The False Faces Part 4

"Name one--just one."

"The Lone Wolf, then."

"Unnatural history is out of my line," Crane objected. "Why is a lone wolf, anyway?"

The Brazilian's voice took on an accent of exasperation. "Senores, I do not jest. I am a student of psychology, more especially of criminal psychology.

I lived long in Paris before this war, and took deep interest in the case of the Lone Wolf."

"Well, you've got me all excited. Go on with your story."

"With much pleasure.... This gentleman, then, this Michael Lanyard, as he called himself, was a distinguished Parisian figure, a man of extraordinary attainment, esteemed the foremost connoisseur d'art in all Europe.

Suddenly, at the zenith of his career, he disappeared. Subsequently it became known that he had been identical with that great Parisian criminal, the Lone Wolf, a superman of thieves who had plundered all Europe with unvarying success for almost a decade."

"Then what made the silly a.s.s quit?"

"According to my information, he won the love of a young woman--"

"And reformed for her sake, of course?"

"To the contrary, senor; Lanyard renounced his double life because of a theory on which he had founded his astonis.h.i.+ng success. According to this theory, any man of intelligence may defy society as long as he will, always providing he has no friend, lover, or confederate in whom to confide. A man self-contained can never be betrayed; the stupid police seldom apprehend even the most stupid criminal, save through the treachery of some intimate.

This Lanyard proved his theory by confounding not only the utmost efforts of the police but even the jealous enmity of that a.s.sociation of Continental criminals known as the Bande Noire--until he became a lover.

Then he proved his intelligence: in one stroke he flouted the police, delivered into their hands the inner circle of the Bande Noire, and vanished with the woman he loved."

"And then--?"

"The rest," said the Brazilian, "is silence."

"It is for to-night, anyway," Crane observed, yawning. "It's bedtime. Here comes the busy steward to put the lights and us out."

There was a general stir; men drained gla.s.ses, knocked out pipes, got up, murmured good-nights. Lanyard closed the American novel upon a forefinger, looked up abstractedly, rose, moved toward the door. The utmost effort of exceptional powers of covert observation a.s.sured him that, at the moment, none of the company favoured him with especial attention; the author of that interest whose intensity had so weighed upon his consciousness had been swift to dissemble.

On his way forward he exchanged bows and smiles with Crane and one or two others, his gesture completely casual. Yet when he entered the starboard alleyway he carried with him a complete catalogue of those who had contributed to the conversation. With all, thanks to seven days'

a.s.sociation, he stood on terms of s.h.i.+pboard acquaintance. Not one, in his esteem, was more potentially mischievous than any other--not even the Brazilian Velasco, though he had been the first to name the Lone Wolf.

It was, furthermore, quite possible that the mention of his erstwhile sobriquet had been utterly fortuitous.

And yet, one might not forget that sensation of being under intent surveillance....

In his stateroom Lanyard stood for several minutes gravely peering into the mirror above the washstand.

The face he scanned was lean and worn in feature, darkly weathered, framed in hair whose jet already boasted an accent of silver at either temple--the face of a man inured to hards.h.i.+p, seasoned in suffering, strong in self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence coldly dispa.s.sionate, quick and shrewd, lighted those dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic cast, three years of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social freebooter of ante-bellum Paris and that undesirable alien whom the authorities had sought to deport from the States. Amazing facility in impersonation had done the rest; unrecognisable as what he had been, he was to-day flawlessly the incarnation of what he elected to seem--Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin, gentleman, of Paris.

Impossible to believe his disguise had been so soon penetrated....

And yet, again, that gossip of the smoking room....

Police work? Or had Ekstrom's creatures picked up his trail once more?

Beneath that urbane mask of his, a hunted, wild thing poised in question, mistrustful of the very wind, p.r.i.c.k-eared, fangs agleam, eyes grimly apprehensive....

A little sound, the least of metallic clicks, breaking the hush of his solitude, froze the adventurer to attention. Only his glance swerved swiftly to a fastened door in the forward part.i.tion--his stateroom being the aftermost of three that might be thrown together to form a suite. The nickeled k.n.o.b was being tried with infinite precaution. On the half turn it checked with a faint repet.i.tion of the click. Then the door itself quivered almost imperceptibly to pressure, though it yielded not a fraction of an inch.

Lanyard's eyes hardened. He did not stir from where he stood, but one hand whipped an automatic from his pocket while the other darted out to the switch-box by the head of his berth and extinguished the light.

Instantly a glimmer of light in the forward stateroom showed through a narrow strip of iron grill-work set in the top of the part.i.tion for ventilating purposes.

Simultaneously the door-k.n.o.b was gently released, and with another louder click the light in the adjoining cubicle was blotted out.

Mystified, Lanyard undressed and turned in, but not to sleep--not for a little, at least.

Who might this neighbour be who tried his door so stealthily? Before to-night that room had had no tenant. Apparently one of the pa.s.sengers had seen fit to s.h.i.+ft his quarters. To what end? To keep a jealous eye on the Lone Wolf, perhaps? So much the better, then: Lanyard need only make enquiry in the morning to identify his enemy.

Deliberately closing his eyes, he dismissed the enigma. He possessed in marked degree that attribute of genius, ability to command slumber at will.

Swiftly the troubled deeps of thought grew calm; on their placid surface inconsequent visions were mirrored darkly, fugitive scenes from the store of subconscious memory: Crane's lantern-jawed physiognomy, keen eyes semi-veiled by humorously drooping lids, the extreme corner of his mouth bulging round his everlasting cigar ... grimy lions in Trafalgar Square of a rainy afternoon ... the octagonal room of L'Abbaye Theleme at three in the morning, a swirl of Baccha.n.a.lian shapes ... Wertheimer's soldierly figure beside the telegraphers' table in that noisome cave at the Front ...

the deck of a tender in darkness swept by a shaft of yellow light which momentarily revealed a group of folk with upturned faces, a petticoat fluttering in its midst....

III

IN THE BARRED ZONE

Day broke with rather more than half a gale blowing beneath a louring sky.

Once clear of the bottleneck mouth of the harbour, the _a.s.syrian_ ran into brutal quartering seas. An old hand at such work, for upward of a decade a steady-paced Dobbin of the transatlantic lanes, she buckled down to it doggedly and, remembering her duty by her pa.s.sengers, rolled no more than she had to, buried her nose in the foaming green only when she must. For all her care, the main deck forward was alternately raked by stinging volleys of spray and scoured by frantic cascades. More than once the crew of the bow gun narrowly escaped being carried overboard to a man. Blue with cold, soaked to the buff despite oilskins, they stuck stubbornly to their posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the pa.s.sengers on the boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure--and snarled in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two destroyers standing on parallel courses about a mile distant to port and to starboard were more often than not barely discernible, spectral vessels reeling and dipping in the haze. The ceaseless whistle of wind in the rigging was punctuated by long-drawn howls which must have filled any conscientious banshee with corrosive envy.

Toward mid-morning rain fell in torrents, driving even the most fearful pa.s.sengers to shelter within the superstructure. A majority crowded the landing at the head of the main companionway close by the leeward door.

Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room--Crane starting this movement with the declaration that, for his part, he would as lief drown like a rat in a trap as battling to keep up in the frigid inferno of those raging seas. A handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the s.h.i.+p swam or sank, mutinously took to their berths.

Stateroom 27--adjoining Lanyard's--sported obstinately a shut door.

Lanyard, sedulous not to discover his interest by questioning the stewards, caught never a glimpse of its occupant. For his own satisfaction he took a covert census of pa.s.sengers on deck as the vessel entered the danger zone, and made the tally seventy-one all told--the number on the pa.s.senger list when the _a.s.syrian_ had left her landing stage the previous evening.

It seemed probable, therefore, that the person in 27 had come aboard from the tender, either with or following the official party. Lanyard was unable to say that more had not left the tender than appeared to sit in inquisition in the music room.

By noon the wind was beginning to moderate, and the sea was being beaten down by that relentlessly las.h.i.+ng rain. Visibility, however, was more low than ever. A fairly representative number descended to the dining saloon for luncheon--a meal which none finished. Midway in its course a thunderous explosion to starboard drove all in panic once more to the decks.

Within two hundred yards of the _a.s.syrian_ a floating mine had destroyed a patrol boat. No more was left of it than an oil-filmed welter of splintered wreckage: of its crew, never a trace.

Imperturbably the _a.s.syrian_ proceeded. Not so her pa.s.sengers: now the smoking room was deserted even by the insouciant Crane, and the seasick to a woman brought their troubles back to the boat-deck.

Alone the tenant of 27 stopped below. And the riddle of this ostensible indifference to terrors that clawed at the vitals of every other soul on board grew to intrigue Lanyard to the point of obsession. Was the reason brute apathy or sheer foolhardihood? He refused either explanation, feeling sure some darker and more momentous motive dictated this obstinate avoidance of the public eye. Exasperation aroused by failure to fathom the mystery took precedence in his thoughts even to the personal solicitude excited by last night's gossip of the smoking room....

With no other disturbing incident the afternoon wore away, the wind steadily flagging, the waves as steadily subsiding. When twilight closed in there was nothing more disturbing to one's equilibrium than a sea of long and sullen rolls scored by the pelting downpour.

Perhaps as many as ten venturesome souls dined in the saloon, their fellows sticking desperately to the decks and contenting themselves with coffee and sandwiches.

Daylight waned, terrors waxed: pa.s.sengers instinctively gravitated into little knots and cl.u.s.ters, conversing guardedly as if fearful lest their normal accents bring down upon them those Apaches of the underseas for signs of whom their frightened glances incessantly ranged over-rail and searched the heaving wastes.