Alias the Lone Wolf

by Louis Joseph Vance

He transferred his attention from the formidable defences of the lower storey to the second. Here all the windows were of the type called french, and opened inward from shallow balconies with wrought bronze railings. Lanyard was acquainted with every form of fastening used for such windows; all were simple, none could resist his persuasions, provided he stood upon one of those balconies. Nor did he count it a difficult matter for a man of his activity and strength to scale the front of the house as far as the second storey; its walls were builded of heavy blocks of dressed stone with deep horizontal channels between each tier. These grooves would be greasy with rain; otherwise one could hardly ask for better footholds. A climb of some twelve or fifteen feet to the balcony: one should be able to make that within two minutes, granted freedom from interruption. The rub was there; the quarter seemed quite fast asleep; in the five minutes which had elapsed since Lanyard had ensconced himself in the doorway no motor car had passed, not a footfall had disturbed the stillness, never a sound of any sort had come to his attention other than one distant blare of a two-toned automobile horn from the neighbourhood of the Arc de Triomphe. But one dared not count on long continuance of such conditions. Already the sky showed a lighter shade above the profile of the roofs. And one wakeful watcher at a nearby window would spell ruin.

Nevertheless he must adventure the consequences....

Poised to leave his shelter and dart across the street, with his point of attack already selected, his thoughts already busy with consideration of steps to follow--he checked and fell still farther back into the shadow. Something was happening in the house across the way.

A man had opened the service-door and paused behind the bronze gate. There was no light behind him, and the gloom and intervening strips of metal rendered his figure indistinct. Lanyard's high-keyed perceptions had none the less been instant to remark that slight movement and the accompanying change in the texture of the darkness barred by the gate.

Following a little wait, it swung slowly out, perhaps eighteen inches, the man advancing with it and again halting to peer up and down the street. Then quickly, as if alarmed, he withdrew, shut the gate, and disappeared, closing the service-door behind him.

Listening intently, Lanyard heard no click of latch, such as should have been audible in that dead hour of hush. Evidently the fellow had neglected to make fast the gate. Possibly he had been similarly remiss about fastening the door. But what was he up to? Why this furtive appearance, why the retreat so abruptly executed?

By way of answer came the soft drone of a high-powered motor; then the car itself rolled into view, a stately limousine coming from the direction of the avenue de Friedland. Before the corner house it stopped. A lackey alighted with an umbrella and ran to hold the door; but Liane Delorme would not wait for him. The car had not stopped when she threw the door open; on the instant when its wheels ceased to turn she jumped down and ran toward the house, heedless of the rain.

At the same time one side of the great front doors swung inward, and a footman ran out to open the gates. The lackey with the umbrella, though he moved briskly, failed to catch up with Liane before she sped up the steps. So he closed the umbrella and trotted back to his place beside the chauffeur. The footman shut gates and door as the limousine moved away: it had not been sixty seconds at rest. In fifteen more street and house were both as they had been, save that a light now shone through the plate glass of the latter's great doors. And that was soon extinguished.

Conceiving that the man who had appeared at the service entrance was the same who had admitted Liane, Lanyard told himself he understood: impatient for his bed, the fellow had gone to the service gate to spy out for signs of madame's return. Now if only it were true that he had failed to close it securely----!

It proved so. The gate gave readily to Lanyard's pull. The knob of the small door turned silently. He stepped across the threshold, and shut himself into an unlighted hall, thoughtfully apeing the negligence of the servant and leaving the door barely on the latch by way of provision against a forced retreat.