The Lone Wolf Series. Louis Joseph Vance
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wand; the stream of east-bound vehicles checked and began to close up to the right of the crossing, upon which they encroached jealously; and a taxi on the outside, next the island, overshot the mark, pulled up sharply, and began to back into place. Before Lanyard could stir, its window was opposite him, and he was looking in, transfixed.
There was sufficient light to enable him to see clearly the face of the passenger — its pale oval and the darkness of eyes whose gaze clung to his with an effect of confused fascination….
She sat quite motionless until one white-gloved hand moved uncertainly toward her bosom.
That brought him to; unconsciously lifting his cap, he stepped back a pace and started to move on.
At this, she bent quickly forward and unlatched the door. It swung wide to him.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, he accepted the dumb invitation, stepped in, took the empty seat, and closed the door.
Almost at once the car moved on with a jerk, the girl sinking back into her corner with a suggestion of breathlessness, as though her effort to seem composed had been almost too much for her strength.
Her face, turned toward Lanyard, seemed wan in the half light, but immobile, expressionless; only her eyes were darkly quick with anticipation.
On his part, Lanyard felt himself hopelessly confounded, in the grasp of emotions that would scarce suffer him to speak. A great wonder obsessed him that she should have opened that door to him no less than that he should have entered through it. Dimly he understood that each had acted without premeditation; and asked himself, was she already regretting that momentary weakness.
"Why did you do that?" he heard himself demand abruptly, his voice harsh, strained, and unnatural.
She stiffened slightly, with a nervous movement of her shoulders.
"Because I saw you… I was surprised; I had hoped — believed — you had left Paris."
"Without you? Hardly!"
"But you must," she insisted — "you must go, as quickly as possible. It isn't safe — "
"I'm all right," he insisted — "able-bodied — in full possession of my senses!"
"But any moment you may be recognized — "
"In this rig? It isn't likely…. Not that I care."
She surveyed his costume curiously, perplexed.
"Why are you dressed that way? Is it a disguise?"
"A pretty good one. But in point of fact, it's the national livery of my present station in life."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Simply that, out of my old job, I've turned to the first resort of the incompetent: I'm driving a taxi."
"Isn't it awfully — risky?"
"You'd think so; but it isn't. Few people ever bother to look at a chauffeur. When they hail a taxi they're in a hurry, as a rule — preoccupied with business or pleasure. And then our uniforms are a disguise in themselves: to the public eye we look like so many Chinamen!"
"But you're mistaken: I knew you instantly, didn't I? And those others — they're as keen-witted as I — certainly. Oh, you should not have stopped on in Paris!"
"I couldn't go without knowing what had become of you."
"I was afraid of that," she confessed.
"Then why — ?"
"Oh, I know what you're going to say! Why did I run away from you?" And then, since he said nothing, she continued unhappily: "I can't tell you… I mean, I don't know how to tell you!"
She kept her face averted, sat gazing blankly out of the window; but when he sat on, mute and unresponsive — in point of fact not knowing what to say — she turned to look at him, and the glare of a passing lamp showed her countenance profoundly distressed, mouth tense, brows knotted, eyes clouded with perplexity and appeal.
And of a sudden, seeing her so tormented and so piteous, his indignation ebbed, and with it all his doubts of her were dissipated; dimly he divined that something behind this dark fabric of mystery and inconsistency, no matter how inexplicable to him, excused all her apparent faithlessness and instability of character and purpose. He could not look upon this girl and hear her voice and believe that she was not at heart as sound and sweet, tender and loyal, as any that ever breathed.
A wave of tenderness and compassion brimmed his heart; he realized that he didn't matter, that his amour propre was of no account — that nothing mattered so long as she were spared one little pang of self-reproach.
He said, gently: "I wouldn't have you distress yourself on my account, Miss Shannon… I quite understand there must be things I can't understand — that you must have had your reasons for acting as you did."
"Yes," she said unevenly, but again with eyes averted — "I had; but they're not easy, they're impossible to explain — to you."
"Yet — when all's said and done — I've no right to exact any explanation."
"Ah, but how can you say that, remembering what we've been through together?"
"You owe me nothing," he insisted; "whereas I owe you everything, even unquestioning faith. Even though I fail, I have this to thank you for — this one not-ignoble impulse my life has known."
"You mustn't say that, you mustn't think it. I don't deserve it. You wouldn't say it — if you knew — "
"Perhaps I can guess enough to satisfy myself."
She gave him a swift, sidelong look of challenge, instinctively on the defensive.
"Why," she almost gasped — "what do you think — ?"
"Does it matter what I think?"
"It does, to me: I wish to know!"
"Well," he conceded reluctantly, "I think that, when you had a chance to consider things calmly, waiting back there in the garden, you made up your mind it would be better to — to use your best judgment and — extricate yourself from an embarrassing position — "
"You think that!" she interrupted bitterly. "You think that, after you had confided in me; after you'd confessed — when I made you, led you on to it — that you cared for me; after you'd told me how much my faith meant to you — you think that, after all that, I deliberately abandoned you because I suddenly realized you had been the Lone Wolf — !"
"I'm sorry if I hurt you. But what can I think?"
"But you are wrong!" she protested vehemently — "quite, quite wrong! I ran away from myself — not from you — and with another motive, too, that I can't explain."
"You ran away from yourself — not from me?" he repeated, puzzled.
"Don't you understand? Why make it so hard for me? Why make me say outright what pains me so?"
"Oh, I beg of you — "
"But if you won't understand otherwise — I must tell you, I suppose." She checked, breathless, flushed, trembling. "You recall our talk after dinner, that night — how I asked what if you found out you'd been mistaken in me, that I had deceived you; and how I told you it would be impossible for me ever to marry you?"
"I remember."
"It was because of that," she said — "I ran away; because I hadn't been talking idly; because you were mistaken in me, because I was deceiving you, because I could never marry you, and because — suddenly — I came to know that, if I didn't go then and there, I might never find the strength to leave you, and only suffering and unhappiness could come of it all. I had to go, as much for your sake as for my own."
"You mean me to understand, you found you were beginning to — to care a little for me?"
She made an effort to speak, but in the end answered only with a dumb inclination of