Chapter IX: Part 9

The Sybarite, making easy way through a slight sea, with what wind there was--not much--on the port bow, rolled but slightly, and her deliberate and graceful fore-and-aft motion, as she swung from crest to crest of the endless head-on swells, caused the stars to stream above her mast-heads, a boundless river of broken light. The pulsing of the engines, unhasting, unresting, ran through her fabric in ceaseless succession of gentle tremors, while the rumble of their revolutions resembled the refrain of an old, quiet song. The mechanism of the patent log hummed and clicked more obtrusively. Directly underfoot the screw churned a softly clashing wake. From the saloon companionway drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat that waits upon even what men term success.

He felt crushed, spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it profit his soul to make good a vain boast to Eve de Montalais? Would it matter to her what success or failure meant to him? Lanyard doubted it, he doubted her, himself, all things within the compass of his understanding, and knew appalling glimpses of that everlasting truth, too passionless to be cynical, that the hopes of man and his fears, his loves and hates, his strivings and passivity, are all one in the measured and immutable processes of Time....

The pressure of a hand upon his own roused him to discover the Liane Delorme had seated herself beside him, in a chair that looked the other way, so that her face was not far from his; and he could scarcely be unaware of its hinted beauty, now wan and glimmering in starlight, enigmatic with soft, close shadows.

"I must have been dreaming," he said, apologetic. "You startled me."

"One could see that, my friend."

The woman spoke in quiet accents and let her hand linger upon his with its insistent reminder of the warm, living presence whose rich colouring was disguised by the gloom that encompassed both.

Four strokes in duplicate on the ship's bell, then the call: "_Eight bells and a-a-all's well_!"

Lanyard muttered: "No idea it was so late."

A slender white shape, Mr. Collison emerged from his quarters in the deck-house beneath the bridge and ran up the ladder to relieve Mr. Swain. At the same time a seaman came from forward and ascended by the other ladder. Later Mr. Swain and the man whose trick at the wheel was ended left the bridge, the latter to go forward to his rest, Mr. Swain to turn into his room in the deck-house.

The hot glow of the saloon skylights became a dim refulgence, aside from which, and its glimmer in the mouth of the companionway, no lights were visible in the whole length of the ship except the shuttered window of Mr. Swain's room, which presently was darkened, and odd glimpses of the binnacle light to be had when the helmsman shifted his stand.

A profound hush closed down upon the ship, whose progress across the face of the waters seemed to acquire a new significance of stealth, so that the two seated by the taffrail, above the throbbing screws and rushing torrent of the wake, talked in lowered accents without thinking why.

"It is that one grows bored, eh, cher ami?"

"Perhaps, Liane."

"Or perhaps that one's thought are constantly with one's heart, elsewhere?"

"You think so?"

"At the Château de Montalais, conceivably."

"It amuses you, then, to shoot arrows into the air?"

"But naturally, I seek the reason, when I see you distrait and am conscious of your neglect."

"I think it is for me to complain of that!"

"How can you say such things?"

"One has seen what one has seen, these last few days. I think you are what that original Phinuit would call 'a fast worker,' Liane."

"What stupidity! If I seek to make myself liked, you know well it is with a purpose."

"One hardly questions that."

"You judge harshly ... Michael."

Lanyard spent a look of astonishment on the darkness. He could not remember that Liane had ever before called him by that name.

"Do I? Sorry...." His tone was listless. "But does it matter?"

"You know that to me nothing else matters."

Lanyard checked off on his fingers: "Swain, Collison, Mussey. Who next? Why not I, as well as another?"

"Do you imagine for an instant that I class you with such riffraff?"

"Why, if you really want to know what I think, Liane: it seems to me that all men in your sight are much the same, good for one thing only, to be used to serve your ends. And who am I that you should hold me in higher rating than any other man?"

"You should know I do," the woman breathed, so low he barely caught the words and uttered an involuntary "Pardon?" before he knew he had understood. So that she iterated in a clearer tone of protest: "You should know I do--that I do esteem you as something more than other men. Think what I owe to you, Michael; and then consider this, that of all men whom I have known you alone have never asked for love."

He gave a quiet laugh. "There is too much humility in my heart."

"No," she said in a dull voice--"but you despise me. Do not deny it!" She shifted impatiently in her chair. "I know what I know. I am no fool, whatever you think of me.... No," she went on with emotion under restraint: "I am a creature of fatality, me--I cannot hope to escape my fate!"

He was silent a little in perplexed consideration of this. What did she wish him to believe?

"But one imagines nobody can escape his fate."

"Men can, some of them; men such as you, rare as you are, know how to cheat destiny; but women never. It is the fate of all women that each shall some time love some man to desperation, and be despised. It is my fate to have learned too late to love you, Michael----"

"Ah, Liane, Liane!"

"But you hold me in too much contempt to be willing to recognise the truth."

"On the contrary, I admire you extremely, I think you are an incomparable actress."

"You see!" She offered a despairing gesture to the stars. "It is not true what I say? I lay bare my heart to him, and he tells me that I act!"

"But my dear girl! surely you do not expect me to think otherwise?"

"I was a fool to expect anything from you," she returned bitterly--"you know too much about me. I cannot find it in my heart to blame you, since I am what I am, what the life you saved me to so long ago has made me. Why should you believe in me? Why should you credit the sincerity of this confession, which costs me so much humiliation? That would be too good for me, too much to ask of life!"

"I think you cannot fairly complain of life, Liane. What have you asked of it that you have failed to get? Success, money, power, adulation----"

"Never love."

"The world would find it difficult to believe that."

"Ah, love of a sort, yes: the love that is the desire to possess and that possession satisfies."

"Have you asked for any other sort?"

"I ask it now. I know what the love is that longs to give, to give and give again, asking no return but kindness, understanding, even toleration merely. It is such love as this I bear you, Michael. But you do not believe...."

Divided between annoyance and distaste, he was silent. And all at once she threw herself half across the joined arms of their chairs, catching his shoulders with her hands, so that her half-clothed body rested on his bosom, and its scented warmth assailed his senses with the seduction whose power she knew so well.

"Ah, Michael, my Michael!" she cried--"if you but knew, if only you could believe! It is so real to me, so true, so overwhelming, the greatest thing of all! How can it be otherwise to you?... No: do not think I complain, do not think I blame you or have room in my heart for any resentment. But, oh my dear! were I only able to make you understand, think what life could be to us, to you and me. What could it withhold that we desired? You with your wit, your strength, your skill, your poise--I with my great love to inspire and sustain you--what a pair we should make! what happiness would be ours! Think, Michael--think!"

"I have thought, Liane," he returned in accents as kind as the hands that held her. "I have thought well..."

"Yes?" She lifted her face so near that their breaths mingled, and he was conscious of the allure of tremulous and parted lips. "You have thought and.... Tell me your thought, my Michael."

"Why, I think two things," said Lanyard: "First, that you deserve to be soundly kissed." He kissed her, but with discretion, and firmly put her from him. "Then"--his tone took on a note of earnestness--"that if what you have said is true, it is a pity, and I am sorry, Liane, very sorry. And, if it is not true, that the comedy was well played. Shall we let it rest at that, my dear?"

Half lifting her, he helped her back into her chair, and as she turned her face away, struggling for mastery of her emotion, true or feigned, he sat back, found his cigarette case, and clipping a cigarette between his lips, cast about for a match.

He had none in his pockets, but knew that there was a stand on one of the wicker tables nearby. Rising, he found it, and as he struck the light heard a sudden, soft swish of draperies as the woman rose.

Moving toward the saloon companionway, she passed him swiftly, without a word, her head bended, a hand pressing a handkerchief to her lips. Forgetful, he followed her swaying figure with puzzled gaze till admonished by the flame that crept toward his fingertips. Then dropping the match he struck another and put it to his cigarette. At the second puff he heard a choking gasp, and looked up again.

The woman stood alone, en silhouette against the glow of the companionway, her arms thrust out as if to ward off some threatened danger. A second cry broke from her lips, shrill with terror, she tottered and fell as, dropping his cigarette, Lanyard ran to her.

His vision dazzled by the flame of the match, he sought in vain for any cause for her apparent fright. For all he could see, the deck was as empty as he had presumed it to be all through their conversation.

He found her in a faint unmistakably unaffected. Footfalls sounded on the deck as he knelt, making superficial examination. Collison had heard her cries and witnessed her fall from the bridge and was coming to investigate.

"What in blazes----!"

Lanyard replied with a gesture of bewilderment: "She was just going below. I'd stopped to light a cigarette, saw nothing to account for this. Wait: I'll fetch water."

He darted down the companionway, filled a glass from a silver thermos carafe, and hurried back. As he arrived at the top of steps, Collison announced: "It's all right. She's coming to."

Supported in the arms of the second mate, Liane was beginning to breathe deeply and looking round with dazed eyes. Lanyard dropped on a knee and set the glass to her lips. She gulped twice, mechanically, her gaze fixed to his face. Then suddenly memory cleared, and she uttered a bubbling gasp of returning dread.

"Popinot!" she cried, as Lanyard hastily took the glass away. "Popinot--he was there--I saw him--standing there!"

A trembling arm indicated the starboard deck just forward of the companion housing. But of course, when Lanyard looked, there was no one there ... if there had ever been....

XXIII

THE CIGARETTE

Lanyard found himself exchanging looks of mystification with Collison, and heard his own voice make the flat statement: "But there is nobody...." Collison muttered words which he took to be: No, and never was. "But you must have seen him from the bridge," Lanyard insisted blankly, "if...."

"I looked around as soon as I heard her call out," Collison replied; "but I didn't see anybody, only mademoiselle here--and you, of course, with that match."

"Please help me up," Liane Delorme asked in a faint voice. Collison lent a hand. In the support and shelter of Lanyard's arm the woman's body quivered like that of a frightened child. "I must go to my stateroom," she sighed uncertainly. "But I am afraid..."

"Do not be. Remember Mr. Collison and I... Besides, you know, there was nobody..."

The assertion seemed to exasperate her; her voice discovered new strength and violence.

"But I am telling you I saw ... that assassin!"--she shuddered again--"standing there, in the shadow, glaring at me as if I had surprised him and he did not know what next to do. I think he must have been spying down through the skylight; it was the glow from it that showed me his red, dirty face of a pig."

"You came aft on the port side, didn't you?" Lanyard enquired of the second mate.

Collison nodded. "Running," he said--"couldn't imagine what was up."

"It is easy not to see what one is not looking for," Lanyard mused, staring forward along the starboard side. "If a man had dropped flat and squirmed along until in the shelter of the engine-room ventilators, he could have run forward--bending low, you know--without your seeing him."

"But you were standing here, to starboard!"

"I tell you, that match was blinding me," Lanyard affirmed irritably. "Besides, I wasn't looking--except at my sister--wondering what was the matter."

Collison started. "Excuse me," he said, reminded--"if mademoiselle's all right, I ought to get back to the bridge."

"Take me below," Liane begged. "I must speak with Captain Monk."

Monk and Phinuit were taking their ease plus nightcaps in the captain's sitting-room. A knock brought a prompt invitation to "Come in!" Lanyard thrust the door open and curtly addressed Monk: "Mademoiselle Delorme wishes to see you." The eloquent eyebrows indicated surprise and resignation, and Monk got up and inserted himself into his white linen tunic. Phinuit, more sensitive to the accent of something amiss, hurried out in unceremonious shirt sleeves. "What's up?" he demanded, looking from Lanyard's grave face to Liane's face of pallor and distress. Lanyard informed him in a few words.

"Impossible!" Phinuit commented.

"Nonsense," Monk added, speaking directly to Liane. "You imagined it all."

She had recovered much of her composure, enough to enable her to shrug her disdain of such stupidity.

"I tell you only what my two eyes saw."

"To be sure," Monk agreed with a specious air of being wide open to conviction. "What became of him, then?"

"You ask me that, knowing that in stress of terror I fainted!"

The eyebrows achieved an effect of studied weariness. "And you saw nobody, monsieur? And Collison didn't, either?"

Lanyard shook his head to each question. "Still, it is possible----."

Monk cut him short impatiently. "All gammon--all in her eye! No man bigger than a cockroach could have smuggled himself aboard this yacht without my being told. I know my ship, I know my men, I know what I'm talking about."

"Presently," Liane prophesied darkly, "you may be talking about nothing."

At a loss, Monk muttered: "Don't get you...."

"When you find yourself, some fine morning, with your throat cut in your sleep, like poor de Lorgnes--or garroted, as I might have been."

"I'm not going to lose any sleep....." Monk began.

"Lose none before you have the vessel searched," Liane pleaded, with a change of tone. "You know, messieurs, I am not a woman given to hallucinations. I _saw_ ... And I tell you, while that assassin is at liberty aboard this yacht, not one of our lives is worth a sou--no, not one!"

"Oh, you shall have your search." Monk gave in as one who indulges a childish whim. "But I can tell you now what we'll find--or won't."

"Then Heaven help us all!" Liane went swiftly to the door of her room, but there hesitated, looking back in appeal to Lanyard. "I am afraid...."

"Let me have a look round first."

And when Lanyard had satisfied himself there was nobody concealed in any part of Liane's suite, and had been rewarded with a glance of gratitude--"I shall lock myself in, of course," the woman said from the threshold--"and I have my pistol, too."

"But I assure you," Monk commented in heavy sarcasm, "our intentions are those of honourable men."

The door slammed, and the sound of the key turning in the lock followed. Monk trained the eyebrows into a look of long-suffering patience.

"A glass too much... Seein' things!"

"No," Lanyard voiced shortly his belief; "you are wrong. Liane saw something."

"Nobody questions that," Phinuit yawned. "What one does question is whether she saw a man or a figment of her imagination--some effect of the shadows that momentarily suggested a man."

"Shadows do play queer tricks at night, at sea," Monk agreed. "I remember once--"

"Then let us look the ground over and see if we can make that explanation acceptable to our own intelligences," Lanyard cut in.

"No harm in that."

Phinuit fetched a pocket flash-lamp, and the three reconnoitred exhaustively the quarters of the deck in which the apparition had manifested itself to the woman. By no strain of credulity could the imagination be made to accept the effect of shadows at the designated spot as the shape of somebody standing there. On the other hand, when Phinuit obligingly posed himself between the mouth of the companionway and the skylight, it had to be admitted that the glow from either side provided fairly good cover for one who might wish to linger there, observing and unobserved.

"Still, I don't believe she saw anything," Monk persisted--"a phantom Popinot, if anything."

"But wait. What is it we have here?"

Lanyard, scrutinising the deck with the flashlamp, stooped, picked up something, and offered it on an outspread palm upon which he trained the clear electric beam.

"Cigarette stub?" Monk said, and sniffed. "That's a famous find!"

"A cigarette manufactured by the French Régie."

"And well stepped on, too," Phinuit observed. "Well, what about it?"

"Who that uses this part of the deck would be apt to insult his palate with such a cigarette? No one of us--hardly any one of the officers or stewards."

"Some deck-hand might have sneaked aft for a look-see, expecting to find the quarterdeck deserted at this hour."

"Even ordinary seamen avoid, when they can, what the Régie sells under the name of tobacco. Nor is it likely such a one would risk the consequences of defying Captain Monk's celebrated discipline."

"Then you believe it was Popinot, too?"

"I believe you would do well to make the search you have promised thorough and immediate."

"Plenty of time," Monk replied wearily. "I'll turn this old tub inside out, if you insist, in the morning."

"But why, monsieur, do you remain so obstinately incredulous?"

"Well," Monk drawled, "I've known the pretty lady a number of years, and if you ask me she's quite up to playing little games all her own."

"Pretending, you mean--for private ends?"

The eyebrows offered a gesture urbane and sceptical.

Whether or not sleep brought Monk better counsel, the morning's ransacking of the vessel and the examination of her crew proved more painstaking than Lanyard had expected. And the upshot was precisely as Monk had foretold, precisely negative. He reported drily to this effect at an informal conference in his quarters after luncheon. He himself had supervised the entire search and had made a good part of it in person, he said. No nook or cranny of the yacht had been overlooked.

"I trust mademoiselle is satisfied," he concluded with a mockingly civil movement of eyebrows toward Liane.

His reply was the slightest of shrugs executed by perfect shoulders beneath a gown of cynical transparency. Lanyard was aware that the violet eyes, large with apprehension, flashed transiently his way, as if in hope that he might submit some helpful suggestion. But he had none to offer. If the manner in which the search had been conducted were open to criticism, that would have to be made by a mind better informed than his in respect of things maritime. And he avoided acknowledging that glance by even so much as seeming aware of it. And in point of fact, coldly reviewed in dispassionate daylight, the thing seemed preposterous to him, to be asked to believe that Popinot had contrived to secrete himself beyond finding on board the Sybarite.

Without his participation the discussion continued.

He heard Phinuit's voice utter in accents of malicious amusement: "Barring, of course, the possibility of connivance on the part of officers or crew."

"Don't be an ass!" Monk snapped.

"Don't be unreasonable: I am simply as God made me."

"Well, it was a nasty job of work."

"Now, listen." Phinuit rose to leave, as one considering the conference at an end. "If you persist in picking on me, skipper, I'll ravish you of those magnificent eyebrows with a safety razor, some time when you're asleep, and leave you as dumb as a Wop peddler who's lost both arms."

Liane followed him out in silence, but her carriage was that of a queen of tragedy. Lanyard got up in turn, and to his amazement found the eyebrows signalling confidentially to him.

"What the devil!" he exclaimed, in an open stare.

Immediately the eyebrows became conciliatory.

"Well, monsieur, and what is your opinion?"

"Why, to me it would seem there might be something in the suggestion of Monsieur Phinuit."

"Ridiculous!" Monk dismissed it finally. "Do you know, I rather fancy my own.... Liane's up to something," he added, explanatory; and then, as Lanyard said nothing--"You haven't told me yet what she was talking to you about last night just before her--alleged fright."

Lanyard contrived a successful offensive with his own eyebrows.

"Oh?" he said, "haven't I?" and walked out.

Here was a new angle to consider. Monk's attitude hinted at a possible rift in the entente cordiale of the conspirators. Why else should he mistrust Liane's sincerity in asserting that she had seen Popinot? Aside from the question of what he imagined she could possibly gain by making a scene out of nothing--a riddle unreadable--one wondered consumedly what had happened to render Monk suspicious of her good faith.

The explanation, when it was finally revealed to Lanyard by the most trivial of incidents, made even his own blindness seem laughable.

For three more days the life of the ship followed in unruffled tranquillity its ordered course. Liane Delorme was afflicted with no more visions, as the captain would have called them; though by common consent the subject had been dropped upon the failure of the search, and to all seeming was rapidly fading from the minds of everybody but Liane herself and Lanyard. This last continued to plague himself with the mystery and, maintaining always an open mind, was prepared at any time to be shockingly enlightened; that is, to discover that Liane had not cried wolf without substantial reason. For he had learned this much at least of life, that everything is always possible.

As for Liane, she made no secret of her unabated timidity, yet suffered it with such fortitude as could not fail to win admiration. If she was a bit more subdued, a trifle less high-spirited than was her habit, if she refused positively to sit with her back to any door or to retire for the night until her quarters had been examined, if (as Lanyard suspected) she was never unarmed for a moment, day or night, she permitted no signs of mental strain to mar the serenity of her countenance or betray the studied graciousness of her gestures.

Toward Lanyard she bore herself precisely as though nothing had happened to disturb the even adjustment of their personal relations; or, perhaps, as if she considered everything had happened, so that their rapport had become absolute; at all events, with a pleasing absence of constraint. He really couldn't make her out. Sometimes he thought she wished him to believe she was not as other women and could make rational allowance for his poor response to her naïve overtures. But that seemed so abnormal, he felt forced to fall back on the theory that her declaration had been nothing more than a minor gambit in whatever game she was playing, and that consequently she bore no malice because of its failure. No matter which explanation was the true one, no matter which keyed her temper toward him, Lanyard found himself liking the woman better, not as a woman but as another human being, than he had ever thought to. Say what you liked, in this humour she was charming.

But he never for an instant imagined she was meekly accepting defeat at his hands instead of biding her time to resume the attack from a new quarter. So he wasn't at all surprised when, one evening, quite early after dinner, she contrived another tête-à-tête, and with good conversational generalship led their talk presently into a channel of amiable personalities.

"And have you been thinking about what we said--or what I said, my friend--that night--so long ago it seems!--three nights ago?"

"But inevitably, Liane."

"You have not forgotten my stupidity, then."

"I have forgotten nothing."

She made a pretty mouth of doubt. "Would it not have been more kind to forget?"

"Such compliments are not easily forgotten."

"You are sure, quite sure it was a compliment?"

"No-o; by no means sure. Still, I am a man, and I am giving you the full benefit of every doubt."

She laughed, not ill-pleased. "But what a man! how blessed of the gods to be able to laugh at yourself as well as at me."

"Undeceive yourself: I could never laugh at you, Liane. Even if one did not believe you to be a great natural comedienne at will, one would always wonder what your purpose was--oh yes! with deep respect one would wonder about that."

"And you have been wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and throwing myself at your head."

"Why," said Lanyard with a look of childlike candour, "you might, you know, have been uncontrollably swayed by some passionate impulses of the heart."

"But otherwise--?" she prompted, hugely amused.

"Oh, if you had a low motive in trying to make a fool of me, you know too well how to hide your motive from such a fool."

In a fugitive seizure of thoughtfulness the violet eyes lost all their impishness. She sighed, the bright head drooped a little toward the gleaming bosom, a hand stole out to rest lightly upon his once again.

"It was not acting, Michael--I tell you that frankly--at least, not all acting."

"Meaning, I take it, you know love too well to make it artlessly."

"I'm afraid so, my dear," said Liane Delorme with another sigh. "You know: I am afraid of you. You see everything so clearly..."

"It's a vast pity. I wish I could outgrow it. One misses so many amusing emotions when one sees too clearly."

During another brief pause, Lanyard saw Monk come on deck, pause, and search them out, in the chairs they occupied near the taffrail, much as on that other historic night. Not that he experienced any difficulty in locating them; for this time the decklights were burning clearly. Nevertheless, Captain Monk confessed emotion at sight of those two in a quite perceptible start; and Lanyard saw the eyebrows tremendously agitated as their manipulator moved aft.

Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm.

"Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless, Michael?"

"There's so much to be said about that, Liane," he evaded.

Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen.

"Might one suggest," he did suggest in iced accents, "that the quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of family affection?"

Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an impatience which all at once proved too much for her.

"Oh, go to the devil!" she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks which she was able to use and discard at will.

For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse.

It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. As it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis to his words.

"So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought worth while," he said with infuriated condescension, "it might be judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of affection within view of my officers and crew. Suppose we..." He choked a little. "In short, I came to invite you to a little conference in my rooms, with Mr. Phinuit."

"Conference?" Liane enquired coolly, without stirring. "I know nothing of this conference."

"Mr. Phinuit and I are agreed that Monsieur Lanyard is entitled to know more about our intentions while he has time to weigh them carefully. We have only four more days at sea..."

Unable longer to contain himself, Lanyard left his chair with alacrity. "But this is so delightful! You've no idea, really, monsieur, how I have looked forward to this moment." And to Liane: "Do come, and see how I take it, this revelation of my preordained fate. It will be, I trust sincerely, like a man."

With momentary hesitation, and in a temper precluding any sympathy, with his humour, the woman rose and silently followed with him that long-legged figure whose stalk held so much dramatic significance as he led to the companionway.

After that it was refreshing to find unromantic Mr. Phinuit lounging beside the captain's desk with crossed feet overhanging one corner of it and mind intent on the prosaic business of paring his fingernails. Lanyard nodded to him with great good temper and--while Phinuit lowered his feet and put away his penknife--considerately placed a chair for Liane in the position in which she preferred to sit, with her face turned a little from the light. Nor would his appreciation of the formality which seemed demanded by Monk's solemn manner, permit him to sit before the captain had taken his own chair behind the desk.

Then, however, he discovered the engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed himself with unaffected eagerness to the most portentous eyebrows in captivity.

"Now," he announced with a little bow, "for what, one imagines, Mr. Phinuit would term the Elaborate Idea!"

XXIV

HISTORIC REPETITION

Phinuit grinned, then smothered a little yawn. Liane Delorme gave a small, disdainful movement of shoulders, and posed herself becomingly, resting an elbow on the arm of her chair and inclining her cheek upon two fingers of a jewelled hand. Thus she sat somewhat turned from Monk and Phinuit, but facing Lanyard, to whom her grave but friendly eyes gave undivided heed, for all the world as if there were no others present: she seemed to wait to hear him speak again rather than to care in the least what Monk would find to say.

Captain Monk filled in that pause with an impressive arrangement of eyebrows. Then, fixing his gaze, not upon Lanyard, but upon the point of a pencil with which his incredibly thin fingers traced elaborate but empty designs upon the blotter, he opened his lips, hemmed in warning that he was about to speak, and seemed tremendously upset to find that Liane was inconsiderately forestalling him.

Her voice was at its most musical pitch, rather low for her, fluting, infinitely disarming and seductive.

"Let me say to you, mon ami, that--naturally I know what is coming--I disapprove absolutely of this method of treating with you."

"But it is such an honour to be considered important enough to be treated with at all!"

"You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience two-thirds incapable of appreciation."

"Oh, you're wrong!" Phinuit declared earnestly. "I'm appreciative, I think the dear man's immense."

"Might I suggest"--the unctuous tones of Captain Monk issued from under mildly wounded eyebrows--"if any one of us were unappreciative of Monsieur Lanyard's undoubted talents, he would not be with us tonight."

"You might suggest it," Phinuit assented, "but that wouldn't make it so, it is to mademoiselle's appreciation that you and I owe this treat, and you know it. Now quit cocking those automatic eyebrows at me; you've been doing that ever since we met, and they haven't gone off yet, not once."

Irrepressible, Liane's laughter pealed; and though he couldn't help smiling, Lanyard hastened to offer up himself on the altar of peace.

"But--messieurs!--you interest me so much. Won't you tell me quickly what possible value my poor talents can have found in your sight?"

"You tell him, Monk," Phinuit said irreverently--"I'm no tale-bearer."

Monk elevated his eyebrows above recognition of the impertinence, and offered Lanyard a bow of formidable courtesy.

"They are such, monsieur," he said with that deliberation which becomes a diplomatic personage--"your talents are such that you can, if you will, become invaluable to us."

Phinuit chuckled outright at Lanyard's look of polite obtuseness.

"Never sail a straight course--can you skipper?--when you can get there by tacking. Here: I'm a plain-spoken guy, let me act as an interpreter. Mr. Lanyard: this giddy association of malefactors here present has the honour to invite you to become a full-fledged working member and stockholder of equal interest with the rest of us, participating in all benefits of the organization, including police protection. And as added inducement we're willing to waive initiation fee and dues. Do I make myself clear?"

"But perfectly."

"It's like this: I've told you how we came together, the five of us, including Jules and Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes. Now we expect this venture, our first, to pan out handsomely. There'll be a juicy melon cut when we get to New York. There's a lot more--I think you understand--than the Montalais plunder to whack up on. We'll make the average get-rich-quick scheme look like playing store in the back-yard with two pins the top price for anything on the shelves. And there isn't any sane reason why we need stop at that. In fact, we don't mean to. The Sybarite will make more voyages, and if anything should happen to stop it, there are other means of making the U. S. Customs look foolish. Each of us contributes valuable and essential services, mademoiselle, the skipper, my kid-brother, even I--and I pull a strong oar with the New York Police Department into the bargain. But there's a vacancy in our ranks, the opening left by the death of de Lorgnes, an opening that nobody could hope to fill so well as you. So we put it up to you squarely: If you'll sign on and work with us, we'll turn over to you a round fifth share of the profits of this voyage as well as everything that comes after. That's fair enough, isn't it?"

"But more than fair, monsieur."

"Well, it's true you've done nothing to earn a fifth interest in the first division..."

"Then, too, I am here, quite helpless in your hands."

"Oh, we don't look at it that way----"

"Which," Liane sweetly interrupted, "is the one rational gesture you have yet offered in this conference, Monsieur Phinuit."

"Meaning, I suppose, Mr. Lanyard is far from being what he says, helpless in our hands."

"Nor ever will be, my poor friend, while he breathes and thinks."

"But, Liane!" Lanyard deprecated, modestly casting down his eyes--"you overwhelm me."

"I don't believe you," Liane retorted coolly.

For some moments Lanyard continued to stare reflectively at his feet. Nothing whatever of his thought was to be gathered from his countenance, though eyes more shrewd to read than those of Phinuit or Monk were watching it intently.

"Well, Mr. Lanyard, what do you say?"

Lanyard lifted his meditative gaze to the face of Phinuit. "But surely there is more...." he suggested in a puzzled way.

"More what?"

"I find something lacking.... You have shown me but one side of the coin. What is the reverse? I appreciate the honour you do me, I comprehend fully the strong inducements I am offered. But you have neglected--an odd oversight on the part of the plain-spoken man you profess to be--you have forgotten to name the penalty which would attach to a possible refusal."

"I guess it's safe to leave that to your imagination."

"There would be a penalty, however?"

"Well, naturally, if you're not with us, you're against us. And to take that stand would oblige us, as a simple matter of self-preservation, to defend ourselves with every means at our command."

"Means which," Lanyard murmured, "you prefer not to name."

"Well, one doesn't like to be crude."

"I have my answer, monsieur--and many thanks. The parallel is complete."

With a dim smile playing in his eyes and twitching at the corners of his lips, Lanyard leaned back and studied the deck beams. Liane Delorme sat up with a movement of sharp uneasiness.

"Of what, my friend, are you thinking?"

"I am marvelling at something everybody knows--that history does repeat itself."

The woman made a sudden hissing sound, of breath drawn shortly between closed teeth. "I hope not!" she sighed.

Lanyard opened his eyes wide at her. "You hope not, Liane?"

"I hope this time history will not altogether repeat itself. You see, my friend, I think I know what is in your mind, memories of old times...."

"True: I am thinking of those days when the Pack hunted the Lone Wolf in Paris, ran him to earth at last, and made him much the same offer as you have made to-night.... The Pack, you should know, messieurs, was the name assumed by an association of Parisian criminals, ambitious like you, who had grown envious of the Lone Wolf's success, and wished to persuade him to run with them."

"And what happened?" Phinuit enquired.

"Why it so happened that they chose the time when I had made up my mind to be good for the rest of my days. It was all most unfortunate."

"What answer did you give them, then?"

"As memory serves, I told them they could all go plumb to hell."

"So I hope history will not repeat, this time," Liane interjected.

"And did they go?" Monk asked.

"Presently, some of them, ultimately all; for some lingered a few years in French prisons, like that great Popinot, the father of monsieur who has caused us so much trouble."

"And you----?"

"Why," Lanyard laughed, "I have managed to keep out of jail, so I presume I must have kept my vow to be good."

"And no backsliding?" Phinuit suggested with a leer.

"Ah! you must not ask me to tell you everything. That is a matter between me and my conscience."

"Well," Phinuit hazarded with a good show of confidence, "I guess you won't tell us to go plumb to hell, will you?"

"No; I promise to be more original than that."

"Then you refuse!" Liane breathed tensely.

"Oh, I haven't said that! You must give me time to think this over."

"I knew that would be his answer," Monk proclaimed, pride in his perspicuity shaping the set of his eyebrows. "That is why I was firm that we should wait no longer. You have four days in which to make up your mind, monsieur."

"I shall need them."

"I don't see why," Phinuit argued: "it's an open and shut proposition, if ever there was one."

"But you are asking me to renounce something upon which I have set much store for many years, monsieur. I can't be expected to do that in an hour or even a day."

You shall have your answer, I promise you, by the time we make our landfall--perhaps before."

"The sooner, the better."

"Are you sure, monsieur? But one thought it was the tortoise who won the famous race."

"Take all the time you need," Captain Monk conceded generously, "to come to a sensible decision."

"But how good you are to me, monsieur!"

XXV

THE MALCONTENT

Singular though the statement may seem, when one remembers the conditions that circumscribed his freedom of action on board the Sybarite, that he stood utterly alone in that company of conspirators and their creatures, alone and unarmed, with never a friend to guard his back or even to whisper him one word of counsel, warning or encouragement, with only his naked wits and hands to fortify and sustain his heart: it is still no exaggeration to say that Lanyard got an extraordinary amount of private diversion out of those last few days.

From the hour when Liane Delorme, Phinuit and Captain Monk, in conclave solemnly assembled at the instance of the one last-named, communicated their collective mind in respect of his interesting self, the man was conscious of implicit confidence in a happy outcome of the business, with a conscientiousness less rational than simply felt, a sort of bubbling exhilaration in his mood that found its most intelligible expression in the phrase, which he was wont often to iterate to himself: Ça va bien--that goes well!

That--the progressive involution of this insane imbroglio--went very well indeed, in Lanyard's reckoning; he could hardy wish, he could not reasonably demand that it should go better.

He knew now with what design Liane Delorme had made him a party to this sea adventure and intimate with every detail of the conspiracy; and he knew to boot why she had offered him the free gift of her love; doubt as to the one, scruples inspired by the other--that reluctance which man cannot but feel to do a hurt to a heart that holds him dear, however scanty his response to its passion--could no longer influence him to palter in dealing with the woman. The revelation had in effect stricken shackles from Lanyard's wrists, now when he struck it would be with neither hesitation nor compunction.

As to that stroke alone, its hour and place and fashion, he remained without decision. He had made a hundred plans for its delivery, and one of them, that seemed the wildest, he thought of seriously, as something really feasible. But single-handed! That made it difficult. If only one could devise some way to be in two places at one time and the same! An impossibility? He wouldn't deny that. But Lanyard had never been one to be discouraged by the grim, hard face of an impossibility. He had known too many such to dissipate utterly, vanish into empty air, when subjected to a bold and resolute assault. He wouldn't say die.

Never that while he could lift hand or invent stratagem, never that so long as fools played their game into his hands, as this lot wished to and did. What imbecility! What an escape had been his when, in that time long since, he had made up his mind to have done with crime once and for all time! But for that moment of clear vision and high resolve he might be to-day even as these who had won such clear title to his contempt, who stultified themselves with vain imaginings and the everlasting concoction of schemes whose sheer intrinsic puerility foredoomed them to farcical failure.

Lanyard trod the decks for hours at a time, searching the stars for an answer to the question: What made the Law by whose decree man may garner only punishment and disaster where he has husbanded in iniquity? That Law implacable, inexorable in its ordained and methodic workings, through which invariably it comes to pass that failure and remorse shall canker in the heart even of success ill-gained....

But if he moralized it was with a cheerful countenance, and his sermons were for himself alone. He kept his counsel and spoke all men fairly, giving nowhere any manner of offense: for could he tell in what unlikely guise might wait the instrument he needed wherewith to work out his unfaltering purpose?

And all the while they were watching him and wondering what was in his mind. Well, he gave no sign. Let them watch and wonder to their heart's content; they must wait until the time he had appointed for the rendering of his decision, when the Sybarite made her landfall.

Winds blew and fell, the sea rose and subsided, the Sybarite trudged on into dull weather. The sky grew overcast; and Lanyard, daily scanning the very heavens for a sign, accepted this for one, and prayed it might hold. Nothing could be more calculated to nullify his efforts than to have the landfall happen on a clear, calm night of stars.

He went to bed, the last night out, leaving a noisy gathering in the saloon, and read himself drowsy. Then turning out his light he slept. Sometime later he found himself instantaneously awake, and alert, with a clear head and every faculty on the qui vive--much as a man might grope for a time in a dark strange room, then find a door and step out into broad daylight.

Only there was no light other than in the luminous clarity of his mind. Even the illumination in the saloon had been dimmed down for the night, as he could tell by the tarnished gleam beneath his stateroom door.

Still, not everyone had gone to bed. The very manner of his waking informed him that he was not alone; for the life Lanyard had led had taught him to need no better alarm than the entrance of another person into the place where he lay sleeping. All animals are like that, whose lives hang on their vigilance.

Able to see nothing, he still felt a presence, and knew that it waited, stirless, within arm's-length of his head. Without much concern, he thought of Popinot, that "phantom Popinot" of Monk's derisive naming.

Well, if the vision Liane had seen on deck had taken material form here in his stateroom, Lanyard presumed it meant another fight, and the last, to a finish, that is to say, to a death.

Without making a sound, he gathered himself together, ready for a trap, and as noiselessly lifted a hand toward the switch for the electric light, set in the wall near the head of the bed. But in the same breath he heard a whisper, or rather a mutter, a voice he could not place in its present pitch.

"Awake, Monsieur Delorme?" it said. "Hush! Don't make a row, and never mind the light."

His astonishment was so overpowering that instinctively his tensed muscles relaxed and his hand fell back upon the bedding.

"Who the deuce----?"

"Not so loud. It's me--Mussey."

Lanyard echoed witlessly: "Mussey?"

"Yes. I don't wonder you're surprised, but if you'll be easy you'll understand pretty soon why I had to have a bit of a talk with you without anybody's catching on."

"Well," Lanyard said, "I'm damned!"

"I say!" The subdued mutter took on a note of anxiety. "It's all right, isn't it? I mean, you aren't going to kick up a rumpus and spill the beans? I guess you must think I've got a hell of a gall, coming in on you like this, and I don't know as I blame you, but... Well, time's getting short, only two more days at sea, and I couldn't wait any longer for a chance to have a few minutes' chin with you."

The mutter ceased and held an expectant pause. Lanyard said nothing. But he was conscious that the speaker occupied a chair by the bed, and knew that he was bending near to catch his answer; for the air was tainted with vinous breath. Yes: one required no stronger identification, it was beyond any doubt the chief engineer of the Sybarite.

"Say it's all right, won't you?" the mutter pleaded.

"I am listening," Lanyard replied--"as you perceive."

"I'll say it's decent of you--damned decent. Blowed if I'd take it as calm as you, if I waked up to find somebody in my room."

"I believe," said Lanyard pointedly, "you stipulated for a few minutes' chin with me. Time passes, Mr. Mussey. Get to your business, or let me go to sleep again."

"Sharp, you are," commented the mutter. "I've noticed it in you. You'd be surprised if you knew how much notice I've been taking of you."

"And flattered, I'm sure."

"Look here..." The mutter stumbled. "I want to ask a personal question. Daresay you'll think it impertinent."

"If I do, be sure I shan't answer it."

"Well... it's this: Is or isn't your right name Lanyard, Michael Lanyard?"

This time it was Lanyard who, thinking rapidly, held the pause so long that his querist's uneasiness could not contain itself.

"Is that my answer? I mean, does your silence--?"

"That's an unusual name, Michael Lanyard," cautiously replied its proprietor. "How did you get hold of it?"

"They say it's the right name of the Lone Wolf. Guess I don't have to tell you who the Lone Wolf is."

"'They say'? Who, please, are 'they'?"

"Oh, there's a lot of talk going around the ship. You know how it is, a crew will gossip. And God knows they've got enough excuse this cruise."

This was constructively evasive. Lanyard wondered who had betrayed him. Phinuit? The tongue of that plain-spoken man was hinged in the middle; but one couldn't feel certain. Liane Delorme had made much of the chief engineer; though she seemed less likely to talk too much than anyone of the ship's company but Lanyard himself. But then (one remembered of a sudden) Monk and Mussey were by reputation old cronies; it wasn't inconceivable that Monk might have let something slip...

"And what, Mr. Mussey, if I should admit I am Michael Lanyard?"

"Then I'll have something to say to you, something I think'll interest you."

"Why not run the risk of interesting me, whoever I may be?"

Mussey breathed heavily in the stillness: the breathing of a cautious man loath to commit himself.

"No," he said at length, in the clearest enunciation he had thus far used. "No. If you're not Lanyard, I'd rather say nothing more--I'll just ask you to pardon me for intruding and clear out."

"But you say there is some gossip. And where there is smoke, there must be fire. It would seem safe to assume I am the man gossip says I am."

"Michael Lanyard?" the mutter persisted--"the Lone Wolf?"

"Yes, yes! What then?"

"I suppose the best way's to put it to you straight..."

"I warn you, you'll gain nothing if you don't."

"Then... to begin at the beginning... I've known Whit Monk a good long time. Years I've known him. We've sailed together off and on ever since we took to the sea; we've gone through some nasty scrapes together, and done things that don't bear telling, and always shared the thick and the thin of everything. Before this, if anybody had ever told me Whit Monk would do a pal dirt, I'd've punched his head and thought no more about it. But now..."