Part 17 (1/2)
”I see.” There had sounded in her tone a finality which signified desire to drop the subject. None the less, he pursued mischievously: ”Permit me to wish you bon voyage, Miss Bannon... and to express my regret that circ.u.mstances have conspired to change your plans.”
She was still eyeing him askance, dubiously, as if weighing the question of his acquaintance with her plans, when the fiacre lumbered from the rue Vivienne into the place de la Bourse, rounded that frowning pile, and drew up on its north side before the blue lights of the all-night telegraph bureau.
”With permission,” Lanyard said, unlatching the door, ”I'll stop off here. But I'll direct the cocher very carefully to the Gare du Nord.
Please don't even tip him--that's my affair. No--not another word of thanks; to have been permitted to be of service--it is a unique pleasure, Miss Bannon. And so, good night!”
With an effect that seemed little less than timid, the girl offered her hand.
”Thank you, Mr. Lanyard,” she said in an unsteady voice. ”I am sorry--”
But she didn't say what it was she regretted; and Lanyard, standing with bared head in the driving mist, touched her fingers coolly, repeated his farewells, and gave the driver both money and instructions, and watched the cab lurch away before he approached the telegraph bureau....
But the enigma of the girl so deeply intrigued his imagination that it was only with difficulty that he concocted a non-committal telegram to Roddy's friend in the Prefecture--that imposing personage who had watched with the man from Scotland Yard at the platform gates in the Gare du Nord.
It was couched in English, when eventually composed and submitted to the telegraph clerk with a fervent if inaudible prayer that he might be ignorant of the tongue.
_”Come at once to my room at Troyon's. Enter via adjoining room prepared for immediate action on important development. Urgent. Roddy.”_
Whether or not this were Greek to the man behind the wicket, it was accepted with complete indifference--or, rather, with an interest that apparently evaporated on receipt of the fees. Lanyard couldn't see that the clerk favoured him with as much as a curious glance before he turned away to lose himself, to bury his ident.i.ty finally and forever under the incognito of the Lone Wolf.
He couldn't have rested without taking that one step to compa.s.s the arrest of the American a.s.sa.s.sin; now with luck and prompt action on the part of the Prefecture, he felt sure Roddy would be avenged by Monsieur de Paris.... But it was very well that there should exist no clue whereby the author of that mysterious telegram might be traced....
It was, then, not an ill-pleased Lanyard who slipped oft into the night and the rain; but his exasperation was elaborate when the first object that met his gaze was that wretched fiacre, back in place before the door, Lucia Bannon leaning from its lowered window, the cocher on his box brandis.h.i.+ng an importunate whip at the adventurer.
He barely escaped choking on suppressed profanity; and for two sous would have swung on his heel and ignored the girl deliberately. But he didn't dare: close at hand stood a sergent de ville, inquisitive eyes bright beneath the dripping visor of his kepi, keenly welcoming this diversion of a cheerless hour.
With at least outward semblance of resignation, Lanyard approached the window.
”I have been guilty of some stupidity, perhaps?” he enquired with lip-civility that had no echo in his heart. ”But I am sorry--”
”The stupidity is mine,” the girl interrupted in accents tense with agitation. ”Mr. Lanyard, I--I--”
Her voice faltered and broke off in a short, dry sob, and she drew back with an effect of instinctive distaste for public emotion. Lanyard smothered an impulse to demand roughly ”Well, what now?” and came closer to the window.
”Something more I can do, Miss Bannon?”
”I don't know.... I've just found it out--I came away so hurriedly I never thought to make sure; but I've no money--not a franc!”
After a little pause he commented helpfully: ”That does complicate matters, doesn't it?”
”What am I to do? I can't go back--I won't! Anything rather. You may judge how desperate I am, when I prefer to throw myself on your generosity--and already I've strained your patience--”
”Not much,” he interrupted in a soothing voice. ”But--half a moment--we must talk this over.”
Directing the cocher to drive to the place Pigalle, he reentered the cab, suspicion more than ever rife in his mind. But as far as he could see--with that confounded sergo staring!--there was nothing else for it. He couldn't stand there in the rain forever, gossiping with a girl half-hysterical--or pretending to be.
”You see,” she explained when the fiacre was again under way, ”I thought I had a hundred-franc note in my pocketbook; and so I have--but the pocketbook's back there, in my room at Troyon's.”
”A hundred francs wouldn't see you far toward New York,” he observed thoughtfully.