Alias the Lone Wolf Part 45

"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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body...." 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 n.o.body..."

The a.s.sertion seemed to exasperate her; her voice discovered new strength and violence.

"But I am telling you I saw ... that a.s.sa.s.sin!"--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 s.h.i.+rt 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 n.o.body, monsieur? And Collison didn't, either?"