The Lone Wolf Series. Louis Joseph Vance
But already he had been dragged in, without wish or consent of his; whoever coveted her secret — whatever that was, more precious to her than jewels — harboured designs upon his own as well. It was his duty henceforth to go warily, overlooking no circumstance, however trifling and inconsiderable it might appear. The slenderest thread may lead to the heart of the most intricate maze — and the heart of this was become Lanyard's immediate goal, for there his enemy lay perdu.
It was never this man's fault to underrate an enemy, least of all an unknown; and he entertained wholesome respect for Secret Service operators — picked men, as a rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this business, he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work — one of those blind duels, desperate and grim affairs of masked combatants feinting, thrusting, guarding in the dark, each with the other's sword ever feeling for his throat, fighting for life itself and making his own rules as the contest swayed.
But what was this Brooke girl doing in that galley? What conceivable motive induced her to dabble those slender hands in the muck and blood of Secret Service work?
Lanyard was fain to let that question rest. After all, it was no concern of his. There she was, up to her pretty eyebrows in some dark, bad business; and it was not for him to play the gratuitous ass, rush in unasked, and seek to extricate her….
Through endless hours he sat brooding, vision blindly focussed upon the misty, shimmering mystery of that night.
Ekstrom!… Slowly in his understanding intuition shaped the conviction that it was Ekstrom whom he was fighting now, Ekstrom in the guise of one of his creatures, some agent of the Prussian spy system who had contrived to smuggle himself aboard this British steamship.
Out of those nine in the smoking room the previous night, then, he must beware of one primarily, perhaps of more.
Four he was disposed, with reservations, to reckon negligible: Baron von Harden, head of a Netherlands banking house, a silent body whose acute mental processes went on behind a pallid screen of flabby features; Julius Becker, a theatrical manager of New York, whose right name ended in ski; Bartlett Putnam, late chargé d'affaires of the American embassy in Madrid; Edmund O'Reilly, naturalized citizen of the United States, interested in the manufacture of motor tractors somewhere in Michigan.
Of the other five, two were English: Lieutenant Thackeray, a civilly reticent gentleman whose right arm rested in a black silk sling, making a flying trip to visit a married sister in New York; Archer Bartholomew, Esq., solicitor, a red-cheeked, bright-eyed, white-haired, brisk little Cockney, beyond the military age.
There remained Dressier, the stout, self-satisfied Swiss, whose fawning manner was possibly accounted for by his statement that he journeyed to New York to engage in the trade of restaurateur in partnership with his brother; Crane, long and awkward and homely, of saturnine cast, slow of gesture and negligent as to dress, his humorous sense clouding a power of shrewd intelligence; and Señor Arturo Velasco, of Buenos Aires, middle-aged, apparently extremely well-to-do, a thoughtful type, more self-contained than most of his countrymen.
One of these probably … But which?…
Nor must he permit himself to forget that the Assyrian carried fifty-nine other male passengers, in addition to her complement of officers, crew, and stewards, that any one of these might prove to be Potsdam's cat's-paw.
Awesome pallor tinged the eastern horizon, gaining strength, spread in imperceptible yet rapid gradations toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked out, vanished. Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray. Almost visibly the routed night rolled back over the western rim of the world. Shafts of supernal radiance lanced the formless void between sky and sea. Swollen and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now to port, now to starboard, as the Assyrian twisted and writhed on her corkscrew way.
Passengers whose fears had become sufficiently numb to permit them to drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused blinking and blear-eyed, arose and stretched cramped, cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the sleepless misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard awake and marched him off for coffee and cigarettes in the smoking room.
Later, starting out for a turn around the decks, they passed a deck-chair sheltered in a jog where the engine-room ventilating shaft joined the forward deck-house, in which Miss Brooke lay cocooned in wraps and furs, her profile, turned aside from the sea, exquisitely etched against the rich blackness of a fox stole. She slept as quietly as the most carefree, a shadowy smile touching her lips.
Crane's stride faltered. He whistled low.
"In the name of all things wonderful! how did that get on board?"
Lanyard mentioned the girl's name. "She has the stateroom next to mine — came off that tender, night before last."
"And me sore on that darn' li'l boat because it brought aboard all the nosey Johnnies! Ain't it the truth, you never know your luck?"
The American ruminated in silence till another lap of their walk took them past the girl again.
"Funny," he mused, "if that's why they held us up…."
"Comment, monsieur?"
"Oh, I was just wondering if it was on that young lady's account they kept us kicking our heels back there so long."
"I am still stupid," Lanyard confessed.
"Why, she might be a special messenger, you know — something like that — the British Government wanted to smuggle out of the country without anybody suspecting."
"Monsieur is a romantic."
"You can't trust me," Crane averred unblushingly.
When they passed the chair again it was empty.
At breakfast Lanyard saw the girl from a distance: their places were separated by the width of the saloon. She had no neighbours at her table, did not look up when Lanyard entered, finished her meal some time before he did, and retired immediately to her stateroom, in whose seclusion she remained for the rest of the day.
That second day was altogether innocent of untoward incident. At least superficially the life of the ship settled into the groove of "business as usual." Only the company of the Assyrian's faithful convoys was an ever-present reminder of peril.
And in the middle of the afternoon she passed close by a derelict, a torpedoed tramp, deep down by the stern, her bows helplessly high in air and crimson with rust, the melancholy haunt of a great multitude of gulls.
More than slightly to Lanyard's surprise he received no quiet invitation to the captain's quarters to be interrogated concerning the burglary in Stateroom 27. Apparently, the young woman had contented herself with reporting merely that the communicating door had carelessly been left unfastened.
For his own part, neither seeking nor avoiding individual members of the smoking-room group, Lanyard permitted himself to be drawn into their company, and sat among them amiably receptive. But this profited him scantily; there was no further talk of the Lone Wolf; he was not again aware of that covert surveillance.
But when — the evening chill driving him below to don a fur-lined topcoat — the Brooke girl, coming up the companionway, acknowledged his look of recognition with the most distant of nods, he accepted the apparent rebuff without resentment. He understood. She was playing the game. The enemy was watching, listening. After that he was studious to refrain from seeming either to avoid or to seek her neighbourhood; and if he did keep a sharp eye on her, it was so circumspectly as to mock detection. To the best of his observation she found no friends on board, contracted no new acquaintances, kept herself to herself within walls of inexorable reserve.
Dawn, ending the second night at sea, found the Assyrian pursuing a course still devious, and now alone; the destroyers had turned back during the night. The western boundary of the barred zone lay astern. Ahead, at the end of a brief interval of time, the ivory towers of New York loomed, a-shimmer with