Alias the Lone Wolf Part 39

Regard, moreover, how deeply I am indebted to him. So I promised I would do my best. Et voila! I have brought him to the jewels; the rest is--how do you say--up to him. Are you satisfied with the way I keep my word, monsieur?"

"It's hard to see how he can have any kick coming," Phinuit commented with some acidity.

Lanyard addressed himself to Liane: "Do I understand the jewels are on this vessel?"

"In this room."

Lanyard sat up and took intelligent notice of the room. Phinuit chuckled, and consulted Monk in the tone of one reasonable man to his peer.

"I say, skipper: don't you think we ought to be liberal with Monsieur Lanyard? He's an awfully good sort--and look't all the services he has done us."

Monk set the eyebrows to consider the proposition.

"I am emphatically of your mind, Phin," he p.r.o.nounced at length, oracular.

"It's plain to be seen he wants those jewels--means to have 'em. Do you know any way we can keep them from him?"

Monk moved his head slowly from side to side: "None."

"Then you agree with me, it would save us all a heap of trouble to let him have them without any more stalling?"

By way of answer Monk bent over and quietly opened a false door, made to resemble the fronts of three drawers, in a pedestal of his desk.

Lanyard couldn't see the face of the built-in safe, but he could hear the spinning of the combination manipulated by Monk's long and bony fingers. And presently he saw Monk straighten up with a sizable steel dispatch-box in his hands, place this upon the desk, and unlock it with a key on his pocket ring.

"There," he announced with an easy gesture.

Lanyard rose and stood over the desk, investigating the contents of the dispatch-box. The collection of magnificent stones seemed to tally accurately with his mental memoranda of the descriptions furnished by Eve de Montalais.

"This seems to be right," he said quietly, and closed the box. The automatic lock snapped fast.

"Now what do you say, brother dear?"

"Your debt to me is fully discharged, Liane. But, messieurs, one question: Knowing I am determined to restore these jewels to their owner, why this open handedness?"

"Cards on the table," said Phinuit. "It's the only way to deal with the likes of you."

"In other words," Monk interpreted: "you have under your hand proof of our bona fides."

"And what is to prevent me from going ash.o.r.e with these at once?"

"Nothing," said Phinuit.

"But this is too much!"

"Nothing," Phinuit elaborated, "but your own good sense."

"Ah!" said Lanyard--"ah!"--and looked from face to face.

Monk adjusted his eyebrows to an angle of earnestness and sincerity.

"The difficulty is, Mr. Lanyard," he said persuasively, "they have cost us so much, those jewels, in time and money and exertion, we can hardly be expected to sit still and see you walk off with them and say never a word in protection of our own interests. Therefore I must warn you, in the most friendly spirit: if you succeed in making your escape from the Sybarite with the jewels, as you quite possibly may, it will be my duty as a law-abiding man to inform the police that Andre d.u.c.h.emin is at large with his loot from the Chateau de Montalais. And I don't think you'd get very far, then, or that your fantastic story about meaning to return them would gain much credence. D'ye see?"

"But distinctly! If, however, I leave the jewels and lay an information against you with the police----?"

"To do that you would have to go ash.o.r.e...."

"Do I understand I am to consider myself your prisoner?"

"Oh, dear, no!" said Captain Monk, inexpressibly pained by such crudity. "But I do wish you'd consider favourably an invitation to be our honoured guest on the voyage to New York. You won't? It would be so agreeable of you."

"Sorry I must decline. A prior engagement...."

"But you see, Lanyard," Phinuit urged earnestly, "we've taken no end of a fancy to you. We like you, really, for yourself alone. And with that feeling the outgrowth of our very abbreviated acquaintance--think what a friends.h.i.+p might come of a real opportunity to get to know one another well."

"Some other time, messieurs...."

"But please!" Phinuit persisted--"just think for one moment--and do forget that pistol I know you've got in a handy pocket. We're all unarmed here, Mademoiselle Delorme, the skipper and I. We can't stop your going, if you insist, and we know too much to try. But there are those aboard who might. Jules, for instance: if he saw you making a getaway and knew it might mean a term in a French prison for him....

And if I do say it as shouldn't of my kid brother, Jules is a dead shot. Then there are others. There'd surely be a scrimmage on the decks; and how could we explain that to the police, who, I am able to a.s.sure you from personal observation, are within hail? Why, that you had been caught trying to stow away with your loot, which you dropped in making your escape. D'ye see how bad it would look for you?"

To this there was no immediate response. Sitting with bowed head and sombre eyes, Lanyard thought the matter over a little, indifferent to the looks of triumph being exchanged above his head.

"Obviously, it would seem, you have not gone to all this trouble--lured me aboard this yacht--merely to amuse yourselves at my expense and then knock me on the head."

"Absurd!" Liane declared indignantly. "As if I would permit such a thing, who owe you so much!"

"Or look at it this way, monsieur," Monk put in with a courtly gesture: "When one has an adversary whom one respects, one wisely prefers to have him where one can watch him."

"That's just it," Phinuit amended: "Out of our sight, you'd be on our nerves, forever pulling the Popinot stunt, springing some dirty surprise on us. But here, as our guest--!"

"More than that," said Liane with her most killing glance for Lanyard: "a dear friend."

But Lanyard was not to be put off by fair words and flattery.

"No," he said gravely: "but there is some deeper motive..."

He sought Phinuit's eyes, and Phinuit unexpectedly gave him an open-faced return.

"There is," he stated frankly.

"Then why not tell me--?"

"All in good time. And there'll be plenty of that; the Sybarite is no Mauretania. When you know us better and have learned to like us..."

"I make no promises."

"We ask none. Only your pistol..."

"Well, monsieur: my pistol?"