Alias The Lone Wolf.
by Louis Joseph Vance.
I
WALKING PAPERS
Through the suave, warm radiance of that afternoon of Spring in England a gentleman of modest and commonly amiable deportment bore a rueful countenance down Piccadilly and into Halfmoon street, where presently he introduced it to one whom he found awaiting him in his lodgings, much at ease in his easiest chair, making free with his whiskey and tobacco, and reading a slender brown volume selected from his shelves.
This degage person was patently an Englishman, though there were traces of Oriental ancestry in his cast. The other, he of the doleful habit, was as unmistakably of Gallic pattern, though he dressed and carried himself in a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon fashion, and even seemed a trace intrigued when greeted by a name distinctively French.
For the Englishman, rousing from his appropriated ease, dropped his book to the floor beside the chair, uprose and extended a cordial hand, exclaiming: "H"are ye, Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin?"
To this the other responded, after a slight pause, obscurely enough: "Oh! ancient history, eh? Well, for the matter of that: How are you, Mister Wertheimer?"
Their hands fell apart, and Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin proceeded to do away his hat and stick and chamois gloves; while his friend, straddling in front of a cold grate and extending his hands to an imaginary blaze, covered with a mild complaint the curiosity excited by a brief study of that face of melancholy.
"Pretty way you"ve got of making your friends wait on your pleasure.
Here I"ve wasted upwards of two hours of His Majesty"s time..."
"How was I to know you"d have the cheek to force your way in here in my absence and help yourself to my few poor consolations?" d.u.c.h.emin retorted, helping himself to them in turn. "But then one never does know what fresh indignity Fate has in store..."
"After you with that whiskey, by your leave. I say: I"d give something to know where you ignorant furriners come by this precious pre-War stuff." But without waiting to be denied this information, Mr.
Wertheimer continued: "Going on the evidence of your looks and temper, you"ve been down to Tilbury Docks this afternoon to see Karslake and Sonia off."
"A few such flashes of intelligence applied professionally, my friend, should carry you far."
"And the experience has left you feeling a bit down, what?"
"I imagine even you do not esteem parting with those whom one loves an exhilarating pastime."
"But when it"s so obviously for their own good..."
"Oh, I know!" d.u.c.h.emin agreed without enthusiasm. "If anything should happen to Karslake now, it would break Sonia"s heart, but..."
"And after the part he played in that Va.s.silyevski show his lease of life wouldn"t be apt to be prolonged by staying on in England."
"I agree; but still--!" sighed d.u.c.h.emin, throwing himself heavily into a chair.
"Which," Wertheimer continued, standing, "is why we arranged to give him that billet with the British Legation in Peking."
"Didn"t know you had a hand in that," observed d.u.c.h.emin, after favouring the other with a morose stare.
"Oh, you can"t trust me! When you get to know me better you"ll find I"m always like that--forever flitting hither and yon, bestowing benefits and boons on the ungrateful, like any other giddy Providence."
"But one is not ungrateful," d.u.c.h.emin insisted. "G.o.d knows I would gladly have sped Karslake"s emigration with Sonia to Van Dieman"s Land or Patagonia or where you will, if it promised to keep him out of the way long enough for the Smolny Inst.i.tute to forget him."
"Since the said Smolny inconsiderately persists in failing to collapse, as per the daily predictions of the hopeful."
"Just so."
"But aren"t you forgetting you yourself have given that Smolny lot the same and quite as much reason for holding your name anathema?"
"Ah!" d.u.c.h.emin growled--"as for me, I can take care of myself, thank you. My trouble is, I want somebody else to take care of. I had a daughter once, for a few weeks, long enough to make me strangely fond of the responsibilities of a father; and then Karslake took her away, leaving me nothing to do with my life but twiddle futile thumbs and contemplate the approach of middle age." "Middle age? Why flatter yourself? With a daughter married, too!"
"Sonia"s only eighteen..."
"She was born when you were twenty. That makes you nearly forty, and that"s next door to second childhood, Man!" the Englishman declared solemnly--"you"re superannuated."
"I know; and so long as I feel my years, even you can abuse me with impunity."
But Wertheimer would not hear him. "Odd," he mused, "I never thought of it before, that you were growing old. And I"ve been wondering, too, what it was that has been making you so precious slow and cautious and cranky of late. You"re just doddering--and I thought you were simply tired out and needed a holiday."
"Perhaps I am and do," said d.u.c.h.emin patiently. "One feels one has earned a holiday, if ever anybody did in your blessed S. S."
"Ah! You think so?"
"You"d think so if you"d been mucking round the East End all Winter with your life in your hands."
"Still--at your age--I"d be thinking about retiring instead of asking for a rest."
Although d.u.c.h.emin knew very well that he was merely being ragged in that way of deadly seriousness which so often amuses the English, he chose to suggest sourly: "My resignation is at your disposal any time you wish it."
"Accepted," said Wertheimer airily, "to take effect at once."
To this d.u.c.h.emin merely grunted, as who should say he didn"t consider this turn of conversation desperately amusing. And Wertheimer resuming his chair, the two remained for some moments in silence, a silence so doggedly maintained on both sides that d.u.c.h.emin was presently aware of dull gnawings of curiosity. It occurred to him that his caller should have found plenty to do in his bureau in the War Office....
"And to what," he enquired with the tedious irony of ennui, "is one indebted for this unexpected honour on the part of the First Under-Secretary of the British Secret Service? Or whatever your high-sounding official t.i.tle is..."
"Oh!" Wertheimer replied lazily--and knocked out his pipe--"I merely dropped in to say good-bye."
d.u.c.h.emin discovered symptoms of more animation.
"h.e.l.lo! Where are you off to?"
"Nowhere--worse luck! I mean I"m here to bid you farewell and G.o.dspeed and what not on the eve of your departure from the British Isles."
"And where, pray, am I going?"
"That"s for you to say."
Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin meditated briefly. "I see," he announced: "I"m to have a roving commission."
"Worse than that: none at all."
d.u.c.h.emin opened his eyes wide.