The False Faces Part 25

XII

RESURRECTION

The early editions of those New York evening newspapers which Lanyard purchased in Providence, when he changed trains there en route from New Bedford to New York, carried multi-column and most picturesque accounts of the _a.s.syrian_ disaster.

But the whole truth was in none.

Lanyard laid aside the last paper privately satisfied that, for no-doubt praiseworthy reasons of its own, Was.h.i.+ngton had seen fit to dictate the suppression of a number of extremely pertinent circ.u.mstances and facts which could hardly have escaped governmental knowledge.

Already, one inferred, a sort of censors.h.i.+p was at work, an effective if comparatively modest precursor to that n.o.ble volunteer committee which was presently with touching spontaneity to fasten itself upon an astonished s.h.i.+p of State before it could gather enough way to escape such cirripede attachments.

Presumably it was not thought wise to disconcert a great people, in the complacence of its awakening to the fact that it was remotely at war with the Hun, with information that a Boche submersible was, or of late had been, operating in the neighbourhood of Nantucket.

Unanimously the sinking of the _a.s.syrian_ was ascribed to an internal explosion of unknown origin. No paper hinted that German secret agents might possibly have figured incogniti among her pa.s.sengers. There was mention neither of the flare which had burned on her after deck to make the _a.s.syrian_ a conspicuous target in the night, nor of any of the other untoward events which had led up to the explosion. Nothing whatever was said of the shot fired at the submerging U-boat by a United States torpedo-boat destroyer speeding to the rescue.

Still, the bare facts alone were sufficiently appalling. Reading what had been permitted to gain publication, Lanyard experienced a qualm of horror together with the thought that, even had he drowned as he had expected to drown, such a fate had almost been preferable to partic.i.p.ation in those awful ten minutes precipitated by that pale messenger of death which had so narrowly missed Lanyard himself as he rested on the bosom of the sea.

Within ten minutes after receiving her coup de grace the _a.s.syrian_ had gone under; barely that much time had been permitted a pa.s.senger list of seventy-two and a personnel of nearly three hundred souls in which to rouse from dreams of security and take to the lifeboats.

Thanks to the frenzied haste compelled by the swift settling of the s.h.i.+p, more than one boat had been capsized. Others had been sunk--literally driven under--by ma.s.ses of humanity cascading into them from slanting decks. Others, again, had never been launched at all.

The utmost efforts of the destroyer, fortuitously so near at hand, had served to rescue but thirty-one pa.s.sengers and one hundred and eighty of the crew.

In the list of survivors Lanyard found these names:

Becker, Julius--New York Brooke, Cecelia--London Crane, Robert T.--New York Dressier, Emil--Geneva O'Reilly, Edmund--Detroit Putnam, Bartlett--Philadelphia Velasco, Arturo--Buenos Aires

Among the injured, Lieutenant Lionel Thackeray, D.S.O., was listed as suffering from concussion of the brain, said to have been contracted through a fall while attempting to aid the launching of a lifeboat.

In the long roster of the drowned these names appeared:

Bartholomew, Archer--London d.u.c.h.emin, Andre--Paris Von Harden, Baron Gustav--Amsterdam Osborne, Captain E. W.--London

Of all the officers, Mr. Sherry was a solitary survivor, fished out of the sea after going down with his s.h.i.+p.

No list boasted the name "Karl."

Lacking accommodations for the rescued, it was stated, the destroyer had summoned by wireless the east-bound freight steams.h.i.+p _Saratoga_, which had trans-s.h.i.+pped the unfortunates and turned back to New York....

Throughout the best part of that journey from Providence to New York Lanyard sat blankly staring into the black mirror of the window beside his chair, revolving schemes for his immediate future in the light of information derived, indirectly as much as directly, from these newspaper stories.

Retrospective consideration of that voyage left little room for doubt that the designs of the German agents had been thoughtfully matured. They had been quiet enough between their first stroke in the dark and their last, between the burglary of Cecelia Brooke's stateroom the first night out and those murderous attacks on Bartholomew and Thackeray. Unquestionably, had they bided their time pending that hour when, according to their information, the submersible would be off Nantucket, awaiting their signal to sink the _a.s.syrian_--a signal which would never have been given had their plans proved successful, had they not made the s.h.i.+p too hot to hold them, and finally had they not made every provision for their own escape when the s.h.i.+p went down.

Lanyard was confident that all of their company had been warned to hold themselves ready, and consequently had come off scot free--all, that is, save that victim of treachery, the unhappy Baron von Harden.

If the number of that group which Lanyard had selected as comprising a majority of his enemies, those nine who had discussed the Lone Wolf in the smoking room, was now reduced to five--Becker, Dressier, O'Reilly, Putnam, and Velasco--or four, eliminating Putnam, of whose loyalty there could be no question--Lanyard still had no means of knowing how many confederates among the other pa.s.sengers these four might not have had.

And even four men who appreciated what peril to their plans inhered in the Lone Wolf, even four made a ponderable array of desperate enemies to have at large in New York, apt to be encountered at any corner, apt at any time to espy and recognise him without his knowledge.

This situation imposed upon him two major tasks of immediate moment: he must hunt down those four one by one and either satisfy himself as to their innocence of harmful intent or put them permanently _hors de combat_; and he must extinguish utterly, once and for all time, that amiable personality whose brief span had been restricted to the decks of the _a.s.syrian_, Monsieur Andre d.u.c.h.emin.

That one must be buried deep, beyond all peradventure of involuntary resurrection.

Fortunately the last step toward the positive metamorphosis indicated had been taken that very morning, when the Gallic beard of Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin was erased by the razor of a New England barber, whose shears had likewise eradicated every trace of a Continental mode of hair-dressing. There remained about Lanyard little to remind of Andre d.u.c.h.emin but his eyes; and the look of one's eyes, as every good actor knows, is something far more easy to disguise than is commonly believed.

But it was hardly in human nature not to mourn the untimely demise of so useful a body, one who carried such beautiful credentials and serviceable letters of introduction, whose character boasted so much charm with a solitary fault--too facile vulnerability to the prying eyes of those to whom Paris meant those days and social strata in which Michael Lanyard had moved and had his being. Witness--according to Crane--the demoniac cleverness of the Brazilian in unmasking the d.u.c.h.emin incognito.

Suspicion was taking form in Lanyard's reflections that he had paid far too little attention to Senor Arturo Velasco of Buenos Aires, whose avowed avocation of amateur criminologist might easily be synonymous with interests much less innocuous.

Or why had Velas...o...b..en so quick to communicate recognition of Lanyard to an employee of the United States Secret Service?

For that matter, why had he felt called so publicly to descant upon the natural history of the Lone Wolf? In order to focus upon that one the attentions of his enemies? Or to put him on guard?

It was altogether perplexing. Was one to esteem Velasco friend or foe?

Lanyard could comfort himself only with the promise he should one day know, and that without undue delay.

Alighting in Grand Central Terminus late at night, he made his way to Forty-second Street and there, in the staring headlines of a "Late Extra,"

read the news that the steams.h.i.+p _Saratoga_ had suffered a crippling engine-room accident and was limping slowly toward port, still something like eighteen hours out.

Wondering if it were presumption to construe this as an omen that the stars in their courses fought for him, Lanyard went west to Broadway afoot, all the way beset with a sense of incredulity; it was difficult to believe that he was himself, alive and at large in this city of wonder and s.p.a.ce, where people moved at leisure and without fear on broad streets that resembled deep-bitten channels for rivers of light. He was all too wont with nights of dread and trembling, with the mediaeval gloom that enwrapped the cities of Europe by night, their grim black streets desolate but for a few, infrequent, scurrying shapes of fright.... While here the very beggars walked with heads unbowed, and men and women of happier estate laughed and played and made love lightly in the scampering taxis that whisked them homeward from restaurants of the feverish midnight.

A people at war, actually at grips with the Blond Beast, arrayed to defend itself and all humanity against conquest by that loathsome incubus incarnate, a people heedless, carefree, irresponsible, refusing to credit its peril....

Here and there a recruiting poster, down the broad reaches of Fifth Avenue a display of bunting, no other hint of war-time spirit and gravity....

Longacre Square, a weltering lake of kaleidoscopic radiance, even at this late hour thronged with carnival crowds, not one note of sobriety in the night....

Lanyard lifted a wondering gaze to the livid sky whose far, clear stars were paled and shamed by the up-flung glare, like eyes of innocence peering down into a pit of h.e.l.l.

Inscrutable!

Yet one could hardly be numb to the subtle, heady intoxication of those cool, immaculate, sea-sweet airs which swept the streets, instilling self-confidence and lightness of spirit even in heads shadowed with the woe of war-worn Europe.

Lanyard had not crossed the Avenue before he found himself walking with a brisker stride, holding his own head high....

On impulse, despite the lateness of the hour, albeit with misgivings justified in the issue, he hailed a taxicab and had himself driven to the headquarters of the British Secret Service in America, an unostentatious dwelling on the northwest corner of West End Avenue at Ninety-fifth Street.

Here a civil footman answered the door and Lanyard's enquiries with the information that Colonel Stanistreet had unexpectedly been called out of town and would not return before evening of the next day, while his secretary, Mr. Blensop, had gone to a play and might not come home till all hours.

More impatient than disappointed, Lanyard climbed back into his cab, and in consequence of consultation with its friendly minded chauffeur, eventually put up for the night in an Eighth Avenue hotel of the cla.s.s that made Senator Raines famous, a hostelry brazenly proclaiming accommodations "for gentlemen only," whereas it offered entertainment for both man and beast and catered rather more to beast than to man.

However, it served; it was inconspicuous and made no demands upon a shabby traveller sans luggage, more than payment in advance.

Early abroad, Lanyard breakfasted with attention fixed to the advertising columns of the _Herald_, and by mid-morning was established as sub-tenant of a furnished bachelor apartment on Fifty-eighth Street near Seventh Avenue, a tiny nest of few rooms on the street level, with entrances from both the general lobby and the street direct: an admirable arrangement for one who might choose to come and go without supervision or challenge.