Читать книгу The Lone Wolf Returns - Louis Joseph Vance - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The first was a pretty young thing, piquantly fair and petite, with glowing face and merry eyes, at sight of whom Lanyard felt warranted in breathing an invocation to his prophetic soul. For now, it seemed, chance or predestination was making good that presentiment to which he had confessed during supper at the Ritz.

This brilliant little shape of life in the dark rectangle of the doorway had been conspicuously one of that party whose forbidding host had excited the aversion of Eve de Montalais and, in himself, half-formed forebodings. The man at whom she was so gayly gurgling over her shoulder, who wore both topper and grin at the doggish slant which becomes the author of an amusingly improper wheeze, was the little chap of the weazened wise mask whom Lanyard privately reckoned court jester to the Sultan of Loot. The latter in very person bulked in the shadowy background provided by the corridor, a presence vast but vague, betrayed by the baleful burning of fire opals as a thunderhead on a summer's night may remain more sensed than seen till a glimmer of lightning lends definition to its loom. Behind lurked a fourth, a figure still more indefinite. And in the rear a gleam picked out the hairless poll of Theodore, inclined at a servile angle.

Discovering Liane Delorme all at once, the lady on the threshold registered rapture, then ran to her with glad hands extended, her slight little body bearing an extravagant wrap of Russian sables with a grace as dainty as a fay's. Lips that didn't need paint to point their pretty contours bubbling joyously—"Darling Liane! You luscious thing! How we've missed you!"—she precipitated herself into Liane's arms and printed inconsiderate kisses upon that studiously composed complexion. When she permitted Liane to disengage and present Lanyard, he received an almost disconcertingly cordial smile and a tiny hand on which blazed in insolent beauty what he rated at first glance the most exquisite emeralds he had ever seen, who in his day had been somewhat an amateur of emeralds.

"Mr. Lanyard!"—Liane's introduction had been effected in English—"I am so glad to know you. It seems to me Liane knows all the interesting people—and nobody else."

"One trusts very truly you will not find need tonight to revise that recommendation," Lanyard returned, bowing low over the little hand. He added with an enquiring inflexion, because he wasn't sure of having caught the name aright: "Mrs. McFee . . ."

"Mrs. Folliott McFee," Liane supplied with an accent on the Folliott that supplemented something to this sense: 'Surely you must know that magic name!'

All the same, Lanyard didn't.

"Folly for short," laughed Mrs. McFee—"Folly to my friends." Then she gave a small make-believe shriek because the sable robe was being lifted from her shoulders by the gentleman of the carven countenance. "Peter Pagan! how you startled me . . . You know Peter Pagan, of course, Mr. Lanyard: everybody does."

"Business of initiating you to the inner circle of certified somebodies, Mr. Lanyard," quoth Mr. Pagan solemnly, shaking hands, and leaving Lanyard with a feeling that no man had a right to look like that if he couldn't extemporize more tellingly.

But Liane had dropped a hand upon his sleeve and was drawing him aside to be made known to the Sultan of Loot.

"Mr. Morphew: Mr. Lanyard . . . You must become good friends, you two who are both such good friends of mine."

This impressive figure of the immobile and livid face and the hooded eyes, this Mr. Hugh Morphew, met Lanyard with a manner subtly allusive beneath a show of non-committal courtesy. His smile was grave, reticent and fugitive, a solitary cat's-paw flawing the surface of plumbless deeps; his few words were carefully chosen and cast in polished periods by an orotund voice: he was honoured to make the acquaintance of Mr. Lanyard and hoped that he, as a friend of Mademoiselle Delorme, would be so very good as to become one of their number for the remainder of the evening . . . But in the cast of his eye, the clasp of his hand, in an undertone his accents had as he pronounced these perfunctory phrases, there was meaning intended to be seized by Lanyard only, and which the latter interpreted much to this effect: 'We have been waiting a long time for this meeting, you and I. But patience: all in good time we will come to understand each other perfectly.' . . .

To this finesse Lanyard returned no acknowledgement of any sort. Indeed, he contrived to appear unconscious of it, to interpose an amiably modest manner between the scrutiny of those inquisitive but illegible eyes and a nature anything but easy to impress. He had lived so long in this world, in the course of a busy life had had so much to do with pretentiousness, that secretly, and the innuendoes of Liane Delorme to the contrary notwithstanding, he inclined to suspect Mr. Morphew of being a pompous fraud, a character of the utmost commonplaceness skulking behind the consequential false front of a jerry-built personality. He might be mistaken; but for the present the best he was disposed to grant Mr. Morphew was suspended judgement.

Moreover, at the moment, Folly McFee was demanding his attention on behalf of one Mr. Mallison, another whom Lanyard remembered having noticed at the Ritz.

This final introduction was transacted without casualties but without eliciting crows of ecstasy from either party. Mr. Mallison, indeed, was unaffectedly off-hand in his attitude, he didn't care a damn who knew that, to him, Mr. Lanyard was an interloper, an upstart, nobody in particular. A gesture for which Lanyard was grateful since it enabled him to reciprocate the sentiment that shaped it without feeling remiss in the matter of everyday urbanity.

Tall and gracefully made, Mr. Mallison aired evening clothes and hair of a lustre seldom to be observed this side of the cinema screen. His speech had the tune of the educated English, or something nearly resembling it, his manners were silky and sulky, he practised a furtive smile down his nose as if he knew something but wouldn't tell, he had mastered a killing trick or two of the eyes for use in talking to women. And when it transpired, on the word of Folly McFee, that Mally tango'd quite too divinely, one felt that one needed to know no more. . . . A person of importance, if you asked Lanyard, solely as he might upon occasion shine with incandescence borrowed from the genius of Mr. Morphew, upon whom Mallison seemed assiduous to fawn in season and out.

Having offered the apology for his intrusion which custom prescribed and accepted the equally conventional assurance that all hands were ravished to have the privilege of welcoming one so well sponsored, Lanyard settled down to use his wits, as Liane had recommended, and find out for himself what this party was all about; if, indeed, it was 'about' anything more unusual than mankind's native predisposition to make light of whatever laws there be.

Certainly, if its members had foregathered at the Clique Club for any purpose other than the desire to drink forbidden wine upon premises of unholy repute, it wasn't at first blush apparent. Nobody was hungry, every soul present having sat through a supper elsewhere and earlier. On the other hand, everybody was famously thirsty with the exception of Mr. Morphew, who was alleged never to drink, and Lanyard who, having sampled it, didn't frightfully care for the Clique cellar. But all of a sudden Folly McFee, in whom artificial exhilaration was mounting apace, announced that she craved sure-enough excitement. Whereupon at a sign from Morphew the cloth was whisked away and the green baize of a card-table disclosed; whose top manipulation of a hidden catch reversed, bringing to light a small layout for roulette, complete but for chips and the metal wheel to fit in the bowl. These being supplied by Theodore, Mr. Morphew announced that he would stand the first trick as banker and croupier in one, and that white chips would cost one dollar apiece and the sky would be the limit; Mrs. McFee produced an impressive roll of bills from a jewelled mesh-bag and bought chips with a free hand; while Liane Delorme, Mallison, and Pagan purchased more conservatively but still eagerly.

But Lanyard, when Morphew's heavy-lidded eyes turned his way, shook his head: "Thanks; but if you don't mind I'll just look on."

"O Mr. Lanyard!" Folly McFee remonstrated—"and you look like such a good sport."

"You see how deceitful I am," Lanyard pointed out. "Let this be a lesson to Folly, not to trust appearances."

"But really, my friend!" Liane observed reproachfully—"you are no longer the man you were."

"I have always made it a rule not to gamble without money in pocket."

"But I will let you have any amount you want."

"You are too good, Liane. Another rule I have all my life observed is never to gamble with borrowed money."

"Your credit is good, Mr. Lanyard," Morphew tersely put in.

"Rule Number Three: Never play on credit . . . I am deeply sensible of your courtesy, Mr. Morphew, but really I will be most grateful if you will permit me to sit by and look on merely. The novelty of seeing myself in such a rôle at a roulette table will be compensation enough for the self-denial."

"As you prefer . . ." Morphew politely gave in. But before long he made occasion to exchange with Liane a look clouded with meaning, which Lanyard wasn't supposed to see and which, so far as anybody else knew, he didn't, who was busy just then refilling Folly McFee's glass and making amused response to the coquetry with which the flushed and laughing face turned up to his was instinct.

All the same, Lanyard wasn't missing much that went on, Life had too well trained his faculties to overlook nothing that fell within their range and to be wary of dismissing as necessarily negligible the most minor and incidental details of any affair. He was beginning now to experience glimmerings, to perceive that this curious post-midnight party was 'about' something after all. Even before intercepting that mute consultation of eyes he had felt tolerably satisfied that a community of interests existed between at least three of those present, that Liane, Morphew and Pagan were playing prearranged parts in complete mutual sympathy. It was just possible that Mallison, too, was privy to their confidence; but one rather doubted that, Mallison impressed one as more likely to prove a tool, a pawn, a wage-loyal henchman, than a peer of this interesting confederation.

The arguments he had adduced in his endeavour to make Eve understand that he was not a man of the sort she ought to marry began to seem inspired. Liane had never brought him here simply to gratify a vagrant whim. Neither had her half-veiled hints been idly uttered, concerning those nameless acquaintances of hers who were taking such a profound if gratuitous interest in Lanyard, and the one whom she most wanted him to meet, either Pagan or Morphew unquestionably, and who was "quite a social power . . . in a quiet way." Because the woman was well-disposed, for old sake's sake she had chosen to warn him, if in her own oblique fashion, to be on his guard with those two in whose minds, Lanyard hadn't any manner of doubt, the project for some time had been forming of inveigling him into some shady sort of association with them, for purposes of their own in the last degree questionable.

Undoubtedly they had taken a good deal of pains to inform themselves as to Lanyard's circumstances. How they expected to be repaid for their trouble remained for him to find out. Hardly out of his pocket; knowing as much as Liane had revealed, they probably knew more, even that the debacle of his unregenerate days had left him without resources other than the half-pay attaching to an extended leave of absence from the British Secret Service, and that the not inconsiderable cost of squiring about New York a woman of fashion had brought him to a pass where he might no longer refuse to face the prospect of being unable to pursue that sweet association for sheer inability to finance it—he who had been accustomed to waste money away as freely as in more spacious times he had been wont to appropriate it! A plight the more painful in that it was one he couldn't possibly confess to the woman he loved. He had gone tonight as far in that direction as pride would let him. . . .

Since, then, it was manifestly not pence they wanted of him, this precious pair, this Morphew and this Pagan, it followed that they wanted something less tangible but probably in the upshot more profitable, something which they might have found themselves in a position to require of him if he could have been induced to play roulette on credit and had lost—as he made no doubt he would have lost. Setting aside all question of the honesty of the wheel which Morphew's huge hands were manipulating with notable deftness, the observation and experience of this inveterate gambler of other days had convinced Lanyard that luck seldom or never favours him to whom its smile is a matter of life or death.

Not that he conceived the game to have been planned with any idea of inducing him to play and lose, his attendance had come about too fortuitously. To believe that was to believe Liane had foreseen that he would be marching down Fifth avenue at half an hour after midnight and had deliberately arranged to have her cab skid and land her on the kerb a dozen paces ahead of him.

No: by every sign acceptable to a fairly sophisticated intelligence, tonight's affair had been plotted for the sole if highly problematic benefit of Mrs. Folliott McFee. Not in all likelihood for the purpose of fleecing her at a friendly little game, though she was punting with feverish imprudence, broadcasting her bets and losing very considerable sums without perceptible care. Lanyard was prepared to credit Messrs. Morphew and Pagan with capacity for any degree of knavery; but their evident affluence and their association with Liane Delorme inclined him to believe that they were in this instance up to some mischief at least a cut above crooked gambling. Liane, thorough-paced rip that she was, had in the course of a highly chromatic career feathered her nest too warmly to be reduced to the rôle of tout to a brace of common sharpers.

What, then, could their purpose be with this engaging and indiscreet young person? If only one knew a little more about Mrs. Folliott McFee it might be easier to guess.

In the absence of such specific information, a study of her as she was tonight would do no harm, might quite possibly prove rewarding.

Indisputably a fascinating creature. Divested of her sables, disclosed partially in but largely out of a flimsy piece of impudence which the cynical Rue de la Paix had fashioned to serve as an evening gown, she cut a figure the most sprightly and sightly heart could wish: an animated miniature of extreme loveliness, abandoning herself to the spirit of play with the heedless vivacity of a charming child; drinking a bit more than she should, perhaps, while she watched her stakes unfailingly fall to the lot of the croupier's rake, but plaguing Mallison with a lightly malicious wit that struck him speechless and left him more than ever sulky, bartering pungent banter with Mr. Peter Pagan, cheeking the taciturn Morphew till he smiled perforce his rare begrudged smiles, and never for an instant forgetting that Lanyard was likewise an unattached and personable male; and all with a delicate air that robbed her most flagrant audacities of any suggestion of poor taste and made her seem strangely out of place in that ring of hard and selfish faces, in that overheated private room of an establishment whose every purpose was illicit, in that demoralizing atmosphere drenched with perfume of wine and scent of perfumed flesh . . . Strangely out of place, appealingly helpless for all her bravado: a child among thieves and worse . . .

But it were a thankless job to waste solicitude upon her: if Folly couldn't take care of herself, nothing was more certain than that the way to earn her abiding dislike was to try to take care of her. In New York, as every elsewhere in the haunts of men of means beyond their needs or native ability to spend with good grace, no novelty at all inheres in the spectacle of such flighty young women, amusement-mad and gifted with too much freedom from responsibility, going devious ways with dubious guides. And the worst of it is, as a general rule it's nobody's business but their own.

Now in course of time, when a waiter entered with yet another cooler wherein two more bottles were luxuriously cuddled in cracked ice, the open door admitted stimulating strains of the orchestra downstairs; and forthwith Folly McFee concluded she'd had enough of roulette, at least temporarily.

"Perfectly damn' rotten luck!" she declared, pushing back her chair and jumping up. "I'm for a dance, maybe that will change it. Who wants to take me down for this tango? Mally——?"

"You can't have Mally," Liane Delorme informed her with serene decision. "You've had him all evening at the Ritz. It's my turn now. Take Peter Pagan: he's a better match for you, dear."

"Pick on somebody your own size," Pagan paraphrased, leaving his place with an alacrity that forestalled Lanyard's intended response to the glint of invitation in the eyes which Folly promptly had turned his way. "If you refuse me, Folly, you doom me to dance with Liane; and that always makes me feel like an enterprising tug waltzing the Mauretania round the North River."

Liane retorted with one of those characterizations so dear to the Parisian heart, a deadly insult but absolutely meaningless when rendered into English; and Pagan proved a certain lack of finish in his cosmopolitan education by merely looking blank as he mentally translated her remarks. After which he bowed cheerfully to the traducer of his lineage and ambled off with Folly's hand under his arm; while Liane rose and playfully tweaked Mallison out of his chair by an ear, to his indignation, for he had been winning and naturally wanted to go on playing as long as his luck lasted.

"It isn't that I really want to dance," she coolly explained to Morphew and Lanyard as she haled Mallison to the door, "but simply to give you two time to get acquainted . . ."

Morphew lumbered heavily after her and set the spring-lock by way of providing against interruption. "Intelligent woman, Liane," he approved, unsmiling, as he returned to his chair.

"As to that, monsieur, one is entirely of your mind."

Lanyard helped himself to a cigarette and looked civilly receptive under the weight of Morphew's direct and thoughtful stare.

"Odd," that one considered, "we never happened to meet before this, Mr. Lanyard."

"Think so?"

"Noticed you about town often enough."

"But does not the fact that our paths have sometimes crossed prove we travel widely different courses?"

"I'm not so sure . . ."

"Not——?" Lanyard murmured, lifting the brows of polite surprise.

"I've got a notion, if the whole truth were known, you and I would find we were travelling in much the same direction . . . in the dark."

"Monsieur does much travelling in the dark?"

"Guess you know what I mean," Morphew's gravity was lightened by a twinkle of genial cunning. "When I say 'in the dark,' I mean, of course, the side of our lives we like to keep covered up."

"This is most interesting," Lanyard protested with animation. "You are going to tell me about that side of your life which you like to keep covered up?"

"No fear." The twinkle broadened into a grin. "Guess I'll let you guess at that, same as I have to guess at yours."

"I hope very truly monsieur does not so waste his time. I can assure him, if his guesswork were to flood with light every nook and by-way of my life, what he would see would not entertain him."

The lines running from Morphew's nostrils to the corners of his mouth took on a sardonic set. "I doubt that, Mr. Lanyard."

"My ways of life are very quiet."

"I believe you. Still, I doubt I'd be bored."

"Possibly not," Lanyard conceded. "One is able to judge only by what one has seen of you in public, monsieur; which leads one to believe your interests centre by choice in light-hearted young people, not sober-sided, steady-paced elderlies like myself."

"Oh! as to that, I take folks as I find them," Morphew alleged. "And I find 'em all interesting, one way or another. Now yourself . . ."

"But I do assure you I am not at all interesting."

"Point of view," Morphew contended. "I'll say you've had an interesting life."

Lanyard gave a good-natured shrug. "After all, it is the only life I have . . . But monsieur, I am sure"—his manner grew moderately pointed—"would find it tiresome."

"I don't," Morphew bluntly countered.

"Then I am honoured—I presume—to learn you have concerned yourself in respect of my modest self."