Alias

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Alias The Lone Wolf, by Louis Joseph Vance

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Title: Alias The Lone Wolf
Author: Louis Joseph Vance
Release Date: November 29, 2003 [EBook #10327]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: "And who would ever believe anybody else guilty who knew your guest was Michael Lanyard, alias 'The Lone Wolf'?"]

ALIAS
THE LONE WOLF
BY
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
[Illustration: FRUCTUS QUAM FOLIA ]

1921

TO
ROBERT AITKEN SWAN
WHOSE FRIENDSHIP I HAVE TRIED
IN MANY OTHER WAYS, THIS
YARN WITH DIFFIDENCE IS
DEDICATED
NOTE: This is the fourth of the Lone Wolf stories. Its predecessors were, in chronological sequence, "The Lone Wolf," "The False Faces," "Red Masquerade."
Each story, however, is entirely self-contained and independent of the others.
If it matters....
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
Westport--9 September, 1921.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
WALKING PAPERS
II ONE WALKS
III MEETING BY MOONLIGHT
IV EVE
V PHINUIT & CO
VI VISITATION
VII TURN ABOUT
VIII IN RE AMOR ET AL
IX BLIND MAN'S BUFF
X BUT AS A MUSTARD SEED
XI AU REVOIR
XII TRAVELS WITH AN ASSASSIN
XIII ATHENAIS
XIV DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND
XV ADIEU
XVI THE HOUSE OF LILITH
XVII CHEZ LIANE
XVIII BROTHER AND SISTER
XIX SIX BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE
XX THE SYBARITES
XXI SOUNDINGS
XXII OUT OF SOUNDINGS
XXIII THE CIGARETTE
XXIV HISTORIC REPETITION
XXV THE MALCONTENT
XXVI THE BINNACLE
XXVII ?A VA BIEN!
XXVIII FINALE

ALIAS
THE LONE WOLF

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 dégagé 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 Duchemin?"
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 Duchemin 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?" Duchemin 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!" Duchemin 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 Vassilyevski show his lease of life wouldn't be apt to be prolonged by staying on in England."
"I agree; but still--!" sighed Duchemin, 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 Duchemin, 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," Duchemin insisted. "God knows I would gladly have sped Karslake's emigration with Sonia to Van Dieman's Land or Patagonia or where you will,