Part 8 (1/2)

”O quite!” Lanyard a.s.sented carelessly. He held out his hand.

”Good-bye, my friend.”

The Jew shook hands warmly.

”Good night, monsieur--and the best of luck!”

There was significance in his last words that Lanyard did not trouble to a.n.a.lyze. Beyond doubt, the man knew more than he dared admit. And the adventurer told himself he could shrewdly surmise most of that which the other had felt constrained to leave unspoken.

Pressure from some quarter had been brought to bear upon that eminently respectable firm of jewel dealers in Amsterdam to induce them to discontinue their clandestine relations with the Lone Wolf, profitable though these must have been.

Lanyard believed he could name the quarter whence this pressure was being exerted, but before going further or coming to any momentous decision, he was determined to know to a certainty who were arrayed against him and how much importance he need attach to their antagonism.

If he failed in this, it would be the fault of the other side, not his for want of readiness to accept its invitation.

In brief, he didn't for an instant contemplate abandoning either his rigid rule of solitude or his chosen career without a fight; but he preferred not to fight in the dark.

Anger burned in him no less hotly than chagrin. It could hardly be otherwise with one who, so long suffered to go his way without let or hindrance, now suddenly, in the course of a few brief hours, found himself brought up with a round turn--hemmed in and menaced on every side by secret opposition and hostility.

He no longer feared to be watched; and the very fact that, as far as he could see, he wasn't watched, only added fuel to his resentment, demonstrating as it did so patently the cynical a.s.surance of the Pack that they had him cornered, without alternative other than to supple himself to their will.

To the driver of the first taxicab he met, Lanyard said ”L'Abbaye,”

then shutting himself within the conveyance, surrendered to the most morose reflections.

Nothing of this mood was, however, apparent in his manner on alighting.

He bore a countenance of amiable insouciance through the portals of this festal inst.i.tution whose proudest boast and--incidentally--sole claim to uniquity is that it never opens its doors before midnight nor closes them before dawn.

He had moved about with such celerity since entering his flat on the rue Roget that it was even now only two o'clock; an hour at which revelry might be expected to have reached its apogee in this, the soi-disant ”smartest” place in Paris.

A less sophisticated adventurer might have been flattered by the cordiality of his reception at the hands of that arbiter elegantiarum the maitre-d'hotel.

”Ah-h, Monsieur Lanya_rrr_! But it is long since we have been so favoured. However, I have kept your table for you.”

”Have you, though?”

”Could it be otherwise, after receipt of your honoured order?”

”No,” said Lanyard coolly, ”I presume not, if you value your peace of mind.”

”Monsieur is alone?” This with an accent of disappointment.

”Temporarily, it would seem so.”

”But this way, if you please....”

In the wake of the functionary, Lanyard traversed that frowsy anteroom where doubtful wasters are herded on suspicion in company with the corps of automatic Baccha.n.a.lians and figurantes, to the main restaurant, the inner sanctum toward which the nave soul of the travel-bitten Anglo-Saxon aspires so ardently.

It was not a large room; irregularly octagonal in shape, lined with wall-seats behind a close-set rank of tables; better lighted than most Parisian restaurants, that is to say, less glaringly; abominably ventilated; the open s.p.a.ce in the middle of the floor reserved for a handful of haggard young professional dancers, their stunted bodies more or less costumed in brilliant colours, footing it with all the vivacity to be expected of five-francs per night per head; the tables occupied by parties Anglo-Saxon and French in the proportion of five to one, attended by a company of bored and apathetic waiters; a string orchestra ragging incessantly; a vicious buck-n.i.g.g.e.r on a dais s.h.i.+ning with self-complacence while he vamped and shouted ”_Waitin' foh th'

Robuht E. Lee_”...