Alias the Lone Wolf Part 22

"That is as one regards it, mademoiselle."

"Oh! oh!" There was any amount of deep significance in these exclamations. "One may regard that in more ways than one."

"Indeed," Lanyard agreed with his most winning manner: "One may for instance remember that I recovered speedily enough to be in Paris to-night and meet mademoiselle without losing time."

"Monsieur wishes me to flatter myself into thinking he did me the honour of desiring to find me to-night?"

"Or any other. Do not depreciate the potency of your charms, mademoiselle. Who, having seen you once, could help hoping to see you again?"

"My friend," said Liane, with a pursed, judgmatical mouth, "I think you are much too amiable."

"But I a.s.sure you, never a day has pa.s.sed, no, nor yet a night, that I have not dwelt upon the thought of you, since you made so effective an entrance to the chateau, a vision of radiant beauty, out of that night of tempest and fury."

Liane drooped a coy head. "Monsieur compliments me too much."

"Impossible!"

"Is one, then, to understand that monsieur is making love to me?"

Lanyard p.r.o.nounced coolly: "No."

That won another laugh of personal appreciation. "What then, mon ami?"

"Figure to yourself that one may often dream of the unattainable without aspiring to possess it."

"Unattainable?" Liane repeated in a liquid voice: "What a dismal word, monsieur!" "It means what it means, mademoiselle."

"To the contrary, monsieur, it means what you wish it to mean. You should revise your lexicon."

"Now it is mademoiselle who is too flattering. And where is that good Monsieur Monk to-night?"

The woman overlooked the innuendo; or, rather, buried it under a landslide of emotional acting.

"Ah, monsieur! but I am desolated, inconsolable. He has gone away!"

"Monsieur Monk?" Lanyard opened his eyes wide.

"Who else? He has left France, he has returned to his barbarous America, with his beautiful motor car, his kind heart, and all his millions!"

"And the excellent Phinuit?"

"That one as well."

"How long ago?"

"A week to-morrow they did sail from Cherbourg. It is a week since anyone has heard me laugh."

Lanyard compa.s.sionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled her gla.s.s.

"Accept, mademoiselle, every a.s.surance of my profound sympathy."

"You have a heart, my friend," she said, and drank with the feverish pa.s.sion of the disconsolate.

"And one very truly at mademoiselle's service."

Liane sniffed mournfully and dabbed at her nose with a ridiculous travesty of a handkerchief. "Be so kind," she said in a tearful voice, though her eyes were quite dry and, if one looked closely, calculating--"a cigarette."

One inferred that the storm was over. Lanyard tendered his cigarette case, and then a match, wondering what next. What he had reason to antic.i.p.ate was sure to come, the only question was when. Not that it mattered when; he was ready for it at any time. And there was no hurry: Athenais, finding herself paired with an un-commonly good dancer in Le Brun, was considerately making good use of this pretext for remaining on the floor--there were two bands to furnish practically continuous music--and leave Lanyard to finish uninterrupted what she perfectly understood to be a conversation of considerable moment.

As for Benouville, he was much too well trained to dream of returning without being bidden by Liane Delorme.

"But it is wonderful," murmured that one, pensive.

And there was that in her tone to make Lanyard mentally p.r.i.c.k forward his ears. He sketched a point of interrogation.

"To encounter so much understanding in one who is a complete stranger."

("'Complete'?" Lanyard considered. "I think it's coming...")

"Monsieur must not think me unappreciative."

"Ah, mademoiselle!" he protested sadly--"but you forget so easily."

"That we have met before, when I term you a complete stranger?"

"Well... yes."

"It is because I would not be in monsieur's debt!"

"Pardon?"

"I will repay sympathy with sympathy. I have already forgotten that I ever visited the Chateau de Montalais. So how should I remember I met monsieur there under the name of... but I forget."

"The name of d.u.c.h.emin?"

"I never knew there was such a name--I swear!--before I saw it in type to-day."

"In type?"

"Monsieur does not read the papers?"

"Not all of them, mademoiselle."

"It appeared in Le Matin to-day, this quaint name d.u.c.h.emin, in a despatch from Millau stating that a person of that name, a guest of the Chateau de Montalais, had disappeared without taking formal leave of his hosts."

"One gathers that he took something else?"

"Nothing less than the world-known Anstruther collection of jewels, the property of Madame de Montalais nee Anstruther."