The False Faces (Vance)/Chapter 14
XIV
DEFAMATION
IT WAS hardly possible to watch Mr. Blensop functioning in his vocational capacity without reflecting on that cruel injustice which Nature only too often practises upon her offspring in secreting most praiseworthy qualities within fleshy envelopes of hopelessly frivolous cast.
The flowing gestures of this young man, his fluting accents, poetic eyes, and modestly ingratiating moustache, the preciosity of his taste in dress, assorted singularly with an austere devotion to duty rare if unaffected.
Beyond question, whether or not naturally a man of studious and conscientious temper, Mr. Blensop figured to admiration in the rôle of such an one.
Seated, the shaded lamplight an aureole for his fair young head, he wrought industriously with a beautiful gold-mounted fountain pen for fully five minutes after Lanyard had stolen into the draped recess of the French window, pausing only now and again to take a fresh sheet of paper or consult one of the sheaves of documents that lay before him.
At length, however, he hesitated with pen lifted and abstracted gaze focussed upon vacancy, shook a bewildered head, and rose, moving directly toward the windows.
For as long as thirty breathless seconds Lanyard remained in doubt; there was the barest chance that in his preoccupation Blensop might pass through to the garden without noticing that dark figure flattened against the inswung half of the window, in the dense shadow of the portière. Otherwise the game was altogether up; Lanyard could see no way to avoid the necessity of staggering Blensop with a blow, racing for freedom, abandoning utterly further effort to learn the motive of "Karl's" impersonation of Duchemin.
He gathered himself together, waited poised in readiness for any eventuality—and blessed his lucky stars to find his apprehensions idle.
Three paces from the windows, Mr. Blensop made it plain that he was after all not minded to stroll in the garden. Pausing, he swung a high-backed wing chair round to face the corner of the room, switched on a reading lamp, sat down and selected a volume of some work of reference from the well-stocked book shelves.
For several minutes, seated within arm's length of the trespasser, he studied intently, then with a cluck of satisfaction replaced the volume, extinguished the light, and went back to his writing.
But presently he checked with a vexed little exclamation, shook his pen impatiently, and fixed it with a frown of pained reproach.
But that did no good. The cussedness of the inanimate was strong in this pen: since its reservoir was quite empty it mulishly refused more service without refilling.
With a long-suffering sigh, Mr. Blensop found a filler in one of the desk drawers, and unscrewed the nib of the pen.
This accomplished, he paused, listened for a moment with head cocked intelligently to one side, dropped the dismembered implement, and got up alertly. At the same moment the door to the hallway opened, and two women entered, apparently sisters: one a lady of mature and distinguished charm, the other an equally prepossessing creature much her junior, the one strongly animated with intelligent interest in life, the other a listless prey to habitual ennui.
To these fluttered Mr. Blensop, offering to relieve them of their wraps.
"Permit me, Mrs. Arden," he addressed the elder woman, who tolerated him dispassionately. "And Mrs. Stanistreet … I say, aren't you a bit late?"
"Frightfully," assented Mrs. Stanistreet in a weary voice. "It must be all of midnight."
"Hardly that, Adele," said Mrs. Arden with a humorous glance.
"Dinner, the play, supper, and home before twelve!" commented Blensop, shocked. "I say, that is going some, you know."
"George would insist on hurrying home," the young wife complained. "Frightfully tiresome. We were so comfy at the Ritz, too. …"
"The Crystal Room?" Dissembled envy poisoned Blensop's accents.
"Frightfully interestin'—everybody was there. I did so want to dance—missed you, Arthur."
"I say, you didn't, did you, really?"
"Poor Mr. Blensop!" Mrs. Arden interjected with just a hint of malice. "What a pity you must be chained down by inexorable duty, while we fly round and amuse ourselves."
"I must not complain," Blensop stated with humility becoming in a dutiful martyr, a pose which he saw fit quickly to discard as another man came briskly into the room. "Ah, good evening, Colonel Stanistreet."
"Evening, Blensop."
With a brusque nod, Colonel Stanistreet went straightway to the desk, stopping there to take up and examine the work upon which his secretary had been engaged: a gentleman considerably older than his wife, of grave and sturdy cast, with the habit of standing solidly on his feet and giving undivided attention to the matter in hand.
"Anything of consequence turned up?" he enquired abstractedly, running through the sheets of pen-blackened paper.
"Three persons called," Blensop admitted discreetly. "One returns at midnight."
Stanistreet threw him a keen look. "Eh!" he said, making swift inference, and turned to his wife and sister-in-law. "It is nearly twelve now. Forgive me if I hurry you off."
"Patience," said Mrs. Arden indulgently. "Not for worlds would I hinder your weighty affairs, dear old thing, but I sleep more sound o' nights when I know my trinkets are locked up securely in your safe."
With a graceful gesture she unfastened a magnificent necklace and deposited it on the desk.
"Frightful rot," her sister commented from the doorway. "As if anybody would dare break in here."
"Why not?" Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her fingers of their rings.
"With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night"
"Letty is sensible," Stanistreet interrupted. "Howson's faithful enough, and these American police dependable, but second-storey men happen in the best-guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave your things here with Letty's."
"No fear," his wife returned coolly. "Too frightfully weird. …"
She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a pretty figure of disdainful discontent.
"But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right," Blensop interposed vivaciously. "What do you imagine I heard to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!"
"What is that you say?" Mrs. Arden demanded sharply.
"The Lone Wolf … Fact. Have it on most excellent authority."
"The Lone Wolf!" Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. "If you ask me, I think the Lone Wolf nothing in the world but a scapegoat for police stupidity."
"You wouldn't say that," Mrs. Arden retorted, "if you had lived in Paris as long as I. There, in the dear old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax not to believe in him."
"Frightful nonsense," insisted the other. "I'm off. 'Night, Arthur. Shall you be long, George?"
"Oh, half an hour or so," her husband responded absently as she disappeared.
With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped upon the desk, to the care of her brother-in-law, Mrs. Arden uttered good-nights and followed her sister.
Blensop bowed her out respectfully, shut the door and returned to the desk.
"What's this about the Lone Wolf?" Stanistreet enquired, sitting down to con the papers more intently.
"Oh!" Blensop laughed lightly. "I was merely repeating the blighter's own assertion. I mean to say, he boasted he was the Lone Wolf."
"Who boasted he was the Lone Wolf?"
"Chap who called to-night, giving the name of Duchemin—André Duchemin. Had French passports, and letters from the Home Office recommending him rather highly. Useful creature, one would fancy, with his knowledge of the right way to go about the wrong thing. What? Ought to be especially helpful to us in hunting down the Hun over here."
"Is this the man who returns at midnight?"
"Yes, sir. I thought it best to make the appointment."
"Why?"
"He said he had crossed on the Assyrian, said it significantly, you know. I fancied he might be the person you have been expecting."
Stanistreet looked up with a frown. "Hardly," he said—"if, that is, he is really what he claims to be. I wonder how he came by those letters."
"Does seem odd, doesn't it, sir? A confessed criminal!"
"An extraordinary man, by all accounts. … Those other callers?"
"Nobody of importance, I should say. A man who gave his name as Ember and got a bit shirty when I asked his business. Told him you might consent to see him at nine in the morning."
"And the other?"
"A young woman—deuced pretty girl—also reticent. What was her name? Brooke—that was it: Cecelia Brooke."
"The devil!" Stanistreet exclaimed, dropping the papers. "What did you say to her?"
"What could I say, sir? She refused to divulge a word about her business with us. I told her"
Warned by a gesture from Colonel Stanistreet, Blensop broke off. Walker was opening the door.
"Well, Walker?"
"A Mr. Duchemin, sir, says Mr. Blensop made an appointment with you for twelve to-night."
"Show him in, please."
The footman shut himself out. Blensop clutched nervously at Mrs. Arden's jewels.
"Hadn't I better put these in the safe first?"
"No—no time." Stanistreet opened a drawer of the desk—"Here!"—and closed it as Blensop hastily swept the jewellery into it. "Safe enough there—as long as he doesn't know, at all events. But don't forget to put them away after he goes."
"No, sir."
Again the door opened. Walker announced: "Mr. Duchemin." Stanistreet rose in his place. A man strode in with the assurance of one who has discounted a cordial welcome.
Through the gap which he had quietly created between the portière and the side of the window, Lanyard stared hungrily, and for the second time that night damned heartily the inadequate light in the library.
The impostor's face, barely distinguishable in the up-thrown penumbra of the lampshade, wore a beard—a rather thick, dark beard of negligent abundance, after a mode popular among Frenchmen—above which his features were an indefinite blur.
Lanyard endeavoured with ill success to identify the fellow by his carriage; there was a perceptible suggestion of a military strut, but that is something hardly to be termed distinctive in these days. Otherwise, he was tall, quite as tall as Lanyard, and had much the same character of body, slender and lithe.
But he was "Karl" beyond question, confederate and murderer of Baron von Harden, the man who had thrown the light bomb to signal the U-boat, the brute with whom Lanyard had struggled on the boat deck of the Assyrian—though the latter, in the confusion of that struggle, had thought the German's beard a masking handkerchief of black silk.
Now by that same token he was no member of that smoking-room coterie upon which Lanyard's suspicions had centered.
On the other hand, any number of passengers had worn beards, not a few of much the same mode as that sported by this nonchalant fraud.
Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits to aid a laggard memory, haunted by a feeling that he ought to know this man instantly, even in so poor a light. Something in his habit, something in that insouciance which so narrowly escaped insolence, was at once strongly reminiscent and provokingly elusive. …
Pausing a little ways within the room, the fellow clicked heels and bowed punctiliously in Continental fashion, from the hips.
"Colonel Stanistreet, I believe," he said in a sonorous voice—"Karl's" unmistakable voice—"chief of the American bureau of the British Secret Service?"
"I am Colonel Stanistreet," that gentleman admitted. "And you, sir?"
"I have adopted the name of André Duchemin," the impostor stated. "With permission I retain it."
Colonel Stanistreet inclined his head slightly. "As you will. Pray be seated."
He dropped back into his chair, while "Karl" with a murmur of acknowledgment again took the armchair on the far side of the desk, where the lamp stood between him and the secret watcher.
"My secretary tells me you have letters of introduction. …"
"Here." Calmly "Karl" produced and offered those purloined papers.
"You will smoke?" Stanistreet indicated a cigarette-box and leaned back to glance through the letters.
During a brief pause Blensop busied himself with collecting together the documents which had occupied him and began reassorting them, while "Karl," helping himself to a cigarette, smoked with manifest enjoyment.
"These seem to be in order," Stanistreet observed. "I note from this code letter that your true name is Michael Lanyard, you were once a professional French thief known as 'The Lone Wolf', but have since displayed every indication of desire to reform your ways, and have been of considerable use to the Intelligence Office. I am desired to employ your services in my discretion, contingent—pardon me—upon your continued good behaviour."
"Precisely," assented "Karl."
"Proceed, Monsieur Duchemin."
"It is an affair of some delicacy. … Do we speak alone, Colonel Stanistreet?"
"Mr. Blensop is my confidential secretary. …"
"Oh, no objection. Still—if I may venture the suggestion—those windows open upon a garden, I take it?"
"Yes. Blensop, be good enough to close the windows."
"Certainly, sir."
Stepping delicately, Blensop moved toward the end of the room.
Again Lanyard was confronted with the alternatives of incontinent flight or attempting to remain undetected through the adoption of an expedient of the most desperate audacity. He had prepared against such contingency, he did not mean to go; but the feasibility of his contemplated manœuvre depended entirely upon chance, its success in any event was forlornly problematic.
"Karl" remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he from "Karl." Colonel Stanistreet, facing his caller, sat half turned away from the windows. Everything rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows he would elect first to close.
A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had foreseen, to the right, and momentarily disappeared in the recess of the farther window.
In the same instant Lanyard slipped noiselessly from behind the portière, and dropped into that capacious wing chair which Blensop had thoughtfully placed for him some time since.
Thus seated, making himself as small and still as possible, he was wholly concealed from all other occupants of the library but Blensop; and even this last was little likely to discover him.
He did not. He closed and latched the farther window, then that wherein Lanyard had lurked, and ambled back into the room with never a glance toward that shadowed corner which held the wing chair.
And Lanyard drew a deep breath, if a quiet one. Behind him the conversation had continued without break. It was true, he could see nothing; but he could hear all that was said, he had missed no syllable, and now every second was informing him to his profit. …
"Your secretary, no doubt, has told you I am a survivor of the Assyrian disaster."
"Yes. …"
"You were, I believe, expecting a certain communication of extraordinary character by the Assyrian, to be brought, that is, by an agent of the British Secret Service."
After an almost imperceptible pause Stanistreet said evenly: "It is possible."
"A communication, in fact, of such character that it was impossible to entrust it to the mails or to cable transmission, even in code."
"And if so, sir…?"
"And you are aware that, of the two gentlemen entrusted with the care of this document, one was drowned when the Assyrian went down, and the other so seriously injured that he has not yet recovered consciousness, but was transferred directly from the pier to a hospital when the Saratoga docked."
"What then, Monsieur Duchemin?"
"Colonel Stanistreet," said the impostor deliberately, "I have that communication. I will ask you not to question me too closely as to how it came into my possession. I have it: that is sufficient."
"If you possess any document which you conceive to be so valuable to the British Government, monsieur, and consequently to the Allied cause, I have every confidence in your intention to deliver it to me without delay."
A note of mild derision crept into the accents of "Karl."
"I have every intention of so doing, my dear sir. … But you must appreciate I have incurred considerable personal danger, hardship, and inconvenience in taking good care of this document, in seeing that it did not fall into the wrong hands; in short, in bringing it safely here to you to-night."
A slightly longer pause prefaced Stanistreet's reply, something which he delivered in measured tones: "I am able to promise you the British Government will show due appreciation of your disinterested services, Monsieur—Duchemin."
"Not disinterested—not that!" the cheat protested. "Gentlemen of my kidney, sir, seldom put themselves out except in lively anticipation of favours to come."
"Be good enough to make yourself more clear."
"Cheerfully. I possess this document. I understand its character is such that Germany would pay a round price for it. But I am a good patriot. In spite of the fact that nobody knew I possessed it, in spite of the fact that I need only have quietly taken it to Seventy-ninth Street to-night"
"Monsieur Duchemin!" Stanistreet's voice was icy. "Your price?"
"Sorry you feel that way about it," said "Karl" with ill-concealed insincerity. "You must know thieving is no more what it once was. Even I, too, often am put to it to make both ends"
"If you please, sir—how much?"
"Ten thousand dollars."
Silence greeted this demand, a lull that to Lanyard seemed endless. For in his fury he was trembling so that he feared lest his agitation betray him. The very walls before his eyes seemed to quake in sympathy. He was aware of the ache of swollen veins in his temples, his teeth hurt with the pressure put upon them, his breath came heavily, and his nails were digging painfully into his palms.
"Blensop?"
"Sir?"
"How much have we on hand, in the emergency fund?"
"Between ten and twelve thousand dollars, sir."
"Intuition, monsieur, is an indispensable item in the equipment of a successful chevalier d'Industrie. So, at least, the good novelists tell us. …"
"Open the safe, Blensop, and fetch me ten thousand dollars."
"Very good, sir."
"I presume you won't object to satisfying me that you really have this document, before I pay you your price."
"It is this which makes it a pleasure to deal with an Englishman, monsieur: one may safely trust his word of honour."
"Indeed. …"
"Permit me: here is the document. Use that magnifying glass I see by your elbow, monsieur; take your time, satisfy yourself."
"Thanks; I mean to."
Another break in the dialogue, during which the eavesdropper heard an odd sound, a sort of muffled swishing ending in a slight thud, then the peculiar metallic whine of a combination dial rapidly manipulated, finally the dull clank of bolts falling back into their sockets.
"Your coffre-fort—what do you say?—strong-box—safe—is cleverly concealed, Colonel Stanistreet."
There was no direct reply, but after a moment Stanistreet announced quietly: "This seems to be an authentic paper. … Monsieur Duchemin, what knowledge precisely have you of the nature of this document?"
"Surely monsieur cannot have overlooked the circumstance that its seals were intact."
"True," Stanistreet admitted. "Still. …"
"I trust Monsieur does not question my good faith?"
"Why not?" Stanistreet enquired drily.
"Monsieur!"
"Oh, damn your play-acting, sir! If you can be capable of one infamy, you are capable of more. None the less, you are right about an Englishman's word: here is your money. Count it and—get out!"
"Thanks"—the impostor's tone was an impertinently exact imitation of Stanistreet's—"I mean to."
"Permit me to excuse myself," Stanistreet added; and Lanyard heard the muffled scrape of chair-legs on the rug as the Englishman got up.
"Gladly," the spy returned—"and ten thousand thanks, monsieur!"
The secretary intoned melodiously: "This way, Monsieur Duchemin, if you please."
"Pardon. Is it material which way I leave?"
"What do you mean?" Stanistreet demanded.
"I should be far easier in my mind if monsieur would permit me to go by way of his garden, rather than run the risk of his front door."
"What's this?"
"In these little affairs, monsieur, I try to make it a rule to avoid covering the same ground twice."
"You have the insolence to imply I would lend myself to treachery!"
"I beg monsieur's pardon very truly for suggesting such a thing. Nevertheless, one cannot well be overcautious when one is a hunted man."
"Blensop … be good enough to see this man out through the garden."
"Yes, sir."
"Again, monsieur, my thanks."
"Good-night," said Stanistreet curtly.
Blensop passed Lanyard's chair, unlatched and opened the window and stood aside. An instant later "Karl" joined him, swung on a heel, facing back, clicked heels again and bowed mockingly. Apparently he got no response, for he laughed quietly, then turned and went out through the window, Blensop mincing after.
With a struggle Lanyard mastered the temptation to dash after the spy, overtake and overpower him, expose and give him up to justice. Only the knowledge that by remaining quiescent, by biding his time, he might be enabled to redeem his word to the Brooke girl, gave him strength to be still.
But he suffered exquisitely, maddened by the defamation imposed upon his nick-name of a thief by this brazen impostor.
Nor was wounded amour-propre mended by an exclamation in the room behind his chair, the accents of Colonel Stanistreet thick with contempt:
"The Lone Wolf! Faugh!"