Alias the Lone Wolf Part 24

"He was really a count?"

"Who knows? It was the style by which he had always pa.s.sed with us."

"Alas!" sighed Lanyard, and bent a sombre gaze upon his gla.s.s.

Without looking he was aware of a questioning gesture of the woman's head. He said no more, but shook his own.

"What is this?" she asked sharply. "You know something about de Lorgnes?"

"Had you not heard?" he countered, looking up in surprise.

"Heard--?" He saw her eyes stabbed by fear, and knew himself justified of his surmises. All day she had been expecting de Lorgnes, or word from him, all day and all this night. One could imagine the hourly augmented strain of care and foreboding; indeed its evidence were only too clearly betrayed in her face and manner of that moment: she was on the rack.

But there was no pity in Lanyard's heart. He knew her of old, what she was, what evil she had done; and in his hearing still sounded the echoes of those words with which, obliquely enough but without misunderstanding on the part of either, she had threatened to expose him to the police unless he consented to some sort of an alliance with her, a collaboration whose nature could not but be dishonourable if it were nothing more than a simple conspiracy of mutual silence.

And purposely he delayed his answer till her patience gave way and she was clutching his arm with frantic hands.

"What is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? Why don't you tell me--if there is anything to tell--?"

"I was hesitating to shock you, Liane."

"Never mind me. What has happened to de Lorgnes?"

"It is in all the evening newspapers--the murder mystery of the Lyons rapide."

"De Lorgnes--?"

Lanyard inclined his head. The woman breathed an invocation to the Deity and sank back against the wall, her face ghastly beneath its paint.

"You know this?"

"I was a pa.s.senger aboard the rapide, and saw the body before it was removed."

Liane Delorme made an effort to speak, but only her breath rustled harshly on her dry lips. She swallowed convulsively, turned to her gla.s.s, and found it empty. Lanyard hastened to refill it. She took the wine at a gulp, muttered a word of thanks, and offered the gla.s.s to be filled anew; but when this had been done sat unconscious of it, staring witlessly at nothing, so lost to her surroundings that all the muscles of her face relaxed and her years peered out through that mask of artifice which alone preserved for her the illusion and repute of beauty.

Thus the face of an evil woman of middle-age, debauched beyond hope of redemption, was hideously revealed. Lanyard knew a qualm at seeing it, and looked hastily away.

Beyond the rank of tables which stood between him and the dancing floor he saw Athenais Reneaux with Le Brun sweeping past in the suave movement of a waltz. The girl's face wore a startled expression, her gaze was direct to the woman at Lanyard's side; then it s.h.i.+fted enquiringly to him. With a look Lanyard warned her to compose herself, then lifted an eyebrow and glanced meaningly toward the doors. The least of nods answered him before Le Brun swung Athenais toward the middle of the floor and other couples intervened.

Liane Delorme stirred abruptly.

"The a.s.sa.s.sin?" she demanded--"is there any clue?"

"I believe he is known by description, but missing."

"But you, my friend--what do you know?"

"As much as anybody, I fancy--except the author of the murder."

"Tell me."

Quietly, briefly, Lanyard told her of seeing the Comte de Lorgnes at dinner in Lyons; of the uneasiness he manifested, and the c.u.mulative feeling of frustration and failure he so plainly betrayed as the last hours of his life wore on; of the Apaches who watched de Lorgnes in the cafe and the fact that one of them had contrived to secure a berth in the same carriage with his victim; of seeing the presumptive murderer slinking away from the train at Laroche; and of the discovery of the body, on the arrival of the rapide at the Gare de Lyon.

Absorbed, with eyes abstracted and intent, and a mouth whose essential selfishness and cruelty was unconsciously stressed by the compression of her lips: the woman heard him as he might have been a disembodied voice. Now and again, however, she nodded intently and, when he finished, had a pertinent question ready.

"You say a description of this a.s.sa.s.sin exists?"

"Have I not communicated it to you?"

"But to the police--?"

"Is it likely?" The woman gave him a blank stare.

"Pardon, mademoiselle: but is it likely that the late Andre d.u.c.h.emin would have more to do with the police than he could avoid?"

"You would see a cold-blooded crime go unavenged--?"

"Rather than dedicate the remainder of my days to seeing the world through prison bars? I should say yes!--seeing that this a.s.sa.s.sination does not concern me, and I am guiltless of the crime with which I myself am charged. But you who were a friend to de Lorgnes know the facts, and nothing hinders your communicating them to the Prefecture.... Though I will confess it would be gracious of you to keep my name out of the affair."

But Lanyard was not dicing with Chance when he made this suggestion: he knew very well Liane Delorme would not go to the police.

"That for the Prefecture!" She clicked a finger-nail against her teeth.

"What does it know? What does it do when it knows anything?"

"I agree with mademoiselle entirely."

"Ah!" she mused bitterly--"if only we knew the name of that sale cochon!"

"We do."

"We--monsieur?"

"I, at least, know one of the many names doubtless employed by the a.s.sa.s.sin."

"And you hesitate to tell me!"

"Why should I? No, but an effort of memory..." Lanyard measured a silence, seeming lost in thought, in reality timing the blow and preparing to note its effect. Then, snapping his fingers as one who says: I have it!--"Albert Dupont," he announced abruptly.

Unquestionably the name meant nothing to the woman. She curled a lip: "But that is any name!" Then thoughtfully: "You heard his companion of the cafe call him that?"

"No, mademoiselle. But I recognised the animal as Albert Dupont when he boarded the train at Combe-Rendonde that morning and, unnoticed by him, travelled with him all the way to Lyons."

"You recognised him?"

"I believe it well."

"When had you known him?"

"First when I fought with him at Montpellier-le-Vieux, later when he sought to do me in on the outskirts of Nant. He was the fugitive chauffeur of the Chateau de Montalais."