The False Faces (Vance)/Chapter 15
XV
RECOGNITION
PRESENTLY Blensop came back, closed the window, and passed blindly by Lanyard, his reappearance saluted by Stanistreet in tones that shook with contained temper.
"You saw that animal outside the walls?"
Mildly injured surprise was indicated in the reply: "Surely, sir!"
"And locked the door after him?"
"Yes, sir—securely."
"Howson anywhere about?"
"I didn't see him. Daresay he's prowling somewhere within call. Do you wish to speak to him?"
"No … But you might, if you see anything of him, tell him to keep an extra eye open to-night. I don't trust this self-styled Lone Wolf."
"Naturally not, sir, under the circumstances."
Stanistreet acknowledged this with an irritated snort. "No matter," he thought aloud; "if it has cost us a pretty penny, we have got this safe in hand at last. I've not had too much sleep, I can promise you, since the report came through of Bartholomew's death and Thackeray's disablement. Nor am I satisfied that this Monsieur Duchemin came by the document fairly—confound his impudence! If he hadn't put me on honour, tacitly, I'd not hesitate an instant about informing the police."
"Rather chancy course to take in this business, what?"
"I don't know. … That Yankee invention known as the 'frame-up' would easily make America too small for the Lone Wolf without the British Secret Service ever being mentioned in the matter."
"Yes; but suppose the beast knows the contents of this paper, suspects the authorship of the 'frame-up'—as he instinctively would—and blabs? Messages have been unsealed and copied and resealed before this."
"That one consideration ties my hands. … Here, my boy: take this and put it in the safe—and don't forget Mrs. Arden's things, of course. Good-night."
"Trust me, sir. Good-night."
A door closed with a slight jar, and for half a minute the room was so positively quiet that Lanyard was beginning to wonder if Blensop himself had gone out with his employer, when he heard a low and musical chuckle, followed by a soft clashing as the secretary scooped Mrs. Arden's jewellery out of the desk drawer.
Itching with curiosity, Lanyard turned with infinite care and peered round the wing of the chair, thus gaining a view of the wall farthest from the street.
Blensop remaining invisible, Lanyard's interest centred immediately upon the safe the ingenuity of whose concealment had excited "Karl's" favourable comment, and with much excuse.
One of the portraits—that upon whose merits Blensop had descanted to "Karl" earlier in the night—was, Lanyard saw, so mounted upon a solid panel of wood that, by means of hidden mechanism, it could be moved sidelong from its frame, uncovering the face of a safe built into the wall.
This last now stood open, its door, swung out toward Lanyard, showing a simple arrangement of dials and locks with which he was on terms of contemptuous familiarity; only the veriest tyro of a cracksman would want more than a good ear and a subtle sense of touch in order to open it without knowledge of the combination.
With all its reputation for efficiency and astuteness the British Secret Service entrusted its mysteries to an antiquated contraption such as this!
Humming a blithe little air, Blensop moved into Lanyard's field of vision and stopped between him and the safe, deftly pigeonholing therein the docketed papers and Mrs. Arden's jewels. Then, closing the door, he shot its bolts, gave the dial a brisk twirl, located a lever in the side of the frame and thrust it into its socket.
With the same swish and thud which had puzzled Lanyard at first hearing, the portrait slipped back into place.
Rounding on a heel, Blensop paused, head to one side, a slight frown shadowing his bland countenance, and stood briefly rooted in some perplexity of obscure origin. Twice he shook a peevish head, then smiled radiantly and brought his hands together in an audible clap.
"I have it!" he cried in delight and, dancing briskly toward the desk, once more disappeared.
Now what was this which Mr. Blensop so spontaneously had, and from the having of which he derived so much apparently innocent enjoyment? Wanting an answer, Lanyard settled back in disgust, then sat sharply forward, gaze riveted to the near sash of the adjacent window.
In showing "Karl" out, Blensop had moved the portières, exposing more glass than previously had been visible. Now this mirrored darkly to the adventurer a somewhat distorted vision of Blensop standing over the desk, seemingly employed in no more amusing occupation than filling his fountain-pen. But undoubtedly he was in the highest spirits; for the lilt of his humming rose sweet and clear and ever louder.
To this accompaniment he pocketed his pen, two-stepped to the windows, drew the portières jealously close, returned to the desk, switched off the reading lamp, and left the room completely dark but for a dim glow from the ash-filmed embers of the fire.
But before he went out the secretary interrupted his humming to laugh with a mischievous élan which completely confounded Lanyard. He was not unacquainted with the Blensop type, but the secret glee which seemed to animate this specimen was something far beyond his comprehension.
As the door softly closed Lanyard moved silently across the room and bent an ear to its panels, meanwhile drawing over his hands a pair of thin white kid gloves.
From beyond came no sound other than a faint creaking of stair-treads quickly silenced.
Opening the door, Lanyard peered out, finding the hallway deserted and dimly lighted by a single bulb of little candle-power at its far end, then scouted out as far as the foot of the stairs, listened there for a little, hearing no sounds above, and reconnoitred through the other living rooms, at length returning to the library persuaded he was alone on the ground floor of the house.
A Yale lock was fixed to the library side of the door. Lanyard released its catch, insuring freedom from interruption on the part of anybody who lacked the key, crossed to the other side door, left this on the latch and, having thus provided an avenue for escape, turned attention to business, in brief, to the safe.
Turning on the picture-light he found and operated the lever, with his other hand so restraining the action of the panel that it moved aside without perceptible jar.
Then with an ear to that smooth, cold face of enamelled steel, he began to manipulate the combination. From within the door a succession of soft clicks and knocks punctuated the muted whine of the dial, speaking a language only too intelligible to the trained hearing of a thief; synchronous breaks and resistance in the action of the dial conveyed additional information through the medium of supersensitive finger tips. Within two minutes he had learned all he needed to know, and standing back twirled the knob right and left with a confident hand. At its fourth stop he heard the dull bump of released tumblers, grasped the handle, and twisted it strongly. The door swung open.
Systematically Lanyard searched the pigeonholes, emptying all but one, examining minutely their contents without finding that slender roll of paper.
Mystified, he hesitated. The thing, of course, was somewhere there, only hidden more cunningly than he had hoped. It was possible, even probable, that Blensop had stowed the cylinder away in a secret compartment.
But the interior arrangement was disconcertingly simple. Lanyard saw no sign of waste space in which such a drawer might be secreted. Unless, to be sure, one of the pigeonholes had a false back. …
He began a fresh examination, again emptying each pigeonhole and sounding its rear wall without result till there remained only that in which Blensop had placed the Arden jewels.
It was necessary to move these, but Lanyard long withheld his hand, reluctant to touch them, for that same reason which had influenced him to avoid them in his first search.
Jewels such as these he both worshipped and desired with the passionate adoration of connoisseur and lover in one. He feared violently the temptation of physical contact with such stuff.
For his was no thief's errand to-night, but a matter, as he conceived it, of his private honour, something apart and distinct from the code of rogue's ethics which guided his professional activities. He had pledged his word to Cecelia Brooke to keep safe for her that cylinder of paper, to return it upon her demand for whatsoever disposition she might choose to make of it. It was no concern of his what that choice might turn out to be, any more than it was his affair if the document were a paper of international importance. But she must and should, if act of his could compass it, be given opportunity to redeem her word of honour if, as one believed, that likewise were involved in the fate of the document.
He had stolen into this house like a thief because he had given his pledge and perforce had been made false to that pledge, because he had been despoiled of the concrete evidence of the trust reposed unasked in him, and because he had learned that his spoiler was to meet Stanistreet in this room at midnight.
He was here solely to make good his word, to take away that cylinder, could he find it, and to return it to the girl … not to thieve. …
Never that! …
Slowly, reluctantly, inevitably he put forth his hand and selected from among those brilliant symbols of his soul's profound damnation the necklace, a rope of diamonds consummately matched, a rivulet of frozen fire, no single stone less lovely than another.
"Admirable!" he whispered. "Oh, admirable!"
Hesitant to do this thing which to him, by the strange standard of his warped code, spelled dishonour, he would and he would not; and while he paltered, was visited by an oddly vivid memory of the clear and candid eyes of Cecelia Brooke, seemed veritably to see them searching his own with their look of grieving wonder … the eyes of one woman who had reckoned him worthy of her trust. …
Almost he won victory in this fight he was foredoomed to lose. Under the level and steadfast regard of those eyes his hand went out to replace the necklace, moved unsteadily, faltered. …
Beyond the windows an incautious footfall sounded. In the darkness out there someone blundered into a piece of wicker furniture and disturbed it with a small scraping sound, all but inaudible, but to the thief as loud as the blast of a police whistle.
Instantly and instinctively, in two simultaneous gestures, Lanyard dropped the necklace into an inner pocket of his coat and switched off the picture-light.
With hands now as steady and sure as they had been vacillant a moment since, he closed the safe door noiselessly, shot its bolts, and was yards away, crouching behind an armchair, before the man outside had ceased to fumble with the window fastenings.
If this were the watchman Howson, doubtless he would be satisfied with finding the room dark and apparently untenanted, and would go off upon his rounds unsuspecting. If he did not, or if he noticed the displaced panel, then would come Lanyard's time to break cover and run for it.
With a faint creak one of the windows swung inward. Curtain-rings clashed dully on their poles. Someone came through the portières and paused, pulling them together behind him. The beam of an electric flash-lamp lanced the gloom and its spotlight danced erratically round the walls.
Now there was no more thought of flight in Lanyard's humour, but rather a firm determination to stand his ground. This was no night watchman, but a housebreaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those premises than himself; and at that an unskilled hand at such work, the rawest of amateurs practising methods as clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary on a stage before a simple-minded audience.
The noise he made on entering alone proved that, then this fatuous business with the flash-lamp. And as he moved inward from the windows it became evident that he had not even had the wit to close the portières completely; a violet glimmer of starlight shone in through a deep triangular gap between them at the top.
For all that, the intruder seemed to know what he wanted and where to seek it, betrayed a nice acquaintance with the room, proceeding directly to the safe picked out by his lamp.
Arrived beneath it he uttered a low sound which might have been interpreted as surprise due to finding the panel already out of place. If so, surprise evidently roused in him no suspicion that all might not be well. On the contrary, he quite calmly located and turned the switch controlling the picture-light.
Immediately, as its rays gushed down and disclosed the man, Lanyard rose boldly from his place in hiding. Now there was no more need for concealment; now was his enemy delivered into his hands.
The man was "Karl."
His back to Lanyard, unconscious of that one's catlike approach, the spy put up his flash-lamp, searched in a waistcoat pocket and produced a slip of paper, and bent his face close to the combination dial, studying its figures; but abruptly, like a startled animal, whirled round to face the windows.
One of the sashes was thrown back roughly, and a figure clad in the gray livery of a private watchman parted the portières and entered the library.
"Everything all right in here, Mr. Blensop?"
Lanyard saw the sheen of blue steel in the hands of "Karl," and leaped too late: even as he fell upon the spy's shoulders, the pistol exploded.
The watchman reeled back with a choking cry, caught wildly at the portières, and dragged them down with him as he fell.
His screams of agony made hideous the night. And the second cry was no more than uttered when Lanyard, even in the heat of his struggle, heard sounds indicating that already the household was alarmed.
But the door would hold for a while; it was not probable that the first to come downstairs would think to bring with him the key. Time enough to think of escape when Lanyard had settled his score with this one: no light undertaking; not only was the score a long one, longer than Lanyard then dreamed, but, as he had learned to his cost, the man was an antagonist of skill and strength not to be despised.
Nevertheless, aided by the surprise of his onslaught, Lanyard succeeded in disarming the spy, forcing him to drop the pistol at the outset, and through attacking from behind had him at a further disadvantage. For all that he found his hands full till, by a trick of jiu-jitsu, he wrenched one of the fellow's arms behind him so roughly as almost to dislocate it at the shoulder and, forcing the forearm up toward his shoulder blades, held him temporarily helpless.
"Be still, you murderous canaille!" he growled—"or must I tear your arm from its socket? Still, I say!"
"Karl" uttered a grunt of pain and ceased to struggle.
Pinning him against the bookcase, Lanyard hastily rifled his pockets, at the first dip bringing forth a thin sheaf of American bank-notes with the figures $1000 conspicuous on the uppermost.
"Ten thousand dollars," he said grimly—"precisely my fee for the use of my name—to say nothing of its abuse!"
A torrent of untranslatable German blasphemy answered him. Intelligible was the half-frantic demand: "Who the devil are you?"
"Take a look, assassin—see for yourself!" Lanyard twisted the spy around to face him, holding him helpless against the wall with a knee in his middle and a hand gripping his throat inexorably. "Do you know me now—the man you thought you'd drowned a hundred fathoms deep?"
Blows thundered on the hallway door. Neither heeded. The spy was staring into Lanyard's face, his eyes starting with horror and affright.
"Lanyard!" he gasped. "Good God! will you never die?"
"Never by your hand" Lanyard began, but stopped sharply.
For a moment he glared incredulously, and in that moment knew his enemy.
"Ekstrom!" he cried; and the man at his mercy winced and quailed.
The din in the hallway grew louder. Voices cried out for the key. Somebody threw himself against the door so heavily that it shook.
The emergency forced itself upon Lanyard's consciousness, would not be denied. Its dilemma seemed calculated to unseat his reason. If he lingered, he was lost. Either he must grant this creature new lease of life, or be caught and pay the penalty of murder for an execution as surely just as any in the history of mankind.
It was bitter, too bitter to have come to this his hour so long desired, so long deferred, so arduously sought, and have the fruits of it snatched from his craving grasp.
He could not bring himself to this renunciation; slowly his fingers tightened on the other's throat.
Driven to desperation by the light of madness that began to flicker in Lanyard's eyes, the Prussian abruptly put all he had of might and fury into one final effort, threw Lanyard off, and in turn attacked him, fighting like a lunatic for footroom, for space enough to turn and make for the windows.
In spite of all he could do Lanyard saw the man work away from the wall and manoeuvre his back toward the windows; then he flew at him with redoubled fury, driving home blow after blow that beat down Ekstrom's guard and sent him staggering helplessly, till an uppercut, swinging in under his uplifted forearms, put an end to the combat. Ekstrom shot backward half a dozen feet, stumbled over the prostrate body of the watchman, and crashed headlong into the windows, going down in a shower of shattered glass.
In one and the same instant Lanyard darted back and dropped upon his knees in the shadow of the club lounge, and the door to the hallway slammed open. A knot of men, to the number of half a dozen, tumbling into the library, saw that figure floundering amid the ruins of the window, and made for it, passing on the other side of the lounge, between it and the fireplace.
Unseen, Lanyard rose, ran crouching across the room; found the side door, opened it just far enough to permit the passage of his body, and drew it to behind him.
Ninety-fifth Street was a lonely lane of midnight quiet. He sped across it like the shadow of a cloud wind-hunted.