quickly!”—the voice of Eve de Montalais.

  In two bounds Duchemin overtook the car and before it had come to a standstill leaped upon the running-board and grasped the side. He had one glimpse of the set white face of Eve, en profile, as she bent forward, manipulating the gear-shift. Then the pistol spat again, its bullet struck him a blow of sickening agony in the side.

  Aware that he was dangerously wounded, he put all that he had left of strength and will into one final effort, throwing his body across the door. As he fell sprawling into the tonneau consciousness departed like a light withdrawn.

  CHAPTER VIII

  IN RE AMOR ET AL.

  In the course of two weeks or so Duchemin was able to navigate a wheeled chair, bask on the little balcony outside his bedchamber windows in the Château de Montalais, and even—strictly against orders—take experimental strolls.

  The wound in his side still hurt like the very deuce at every ill-considered movement; but Duchemin was ever the least patient of men unless the will that coerced him was his own; constraint to another’s, however reasonable, irked him to exasperation; so that these falterings in forbidden ways were really (as he assured Eve de Montalais when, one day, she caught him creeping round his room, one hand pressed against the wall for support, the other to his side) in the nature of a sop to his self-respect.

  “You’ve only got to tell me not to do a thing often enough,” he commented as she led him back to his chair, “to fill me with unholy desire to do it if I die in the attempt.”

  “Isn’t that a rather common human failing?” she asked, wheeling the invalid chair through one of the french windows to the balcony.

  “That’s what makes it all seem so unfair.”

  Smiling, the woman turned the back of the chair to the brightest glare of sunshine, draped a light rug over the invalid’s knees, and seated herself in a wicker chair, facing him.

  “Makes all what seem so unfair?”

  “The indignity of being born human.” He accepted a cigarette and waxed didactic: “The one thing that the ego can find to reconcile it with existence is belief in its own uniquity.”

  “I don’t think,” she interrupted with a severe face belied by amused eyes, “that sounds quite nice.”

  “Uniquity? Because it sounds like iniquity? They are not unrelated. What makes iniquity seem attractive is as a rule its departure from the commonplace.”

  “But you were saying—?”

  “Merely it’s our personal belief that our emotions and sensations and ways of thought are peculiar to ourselves, individually, that sometimes makes the game seem worth the scandal.”

  “Yes: one presumes we all do think that…”

  “But no sooner does one get firmly established in that particular phase of self-complacence than along comes Life, grinning like a gamin, and kicks over our pretty house of cards—shows us up to ourselves by revealing our pet, exclusive idiosyncrasies as simple infirmities all mortal flesh is heir to.”

  “Monsieur is cynic…”

  “Madame means obvious. Well: if I patter platitudes it is to conceal a sense of gratification.” Eve arched her eyebrows. “I mean, you have shown me that I share at least one quality with you: instinctive resentment of the voice of reason.”

  She pronounced a plaintive “Mon Dieu!” and appealing to Heaven for compassion declared: “He means again to wrestle spiritually with me about the proper disposition of my jewels.”

  “No, madame: pardon. I am contemplating a long series of exhaustive arguments designed to prove it your duty to leave your jewels where they are, in all their noble insecurity. This in the firm belief that to plead with you long enough to adopt this course will result in your going and doing otherwise out of sheer…”

  “Perversity, monsieur?”

  “Humanity, madame!”

  Eve de Montalais laughed the charming, low-keyed laugh of a happily diverted woman.

  “But spare yourself, monsieur. I surrender at discretion: I will do as you wish.”

  “Truly? Rather than listen to my discourse, you actually agree to remove your jewels to a safe place?”

  “Even so, monsieur. As soon as you are able to get about, and the Château de Montalais lacks a guest, I will leave Louise to take care of madame ma mère for a few days while I journey to Paris—”

  “Alone?”

  “But naturally.”

  “Taking your jewels with you?”

  “Why else do I go?”

  “But, madame, you must not—”

  “And why?”

  “You, a woman! travel alone to Paris with a treasure in jewels? Ah, no! I should say not!”

  “Monsieur is emphatic,” Eve suggested demurely.

  “Monsieur means to be. Rather than let you run such a risk I would steal the jewels myself, convey them to Paris, put them in safe keeping, and send you the receipt.”

  “What a lot of trouble monsieur would save me, if he would only be so kind as to do as he threatens.”

  “And how amusing if he were arrested en route,” Duchemin supplemented with a wry smile.

  “I am quite confident of your ability to elude the police, monsieur.”

  “Do I hear you compliment me?”

  “If you take it so…”

  “But suppose you were not confident of my good will?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Madame is too flattering; one is sure she is too wise to put so great a temptation in the way of any man.”

  “Monsieur is the reverse of flattering; he implies that one does not know where one can repose trust.”

  “I must warn madame there are those in this world who would call her faith misplaced.”

  “Doubtless. But what of that? Am I to distrust you because others might who do not know you so well?”

  “But—madame—you can hardly claim to know me well.

  “Listen, my friend.” Eve de Montalais flicked away her cigarette and sat forward, elbows on knees, hands laced, her level gaze holding his. “It is true, our acquaintance is barely three weeks old; but you do injustice to my insight if you assume I have learned nothing about you in all that time. You have not been secretive with me. The mask you hold between yourself and the world, lest it pry into what does not concern it, has been lowered when you have talked with me; and I have had eyes to see what was revealed—”

  “Ah, madame!”

  “—the nature of a man of honour, monsieur, simple of heart and generous, as faithful as he is brave.”

  Eve had spoken impulsively, with warmth of feeling unrealised until too late. Now slow colour mantled her cheeks. But her eyes remained steadfast, candid, unashamed. It was Duchemin who dropped his gaze, abashed.

  And though nothing had any sense in his understanding other t
han the words which he had just heard from the lips of the woman who held his love—as he had known now these many days—some freak of dual consciousness made him see, for the first time, in that moment, how oddly bleached and wasted seemed the powerful, nervous, brown hands that rested on his knees. And he thought: It will be long before I am strong again.

  With a troubled smile he said: “I would give much to be worthy of what you think of me, madame. And I would be a poor thing indeed if I failed to try to live up to your faith.”

  “You will not fail,” she replied. “What you are, you were before my faith was, and will be afterwards, when…”

  She did not finish, but of a sudden recollected herself, lounged back in her chair, and laughed quietly, with humorous appeal to his sympathy.

  “So, that is settled: I am not to be permitted to take my jewels to Paris alone. What then, monsieur?”

  “I would suggest you write your bankers,” said Duchemin seriously, “and tell them that you contemplate bringing to Paris some valuables to entrust to their care. Say that you prefer not to travel without protection, and request them to send you two trusted men—detectives, they may call them—to guard you on the way. They will do so without hesitation, and you may then feel entirely at ease.”

  “Not otherwise, you think?”

  “Not otherwise, I feel sure.”

  “But why? You have been so persistent about this matter, monsieur. Ever since that night when those curious people stopped here in the rain.… Can it be that you suspect them of evil designs upon my trinkets?” Duchemin shrugged. “Who knows, madame, what they were? You call them ‘curious’; for my part I find the adjective apt.”

  “I fancy I know what you thought about them…”

  “And that is—?”

  “That they rather led the conversation to the subject of my jewels.”

  “Such was my thought, indeed.”

  “Perhaps you were right. If so, they learned all they needed to know.”

  “Except possibly the precise location of your strong box.”

  “They may have learned even that.”

  “How, madame?”

  “I don’t know; but if they were what you suspect they were, they were clever people, far more clever than poor provincials like us.” She took a moment for thought. “But I am puzzled by their harping on the subject of—I think they called him the Lone Wolf. Now why should they do that?”

  Duchemin was constrained to take refuge in another shrug. “Who knows?” he iterated. “If they were as clever as we assume, doubtless they were clever enough to have a motive even for that.”

  “He really existed, this Lone Wolf? He was more than a creature of fable?”

  “Assuredly, madame. For years he was the nightmare and the scourge of people of wealth in every capital of Europe.”

  “Why did they call him the Lone Wolf, do you know?”

  “I believe some imaginative Parisian journalist fixed that sobriquet on him, in recognition of the theory upon which, apparently, he operated.”

  “And that was—?”

  “That a criminal, at least a thief, to be successful must be absolutely anonymous and friendless; in which case nobody can betray him. As madame probably understands, criminals above a certain level of intelligence are seldom caught by the police except through the treachery of accomplices. The Lone Wolf seems to have exercised a fair amount of ingenuity and prudence in making his coups; and inasmuch as he had no confederates, not a living soul in his confidence, there was no one who could sell him to the authorities.”

  “Still, in the end—?”

  “Oh, no, madame. He was never caught. He simply ceased to thieve.”

  “I wonder why…”

  “I believe because he fell in love and considered good faith with the object of his affections incompatible with a career of crime.”

  “So he gave up crime. How romantic! And the woman: did she appreciate the sacrifice?”

  “While she lived, yes, madame. Or so they say. Unfortunately, she died.”

  “And then—?”

  “So far as is known the converted enemy to Society did not backslide; the Lone Wolf never prowled again.”

  “An extraordinary story.”

  “But is not every story that has to do with the workings of the human soul? What one of us has not buried in him a story quite as strange? Even you—”

  “Monsieur deceives himself. I am simply—what you see.”

  “But what I see is not simple, but complex and intriguing beyond expression. A woman of your sort walling herself up in a wilderness, renouncing the world, renouncing life itself in its very heyday—!”

  “But hardly that, monsieur.”

  “Then I am stupid…”

  “I will explain.” The sleekly coiffured brown head bent low over hands that played absently with their jewels. “To a woman of my sort, monsieur, life is not life without love. I lived once for a little time, then love was taken out of my life. When my sorrow had spent itself, I knew that I must find love again if I were to go on living. What was I to do? I knew that love is not found through seeking. So I waited…”

  “Such philosophy is rare, madame.”

  “Philosophy? No: I will not call it that. It was knowledge—the heart wise in its own wisdom, surpassing mine, telling me that if I would but be patient love would one day seek me out again, wherever I might wait, and give me once more—life.”

  She rose and went to the window, paused there, turning back to Duchemin a face composed but fairer for a deepened flush.

  “But this is not writing to my bankers, monsieur,” she said in a changed but steady voice. “I must do that at once if I am to get the letter in today’s post.”

  “If madame will accept the advice of one not without some experience…”

  “What else does monsieur imagine I am doing?”

  “Then you will write privately and burn your blotting paper; after which you will post the letter with your own hands, letting nobody see the address.”

  “And when shall I say I will make the journey?”

  “As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais.”

  “That will be in three days…”

  “Or less.”

  “As soon as your bankers can send their people to the Château de Montalais.”

  “That will be in three days…”

  “Or less.”

  “But you will not be strong enough to leave us within another week.”

  “What has that to do—?”

  “This: that I refuse positively to go away while you are our guest, monsieur. Somebody must watch over you and see that you come to no harm.”

  “But madame—!”

  “No: I am quite resolved. Monsieur has too rare a genius for getting in the way of danger. I shall not leave the château before you do. So I shall set this day week for the date of my journey.”

  CHAPTER IX

  BLIND MAN’S BUFF

  In short, Monsieur Duchemin considered convalescence at the Chateau de Montalais one of the most agreeable of human estates, and counted the cost of admission thereunto by no means dear; and with all his grousing (in respect of which he was conscientious, holding it at once a duty and a perquisite of his disability) he was at heart in no haste whatever to be discharged as whole and hale. The plain truth is, the man malingered shamelessly and even took a certain pride in the low cunning which enabled him to pose on as the impatient patient when he was so very well content to take his ease, be waited on and catered to, and listen for the footsteps of Eve de Montalais and the accents of her delightful voice.

  These last he heard not often enough by half. Still, he seldom lacked company in the long hours when Eve was busy with the
petty duties of her days, and left him lorn. Madame de Sévénié had taken a flattering fancy to him, and frequently came to gossip beside his bed or chair. He found her tremendously entertaining, endowed as she was with an excellent and well-stored memory, a gift of caustic characterization and a pretty taste in the scandal of her bygone day and generation, as well as with a mind still active and better informed on the affairs of today than that of many a Parisienne of the haute monde and half her age.

  During the first bedridden week, Georges d’Aubrac visited Duchemin at least once each day to compare wounds and opinions concerning the inefficiency of the local gendarmerie. For that body accomplished nothing toward laying by the heels the authors of the attacks on d’Aubrac and Duchemin, but (for all Duchemin can say to the contrary) is still following “clues” with the fruitless diligence of so many American police detectives on the trail of a bank messenger accused of stealing bonds.

  A decent, likable chap, this d’Aubrac, as reticent as any Englishman concerning his part in the Great War. Duchemin had to talk round the subject for days before d’Aubrac confessed that his record in the French air service had won him the title of Ace; and this only when Duchemin found out that d’Aubrac was at present, in his civilian capacity, managing director of an establishment manufacturing airplanes.

  At the end of that week he left to go back to his business; and Louise de Montalais replaced him at Duchemin’s side, where she would sit by the hour reading aloud to him in a voice as colourless as her unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d’Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne.

  But the third week found Duchemin mending all too rapidly; the time came too soon when the word “tomorrow” held for him all the dread significance, he assured himself, that it holds for a condemned man on the eve of execution.