The Lone Wolf Returns

by Louis Joseph Vance

Liane exploded a "Ho!" of pure joy, and Pagan shot Lanyard an envenomed glance which he was swift to mask with his well-worn smirk. "To be frank," he generously admitted, dropping into a conversational tone, "I had the Lone Wolf in mind. They say the fellow is here, in New York, now, and up to his old games again. I confess the thought rides my imagination, the puzzle of it. By all accounts, he went straight for years. How, then, came he to backslide? Were the claims of the past too strong? or the demands of the present? Does he steal today deliberately for gain? or involuntarily at the dictates of some subtle and deathless instinct?"

"But monsieur has so many entertaining theories, surely he will produce one to cover this hypothetical instance."

"I don't know. Nature is too strong for us, she laughs at all our efforts to revise her. We may repress and inhibit our native instincts as much as we will, but in the end, as a rule, they have their way. The Psychical Research Society reported, not long ago, the case of a man in whom the influence of instincts developed in early professional life were so strong that, buried though his criminal past was under a dozen years of law-abiding life, he reverted to old practices from time to time without knowing what he did; that is to say, in spells of amnesia, during which his first personality, the natural man, broke through the veneer of the secondary or artificial personality with which he had so painstakingly overlaid it. A safe-breaker and jewel thief like this Lone Wolf. Interesting if this were another such case."

"Interesting, indeed, monsieur, if conceivable."

"But think a minute, and I believe you'll admit it's easily conceivable. Imagine such a man, with wits and senses all habituated by years of rigorous training to serve his predatory nature. Because he's trying to live an honest life today doesn't mean that those old, ingrained habits have necessarily ceased to function. To the contrary, I imagine, they are always at work. As he goes to and fro and meets men and women who invite him into their homes—in their ignorance of his former identity, of course—inevitably, I maintain, such a man will always be observing and valuing and formulating plans of attack—subconsciously, perhaps, but still and for all that making use of the faculties he trained in other days. I can believe he never visits a home of any consequence without taking away with him a comprehensive scheme for burglarizing it. As you or I might, Mr. Lanyard, if either of us had the education of the Lone Wolf, say in respect of this very house. . . . And then some night, when he's least dreaming of anything of the sort, the old Adam reasserts itself, without or with his will and cognizance—"

Perhaps a little frightened by the gleam in Lanyard's eyes and the tension of his lips, Liane bounced up vivaciously, ran to Pagan, and clapped a palm over his mouth.

"Peter!" she cried—"you make me tired, you talk so much. Once you get started, you never know when to stop. But now you will stop, I insist that you stop and take me home. It is nearly three, and I am weary to the marrow of my bones, too fatigued to listen another instant to your twaddle."

Lanyard contrived with fair enough grace to decline Pagan's magnanimous offer of a lift in his car; but by the time he found himself on Fifth avenue again was half sorry he had. There were no taxicabs cruising for fares at that hour, at least all he spied were tearing along with metal flags reversed; and his head was at one and the same time buzzing with fumes of whiskey and thick with that drowsiness of which he had first become sensible in the cab with Folly McFee. Singularly enough, that cloud had lifted during his stop in her home, whereas since leaving it, ever since he had drawn his first breath of the dank, chill air of the streets, his wits had been like slugs fumbling blindly in a bed of cotton-wool. Now his feet as well were beginning to feel leaden, walking, ordinarily a source of such keen enjoyment to this man of vigorous physical life, had become a task.

Hard to understand how one could have been so affected by the scanty ration of alcohol one had consumed that evening, a solitary glass of champagne at the Clique, a single Scotch and soda two hours later. It might be, of course, that Pagan had mixed too stiff a highball. One hadn't been so impressed while drinking, but now the flavour of the whisky clung to the palate, harshly reminiscent. Evidently not such good stuff as it had seemed at the first sip.

Odd to find oneself resuming one's homeward walk at almost the very point where that rencontre with Liane had interrupted it. Still more odd, how that affair had resulted; in three brief hours everything had come true that one had foretold in seeking to dissuade Eve from the idea of marriage . . .