Part 15

"You will never repay it now. Did I not foretell that, when I had told you everything, you would forget your pledge to me? 'Prove me ungrateful'--out of your own mouth, Michael!--'and you can ask nothing of me I will refuse to do in testimony to my penitence.'"

Still unresisting in her embrace, he asked: "And I am already proved ungrateful in your sight?"

"Do you not mean to forsake me, put me by now I am of no more use?"

"I have not said so."

"What else do you intend, when you tell me of your determination to go back to New York?"

"One must first pay one's debts--"

"Then the debt you owe my love and devotion stands second to the debt you owe self-love?"

"Say, rather, self-respect; wanting that, no man can claim to deserve any woman's love. Let me first of all settle my reckoning with Society--"

"There will be nothing of you left for me!"

"In one breath you urge me to hold myself blameless for wrongs done to others that I don't remember, in the next you call me to account for obligations to you incurred under the same conditions."

"I am not concerned with consistency, Michael, but with love. You have made yourself too dear to me, even though you didn't know what you were doing--I can't go on without you now. You hold your dream of honesty dear; do not deny me my dream of decency. Back there in New York we joined our lives, outlaw and outcast; we must go on together or forego all hope for all time. Give me at least the fair chance you ask for yourself . . ."

Her prayers ran out in a mumble under a hand which gently closed her mouth; ears not deaf to them had been quick none the less to pick up footfalls in the passageway. Now in the hush that fell the knob of the stateroom door rattled, the door itself creaked to the pressure of a shoulder, someone swore indignantly beyond it, and immediately a knock weighted with authority resounded on its panels.

In the panting bosom pressed to his Lanyard felt the heart leap and flutter wildly. To a whisper of dismay, "They have come for you already!" he returned with calm: "Never fear--they shan't get me."

The summons was repeated.

"What can you do?" Liane breathed.

"Nothing so long as I am not free to move."

Her arms fell away, but her hands lingered upon his shoulders. In the passage several men were confabulating in mutters dulled by the intervening door. One became articulate in vexation: "I tell you, he didn't get enough dope in that powder to make him sleep like this!"

Again Liane's whisper: "What shall we do?"

Lanyard considered: "We can't keep them out . . . may as well let them in."

"But you said you wouldn't give yourself up--"

"No more do I mean to."

The knuckles of authority drummed on for a moment. When they ceased Lanyard was hailed right cheerily: "I say, Mr. Duchemin wake up, let me in! It's I, Dr. Bright. Don't you hear me?"

"But Michael!" the whisper implored him--"you can't stand off the whole ship!"

"Why did you bring me that pistol, then?"

"Not in anticipation of anything like this--"

"Don't worry: I shan't use it. I've a better plan. I count on you: stand by to draw the bolt when I give the word."

Lanyard watched the dim shape of Liane fall back to the door. Bright was yapping with a Judas tongue, bidding him open in the sacred name of fellowship. With the thick enunciation of one just wakened from the deep sweet sleep of an innocent Lanyard responded: "Half a minute! What's the row?" Then more quietly--"Ready, Liane?"

"Yes, but--"

"Fall back behind the door when you open it."

No time-wasting preparations to make, only a dressing gown to shrug out of: he stood in shirt and trousers, shoeless.

"Now!"

As the bolt grated, Lanyard set a foot upon the transom, a hand to the sill of the window-port, and lifted himself nimbly through that narrow outlet, dropping to the deck on feet as furtive as a cat's.

For an instant he stood glancing alertly forward, aft, and over the rail. The deck was deserted, a solitary coast light abeam blinked forlornly, a minute spark lost beyond a measureless waste of grim black water. Dubiously Lanyard considered it: a pull to daunt the heart of the boldest swimmer . . .

The dark port behind him turned into a square of staring amber. Through it broke a din of voices blasphemous in anger and disappointment. Lanyard darted aft.

The watch on the afterdeck witnessed the plunge of a dark body from the rail of the promenade deck down over the side. A man who appeared at the same rail an instant later lifted up a voice of authentic seafaring whine:

"_Man oo-verboard!_"

The watch took up the cry.

XVII

Sea-wise Bahaman corespondents of American press services were of one mind concerning Lanyard's disappearance from the Port Royal, arguing that the known conditions of time and tide ruled it out of all consideration as a sane attempt at escape. The stories they cabled North were accordingly published, for the most part, under headlines something in this sense:

LONE WOLF SUICIDES AT SEA

Lanyard, these reports related, had gone overboard, rather than submit to arrest, after dark of a moonless night, when the Port Royal was standing into Northeast Providence Channel, her position being approximately midway between its jaws. Thus, if he dreamed to win to land either in the North, where Hole-in-the-Wall Lighthouse sentinels the southernmost point of Great Abaco Island, or in South, where Egg Island Light warns of the perils lying off the northerly tip of Eleuthera, the fugitive had undertaken a ten-mile pull against the drag of the strong offshore current which was setting through the channel at the time; a task which must have thwarted the stoutest effort of the strongest swimmer, even assuming that the sharks with which those waters swarm had been content to let him pass unmolested. Something which, the consensus maintained, in the case of Lanyard, the sharks indisputably hadn't.

That cry of "Man overboard!" had brought the Port Royal to a prompt and a dead halt; the waters roundabout had been lavishly sown with ring-buoys as well as with floating flares, guided by whose weird illumination a life-boat quartered the theatre of the mystery for upwards of an hour before the steamer called it in and proceeded. Nevertheless the authorities who boarded her at Nassau, in their disappointment indisposed to accept the suicide theory, insisted on a thorough rummage of the vessel which accomplished little toward hushing the murmurs of dissatisfaction with which, at length and empty-handed, they took themselves ashore.

These doubters had at least one confrère of weathered judgment in New York, who gave free tongue to his conviction that the Lone Wolf was one wise bird and a tough fish to drown. And the faith of this one in the will-to-live animating the hybrid monstrosity of his figure had good justification in the outcome, when, one night more than a month after the event of the alleged suicide, a glare beating directly into his face roused him from the slumbers of an honest man to find that some marauder had added the cool insolence of switching on the bedside lamp to the felonious injury of housebreaking.

One who in his time had done much to make life a misery to men of wicked ways, and more than once had figured as the target of an assassin's weapon, the householder had long been accustomed to sleep with a pistol ready to his hand. But his instinctive fumble for it drew a blank this time; so, with such composure as he could command, he turned attention to the agent of its confiscation.

This person had cheekily drawn up a chair to the bedside and made himself at home in it, one of the detective's cigars between his teeth and a highball of the detective's precious pre-Prohibition Scotch in his hand testifying to amiable readiness to be sociable, provided his host had no real objection to advance.

A semi-blinded stare was met by a smile that flashed teeth of notable whiteness in a face deeply bronzed where it didn't boast a lush overgrowth of beard. This last was sparely shot with grey, and so was hair that also wanted shearing; but the rich complexion of the miscreant was clear, his eyes were luminous with vitality, he had in every particular the look of one who had consorted long and profitably with Nature in her least sophisticated phases. As for his costume, it was altogether shocking, comprising simply a cotton singlet, a coat without much definite shape or colour, a pair of ragged trousers belted with an end of rope, and foot-gear that would have kindled the envy of a slapstick clown of the cinema.

"Well!" the detective summed up his scrutiny--"if that front didn't make you the spit of the devil, I'd lay long odds you were none other than my poor dear pal, the late Mike Angelo Lanyardi."

"It isn't sporting to bet on a certainty," the guest severely pointed out. "And I'm sorry you think I'm late, my good Crane; but I'd rather far be that than never."

"It would be a whole lot healthier for you to be never, in this neck-o'-the-woods. If you haven't got sense enough to stay put in your watery grave--"

"How shall an unquiet spirit withstand the temptation thus to revisit these glimpses of the moonshine?" Lanyard sipped his drink with unaffected relish. "Prime stuff, my friend! and I will be glad to fetch you its fellow if you'll only be nice and forget for a time you're a limb of the law whose sworn duty it is to pinch out of hand revisitants, like me, from another and a wetter world."

"The devil himself couldn't twist the King's English into such ornery knots," Crane declared. "I'm convinced: it is indeed the Lone Wolf who lurks behind those lovely whiskers."

"You may be right," Lanyard admitted. "Unhappily, I for one can't altogether share your certainty."

Crane made nothing of that, so let it pass. "Such behind the case," he pursued, "a man-size slug of Scotch would be some solace to my conscience."

"On your promise to be peaceable?" Lanyard stipulated, rising.

"Speaking as one who has seen you act up when your sense of self-preservation was hitting on all six, I don't mind passing you my word, you're in no danger of my starting any rukus without a gun."

"Or with one, I trust very truly."

"If you'd had the common decency to trust me at all, I wouldn't be missing my gat this minute."

"Common decency not being the same thing, one takes it, as common sense?"

"You don't have to worry," Crane insisted with an air of some aggrievance. "If I can't round you up without a gun, you can run loose and wild for all of me."

"On that understanding, then . . ." Lanyard tossed the weapon back to the bed. "Forgive a simple precaution not inspired by any real doubt of your good disposition toward an old friend, or your sporting attitude toward a professional antagonist . . ."

The broad of his back was a shining mark for Crane as he strode away to an adjoining room, where he made a light, and from which he presently returned with a box of cigars and a musical glass.

Crane had not stirred. The pistol rested where it had fallen. Lanyard tendered the drink and the open box.

"Astonishing," he mused, "what a sound taste in cigars one finds prevalent among members of a venal and brutalized constabulary!"

He remarked in pained astonishment that the bed was quaking with Crane's silent mirth.

"Don't mind me!" the detective protested: "it's myself I'm giving the laugh, not you. I've been figuring for some time now, you were about due to stage a gaudy resurrection; but this beats my craziest notions of what the show would be like. I'm a pretty old mule of a dick, and a tough audience for trick stuff, but I've got to hand it to you, Lanyard: I've never yet been able to dope out what your next dodge would be nor how you'd pull it. So, whenever you get all set to explain what the hell you mean by sitting there and looking like that--well, you needn't be afraid I'll walk out on you."

"You don't like my make-up?" Lanyard drew a long face over his vestments. "Do you know? I rather fancied it. These jibs seem so appropriate to my newly adopted calling. Behold in me, if you please, my dear Crane, a seafaring man fully three weeks of age."

"That leaves a couple to be accounted for, then, since the night you took to the big drink."

"There were two weeks before I became what I am," Lanyard confessed, "when, not to put too fine a point on it, I was purely and beautifully a beachcomber in those enchanting Bahamas."

"I've got a hunch this is going to be good." Crane grinned luxuriously through cigar-smoke. "At least, I don't imagine you've got the crust to think you stand any show of getting whatever it is you want out of me, without coming through with a full account of yourself from then right up to now."

"A stipulation of quid pro quo is always reasonable and in order," Lanyard agreed. "Yet I am afraid you may find my story a poor exchange for what I wish to learn from you, my friend . . ."

"It's your risk. Shoot."

"You are wondering how I eluded the authorities at Nassau? That was elementary. . . . On the other hand, one must admit one was dealing, aboard the Port Royal, with gentry of small experience and less imagination. . . . When I left my stateroom by way of its window, I found myself with scant stomach for a long swim in black water: it needs the hot blood of youth to contemplate without a qualm adventures like that. There was a deck-chair nearby, and in it somebody's steamer-rug; I folded up the one in the other, and cast them overboard. In the darkness they passed for the shape of a man to startled eyes on the main deck below; nobody questioned the alarm I raised of 'Man overboard!' There was much excitement then; but other than the ship's officers, nobody knew the unfortunate was a notorious criminal trying to evade arrest, nobody else was looking for André Duchemin--and I was careful enough to make myself insignificant. When the boat was lowered to scour the seas for me, all hands honoured the performance with undivided attention, it was easy to take refuge in one of the life-boats swung inboard on its davits on the opposite side of the deck; I wormed my way in under the canvas cover and lay snug till the Port Royal took the pilot aboard outside Nassau and with him the police agents. It was still quite dark; and as the blood-hounds swarmed up one side, the Lone Wolf dropped down the opposite, unseen. There were a number of vessels riding at anchor in the roadstead, and when I had put a good distance between myself and the Port Royal I picked out a little schooner of unkempt appearance, climbed aboard her while the anchor-watch snored, and hid myself in her hold."

Lanyard paused to puff his cigar into a glow, and chuckled. "That was a sorry shift, out of the frying-pan into the fire for the poor old Lone Wolf. . . . The schooner turned out to be a rum-runner. Her owners had put into Nassau for a night's carouse. In the morning they came aboard, weighed anchor, and set sail. When I reckoned the time ripe to declare myself, a jury of noble headaches sat on my case, decided that a stowaway with so lame a story could be nothing but a spy of the United States Internal Revenue Service; and, true to piratical tradition, sentenced me to be marooned on a desert isle. That very night the foul deed was done: the next sun rose to shine upon an outcast from humankind squatting forlornly on the beach of a desolate cay, God only knew where, and trying to recall his Robinson Crusoe . . .

"I had a thin time of it for several days, my friend! I lived frugally on the fruits of the land, when and if found, and such creatures of the shallow sea as I was able to snare with naked hands. The fruits were not sustaining, and the raw seafood made me wretchedly sick.

"The cay was one of an endless chain--little islets, some nothing more than rocks, some mere sandbanks dry only at low tide, separated by narrow channels of no great depth. I made my laborious way from one to another; but when at length I did stumble across a settlement it was only a huddle of wattled huts inhabited by negro sponge-fishers, their wives and progeny, who spoke a patois unintelligible to my ears, lived in squalour indescribable, and discovered boundless contempt for a white man in such plight. For all that, they gave me cooked food of a kind into which I did not care to enquire too closely, being contented enough to have it stay on my stomach.

"Their headman had enough English to strike a bargain with me. . . . I had fled in my shirt and trousers, the only valuable I possessed was a wrist-watch in a gold case. Sea-water had put it out of service, but the negro coveted it with great lust, and agreed in exchange for it to convey me in his boat to another island on which there were white men. Thus it fell out that, some ten days after my dive into the harbour of Nassau, I found myself on a cay of good size which served one particular band of rum-runners as a secret rendezvous and dépôt.

"My condition at that juncture was so pitiable as to make my tale seem credible; I posed as a French sailor who had been washed overboard from a passing vessel during a blow that had recently swept the islands. The rum-runners were a rough lot, but humane: they took me in, fed and clothed me, would have let me kill myself with drink had I been so minded, and raised no objection when I prayed for a chance to work my passage on the first vessel that put in to take on a cargo for the States. Having eaten their bread and salt, I shall not betray their confidence: it is enough that I was set ashore not too far from this city. And here I am."

Lanyard saluted the detective with his glass; and in an explosive grunt Crane proclaimed that he would be everlastingly damned. "You went through all that hell to come back here and stick your fool head into the noose that's waiting for it!"

"My dear friend: I didn't like to dash your expectations . . ."

"Don't you realize what you're up against?--wanted for a dozen jobs pulled off in the last six months! a price of fifty thousand cold-drawn dollars on your head!"

"But, by all accounts, the Lone Wolf was drowned to death in the middle of Northeast Providence Channel on the night of the fifth of June."

"Don't suppose anybody takes any stock in that yarn today, do you?"

The stress on the adverb caused Lanyard's eyes to widen. "And why not?"

"See here!" Crane bounced up in his bed and with every evidence of strong emotion levelled a bony forefinger; but second thought closed the lips that stormy indignation had opened, bewilderment blanked out the fire that had flamed up in his eyes, frustration slackened his arm; in mild despair he fell back upon his pillow. "I don't get you," he uttered feebly--"that's all: I just don't get you."

"But, my dear sir, it is now and ever will be my ambition to make sure that you, in your official capacity, never do get me."

But the detective wasn't in a humour to be patient with persiflage. "I don't get you," he mulishly reiterated. "If you're aiming to give me some sort of a steer, I don't connect with the big idea, when your one best bet--and _I_ know _you're_ wise enough to know it--is to keep all the scenery you can between you and me all the time, and not come stalling around in fancy dress to give me an earful that don't matter a whoop if it ain't true. Because, I tell you this, Lanyard! . . ."

Crane was again sitting up and brandishing an admonitory forefinger. "Let me tell you this here and now, for your own good: As long as I believed in you, there wasn't much you could name I wouldn't have done for you; but the way things look now, unless you're prepared to come through with something more nourishing to my confidence than drawing-room manners and a baby stare, you're monkeying with high explosive this very minute; because just as soon as ever you leave this flat and I'm no longer bound by my promise not to mix things up with you"--a move of a disgusted hand designated the pistol whose return had put the detective on his honour--"I'm going to light out after you and camp on your trail night and day till I get you right--so help me!"

"Amen!" Lanyard piously chanted. "No: don't be angry, but believe I mean that in all seriousness. Had I not expected to find such fidelity to principle in you, that even friendship cannot corrupt, I should have held to my ancient rule and played a lone hand in this game of Blind Wolf's Buff: I am here tonight for a single purpose: to ask your aid and offer you mine in the business of bringing the Lone Wolf to book, whether he prove to be myself or some impostor trading on my old-time reputation."

"So that's the song and dance, eh?"

Lanyard shrugged. "I must not resent your tone, matters being as they have been made to seem. But I shall persuade you of my sincerity before I bid you good night, and more, that grounds exist for reasonable doubt concerning my guilt of the crimes imputed to me; or . . . I will surrender to you forthwith and let the law take its course."

In a hard stare Crane wondered aloud: "You mean that, Lanyard?" But a smile was all his answer; and after another little pause the detective silently extended a hand which Lanyard leaned forward to grasp. "Now lay 'em on the table, face up."

"I have every confidence in your charity," Lanyard responded, sitting back; "but what I shall tell you now will test it. On the night of the third of November last--"

"That night after you pulled that turn with Mallison at little Mrs. McFee's?"

"Precisely--"

"Night of the day you disappeared!"

"'Disappeared'?"

"Nobody I know has seen hair nor hide of you since."

"That's most interesting," Lanyard commented, making mental memoranda. "You know nothing, then, of a motor accident on the Armonk Road in which I was involved on the night in question?"

"First I've heard of it."

"There was such an accident, notwithstanding, in which I sustained grave injuries; I bear a new scar upon my head, beneath the hair, that satisfies me at least one hurt was grave."

"Well!" Crane laughed shortly--"guess you ought to know if anybody."

"That's the very point: I ought to--but I don't."

"Mean to say you don't remember--?"

"Between the moment when I was struck and thrown by a motor-car that night of November, and the moment when, on the morning of the fifth of June, I bumped my head badly, falling from a companion-ladder on the Port Royal, I remember nothing. For all I know of my life between these dates, I am indebted to a lady who may or may not be a sacred vessel of the unbiased truth--Mademoiselle Delorme."

"Liane Delorme!" cried Crane--"where in time did you meet up with that war-horse?"

"On board the Port Royal."

"Funny! that dame sailed for France last February--by request--and specially requested not to come back, too."

"You are sure?"

"Made it my business to see her off. The Lone Wolf had just begun to be a regular pest, about that time, and I thought maybe little Liane knew more than she was willing to let on. So we got the Government to put on the screws; it amounted to her being deported, though she was given to understand the Government's memory might go bad if her's got good. But she left swearing in seven languages, none of 'em ladylike, she didn't know the first thing about you and was a cruelly misjudged woman and all like that."

"Yet she must have returned, to have sailed on the Port Royal with me."

"Oh! there are a hundred different ways, all good, for an undesirable alien to sneak into this country--by rail from Canada or Mexico, or through any port but New York--running next to no risk of being spotted and held up except by accident."