Alias the Lone Wolf Part 34

"In the touring car, which follows us with our luggage."

"It is fast, this touring car?"

"The best money can buy."

"Now tell me what you know about the chauffeur who drives the limousine?"

"He is absolutely to be trusted."

"You have had him long in your employ?"

The woman hesitated, looked aside, bit her lip.

"As a matter of fact, monsieur," she said hastily, trying to cover her loss of countenance with rapid speech--"it is the boy who drove us through the Cevennes. Monsieur Monk asked me to keep him pending his return to France, You understand, he is not to be away long--Monsieur Monk--only a few weeks; so it would have been extravagant to take Jules back to America for that little time. You see?"

Lanyard had the grace to keep a straight face. He nodded gravely.

"You make it all perfectly clear, little sister. And the driver of the touring car: are you sure of him?"

"I think so. But you do not tell me what you have in mind."

"Simply this: At the last moment you will decide to take Leon with you.

Give him no more time than he needs to pack a handbag. Trump up some excuse and let him follow with Marthe..."

"No difficulty about that. He is an excellent driver, Leon; he served me as chauffeur--and made a good one, too--for a year before I took him into the house, at his request; he said he was tired of driving. But if the man I had meant to use is indisposed--trust me to see that he is--I can call on Leon to take care of Marthe and our luggage in the touring car."

"Excellent. Now presuming Dupont to be well informed, we may safely bank on his attempting nothing before nightfall. Road traps can be too easily perceived at a distance by daylight. Toward evening then, we will let the touring car catch up. You will express a desire to continue in it, because--because of any excuse that comes into your head. At all events, we will exchange cars with Marthe and Leon, leaving the latter to bring on the limousine while Jules drives for us.

Whatever happens then, we may feel sure the touring car will get off lightly; for whether they're involved with Dupont or not, Leon and Marthe are small fry, not the fish he's angling for."

"But will not Leon and Marthe suspect and refuse to follow?"

"Perhaps they may suspect, but they will follow out of curiosity, to see how we fare, if for nothing else. You may lose a limousine, but you can afford to risk that as long as you are not in it--eh, little long-lost sister?"

"My dear brother!" Liane cried, deeply moved. She leaned forward and caressed Lanyard's hand with sisterly warmth, in her admiration and gratification loosing upon him the full candle-power of the violet eyes in their most disastrous smile. "What a head to have in the family!"

"Take care!" Lanyard admonished. "I admit it's not half bad at times, but if this battered old headpiece of mine is to be of any further service to us, Liane, you must be careful not to turn it!"

XIX

SIX BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE

Once decided upon a course of action, Liane Delorme demonstrated that she could move with energy and decision uncommon in her kind. Under her masterly supervision, preparations accomplished themselves, as it were, by magic.

It was, for example, nearer three than four o'clock when the expedition for Cherbourg left the door of her town-house and Paris by way of the Porte de Neuilly; the limousine leading with that polished pattern of a chauffeur, Jules, at its wheel, as spick and span, firm of jaw and imperturbable of eye as when Lanyard had first noticed him in Nant; the touring car trailing, with the footman Leon as driver, and not at all happy to find himself drafted in that capacity, if one might judge by a sullen sort of uneasiness in his look.

Nothing was to be expected in the streets or suburbs, neither speed nor any indication of the intentions (if any) of Dupont. Lanyard spared himself the thankless trouble of watching to see if they were followed--having little doubt they were--and took his ease by the side of Liane Delorme.

Chatting of old times, or sitting in grateful silence when Liane relapsed into abstraction--something which she did with a frequency which testified to the heavy pressure of her thoughts--he kept an appreciative eye on Jules, conceding at length that Liane's adjective, superb, had been fitly applied to his driving. So long as he remained at the wheel, they were not only in safe hands but might be sure of losing nothing on the road.

It was in St. Germain-en-Laye that Lanyard first noticed the grey touring car. But for mental selection of St. Germain as the likeliest spot for Dupont to lay in waiting, and thanks also to an error of judgment on the part of that one, he must have missed it; for there was nothing strikingly sinister in the aspect of that long-bodied grey car with the capacious hood betokening a motor of great power. But it stood incongruously round the corner, in a mean side street, as if anxious to escape observation; its juxtaposition to the door of a wine shop of the lowest cla.s.s was noticeable in a car of such high caste; and, what was finally d.a.m.ning, the rat-faced man of Lyons was lounging in the door of the wine shop, sucking at a cigarette and watching the traffic with an all too listless eye shaded by the visor of a shabby cap.

Lanyard said nothing at the time, but later, when a long stretch of straight road gave him the chance, verified his suspicions by looking back to see the grey car lurking not less than a mile and a half astern; the Delorme touring car driven by Leon keeping a quarter of a mile in the rear of the limousine.

These relative positions remained approximately unchanged during most of the light hours of that long evening, despite the terrific pace which Jules set in the open country. Lanyard, keeping an eye on the indicator, saw its hand register the equivalent of sixty English miles an hour more frequently than not. It seldom dropped below fifty except when pa.s.sing through towns or villages. And more often than he liked Lanyard watched it creep up to and past the mark seventy.

With such driving he was quite willing to believe that they would see Cherbourg or Heaven by midnight if not before; always, of course, providing...

For the first three hours Leon stood the pace well. Then nerves or physical endurance began to fail, he dropped back, and the Delorme touring car was thereafter seldom visible.

No more, for that matter, was the grey shadow. Lanyard's forecast seemed to be borne out by its conduct: Dupont was biding his time and would undoubtedly attempt nothing before nightfall. In the meantime he was making no effort to do more than keep step with the limousine, but at a decent distance. Only occasionally when, for this reason or that, Jules was obliged to run at reduced speed for several minutes on end, the grey car would draw into sight, always, however, about a mile behind the Delorme touring car.

At about seven they dined on the wing, from the hamper which, with Liane's jewel case in its leather disguise of a simple travelling bag, const.i.tuted all the limousine's load of luggage. Lanyard pa.s.sed sandwiches through the front window to Jules, who munched them while driving like a speed maniac, and with the same appalling nonchalance washed them down with a tumbler of champagne. Then he discovered some manner of sorcerous power over matches in the wind, lighted a cigarette, and signalised his sense of refreshment by smoothly edging the indicator needle up toward the eighty notch, where he held it stationary until Lanyard and Liane with one accord begged him to consider their appet.i.tes.

At eight o'clock they were pa.s.sing through Lisieux, one hundred and eighteen miles from Paris.

Lanyard made mental calculations.

"The light will hold till after nine," he informed Liane. "By that time we shall have left Caen behind."

"I understand," she said coolly; "it will be, then, after Caen."

"Presumably."

"Another hour of peace of mind!" She yawned delicately. "I think--I am bored by this speed--I think I shall have a nap."

Composedly she arranged pillows, put her pretty feet upon the jewel case and, turning her face from Lanyard, dozed.

"I think," he reflected, "that the world is more rich in remarkable women than in remarkable men!"

A luminous lilac twilight vied with the street lamps of Caen when the limousine rolled through the city at moderate speed. Lanyard utilized this occasion to confer with Jules through the window.

"Beyond the town," he said, "you will stop just round the first suitable turning, so that we can't be seen before the corner is turned.

Draw off to the side of the road and--I think it would be advisable to have a little engine trouble."

"Very good, sir," said Jules without looking round. Then he added in a voice of complete respect: "Pardon, sir, but--madame's orders?"

"If they are not"--Lanyard was nettled--"she will countermand them."

"Quite so, sir. And--if you don't mind my asking--what's the idea?"

"I presume you set some value on your skin?"

"Plumb crazy about it."

"Mademoiselle Delorme and I are afflicted with the same idiosyncrasy.