Chapter IV: Part 4

Nor was he altogether confident of his companion. The weight of her hand upon his arm, the fugitive contacts of her shoulder, seemed to him, just then, the most vivid and interesting things in life; the consciousness of her personality at his side was like a shaft of golden light penetrating the darkness of his dilemma. But as minutes passed and their flight was unchallenged, his mood grew dark with doubts and quick with distrust. Reviewing it all, he thought to detect something too damnably adventitious in the way she had nailed him, back there in the corridor of Troyon's. It was a bit too coincidental--"a bit thick!"--like that specious yarn of somnambulism she had told to excuse her presence in his room. Come to examine it, that excuse had been far too clumsy to hoodwink any but a man bewitched by beauty in distress.

Who was she, anyway? And what her interest in him? What had she been after in his room?--this American girl making a first visit to Paris in company with her venerable ruin of a parent? Who, for that matter, was Bannon? If her story of sleep-walking were untrue, then Bannon must have been at the bottom of her essay in espionage--Bannon, the intimate of De Morbihan, and an American even as the murderer of poor Roddy was an American!

Was this singularly casual encounter, then, but a cloak for further surveillance? Had he in his haste and desperation simply played into her hands, when he burdened himself with the care of her?

But it seemed absurd; to think that she... a girl like her, whose every word and gesture was eloquent of gentle birth and training...!

Yet--what _had_ she wanted in his room? Somnambulists are sincere indeed in the indulgence of their failing when they time their expeditions so opportunely--and arm themselves with keys to fit strange doors. Come to think of it, he had been rather willfully blind to that flaw in her excuse.... Again, why should she be up and dressed and so madly bent on leaving Troyon's at half-past four in the morning? Why couldn't she wait for daylight at least? What errand, reasonable duty or design could have roused her out into the night and the storm at that weird hour? He wondered!

And momentarily he grew more jealously heedful of her, critical of every nuance in her bearing. The least trace of added pressure on his arm, the most subtle suggestion that she wasn't entirely indifferent to him or regarded him in any way other than as the chance-found comrade of an hour of trouble, would have served to fix his suspicions. For such, he told himself, would be the first thought of one bent on beguiling--to lead him on by some intimation, the more tenuous and elusive the more provocative, that she found his person not altogether objectionable.

But he failed to detect anything of this nature in her manner.

So, what was one to think? That she was mental enough to appreciate how ruinous to her design would be any such advances? ...

In such perplexity he brought her to the end of the alley and there pulled up for a look round before venturing out into the narrow, dark, and deserted side street that then presented itself.

At this the girl gently disengaged her hand and drew away a pace or two; and when Lanyard had satisfied himself that there were no Apaches in the offing, he turned to see her standing there, just within the mouth of the alley, in a pose of blank indecision.

Conscious of his regard, she turned to his inspection a face touched with a fugitive, uncertain smile.

"Where are we?" she asked.

He named the street; and she shook her head. "That doesn't mean much to me," she confessed; "I'm so strange to Paris, I know only a few of the principal streets. Where is the boulevard St. Germain?"

Lanyard indicated the direction: "Two blocks that way."

"Thank you." She advanced a step or two, but paused again. "Do you know, possibly, just where I could find a taxicab?"

"I'm afraid you won't find any hereabouts at this hour," he replied. "A fiacre, perhaps--with luck: I doubt if there's one disengaged nearer than Montmartre, where business is apt to be more brisk."

"Oh!" she cried in dismay. "I hadn't thought of that.... I thought Paris never went to sleep!"

"Only about three hours earlier than most of the world's capitals.... But perhaps I can advise you--"

"If you would be so kind! Only, I don't like to be a nuisance--"

He smiled deceptively: "Don't worry about that. Where do you wish to go?"

"To the Gare du Nord."

That made him open his eyes. "The Gare du Nord!" he echoed. "But--I beg your pardon--"

"I wish to take the first train for London," the girl informed him calmly.

"You'll have a while to wait," Lanyard suggested. "The first train leaves about half-past eight, and it's now not more than five."

"That can't be helped. I can wait in the station."

He shrugged: that was her own look-out--if she were sincere in asserting that she meant to leave Paris; something which he took the liberty of doubting.

"You can reach it by the Metro," he suggested--"the Underground, you know; there's a station handy--St. Germain des Pres. If you like, I'll show you the way."

Her relief seemed so genuine, he could have almost believed in it. And yet--!

"I shall be very grateful," she murmured.

He took that for whatever worth it might assay, and quietly fell into place beside her; and in a mutual silence--perhaps largely due to her intuitive sense of his bias--they gained the boulevard St. Germain. But here, even as they emerged from the side street, that happened which again upset Lanyard's plans: a belated fiacre hove up out of the mist and ranged alongside, its driver loudly soliciting patronage.

Beneath his breath Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Metropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or--share it with her.... But why not? He could readily drop out at his destination, and bid the driver continue to the Gare du Nord; and the Metro was neither quick nor direct enough for his design--which included getting under cover well before daybreak.

Somewhat sulkily, then, if without betraying his temper, he signalled the cocher, opened the door, and handed the girl in.

"If you don't mind dropping me en route..."

"I shall be very glad," she said ... "anything to repay, even in part, the courtesy you've shown me!"

"Oh, please don't fret about that...."

He gave the driver precise directions, climbed in, and settled himself beside the girl. The whip cracked, the horse sighed, the driver swore; the aged fiacre groaned, stirred with reluctance, crawled wearily off through the thickening drizzle.

Within its body a common restraint held silence like a wall between the two.

The girl sat with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Peres, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her strange Parisian experience.

And in his turn, Lanyard reviewed those well-remembered ways in vast weariness of spirit--disgusted with himself in consciousness that the girl had somehow divined his distrust....

"The Lone Wolf, eh?" he mused bitterly. "Rather, the Cornered Rat--if people only knew! Better still, the Errant--no!--the Arrant Ass!"

They were skirting the Palais Royal when suddenly she turned to him in an impulsive attempt at self-justification.

"What _must_ you be thinking of me, Mr. Lanyard?"

He was startled: "I? Oh, don't consider me, please. It doesn't matter what I think--does it?"

"But you've been so kind; I feel I owe you at least some explanation--"

"Oh, as for that," he countered cheerfully, "I've got a pretty definite notion you're running away from your father."

"Yes. I couldn't stand it any longer--"

She caught herself up in full voice, as though tempted but afraid to say more. He waited briefly before offering encouragement.

"I hope I haven't seemed impertinent...."

"No, no!"

Than this impatient negative his pause of invitation evoked no other recognition. She had subsided into her reserve, but--he fancied--not altogether willingly.

Was it, then, possible that he had misjudged her?

"You've friends in London, no doubt?" he ventured.

"No--none."

"But--"

"I shall manage very well. I shan't be there more than a day or two--till the next steamer sails."

"I see." There had sounded in her tone a finality which signified desire to drop the subject. None the less, he pursued mischievously: "Permit me to wish you bon voyage, Miss Bannon... and to express my regret that circumstances have conspired to change your plans."

She was still eyeing him askance, dubiously, as if weighing the question of his acquaintance with her plans, when the fiacre lumbered from the rue Vivienne into the place de la Bourse, rounded that frowning pile, and drew up on its north side before the blue lights of the all-night telegraph bureau.

"With permission," Lanyard said, unlatching the door, "I'll stop off here. But I'll direct the cocher very carefully to the Gare du Nord. Please don't even tip him--that's my affair. No--not another word of thanks; to have been permitted to be of service--it is a unique pleasure, Miss Bannon. And so, good night!"

With an effect that seemed little less than timid, the girl offered her hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Lanyard," she said in an unsteady voice. "I am sorry--"

But she didn't say what it was she regretted; and Lanyard, standing with bared head in the driving mist, touched her fingers coolly, repeated his farewells, and gave the driver both money and instructions, and watched the cab lurch away before he approached the telegraph bureau....

But the enigma of the girl so deeply intrigued his imagination that it was only with difficulty that he concocted a non-committal telegram to Roddy's friend in the Prefecture--that imposing personage who had watched with the man from Scotland Yard at the platform gates in the Gare du Nord.

It was couched in English, when eventually composed and submitted to the telegraph clerk with a fervent if inaudible prayer that he might be ignorant of the tongue.

_"Come at once to my room at Troyon's. Enter via adjoining room prepared for immediate action on important development. Urgent. Roddy."_

Whether or not this were Greek to the man behind the wicket, it was accepted with complete indifference--or, rather, with an interest that apparently evaporated on receipt of the fees. Lanyard couldn't see that the clerk favoured him with as much as a curious glance before he turned away to lose himself, to bury his identity finally and forever under the incognito of the Lone Wolf.

He couldn't have rested without taking that one step to compass the arrest of the American assassin; now with luck and prompt action on the part of the Prefecture, he felt sure Roddy would be avenged by Monsieur de Paris.... But it was very well that there should exist no clue whereby the author of that mysterious telegram might be traced....

It was, then, not an ill-pleased Lanyard who slipped oft into the night and the rain; but his exasperation was elaborate when the first object that met his gaze was that wretched fiacre, back in place before the door, Lucia Bannon leaning from its lowered window, the cocher on his box brandishing an importunate whip at the adventurer.

He barely escaped choking on suppressed profanity; and for two sous would have swung on his heel and ignored the girl deliberately. But he didn't dare: close at hand stood a sergent de ville, inquisitive eyes bright beneath the dripping visor of his kepi, keenly welcoming this diversion of a cheerless hour.

With at least outward semblance of resignation, Lanyard approached the window.

"I have been guilty of some stupidity, perhaps?" he enquired with lip-civility that had no echo in his heart. "But I am sorry--"

"The stupidity is mine," the girl interrupted in accents tense with agitation. "Mr. Lanyard, I--I--"

Her voice faltered and broke off in a short, dry sob, and she drew back with an effect of instinctive distaste for public emotion. Lanyard smothered an impulse to demand roughly "Well, what now?" and came closer to the window.

"Something more I can do, Miss Bannon?"

"I don't know.... I've just found it out--I came away so hurriedly I never thought to make sure; but I've no money--not a franc!"

After a little pause he commented helpfully: "That does complicate matters, doesn't it?"

"What am I to do? I can't go back--I won't! Anything rather. You may judge how desperate I am, when I prefer to throw myself on your generosity--and already I've strained your patience--"

"Not much," he interrupted in a soothing voice. "But--half a moment--we must talk this over."

Directing the cocher to drive to the place Pigalle, he reentered the cab, suspicion more than ever rife in his mind. But as far as he could see--with that confounded sergo staring!--there was nothing else for it. He couldn't stand there in the rain forever, gossiping with a girl half-hysterical--or pretending to be.

"You see," she explained when the fiacre was again under way, "I thought I had a hundred-franc note in my pocketbook; and so I have--but the pocketbook's back there, in my room at Troyon's."

"A hundred francs wouldn't see you far toward New York," he observed thoughtfully.

"Oh, I hope you don't think--!"

She drew back into her corner with a little shudder of humiliation.

As if he hadn't noticed, Lanyard turned to the window, leaned out, and redirected the driver sharply: "Impasse Stanislas!"

Immediately the vehicle swerved, rounded a corner, and made back toward the Seine with a celerity which suggested that the stables were on the Rive Gauche.

"Where?" the girl demanded as Lanyard sat back. "Where are you taking me?"

"I'm sorry," Lanyard said with every appearance of sudden contrition; "I acted impulsively--on the assumption of your complete confidence. Which, of course, was unpardonable. But, believe me; you have only to say no and it shall be as you wish."

"But," she persisted impatiently--"you haven't answered me: what is this impasse Stanislas?"

"The address of an artist I know--Solon, the painter. We're going to take possession of his studio in his absence. Don't worry; he won't mind. He is under heavy obligation to me--I've sold several canvasses for him; and when he's away, as now, in the States, he leaves me the keys. It's a sober-minded, steady-paced neighbourhood, where we can rest without misgivings and take our time to think things out."

"But--" the girl began in an odd tone.

"But permit me," he interposed hastily, "to urge the facts of the case upon your consideration."

"Well?" she said in the same tone, as he paused.

"To begin with--I don't doubt you've good reason for running away from your father."

"A very real, a very grave reason," she affirmed quietly.

"And you'd rather not go back--"

"That is out of the question!"--with a restrained passion that almost won his credulity.

"But you've no friends in Paris--?"

"Not one!"

"And no money. So it seems, if you're to elude your father, you must find some place to hide pro tem. As for myself, I've not slept in forty-eight hours and must rest before I'll be able to think clearly and plan ahead....And we won't accomplish much riding round forever in this ark. So I offer the only solution I'm capable of advancing, under the circumstances."

"You are quite right," the girl agreed after a moment. "Please don't think me unappreciative. Indeed, it makes me very unhappy to think I know no way to make amends for your trouble."

"There may be a way," Lanyard informed her quietly; "but we'll not discuss that until we've rested up a bit."

"I shall be only too glad--" she began, but fell silent and, in a silence that seemed almost apprehensive, eyed him speculatively throughout the remainder of the journey.

It wasn't a long one; in the course of the next ten minutes they drew up at the end of a shallow pocket of a street, a scant half-block in depth; where alighting, Lanyard helped the girl out, paid and dismissed the cocher, and turned to an iron gate in a high stone wall crowned with spikes.

The grille-work of that gate afforded glimpses of a small, dark garden and a little house of two storeys. Blank walls of old tenements shouldered both house and garden on either side.

Unlocking the gate, Lanyard refastened it very carefully, repeated the business at the front door of the house, and when they were securely locked and bolted within a dark reception-hall, turned on the electric light.

But he granted the girl little more than time for a fugitive survey of this ante-room to an establishment of unique artistic character.

"These are living-rooms, downstairs here," he explained hurriedly. "Solon's unmarried, and lives quite alone--his studio-devil and femme-de-menage come in by the day only--and so he avoids that pest a concierge. With your permission, I'll assign you to the studio--up here."

And leading the way up a narrow flight of steps, he made a light in the huge room that was the upper storey.

"I believe you'll be comfortable," he said--"that divan yonder is as easy a couch as one could wish--and there's this door you can lock at the head of the staircase; while I, of course, will be on guard below.... And now, Miss Bannon... unless there's something more I can do--?"

The girl answered with a wan smile and a little broken sigh. Almost involuntarily, in the heaviness of her fatigue, she had surrendered to the hospitable arms of a huge lounge-chair.

Her weary glance ranged the luxuriously appointed studio and returned to Lanyard's face; and while he waited he fancied something moving in those wistful eyes, so deeply shadowed with distress, perplexity, and fatigue.

"I'm very tired indeed," she confessed--"more than I guessed. But I'm sure I shall be comfortable.... And I count myself very fortunate, Mr. Lanyard. You've been more kind than I deserved. Without you, I don't like to think what might have become of me...."

"Please don't!" he pleaded and, suddenly discountenanced by consciousness of his duplicity, turned to the stairs. "Good night, Miss Bannon," he mumbled; and was half-way down before he heard his valediction faintly echoed.

As he gained the lower floor, the door was closed at the top of the stairs and its bolt shot home with a soft thud.

But turning to lock the lower door, he stayed his hand in transient indecision.

"Damn it!" he growled uneasily--"there can't be any harm in that girl! Impossible for eyes like hers to lie!... And yet ... And yet!... Oh, what's the matter with me? Am I losing my grip? Why stick at ordinary precaution against treachery on the part of a woman who's nothing to me and of whom I know nothing that isn't conspicuously questionable?... All because of a pretty face and an appealing manner!"

And so he secured that door, if very quietly; and having pocketed the key and made the round of doors and windows, examining their locks, he stumbled heavily into the bedroom of his friend the artist.

Darkness overwhelmed him then: he was stricken down by sleep as an ox falls under the pole.

XII

AWAKENING

It was late afternoon when Lanyard wakened from sleep so deep and dreamless that nothing could have induced it less potent than sheer systemic exhaustion, at once nervous, muscular and mental.

A profound and stifling lethargy benumbed his senses. There was stupor in his brain, and all his limbs ached dully. He opened dazed eyes upon blank darkness. In his ears a vast silence pulsed.

And in that strange moment of awakening he was conscious of no individuality: it was, for the time, as if he had passed in slumber from one existence to another, sloughing en passant all his three-fold personality as Marcel Troyon, Michael Lanyard, and the Lone Wolf. Had any one of these names been uttered in his hearing just then it would have meant nothing to him--or little more than nothing: he was for the time being merely _himself_, a shell of sensations enclosing dull embers of vitality.

For several minutes he lay without moving, curiously intrigued by this riddle of identity: it was but slowly that his mind, like a blind hand groping round a dark chamber, picked up the filaments of memory.

One by one the connections were renewed, the circuits closed....

But, singularly enough in his understanding, his first thought was of the girl upstairs in the studio, unconsciously his prisoner and hostage--rather than of himself, who lay there, heavy with loss of sleep, languidly trying to realize himself.

For he was no more as he had been. Wherein the difference lay he couldn't say, but that a difference existed he was persuaded--that he had changed, that some strange reaction in the chemistry of his nature had taken place during slumber. It was as if sleep had not only repaired the ravages of fatigue upon the tissues of his brain and body, but had mended the tissues of his soul as well. His thoughts were fluent in fresh channels, his interests no longer the interests of the Michael Lanyard he had known, no longer self-centred, the interests of the absolute ego. He was concerned less for himself, even now when he should be most gravely so, than for another, for the girl Lucia Bannon, who was nothing to him, whom he had yet to know for twenty-four hours, but of whom he could not cease to think if he would.

It was her plight that perturbed him, from which he sought an outlet--never his own.

Yet his own was desperate enough....

Baffled and uneasy, he at length bethought him of his watch. But its testimony seemed incredible: surely the hour could not be five in the afternoon!--surely he could not have slept so close upon a full round of the clock!

And if it were so, what of the girl? Had she, too, so sorely needed sleep that the brief November day had dawned and waned without her knowledge?

That question was one to rouse him: in an instant he was up and groping his way through the gloom that enshrouded bed-chamber and dining-room to the staircase door in the hall. He found this fast enough, its key still safe in his pocket, and unlocking it quietly, shot the beam of his flash-lamp up that dark well to the door at the top; which was tight shut.

For several moments he attended to a taciturn silence broken by never a sound to indicate that he wasn't a lonely tenant of the little dwelling, then irresolutely lifted a foot to the first step--and withdrew it. If she continued to sleep, why disturb her? He had much to do in the way of thinking things out; and that was a process more easily performed in solitude.

Leaving the door ajar, then, he turned to one of the front windows, parted its draperies, and peered out, over the little garden and through the iron ribs of the gate, to the street, where a single gas-lamp, glimmering within a dull golden halo of mist, made visible the scant length of the impasse Stanislas, empty, rain-swept, desolate.

The rain persisted with no hint of failing purpose....

Something in the dreary emptiness of that brief vista deepened the shadow in his mood and knitted a careworn frown into his brows.

Abstractedly he sought the kitchen and, making a light, washed up at the tap, then foraged for breakfast. Persistence turned up a spirit-stove, a half-bottle of methylated, a packet of tea, a tin or two of biscuit, as many more of potted meats: left-overs from the artist's stock, dismally scant and uninviting in array. With these he made the discovery that he was half-famished, and found no reason to believe that the girl would be in any better case. An expedition to the nearest charcuterie was indicated; but after he had searched for and found an old raincoat of Solon's, Lanyard decided against leaving the girl alone. Pending her appearance, he filled the spirit-stove, put the kettle on to boil, and lighting a cigarette, sat himself down to watch the pot and excogitate his several problems.

In a fashion uncommonly clear-headed, even for him, he assembled all the facts bearing upon their predicament, his and Lucia Bannon's, jointly and individually, and dispassionately pondered them....

But insensibly his thoughts reverted to their exotic phase of his awakening, drifting into such introspection as he seldom indulged, and led him far from the immediate riddle, by strange ways to a revelation altogether unpresaged and a resolve still more revolutionary.

A look of wonder flickered in his brooding eyes; and clipped between two fingers, his cigarette grew a long ash, let it fall, and burned down to a stump so short that the coal almost scorched his flesh. He dropped it and crushed out the fire with his heel, all unwittingly.

Slowly but irresistibly his world was turning over beneath his feet....

The sound of a footfall recalled him as from an immeasurable remove; he looked up to see Lucia at pause upon the threshold, and rose slowly, with effort recollecting himself and marshalling his wits against the emergency foreshadowed by her attitude.

Tense with indignation, quick with disdain, she demanded, without any preface whatever: "Why did you lock me in?"

He stammered unhappily: "I beg your pardon--"

"Why did you lock me in?"

"I'm sorry--"

"Why did you--"

But she interrupted herself to stamp her foot emphatically; and he caught her up on the echo of that:

"If you must know, because I wasn't trusting you."

Her eyes darkened ominously: "Yet you insisted I should trust you!"

"The circumstances aren't parallel: you're not a notorious malefactor, wanted by the police of every capital in Europe, hounded by rivals to boot--fighting for life, liberty and"--he laughed shortly--"the pursuit of happiness!"

She caught her breath sharply--whether with dismay or mere surprise at his frankness he couldn't tell.

"Are you?" she demanded quickly.

"Am I what?"

"What you've just said--"

"A crook--and all that? Miss Bannon, you know it!"

"The Lone Wolf?"

"You've known it all along. De Morbihan told you--or else your father. Or, it may be, you were shrewd enough to guess it from De Morbihan's bragging in the restaurant. At all events, it's plain enough, nothing but desire to find proof to identify me with the Lone Wolf took you to my room last night--whether for your personal satisfaction or at the instigation of Bannon--just as nothing less than disgust with what was going on made you run away from such intolerable associations.... Though, at that, I don't believe you even guessed how unspeakably vicious those were!"

He paused and waited, anticipating furious denial or refutation; such would, indeed, have been the logical development of the temper in which she had come down to confront him.

Rather than this, she seemed calmed and sobered by his charge; far from resenting it, disposed to concede its justice; anger deserted her expression, leaving it intent and grave. She came quietly into the room and faced him squarely across the table.

"You thought all that of me--that I was capable of spying on you--yet were generous enough to believe I despised myself for doing it?"

"Not at first.... At first, when we met back there in the corridor, I was sure you were bent on further spying. Only since waking up here, half an hour ago, did I begin to understand how impossible it would be for you to lend yourself to such villainy as last night's."

"But if you thought that of me then, why did you--?"

"It occurred to me that it would be just as well to prevent your reporting back to headquarters."

"But now you've changed your mind about me?"

He nodded: "Quite."

"But why?" she demanded in a voice of amazement. "Why?"

"I can't tell you," he said slowly--"I don't know why. I can only presume it must be because--I can't help believing in you."

Her glance wavered: her colour deepened. "I don't understand..." she murmured.

"Nor I," he confessed in a tone as low....

A sudden grumble from the teakettle provided welcome distraction. Lanyard lifted it off the flames and slowly poured boiling water on a measure of tea in an earthenware pot.

"A cup of this and something to eat'll do us no harm," he ventured, smiling uneasily--"especially if we're to pursue this psychological enquiry into the whereforeness of the human tendency to change one's mind!"

XIII

CONFESSIONAL

And then, when the girl made no response, but remained with troubled gaze focused on some remote abstraction, "You will have tea, won't you?" he urged.

She recalled her thoughts, nodded with the faintest of smiles--"Yes, thank you!"--and dropped into a chair.

He began at once to make talk in effort to dissipate that constraint which stood between them like an unseen alien presence: "You must be very hungry?"

"I am."

"Sorry I've nothing better to offer you. I'd have run out for something more substantial, only--"

"Only--?" she prompted, coolly helping herself to biscuit and potted ham.

"I didn't think it wise to leave you alone."

"Was that before or after you'd made up your mind about me--the latest phase, I mean?" she persisted with a trace of malice.

"Before," he returned calmly--"likewise, afterwards. Either way you care to take it, it wouldn't have been wise to leave you here. Suppose you had waked up to find me gone, yourself alone in this strange house--"

"I've been awake several hours," she interposed--"found myself locked in, and heard no sound to indicate that you were still here."

"I'm sorry: I was overtired and slept like a log.... But assuming the case: you would have gone out, alone, penniless--"

"Through a locked door, Mr. Lanyard?"

"I shouldn't have left it locked," he explained patiently.... "You would have found yourself friendless and without resources in a city to which you are a stranger."

She nodded: "True. But what of that?"

"In desperation you might have been forced to go back--"

"And report the outcome of my investigation!"

"Pressure might have been brought to induce admissions damaging to me," Lanyard submitted pleasantly. "Whether or no, you'd have been obliged to renew associations you're well rid of."

"You feel sure of that?"

"But naturally."

"How can you be?" she challenged. "You've yet to know me twenty-four hours."

"But perhaps I know the associations better. In point of fact, I do. Even though you may have stooped to play the spy last night, Miss Bannon--you couldn't keep it up. You had to fly further contamination from that pack of jackals."

"Not--you feel sure--merely to keep you under observation?"

"I do feel sure of that. I have your word for it."

The girl deliberately finished her tea, and sat back, regarding him steadily beneath level brows. Then she said with an odd laugh: "You have your own way of putting one on honour!"

"I don't need to--with you."

She analyzed this with gathering perplexity. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, I don't need to put you on your honour--because I'm sure of you. Even were I not, still I'd refrain from exacting any pledge, or attempting to." He paused and shrugged before continuing: "If I thought you were still to be distrusted, Miss Bannon, I'd say: 'There's a free door; go when you like, back to the Pack, turn in your report, and let them act as they see fit.'... Do you think I care for them? Do you imagine for one instant that I fear any one--or all--of that gang?"

"That rings suspiciously of egoism!"

"Let it," he retorted. "It's pride of caste, if you must know. I hold myself a grade better than such cattle; I've intelligence, at least.... I can take care of myself!"

If he might read her countenance, it expressed more than anything else distress and disappointment.

"Why do you boast like this--to me?"

"Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels--impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De Morbihan and--all their crew."

"And Bannon," she corrected calmly--"you meant to say!"

"Wel-l--" he stammered, discountenanced.

"It doesn't matter," she assured him. "I quite understand, and strange as it may sound, I've very little feeling in the matter." And then she acknowledged his stupefied stare with a weary smile. "I know what I know," she added, with obscure significance....

"I'd give a good deal to know how much you know," he muttered in his confusion.

"But what do _you_ know?" she caught him up--"against Mr. Bannon--against my father, that is--that makes you so ready to suspect both him and me?"

"Nothing," he confessed--"I know nothing; but I suspect everything and everybody.... And the more I think of it, the more closely I examine that brutal business of last night, the more I seem to sense his will behind it all--as one might glimpse a face in darkness through a lighted lattice.... Oh, laugh if you like! It sounds high-flown, I know. But that's the effect I get.... What took you to my room, if not his orders? Why does he train with De Morbihan, if he's not blood-kin to that breed? Why are you running away from him if not because you've found out his part in that conspiracy?"

His pause and questioning look evoked no answer; the girl sat moveless and intent, meeting his gaze inscrutably. And something in her impassive attitude worked a little exasperation into his temper.

"Why," he declared hotly--"if I dare trust to intuition--forgive me if I pain you--"

She interrupted with impatience: "I've already begged you not to consider my feelings, Mr. Lanyard! If you dared trust to your intuition--what then?"

"Why, then, I could believe that Mr. Bannon, your father ... I could believe it was his order that killed poor Roddy!"

There could be no doubting her horrified and half-incredulous surprise.

"Roddy?" she iterated in a whisper almost inaudible, with face fast blanching. "Roddy--!"

"Inspector Roddy of Scotland Yard," he told her mercilessly, "was murdered in his sleep last night at Troyon's. The murderer broke into his room by way of mine--the two adjoin. He used my razor, wore my dressing-gown to shield his clothing, did everything he could think of to cast suspicion on me, and when I came in assaulted me, meaning to drug and leave me insensible to be found by the police. Fortunately--I was beforehand with him. I had just left him drugged, insensible in my place, when I met you in the corridor.... You didn't know?"

"How can you ask?" the girl moaned.

Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together until their knuckles shone white through the skin--but not as white as the face from which her eyes sought his with a look of dumb horror, dazed, pitiful, imploring.

"You're not deceiving me? But no--why should you?" she faltered. "But how terrible, how unspeakably awful! ..."

"I'm sorry," Lanyard mumbled--"I'd have held my tongue if I hadn't thought you knew--"

"You thought I knew--and didn't lift a finger to save the man?" She jumped up with a blazing face. "Oh, how could you?"

"No--not that--I never thought that. But, meeting you then and there, so opportunely--I couldn't ignore the coincidence; and when you admitted you were running away from your father, considering all the circumstances, I was surely justified in thinking it was realization, in part at least, of what had happened that was driving you away." She shook her head slowly, her indignation ebbing as quickly as it had risen. "I understand," she said; "you had some excuse, but you were mistaken. I ran away--yes--but not because of that. I never dreamed ..."

She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and twisting her hands together in a manner he found it painful to watch.

"But please," he implored, "don't take it so much to heart, Miss Bannon. If you knew nothing, you couldn't have prevented it."

"No," she said brokenly--"I could have done nothing ... But I didn't know. It isn't that--it's the horror and pity of it. And that you could think--!"

"But I didn't!" he protested--"truly I did not. And for what I did think, for the injustice I did do you, believe me, I'm truly sorry."

"You were quite justified," she said--"not only by circumstantial evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know ... now I must tell you ..."

"Nothing you don't wish to!" he interrupted. "The fact that I practically kidnapped you under pretence of doing you a service, and suspected you of being in the pay of that Pack, gives me no title to your confidence."

"Can I blame you for thinking what you did?" She went on slowly, without looking up--gaze steadfast to her interlaced fingers: "Now for my own sake I want you to know what otherwise, perhaps, I shouldn't have told you--not yet, at all events. I'm no more Bannon's daughter than you're his son. Our names sound alike--people frequently make the same mistake. My name is Shannon--Lucy Shannon. Mr. Bannon called me Lucia because he knew I didn't like it, to tease me; for the same reason he always kept up the pretence that I was his daughter when people misunderstood."

"But--if that is so--then what--?"

"Why--it's very simple." Still she didn't look up. "I'm a trained nurse. Mr. Bannon is consumptive--so far gone, it's a wonder he didn't die years ago: for months I've been haunted by the thought that it's only the evil in him keeps him alive. It wasn't long after I took the assignment to nurse him that I found out something about him.... He'd had a haemorrhage at his desk; and while he lay in coma, and I was waiting for the doctor, I happened to notice one of the papers he'd been working over when he fell. And then, just as I began to appreciate the sort of man I was employed by, he came to, and saw--and knew. I found him watching me with those dreadful eyes of his, and though he was unable to speak, knew my life wasn't safe if ever I breathed a word of what I had read. I would have left him then, but he was too cunning for me, and when in time I found a chance to escape--I was afraid I'd not live long if ever I left him. He went about it deliberately; to keep me frightened, and though he never mentioned the matter directly, let me know plainly, in a hundred ways, what his power was and what would happen if I whispered a word of what I knew. It's nearly a year now--nearly a year of endless terror and..."

Her voice fell; she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of that year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and courageous; and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in enforced association with a creature of Bannon's ruthless stamp, he was rent with compassion and swore to himself he'd stand by her and see her through and free and happy if he died for it--or ended in the Sante!

"Poor child!" he heard himself murmuring--"poor child!"

"Don't pity me!" she insisted, still with face averted. "I don't deserve it. If I had the spirit of a mouse, I'd have defied him; it needed only courage enough to say one word to the police--"

"But who is he, then?" Lanyard demanded. "What is he, I mean?"

"I hardly know how to tell you. And I hardly dare: I feel as if these walls would betray me if I did.... But to me he's the incarnation of all things evil...." She shook herself with a nervous laugh. "But why be silly about it? I don't really know what or who he is: I only suspect and believe that he is a man whose life is devoted to planning evil and ordering its execution through his lieutenants. When the papers at home speak of 'The Man Higher Up' they mean Archer Bannon, though they don't know it--or else I'm merely a hysterical woman exaggerating the impressions of a morbid imagination.... And that's all I know of him that matters."

"But why, if you believe all this--how did you at length find courage--?"

"Because I no longer had courage to endure; because I was more afraid to stay than to go--afraid that my own soul would be forfeit. And then, last night, he ordered me to go to your room and search it for evidence that you were the Lone Wolf. It was the first time he'd ever asked anything like that of me. I was afraid, and though I obeyed, I was glad when you interrupted--glad even though I had to lie the way I did.... And all that worked on me, after I'd gone back to my room, until I felt I could stand it no longer; and after a long time, when the house seemed all still, I got up, dressed quietly and ... That is how I came to meet you--quite by accident."

"But you seemed so frightened at first when you saw me--"

"I was," she confessed simply; "I thought you were Mr. Greggs."

"Greggs?"

"Mr. Bannon's private secretary--his right-hand man. He's about your height and has a suit like the one you wear, and in that poor light--at the distance I didn't notice you were clean-shaven--Greggs wears a moustache--"

"Then it was Greggs murdered Roddy and tried to drug me! ... By George, I'd like to know whether the police got there before Bannon, or somebody else, discovered the substitution. It was a telegram to the police, you know, I sent from the Bourse last night!"

In his excitement Lanyard began to pace the floor rapidly; and now that he was no longer staring at her, the girl lifted her head and watched him closely as he moved to and fro, talking aloud--more to himself than to her.

"I wish I knew! ... And what a lucky thing, you did meet me! For if you'd gone on to the Gare du Nord and waited there....Well, it isn't likely Bannon didn't discover your flight before eight o'clock this morning, is it?"

"I'm afraid not...."

"And they've drawn the dead-line for me round every conceivable exit from Paris: Popinot's Apaches are picketed everywhere. And if Bannon had found out about you in time, it would have needed only a word..."

He paused and shuddered to think what might have ensued had that word been spoken and the girl been found waiting for her train in the Gare du Nord.

"Mercifully, we've escaped that. And now, with any sort of luck, Bannon ought to be busy enough, trying to get his precious Mr. Greggs out of the Sante, to give us a chance. And a fighting chance is all I ask."

"Mr. Lanyard"--the girl bent toward him across the table with a gesture of eager interest--"have you any idea why he--why Mr. Bannon hates you so?"

"But does he? I don't know!"

"If he doesn't, why should he plot to cast suspicion of murder on you, and why be so anxious to know whether you were really the Lone Wolf? I saw his eyes light up when De Morbihan mentioned that name, after dinner; and if ever I saw hatred in a man's face, it was in his as he watched you, when you weren't looking."

"As far as I know, I never heard of him before," Lanyard said carelessly. "I fancy it's nothing more than the excitement of a man-hunt. Now that they've found me out, De Morbihan and his crew won't rest until they've got my scalp."

"But why?"

"Professional jealousy. We're all crooks, all in the same boat, only I won't row to their stroke. I've always played a lone hand successfully; now they insist on coming into the game and sharing my winnings. And I've told them where they could go."

"And because of that, they're willing to----"

"There's nothing they wouldn't do, Miss Shannon, to bring me to my knees or see me put out of the way, where my operations couldn't hurt their pocketbooks. Well ... all I ask is a fighting chance, and they shall have their way!"

Her brows contracted. "I don't understand.... You want a fighting chance--to surrender--to give in to their demands?"

"In a way--yes. I want a fighting chance to do what I'd never in the world get them to credit--give it all up and leave them a free field."

And when still she searched his face with puzzled eyes, he insisted: "I mean it; I want to get away--clear out--chuck the game for good and all!"

A little silence greeted this announcement. Lanyard, at pause near the table, resting a hand on it, bent to the girl's upturned face a grave but candid regard. And the deeps of her eyes that never swerved from his were troubled strangely in his vision. He could by no means account for the light he seemed to see therein, a light that kindled while he watched like a tiny flame, feeble, fearful, vacillant, then as the moments passed steadied and grew stronger but ever leaped and danced; so that he, lost in the wonder of it and forgetful of himself, thought of it as the ardent face of a happy child dancing in the depths of some brown autumnal woodland....

"You," she breathed incredulously--"you mean, you're going to stop--?"

"I _have_ stopped, Miss Shannon. The Lone Wolf has prowled for the last time. I didn't know it until I woke up, an hour or so ago, but I've turned my last job."

He remarked her hands were small, in keeping with the slightness of her person, but somehow didn't seem so--wore a look of strength and capability, befitting hands trained to a nurse's duties; and saw them each tight-fisted but quivering as they rested on the table, as though their mistress struggled to suppress the manifestation of some emotion as powerful as unfathomable to him.

"But why?" she demanded in bewilderment. "But why do you say that? What can have happened to make you--?"

"Not fear of that Pack!" he laughed--"not that, I promise you."

"Oh, I know!" she said impatiently--"I know that very well. But still I don't understand...."

"If it won't bore you, I'll try to explain." He drew up his chair and sat down again, facing her across the littered table. "I don't suppose you've ever stopped to consider what an essentially stupid animal a crook must be. Most of them are stupid because they practise clumsily one of the most difficult professions imaginable, and inevitably fail at it, yet persist. They wouldn't think of undertaking a job of civil engineering with no sort of preparation, but they'll tackle a dangerous proposition in burglary without a thought, and pay for failure with years of imprisonment, and once out try it again. That's one kind of criminal--the ninety-nine per-cent class--incurably stupid! There's another class, men whose imagination forewarns them of dangers and whose mental training, technical equipment and sheer manual dexterity enable them to attack a formidable proposition like a modern safe--by way of illustration--and force its secret. They're the successful criminals, like myself--but they're no less stupid, no less failures, than the other ninety-nine in our every hundred, because they never stop to think. It never occurs to them that the same intelligence, applied to any one of the trades they must be masters of, would not only pay them better, but leave them their self-respect and rid them forever of the dread of arrest that haunts us all like the memory of some shameful act.... All of which is much more of a lecture than I meant to inflict upon you, Miss Shannon, and sums up to just this: _I_'ve stopped to think...."

With this he stopped for breath as well, and momentarily was silent, his faint, twisted smile testifying to self-consciousness; but presently, seeing that she didn't offer to interrupt, but continued to give him her attention so exclusively that it had the effect of fascination, he stumbled on, at first less confidently. "When I woke up it was as if, without my will, I had been thinking all this out in my sleep. I saw myself for the first time clearly, as I have been ever since I can remember--a crook, thoughtless, vain, rapacious, ruthless, skulking in shadows and thinking myself an amazingly fine fellow because, between coups, I would play the gentleman a bit, venture into the light and swagger in the haunts of the gratin! In my poor, perverted brain I thought there was something fine and thrilling and romantic in the career of a great criminal and myself a wonderful figure--an enemy of society!"

"Why do you say this to me?" she demanded abruptly, out of a phase of profound thoughtfulness.

He lifted an apologetic shoulder. "Because, I fancy, I'm no longer self-sufficient. _I_ was all of that, twenty-four hours ago; but now I'm as lonesome as a lost child in a dark forest. I haven't a friend in the world. I'm like a stray pup, grovelling for sympathy. And you are unfortunate enough to be the only person I can declare myself to. It's going to be a fight--I know that too well!--and without something outside myself to struggle toward, I'll be heavily handicapped. But if ..." He faltered, with a look of wistful earnestness. "If I thought that you, perhaps, were a little interested, that I had your faith to respect and cherish ... if I dared hope that you'd be glad to know I had won out against odds, it would mean a great deal to me, it might mean my salvation!"

Watching her narrowly, hanging upon her decision with the anxiety of a man proscribed and hoping against hope for pardon, he saw her eyes cloud and shift from his, her lips parted but hesitant; and before she could speak, hastily interposed:

"Please don't say anything yet. First let me demonstrate my sincerity. So far I've done nothing to persuade you but--talk and talk and talk! Give me a chance to prove I mean what I say."

"How"--she enunciated only with visible effort and no longer met his appeal with an open countenance--"how can you do that?"

"In the long run, by establishing myself in some honest way of life, however modest; but now, and principally, by making reparation for at least one crime I've committed that's not irreparable."

He caught her quick glance of enquiry, and met it with a confident nod as he placed between them the morocco-bound jewel-case.

"In London, yesterday," he said quietly, "I brought off two big coups. One was deliberate, the other the inspiration of a moment. The one I'd planned for months was the theft of the Omber jewels--here."

He tapped the case and resumed in the same manner: "The other job needs a diagram: Not long ago a Frenchman named Huysman, living in Tours, was mysteriously murdered--a poor inventor, who had starved himself to perfect a stabilizator, an attachment to render aeroplanes practically fool-proof. His final trials created a sensation and he was on the eve of selling his invention to the Government when he was killed and his plans stolen. Circumstantial evidence pointed to an international spy named Ekstrom--Adolph Ekstrom, once Chief of the Aviation Corps of the German Army, cashiered for general blackguardism with a suspicion of treason to boot. However, Ekstrom kept out of sight; and presently the plans turned up in the German War Office. That was a big thing for Germany; already supreme with her dirigibles, the acquisition of the Huysman stabilizator promised her ten years' lead over the world in the field of aeroplanes.... Now yesterday Ekstrom came to the surface in London with those self-same plans to sell to England. Chance threw him my way, and he mistook me for the man he'd expected to meet--Downing Street's secret agent. Well--no matter how--I got the plans from him and brought them over with me, meaning to turn them over to France, to whom by rights they belong."

"Without consideration?" the girl enquired shrewdly.

"Not exactly. I had meant to make no profit of the affair--I'm a bit squeamish about tainted money!--but under present conditions, if France insists on rewarding me with safe conduct out of the country, I shan't refuse it.... Do you approve?"

She nodded earnestly: "It would be worse than criminal to return them to Ekstrom...."

"That's my view of the matter."

"But these?" The girl rested her hand upon the jewel-case.