The False Faces | Page 5

sickening stench of
iodoform. Gusts of wet wind eddied hither and yon. Candles flickered
and flared, guttered out, were renewed. Monstrous shadows stole out

from black corners, crept along mouldy walls, crouched, sprang and
vanished, or, inscrutably baffled, retreated sullenly to their lairs....
For the better part of an hour the struggle continued; then its vigour
began to wane. The heaviest British metal went out of action; some
time later the field batteries discontinued their activities. The volume of
firing in the advance trenches dwindled, was fiercely renewed some
half a dozen times, died away to normal. Once more the Boche had
been beaten back.
Returning to his chair, the commanding officer rested his elbows upon
the table and bowed his head between his hands in an attitude of
profound fatigue. He seemed to remind himself of Lanyard's presence
only at 'cost of a racking effort, lifting heavy-lidded eyes to stare
almost incredulously at his face.
"I presumed you were in America," he said in dulled accents.
"I was ... for a time."
"You came back to serve France?"
Lanyard shook his head. "I returned to Europe after a year, the spring
before the war."
"Why?"
"I was hunted out of New York. The Boche would not let me be."
The officer looked startled. "The Boche?"
"More precisely, Herr Ekstrom--to name him as we knew him. But this
I did not suspect for a long time, that it was he who was responsible for
my persecution. I knew only that the police of America, informed of
my identity with the Lone Wolf, sought to deport me, that every avenue
to an honourable livelihood was closed. So I had to leave, to try to lose
myself."
"Your wife ... I mean to say, you married, didn't you?"
Lanyard nodded. "Lucy stuck by me till ... the end.... She had a little
money of her own. It financed our flight from the States. We made a
round-about journey of it, to elude surveillance--and, I think,
succeeded."
"You returned to Paris?"
"No: France, like England, was barred to the Lone Wolf.... We settled
down in Belgium, Lucy and I and our boy. He was three months old.
We found a quiet little home in Louvain--"
The officer interrupted with a low cry of apprehension, Lanyard

checked him with a sombre gesture. "Let me tell you....
"We might have been happy. None knew us. We were sufficient unto
ourselves. But I was without occupation; it occurred to me that my
memoirs might make good reading--for Paris; my friends the French
are as fond of their criminals as you English of your actors. On the
second of August I journeyed to Paris to negotiate with a publisher.
While I was away the Boche invaded Belgium. Before I could get back
Louvain had been occupied, sacked...."
He sat for a time in brooding silence; the officer made no attempt to
rouse him, but the gaze he bent upon the man's lowered head was grave
and pitiful. Abruptly, in a level and toneless voice, Lanyard resumed:
"In order to regain my home I had to go round by way of England and
Holland. I crossed the Dutch frontier disguised as a Belgian peasant.
When I reentered Louvain it was to find ... But all the world knows
what the blond beast did in Louvain. My wife and little son had
vanished utterly. I searched three months before I found trace of either.
Then ... Lucy died in my arms in a wretched hovel near Aerschot. She
had seen our child butchered before her eyes. She herself...."
Lanyard's hand, that rested on the table, clenched and whitened beneath
its begrimed skin. His eyes fathomed distances immeasurably removed
beyond the confines of that grim cellar. But he presently continued:
"Ekstrom had accompanied the army of invasion, had seen and
recognized Lucy in passing through Louvain. Therefore she and my son
were among the first to be sacrificed.... When I stood over her grave I
dedicated my life to the extermination of Ekstrom and all his breed. I
have since done things I do not like to think about. But the Prussian spy
system is the weaker for my work....
"But Ekstrom I could never find. It was as if he knew I hunted him. He
was seldom twenty-four hours ahead of me, yet I never caught up with
him but once; and then he was too closely guarded.... I pursued him to
Berlin, to Potsdam, three times to the western front, to Serbia, once to
Constantinople, twice to Petrograd."
The officer uttered an exclamation of astonishment. Lanyard looked his
way with a depreciatory air.
"Nothing strange about that. To one of my early training that was
easy--everything was easy but the end I sought.... En passant I collected
information concerning the