The Lone Wolf Series. Louis Joseph Vance
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Bending forward, an elbow on the table, she worked her hands together until their knuckles shone white through the skin — but not as white as the face from which her eyes sought his with a look of dumb horror, dazed, pitiful, imploring.
"You're not deceiving me? But no — why should you?" she faltered. "But how terrible, how unspeakably awful! …"
"I'm sorry," Lanyard mumbled — "I'd have held my tongue if I hadn't thought you knew — "
"You thought I knew — and didn't lift a finger to save the man?" She jumped up with a blazing face. "Oh, how could you?"
"No — not that — I never thought that. But, meeting you then and there, so opportunely — I couldn't ignore the coincidence; and when you admitted you were running away from your father, considering all the circumstances, I was surely justified in thinking it was realization, in part at least, of what had happened that was driving you away." She shook her head slowly, her indignation ebbing as quickly as it had risen. "I understand," she said; "you had some excuse, but you were mistaken. I ran away — yes — but not because of that. I never dreamed …"
She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and twisting her hands together in a manner he found it painful to watch.
"But please," he implored, "don't take it so much to heart, Miss Bannon. If you knew nothing, you couldn't have prevented it."
"No," she said brokenly — "I could have done nothing … But I didn't know. It isn't that — it's the horror and pity of it. And that you could think — !"
"But I didn't!" he protested — "truly I did not. And for what I did think, for the injustice I did do you, believe me, I'm truly sorry."
"You were quite justified," she said — "not only by circumstantial evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know … now I must tell you …"
"Nothing you don't wish to!" he interrupted. "The fact that I practically kidnapped you under pretence of doing you a service, and suspected you of being in the pay of that Pack, gives me no title to your confidence."
"Can I blame you for thinking what you did?" She went on slowly, without looking up — gaze steadfast to her interlaced fingers: "Now for my own sake I want you to know what otherwise, perhaps, I shouldn't have told you — not yet, at all events. I'm no more Bannon's daughter than you're his son. Our names sound alike — people frequently make the same mistake. My name is Shannon — Lucy Shannon. Mr. Bannon called me Lucia because he knew I didn't like it, to tease me; for the same reason he always kept up the pretence that I was his daughter when people misunderstood."
"But — if that is so — then what — ?"
"Why — it's very simple." Still she didn't look up. "I'm a trained nurse. Mr. Bannon is consumptive — so far gone, it's a wonder he didn't die years ago: for months I've been haunted by the thought that it's only the evil in him keeps him alive. It wasn't long after I took the assignment to nurse him that I found out something about him…. He'd had a haemorrhage at his desk; and while he lay in coma, and I was waiting for the doctor, I happened to notice one of the papers he'd been working over when he fell. And then, just as I began to appreciate the sort of man I was employed by, he came to, and saw — and knew. I found him watching me with those dreadful eyes of his, and though he was unable to speak, knew my life wasn't safe if ever I breathed a word of what I had read. I would have left him then, but he was too cunning for me, and when in time I found a chance to escape — I was afraid I'd not live long if ever I left him. He went about it deliberately; to keep me frightened, and though he never mentioned the matter directly, let me know plainly, in a hundred ways, what his power was and what would happen if I whispered a word of what I knew. It's nearly a year now — nearly a year of endless terror and…"
Her voice fell; she was trembling with the recrudescent suffering of that year-long servitude. And for a little Lanyard felt too profoundly moved to trust himself to speak; he stood aghast, staring down at this woman, so intrinsically and gently feminine, so strangely strong and courageous; and vaguely envisaging what anguish must have been hers in enforced association with a creature of Bannon's ruthless stamp, he was rent with compassion and swore to himself he'd stand by her and see her through and free and happy if he died for it — or ended in the Santé!
"Poor child!" he heard himself murmuring — "poor child!"
"Don't pity me!" she insisted, still with face averted. "I don't deserve it. If I had the spirit of a mouse, I'd have defied him; it needed only courage enough to say one word to the police — "
"But who is he, then?" Lanyard demanded. "What is he, I mean?"
"I hardly know how to tell you. And I hardly dare: I feel as if these walls would betray me if I did…. But to me he's the incarnation of all things evil…." She shook herself with a nervous laugh. "But why be silly about it? I don't really know what or who he is: I only suspect and believe that he is a man whose life is devoted to planning evil and ordering its execution through his lieutenants. When the papers at home speak of 'The Man Higher Up' they mean Archer Bannon, though they don't know it — or else I'm merely a hysterical woman exaggerating the impressions of a morbid imagination…. And that's all I know of him that matters."
"But why, if you believe all this — how did you at length find courage — ?"
"Because I no longer had courage to endure; because I was more afraid to stay than to go — afraid that my own soul would be forfeit. And then, last night, he ordered me to go to your room and search it for evidence that you were the Lone Wolf. It was the first time he'd ever asked anything like that of me. I was afraid, and though I obeyed, I was glad when you interrupted — glad even though I had to lie the way I did…. And all that worked on me, after I'd gone back to my room, until I felt I could stand it no longer; and after a long time, when the house seemed all still, I got up, dressed quietly and … That is how I came to meet you — quite by accident."
"But you seemed so frightened at first when you saw me — "
"I was," she confessed simply; "I thought you were Mr. Greggs."
"Greggs?"
"Mr. Bannon's private secretary — his right-hand man. He's about your height and has a suit like the one you wear, and in that poor light — at the distance I didn't notice you were clean-shaven — Greggs wears a moustache — "
"Then it was Greggs murdered Roddy and tried to drug me! … By George, I'd like to know whether the police got there before Bannon, or somebody else, discovered the substitution. It was a telegram to the police, you know, I sent from the Bourse last night!"
In his excitement Lanyard began to pace the floor rapidly; and now that he was no longer staring at her, the girl lifted her head and watched him closely as he moved to and fro, talking aloud — more to himself than to her.
"I wish I knew! … And what a lucky thing, you did meet me! For if you'd gone on to the Gare du Nord and waited there….Well, it isn't likely Bannon didn't discover your flight before eight o'clock this morning, is it?"
"I'm afraid not…."
"And they've drawn the dead-line for me round every conceivable exit from Paris: Popinot's Apaches are picketed everywhere. And if Bannon had found out about you in time, it would have needed only a word…"
He paused and shuddered to think what might have ensued had that word been spoken and the girl been found waiting for her train in the Gare du Nord.
"Mercifully, we've escaped that. And now, with any sort of luck, Bannon ought to be busy enough, trying to get his precious Mr. Greggs out of the Santé, to give us a chance. And a fighting chance is all I ask."
"Mr. Lanyard" — the girl bent toward him across the table with a gesture of eager interest — "have you any idea why he — why Mr. Bannon hates you so?"
"But does he? I don't know!"
"If he doesn't, why should he plot to cast suspicion of murder on you, and why be so anxious to know whether you were really the Lone Wolf? I saw his eyes light up when De Morbihan