The Lone Wolf Returns

by Louis Joseph Vance

XXIII

The earlier hours of that night aged without departure from its programme as arranged by Morphew. With entire apathy Lanyard made himself flexible to every maneuvre which that one or Pagan recommended in bogus anxiety "to armour-plate his alibi"—Pagan's phrase, meaning so to colour appearances in advance that nobody would have any excuse for believing Lanyard had not been far from the theatre of the contemplated crime at the hour of its commission. Unshaken assurance that the intrigue had a single object, his permanent removal from Morphew's path at the smallest cost in embarrassment to the latter, prevented Lanyard's lending himself to the artful but meaningless dodges they proposed with anything but the compliance of complete fatigue. It couldn't matter to him what people might think and say of him after that event to whose occurrence he was looking forward with a resignation that, alone of all its preliminary business, afforded him a certain thrill of interest; he wondered a little at the manifestation of such indifference to life in one who had always ere now loved life so well . . .

The sequelae of that mental illness which had blotted seven months out of memory no doubt had something to do with the psychic background to the strange frame of mind which now was his—impossible to surmise how much or how little, lacking as he did the true data of that eclipse, having to guide speculation only Liane's account and Morphew's, each fragmentary and replete with inherent discrepancies as well as in conflict with the other on points of first importance. And even given a faithful record of all those days and nights when the Lone Wolf had walked and the mind of Michael Lanyard had been dark, still it would need a psychoanalyst to say in what manner and to what degree the after-effects of such an experience might be influencing his mental processes of today.

Not that it mattered now, not that Lanyard really cared; for him it sufficed to have in his heart tonight this living pain of longing for a love forever forfeit through no conscious error or omission, through no volition of his own.

Eight months ago he had reconciled himself to the thought of renouncing his love that Eve might never be made to repent her response, that her faith in him might endure. But since blind fate had conspired with human malice to uproot faith, stamp it out in that kind bosom and destroy it altogether, life held for him no more promise to make it worth the living, he could look back into the very face of death and know never a tremor of dismay. As even now . . .

It was quite true, he was not afraid. He searched his heart and found it steadfast, was confident it would not fail him when his hour struck. He was willing enough to go, only stipulating that when he went he would not go alone, Morphew must go with him. Upon this he was determined, and with so passionate a fixity of purpose that he wondered how Morphew could be in his company and remain insensible to what was in his mind.

They sat together, otherwise alone, long after midnight, in a sector of the veranda as dark as the house behind it. In the entrance-hall a night-light burned, throwing its dim fan of rays down the steps to the porte-cochère. Liane and Folly had some time since gone to bed, leaving Lanyard to enjoy a "conference" with Morphew of the latter's allegation, before leaving to return to town in the car that had fetched him. The servants, too, were all presumably abed, since Morphew had faithfully acted out the farce, for the benefit of Lanyard, of telling the butler not to wait up and promising to close up the front part of the house in person.

Not long after, the landaulet had ground its tyres upon the gravel of the drive, had stopped beneath the porte-cochère long enough to permit Pagan and Morphew to speed an imaginary parting guest with farewells loud and clear, then had crunched noisily away with Pagan as its passenger, under-studying Lanyard, to be set down outside the gates ere the car proceeded to New York; while Lanyard and Morphew had settled down to await his furtive return afoot.

A lengthy period of what would have been quiet had Morphew not been, as usual, masticating an unlighted cigar, ended in a snort of complacence: "Well! guess we're all set . . ."

"Not altogether."