X

TURN ABOUT

The thought of Lanyard's pocket flash-lamp offering itself, immediately its wide circle of light enveloped his late antagonist.

That one was resting on a shoulder, legs uncouthly a-sprawl, quite without movement of any perceptible sort; his face more than half-turned to the floor, and masked into the bargain.

Incredulously Lanyard stirred the body with a foot, holding his weapon poised as though half-expecting it to quicken with instant and violent action; but it responded in no way.

With a nod of satisfaction, he shifted the light until it marked down the nearest electric bulb, which proved, in line with his inference, to have been extinguished by the socket key, while the heat of its bulb indicated that the current had been shut off only an instant before his entrance.

The light full up, he went back to the thug, knelt and, lifting the body, turned it upon its back.

Recognition immediately rewarded this manoeuvre: the masked face upturned to the glare was that of the American who had made a fourth in the concert of the Pack--"Mr. Smith," Quickly unlatching the mask, Lanyard removed it; but the countenance thus exposed told little more than he knew; he could have sworn he had never seen it before. None the less, something in its evil cast persistently troubled his memory, with the same provoking and baffling effect that had attended their first encounter.

Already the American was struggling toward consciousness. His lips and eyelids twitched spasmodically, he shuddered, and his flexed muscles began to relax. In this process something fell from between the fingers of his right hand--something small and silver-bright that caught Lanyard's eye.

Picking it up, he examined with interest a small hypodermic syringe loaded to the full capacity of its gla.s.s cylinder, plunger drawn back--all ready for instant service.

It was the needle of this instrument that had p.r.i.c.ked the skin of Lanyard's neck; beyond reasonable doubt it contained a soporific, if not exactly a killing dose of some narcotic drug--cocaine, at a venture.

So it appeared that this agent of the Pack had been commissioned to put the Lone Wolf to sleep for an hour or two or more--_perhaps_ not permanently!--that he might be out of the way long enough for their occult purposes.

He smiled grimly, fingering the hypodermic and eyeing the prostrate man.

"Turn about," he reflected, "is said to be fair play.... Well, why not?"

He bent forward, dug the needle into the wrist of the American and shot the plunger home, all in a single movement so swift and deft that the drug was delivered before the pain could startle the victim from his coma.

As for that, the man came to quickly enough; but only to have his clearing senses met and dashed by the muzzle of a pistol stamping a cold ring upon his temple.

"Lie perfectly quiet, my dear Mr. Smith," Lanyard advised; "don't speak above a whisper! Give the good dope a chance: it'll only need a moment, or I'm no judge and you're a careless highbinder! I'd like to know, however--if it's all the same to you--"

But already the injection was taking effect; the look of panic, which had drawn the features of the American and flickered from his eyes with dawning appreciation of his plight, was clouding, fading, blending into one of daze and stupour. The eyelids flickered and lay still; the lips moved as if with urgent desire to speak, but were dumb; a long convulsive sigh shook the American's body; and he rested with the immobility of the dead, save for the slow but steady rise and fall of his bosom.

Lanyard thoughtfully reviewed these phenomena.

"Must kick like a mule, that dope!" he reflected. "Lucky it didn't get me before I guessed what was up! If I'd even suspected its strength, however, I'd have been less hasty: I could do with a little information from Mr. Mysterious Stranger here!"

Suddenly conscious of a dry and burning throat, he rose and going to the washstand drank deep and thirstily from a water-bottle; then set himself resolutely to repair the disarray of his wits and consider what was best to be done.

In his abstraction he wandered to a chair over whose back hung a light dressing-gown of wine-coloured silk, which, because it would pack in small compa.s.s, was in the habit of carrying with him on his travels.

Lanyard had left this thrown across his bed; and he was wondering subconsciously what use the man had thought to make of it, that he should have taken the trouble to shift it to the chair.

But even as he laid hold of it, Lanyard dropped the garment in sheer surprise to find it damp and heavy in his grasp, sodden with viscid moisture. And when, in a swift flash of intuition, he examined his fingers, he discovered them discoloured with a faint reddish stain.

Had the dye run? And how had the American come to dabble the garment in water--to what end?

Then the shape of an object on the floor near his feet arrested Lanyard's questing vision. He stared, incredulous, moved forward, bent over and picked it up, clipping it gingerly between finger-tips.

It was one of his razors--a heavy hollow-ground blade--and it was foul with blood.

With a low cry, smitten with awful understanding, Lanyard wheeled and stared fearfully at the door communicating with Roddy's room.

It stood ajar an inch or two, its splintered lock accounted for by a small but extremely efficient jointed steel jimmy which lay near the threshold.

Beyond the door ... darkness ... silence...

Mustering up all his courage, the adventurer strode determinedly into the adjoining room.

The first flash of his hand-lamp discovered to him sickening verification of his most dreadful apprehensions.

Now he saw why his dressing-gown had been requisitioned--to protect a butcher's clothing.

After a moment he returned, shut the door, and set his back against it, as if to bar out that reeking shambles.

He was very pale, his face drawn with horror; and he was powerfully shaken with nausea.

The plot was d.a.m.nably patent: Roddy proving a menace to the Pack and requiring elimination, his murder had been decreed as well as that the blame for it should be laid at Lanyard's door. Hence the attempt to drug him, that he might not escape before police could be sent to find him there.

He could no longer doubt that De Morbihan had been left behind at the Circle of Friends of Harmony solely to detain him, if need be, and afford Smith time to finish his hideous job and set the trap for the second victim.

And the plot had succeeded despite its partial failure, despite the swift reverse chance and Lanyard's cunning had meted out to the Pack's agent. It was _his_ dressing-gown that was saturate with Roddy's blood, just as they were his gloves, pilfered from his luggage, which had measurably protected the killer's hands, and which Lanyard had found in the next room, stripped hastily off and thrown to the floor--twin crumpled wads of blood-stained chamois-skin.

He had now little choice; he must either flee Paris and trust to his wits to save him, or else seek De Morbihan and solicit his protection, his boasted influence in high quarters.

But to give himself into the hands, to become an a.s.sociate, of one who could be party to so cowardly a Crime as this ... Lanyard told himself he would sooner pay the guillotine the penalty....

Consulting his watch, he found the hour to be no later than half-past four: so swiftly (truly treading upon one another's heels) events had moved since the incident of the somnambulist.

This left at his disposal a fair two hours more of darkness: November nights are long and black in Paris; it would hardly be even moderately light before seven o'clock. But that were a respite none too long for Lanyard's necessity; he must think swiftly in contemplation of instant action were he to extricate himself without the Pack's knowledge and consent.

Granted, then, he must fly this stricken field of Paris. But how? De Morbihan had promised that Popinot's creatures would guard every outlet; and Lanyard didn't doubt him. An attempt to escape the city by any ordinary channel would be to invite either denunciation to the police on the charge of murder, or one of those fatally expeditious forms of a.s.sa.s.sination of which the Apaches are past-masters.

He must and would find another way; but his decision was frightfully hampered by lack of ready money; the few odd francs in his pocket were no store for the war-chest demanded by this emergency.

True, he had the Omber jewels; but they were not negotiable--not at least in Paris.

And the Huysman plans?

He pondered briefly the possibilities of the Huysman plans.

In his fretting, pacing softly to and fro, at each turn he pa.s.sed his dressing-table, and chancing once to observe himself in its mirror, he stopped short, thunderstruck by something he thought to detect in the counterfeit presentment of his countenance, heavy with fatigue as it was, and haggard with contemplation of this appalling contretemps.

And instantly he was back beside the American, studying narrowly the contours of that livid mask. Here, then, was that resemblance which had baffled him; and now that he saw it, he could not deny that it was unflatteringly close: feature for feature the face of the murderer reproduced his face, coa.r.s.ened perhaps but recognizably a replica of that Michael Lanyard who confronted him every morning in his shaving-gla.s.s, almost the only difference residing in the scrubby black moustache that shadowed the American's upper lip.

After all, there was nothing wonderful in this; Lanyard's type was not uncommon; he would never have thought himself a distinguished figure.