Alias the Lone Wolf

by Louis Joseph Vance

"It was not serious, this wound--no?"

"Mademoiselle may judge when she knows I was unable to leave my bed for nearly three weeks."

"But what atrocity! And this Apache--?"

"Remains at large."

"Ah, these police!" And the lady described a sign of contempt that was wholly unladylike. "Still, you are well recovered, by the way you dance."

"One cannot complain."

"What an experience! Still--" Liane again buried her nose in her glass and regarded Lanyard with a look of mysterious understanding. Re-emerging, she resumed: "Still, not without its compensations, eh, mon ami?"

"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."