Alias the Lone Wolf

by Louis Joseph Vance

No: Monsieur Popinot had been well taken care of--and Lanyard could name an officer of prestige ponderable enough to secure his quarters, wherein presumably Popinot had lain perdu, against search when the yacht has been "turned inside out," according to its commander.

So this was the source of Mr. Mussey's exact understanding of the business!

As to the question of how the Apache had been smuggled aboard, and when, Lanyard never learned the truth. Circumstances were to prevent his interrogating Mr. Mussey, and he could only assume that--since Popinot could hardly have been in the motor car wrecked on the road from Paris--he must have left that pursuit to trusted confrères, and, anticipating their possible failure, have hurried on to Cherbourg by another route to make precautionary arrangements with Mr. Mussey.

Ah, well! no fault could be found with the fellow for lack of determination and tenacity. On the point of rising, Lanyard reconsidered and, bending over the body, ran clever hands rapidly through the clothing, turning out every pocket and heaping the miscellany of rubbish thus brought to light upon the floor--with a single exception; Popinot had possessed a pistol, an excellent automatic. Why he hadn't used it to protect himself, Heaven only knew. Presumably he had been too thoroughly engrossed in the exercise of his favourite sport to think of the weapon up to the time when Phinuit had opened fire on him; and then, thrown into panic, he had been able to entertain one thought only, that of escape.

Lanyard entertained for a moment a vivid imaginary picture of the scene in the saloon when Phinuit had surprised the Apache in the act of strangling Monk; a picture that Phinuit subsequently confirmed substantially in every detail....

One saw the garroter creeping through the blackness of the saloon from his hiding place, forward in the cabin of the chief engineer; stationing himself at the door to Monk's quarters, with his chosen weapon, that deadly handkerchief of his trade, ready for the throat of the Lone Wolf when he should emerge, in accordance with his agreement with Mr. Mussey, the spoils of the captain's safe in his hands. Then one saw Monk, alarmed by the sudden failure of the lights, hurrying out to return to the bridge, the pantherish spring upon the victim's back, the swift, dextrous noosing of the handkerchief about his windpipe, the merciless tightening of it--all abruptly illuminated by the white glare of Phinuit's electric torch. And then the truncated crimson of the first pistol flash, the frantic effort to escape, the hunting of that gross shape of flesh by the beam of light and the bullets as Popinot doubled and twisted round the saloon like a rat in a pit, the last mad plunge for the companionway, the flight up its steps that had by the narrowest margin failed to save him...

Phinuit and Liane Delorme were too busy to heed; quietly Lanyard slipped the pistol into a pocket and got to his feet. Then Swain came charging down the steps to find out what all the row was about, and to report--which he did as soon as Monk was sufficiently recovered to understand--those outrageous and darkly mysterious assaults upon the helmsman and Mr. Collison. Both men, he stated, were unfit for further duty that night, though neither (Lanyard was happy to learn) had suffered any permanent injury.

But what--in the name of insanity!--could have inspired such a meaningless atrocity? What could its perpetrator have hoped to gain? What--!

Monk, stretched out upon a leather couch in his sitting-room, levelled eyebrows of suspicion at Lanyard, who countered with a guilelessness so perfect as to make it appear that he did not even comprehend the insinuation.

"If I may offer a suggestion..." he said with becoming diffidence.