But the racked pigeonholes held nothing to interest him whose one aim was the recovery of the Montalais jewels. The safe was, in fact, dedicated simply to the storage of doc.u.ments.

"Love letters!" Lanyard mused with a grimace of weariness. "And each believed, no doubt, she cared too much for him to hold her power to compromise him. Good Lord! what vanity is man's!"

Then the consideration offered that property of real value might be hidden behind those sheaves of papers. He selected a pigeonhole at hazard, and emptied it of several bundles of letters, all neatly bound with tape or faded ribbon and clearly docketed. It held nothing else whatever. But his eye was caught by a great name endorsed on the face of one of the packages; and reading what else was written there his brows rose high while his lips shaped a soundless whistle. If an inference were fair, Liane had kept not only such doc.u.ments as gave her power over others. Lanyard wondered if it were possible he held in his hand an instrument to bend the woman to his will....

Suddenly he put out a hand and switched off the light, a gesture quite involuntary, simple reaction to the m.u.f.fled thump of a chair overturned on the floor above.

Sounds of scuffling followed, as if Liane were dancing to no music with a heavy-footed partner. Then a groan....

His hands moved so rapidly and deftly that, although he seemed to rise without a second's delay, the safe was closed and the combination locked when he did so, the buffet door was shut and its key in his pocket.

This time Lanyard ascended the stairs without heeding what noise he made. Nevertheless his actions were never awkward or ill-timed; his approach was not heard, his arrival on the upper landing was unnoticed.

In an instantaneous pause he looked into the rose-pink room and saw Liane Delorme, in a negligee like a cobweb over a nightdress even more sheer, kneeling and clawing at her throat, round which a heavy silk handkerchief was slowly tightening; her face already purple with strangulation, her eyes bulging from their sockets, her tongue protruding between swollen lips.

A thick knee was planted between her shoulder-blades. The ends of the handkerchief were in the sinewy hands of Albert Dupont.

XVII

CHEZ LIANE

Conceivably even a journeyman strangler may know the thrill of professional pride in a good job well done: Dupont was grinning at his work, and so intent upon it that his first intimation of any interference came when Lanyard took him from behind, broke his hold upon the woman (and lamentably failed to break his back at the same time) whirled him round with a jerk that all but unsocketed an arm and, before the thug could regain his balance, placed surely on the heel of his jaw, just below the ear, a blow that, coming straight from the shoulder and carrying all Lanyard had of weight and force and will to punish, in spite of Dupont's heaviness fairly lifted him from his feet and dropped him backwards across a chaise-longue, from which he slipped senseless to the floor.

It was just like that, a crowded, breathless business....

With bruised and aching knuckles to prove that the blow had been one to stun an ox, Lanyard believed it safe to count Dupont hors de combat, for a time at least. In any event, the risk had to be chanced: Liane Delorme was in a plight demanding immediate relief.

In all likelihood she had lost consciousness some moments before Lanyard's intervention. Released, she had fallen positively inert, and lay semi-prostrate on a shoulder, with limbs grotesquely slack and awry, as if in unpleasant mimicry of a broken doll. Only the whites of bloodshot eyes showed in her livid and distorted countenance. Arms and legs twitched spasmodically, the ample torso was violently shaken by labouring lungs.

The twisted handkerchief round her throat had loosened, but not enough to give relief. Lanyard removed it, turned her over so that she lay supine, wedged silken pillows from the chaise-longue beneath her head and shoulders, then reached across her body, took from her dressing table a toilet-water flask of lovely Italian gla.s.s, and drenched her face and bosom with its pungent contents.

She gasped, started convulsively, and began to breathe with less effort. That dreadful rattling in her throat was stilled. Heavy lids curtained her eyes.

Lanyard continued to apply the scented water with a lavish hand. In time the woman shuddered, sighed profoundly, and looked up with a witless stare.

Man is measurably a creature of gestures stereotyped when the world was young: Lanyard patted the woman's hand as one might comfort an abused child. "It is all right now, Liane," he said in a rea.s.suring voice.

"Rest tranquilly. You will soon be yourself again. But wait: I will find you a drink."

She said nothing, her look continued cloudy; but the dazed eyes followed him as he got up and cast about for a gla.s.s of water.

But then he remembered Dupont, and decided that Liane could wait another minute while he made it impossible for the Apache to do more mischief.

He moved round the chaise-longue and paused, looking down thoughtfully.

Since his fall Dupont had made neither moan nor stir. No crescent irides showed beneath the half-shut lids. He was so motionless, he seemed scarcely to breathe. Lanyard dug the toe of a boot into his ribs none too gently, but without satisfaction of any doubts. The fellow gave no sign of sensibility, but lay utterly relaxed, with the look of one dead.

Lanyard frowned uneasily. He had seen men drop dead from blows less powerful than his, and though this one had well earned a death swift and merciless, Lanyard experienced a twinge of horror at the thought.

Often enough it had been his lot in times of peace and war to be forced to fight for life, and more than once to kill in defence of it; but that had never happened, never could happen, without his suffering the bitterest regret. Even now, in the case of this b.l.o.o.d.y-handed butcher, this ruthless garroter....

Dropping to his knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for symptoms of animation. He perceived them instantly. With inconceivable suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive. An arm like the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard's neck, clipped his head to Dupont's yearning bosom, ground his face into the flannel folds of a foul-scented shirt. Simultaneously the huge body heaved prodigiously, and after a brief interval of fantastic floppings, like a young mountain fell on top of Lanyard.

But that was the full measure of Dupont's success in this stratagem. If hopelessly victimized and taken by surprise, Lanyard should have been better remembered by the man who had fought him at Montpellier-le-Vieux and again, with others a.s.sisting, on the road to Nant; though it is quite possible, of course, that Dupont failed to recognise his ancient enemy in clean-shaven Monsieur Paul Martin of the damp and bedraggled evening clothes.

However that may have been, in the question of brute courage Dupont had yet to prove lacking. His every instinct was an Apache's: left to himself he would strike always from behind, and run like a cur to cover. But cornered, or exasperated by opposition to his vast powers--something which he seemed quite unable to understand--he could fight like a maniac. He was hardly better now, when he found himself thrown off and attacked in turn at a time when he believed his antagonist to be pinned down, helpless, at the mercy of the weapon for which he was fumbling. And the murderous fury which animated him then more than made up for want of science, cool-headedness and imagination.

They fought for their most deeply-rooted pa.s.sions, he to kill, Lanyard to live, Dupont to batter Lanyard into conceding a moment of respite in which a weapon might be used, Lanyard to prevent that very thing from happening. Even as animals in a pit they fought, now on their knees straining each to break the other's hold, now wallowing together on the floor, now on their feet, slogging like bruisers of the old school.

Dupont took punishment in heroic doses, and asked for more. Shedding frightful blows with only an angry shake of his head, he would lower it and charge as a wild boar charges, while his huge arms flew like lunatic connecting-rods. The cleverest footwork could not always elude his tremendous rushes, the coolest ducking and dodging could not wholly escape that frantic shower of fists.

Time and again Lanyard suffered blows that jarred him to his heels, time and again was fain to give ground to an onslaught that drove him back till his shoulders touched a wall. And more than once toward the end he felt his knees buckle beneath him and saw his shrewdest efforts fail for want of force. The sweat of his brows stung and dimmed his eyes, his dry tongue tasted its salt. He staggered in the drunkenness of fatigue, and suffered agonies of pain; for his exertions had strained the newly knitted tissues of the wound in his side, and the hurt of this was wholly h.e.l.lish.

But always he contrived somehow, strangely to him, to escape annihilation and find enough in reserve to fly back at Dupont's throat upon the first indication of desire on the part of the latter to yield the offensive. To do less were to permit him to find and use his weapon, whatever it might be--whether knife or pistol was besides the issue.

Chairs, the chaise-longue, tables were overturned and kicked about.

Priceless bits of porcelain and gla.s.s, lamps, vases, the fittings of the dressing-table were cast down in fragments to the floor.

Constrained to look to herself or be trampled underfoot, and galvanized with terror, the woman struggled up and tottered hither and yon like a bewildered child, in the beginning too bemused to be able to keep out of the way of the combatants. If she crouched against a wall, battling bodies brushed her away from it. Did she take refuge in a corner she must abandon it else be crushed. Once she stumbled between the two, and before Lanyard could thrust her aside Dupont had fallen back half a dozen feet and worried a pistol out of his clothing.

He fired first from the hip, and the shot shattered the mirror of the dressing-table. Trying for better aim, he lifted and levelled the weapon with a trembling arm which he sought to steady by cupping the elbow in his left hand. But the second bullet ploughed into the ceiling as Lanyard in desperation executed a coup de pied in la savate, and narrowly succeeded in kicking the pistol from Dupont's grasp.

Bereft thus of his last hope--they were too evenly matched, and both too far spent for either to force a victory with his naked hands--the Apache swung round and ran, at the same time throwing a heavy chair over on its back in the path of pursuit. Unable to avoid it, Lanyard tried to hurdle it, caught a foot on one of its legs and, as Dupont threw himself headlong down the stairs, crashed to the floor with an impact that shook its beams.

Main will-power lifted him to his knees before he collapsed, his last ounce of endurance wasted. Then the woman, with flying draperies, a figure like a fury, sped to the banister rail and leaning over emptied the several shots remaining in Dupont's automatic down the well of the staircase. It is doubtful if she saw anything to aim at or accomplished more than to wing the Apache's flight. Dupont had gained the second storey while Lanyard was still fighting up from his fall. The last report and the crash of the front door slammed behind Dupont were as one heartbeat to the next.

Lanyard pillowed his head on a forearm and lay sobbing for breath.

Liane Delorme turned and ran to the front of the house.

Presently she came back drooping, sank into a chair and with lackl.u.s.tre eyes regarded the man at her feet.

"He got away," she said superfluously, in a faint voice. "I saw him in the street ... staggering like a sot..."

At that moment Lanyard could not have mustered a show of interest had he been told Dupont was returning at the head of a horde. He closed his tired eyes and envied the lucky dead whose rest was independent of bruised flesh and aching bones. Neither, he supposed, were dreams poisoned by chagrin when what was mortal no longer mattered.... Three times had he come to grips with Dupont and, though he had been outnumbered on the road to Nant, in Lanyard's sight the honours were far from easy. Neither would they be while yet the other lived or was at large...

The bitterness of failure and defeat had so rank a flavour in his thoughts that nothing else in life concerned him now. He had forgotten Liane Delorme for minutes when her arm pa.s.sed beneath his shoulders and tried to lift them from the floor. He looked up then with listless eyes, and saw her on one knee by his side, giving him in his turn that confident and rea.s.suring smile with which he had greeted her reviving senses ... a long, long time ago, it seemed.

"Come!" she said--"sit up, monsieur, and take this drink. It will lend you strength. You need it."

G.o.d knew he did! His throat was like a furnace flue, his mouth held the taste of leather. But for that thirst, indeed, he could hardly have found the energy to aid her efforts and lurch upon an elbow. A white-hot lancet pierced his wound, and though he locked his teeth against it a groan forced out between them. The woman cried out at the rapid ebb of colour from his face.

"But you are suffering!"

He forced a grey smile. "It is nothing," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely--"it will pa.s.s. If you please--that drink----"

She put a knee behind his shoulders for support, and he rested his head back upon it and drank deep from the gla.s.s which she held to his lips.

Nectar of Olympus was never more divine than that deep draught of brandy and soda. He thought he quaffed Life itself in its distilled quintessence, its pure elixir. His look of grat.i.tude had almost the spirit and the vigour of himself renewed.