The Lone Wolf Returns

by Louis Joseph Vance

But nobody had knocked, the band of raw red gold was stationary that barred the dusk, it was a bed that held him, not a berth, the spacious sleeping quarters of a pampered landlubber were his instead of cramped and bare accomodations aboard an ocean-going boat; and he was quickening to apprehensions of a plight more exigent even than that which Liane had come to tell him of upon that other nightfall, in the Bahamas, weeks ago; by courtesy a guest in the town-house of a new-found ally, in fact no better than a prisoner in the stronghold of his most embittered enemy . . .

Fagged though he had been all through that parley of the small hours, Lanyard had likewise been far too thoroughly alive to its vital bearing upon the issue of whether or not this life of his were worth the struggle, to have slighted any innuendo in Morphew's attitude, however trivial in seeming or elusive. And now recalling, weighing and minutely searching every spoken word and unsaid implication, he perceived no reason for reconsidering his verdict on their consequence, that Morphew's proposal of an alliance had been as treacherous as his own complaisance toward it. . . . A memory the cause of corroding chagrin, to him who had never before met offer of oppression with less than flat defiance, to whom the bare thought of compromise with an overbearing and corrupt antagonist was one to sicken over. He had sour comfort of the saying that it's fair to fight the devil with fire, he would liever have known himself surely the poor thing they pictured him, uncontrollably subject to criminal lapses, than to remember he had been reduced to trafficing with cattle such as Morphew—and on terms of Morphew's choice!

Yet it had been that or worse—a knife in his back, very likely, before he could find out the truth for himself about those latterday prowlings of the Lone Wolf that enemy and friend alike attributed to Michael Lanyard, that the friendliest guesses ascribed to the cropping out of ingrained criminal proclivities which the best will in the world might neither eradicate nor hope to hold in check.

God knew it might be true! and if it were, then it was time indeed to let Society rid itself of such a menace. But first all doubts must be resolved . . .

Morphew had had the best of him from the outset, had chosen the ground, forced the fighting, outgeneralled him in every skirmish, beaten him down at last to his knees, forced him to stomach quarter on conditions unspeakably humiliating. But better to bow to such abasement than forfeit every chance to clear his scutcheon or, failing, tear him down whose malevolence had been the first cause of its smirching, down from the strong place he had set up to be his refuge, and bury him deep in its ruins—though these bury not Morphew alone.

To compass an end so just, to avenge society as he revenged himself, was the one way Lanyard could conjecture to make amends for being as life had made him; to this he dedicated himself without any reservation whatever, renouncing every cherished prejudice against unfaith and double-dealing, holding no sacrifice whether of scruples or of life itself too heavy a price to pay for its accomplishment, refusing to know any depth of degradation to which he would not gladly descend with the promise that at the bottom he would find Morphew's throat defenseless.

Intuition gave one gleam of hope. Making no claim to the ability to read Morphew's mind, Lanyard assumed with confidence to assay his manner; and recreating this to his mental vision, as it had been manifest in last night's rencontre, estimated every facet of it false. Morphew only too possibly might have been sincere in all he had asserted concerning the recrudesence of the Lone Wolf in the flesh of Michael Lanyard; but his honest scorn, paraded for what he professed to consider disingenuous efforts to hide behind a claim of lost memory, had been in Lanyard's judgment sheerest sham, paste indignation donned for the occasion and, by that token, for some sly purpose. Morphew had taken too much humbling at Lanyard's hands to spare him without some compensating end in view, not conceivably a sordid one alone. If in actual need of money he was little likely to reject it unless Lanyard and none other, operating as a burglar, earned it for him. Power such as he pretended to, intelligently exerted, could hardly have failed to bring to heel that enterprising understudy of the Lone Wolf, who had been so busy all the while that Lanyard had been becalmed in the Bahamas, and bend him to Morphew's purposes as Morphew now proposed to bend Lanyard. So it seemed not unreasonable to assume that the use which Morphew had for Lanyard was another than he avowed, some end that Lanyard alone of all men could serve, therefore not an end of simple avarice—in short, nothing but the satisfaction of some all-absorbing private passion.

Morphew knew, and knew that Lanyard knew—must have known, or was a denser dunce than Lanyard thought him—that last night's compact had been a farce, that neither of them meant to abide by it one moment longer than suited his convenience, and finally that so long as Lanyard lived and had his liberty Morphew's own liberty if not his very life was in jeopardy. Yet he had preferred that risk . . .

A man so ruled by his passions was surely vulnerable: it remained to bide one's time with every wit wide awake to catch and profit by the first clue that Morphew might let fall, then strike with all the shrewdness one could muster at the weak spot so exposed. Lanyard would hardly have to school himself to patience very long . . .

Arrived at this conclusion, scarcely one to content him, nevertheless the one with which he must for the time being be content, Lanyard permitted considerations of more material sort to assert their claims, with the promptly resultant discovery that he was both sticky and hungry, in sore need of a bath and breakfast. And sitting up, he made another discovery, that his privacy had not been respected while he slept. His weatherbeaten wardrobe had vanished from the chair over which he had thrown it on going to bed; in its place he found a flowered dressing-gown of thinnest silk and a pair of bedroom slippers—a costume supremely suited to such sultry weather, as long as one remained indoors. He perceived himself to be indeed a prisoner.