The Lone Wolf Returns

by Louis Joseph Vance

Existing then only in her love and in the love he bore her, forgetting all else in life, Lanyard came to himself in trembling, and stumbled toward her hands . . .

It was the swift change of her expression that halted him, the startled dread that afflicted her as something at his back drew her attention.

Galvanized by that hint of peril to his beloved, Lanyard whirled on a heel. But the cry of angry challenge that rose to his lips was audible only as a broken rattle, he was instantaneously stricken to futility to find himself confronted by Michael Lanyard his living apparition.

It was like a trick of delirium, a phantom parody of Lanyard materialized from behind a huge wing-chair beyond the far end of the table: his counterfeit in every particular of dress and feature, his facsimile grotesquely forged.

One look recognized the likeness and its fraudulence; that is to say, assured Lanyard that he wasn't confronting a mirror. A gleam of grim joy shone on his features. He covered in a leap half the distance between them, saw a pistol in the grasp of the impostor swing level with his head, ducked before it spat. His own weapon was out of reach, but the string of diamonds in his hand licked out from it like a whiplash of white flame, and fell squarely across the other's eyes. A second shot went wild as the man's head jerked back from the stinging impact of the stones. And then Lanyard was at his throat . . .

The sheer fury of his onslaught bore both back to the wing-chair and over its legs as it toppled and fell on its side. The pinned wrist of the hand that held the pistol was twisted with such cunning that the fingers relaxed, the weapon described a flashing arc through the air, dropped to the polished floor, and slid a dozen feet away from the combatants. Even more to the purpose, when that writhing tangle of bodies resolved itself, Lanyard was on top. But the under dog rallied with the fury of one fighting for his very life, and rained brutal blows on Lanyard's face. Indifferent to these, Lanyard dug both thumbs into the fellow's throat and slowly but savagely choked him into semi-strangulation.

He lay still at length, gagging and wheezing, tongue protruding, eyes starting from their sockets. And Lanyard released his pressure on the windpipe only to twine vindictive fingers into the hair of his victim and tug for glory and the Saints—till a wig and false forehead en bloc came away in his grasp.

After that it was the work of half a minute to snatch a handkerchief from a breast-pocket, scrub off most of that mask of grease-paint, and bring to light glimpses of the ruined beauty of the dancing yegg.

Eve's shadow fell athwart the two, and Lanyard, for all the labouring of his lungs, had an irrepressible chuckle as he looked up into her bewildered face.

"Permit me to introduce the Lone Wolf's last incarnation!" he cried, and jumped up, brandishing the scalp he had taken—"known to the police and social circles of the cabarets as Henry Mallison—Mally for short!"