OF
SIM
IN
SCONSIN
B
BRAR











-






Ckrenee Rowe
“ Twice the automatic blazed in his face as he closed
in,—the bullets clearing narrowly'


1
THE FALSE FACES
A CHAPTER FROM THE HISTORY
OF THE LONE WOLF
BY
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK


PZ
3
1277
Fa
Copyright, 1918, by
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreiga
languages, including the Scandinavian
Copyright, 1917, by the
CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY


D
CONTENTS
PAGE
I
3
II
19
III
35
49
IV
V
60
VI
78
VII
94
VIII
104
IX
117
X
133
149
XI
XII
Out of No Man's Land......
From a British Port..
In the Barred Zone...
In Deep Waters..
On the Banks..
Under Suspicion.
In Stateroom 29....
Off Nantucket...,
Sub Sea...
At Base...
Under the Rose.
Resurrection.
Reincarnation...
Defamation...
Recognition....
Au Printemps.
Finesse....
Danse Macabre..
Force Majeure.
Riposte....
Question...
Chicane...
Amnesty.
161
179
XIII
XIV
XV
191
207
220
XVI
XVII
XVIII
233
251
XIX
265
272
XX
XXI
295
XXII
311
XXIII
324





THE FALSE FACES
.





I
OUT OF NO MAN'S LAND
0
N THE muddy verge of a shallow little pool the
man lay prone and still, as still as those poor
dead whose broken bodies rested all about him,
where they had fallen, months or days, hours or weeks
ago, in those grim contests which the quick were wont
insensately to wage for a few charnel yards of that
debatable ground.
Alone of all that awful company this man live and,
though he ached with the misery of hunger and cold
and rain-drenched garments, was unharmed.
Ever since nightfall and a brisk skirmishe had made
practicable an undetected escape through the German
lines, he had been in the open, alternately creeping toward
the British trenches under cover of darkness and resting
in deathlike immobility, as he now rested, while pistol-
lights and star-shells flamed overhead, flooding the night
with ghastly glare and disclosing in pitiless detail that
two-hundred-yard ribbon of earth, littered with indescrib-
able abominations, which set apart the combatants.
When this happened, the living had no other choice than
to ape the dead, lest the least movement, detected by
eyes that peered without rest through loopholes in the
sandbag parapets, invite a bullet's blow.
Now it was midnight, and lights were flaring less fre-
quently, even as rifle-fire had grown more intermittent
as if many waters might quench out hate in the
beart of man!
3
O


THE FALSE FACES
For it was raining hard—a dogged, dreary downpour
drilling through a heavy atmosphere whose enervation
was like the oppression of some malign and inexorable
incubus; its incessant crepitation resembling the mutter
of a weary, sullen drum, dwarfing to insignificance the
stuttering of machine-guns remote in the northward,
dominating even a dull thunder of cannonading some-
where down the far horizon; lowering a vast and shim-
mering curtain of slender lances, steel-bright, close-
ranked, between the trenches and over all that weary
land. Thus had it rained since noon, and thus—for
wań of any hint of slackening-it might rain for another
twelve hours, or eighteen, or twenty-four.
The star-rocket, whose rays had transfixed him beside
the pool, paled and winked out in mid-air, and for several
minutes unbroken darkness obtained while, on hands and
knees, the man crept on toward that gap in the British
barbed-wire entanglements which he had marked down
ere daylight waned, shaping a tolerably straight course
despite frequent detours to avoid the unspeakable.
Only once was his progress interrupted—when straining
senses apprised him that a British patrol was taking
advantage of the false truce to reconnoitre toward the
enemy lines, its approach betrayed by a nearing squash
of furtive feet in the boggy earth, the rasp of constrained
respiration, a muttered curse when someone slipped and
narrowly escaped a fall, the edged hiss of an officer's
whisper reprimanding the offender. Incontinently he
who crawled dropped flat to the greasy mud and lay
moveless.
Almost at the same instant, warned by a trail of sparks


THE FALSE FACES
5
rising in a long arc from the German trenches, the soldiers
imitated his action, and, as long as those triple stars
shone in the murk, made themselves one with him and
the heedless dead. Two lay so close beside him that the
man could have touched either by moving a hand a mere
six inches; he was at pains to do nothing of the sort; he
was sedulous to clench his teeth against their chattering,
even to hold his breath, and regretted that he might not
mute the thumping of his heart. Nor dared he stir until,
the lights fading out, the patrol rose and skulked onward.
Thereafter his movements were less stealthy; with a
detachment of their own abroad in No Man's Land, the
British would refrain from shooting at shadows. One
had now to fear only German bullets in event the patrol
were discovered.
Rising, the man slipped and stumbled on in semi-
crouching posture, ready to flatten to earth as soon as
any one of his many overshoulder glances detected
another sky-spearing flight of sparks. But this necessity
he was spared; no more lights were discharged before he
groped through the wires to the parapet, with almost
uncanny good luck, finding the very spot where the Brit-
ish had come over the top, indicated by protruding
uprights of a rough wooden scaling ladder.
As he turned, felt with a foot for the uppermost
rung, and began to descend, he was saluted by a voice
hoarse with exposure, from the black bowels of the trench:
“Blimy!but ye're back in a 'urry! Wot's up? Forget
to put perfume on yer pocket-'andkerchief-or wot?”
The man's response, if he made any, was lost in a
heavy splash as his feet slipped on the slimy rungs, de-


6
THE FALSE FACES
Carn't yer
livering him precipitately into a knee-deep stream of foul
water which moved sluggishly through the trench like
the current of a half-choked sewer—a circumstance which
neither suprised him nor added to his physical discom-
fort, who could be no more wet or defiled than he had
been.
Floundering to a foothold, he cast about vainly for a
clue to the other's whereabouts; for if the night was
thick in the open, here in the trench its density was as
that of the pit; the man could distinguish positively
nothing more than a pallid rift where the walls opened
overhead.
"Well, sullen, w'ere's yer manners?
answer a civil question?”
Turning toward the speaker, the man replied in good
if rather carefully enunciated English:
“I am not of your comrades. I am come from the
enemy trenches."
"The 'ell yer are! 'Ands up!"
The muzzle of a rifle prodded the man's stomach.
Obediently he lifted both hands above his head. A
thought later, he was half blinded by the sudden spot-
light of an electric flash-lamp.
"Deserter, eh? You kamerad--wot?”
“Kamerad!" the man echoed with an accent of con-
tempt. "I am no German-I am French. I have come
through the Boche lines to-night with important infor-
mation which I desire to communicate forthwith to your
commanding officer."
"Strike me!” his catechist breathed, skeptical.
There was a new sound of splashing in the trench.


THE FALSE FACES
7
A third voice chimed in: “ 'Ello? Wot's all the row
abaht?”
"Step up and tike a look for yerself. 'Ere's a blighter
wot sez 'e's com from the Germ trenches with important
information for the 0. C.”
“Bloody liar," the newcomer commented dispassion-
ately. "Mind yer eye. Likely it's just another pl’yful
little trick of the giddy Boche. 'Ere you!" The splash-
ing drew nearer.
“Wot's yer gime? Speak up if yer
don't want a bullet through yer in'ards."
"I play no game," the man said patiently. “I am
unarmed—your prisoner, if you like.”
"I like, all right. Mike yer mind easy abaht that.
But wot's all this important information'?"
"I shall divulge that only to the proper authorities.
Be good enough to conduct me to your commanding
officer without more delay.
"Wot do yer mike of 'im, corp'ril?" the first soldier
enquired. “'Ow abaht an inch or two o' the bay'net to
loosen 'is tongue?”
After a moment's hesitation in perplexed silence, the
corporal took the flash-lamp from the private and with
its beam raked the prisoner from head to foot, gaining
little enlightenment from this review of a tall, spare fig-
ure clothed in the familiar gray overcoat of the German
private its face a mere mask of mud through which
shone eyes of singular brilliance and steadiness, the eyes
of a man of intelligence, determination, and courage.
"Keep yer 'ands 'igh," the corporal advised curtly.
"Ginger, you search 'im.”
Propping his rifle against the wall of the trench, its


8
THE FALSE FACES
butt on the firing-step just out of water, the private pro-
ceeded painstakingly to examine the person of the pris-
oner; in course of which process he unbuttoned and
threw open the gray overcoat, exposing a shapeless tunic
and trousers of shoddy drab stuff.
“ 'E 'asn't got no arms—'e 'asn't got nothink, not so
much as 'is blinkin' latch-key."
“Very good. Get back on yer post. I'll tike charge
o'this one.”
Grounding his own rifle, the corporal fixed its bayonet,
then employed it in a gesture of unpleasant significance.
“ 'Bout fice," he ordered. "March. Yer can drop
yer ’ands—but don't go forgettin' I'm right 'ere be'ind
yer.”
In silence the prisoner obeyed, wading down the
flooded trench, the spot-light playing on his back, strik-
ing sullen gleams from the inky water that swirled about
his knees, and disclosing glimpses of coated figures
stationed at regular intervals along the firing-step, faces
steadfast to loopholes in the parapet.
Now and again they passed narrow rifts in the walls
of the trench, entrances to dugouts betrayed by glimmers
of candle-light through the cracks of makeshift doors
or the coarse mesh of gunnysack curtains.
From one of these, at the corporal's summons, a
sleepy subaltern stumbled to attend ungraciously to his
subordinate's report, and promptly ordered the prisoner
taken on to the regimental headquarters behind the lines.
A little farther on captive and captor turned off into
a narrow and tortuous communication trench. There-
after for upward of ten minutes they threaded a laby-


THE FALSE FACES
9
rinth of deep, constricted, reeking ditches, with so little
to differentiate one from another that the prisoner won-
dered at the sure sense of direction which enabled the
corporal to find his way without mis-step, with the
added handicap of the abysmal darkness. Then, of a
sudden, the sides of the trench shelved sharply down-
ward, and the two debouched into a broad, open field.
Here many men lay sleeping, with only waterproof sheets
for protection from that bitter deluge which whipped
the earth into an ankle-deep lake of slimy ooze and lent
keener accent to the abiding stench of filth and decom-
posing flesh. A slight hillock stood between this field
and the firing-line-where now lively fusillades were
being exchanged-its profile crowned with a spectral
rank of shell-shattered poplars sharply silhouetted
against a sky in which star-shells and Verey lights flow-
ered like blooms of hell.
Here the corporal abruptly commanded his prisoner
to halt and himself paused and stood stiffly at attention,
saluting a group of three officers who were approaching
with the evident intention of entering the trench. One
of these loosed upon the pair the flash of a pocket lamp.
At sight of the gray overcoat all three stopped short.
A voice with the intonation of habitual command en-
quired: "What have we here?"
The corporal replied: “A prisoner, sir-sez ’e's French
come across the open to-night with important infor-
mation-so 'e sez.”
The spot-light picked out the prisoner's face. The
officer addressed him directly.
“What is your name, my man?”


10
THE FALSE FACES
>>
"That,” said the prisoner, "is something which-like
my intelligence--I should prefer to communicate pri-
vately."
With a startled gesture the officer took a step forward
and peered intently into that mụd-smeared countenance.
“I seem to know your voice,” he said in a speculative
tone.
"You should," the prisoner returned.
“Gentlemen," said the officer to his companions, "you
may continue your rounds. Corporal, follow me with
your prisoner.”
He swung round and slopped off heavily through the
mud of the open field.
Behind them the sound of firing in the forward trenches
swelled to an uproar augmented by the shrewish chatter-
ing of machine-guns. Then a battery hidden some-
where in the blackness in front of them came into action,
barking viciously, Shells whined hungrily overhead.
The prisoner glanced back: the maimed poplars stood out
stark against a sky washed with wave after wave of in-
fernal light.
Some time later he was conscious of a cobbled way
beneath his sodden footgear. They were entering the
outskirts of a ruined village. On either hand fragments
of walls reared up with sashless windows and gaping
doors like death masks of mad folk stricken in paroxysm.
Within one doorway a dim light burned; through it tha
officer made his way, prisoner and corporal at his heels,
passing a sentry, then descending a flight of crazy wooden
steps to a dank and gloomy cellar, stone-walled and
vaulted. In the middle of the cellar stood a broad table


THE FALSE FACES
11
at which an orderly sat writing by the light of two candles
stuck in the necks of empty bottles. At another table,
in a corner, a sergeant and an operator of the Signal
Corps were busy with field telephone and telegraph in-
struments. On a meagre bed of damp and mouldy straw,
against the farther wall, several men, orderlies and sub-
alterns, rested in stertorous slumbers. Despite the cold
the atmosphere was a reek of tobacco smoke, sweat, and
steam from wet clothing.
The man at the centre table rose and saluted, offering
the commanding officer a sheaf of scribbled messages
and reports. Taking the chair thus vacated, the officer
ran an eye over the papers, issued several orders inspired
by them, then turned attention to the prisoner.
"You may return to your post, corporal."
The corporal executed a smart about-face and clumped
up the steps. In answer to the officer's steadfast gaze
the prisoner stepped forward and confronted him across
the table.
“Who are you?"
"My name," said the prisoner, after looking around
to make sure that none of the other tenants of the cellar
was within earshot, “is Lanyard-Michael Lanyard.”
"The Lone Wolf!"
Involuntarily the officer jumped up, almost overturn-
ing his chair.
“That same," the prisoner affirmed, adding with a
grimace of besmirched and emaciated features that was
meant for a smile“General Wertheimer."
"Wertheimer is not my name."
"I am aware of that. I uttered it merely to confirm


12
THE FALSE FACES
>>
my identity to you; it is the only name I ever knew you
by in the old days, when you were in the British Secret
Service and I a famous thief with a price upon my head,
when you and I played hide and seek across half Europe
and back again-in the days of Troyon's and 'the Pack,'
the days of De Morbihan and Popinot and
“Ekstrom,” the officer supplied as the prisoner hesi-
tated oddly.
“And Ekstrom," the other agreed.
There was a little silence between the two; then the
officer mused aloud:“All dead!"
but one.”
The officer looked up sharply. “Which -?”
“The last-named.”
"Ekstrom? But we saw him die! You yourself fired
the shot that
"It was not Ekstrom. Trust that one not to imperfl
his precious carcase when he could find an underling to
run the risk for him! I tell you I have seen Ekstrom
within this last month, alive and serving the Fatherland
as the genius of that system of espionage which keeps
the enemy advised of your every move, down to the least
considerable that system which makes it possible for
the Boche to greet every regiment by name when it
moves up to serve its time in your advanced trenches."
“You amaze me!”
“I shall convince you; I bring intelligence which will
enable you to tear apart this web of treason within
your own lines and
Lanyard's voice broke. The officer remarked that
he was trembling-trembling so violently that to


THE FALSE FACES
13
support himself he must grip the edge of the table
with both hands.
“You are wounded?"
“No-but cold to my very marrow, and faint with
hunger. Even the German soldiers are on starvation
rations, now; the civilians are worse off; and I-I have
been over there for years, a spy, a hunted thing, subsist-
ing as casually as a sparrow!"
“Sit down. Orderly!”
And there was no more talk between these two for a
time. Not only did the officer refuse to hear another
word before Lanyard had gorged his fill of food and drink,
but an exigent communication from the front, trans-
mitted through the trench telephone system, diverted
his attention temporarily.
Gnawing ravenously at bread and meat, Lanyard
watched curiously the scenes in the cellar, following, as
best he might, the tides of combat; gathering that
German resentment of a British bombing enterprise
(doubtless the work of that same squad which had stolen
past him in the gloom of No Man's Land) had developed
into a violent attempt to storm the forward trenches.
In these a desperate struggle was taking place. Rein-
forcements were imperatively wanted.
Activities at the signallers' table became feverish;
the commanding officer stood over it, reading incoming
messages as they were jotted down and taking such action
thereupon as his judgment dictated. Orderlies, dragged
half asleep from their nests of straw, were shaken awake
and despatched to rouse and rush to the front the troops
Lanyard had seen sleeping in the open field. Other


14
THE FALSE FACES
orderlies limped or reeled down the cellar steps, delivered
their despatches, and, staggered out through a breach in
the wall to have their injuries attended to in the field
dressing-station in the adjoining cellar, or else threw
themselves down on the straw to fall instantly asleep
despite the deafening din.
The Boche artillery, seeking blindly to silence the field
batteries whose fire was galling their offensive, had begun
to bombard the village. Shells fled shrieking overhead,
to break in thunderous bellows. Walls toppled with
appalling crashes, now near at hand, now far. The ebb
and flow of rifle-fire at the front contributed a back-
ground of sound not unlike the roaring of an angry surf.
Machine-guns gibbered like maniacs. Heavier artillery
was brought into play behind the British lines, appar-
ently at no great distance from the village; the very
flag-stones of the cellar floor quaked to the concussions
of big-calibre guns.
Through the breach in the wall echoed the screams
and groans of wounded. The foul air became saturated
with a 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


THE FALSE FACES
15
.
.
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-
.
.


16
THE FALSE FACES
about fourney of it, to elude surveillance-and, I think,
succeeded."
“You returned to Paris?"
“No: France, like England, was barred to the Lone
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
Wolf.
tell you.
“We might have been happy. None knew us.
We
were sufficient unto ourselves. But I was without occu-
pation; 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 nego-
tiate with a publisher. While I was away the Boche in-
vaded 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 re-
entered 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.


TIIE FALSE FACES
17
His eyes
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.
fathomed distances immeasurably removed beyond the
confines of that grim cellar. But he presently con-
tinued :
“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 dedi-
cated 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 Petro-
grad."
The officer uttered an exclamation of astonishment.
Lanyard looked his way with a depreciatory air.
“Nothing strange about that. To one of my early train-
ing that was easy-everything was easy but the end
I sought.
En passant I collected information
concerning the workings of the Prussian spy system.
From time to time I found means to communicate
somewhat of this to the Surété in Paris. I believe
France and England have already profited a little
.


18
THE FALSE FACES
through my efforts. They shall profit more, and quickly,
when I have told all that I have to tell.
“Of a sudden Ekstrom vanished. Overnight he dis-
appeared from Germany. A false lead brought me back
to this front. Two days ago I learned he had been sent
to America on a secret mission. Knowing that the
States have severed diplomatic relations with Berlin
and tremble on the verge of a declaration of war, we can
surmise something of the nature of his mission. I mean
to see that he fails.
To follow him to America,
making my way out through Belgium and Holland, pur-
suing such furtive ways as I must in territory dominated
by the Boche, meant much time lost. So I came through
the lines to-night. Fortune was kind in throwing me
into your hands: I count upon your assistance. As an
ex-agent of the Secret Service you are in a position to
make smooth my path; as an Englishman, you will ad-
vance the interests of a prospective ally of England
if you help me to the limit of your ability; for what I
mean to do in America will serve that country, by expos-
ing the conspiracies of the Boche across the water, as
much as it will serve my private ends."
The officer's hand fell across the table and closed upon
the knotted fist of the Lone Wolf.
“As an Englishman,” he said simply—“of course.
But no less as your friend."
9


II
FROM A BRITISH PORT
A
ND one man in his time plays many parts": few
more than this same Lanyard. In no way to
be identified with the hunted creature who crept
into the British lines out of No Man's Land was the
Monsieur Duchemin who, ten days after that wintry
midnight, took passage for New York from “a British
port," aboard the steamship Assyrian.
André Duchemin was the name inscribed in the cre-
dentials furnished him in recognition of signal assistance
rendered the British Secret Service in its task of scotching
the Prussian spy system. And the personality he chose
to assume suited well the name. A man of modest and
amiable deportment, viewing the world with eyes intelli-
gent and curious, his temper reacting from its ways in
terms of grave humour, Monsieur Duchemin passed
peaceably on his lawful occasions, took life as he found
it, made the best of irksome circumstances.
This last idiosyncrasy stood him in good stead. For
the Assyrian failed to clear upon her proposed sailing
date and for a livelong week thereafter chafed along-
side her landing stage, steam up, cargo laden and stowed,
nothing lacking but the Admiralty's permission to begin
her westbound voyage-a permission inscrutably with-
held, giving rise to a common discontent which the pas-
sengers dissembled to the various best of their abilities,
that is to say, in most cases thinly or not at all.
19


20
THE FALSE FACES
Yet they were none of them unreasonable beings.
They had come aboard one and all keyed up to a high
nervous pitch, pardonable in such as must commit their
lives to the dread adventure of the barred zone, wanting
nothing so much as to get it over with, whatever its
upshot. And everlasting procrastination required them
day after day to steel their hearts anew against that
Terror which followed its furtive ways beneath the
leaden waters of the Channel!
Alone among them this Monsieur Duchemin paraded
successfully a false face of resignation, protesting no pre-
dilection whatsoever for a watery grave, no infatuat:
haste to challenge the Hun upon his chosen hunting,
ground. In the fullness of time it would be permitted
to him to go down to the sea in this ship. Meanwhile
he found it apparently pleasant and restful to explore
the winding cobbled ways of that antiquated waterside
community, made over by the hand of War into a bust-
ling seaport, or to tramp the sunken lanes that seamed
those green old Cornish hills which embosomed the wide
harbour waters, or to lounge about the broad white decks
of the Assyrian watching the diurnal traffic of the haven
-a restless, warlike pageant.
Daily, in earliest dusk of dawn, the wakeful might
watch the faring forth of a weirdly assorted fleet of
small craft, the day patrol, to relieve a night patrol as
weirdly heterogeneous. Daily, at all hours, mine-sweepers
came and went, by twos and twos, in flocks, in schools;
and daily bellowing offshore detonations advertised their
success in garnering those horned black seeds of death
which the Hun and his kin were sedulous to sow in the


THE FALSE FACES
21
fairways. While daily battleships both great and small
rolled in wearily to refit and dress their wounds, or took
swift departure on grim and secret errands.
There was, moreover, the not-infrequent spectacle of
some minor ship of war-a truculent, gray destroyer as
like as not-shepherding in a sleek submarine, like a
felon whale armoured and strangely caparisoned in gray-
brown steel, to be moored in chains with a considerable
company of its fellows on the far side of the roadstead,
while its crew was taken ashore and consigned to some
dark limbo of oblivion.
And once, with a light cruiser snapping at her heels, a
drab Norwegian tramp plodded sullenly into port, a
mine-layer caught red-handed, plying its assassin's trade
beneath a neutral flag.
Not long after its crew had been landed, volleys of
musketry crashed in the town gaol-yard.
One of a group of three idling on the promenade deck
of the Assyrian, Lanyard turned sharply and stared
through narrowed eyelids into the quarter whence the
sounds reverberated.
The man at his side, a loose-jointed American of the
commercial caste, paused momentarily in his task of
masticating a fat dark cigar.
“This way out,” he commented thoughtfully.
Lanyard nodded; but the third, a plumply ingratiative
native of Geneva, known to the ship as Emil Dressler,
frowned in puzzlement.
"Pardon, Monsieur Crane, but what is that you say-
'this way out'?"


22
THE FALSE FACES
.
"Simply," Crane explained, "I take the firing to mean
the execution of our nootral friends from Norway."
The Swiss shuddered. “It is most terrible!”
"Well, I don't know about that. They done their
damnedest to fix it for us to drown somewhere out there
in the nice, cold English Channel. I'm just as satisfied
it's them, instead, with their backs to a stone wall in
the warm sunlight, getting their needin's. That's only
justice. Eh, Monsieur Duchemin?”
“It is war,” said Lanyard with a shrug.
“And war is
No: Sherman was all wrong.
Hell's got perfectly good grounds for a libel suit against
William Tecumseh for what he up and said about it and
war, all in the same breath.”
Lanyard smiled faintly, but Dressler pondered this
obscure reference with patent distress. Crane champed
his cigar reflectively.
“What's more to our purpose," he said presently:
"I shouldn't be surprised if this meant the wind-up of
our rest-cure here. That's the third mine-layer they've
collected this week-two subs, and now this benevolent
nootral. Am I right, Monsieur Duchemin?"
“Who knows?” Lanyard replied with a smile. “Even
now the mine-sweeping flotilla is coming home, as you
see; which means, the neighbouring waters have been
cleared. It is altogether a possibility that we may be
permitted to depart this night."
Even so the event: as that day's sun declined amid a
portentous welter of crimson and purple and gold, the
moorings were cast off and the Assyrian warped out into
mid-channel and anchored there for the night.


THE FALSE FACES
23
Inasmuch as she was to sail as the tide served, some
time before sunrise, the passengers were advised to seek
their berths at an early hour. Thirty minutes before
the steamship entered the danger zone (as she would
soon after leaving the harbour) they would be roused and
were expected promptly to assemble on deck, with life-
preservers, and station themselves near the boats to
which they were individually assigned.
For their further comforting they were treated, in the
ebb of the chill blue twilight, to boat-drill and final in-
structions in the right adjustment of life-belts.
A preoccupied company assembled in the dining saloon
for what might be its last meal. In the shadow of the
general apprehension, conversation languished; expres-
sions of relief on the part of those who had been loudest
in complaining at the delays were notably unheard;
even Crane, Lanyard's nearest neighbour at table, was
abnormally subdued. Reviewing that array of sobered
and anxious faces, Lanyard remarked-not for the first
time, but with renewed gratitude that in all the roster
of passengers none were children and but two were
women: the American widow of an English officer and
her very English daughter, an angular and superior
spinster.
Avoiding the customary post-prandial symposium in
the smoking room, Lanyard slipped away with his cigar
for a lonely turn on deck.
Beneath a sky heavily canopied, the night was stark
black and loud with clashing waters. A fitful wind
played in gusts now grim, now groping, like a lost thing
blundering blindly about in that deep darkness. Ashore


24
THE FALSE FACES
a few wan lights, widely spaced, winked uncertainly,
withdrawn in vast remoteness; those near at hand, of
the anchored shipping, skipped and swayed and flickered
in mad mazes of goblin dance. To him who paced those
vacant, darkened decks, the sense of dissociation from
all the common, kindly phenomena of civilization was
something intimate and inescapable. Melancholy as well
rode upon that black-winged wind.
At pause beneath the bridge, the adventurer rested
elbows upon the teakwood rail and with importunate
eyes searched the masked face of his destiny. There
was great fear in his heart, not of death, but lest death
overtake him before that scarlet hour when he should
encounter the man whom he must always think of as
"Ekstrom.”
After that, nothing would matter: let Death come then
as swiftly as it willed.
He was not even middle-aged, on the hither side of
thirty; yet his attitude was that of one who had already
crossed the great divide of the average mortal span: he
looked backward upon a life, never forward to one.
To him his history seemed a thing written, lacking the
one word Finis: he had lived and loved and lost-had
arrayed himself insolently against God and Man, had
been lifted toward the light a little way by a woman's
love, had been thrust relentlessly back into the black
pit of his damnation. He made no pretense that it was
otherwise with him: remained now merely the thing he
had been in the beginning, minus that divine spark
which love had once kindled into consuming aspiration
toward the right; the Lone Wolf prowled again to-day


26
THE FALSE FACES
with the second and third officers and a number of
stewards.
Resentment was not unwarranted: already, before
being suffered to take up quarters on board the Assyrian,
each passenger had submitted to a most comprehensive
survey of his credentials, his mental, moral, and social
status, his past record, present affairs, and future pur-
poses. A formality to be expected by all such as travel
in war time, it had been rigid but mild in contrast with
this eleventh-hour inquisition-a proceeding so drastic
and exhaustive that the only plausible inference was
official determination to find excuse for ordering some-
body ashore in irons. Nothing was overlooked: once
passports and other proofs of identity had been scruti-
nized, each passenger was conducted to his stateroom and
his person and luggage subjected to painstaking search.
None escaped; on the other hand, not ope was found
guilty of flagitious peculiarity. In the upshot the
inquisitors, baffled and betraying every symptom of
disappointment, were fain to give over and return to
their tender.
By this time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and
passed, found himself as little inclined for sleep as the
most timorous soul on board. Selecting an American
novel from the ship’s library, he repaired to the smoking
room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an
involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eaves-
dropper upon an animated debate involving some eight
or ten gentlemen at a table in the middle of the saloon-
its subject, the recent visitation.


THE FALSE FACES
27
· Measures so extraordinary were generally held to
indicate an incentive more extraordinary still.
"You can't get away from it,” he heard Crane declare:
“there's some sort of funny business going on, or liable
to go on, aboard this ship. She wasn't held up for a
solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they
come aboard to-night to give us another once-over
through sheer voluptuousness. There's a reason."
“And what," a satiric English voice enquired, “do you
assume that reason to be?”
“Search me.
'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of
the British Intelligence Office are a long sight past finding
out.”
“It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots
suggested: "the Assyrian is suspected of entertaining a
devil unawares."
"Monsieur means?" the Swiss enquired. .
"I mean, the authorities may have been led to believe
some one of us a questionable character."
“German spy?”
"Possibly.”
“Or an English traitor?
"Impossible," asserted another Briton heavily. "There
is to-day no such thing in England. Two years ago the
supposition might have been plausible. But that breed
has long since been stamped out-in England."
“Another guess," Crane cut in: "they've taken con-
siderable trouble to clear the track for us. Maybe it
occurred to somebody at the last moment to make sure
none of us was likely to pull off an inside job."
“ 'Inside job?”” Dressler pleaded.
9


28
THE FALSE FACES
“Planting bombs in the coal bunkers—things like that
-anything to crab our getting through the barred zone
in spite of mines and U-boats."
“Any such attempt would mean almost certain death!”
“What of it? It's been tried before and got away
with. You've got to hand it to Fritz, he'll risk hell-for-
breakfast cheerful any time he gets it in his bean he's
serving Gott und Vaterland."
“Granted,” said the Englishman. “But I fancy such
an one would find it far from easy to secure passage upon
this or any other vessel.”
“How so? You may have haltered all your traitors,
but there's still a-plenty German spies living in Eng-
land. Even you admit that. And if they can get by
your Secret Service, to say nothing of Scotland Yard,
what's to prevent their fixing to leave the country?”
"Nothing, certainly. But I still contend it is hardly
likely.”
“Of course it's hardly likely. Look at these guys to-
night--dead set on making an awful example of anybody
that couldn't come clean. I didn't notice them missing
any bets. They combed me to the Queen's taste; for a
while I was sure scared they'd extract my pivot tooth to
see if there wasn't something incriminating and degrading
secreted inside it. And nobody got off any easier. I say
the good ship Assyrian has a pretty clean bill of health to
go sailing with.”
“On the other hand”-yet another American voice was
speaking-"no spy or criminal worth his salt would try
to ship without preparations thorough enough to insure
success, harring accidents.”


THE FALSE FACES
29
“Criminal?” drawled the Briton incredulously.
"The enterprisin' burglar keeps a-burglin', even in war
time. There have been notable burglaries in London of
late, according to your newspapers."
“And you think the thief would attempt to smuggle
his loot out of the country aboard such a ship as this?”
“Why not?”
“Scotland Yard to the contrary notwithstanding?"
"If Scotland Yard is as efficient as you think, sir,
certainly any sane thief would make every effort to leave
a country it was making too hot for him.”
“Considerable criminal!" Crane jeered.
“Undeceive yourself, señor.” This was a Brazilian,
a quiet little dark body who commonly contented himself
with a listening rôle in the smoking-room discussions.
“There are truly criminals of intelligence. And war
conditions are driving them out of Europe."
Of a sudden Lanyard-stretched out at length upon
the leather cushions, in full view of these gossips—became
aware that he was being closely scrutinised. By whom,
with what reason or purpose, he could not surmise; and
it were unwise to look up from that printed page. But
that sixth sense of his—intuition, what you will—that
exquisitively sensitive sentinel admonished that at least
one person in the room was watching him narrowly.
Though he made no move other than to turn a page,
his glance followed blindly blurring lines of text, and his
quickened wits overlooked no shade of meaning or in-
tonation as that talk continued.
"A criminal of intelligence,” some one observed, "is a


30
THE FALSE FACES
giddy paradox whose fatuous existence is quite fittingly
confined to the realm of fable.”
“You took the identical words right out of my mouth,”
Crane complained bitterly.
"Your pardon, señores: history confutes your incre-
dulity.”
“But we are talking about to-day.”
“Even to-day-can you deny it?--men attain high
places by means which the law would construe as criminal,
were they not intelligent enough to outwit it.”
“Big game," Crane objected; “something else again.
What we contend is no man of ordinary common sense
could get his own consent to crack a safe, or pick a pocket,
or do second-story work, or pull any rough stuff like
that.”
"Again you overlook living facts,” persisted the Brazil-
ian.
“Name one just one.”
"The Lone Wolf, then."
“Unnatural history is out of my line,” Crane objected.
“Why is a lone wolf, anyway?”
The Brazilian's voice took on an accent of exasperation.
"Señores, I do not jest. I am a student of psychology,
more especially of criminal psychology. I lived long in
Paris before this war, and took deep interest in the case
of the Lone Wolf.”
"Well, you've got me all excited. Go on with your
story."
“With much pleasure
This gentleman, then,
this Michael Lanyard, as he called himself, was a distin-
guished Parisian figure, a man of extraordinary attainment,
.
.


THE FALSE FACES
31
esteemed the foremost connoisseur d'art in all Europe.
Suddenly, at the zenith of his career, he disappeared.
Subsequently it became known that he had been identical
with that great Parisian criminal, the Lone Wolf, a
superman of thieves who had plundered all Europe with
unvarying success for almost a decade.”
“Then what made the silly ass quit?"
"According to my information, he won the love of a
young woman-
"And reformed for her sake, of course?”
"To the contrary, señor; Lanyard renounced his
double life because of a theory on which he had founded
his astonishing success. According to this theory, any
man of intelligence may defy society as long as he will,
always providing he has no friend, lover, or confederate
in whom to confide. A man self-contained can never be
betrayed; the stupid police seldom apprehend even the
most stupid criminal, save through the treachery of some
intimate. This Lanyard proved his theory by con-
founding not only the utmost efforts of the police but even
the jealous enmity of that association of Continental
criminals known as the Bande Noire until he became a
lover. Then he proved his intelligence: in one stroke
he flouted the police, delivered into their hands the inner
circle of the Bande Noire, and vanished with the woman
he loved.”
"And then?"
"The rest,” said the Brazilian, "is silence.”
"It is for to-night, anyway,” Crane observed, yawning.
"It's bedtime. Here comes the busy steward to put the
lights and us out."
>>


32
THE FALSE FACES
There was a general stir; men drained glasses, knocked
out pipes, got up, murmured good-nights. Lanyard closed
the American novel upon a forefinger, looked up abstract-
edly, rose, moved toward the door. The utmost effort of
exceptional powers of covert observation assured him
that, at the moment, none of the company favoured him
with especial attention; the author of that interest whose
intensity had so weighed upon his consciousness had been
swift to dissemble.
On his way forward he exchanged bows and smiles with
Crane and one or two others, his gesture completely
casual. Yet when he entered the starboard alleyway he
carried with him a complete catalogue of those who had
contributed to the conversation. With all, thanks to
seven days' association, he stood on terms of shipboard
acquaintance. Not one, in his esteem, was more poten-
tially mischievous than any other-not even the Brazilian
Velasco, though he had been the first to name the Lone
Wolf.
It was, furthermore, quite possible that the mention
of his erstwhile sobriquet had been utterly fortuitous.
And yet, one might not forget that sensation of being
under intent surveillance.
In his stateroom Lanyard stood for several minutes
gravely peering into the mirror above the washstand.
The face he scanned was lean and worn in feature,
darkly weathered, framed in hair whose jet already
boasted an accent of silver at either temple the face of a
man inured to hardship, seasoned in suffering, strong in
self-knowledge. The incandescence of an intelligence
coldly dispassionate, quick and shrewd, lighted those
.


THE FALSE FACES
33
dark eyes. Distinctively a face of Gallic cast, three years
of long-drawn torment had served in part to erase from
it wellnigh all resemblance to both the brilliant social
freebooter of ante-bellum Paris and that undesirable
alien whom the authorities had sought to deport from
the States. Amazing facility in impersonation had done
the rest; unrecognisable as what he had been, he was
to-day flawlessly the incarnation of what he elected to
seem-Monsieur Duchemin, gentleman, of Paris.
Impossible to believe his disguise had been so soon
penetrated
And yet, again, that gossip of the smoking room
Police work? Or had Ekstrom's creatures picked up
his trail once more?
Beneath that urbane mask of his, a hunted, wild thing
poised in question, mistrustful of the very wind, prick-
eared, fangs agleam, eyes grimly apprehensive.
A little sound, the least of metallic clicks, breaking the
hush of his solitude, froze the adventurer to attention.
Only his glance swerved swiftly to a fastened door in the
forward partition-his stateroom being the aftermost
of three that might be thrown together to form a suite.
The nickeled knob was being tried with infinite precau-
tion. On the half turn it checked with a faint repeti-
tion of the click. Then the door itself quivered almost
imperceptibly to pressure, though it yielded not a fraction
of an inch.
Lanyard's eyes hardened. He did not stir from where
he stood, but one hand whipped an automatic from his
pocket while the other darted out to the switch-box by
the head of his berth and extinguished the light.


34
THE FALSE FACES
Instantly a glimmer of light in the forward stateroom
showed through a narrow strip of iron grill-work set in
the top of the partition for ventilating purposes.
Simultaneously the door-knob was gently released,
and with another louder click the light in the adjoining
cubicle was blotted out.
Mystified, Lanyard undressed and turned in, but not to
sleep-not for a little, at least.
Who might this neighbour be who tried his door so
stealthily? Before to-night that room had had no tenant.
Apparently one of the passengers had seen fit to shift his
quarters. To what end? To keep a jealous eye on the Lone
Wolf, perhaps? So much the better, then: Lanyard need
only make enquiry in the morning to identify his enemy.
Deliberately closing his eyes, he dismissed the enigma.
He possessed in marked degree that attribute of genius,
ability to command slumber at will. Swiftly the troubled
deeps of thought grew calm; on their placid surface
inconsequent visions were mirrored darkly, fugitive
scenes from the store of subconscious memory: Crane's
lantern-jawed physiognomy, keen eyes semi-veiled by
humorously drooping lids, the extreme corner of his
mouth bulging round his everlasting cigar
grimy lions in Trafalgar Square of a rainy afternoon
the octagonal room of L'Abbaye Thêléme at three in
the morning, a swirl of Bacchanalian shapes
Wertheimer's soldierly figure beside the telegraphers'
table in that noisome cave at the Front
the
deck of a tender in darkness swept by a shaft of yellow
light which momentarily revealed a group of folk with
upturned faces, a petticoat fluttering in its midst.


36
THE FALSE FACES
drawn howls which must have filled any conscientious
banshee with corrosive envy.
Toward mid-morning rain fell in torrents, driving even
the most fearful passengers to shelter within the super-
structure. A majority crowded the landing at the head
of the main companionway close by the leeward door.
Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room-Crane
starting this movement with the declaration that, for his
part, he would as lief drown like a rat in a trap as battling
to keep up in the frigid inferno of those raging seas. A
handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the
ship swam or sank, mutinously took to their berths.
Stateroom 27-adjoining Lanyard's-sported obsti-
nately a shut door. Lanyard, sedulous not to discover
his interest by questioning the stewards, caught never a
glimpse of its occupant. For his own satisfaction he took
a covert census of passengers on deck as the vessel entered
the danger zone, and made the tally seventy-one all told-
the number on the passenger list when the Assyrian had
left her landing stage the previous evening.
It seemed probable, therefore, that the person in 27 had
come aboard from the tender, either with or following
the official party. Lanyard was unable to say that more
had not left the tender than appeared to sit in inquisition
in the music room.
By noon the wind was beginning to moderate, and the
sea was being beaten down by that relentlessly lashing
rain. Visibility, however, was more low than ever. A
fairly representative number descended to the dining
saloon for luncheon-a meal which none finished. Mid-


THE FALSE FACES
37
way in its course a thunderous explosion to starboard
drove all in panic once more to the decks.
Within two hundred yards of the Assyrian a floating
mine had destroyed a patrol boat. No more was left
of it than an oil-filmed welter of splintered wreckage: of
its crew, never a trace.
Imperturbably the Assyrian proceeded.
Not so
her passengers: now the smoking room was deserted
even by the insouciant Crane, and the seasick to a
woman brought their troubles back to the boat-deck.
Alone the tenant of 27 stopped below. And the riddle
of this ostensible indifference to terrors that clawed at
the vitals of every other soul on board grew to intrigue
Lanyard to the point of obsession. Was the reason brute
apathy or sheer foolhardihood? He refused either ex-
planation, feeling sure some darker and more momentous
motive dictated this obstinate avoidance of the public
eye. Exasperation aroused by failure to fathom the
mystery took precedence in his thoughts even to the
personal solicitude excited by last night's gossip of the
smoking room..
With no other disturbing incident the afternoon wore
away, the wind steadily flagging, the waves as steadily
subsiding. When twilight closed in there was nothing
more disturbing to one's equilibrium than a sea of long
and sullen rolls scored by the pelting downpour.
Perhaps as many as ten venturesome souls dined in
the saloon, their fellows sticking desperately to the decks
and contenting themselves with coffee and sandwiches.
Daylight waned, terrors waxed: passengers instinct-
ively gravitated into little knots and clusters, conversing


38
THE FALSE FACES
guardedly as if fearful lest their normal accents bring
down upon them those Apaches of the underseas for
signs of whom their frightened glances incessantly ranged
over-rail and searched the heaving wastes.
The understanding was tacit that all would spend the
night on deck.
Dusk at length blotted out the shadows of their guar-
dian destroyers, and a great and desolating loneliness
settled down upon the ship. One by one the passengers
grew dumb; still they clung together, but seemingly
their tongues would no more function.
With nightfall, the rain ceased, the breeze freshened a
trifle, the pall of cloud lifted and broke, giving glimpses
of remote, impersonal stars. Later a gibbous moon
leered through the flying wrack, checkering the sea with
a restless pattern of black and silver. In this ghastly
setting the Assyrian, showing no lights, a shape of flying
darkness pursuing a course secret to all save her navi-
gators, strained ever onward, panting, groaning, quivering
from stem to stern
like an enchanted thing
doomed to perpetual labours, striving vainly to break
bonds invisible that transfixed her to one spot forever-
more, in the midst of that bleak purgatory of shadow and
moonshine and dread.
Sensitive to the eerie influence of the hour, Lanyard in-
terrupted the tour of the decks which he had steadily
pursued for the better part of the evening, and rested at
the forward rail, looking down over the main deck, its
bleached planking dotted with dark shapes of fixed
machinery. In the bows the formless, uncouth bulk of
the gun squatted in its tarpaulin. Its crew tramped


THE FALSE FACES
33
heavily to and fro, shivering in heavy jackets, hands in
pockets, shoulders hunched up to ears. Farther aft an
iron door clanged heavily behind a sailor emerging from
an alleyway; he approached the ship's bell, with practised
hand sounded two double strokes, then turned and sang
out in the weird minor traditional in his calling:
"Four bells and a-a-all's well !"
Even as the wind made free with the melancholy
echoes of that assurance, the spell upon the ship was
exorcised.
Overhead, from the foremast crow's-nest, a voice
screamed, hoarsely urgent:
“Torpedo! 'Ware submarine to port!”
Many things happened simultaneously, or in a span of
seconds strangely scant. The gunners sprang to station,
whipping away the tarpaulin, while their lieutenant
focussed binoculars upon the confused distances of the
night. Obedient to his instructions, the long, gleaming
tube of steel pivoted smoothly to port.
From the bridge a signal rocket soared, hissing. The
whistle loosed stentorian equalls of indignation and
distress—one long and four short. Commands were
shouted; the engine-room telegraph wrangled madly.
The momentum of the Assyrian was checked start-
lingly; her bows sheered smartly off to port.
A rumour of frightened voices and pounding feet came
from the leeward boat-deck, where the main body of the
passengers was congregated, hidden from Lanyard by
the shoulder of the foreward deck-house. A number of
men ran forward, paused by the rail, stared, and scurried
back, yelling in alarm. At this the din swelled to uproar.


40
THE FALSE FACES
Scanning closely the surface of the sea, Lanyard him
self descried a silvery arrow of spray lancing the swells,
making with deadly speed toward the port bow of the
Assyrian. But now both screws were churning full speed
astern; the vessel lost headway altogether. Then her
engines stopped. For a breathless instant she rested
inert, like something paralyzed with fright, bows-on
to the torpedo, the telegraph ringing frantically. Then
the starboard screw began to turn full ahead, the port
remaining idle. The bows swung off still more sharply
to port. The torpedo shot in under them, vanished for
a breathless moment, reappeared a boat's-length to
starboard, plunged harmlessly on its unhindered way
down the side of the vessel, and disappeared astern.
Amidships terrified passengers milled like sheep,
hampering the work of the boat-crews at the davits.
Ship's officers raged among them, endeavouring to
restore order. Half a mile or so dead ahead a tiny
tongue of flame spat viciously in the murk. A projectile
shrieked overhead, and dropped into the sea astern.
Another followed and fell short.
The U-boat was shelling the Assyrian.
The forward gun barked violent expostulation, if
without visible effect; the submarine lobbing two more
shells at the steamship with an indifference to its own
peril astonishing in one of its craven breed, trained to
strike and run before counterstroke may be delivered.
Its extraordinary temerity, indeed, argued ignorance of
the convoying destroyers.
Coincident with the second shot, however, these
unleashed searchlights slashed the dark through and


THE FALSE FACES
41
through with their great, white, fanlike blades, till first
one then the other picked up and steadied relentlessly
upon a toy-boat shape that swam the swells about
midway between the Assyrian and the destroyer off the
port bows.
Simultaneously the quickfirers of the latter went into
action, jetting orange flame. In the searchlights' glare,
spurts of white water danced all round the submarine.
A mutter of gunfire rolled over to the Assyrian, abruptly
silenced by an imperative deep voice of heavier metal-
which spoke but once.
With the lurid unreality of clap-trap theatrical illusion
the U-boat vomited a great, spreading sheet of flame ..
Someone at the rail, near Lanyard's shoulder, uttered
a hushed cry of horror.
He paid no heed, his interest wholly focussed upon
that distant patch of shining water. As his dazzled
vision cleared he saw that the submarine had disappeared.
Unconsciously, in French, he commented: “So that is
finished!”
Likewise in French, but in a woman's voice of uncom-
mon quality, deep and bell-sweet, came the protest from
the passenger at his side: “But, monsieur, what are
we doing? We turn away from them—those poor things
drowning there!
That was quite true: under forced draught the
Assyrian was heading away on a new course.
“They drown out there in that black water and we
leave them to that!”
Lanyard turned. “The destroyers will take care of


42
THE FALSE FACES
them," he said, "if any survived that explosion with
strength enough to swim."
He spoke from the surface of his thoughts and with
a calm that veiled profound surprise. The woman by
his side was neither the American widow nor her English
daughter, but wholly a stranger to the ship's company he
knew.
The training of the Lone Wolf had been wasted if one
swift glance had failed to comprehend every essential
detail: that tall, straight, slender figure cloaked in the
folds of a garment whose hood framed a face of singular
pallor and sweetness in the moonlight, its shadowed eyes
wide with emotion, its lips a little parted.
With a shiver she lifted her hands to her eyes as if to
darken the visions of her imagination.
“They die out there," she said, in murmurs barely
audible.
“We turn our backs on them.
You think that right?"
"We play the game by the rules the enemy himself
laid down,” Lanyard returned. “They would have sunk
us without one qualm of pity-would, in all probability,
have shelled our boats had any succeeded in getting off.
They have done as much before, and will again. It is
out of reason to insist that the captain risk his
ship in the hope of picking up one or two drowning
assassins."
"Risk his ship? How? They are helpless"
“As a rule, U-boats hunt in pairs; always, when
specially charged to sink one certain vessel. It was so
with the Lusitania, with the Arabic as well; I don't
doubt it was so in this instance that we should have
•


THE FALSE FACES
43
heard from a second submarine had not the destroyers
opened fire when they did.”
The woman stared. “You think that?”
“That the Boche had specific instructions to waylay
and sink the Assyrian? I begin to think that-yes."
This declaration affected the woman curiously; she
shrank away a little, as from a blow, her eyes winced,
her pale lips quivered. When she spoke, it was, strangely
enough, in English so naturally enunciated that Lanyard
could not doubt that this was her mother tongue.
"Then you think it is because
Of a sudden she wilted, clinging to the rail and trem-
bling wildly.
Lanyard shot a glance aft. The disorder among the
passengers was measurably less, though excitement still
ran so high that we felt sure they were as yet unnoticed.
On impulse he stepped nearer.
"Pardon, mademoiselle,” he said quietly; "you are
excusably unstrung. But all danger is past; and there
is still time to regain your stateroom unobserved. If
you will permit me to escort you
He watched her narrowly, but she showed no surprise
at this suggestion of intimacy with her affairs. After
a brief moment she pulled herself together and dropped
a hand upon the arm he offered. In another minute
he was helping her over the raised watersill of the door.
Like all the ship the landing and main companionway
were dark; but below, on the promenade deck, the second
doorway aft on the starboard side stood ajar, affording a
glimpse of a dimly lighted stateroom.
With neither hesitation nor surprise-for he
>
.
was


THE FALSE FACES
45
Now Lanyard's quarters opened not on this alleyway
fore-and-aft but on a short and narrow athwartship
passage. And as he turned away he saw out of the
corner of an eye a white-jacketed figure emerge from this
passageway and move hurriedly aft. Something furtive
in the round of the fellow's shoulders challenged his
curiosity. He called quietly:
“Steward!”
There was no answer. By now the white jacket was no
more than a blur moving in that deep gloom. He cried
again, more loudly:
"I say, steward!”
He could hardly see, but fancied that the man quick-
ened his steps: in another instant he vanished alto-
gether.
Smothering an impulse to give chase, the adventurer
swung alertly into the narrow passage and opened the
door to Stateroom 29. The room was dark, but as he
fumbled for the switch, the door in the forward parti-
tion was thrust open and the girl's slight figure showed,
tensely poised against the light behind her.
"Monsieur Duchemin!" she cried, in a voice sharp with
doubt.
Lanyard turned the switch. “Mademoiselle,” he
said, and coolly crossed to the port, drawing the light-
proof curtains.
“This door was locked all day-locked when the firing
alarmed me and I went out to the deck."
"And on my side, mademoiselle, it was locked and
bolted when last I was here, shortly before dinner."


46
THE FALSE FACES
“Whoever unfastened it entered my room during my
absence and tampered with my luggage.”
“You have missed something?"
Gaze intent to his she nodded. He shrugged and cast
shrewdly round his quarters for some clue to the enigma.
His glance fastened on a leather bellows-bag beneath
the berth. Dropping to his knees he pulled this out, and
looked up with a quizzical grimace, his forefinger indi-
cating the lock, which was uncaught.
“I left this latched but not locked,” he said. “Per-
haps I, too, have lost something."
Opening the bag out flat, he sat back on his heels,
with practised eye inspecting its neat arrangement of
intimate things.
“Nothing has been taken, mademoiselle," he an-
nounced gravely. "But something- I think-has been
generously added.
I seem to have an anonymous
admirer on board.”
Bending forward, he rummaged beneath a sheaf of
shirts and brought forth a small jewel-box of grained
leather, with a monogram stamped on the lid—“C. B.”
"The lock is broken," he observed, and handed it up
to the woman. "As to its contents, mademoiselle
herself knows best
The woman opened the box.
"Nothing is missing,” she said in a thoughtful voice.
"I am relieved.” Lanyard closed the bag, thrust it
back beneath the berth, and got upon his feet. “But
you are quite sure?”
“My jewels are all in order,” she affirmed, without
meeting his gaze.


THE FALSE FACES
47
“And you miss nothing else?”
"Nothing."
Was there an accent of hesitation in this response?
“Then, I take it, the thief was disappointed.”
Now she glanced quickly at his eyes. “Why do you
say that?"
“If the thief had found what he sought, he would never
have presented it to me, mademoiselle would never again
have seen her jewels. Failing in his object, after breaking
that lock, and interrupted by your unexpected return,
he planted the case with me, hoping to have me suspected.
I am fortunately able to prove the best of alibis.
So then," said Lanyard, smiling, “it would appear that,
though we met ten minutes ago for the first time and I
have yet to know mademoiselle by name-we are allies
in a common cause.'
"My name is Brooke-Cecelia Brooke,” she said
quietly—“if it matters. But why ‘allies’?”
“It appears we own a common enemy. Each of us
possesses something which that one desires—you a
secret, I a good name. (Duchemin, indeed, I have
always held to be an excellent name.) I shall not
hesitate to call on you if my treasure is again violated.
May I venture to hope mademoiselle will prove as ready
to command my services?”
“Thank you. I fancy, however, there will be no need."
She moved irresolutely toward the communicating door,
paused in its frame, eyeing him speculatively from under
level brows. He detected, or imagined, a tremor of
impulse toward him, as though she faltered on the verge
of some grave confidence. If so, she curbed her tongue in


48
THE FALSE FACES
time. Her gaze dropped, fixed itself abstractedly on
the door
“This must be fastened,” she said, in a
tone of complete disinterest.
“I will speak to the chief steward immediately.”
-“Don't trouble." She roused. “It doesn't matter,
really, for to-night. I shall leave what valuables I have
in the purser's care and stop on deck till daybreak.”
He gave a gesture of bewilderment. “You abandon
your seclusion-leave your secret unguarded?”
“Why not?” She shrugged slightly with a little moue
of discontent. “If, as you assume, I had a secret, it was
that for certain reasons I did not wish my presence on
board to become known. But it seems it has become
known: my secret is no more. So I need no longer risk
being cut off from the boats in the event of any accident."
Momentarily her gravity was dissipated by a smile at
once delightful and provocative.
“Once more, monsieur-good-night!”
After some moments Lanyard, with a start, found
himself staring blankly at a blankly incommunicative
communicating door.


IV
IN DEEP WATERS
F
TOLLOWING this abrupt introduction to his in-
teresting neighbour, Lanyard went back to his
deck-chair and, bundling himself up against the
cold, settled down to ponder the affair and await develop-
ments in a spirit of chastened resignation. That a
dénouement would duly unfold he was quite satisfied;
that he himself must willy-nilly play some part therein
he was too well persuaded.
Not that he wished to meddle. If this Miss Cecelia
Brooke (as she named herself) fostered any sort of intrigue,
he wanted nothing so fervently as to be left altogether out
of it. But already he had been dragged in, without wish
or consent of his; whoever coveted her secret-whatever
that was, more precious to her than jewels-harboured
designs upon his own as well. It was his duty henceforth
to go warily, overlooking no circumstance, however
trifling and inconsiderable it might appear. The slen-
derest thread may lead to the heart of the most intricate
maze--and the heart of this was become Lanyard's im-
mediate goal, for there his enemy lay perdu.
It was never this man's fault to underrate an enemy,
least of all an unknown; and he entertained wholesome
respect for Secret Service operators-picked men, as a
rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this business,
he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work


50
THE FALSE FACES
one of those blind duels, desperate and grim affairs of
masked combatants feinting, thrusting, guarding in the
dark, each with the other's sword ever feeling for his
throat, fighting for life itself and making his own rules
as the contest swayed.
But what was this Brooke girl doing in that galley?
What conceivable motive induced her to dabble those
slender hands in the muck and blood of Secret Service
work?
Lanyard was fain to let that question rest. After all,
it was no concern of his. There she was, up to her
pretty eyebrows in some dark, bad business; and it was
not for him to play the gratuitous ass, rush in unasked,
and seek to extricate her.
Through endless hours he sat brooding, vision blindly
focussed upon the misty, shimmering mystery of that
night.
Ekstrom!
Slowly in his understanding intui-
tion shaped the conviction that it was Ekstrom whom he
was fighting now, Ekstrom in the guise of one of his
creatures, some agent of the Prussian spy system who
had contrived to smuggle himself aboard this British
steamship.
Out of those nine in the smoking room the previous
night, then, he must beware of one primarily, perhaps
of more.
Four he was disposed, with reservations, to reckon
negligible: Baron von Harden, head of a Netherlands
banking house, a silent body whose acute mental proc-
esses went on behind a pallid screen of flabby features;
Julius Becker, a theatrical manager of New York, whose


THE FALSE FACES
51
right name ended in ski; Bartlett Putnam, late chargé
d'affaires of the American embassy in Madrid; Edmund
O'Reilly, naturalized citizen of the United States, inter-
ested in the manufacture of motor tractors somewhere
in Michigan.
Of the other five, two were English: Lieutenant
Thackeray, a civilly reticent gentleman whose right
arm rested in a black silk sling, making a flying trip to
visit a married sister in New York; Archer Bartholomew,
Esq., solicitor, a red-cheeked, bright-eyed, white-haired,
brisk little Cockney, beyond the military age.
There remained Dressler, the stout, self-satisfied Swiss,
whose fawning manner was possibly accounted for by his
statement that he journeyed to New York to engage in
the trade of restaurateur in partnership with his brother;
Crane, long and awkward and homely, of saturnine cast,
slow of gesture and negligent as to dress, his humorous
sense clouding a power of shrewd intelligence; and Señor
Arturo Velasco, of Buenos Aires, middle-aged, apparently
extremely well-to-do, a thoughtful type, more self-
contained than most of his countrymen.
One of these probably
But which?
Nor must he permit himself to forget that the Assyrian
carried fifty-nine other male passengers, in addition to
her complement of officers, crew, and stewards, that any
one of these might prove to be Potsdam's cat’s-paw.
Awesome pallor tinged the eastern horizon, gaining
strength, spread in imperceptible yet rapid gradations
toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked out, vanished.
Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray.
Almost visibly the routed night rolled back over the


52
THE FALSE FACES
western rim of the world. Shafts of supernal radiance
lanced the formless void between sky and sea. Swollen
and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined
portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew
hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless
firmament, yet failed therein to find complete conceal-
ment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now
to port, now to starboard, as the Assyrian twisted and
writhed on her corkscrew way.
Passengers whose fears had become sufficiently numb
to permit them to drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused
blinking and blear-eyed, arose and stretched cramped,
cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the sleep-
less misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard awake
and marched him off for coffee and cigarettes in the
smoking room.
Later, starting out for a turn around the decks, they
passed a deck-chair sheltered in a jog where the engine-
room ventilating shaft joined the forward deck-house,
in which Miss Brooke lay cocooned in wraps and furs,
her profile, turned aside from the sea, exquisitely etched
against the rich blackness of a fox stole. She slept as
quietly as the most carefree, a shadowy smile touching
her lips.
Crane's stride faltered. He whistled low.
“In the name of all things wonderful! how did that get
on board?”
Lanyard mentioned the girl's name. “She has the
stateroom next to mine came off that tender, night
before last.”
“And me sore on that darn' li'l boat because it brought


THE FALSE FACES
53
aboard all the nosey Johnnies! Ain't it the truth,
you never know your luck?"
The American ruminated in silence till another lap
of their walk took them past the girl again.
"Funny,” he mused, “if that's why they held us
up
“Comment, monsieur?"
“Oh, I was just wondering if it was on that young
lady's account they kept us kicking our heels back there
so long.”
"I am still stupid,” Lanyard confessed.
"Why, she might be a special messenger, you know-
something like that-the British Government wanted to
smuggle out of the country without anybody sus-
pecting.”
"Monsieur is a romantic."
“You can't trust me,” Crane averred unblushingly.
When they passed the chair again it was empty.
At breakfast Lanyard saw the girl from a distance:
their places were separated by the width of the saloon.
She had no neighbours at her table, did not look up when
Lanyard entered, finished her meal some time before he
did, and retired immediately to her stateroom, in whose
seclusion she remained for the rest of the day.
That second day was altogether innocent of untoward
incident. At least superficially the life of the ship
settled into the groove of “business as usual.” Only
the company of the Assyrian's faithful convoys was an
ever-present reminder of peril.
And in the middle of the afternoon she passed close by
a derelict, a torpedoed tramp, deep down by the stern,


54
THE FALSE FACES
her bows helplessly high in air and crimson with rust, the
melancholy haunt of a great multitude of gulls.
More than slightly to Lanyard's surprise he received
no quiet invitation to the captain's quarters to be in-
terrogated concerning the burglary in Stateroom 27.
Apparently, the young woman had contented herself
with reporting merely that the communicating door
had carelessly been left unfastened.
For his own part, neither seeking nor avoiding indi-
vidual members of the smoking-room group, Lanyard
permitted himself to be drawn into their company, and
sat among them amiably receptive. But this profited
him scantily; there was no further talk of the Lone
Wolf; he was not again aware of that covert surveil-
lance.
But when—the evening chill driving him below to don
a fur-lined topcoat-the Brooke girl, coming up the
companionway, acknowledged his look of recognition
with the most distant of nods, he accepted the apparent
rebuff without resentment. He understood. She was
playing the game. The enemy was watching, listening.
After that he was studious to refrain from seeming
either to avoid or to seek her neighbourhood; and if he
did keep a sharp eye on her, it was so circumspectly as to
mock detection. To the best of his observation she
found no friends on board, contracted no new acquaint-
ances, kept herself to herself within walls of inexorable
reserve.
Dawn, ending the second night at sea, found the
Assyrian pursuing a course still devious, and now alone;
the destroyers had turned back during the night. The


THE FALSE FACES
55
western boundary of the barred zone lay astern. Ahead,
at the end of a brief interval of time, the ivory towers of
New York loomed, a-shimmer with endless sunlight,
glorious in golden promise. Accordingly, the spirits of
the passengers were exalted.
The very ship seemed to
grin in self-complacence; she had won safely through.
Unremitting vigilance was none the less maintained.
No hour of the twenty-four found either gun, forward
or aft, wanting a full working crew on the keen qui vive.
The life boats remained on outswung davits; boat drills
for passengers as well as crew were features of the daily
programme. Regulations concerning light and smoking
on deck after dark were rigidly enforced. Fuel was never
spared in the effort to widen the blue gulf between
the steamship and those waters wherein she had so
nearly met her end. By day a hunted thing, racing
frantically toward a port of refuge in the West, all her
stout fabric labouring with titanic pulsations, shying
in panic from the faintest suspicion of smoke upon the
horizon, the Assyrian slipped into the grateful obscurity
of night like a snake into a thicket, made herself akin
to its densest shadows, strained hopelessly not to be out-
distanced by its fugitive mantle.
And the benison of unseasonably clement weather was
hers; day after shining day, night after placid night,
the Atlantic revealed a singularly gracious humour,
mirrored the changeful panorama of the heavens in a
surface little flawed. So that the most squeamish
voyagers, as well as those most beset with fears, slept
sweetly in the comfort of their berths.
Lanyard, however, never went to bed without first


56
THE FALSE FACES
securing his door so that it might be opened by force
alone; and never slept without a pistol beneath his
pillow.
But the truth is, he slept little. For the first time in
his history he learned what it meant to will sleep to come
and have his will defied. He lay for hours staring wide-
eyed into darkness, hearkening to the steady throbbing of
the engines, unable to dismiss the thought that their
every revolution brought him so much nearer to America,
so much the nearer to his hour with Ekstrom. In vain
he sought to fatigue his senses by over-indulgence in
his weakness for gambling. Day-long sessions at poker
and auction in the smoking room—where he found
formidable antagonists, principally in the persons of
Crane, Bartlett Putnam, Velasco, Bartholomew, Julius
Becker and Baron von Harden-served only to forward
his financial fortunes; his luck was phenomenal; he
multiplied many times that slender store of English bank-
notes with which he had embarked upon this adventure.
But he left each exhausting sitting only to toss upon a
wakeful pillow or to roam uneasily the dark and desolate
decks, a man haunted by ghosts of his own raising, hag-
ridden by passions of his own nurturing.
About two o'clock on the third night (the first outside
the danger zone, when every other passenger might
reasonably be expected to be in his berth) Lanyard lay in
a deck-chair deep in shadows, wondering if it were worth
while to go below and woo sleep in his stateroom. By
way of experiment he shut his eyes. When after a moment
he opened them again he was no longer alone.
Some distance away, at the rail, the woman of State-


THE FALSE FACES
57
room 27 was standing with her back to Lanyard, looking
intently forward, unquestionably ignorant of his presence.
Without moving, he watched in listless incuriosity
till he saw her straighten and stand away from the rail
as if bracing herself against some crisis.
A man was coming aft from the entrance to the main
companionway, impatience in his stride-a tall man, of
good carriage, muffled almost to the heels in a heavy
ulster, a steamer-cap well forward over his eyes. But
the light was poor, the pale shine of the aged moon
blending trickily with the swaying shadows; Lanyard
was unable to place him among the passengers. There
was a suggestion of Lieutenant Thackeray—but that one
was handicapped by one shell-shattered arm, whereas
this man had the use of both.
He demonstrated that promptly, taking the girl into
them. She yielded herself gladly, with a hushed little
cry, hiding her face in the bosom of his ulster, clinging to
him.
This, then, was an assignation prearranged! Miss
Cecelia Brooke had a lover aboard the Assyrian, a lover
whom she denied by day but met in stealth by night!
And yet, after that first, swift embrace, their conduct
became oddly unloverlike. The man released her of his
own initiative, held her by the shoulders at arm's length.
There was irritation in his manner. He seemed tempted
to shake the young woman.
"Celia! what madness!”
So much, at least, Lanyard overheard; the rest was a
mumble into the hand which the girl placed over the
man's lips. She cried breathlessly: "Hush! not so loud!”


58
THE FALSE FACES
And then she remembered to guard her own voice. In
an undertone she spoke passionately for a moment. The
man interrupted in a tone of profound vexation. She
drew away, as if hurt, caught him up as he hesitated for
a word, returned, clung to the lapels of his coat, her
accents rapid and pitiful, eloquent of explanation,
entreaty, determination. The man lifted his hands to her
wrists, broke her grasp, cut her brusquely short, put her
forcibly from him. She sobbed softly.
Thus swiftly the scene suffered disillusioning transition,
The pretty fiction of lovers meeting in secret was no more.
Remained a man annoyed to the verge of anger, a woman
desperately importunate.
The wind, sweeping aft, carried broken snatches of
their communications:
all I have
could not let you
go
“Insanity!"
"I was desperate
drive me mad with your nonsense
Lanyard sat up, scraping his chair harshly on the deck.
Stricken mute, the pair at the rail moved only to turn his
way the pallid ovals of their faces.
Heedless of the prohibition, he struck a vesta, cupped
its flame in his hands, bending his face close and deliber-
ately lighting a cigarette. Appreciably longer than
necessary he permitted the flare to reveal his features.
Then he blew it out, rose, sauntered to the rail, cast the
cigarette into the sea, went aft and so below, satisfied
that the girl must have recognised him and so knew
that her secret was safe.
.


THE FALSE FACES
59
But it was in an oddly disgruntled humour that he
turned in-he who had been so ready to twit Crane with
his fantastic speculations concerning the English girl,
who had himself been the readiest to endue her with
the romantic attributes becoming a heroine of her
country's Secret Service! What if he must now esteem
her in the merciless light of to-night's exposure, as the
most piti.ble of all human spectacles, a poor lovesick
thing sans dignity, sans pride, sans heed for the world's
respect, a woman pursuing a man weary of her?
He resented unreasonably the unreasonable resent-
ment which the affair inspired in him.
What was it to him? He who had struck off all fetter-
ing bonds of common human interests, who had re-
nounced all common human emotions, who had set his
hand against all mankind that stood between him and
that vengeful purpose to which he had dedicated his life!
He, the Lone Wolf, the heartless, soulless, pitiless beast
of prey!
God in Heaven! what was any woman to him?


V
ON THE BANKS
UNCE
TACCOUNTABLY enough in his esteem, and
more and more to Lanyard's exasperation, the
evil flavour of that overnight incident lasted; it
tinctured distastefully his first waking thoughts; and
through all that fourth day at sea his mood was dark with
irrational depression.
And the fifth day and the sixth were like unto the
fourth.
Constantly he caught himself on watch for the young
woman, wondering how she would comport herself
toward him, unwilling witness though he had been to
that shabby scene.
But, save distantly at meal times, he saw nothing of
her.
And though he knew that she was much on deck after
midnight, he was studious to keep out of her way. The
tedium of stopping in a stuffy stateroom, when the spell
of restlessness was on him, waiting for the sounds of his
neighbour's return before he might venture forth, was
nothing; anything were preferable to figuring as the
innocent bystander at another encounter between the
Brooke girl and her reluctant lover.
Then that happened which lent the business another
complexion altogether. Its second phase, of close
development, drew toward an end. Subtle underlying
forces began to stir in their portentous latency.
60


THE FALSE FACES
61
The rapiers which thus far had merely touched, shiver-
ing lightly against each other, measuring each its op-
ponent's strength, feeling out his skill, fell apart, then
re-engaged in sharp and deadly play. Steel met steel
and, clashing, struck off sparks whose fugitive glimmer-
ings lightened measurably the murk.
On the sixth night out, at eleven o'clock as a matter of
1outine, the smoking room was closed for the night,
terminating an uncommonly protracted and, in Lanyard's
esteem, irksome sitting at cards. Well tired, he went
immediately to his quarters, undressed, stretched out in
his berth, and switched off the light.
Incontinently he found himself bedevilled by thoughts
that would not rest.
For upward of an hour he lay moveless, seeking oblivion
in that very effort to preserve immobility, while the
Assyrian, lunging heavily on her way, moaned and
muttered tedious accompaniment to the chant of the
working engines.
Despairing at length, and fretted by the closeness of
his quarters, he got up, dressed sketchily, and was
shrugging into his fur-lined coat when he heard the door
to the adjoining stateroom open and close, stealth in the
sound of it.
At that he hung up his overcoat, and threw himself
down with a book on the lounge seat beneath the port.
The novel was dull enough in all conscience; for that
matter no tale within the compass of the cunningest
weaver of words could have enthralled his temper at
that time.


62
THE FALSE FACES
He read and read again page after page, but without
intelligence.
Between his eyes and the type-blackened paper
mirages of the past trembled and wavered; old faces, old
scenes, old illusions took unsubstantial form, dissolved,
blended, faded away: a saddening show of shadows.
His heavy eyelids drooped; slumber's drowsy vest-
ments trailed lazily athwart the sea of consciousness.
A slight noise startled him, either the shutting of the
door to Stateroom 27, or the sound of the book dropping
from his relaxed grasp. He sat up and consulted his
watch. The hour was half after twelve.
The ship's bell sounded remotely a single, doleful
stroke.
He might have dozed five minutes or fifteen-long
enough at least to leave its tantalising effect of sleep
desperately desirable, mockingly elusive, almost grasped,
whisked beyond grasping. And with this he was aware
of something even less tangible, a sense of something
amiss, of something vaguely wrong, as of an evil spirit
stalking furtively through the darkened labyrinth of the
ship. as impalpable and ineluctable as miasmic
exhalations of a morass.
Lanyard passed a hand across his forehead. Had he
been dreaming, then? Was this merely the reaction
from some bitter nightmare? He could not remem-
ber.
On sheer impulse he stood up, extinguished the light,
opened the door. As he did this he noted that a light
hurned in Stateroom 27, visible through the ventilating
grille. So the girl must have returned while he slept.


THE FALSE FACES
Or had she neglected to turn the switch when she went
out? He could not be certain.
On the threshold he paused a little, attentive to the
familiar rumour of the ship by night: the prolonged.
sloughing of riven waters down the side, gnashing of
swells hurled back by the bows, sibilance of draughts in
alleyways, groaning of frames, a thin metallic rattle of
indeterminate origin, the crunching grind of the steering
gear, the everlasting deep-throated diapason of the
engines, somewhere aft in that tier of staterooms a
persistent human snore
nothing unusual, no
alarming discordance.
Yet the feeling that mischief was afoot would not be
still.
Lanyard moved down to the junction of the thwartship
passage with the fore-and-aft alleyway.
Here he commanded a view of the promenade-deck
landing and the main companionway, all in darkness
but for a feeble glimmer of reflected starlight through
the open deck port on the far side of the vessel. Beyond
this the rail was stencilled against the dull face of the
sea with its far lifting and falling horizon; within, no more
was visible than the dimmed whiteness of the forward par-
tition, the dense, indefinite mass of balusters winding
up to the boat-deck, and the flat plane of the tiled
landing.
On this last, near the mouth of the port alleyway, half
obscured by the intervening balusters, something moved,
something huge, black, and formless swayed and writhed
strangely, and in the strangest silence, like a dumb,
tormented misshapen brute transfixed to one spot from


64
THE FALSE FACES
which its most anguished efforts might not avail to budge
it.
Lanyard ran forward, rounded the well of the com-
panionway, and pulled up.
Now the nature of the thing was revealed. Blackly
silhouetted against the square of the doorway two human
figures were close-locked and struggling desperately,
straining, resisting, thrusting, giving, recovering
and all with never a sound more than the deadened thump
of a shifting foot or the rasp of hard-won breathing.
For several seconds the spectator could not distinguish
one contestant from the other. Then a change in the
fortunes of war enabled him to make out that one was a
woman, the other, and momentarily more successful, a
man, Slender and youthful and strong, she fought with
the indomitable fury of a pantheress. He on his part
had won this much temporary advantage-had broken
the woman's clutch upon his throat and was bending her
back over his hip, one hand fumbling at her windpipe, the
other imprisoning her two wrists.
Yet she was far from being vanquished. Even as
Lanyard moved toward the pair, she drove a savage knee
into the man's middle and, as he checked instantaneously
with a grunt of pained surprise, regained her footing and
planted both elbows against his chest, striving frantically
to free her hands.
Simultaneously Lanyard took the fellow from behind,
wound an arm around his neck, jerked his head sharply
back, twisted his forearm till he released the woman's
wrists, and threw him with a force that must have jarred
his every bone.


THE FALSE FACES
65
The woman staggered back against the partition,
panting and sobbing beneath her breath. The man
rebounded from his fall with astonishing agility, and
flew back at Lanyard. An object in his right hand gave
off the dull gleam of polished steel.
Lanyard, his automatic in his stateroom, in the pocket
of the overcoat where he had deposited it when meaning
to go out on deck, lacked any means of defense other than
his two hands; but his one-time fame as an amateur
pugilist had been second only to his fame as a connaisseur
d'art; and to one whose youth had been passed in asso-
ciation with the Apaches of Paris, some mastery of la
savate was an inevitable accomplishment.
A lightning coup de pied planted a heel against one of
the man's shins, and his onslaught faltered in a gust of
Then the point of his jaw received the full force
of Lanyard's right fist with all the ill will imaginable
behind it. The man reared back, reeled into the black
mouth of the alleyway, fell heavily.
Even so, he demonstrated extraordinary vitality and
appetite for punishment. He had no more gone down
than the adventurer, peering into the gloom, saw him
struggle upon his knees. Instantly Lanyard made
toward him, intent on finishing this work so well begun,
but in his second stride tripped over a heavy body
hidden in the shadows, and pitched headlong. Falling,
he was conscious of a flashing thing that sped past his
cheek, immediately above his shoulder. There followed
an echoing thud against the forward partition.
Picking himself up smartly, Lanyard crept several paces
down the alleyway, flattening against the wall, straining,
curses.


66
THE FALSE FACES
his vision, listening intently, rewarded by neither sign
nor sound of his antagonist.
That one must have been swift to advantage himself of
Lanyard's tumble. If he had not vanished into thin air,
or gone to earth in some untenanted stateroom therea-
bouts, he found in the close blackness of that narrow
passage a cloak of positive invisibility to cover his escape.
And there is little wisdom in stalking an armed man
whom one cannot see, with what little light there is at
one's own back.
So Lanyard went back to the landing, stepping carefully
over the obstacle which had both thrown him and saved
his life--the supine body of a third man, motionless;
whether dead or merely insensible, he did not stop to
investigate. His immediate concern was for the woman.
As he came upon her now, she stood en profile to the
partition, tugging strongly at something embedded in the
woodwork close by her side, between her waist and arm-
pit. At the sound of his approach she looked up with
a tremor of apprehension quickly calmed.
“Monsieur Duchemin! If you please
Lanyard, in no way surprised to recognise the voice
of Miss Cecelia Brooke, stepped closer. "What is it?”
he enquired; and then, bending over to look, found that
her cloak was pinned to the partition by the blade of a
heavy knife buried a full half of its considerable length.
"He threw it as you fell,” the girl explained. “I was
in the direct line."
"Permit me, mademoiselle
He laid hold of the haft of the weapon and with some
difficulty withdrew it.


THE FALSE FACES
67
"Who was it?” he asked, weighing the knife in his palm
and examining it as closely as he could without the aid of
light.
There was no reply. Directly her cloak was freed, the
girl had moved hastily away to the body over which
Lanyard had stumbled. He heard an imploring whisper
—“Please!”—and looked up to see her on her knees.
“Who, then, is this?” he demanded, joining her.
"Lionel-Lieutenant Thackeray. Please please!
tell me he is not dead.”
Her voice broke; he saw her slender body convulsed
with racking emotions. Kneeling, Lanyard made a
hasty and superficial examination, necessarily no more
under the conditions.
"His heart beats," he announced—"he breathes. I
do not think him seriously injured.” He made as if to
get up. “I will get a light-a flash-lamp from my state-
room-or, better still, the ship's surgeon"
Her hand fell upon his arm. “Please, no! Not that-
not now. Later, if necessary; but now-surely, you can
help me carry him to his stateroom.”
“You know the number?"
"It's close by-30."
“Find it, and light up. No-leave this to me; I
can carry him without assistance."
The girl rose and disappeared. Lanyard passed his
arms beneath the Englishman's body, gathered him into
them, and struggled to his feet: no inconsiderable task.
Light gushed from an open doorway, the third aft from
the landing. Staggering, the adventurer entered and
deposited the body upon the berth. Immediately the


68
THE FALSE FACES
girl closed and bolted the door, then passed between him
and the berth to bend over the unconscious man. He
lay in deep coma, limbs a-sprawl, unpleasant glints of
white between his half-closed eyelids, his breathing
stertorous through parted lips. Free of its sling, his
wounded arm dangled over the edge of the berth. In
putting him down, Lanyard had remarked that its sleeve
had been slit to the shoulder, and that its bandages were
undone. Now, in amazement, he saw the arm was firm
and muscular, with an unbroken skin, never a sign of any
injury in all its length.
Gently the girl lifted the lieutenant's head to the light,
discovering a hideously bruised swelling at the base of
the skull, blood darkly matting the close-clipped hair.
She requested without looking round: "Water, please
and a towel.”
Obediently Lanyard ran hot and cold water into the
land-basin in equal proportions.
“Would it not be well now to call the ship's surgeon?"
he suggested diffidently.
“Is that necessary? I am something of a nurse. This
is simply a bad contusion-no worse, I believe. He was
struck down from behind, a cowardly blow in the dark,
as he started to go up on deck. I had been waiting for
him. When he didn't come I suspected something was
wrong. I came down, found him lying there, that brute
kneeling over him."
She spoke coolly enough, in contrast with the high
excitement that inflamed her eyes as she turned away
from the berth.
"Monsieur Duchemin, are you armed?”


THE FALSE FACES
69
"I have this,” he said, exhibiting the knife thrown by
the would-be murderera simple trench dagger, without
distinguishing marks of any sort.
“Then take this, please.” Extracting an automatic
pistol from a holster belted beneath Thackeray's coat,
she proffered it. “You won't mind staying here a moment,
standing guard, while I fetch a dressing from my room?”
Before he could utter a word of protest she had slipped
out into the alleyway, shutting the door behind her.
When several minutes had passed the adventurer found
himself beset by increasing concern. This long delay
seemed not only inconsistent with her solicitude, but
indicated a possibility that the girl had braved unwisely
the chance of a resumption of hostilities on the part of
her late and as yet anonymous assailant.
Darkening the room as a matter of common-sense pre-
caution, Lanyard, pistol in hand, stepped out into the
alleyway in time to see the girl in the act of rising from
her knees on the landing, near the spot where Thackeray
had fallen. The light of her flash-lamp was blotted out
as she came hurriedly aft.
Perplexed, he turned back and switched on the light
as she entered.
Her eyes challenged his almost defiantly.
“Was I long?" she asked, breathless. “I dropped some-
thing
Lanyard bowed without speaking. Instinctively he
knew that she was lying; and divining this in his attitude,
she coloured and, disconcerted, turned away. For a
moment, while she busied herself arranging on a con-
venient chair an assortment of first-aid accessories, he


70
THE FALSE FACES
fancied that her half-averted face wore a look of sullen
chagrin, with its compressed lips, downcast eyes, and
faintly gathered brows.
But directly she needed assistance, and requested it
of him in a subdued and impersonal manner, showing a
countenance devoid of any incongruous emotion.
Lanyard, lifting the lieutenant's head and heavy torso,
helped turn him face downward on the berth, then stood
aside, thoughtfully watching the girl's deft fingers sop
absorbent cotton in an antiseptic wash and apply it to
the injury.
After a little, he said: "If mademoiselle has no more
immediate use for me
"Thank you, monsieur. You have already done so
very much!”
“Then, if mademoiselle will supply the name of this
assassin
"I know it no more than you, monsieur!" She glanced
up at him, startled. “What do you mean to do?"
“Why, naturally, lodge an information with the cap-
tain concerning this outrage
“Oh, please, no!"
At a loss, Lanyard shrugged eloquently.
“Not yet, at all events," she hastened to amend. “Let
Lionel judge what is best to be done when he comes
to.”
“But, mademoiselle, who can say when that will be?"
He pointed out the ugly, ragged abrasion in the young
Englishman's scalp exposed by the cleansing away of the
clotted blood. “No ordinary blow," he commented;
"something very like a slung-shot or a loaded cane did
»


72
THE FALSE FACES
And yet
of this clear-eyed, straight-limbed, courageous young
English woman, so wanting in self-consciousness.
what the deuce was she to this man
whom, indisputably, she followed against his wish?
And what conceivable chain of circumstances linked
their fortunes with his, and that double burglary of the
first night out with this murderous assault of to-night?
Nor was to-night's work, considered by itself, lacking
in questionable features.
Why had Thackeray carried that sound arm in a sling?
How had its bandages come to be unwrapped? Not in
struggles before being placed hors de combat, for he had
never had a chance to resist. Had his assailant, then,
unwrapped it subsequently? If so, with what end in
view?
Why had this Miss Cecelia Brooke, surprising the
thug at his work, joined battle with him so bravely and
so madly without calling for help?
What hidden motive excused this singular hesitation
to summon the surgeon, this reluctance to inform the
officers of the ship?
What duplicity was that which the girl had paraded
concerning her procrastination when Lanyard had sur-
prised her on her knees out there on the landing?
If this were what Lanyard had first inclined to think
it, Secret Service intrigue, surely it was weirdly intricate
when an English girl hesitated to safeguard an English-
man by taking into her confidence the officers of a British
ship, British manned!
Nevertheless, and however much he might wonder and
doubt, Lanyard would never question her. Never of


THE FALSE FACES
73
his own volition would he probe more deeply into this
mystery, take one farther step into the intricacies of its
maze.
So, in silence, he waited, passively courteous, aut her
further service if she had need of him, content if she had
not, tolerant of her tacit prayer for time in which to
think a way out of her difficulties.
After some few moments he grew uncomfortably aware
that he had become the object of a speculative regard
not at all unfavourable.
He indulged in a mental gesture of resignation.
Then what he had feared befell, not altogether as he
had apprehended, but in the girl's own fashion, if without
material difference in the upshot.
"I am afraid," said she in an even voice, so quietly
pitched as to be inaudible to any eavesdropper. “This
becomes a task greater than I had dreamed, more than
my wits can cope with. Monsieur Duchemin
She hesitated. He bowed slightly. “If mademoiselle
can make any use of my poor abilities, she has but to
command me."
“We I have much to thank you for already, mon-
sieur, much more than I can ever hope to reward
adequately-
"Reward?" he echoed. "But, mademoiselle!"
"Please don't misunderstand." She flushed a little,
very prettily. “I am simply trying to express my sense
of obligation, not only for what you have already done,
but for what I mean to ask you to do.”
Again he bowed, without comment, amiably recep-
tive.


74
THE FALSE FACES
She resumed with perceptible effort: “I can trust
you"
“You must make sure of that before you do," he
warned her, smiling.
"I am sure," she averred gravely.
“You know nothing concerning me, mademoiselle
pardon! For all you know I may be the greatest rogue in
Christendom. And I must tell you in all candour, some-
times I think I am."
“What I may or may not know concerning you,
Monsieur Duchemin, is immaterial as long as I know
you are what you have proved yourself to me, a gentle-
man, considerate, generous, brave, and --not inquisi-
tive."
He was frankly touched. If this were flattery, tone
and manner robbed it of fulsomeness, rendered it subtle
beyond the coarser perceptions of the man. He knew
himself for what he was, knew himself unworthy; and
that part of him which was unaffectedly French, whether
by accident of birth or influence of environment, and so
impulsive and emotional, reacted in spontaneous grati-
tude to this implicit acceptance of him for what he strove
to seem to be.
“Mademoiselle is gracious beyond my deserts,'
he protested. “Only let me know how I may be of
use
“In three ways: Continue to be lenient in your judg-
ments, and ask me no more questions than you must
because
I may not answer
Her
hands worked together again. She added unhappily, in
a faint voice: “I dare not."


THE FALSE FACES
75
That, too, moved him, since he had been far from
lenient in his judgments. He responded the more
readily: "All that is understood, mademoiselle.”
“Please go at once back to your stateroom, and as
quietly as possible. There is a bare chance you were not
recognised, that nobody knows who came to my aid
to-night. If you can slip away without attracting atten-
tion, so much the better for us, for all of us. You may
not be suspected.”
“Trust me to use my best discretion.”
"Lastly ... take and keep this for me, till I
ask you for it again. Hide it as secretly as you can. It
may be sought for, is certain to be if you are believed
to be in my confidence. It must not be found. And I
may not want it again before we land in New York."
She extended a hand on whose palm rested a small and
slender white cylinder, no longer and little thicker than
the toy pencil that dangles from a dance-card: a tight
roll of plain white paper enclosed in a wrapping of trans-
parent oiled silk, gummed fast down its length and, at
either end, sealed with miniature blobs of black wax.
“Will you do this for me, Monsieur Duchemin? I
warn you, it may cost you your life.”
He took it, his temper veering to the whimsical.
“What is life?” he questioned. “A prelude-perhaps an
overture to that great drama, Death. Who knows?
Who cares?”
She heard him in a stare. “You place no value on
life?”
"Mademoiselle," he said, “I have lived nearly thirty
years in this world, three years in the theatre of war,


76
THE FALSE FACES
seldom far from the trenches of one front or another. I
tell you, I know death too well
He shrugged and put the roll of paper away in a
pocket.
“You understand it must not be taken from you under
any circumstance? As a last resort, it must be destroyed
rather than yielded up."
“It shall be,” he said quietly. “Is there anything
more?"
She shook her head, thoughtfully knuckling her under-
lip.
“How can I communicate with you in event of neces-
sity after we get to New York?” she asked.
"I shall stop for a week or two at the Hotel Knicker-
bocker."
“If anything should happen”—with a swift glance of
anxiety toward the motionless figure in the berth-"if
anything should prevent my calling for it within a week
after our arrival, you will be good enough to deliver it
to She caught herself up quickly, the unuttered
words trembling on her lip. “I will write down the ad-
dress of the person to whom you will deliver it, and slip
it underneath the door between our rooms—first making
certain you are there to receive it-if I do not ask you
to return the thing before we land."
“That shall be as you will."
“When you have memorized the address you will
destroy it?”
"Depend on that.”
"I think that is all. Thank you, Monsieur Duchemin-
and good-night.*


THE FALSE FACES
77
She extended her hand. He saluted it punctiliously
with fingertips and lips.
"If you will put out the light, mademoiselle, it may aid
me to get away unseen.”
She nodded and offered him Thackeray's pistol. “Take
this. O, I have another with me.”
Lanyard accepted the weapon and, when she had
darkened the room, opened the door, slipped out, and
closed it behind him so noiselessly that the girl could not
believe he was gone.
Nothing hindered his return to Stateroom 29.
Fully two minutes after he had locked himself in he
heard the distant clamour of the annunciator, calling a
steward to Stateroom 30.


VI
UNDER SUSPICION
H
E SAT for a long time on the edge of his berth,
elbow on knee, chin in hand, unstirring, gaze
fixed upon that little cylinder of white paper rest-
ing in the hollow of his palm, in profoundest concentra-
tion pondering the problems it presented: what it was,
what possession of it meant to Michael Lanyard, what
safe disposition to make of it pending welcome relief
from this unsought and most unwelcome trust.
This last question alone bade fair to confound his
utmost ingenuity.
As for what it was, Lanyard was well satisfied that he
now held the true focus of this conspiracy, a secret of
the first consequence, far too momentous to the designs
of England to be entrusted, though couched in the most
cryptic cipher ever mind of man devised, even to cables
or mails which England herself controlled.
Solely to prevent this communication from reaching
America, Lanyard believed, Germany had sown mines
broadcast in all the waters which the Assyrian must
cross, and had commissioned her U-boats, without fail
and at whatever cost, to sink the vessel if by any accident
she won safely through the mine-fields.
In the effort to steal this secret, German spies had
sailed on the Assyrian knowing well the double risk they
ran, of being shot like rats if found out, of being drowned
78


THE FALSE FACES
79
like neutrals if the ship went down through the efforts of
their compatriots.
It was the zeal of Potsdam's agents, seeking the bearer
of this secret, which had caused the rifling of Miss
Brooke's luggage when she fell under suspicion, thanks
to her clandestine way of coming aboard; and through
the same agency young Thackeray had been all but
murdered when suspicion, for whatever reason, shifted to
him.
To insure safe transmission of this communication,
England had held the Assyrian idle in port, day after
day, while her augmented patrols scoured the seas,
hunting down ruthlessly every submarine whose peri-
scope dared peer above the surface, and while her trawlers
innumerable swept the channels clear of mines.
To prevent its theft, Lieutenant Thackeray had in-
vented the subterfuge of the "wounded” arm, amid
whose splints and bandages (Lanyard never doubted) the
cylinder had been secreted.
Finally, it was as a special agent, deep in her country's
confidence, that this English girl had smuggled herself
aboard at the last moment, bringing, no doubt, this very
cylinder to be transferred to the keeping of Lieutenant
Thackeray or, perhaps, another confrère, should she find
reason to think herself suspected, her trust endangered.
Nothing strange in that; women had served their
countries in such capacities before; the secret archives
of European chancellories are replete with their records.
Lanyard himself remembered many such women, bril-
liant mondaines from many lands domiciled in that Paris
of the so-dead yesterday to serve by stealth their respec-


80
THE FALSE FACES
tive governments; but never, it was true, a woman of the
caste of Cecelia Brooke; unless, indeed, this were an
actress of surpassing talent, gifted to hoodwink the most
skeptical and least susceptible of men.
And yet
.
Lanyard's train of thought faltered. New doubt of
the girl began to shadow his meditations. Contradictory
circumstances he had noted intruded, uninvited, to
challenge overcredulous conclusions concerning her.
Would any secret agent worth her salt invite suspicion
by making such a conspicuously furtive embarkation, by
such ostentatious avoidance of her fellow passengers, by
surrounding herself with an atmosphere of such palpable
mystery? Would such an one confess she had a “secret”
to an utter stranger, as she had to Lanyard that first
night out? Would she, under any conceivable circum-
stances, entrust to that same stranger that selfsame secret
upon whose inviolate preservation so much depended?
And would she make love-trysts on the decks by
night?
Would a brother-agent take her in his arms, then
reprove her with every symptom of vexation for her
“madness," her "insanity," her "nonsense" that was like
to “drive me mad”?—Thackeray's own words!
Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits for some plausible
reading of this riddle.
Was this Brooke girl possibly (of a sudden he sat bolt
upright) a Prussian agent infatuated with this young
Englishman and by him beloved in spite of all that
forbade their passion?
Did not this explanation reconcile every apparent


THE FALSE FACES
81
inconsistency in her conduct, even to the entrusting to
a stranger of the stolen secret, the purloined paper she
dared not keep about her lest it be found in her pos-
session?
Lanyard's eyes narrowed. Visibly his features har-
dened. If this surmise of his were any way justified in
the outcome, he promised Miss Cecelia Brooke an hour
of most painful penitence.
Woman or not, she need not look for mercy from him,
who must ever be merciless in his dealings with Ekstrom's
crew.
To be made that one's tool!
The very thought was intolerable
As for himself, possession of this paper meant that pit-
falls were digged for his every step.
If ever the British found cause to suspect him, his
certain portion would be to face a firing squad in dusk
of early day.
If, on the other hand, these Prussian agents on board
the Assyrian ever got wind of the fact that the cylinder
was in his care, his fate was apt to be a knife between his
ribs the first time he was caught alone and—with his
back to the assassin.
Two courses, then, were open to him: the most sensible
and obvious, to go straightway to the captain of the
Assyrian, report all that he knew or surmised, and turn
over the paper for safekeeping; one alternative, to hide
the cylinder so absolutely that the most drastic search
would overlook it, yet so handily that he could rid himself
of it at an instant's notice.
But the first course involved denunciation of the


82
THE FALSE FACES
Brooke girl. And what if she were innocent? What if,
after all, these doubts of her were the specious spawn of
facts misinterpreted, misconstrued? What if she proved
to be all she seemed? Could he, even though what he
had warned her he might be, the greatest rogue unhung,
be false to a trust reposed in him by such a woman?
As to that, there was no question in his mind; he would
never betray her, lacking irrefutable conviction that she
was an employee of the Prussian spy system.
Then how to hide the paper?
Kneeling, Lanyard drew from beneath the berth his
bellows-bag, selected from its contents a black japanned
tin case containing a rather elaborate though compact
trench medicine kit, the idle purchase of an empty after-
noon in London. Extracting from its fittings a small
leather-covered case, he replaced the kit, relocked and
shoved the bag back beneath the berth.
Then, standing over the hand-basin, he opened the
leather-covered case. Its velvet-lined compartments
held a hypodermic syringe and needle, and a glass phial
of twenty-four one-thirtieth grain morphia tablets.
Uncorking the phial, he shook out all the tablets,
replaced three, then slid the paper cylinder into the tube;
it fitted precisely, concealed by the label of the manu-
facturing chemist, leaving room for six more tablets.
Lanyard inserted four on top of the cylinder, moistening
the lowermost slightly to make it stick, recorked the
phial, and returned it to its compartment.
Next he dissolved three morphia tablets in a little
water in the bottom of a glass, filled the syringe with the
strong solution, fitted on the needle, squirted most of


THE FALSE FACES
83
the contents down the waste-pipe, and consigned the
remaining tablets to the same innocuous fate.
Finally he replaced needle and syringe in the case, let
the glass which had held the solution stand without
rinsing, and put the open case upon the shelf above the
basin.
A light tapping sounded on the panels of his door.
“Well? Who's there?”
"Your steward, sir. Captain Osborne's compliments,
an’’e'd like to see you in 'is room as soon as convenient,
sir."
"You may say I will come at once.”
“ 'Nk
you,
sir."
A summons to have been expected as a sequel to the
surgeon's report after attending Lieutenant Thackeray;
none the less, Lanyard had not expected it so soon.
Authority, he reflected, ran true to form afloat as well
as ashore; it was prompt enough when required to apply
a pound or so of cure. Surely the officers, at least the
captain, must have been advised why this voyage was
apt to prove exceptionally hazardous; and surely in
the light of such information it had been wiser to set
armed watches on every deck by night, rather than per-
mit the lives of passengers to be imperilled through the
possible activities of Prussian agents among them
incogniti.
And now that he was reminded of it, was not this,
perhaps, but a device of the enemy's to decoy him from
the comparative safety of his stateroom?
It was with a hand in his jacket pocket, grasping
Thackeray's automatic, that he presently left the room.


84
THE FALSE FACES
The alleyway, however, was deserted except for his
steward; who, as he appeared, turned and led the way
up to the boat-deck.
Rounding the foot of the companionway, Lanyard
contrived a hasty glance down the port alleyway. The
door to Stateroom 30 was on the hook; a light burned
within. Outside a guard was stationed, a sailor with a
cutlass: the first application of the pound of cure!
At the heels of his guide, he approached a door in the
deck-house, devoted to officers' accommodations, beneath
the bridge. Here the steward knocked discreetly. A
heavy voice grumbling within was stilled for a moment,
than barked a sharp invitation to enter. The steward
turned the knob, announced dispassionately "Monseer
Duchemin,” and stood aside. Lanyard entered a well-
lighted room, simply but comfortably furnished as the
captain's office and sitting room; sleeping quarters ad-
joined, the head of a berth with a battered pillow
showing through a door a foot or so ajar.
Four persons were present; the notion entered Lan-
yard's head that a fifth possibly lurked in the room
beyond, spying, eavesdropping: not a bad scheme if
Thackeray had an associate on board whose identity it
was desirable to keep under cover.
The door closed gently behind him as he stood politely
bowing, conscious that the four faces turned his way
were distinguished by a singular variety of expression.
Miss Cecelia Brooke was nearest him, beside a chair
from which she had evidently just risen, her pretty young
face rather pale and set, a scared look in her candid eyes.
Beyond her, the captain sat with his back to a desk:


THE FALSE FACES
85
a broad-beamed, vigorous body, intensely masculine,
choleric by habit, and just now in an extraordinarily grim
temper, his iron-gray hair bristling from his pillow, and
his stout person visibly suffering the discomfort of wearing
night-clothes beneath his uniform coat and trousers.
Bending upon Lanyard the steel-hard regard of small,
steel-blue eyes, he drummed the arms of his chair with
thick and stubby fingers.
To one side, standing, was the third officer, a Mr.
Sherry, a youngish man with a pleasant cast of counte-
nance which temporarily wore a look, rarely British, of
ingrained sense of duty at odds with much embarrass-
ment.
Lastly Mr. Crane's lanky person was draped, with its
customary effect of carelessness, on one end of the lounge
seat. He looked up, nodded shortly but cheerfully to
Lanyard, then resumed a somewhat quizzical contempla-
tion of the half-smoked cigar which etiquette obliged
him to neglect in the presence of a lady.
“This is the gentleman?” Captain Osborne queried
heavily of the girl. Receiving a murmured affirmative,
he continued: “Good morning, Monsieur Duchemin
Thanks, Miss Brooke; we won't keep you up
any longer to-night.”
He rose, bowed stiffily as Mr. Sherry opened the door
for the girl, and when she was gone threw himself back
into his chair with a force which made it enter a violent
protest.
“Sit down, sir. Daresay you know what we want of
you.”


86
THE FALSE FACES
- “It is not difficult to guess,” Lanyard admitted. “A
sad business, monsieur."
“Sad!” the captain iterated in a tone of harsh sarcasm.
“That's a mild name to give murder."
Even had it not been blurted violently at him, that
word was staggering. The adventurer echoed it blankly.
"You can't mean Lieutenant Thackeray-?"
“Not yet, though doctor says it may come to that; the
poor chap's in a bad way-concussion."
“So one feared. But monsieur said 'murder'
Captain Osborne sat forward, steely gaze mercilessly
boring into Lanyard's eyes. “Monsieur Duchemin," he
said slowly, “Lieutenant Thackeray was not the only
passenger to suffer through to-night's villainy. The other
died instantly.”
"In God's name, monsieur-who?"
“Bartholomew."
“Mr. Bartholomew!” A memory of that brisk little
body's ruddy, cheerful, British personality flashed
athwart the screen of memory. Lanyard murmured:
"Incredible!”
"Murdered," the captain proceeded, "in Stateroom
28. Lieutenant Thackeray and he were friends, shared
the suite. Apparently Mr. Bartholomew heard some
unusual noise in 30 and left his berth to investigate. He
was struck down from behind as he approached the
communicating door. The murderer had got in by way
of the sitting room, 26.”
Mr. Sherry added in an awed voice: “Frightful blow
skull crushed like an eggshell."
There was a pause. Crane thoughtfully relighted his


THE FALSE FACES
87
cigar, and wrapped his right cheek round it. The captain
glared glassily at Lanyard. Mr. Sherry looked, if
possible, more uncomfortable than ever. . Lanyard
pondered, aghast.
Ekstrom's work, of a certainty! This was his way,
the way he imposed upon his creatures. Ekstrom, ever
a killer, obsessed by the fallacious notion that dead
men tell no tales
And Bartholomew had been in this mess with Thack-
eray, both of them operatives of the British Secret
Service!
“Miss Brooke has given her version of the attack on
Lieutenant Thackeray," the captain pursued. "Be good
enough to let us have yours.
Succinctly Lanyard recounted the happenings between
the moment when premonition of evil drew him from his
stateroom and the moment when he returned thereto.
He was at pains, however, to omit all mention of the
cylinder of paper; that, pending definite knowledge to
the contrary, was a sacred trust, a matter of his honour,
solely the affair of the Brooke girl.
The captain squared himself toward Lanyard, his face
louring, his jaw pugnacious.
“How did you happen to be up and dressed at that late
hour, so ready to respond to this-ah-premonition of
yours?”
"I sleep not well, monsieur. It was my intention to go
on deck and endeavour to walk off my insomnia."
Captain Osborne commented with a snort.
"Why did you leave Miss Brooke alone before she
called the doctor?"


88
THE FALSE FACES
.
“At mademoiselle's request, naturally."
"You'd been deuced gallant up to that time. I pre-
sume it didn't occur to you that the young woman might
need further protection?"
Lanyard shrugged. "It did not occur to me to refuse
her request, monsieur."
“Didn't it strike you as odd she should wish to be left
alone with Lieutenant Thackeray?"
"It was not my affair, monsieur. It was her wish.”
“Excuse me, cap'n.” Crane sat up. “I'd like to ask
Mr. Lanyard a question.”
But Lanyard had prepared himself against that, and
acknowledged the touch with a quiet smile and the hint
of a bow.
"Monsieur Crane
"U. S. Secret Service," Crane informed him with a
grin. “Velasco spotted you-had seen you years ago in
Paruss-tipped me off.”
“So one inferred. And these gentlemen?” Lanyard
indicated the captain and third officer.
“I wised them up—had to, when this happened.'
“Naturally, monsieur. Proceed
“I only wanted to ask if you noticed anything to make
you think perhaps there was an understanding between
Miss Brooke and the lieutenant?”
"Why should I?”
"I ain't curious why you should. What I want to know
is, did you?"
“No, monsieur,” Lanyard lied blandly.
“The little lady didn't seem to take on more'n she
naturally would if the lieutenant'd been a stranger, eh?”
>


THE FALSE FACES
89
“How to judge, when one has never seen mademoiselle
distressed on behalf of another?”
Crane abandoned his effort, resuming contemplation
of his cigar.
“Now we come to the point, Monsieur Lanyard, or
whatever your name is.”
“I have found Duchemin very agreeable, monsieur le
capitaine.”
"I daresay," Captain Osborne sneered. He hesitated,
glowering in the difficulty of thinking. “See here, Mon-
sieur Duchemin-since you prefer that style I'm not
going to beat about the bush with you. I'm a plain man,
plain-spoken. They tell me you reformed. I don't know
anything about that. It's my conviction, once a thief,
always a thief. I may be wrong."
"Right or wrong, monsieur might easily be less
offensive.”
The captain's dark countenance became still more
darkly congested. Implacable prejudice glinted in his
small eyes. Nor was his temper softened by the effrontery
of this offender in giving back look for look with a calm
poise that overshadowed his arrogance of an honest, law-
abiding man.
He made a vague gesture of impatience.
“The point is,” he said, “this crime was accompanied
by robbery."
"Am I to understand I am accused?”
“Nobody is accused,” Crane cut in hastily.
“You have found no clues --?"
“Nary clue.”
"What I want to say to you, Monsieur Duchemin, is


90
THE FALSE FACES
this: the stolen property has got to be recovered before
this ship makes her dock in New York. It means the
loss of my command if it isn't. It means more than that,
according to my information; it means a disastrous
calamity to the Allied cause. And you're a Frenchman,
Monsieur-Duchemin."
“And a thief. Monsieur le capitaine must not forget
his pet conviction.”
“As to that, a man can't always be particular about the
tools he employs. I believe the old saying, set a thief
to catch a thief, holds good.”
“Do I understand," Lanyard suggested sweetly, "you
are about to honour me by utilizing my reputed talents,
by commissioning a thief to catch this thief of to-night?”
“Precisely. You know more of this matter than any
of us here. You were at hand-grips with the murderer
and let him get away.”
“To my deep regret. But I have told you how that
happened."
“Seems a bit strange you made no real effort to find
out what the scoundrel looked like."
"It was dark in that alleyway, monsieur."
The captain made an inarticulate noise, apparently
meant to convey an effect of ironic incredulity. More
intelligible comment was interrupted by a ring of the
telephone. He swung around, clapped receiver to ear,
snapped an impatient “Well?" and listened with evident
exasperation.
Lanyard's eyes narrowed. This business of telephoning
was conceivably well-timed; not improbably the captain
was receiving the report of somebody who had been sent


THE FALSE FACES
91
to search Stateroom 29 in Lanyard's absence. He won-
dered and, wondering, glanced at Crane, to find that
gentleman watching him with a whimsical glimmer which
he was quick to extinguish when the captain said curtly,
"Very good, Mr. Warde," and turned back from the
telephone, his manner more than ever truculent.
“Mr. Lanyard,” he said—“Monsieur Duchemin, that
is—a valuable paper has been stolen, an exceedingly
valuable document. I don't know which carried it,
Lieutenant Thackeray or Mr. Bartholomew. But I do
know such a paper was in their possession. And to the
best of my knowledge, we three were the only ones on
board that did know it. And it has disappeared. Now,
sir, you may or may not be deeper in this affair than you
have admitted. If you are, I'd advise you to own up."
"Monsieur le capitaine implies my complicity in this
dastardly crime!"
Osborne shook his head doggedly. “I imply nothing.
I only say this: if you know anything you haven't told
us, my advice is to make a clean breast of it.”
"I have nothing to tell you, monsieur, beyond the fact
that I find you, your tone, your manner, and your choice
of words, intolerably insolent."
“Then you know nothing?"
"Monsieur!” Lanyard cried sharply.
“Very good,” the captain persisted. "I'll take your
word for it-and give you till we take on our pilot to
find the real criminal and make him give up that paper."
“And if I fail?”
“Not a soul on board leaves the Assyrian till the mur-
derer and thief are found—if they are not one.”


THE FALSE FACES
“But that is a general threat; whereas monsieur has
honoured me by making this a personal matter. What
punishment have you prepared for me specifically, if I
fail to accomplish this task which baffles your-shrewd-
ness?”
"I'll at least inform the port authorities in New York,
tell them who you are, and have you barred it of the
country.”
“I want to say, Lanyard," Crane interposed, “this
isn't my notion of how to deal with you, or in any way by
my advice.”
“Thank you, monsieur," the adventurer replied icily,
without removing his attention from the captain. "What
else, Captain Osborne?”
“That is all I have to say to you to-night, sir. Good
night.”
"But I have something more to say to you, monsieur
le capitaine. First, I desire to give over to you this
article which it will doubtless please you to consider
stolen property." Lanyard placed the automatic pistol
on the desk. "One of Lieutenant Thackeray's," he
explained; “at Miss Brooke's suggestion, I borrowed it as
a life-preserver, in event of another brush with this
homicidal maniac."
"She told us about that,” Osborne said heavily,
fumbling with the weapon. "What else, sir?"
"Only this, monsieur le capitaine: I shall use my best
endeavour to uncover the author of these crimes. If I
succeed, be sure I shall denounce him. If I succeed only
in securing this valuable paper you speak of, be equally
Sure you will never see it; for it shall leave
my
hands only


THE FALSE FACES
93
to pass into those which I consider entirely trustworthy."
“The devil!" Captain Osborne leaped from his
chair quaking with fury. “You dare accuse me of
disloyalty-_!"
“Now you mention it ... Lanyard cocked his
head to one side with a maddening effect of deliberation.
"No," he concluded—“no; I wouldn't accuse you of
intentional treason, monsieur; for that would involve an
imputation of intelligence.
He opened the door and nodded pleasantly to Crane
and the third officer.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” he said silkily. “Oh, and
you, too, Captain Osborne-good-night, I'm sure.
.


THE FALSE FACES
95
but now it stood wide, and Cecelia Brooke was on its
threshold, conversing guardedly with the surgeon. Even
as Lanyard caught sight of them, the latter bowed and
turned aft, while the girl retreated and refastened the
door on its hook.
Thus reminded of Crane’s shrewd questions, Lanyard
was speculating rather foggily concerning the reason
therefor as he turned down the passage to his own quar-
ters. What had the American noticed, or been told,
to make him surmise covert sympathy between the girl
and the lieutenant?
He caught himself yawning. Drowsiness buzzed in
his brain. He had an incoherent feeling that he would
now sleep long and heavily. Entering his stateroom,
be put a shoulder against the door, pushing it to as he
fumbled for the switch. The circumstance that the
lights were no longer burning as he had left them failed
to impress him as noteworthy in view of his belief that,
by the captain's orders, Mr. Warde had been ransack-
ing his effects in his absence.
But when no more than a click responded to a turn
of the switch, the room remaining quite dark, Lanyard
uttered an imprecation, abruptly very wide awake in-
deed.
Before he could move he stiffened to positive immobil-
ity: the cool, hard nose of a pistol had come into contact
with his skull, just behind the ear.
Simultaneously a softly-modulated voice advised him
in purest German: “Be quite still, Herr Lanyard, and
hold up your hands-so! Also, see that you utter no
..


96
THE FALSE FACES
sound till I give you leave,
Karl, the hand.
kerchief."
Lanyard stood motionless, hands well elevated, while
a heavy silk blindfold was whipped over his eyes and
knotted tight at the back of his head.
“Now your paws, Herr Lone Wolf-put them together
behind your back, prudently making no attempt to reach
a pocket.”
Obediently Lanyard permitted his wrists to be caught
together with a second silk handkerchief. He could feel
a slight sensation of heat upon his hands, and guessed
that this was caused by the light of a flash-lamp held
close to the flesh. None the less he took the chance of
clenching his fists and tensing the muscles of his
wrists.
“Tightly, Karl.”
The bonds were made painfully fast. Still it did not
seem to occur to his captors to oblige their prisoner to
open his hands and relax his wrists. Lanyard perceived
a glimmer of hope in this oversight: the enemy was
normally stupid.
"Now the lights again."
After a little wait, during which he could hear the
bulbs being pressed back into their sockets, the switch
clicked once more.
“And now, swine-dog!"-the pistol tapped his skull
significantly—“if you value your life, speak, and speak
quickly. Where is that document?”
“Document?" Lanyard repeated in a tone of wonder.
"Unless you are eager to explore the hereafter, tell
us where we may find it without delay.”


THE FALSE FACES
97
-
99
“Upon my word, I don't know what you're talking
about."
"You lie!" the German snapped. "Face about!"
Somebody grasped his shoulders roughly and swung
him round to the light, the nose of the pistol shifting to
press against his abdomen.
"Search him, Karl."
Unseen hands investigated his pockets cunningly.
As they finished, the man who answered to the name of
Karl became articulate for the first time, following a
grunt of disappointment:
“Nothing—he has it not upon him.”
"Look more thoroughly. Did you think him idiot
enough to carry it where you'd find it at the first dip?
Imbecile!"
For the purpose of this second search Lanyard's gar-
ments were ripped open, and the enemy made sure that
he carried nothing next his skin more incriminating than
a money-belt, which was forcibly removed.
“His shoes—see to his shoes!" the first speaker in-
sisted irritably. “Sit down, Lanyard!”
A petulant push sent the adventurer reeling across the
cabin to fall upon the lounge seat beneath the port.
With some effort he assumed a sitting position, while
Karl, kneeling, hastily unlaced and tore off his shoes
and socks.
"Nothing, captain," was the report.
“Damnation!
Continue to search his luggage.
Leave nothing unexamined. In particular look into
every hole and corner where none but a fool would
attempt to hide anything. This fine gentleman imagines


THE FALSE FACES
99
strain of self-control. He continued to pluck at the folds
of silk while concentrating in effort to memorise the
voice, which he failed utterly to place. Undoubtedly
this animal was a shipboard acquaintance, one who
knew him well; but those detestable German gutturals
disguised his accents quite beyond identification.
“For all that, you are not wise so to try my patience.
I permit you five minutes by my watch in which to
make up your mind to surrender that document."
“How often must I tell you,” Lanyard enquired, “all
this talk of documents is Greek to me?”
“Then you have five minutes to brush up your classical
education, and translate into terms suited to your
intelligence. I will have that document from you or
in four more minutes-shoot you dead.”
To this Lanyard said nothing. But his patient atten-
tions to the handkerchief round his wrists were beginning
perceptibly to be rewarded.
“Moreover, Herr Lanyard, you will do yourself a very
good turn by confessing--entirely aside from saving your
life.”
"How is that?"
“Providing you persuade me of your good faith, I am
empowered to offer you employment in our service."
Lanyard's breath passed hardly through a throat
swollen with rage, chagrin, and hatred, all hopelessly
impotent. But he succeeded in preserving an unruffled
countenance, as his captor's next words demonstrated.
"You are surprised, yes? You are thinking it over?
Take your time you have three minutes more.
Or
perhaps you are sulky, resenting that our cleverness has


200
THE FALSE FACES
.
found you out? Be reasonable, my good man. Think:
you cannot be insensible to the honour my offer does
you.”
“What do you want of me?”
“First, that paper—thereafter to use your surpassing
talents to the glory of God and Fatherland. In addition,
you will be greatly rewarded.”
"Now you do begin to interest me,” Lanyard said
coolly.
Surely he could contrive some way to
slay this beast with his naked hands! He must play for
time.
“How rewarded?”
"As I say, with a place in the Prussian Secret Service,
its protection, freedom to ply your trade unhindered in
America, even countenanced, till that country becomes a
German province under German laws."
"But do I hear you offer this to a Frenchman?”
“Undeceive yourself. Men of all nations to-day,
recognising that the star of Germany is in the ascendant,
that soon all nations will be German, are hastening to
make their peace beforehand by rendering Germany good
service.”
“Something in that, perhaps,” Lanyard admitted
thoughtfully.
"Think well, my friend.
Yes, Karl?"
The voice of the other spy responded sullenly:
"Nothing--absolutely nothing."
"Two minutes, Herr Lanyard."
Of a sudden Lanyard's face was violently distorted in
a grimace of terror. He lurched his shoulders forward,
openly struggling with his bonds.
"But-good God!” he protested in a voice of terror,
.
.


THE FALSE FACES
101
"you can't possibly be so unreasonable! I tell you,
I haven't got your damned paper!”
A loop of the handkerchief slipped over one hand.
"Be still! Cease your struggles. And not so loud, my
friend!” The peremptory voice dropped into mockery as
Lanyard, pale and exhausted, sat back trembling--and
a second loop of silk dropped over the other hand. "So
you begin to appreciate that we mean business, yes?
One minute and thirty seconds!"
"Have mercy!” the adventurer whined desperately-
and licked his lips as if he found them dry with fear. Now
both hands were all but wholly free. True: he remained
blindfolded and covered by a deadly weapon. “Give me a
chance. I'll do anything you wish! But I can't give you
what I haven't got."
"Be silent! Here, Karl."
There was a sound of unintelligible murmuring as the
two spies conferred together. Lanyard writhed in ap-
parent extremity of terror. His hands were free. He
sought hopelessly for inspiration. What to do without
arms?
“Be grateful to Karl. He urges that perhaps you know
nothing of the document."
"Don't you think I'd tell if I did know?"
“Then you have one minute--no, forty secondsin
which to pledge yourself to the Prussian Secret Ser-
vice."
“You want me to swear
-?"
"Certainly."
“Then hear me,” said Lanyard earnestly: "You damned
canaille!" And in one movement he tore the bandage


102
THE FALSE FACES
from his eyes and launched himself head foremost at
the man who stood over him.
He caught part of an oath drowned out by the splitting
report of a pistol that went off within an inch of his ear.
Then his head took the man full in the belly, and both
went sprawling to the deck, Lanyard fighting like a
maniac.
Sheer luck had guided clawing fingers to the right wrist
of his antagonist, round which they shut like jaws of a
trap. At the same time he wrenched the other's arm
high above his head.
Momentarily expecting the shock of a bullet from the
pistol of the second spy, he found time to wonder that
it was so long deferred, and even in the fury of his
struggles, out of the corner of one eye caught a fugitive
glimpse of a tallish man, masked, standing back to the
forward partition in a pose of singular indecision, pistol
poised in his grasp.
Then the efforts of his immediate adversary threw
him into a position in which he was unable to see the
other.
Of a sudden the stateroom was filled with the thunder
of an automatic, its seven cartridges discharged in one
brisk, rippling crash.
It was as if a white-hot iron had been laid across Lan-
yard's shoulder. Beneath him the man started convul-
sively, with such force as almost to throw him off bodily,
then relaxed altogether and lay limp and still, pinning
one of Lanyard's arms under him.
Its visor displaced, the face of Baron von Harden was


THE FALSE FACES
103
revealed, features distorted, eyes glaring, a frozen mask
of hate and terror.
His arm free, the adventurer rolled away from the
corpse in time to see the open window-port blocked by
the body of the other spy.
Gathering himself together, he snatched up the pistol
that dropped from the inert grasp of the dead man, and
levelled it at the port.
But now that space was empty.
He rose and paused for an instant, his glance instinct-
ively seeking the ledge above the hand-basin.
The hypodermic outfit was there, but minus the phial.
In the alleyway rose a confusion of running feet and
shouting tongues. A heavy banging rang on the door to
Stateroom 29. Crane's nasal accents called upon Lan-
yard to open.


VIII
OFF NANTUCKET
U
PON the authors of that commotion Lanyard
wasted no consideration whatever. Let them
knock and clamour; he had more urgent work in
hand, and knew too well the penalty were he stupid
enough to unbolt to them. Their bodies would dam the
doorway hopelessly; insistent hands would hinder him;
innumerable importunate enquiries would be dinned at
him, all immaterial in contrast with this emergency, a
catechism one would need an hour to satisfy. And all
attempts would be futile to make them understand that,
while they plagued him with futile questions, a mur-
derer and spy and thief was making good his escape,
being afforded ample opportunity to slough all traces of
his recent work and resume unchallenged his place
among them.
No; if by any freak of good fortune, any exertion of wit
or daring, that one were to be apprehended, it must be
within the next few minutes, it could only be through
immediate pursuit.
Nor did the adventurer waste time debating the better
course. With him, whose ways of life were ceaselessly
beset by instant and mortal perils, each with its especial
and imperative demand upon his readiness and ingenuity,
· action must ever press so hard upon the heels of thought
as to make the two seem one.
For that matter, the whole transaction had been
104


THE FALSE FACES
105
characterised by almost unbelievable rapidity. And that
square opening of the window-port was hardly vacant
when Lanyard sprang to his feet; the fugitive had
barely time to find his own upon the outer deck before
Lanyard leaped after him; the first thumps upon the
panels of his door were still echoing when he thrust head
and shoulders out of the port and began to pump the
automatic at a shadow fleeing aft upon that narrow
breadth of planking between rail and wall.
Then, at the third shot, the automatic jammed upon a
discharged shell.
Exasperated, the adventurer cast the weapon from
him, shrugged hastily out of his unfastened coat and
waistcoat, hitched tight his belt, and clambered through
the port.
Dropping to the deck, he turned in time to see the
fugitive dart round the shoulder of the superstructure.
As Lanyard gained the after rail of the promenade
deck a man standing on the boat-deck at the head of
the companion-ladder greeted him with pistol fire. He
dodged back, untouched, and instantaneously devised
a stratagem to cope with this untoward development.
Overhead, at the side, a lifeboat hung on its davits,
ready for emergency launching, the gap in the rail which
it filled when normally swung inboard spanned only
by a length of line. And the darkness in the shadow of
the boat was dense, an excellent screen.
Climbing upon the rail, Lanyard grasped the edge of
the deck overhead and drew himself up undetected by his
quarry, whom he espied still holding the head of the com-
panion ladder, hidden from the bridge by the after deck-


106
THE FALSE FACES
house, standing ready to shoot Lanyard should he
attempt to renew the pursuit by that approach.
At the same time, “Karl" seemed mysteriously oc-
cupied with some object or objects in whose manipula-
tion he was hampered to a degree by the necessity under
which he laboured of holding his pistol ready and dividing
his attention.
A man of good stature, broad at the shoulders, slender
at the hips, he poised himself with athletic grace-the
lower part of his face masked by what Lanyard took to
be a dark silk handkerchief.
Lanyard heard him swearing in German.
Then a brisk little spray of sparks jetted from the flint
and steel of a patent cigar-lighter in the hands of the spy.
And as Lanyard rose from his knees after ducking beneath
the line, a stream of fatter sparks spat from the end of a
fuse.
The man leaned over the rail and cast a small black
object to which the sputtering fuse was attached, down to
the main deck.
As it struck midway between superstructure and stern
it burst into brilliant flame, releasing upon the night an
electric-blue glare that must have been visible from any
point within the compass of the horizon.
A yell of profane remonstrance saluted the light, and
throughout the brief passage that followed Lanyard was
conscious that pistols and rifles on the after deck below
were making him and his antagonist their targets.
Before the German could face about, Lanyard, moving
almost noiselessly in his bare feet, had covered more
than half the intervening space. In another breath he


THE FALSE FACES
107
might have had the fellow at a disadvantage. But the
distance was too great. Twice the automatic blazed in
his face as he closed in, the bullets clearing narrowly-
or else he fancied that their deadly cold breath fanned
his cheek.
Then the spy's weapon in turn went out of action.
Half blinded, Lanyard clipped the man round the body
and hugged him tight, exerting all his skill and strength
to effect a throw.
That effort failed; his onslaught was met with address
and ability that all but matched his own. The animal he
embraced had muscles like tempered springs and the
cunning and fury of a wild beast in a trap. For a moment
Lanyard was able to accomplish no more than to smother
resistance in a rib-crushing embrace; no sooner did he
relax it than all attempts to shift his hold were antici-
pated and met half way, forcing him back upon the
defensive.
Yet he was given little chance to prove himself the
master. The first phase of the struggle was still in contest
when the rear door of the smoking room opened and a
man stepped out, paused, summed up the situation in
a glance, seized Lanyard from behind.
The adventurer felt his arms grasped by hands whose
strength seemed little short of superhuman, and wrenched
back so violently that his very bones cracked. Fairly
lifted from his feet, he was held as helpless as an infant
kicking in the arms of its nurse.
Released, the other spy stepped back and swung his
left fist viciously to Lanyard's jaw. Something in the
brain of the adventurer seemed to let go; his head


108
THE FALSE FACES
dropped weakly to one side. The man who had struck
him said quietly, “Loose the fool, Ed,” and followed as
Lanyard reeled away, striking him repeatedly.
For a giddy moment Lanyard was darkly conscious
as one dreams an evil dream-of blows raining merci-
lessly about his head and body, blows that drove him
back athwartships toward a fate dark and terrible, a
great void of blackness. He felt unutterably weary,
and was weakened by a sensation of nausea. Beneath
him his knees buckled. There fell one final blow, ruthless
as the wrath of God.
He was falling backward into nothingness, into an
everlasting gulf of night that yawned for him.
As he shot under the guard rope and into space between
the edge of the deck and the keel of the lifeboat, the spy
rounded smartly on a heel and darted to the smoking-room
door. His confederate was in the act of stepping across
the raised threshold. He followed, closed the door.
The first officer, charging aft from the bridge, rounded
the deck-house and pulled up with a grunt of surprise to
find the deck completely deserted.
The shock of icy immersion reanimated Lanyard.
He felt himself plunging headlong down, down, and
down to inky depths unguessable. The sheer habit of
an accustomed swimmer alone bade him hold his breath.
Then came a pause: he was no more descending; for
a time of indeterminate duration, an age of anguish, he
seemed to float without motion, suspended in frigid
purgatory. Against his ribs something hammered like
a racing engine. In his ears sounded a vast roaring,
the deafening voices of a thousand waterfalls. His head
.


THE FALSE FACES
109
felt swollen and enormous, on the point of bursting
wide.
Without warning expelled from those depths, he shot
full half-length out of water, and fell back into the
milky welter of the Assyrian's wake.
Instinctively he kept afloat with feeble strokes.
The cold was bitter, as sharp as the teeth of death;
but his head was now clear, he was able to appreciate
what had befallen him.
Already the Assyrian, forging onward unchecked,
had left him well astern, her progress distinctly disclosed
by that infernal bluish glare spouting from her after deck.
She seemed absurdly small. Incredulity infected
Lanyard's mind. Nothing so tiny, so insignificant, so
make-believe as that silhouette of a ship could con-
ceivably be that great liner, the Assyrian.
Temporarily a burning pain in his left shoulder drove
all other considerations out of mind. The salt water
was beginning to smart in the raw, superficial wound made
by that assassin's bullet
back there in the
stateroom
long ago
Then the cold began to bite into his marrow, and he
struggled manfully to swim, taking long, slow strokes,
at first comparatively powerful, by insensible degrees
losing force.
Just why he took this trouble he did not know:' for
some dim reason it seemed desirable to live as long as
possible. Withal he was aware he could not live.
Whether careless or utterly ignorant of his fate, the
Assyrian was trudging on and on, leaving him ever
farther astern, lost beyond rescue in that weird, bleak
.
.
.


110
THE FALSE FACES
waste. Even were an alarm to be given, were she to
stop now and put out a boat, it would find him, if it
found him at all, too late.
The cold was killing.
He felt very sleepy. Drowsily he apprehended the
beginning of the end. His senses, growing numb with
cold, presently must cease to function altogether. Then
he would forget, and nothing would matter any more.
Yet the will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard
wished it he could not have ceased to swim, at least to
keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how people ever
managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to
pass human power to resist that buoyancy which sus-
tained one, to let go, let one's self go down. Impossible
to conceive how that was ever done.
Why should he care to go on living?
No reading that riddle!
On obscure impulse he gave up swimming, turned upon
his back, floated face to the sky, derelict, resigning
himself to the cradling arms of the sea. The gradual,
slow rocking of the swells soothed his passion like a
kindly opiate. The cold no more irked him, but seemed
somehow strangely anodynous. Imperturbably he en-
visaged death, without fear, without welcome. What
must be, must
For all that, life clutched at him with jealous hands.
More than ever sleepy, before he slept that last, long
sleep he must somehow solve this enigma, learn the
reason why life continued so to allure his failing
senses.
.


THE FALSE FACES
111
Athwart the drab texture of consciousness wild fancies
played like heat lightning in a still midsummer night.
Death's countenance was kind.
That wide field of stars, drooping low and lifting away
with rhythmic motion, would sometime dip swiftly down
to the very sea itself and, swinging back, take with it
his soul to some remote bourne
The deeps were yielding up their mysteries. Past him
a huge pale monster swept at furious pace, hissing
grimly as it passed, like some spectral Nemesis pursuing
the Assyrian.
Indifferently he speculated concerning the reality of
this phenomenon.
The heave of a swell enabled him to glance incuriously
after the steamship. She seemed smaller, less genuine
than ever, a shadow shape that boasted visibility solely
through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even
that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a
candle lost in the immensities of that night-bound world
of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as he that had
been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny
flame that guttered toward its swift extinction.
Why live, when one might die and, dying, find endless
rest?
Like a blazing thunderbolt one word rent the slumbrous
web of sentience: Ekstrom!
Galvanised by the flood of hatred unpent by the
syllables of that name, Lanyard began again to swim,
flailing the water with frantic arms as if to win some-
whither by the very violence of his efforts.


112
THE FALSE FACES
This the one cogent reason why he must not, could
not, die
.
Unjust to require him to give up life while that one
lived. Unfair
It must not be!
Across the sea rolled a dull, brutish detonation. The
swimmer, swung high on the bosom of a great swell, saw
a vast sheet of fire raving heavenward from the Assyrian.
It vanished instantly.
When his dazzled vision cleared, he could see no more
of the ship. He imagined a faint, wild rumour of panic
voices, conjured up scenes of horror indescribable as
that great fabric sank almost instantaneously, as if some
gigantic hand plucked her under.
What had happened? Had the accomplices of the
dead Baron von Harden set off an infernal machine
aboard the vessel? In the name of reason, why? They
had got what they sought, that accursed document,
whatever it was, that page torn from the Book of Doom.
Then why
?
And to what end had they exploded that light bomb
on the after deck?
To make the Assyrian a glaring target in the night-
what else? A target for what?
Of a sudden all rational mental processes were erased
from Lanyard's consciousness. A wave of pure fear
flooded him, body, mind, and soul. He began to struggle
like a maniac, fighting the waters that hindered his flight
from some hideous thing that was lifting up from the
ocean's ooze to drag him down.
He heard a voice screaming thinly, and knew it was
.
his own.


114
THE FALSE FACES
he could not, he was too weak and faint. Ceasing to
struggle, he rested in half stupour, panting.
With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back.
Rousing, Lanyard saw several figures emerge from the
conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless,
shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above
him, filling their lungs with the sweet air. He tried
to call to them, but evoked a mere rattle from his throat.
Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immedi-
ately over him, fixing binoculars to their eyes, their voices
quite audible.
A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he
heard them conferring together in the German tongue.
Death, then, was but a little delayed.
Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he
shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon
his senses he caught broken phrases, snatches of sentences:
sinking fast struck square amidships
broke her back.
trouble with her boats. There goes one
over!
fools jumping overboard like cattle
“What's that rocket? Do the swine want us to shell
their boats ?"
“Why not? They're asking for it!"
One of the officers lowered his glasses and barked a
series of sharp commands. The crew on deck leaped to
attention. One leaned over the conning-tower hatch
and shouted to his mates below. A hatch forward of
the tower opened, and a quick-firing gun on a disappear-
.


THE FALSE FACES
115
ing carriage swung smoothly and silently up from its lair.
The other officer, looking down, started violently.
“Verdammt! What's this?”
The first rejoined him. “Impossible!”
“Impossible or not a man or a cadaver!”
"Have him up and see
By order, two of the crew dragged Lanyard up to the
bridge, supporting him by main strength while the
officers examined him.
“At the last gasp, but alive," one announced.
"How the devil did he get out here?”
"From the Assyrian"
"Impossible for any man to swim this far since our
torpedo struck"
“Then he must have gone overboard before it struck-
or was thrown-
A cry of alarm from the group about the gun,
awaiting final orders to open fire upon the Assyrian's
boats, interrupted the conference. The officers swung
away in haste.
"Hell's fury! what's that searchlight?”
"A Yankee destroyer-in all probability the one we
dodged yesterday afternoon.”
“She'll find us yet if we don't submerge. Forward,
there-house that gun! And get below-quickly!”
During a moment of apparent confusion, one of the
men sustaining Lanyard caught the attention of an
officer.
"What shall we do with this fellow, sir?” he enquired
"Leave him here to sink or swim as we go down,'
snapped the officer- "and be damned to him!”


116
THE FALSE FACES
With a supreme effort the adventurer sank his fingers
deep into the arms of the two men.
“Wait!” he gasped faintly in German. “On the
Emperor's service
“What's that?” The officer turned back sharply.
“Imperial Secret Service,” Lanyard faltered—“Per-
sonal Division
Division — Wilhelmstrasse Number 27-
A brilliant glare settled suddenly upon the deck of the
submarine, and was welcomed by a panicky gust of
oaths. One officer had already popped through the
conning-tower hatch, followed by several of the crew.
There remained only those supporting Lanyard, and the
second officer.
"Take him below!" the latter ordered. “He may be
telling the truth. If not
In the distance a gun boomed. A shell shrieked over
the submarine and dropped into the sea not a hundred
yards to starboard. The men rushed Lanyard toward the
conning tower. He tried feebly to help them. In that
effort consciousness was altogether blotted out


IX
SUB SEA
W:
HEN he opened his eyes again he was resting,
after a fashion, naked between harsh, damp
blankets in a narrow, low-ceiled bunk inches too
short for one of his stature.
After an experimental squirm or two he lay very still;
his back and all his limbs were stiff and sore, his bullet-
seared shoulder burned intolerably beneath a rudely
applied first-aid dressing, and he was breathing heavily
long, labouring inhalations of an atmosphere sickeningly
dank, close, and foul with unspeakable stenches, for
which the fumes of sulphuric acid with a rank reek of
petroleum and lubricating oils formed but a modest and
retiring background.
Also his head felt very thick and dull. He found it
extremely difficult to think, and for some time, indeed,
was quite unable to think to any purpose.
His
very eyes ached in their sockets.
In the ceiling glowed an electric bulb, dimly illuminat-
ing a cubicle barely big enough to accommodate the bunk,
a dresser, and a small desk with a folding seat. The
inner wall was a slightly concave surface of steel plates
whose seams oozed moisture. In the opposite wall was a
sliding door, open, beyond which ran a narrow alleyway
floored with metal grating. Everything in sight was
enamelled with white paint and clammy with the sweat
of that foetid air.
119


118
THE FALSE FACES
Over all an unnatural hush brooded, now and again
accentuated by a rumble of distant voices and gusts of
vacant laughter, once or twice by a curious popping. For
a long time he heard nothing else whatever. The effect
was singularly disquieting and did its bit to quicken
torpid senses to grasp his plight.
Sluggishly enough Lanyard pieced together fragments
of lurid memories, reconstructing the sequence of last
night's events scene by scene to the moment of his
rescue by the U-boat.
So, it appeared, he was aboard a German submersible,
virtually a prisoner, though posing as an agent of the
Personal Intelligence Department of the German Secret
Service.
To that inspiration of failing consciousness he owed his
life, or such of its span as now remained to him, a term
whose duration could only be defined by his ability to
carry off the imposture pending problematic opportunity
to escape. And, assuming that this last were ever offered
him, there was no present possibility of guessing how
long it might not be deferred.
Its butcher's mission successfully accomplished, the
U-boat was not improbably even now en route for
Heligoland, beginning a transatlantic cruise of weeks
that might never end save in a nameless grave at the
bottom of the Four Seas.
Only the matter of impersonation failed to embarrass
in prospect. A natural linguist, Lanyard's three years
within the German lines had put a rare finish upon his
mastery of German. More than this, he was well versed
in the workings of the Prussian spy system. As Dr.


THE FALSE FACES
119
.
Paul Rodiek, Wilhelmstrasse Agent Number 27, he was
safe as long as he found no acquaintance of that gentle-
man in the complement of the submarine; for, largely
upon information furnished by Lanyard himself, Dr.
Rodiek had been secretly apprehended and executed in
the Tower the day before Lanyard left London to join
the Assyrian.
But the question of the U-boat's present whereabouts
and its movements in the immediate future disturbed
the adventurer profoundly. He was elaborately in-
curious about Heligoland; and several weeks' association
with the Boche in the close quarters of a submarine was
a prospect that revolted. Wellnigh any fate were
preferable
Uncertain footsteps sounded in the alleyway, paused
at the entrance to his cubicle. He turned his head
wearily on the pillow. In the doorway stood a man whose
slenderly elegant carriage of a Prussian officer was not
disguised even by his shapeless wreck of a naval lieu-
tenant's uniform, a man with a countenance of singularly
unpleasant cast, leaving out of all consideration the
grease and grime that discoloured it. His narrow fore-
head slanted back just a trace too sharply, his nose was
thin and overlong, his mouth thin and cruel beneath its
ambitious mustache à la Kaiser; his small black eyes, set
much too close together, blazed with unholy exhilaration.
As soon as he spoke Lanyard understood that he was
drunk, drunk with more than the champagne of which
he presently boasted.
"Awake, eh?” he greeted Lanyard with a mirthless
snarl. “You've slept like the dead man I took you for


120
THE FALSE FACES
at first, my friend-a solid fourteen hours, my word for
it! Feeling better now?”
Lanyard's essays to reply began and ended in a croak
for water. The Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned
with an aluminium cup of stale cold water mixed with a
little brandy.
“Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard,
painfully propping himself up on an elbow, gulped like an
animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We are holding
a little celebration, you know.”
Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in
his eyes.
"Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded.
“We got her, and that means much honour and a long
furlough to boot, when we get home, just as failure
would have spelled—I don't like to think what. I
shouldn't care to fill the shoes of those poor devils who
let the Assyrian escape them off Ireland, I can tell you.”
Something very much liké true fear flickered in his
small eyes as he pondered the punishment meted out to
those who failed.
So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one
noticed no motion of her progress, heard no noise of
machinery.
"Where are we?" Lanyard whispered.
"Peacefully asleep on the bottom, about five miles
south of Martha's Vineyard, waiting till it is dark enough
to slip in to our base."
“Base?”
The Prussian hiccoughed and giggled. “On the south
shore of the Vineyard,” he confided with alcoholic glee:


THE FALSE FACES
121
The sea
*snuggest little haven heart could wish, well to the north
of all deep-sea traffic; and the coastwise trade runs still
farther north, through Vineyard Sound, other side the
island. Not a soul ever comes that way, not a soul
suspects. How should they? The admirable charts of
the Yankee Coast and Geodetic Survey"-he sneered-
“show no break in the south beach of the island, between
the ocean and the ponds. But there is one.
made the breach during a gale, our people helped with
a little Trotyl, tides and storms did the rest. Now we
can enter a secluded, landlocked harbour with just
enough water at low tide, and lie hidden there till the
word comes to move again three miles of dense scrub
forest, all privately owned as a game preserve, fenced and
patrolled, between us and the nearest cultivated land-
and friends in plenty on the island to keep all our needs
supplied-petroleum, fresh vegetables, champagne, all
that. Just the same we take no chances-never make
our landfall by day, never enter or leave harbour except
at night."
He paused, contemplating Lanyard owlishly. “Ought
not to tell you all this, I presume,” he continued, more
soberly, though the wild light still flickered ominously in
his eyes. “But it is safe enough; you will see for yourself
in a few hours; and then
either you are all
right, or you will never live to tell of it. We radio'd
for information about Wilhelmstrasse Number 27
just before dawn, after we had dodged that damned
Yankee destroyer. Ought to get an answer to-night,
when we come up.”


THE FALSE FACES
123
“Personal Intelligence Bureau-confidential agent.'
“What were you doing on board the Assyrian?”
Lanyard mustered enough strength to look the man
squarely in the eye.
“Pardon,” he said coldly. “You must know your ques-
tion is indiscreet."
“I must know more about you.”
“It should be enough,” Lanyard ventured boldly, “to
know that I set off that flare as arranged, at risk of my
life.”
“How came you
overboard?”
“In the scuffle caused by my lighting the flare."
“So you tell me. But we found you half clothed,
lacking any sort of identification. Am I to accept your
unsupported word?”
"My papers are naturally at the bottom of the sea,
in the garments I discarded lest their weight drag me
down. If you have doubts,” Lanyard continued firmly,
“it is your privilege to settle them by communicating
via radio with Seventy-ninth Street."
He shut his eyes wearily and turned his head aside on
the pillow, confident that this reference to the head-
quarters and secret wireless station of the Prussian spy
system in New York would win him peace for a time at
least.
After a moment the commander uttered a
committal grunt. “We shall see,” he prophesied darkly,
and went away.
Later, one of the crew brought Lanyard a dish of greasy
stew and potatoes, lukewarm, with bread and a half-
bottle of excellent champagne.
non-


124
THE FALSE FACES
He ate all he could stomach of the first, devoured the
second ravenously, and drainer) the bottle of its ultimate
life-giving drop.
Then, immeasurably refreshed and fortified in body
and spirit, he turned face to the wall, composed himself
as if to sleep, shut his eyes, adjusted the tempo of his
respiration, and lay quite still, wide awake and thinking
hard.
After a while somebody tramped into the cubicle, bent
over Lanyard inquisitively and, satisfied that he slept,
retired, taking away the empty bottle and dishes.
Otherwise his meditations were disturbed only by those
echoes of revelry in honour of the late manifestation of
the Hun's divine right to do wanton murder on the high
seas.
The rumour waxed and waned, died into dull mutter-
ings, broke out afresh in spurts of merriment that held
an hysterical note. Once a quarrel sprang up and was
silenced by the commander's deep, unpleasant tones.
Corks popped spasmodically. Again there were sounds
much like a man's sobbing; but these were promptly
blared down by a phonograph with a typically American
accent. When that palled, a sentimental disciple of
frightfulness sang Tannenbaum in a melting tenor.
Everything tended to effect an impression that all,
commander and meanest mechanic alike, were making
forlorn efforts to forget.
Devoutly Lanyard prayed they might be successful, at
least until the submarine made her secret base. If too
much alcohol was bad, too much brooding was infinitely
worse for the German temperament. He remembered


THE FALSE FACES
125
one U-boat commander who, returning to the home port
after a conspicuously successful cruise, had been taken
ashore in a strait-jacket.
Lanyard himself did not care to dwell upon those
scenes which must have been enacted on board the
Assyrian after the torpedo struck
Deliberately ignoring all else, he set himself the task of
reviewing those events which had led up to his going
overboard.
One by one he considered the incidents of that night,
painstakingly dissected them, examined their every phase
in minute analysis, weighing for ulterior meaning every
word uttered in his presence, harking even farther back
to reconstruct his acquaintance with each actor from
the very moment of its inception, seeking that hint which
he was convinced must be somewhere hidden in the
history of the affair, waiting only recognition to lead
straightway out of this gloomy maze of mystery into a
sunlit open of understanding.
In vain: there was an ambiguity in that business to
baffle the keenest and most pertinacious investigation.
The conduct of Cecelia Brooke alone bristled with in-
consistencies inexplicable, the conduct of the German
spies no less.
To get better perspective upon the problem, he reduced
the premises to their barest summary:
A valuable dossier brought on board the Assyrian (no
matter by whom) had come into the possession of
British agents, with the knowledge of Captain Osborne.
Thackeray had secreted it in that fraudulent bandage.
German agents, apparently under the leadership of


126
THE FALSE FACES
Baron von Harden, had waylaid him, knocked him sense-
less, unwrapped the bandage, but somehow (probably in
the first instance through the interference of the Brooke
girl) had overlooked the document. Subsequently the
Brooke girl had found and entrusted it to Lanyard. (No
matter why!) He on his part had exerted his utmost
inventiveness in hiding it away. Nevertheless it had
been discovered and abstracted within an hour.
By whom?
Not improbably by the Brooke girl herself. Repenting
her impulsiveness, after leaving Lanyard with the
captain, from whom she had doubtless learned the truth
about "Monsieur Duchemin," she might well have gone
directly to Lanyard's stateroom and hit upon the morphia
phial as the likeliest hiding place without delay, thanks
to prior acquaintance with the proportions of the paper
cylinder.
But why should she have assumed that Lanyard had
not disposed of the trust about his person?
Not impossibly the thing had been found by the first
officer of the Assyrian, searching by order of the captain-
as Lanyard assumed he had.
But, if Mr. Warde had found it, he had not reported
his find when telephoning to Captain Osborne; or else
the latter had gone to great lengths to mystify Lanyard.
There remained the chance that the paper had been
stolen by one of the two German agents—by either with-
out the knowledge of the other.
If Baron von Harden had found it-necessarily before
Lanyard returned to the room-he had subsequently
been at elaborate pains to conceal his success from both


128
THE FALSE FACES
Or "Karl” had stolen it.
Privately, indeed, Lanyard rather inclined to hope
that the last might prove to be the true solution. He
desired earnestly to meet "Karl” once more, on equal
terms. And the more counts in the score, the greater
his satisfaction in exacting a reckoning in full.
But he anticipated. That chapter might only too
possibly have been closed forever by the hand of Death.
As yet he knew nothing concerning the mortality of the
Assyrian débâcle. He had not enquired of the officers
of the U-boat because they knew little if anything more
than he. Their glasses had discovered to them trouble
with the lifeboats; they had spoken of one boat capsizing,
of "people going overboard like cattle.” There must
have been many drownings, even with a United States
destroyer near by and speeding to the rescue.
A single question troubled Lanyard greatly. Officers
and crew of the U-boat had betrayed profoundest con-
sternation upon the advent of that destroyer, presumably
a warship of a neutral nation. And that same ship had
without hesitation fired upon the submarine.
Was it possible, then, that the United States had
already declared war on Germany?
It seemed extremely probable; in such event these
Germans would have been notified instantly by .wire-
less from the New York bureau of their country's Secret
Service; whereas, Captain Osborne, receiving the same
advice by wireless, might reasonably have kept it quiet
lest the news stir to more formidable activity those
agents of the Wilhelmstrasse whose presence among the
passengers he must at least have strongly suspected.


THE FALSE FACES
129
Presently the closeness of the atmosphere began to
work upon Lanyard's perceptions. In spite of his long
rest, a new drowsiness drugged his senses. He yielded
without struggle, knowing he would soon need every
ounce of strength and vitality that sleep could give
him.
The din of an inferno startled him awake. Those
narrow metal walls were echoing a clangour of machinery
maniacal in character and overpowering in volume.
Clankings, tappings, hissings, coughings, clatterings,
stridulation of a wireless spark, drone of dynamos,
shrewdish scolding of Diesel motors developing two
thousand horsepower, individual efforts of some two
thousand valves, combined or, declined to combine
in a cacophony like nothing under the sun but the chant
of a submersible under way on the surface.
Lanyard, gratefully aware of a current of fresh air
sweeping through the hold, rolled out of his bunk to
find that, while he slept, clothing had been provided for
him, rough but adequate; heavy woollen underwear and
socks, a sweater, a dungaree coat, trousers of the same
stuff, all vilely damp, and a friendless pair of oil-sodden
shoes: the sweepings of a dozen lockers, but as welcome
as disreputable.
Dressed, he turned aft through the alleyway, entering
immediately the central operating room and storm
center of that typhoon of noise, a wilderness of polished
machinery in active being.
Of the score or more leather-clad machinists silent at
their posts, none paid him more heed than a passing,
incurious glance as he crossed to a narrow steel companion


130
THE FALSE FACES
ladder and ascended to the conning tower. This he
found deserted; but its deck-hatch was open. He
climbed out to the bridge.
The night was calm and heavily overcast, with no
sea more than long, slow swells. Through its windless
quiet the U-boat racketed with the raving abandon of
the Spirit of Discord on a spree in a boiler factory. To
the riot of its internal strife was added the remonstrance
of waters sliced by the stem and flung back by the sides,
a prolonged and stertorous hiss like the rending of an
endless sheet of canvas.
To eyes new from the electric illumination of the hold,
the blackness was positive, with the palpable quality of
an element, relieved alone by the dull glow of the binnacle
housing the gyroscope telltale, from which the faintest
of golden reflections struck back to pick out a pair of
seemingly severed fists gripping the handles of the bridge
steering wheel with a singular effect of desperation.
For some moments Lanyard could see nothing more.
The mirthless chuckle of the lieutenant sounded at his
elbow.
"So the good Herr Doctor thought he had better come
up for air, eh? My friend, the very dead might envy
you the sincerity of your slumbers. We have been half
an hour on the surface, with all this uproar- and you are
only just wakened!”
“Half an hour?” Lanyard repeated thoughtfully.
“Then we should be close in
“Give us ten minutes more
if we don't go
aground in this accursed blackness!”
A broad-shouldered body passed between Lanyard
>
.


THE FALSE FACES
131
and the binnacle, momentarily eclipsing its light. Down
below in the operating room a bell shrilled, and of a
sudden the Diesels were silenced.
The dead quiet that followed the sharp extinction of
that hubbub was as startling as the detonation of high
explosive had been.
Through this sudden stillness the submarine slipped
stealthily, the hissing beneath her bows dying down to
gentle sibilance.
From forward the calls of an invisible leadsman were
audible. In response the commander uttered throaty
orders to the helmsman at his elbow, and those unat-
tached hands shifted the wheel minutely.
Lanyard started to speak, but a growl from the captain,
and a touch of the lieutenant's hand on his sleeve cau-
tioned him to silence.
There was a small pause. The vessel seemed to have
lost way altogether, to swim like a spirit ship that
Stygian tide. The lieutenant moved forward, leaving
Lanyard alone. The voice of the leadsman was stilled.
By the wheel the captain stood absolutely motionless,
his body vaguely silhouetted against the glow of the
binnacle. The hands that gripped the wheel so savagely
were as steady as if carven out of stone. An atmosphere
of suspense enveloped the boat like a cloud.
Lanyard grew conscious of something huge and formid-
able, a denser shadow in the darkness beyond the bows,
the loom of land. Off to starboard a point of light ap-
peared abruptly, precisely as if a golden pin had punctured
the black blanket of the night. The captain growled
gutturals of relief and command. The hands on the


132
THE FALSE FACES
wheel shifted, steering exceeding small. A second
light shone out to port, then shifted slowly into range
with the first, till the two were as one. Again the bell
sang in the operating room, and the vessel forged ahead
quietly to the urge of electric motors alone. A third
light and a fourth appeared, well apart to port and
starboard, the range lights precisely equidistant between
them. Between these the U-boat moved swiftly. They
swam back on either hand and were abruptly extinguished
as if the night, resenting their insolent trespass, had
gobbled both at a gulp.
The temperature became sensibly warmer and the
salt air of the sea was strongly tinctured with the sweet
smell of pines and forest mould.
Up forward carbons sputtered and spat; a searchlight
was unsheathed and carved the gloom as if it was butter,
ranging swiftly over the tree-clad shore of a burnished
black lagoon, picking out en passant several unpainted
wooden structures, then steadying on a long and sub-
stantial landing stage, on which several men stood
waiting
2
-


X
AT BASE
A
S THE U-boat, with motors dead and way lessen-
ing, glided up alongside the head of that T-
shaped landing stage and was made fast, the
wireless operator popped up from below, saluted the com-
mander, and delivered a written message.
Lanyard, instinctively aware that this was the expected
report from Seventy-ninth Street on Dr. Paul Rodiek,
quietly pulled himself together and took quick obser-
vations.
At best his chances in the all-too-probable emergency
were far from brilliant. Yet one might better perish
trying, however hopelessly, than passively submit to being
shot down.
The lieutenant, waspishly superintending the work of
crew and base guards at the mooring lines, stood pre-
occupied within an arm's length; while the landing
stage was a fair six feet away. From its T-head to the
shore, the distance was nothing less than two hundred
yards.
Desperate action and miraculous luck might take the
Prussian by surprise and enable one to snatch the service
automatic from its holster at his belt, leap to the stage,
and shoot a way landward through the guards clustered
there; after which everything would depend on swiftness
of foot and the uncertain light permitting one to gain a
133


134
THE FALSE FACES
.
refuge in the surrounding woodland without a bullet in
one's back.
It was a sorry hope.
With catlike attention Lanyard watched the hands
holding that paper to the binnacle light-large hands,
heavy and muscular but tremulous with drink and nervous
reaction from the long strain and cumulative horror of
the cruise then ending. Their aim would not be good,
except by accident. None the less, if the report were
unfavourable, their first gesture would be toward the
holster, signalling to Lanyard that the moment had come
to initiate heroic measures.
The Bavarian was an unconscionable time absorbing
the import of the message. Bending his face close to
the paper, the better to make out the writing, he read
with moving lips, slowly, a doltish frown of concentration
clouding his congested countenance.
At length, however, he stood up, swaying a little as he
folded and pocketed the paper.
Lanyard relaxed. The man was too far gone in drink
to be crafty, too sure of his absolute power of life and
death to imagine a need for craft. Since his hand had
not immediately sought the holster, it would not.
Turbid accents uttered the name of Dr. Rodiek.
Lanyard stepped forward alertly. “Yes, Herr
Captain?”
“New York says it had no knowledge of your intention
to leave England on the Assyrian, but that you may
well have done so. The Wilhelmstrasse will know, of
course. It has already been telegraphed. Pending
its reply, I am to detain you."


THE FALSE FACES
135
“How long?” Lanyard demurred.
"As you know, transatlantic communications must
now go by land telegraph to the Border, by hand into
Mexico, thence by radio via Venezuela to Berlin. All
that takes time. Also, we may not signal New York
but at stated times of night. You will be detained
another twenty-four hours at least, possibly longer,”
"My errand cannot wait.”
“It must.”
"You will obstruct the business of the Imperial
Government at your peril.”
“I would incur still greater peril did I let you go,” the
commander replied nervously. “With these swine-dogs
at war with the Fatherland, our lives are not worth that
should this base be betrayed.”
“Do I understand America has declared war?”
“Two days since. Did you not know?”
“The Assyrian's wireless room was under guard: the
captain published no bulletins whatever.”
The Bavarian gave a gesture of impatience.
"You will remain on board for the night,” he announced
heavily.
“Pardon!" Lanyard insisted with every evidence of
anxious excitement. “What you tell me makes it more
than ever imperative that I reach New York without an
hour's avoidable delay. I warn you, think well before
you hinder the discharge of my duty."
"It is not necessary that I think," the commander
replied. "My thinking has all been done for me. Me,
I obey my orders; it is not my part to question their
wisdom. Moreover, Herr Doctor, to my mind your


136
THE FALSE FACES
insistence is to say the least suspicious. Even had I
discretion in the matter, I should hold you. Therefore,
you will keep a civil tongue in your head, or go below in
irons immediately!”
He swung on his heel, showing an insolent back while
he conferred with his subaltern.
And Lanyard shrugged appreciation of the futility
of more contention against such mulishness. Not that
the Bavarian was not right enough! As to that, one had
really hoped for no better issue; but every shift is worth
trial till proved worthless; and he was no worse off now
than if he had submitted without complaint. Still one
had Chance to look to for aid and comfort in this stress;
and Chance, the jade, is not always unkind to her
audacious suitors.
Even now she flashed upon Lanyard a provoking
intimation of her smile. He began to divine possibilities
in this overt ill-feeling between the officers; advantage
might be made of the racial hostility of Prussian and
Bavarian.
The commander's attitude and tone were consistently
overbearing, if his words were inaudible to Lanyard.
The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form;
his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as
the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he
grumbled indistinctly in Lanyard's hearing:
"Dog of a Bavarian!"
“The good Herr Captain,” Lanyard suggested pleas-
antly, "is not in the most agreeable of tempers, yes?”
The high and well-born lieutenant spat compre-
hensively into the darkness overside. After a moment


THE FALSE FACES
137
of hesitation he moved nearer and spoke in confidential
accents. And the fragrant air of the night was tainted
with the vinous effluvium of his breath.
“Always he prattles of his precious duty!” the Prussian
muttered. “Damn his duty! Look you, Herr Doctor:
months we have been on this cruise, yes, more than three
months out of Heligoland, penned together in this
ramshackle stinkpot, or isolated here in this God-for-
gotten hole, seeing nothing of life, hearing nothing of the
world but what little the radio tells us-sick of the very
sight of one another's faces! And now, when we have
accomplished a glorious feat and have every right to
look for prompt recall and the rewards of heroes, orders
come to remain indefinitely and operate against the
North Atlantic fleet of the contemptible Yankee navy!
The life of a dog! And that noble commander of mine
pretends to welcome it, talks of one's duty to the Father-
land—as if he liked the work any better than Isolely
to spite me!"
“But why?”
“Because he hates me,” the lieutenant snarled passion-
ately—“hates me even as I hate him he knows how
well!”
He interrupted himself to define his conception of the
commander's character in the freest vernacular of the
Berlin underworld.
Lanyard laughed amiably. "They are like that,” he
agreed"those Bavarians!"
Which inspired the Prussian to deliver a phospho-
rescent diatribe on the racial traits of the Bavarian people
as comprehended by the North German junker.


138
THE FALSE FACES
“To be cooped up God knows how long in this pu-
trescent death-trap with such cattle," he concluded muti-
nously—“it passes all endurance!"
“I wonder you stand it,” Lanyard sympathised—“a
man of spirit and good birth, as one readily perceives.
Though the life of a secret agent is not altogether heav-
enly either, if you ask me,” he added gratuitously.
“Regard me now, charged with a mission of most
vital moment, more than ever so since the Yankees
have shown their teeth-delayed here indefinitely be-
cause your excellent Herr Captain chooses to doubt my
word.”
“Patience. Maybe your release comes quickly. Then
he will regret-or would had he wit enough. There is
no cure for a fool.” The sententiousness of this aphorism
was unhappily marred by a hiccough. “Anybody with
eyes in his head could see you are what you are
The last of the operating-room crew piled up the
hatchway, saluted, and hurried ashore to join in noisy
jubilations. There remained on the U-boat only the
lieutenant with Lanyard, and two base guards detailed
as anchor watch.
"I nust go,” the lieutenant volunteered. “And believe
me, one welcomes a change of clothing and a dry bed
after a week in this reeking sieve. As for you, my friend,
if it lay with me, you should receive the treatment due a
gentleman.” A wave of maudlin camaraderie affected
him. He passed an affectionate arm through Lanyard's
and was suffered, though the gorge of the adventurer
revolted at the familiarity. “I am sorry to leave you.
No, do not be astonished! No protestations, please!


THE FALSE FACES
139
It is quite true. I know a man of the right sort when
I meet one, the sort even I can associate with without
loss of self-respect. It is a great pity you may not come
with me and make a night of it.”
"Another time, perhaps," Lanyard said. “The
night may yet come when you and I shall meet at the
Metropole or the Admiral's Palace. ... Who knows?”
“Ah!" sighed the Prussian, enchanted. “What a
night that will be, my friend!
But now, it is
too bad, I really must ask you to step below. Such are
my silly orders. I am made responsible for you. What
do you think of that for a joke, eh?”
He laughed vacantly but loudly, and, attempting to
poke a derisive thumb into Lanyard's ribs, lost his
balance.
“What a responsibility!" said Lanyard gravely, holding
.
him up.
"Nonsense, that's what it is. You have no possible
chance to escape."
“Suppose I make one-tip you overboard, take to my
heels?"
“You would be shot like a rabbit before you got half
way to the shore.”
“Ah, but grant, for the sake of argument, that these
brave fellows, the guards, aim poorly in this gloom?"
“Where would you go? Into the forest, naturally.
But how far? You may believe me when I tell you,
not a hundred yards. It's a true wilderness, scrub-oak
and cedar and second growth choked with underbrush,
almost trackless. In five minutes you would be help-
lessly lost, in this blackness, with no stars to steer by.


140
THE FALSE FACES
We need only wait till daylight to find you walking in
a circle."
“You can't mean," Lanyard pursued, learning some-
thing helpful every moment, "there is no commu-
nicating road?”
“The main woods road, yes: but that is far too well
patrolled. Without the countersign, you would be
caught or shot a dozen times before you reached the end
of it."
“Ah, well!”—with the sigh of a philosopher-"then I
presume there's no way out but by swimming."
“Over to the beach you mean? Well, what then?
You have got a twenty-mile walk either way through
deep sand sure to betray your footprints. At dawn we
follow and bag you at our leisure."
"You are discouraging!” Lanyard complained. “I
see I may as well go below and be good. It's a dull life.”
“Tell you what,” giggled the lieutenant, leading his
prisoner to the conning-tower hatch and lowering his
voice: "do just that, go below and be nice, and presently
I will come back and we'll split a bottle. What do you
say to that, eh?”
“Colossal!"
“Not a bad notion, is it? I like it myself. One gets
weary for the society of a gentleman, you've no idea. .
As soon as my commander is drunk enough, I will slip
away. How's that?”
“Grossartig!" Lanyard approved, turning to descend.
“Wait. You shall see for yourself what it means to
have the friendship of a man of my stamp." The lieu-
tenant raised his voice, addressing the anchor watch:


THE FALSE FACES
141
“Attention. Heed with care: this gentleman is my
friend. He is detained merely as a matter of form. I
do not wish him to be annoyed. Do you understand?
You are to leave him to himself as long as he remains
quietly below. But he is not to come on deck again till
I return. Is all that clear, imbeciles?”
The imbeciles, saluting mechanically, indicated glim-
merings of comprehension.
“Then below you go, Dr. Rodiek. And don't get
impatient: I will rejoin you as soon as possible."
"Don't be long," Lanyard implored.
As he lowered himself through the hatch he saw the
Prussian stumble down the gangplank and reel shore-
ward.
Well satisfied with his diplomacy, Lanyard lingered a
while in the conning tower, closely studying and memo-
rising the more salient features of the Island of Martha's
Vineyard and its adjacent waters and mainland as deline-
ated on a most comprehensive large-scale chart published
by the German Admiralty from exhaustive soundings
and surveys of its own navigators and typographers,
with corrections of as recent date as the first part of the
year 1917.
Here the breach in the south coast line which permitted
the utilisation of what had formerly been an extensive
fresh-water pond as this secret submarine base, was
clearly shown. And a single glance confirmed the
lieutenant's statement concerning its remote isolation
from settled sections of the island.
Somewhat dismayed, Lanyard descended to the central
operating compartment and scouted through the hold


THE FALSE FACES
143
interest was attracted by a small safe anchored to the
deck beneath the desk.
To this Lanyard addressed himself without hesitation,
solving the secret of its combination readily through
exercise of the most rudimentary of professional principles.
The problem it offered, indeed, was child's play to such
cunning of touch and hearing as had made the reputation
of the Lone Wolf.
Open, the safe discovered to him a variety of articles
of interest: some five thousand dollars in English and
American banknotes of large denomination, several
hundred in American gold; three distinct cipher codes,
one of these wholly novel in Lanyard's experience and so,
he believed, in the knowledge of the Allied secret services;
the log of the U-boat and the intimate diary of its com-
mander, both in cryptograph; a compact directory of
German agents domiciled in Atlantic coast ports; a very
considerable accumulation of German Admiralty orders;
together with many documents of lesser moment.
Rapidly sorting out the more valuable of these, Lan-
yard disposed them about his person, then confiscated the
banknotes as indemnity for his stolen money-belt,
replaced the rejections, and reclosed and locked the safe.
His next interest was to arm himself. After several
disappointments he discovered arms-lockers beneath
the berths for the crew in the forward compartment just
aft of that devoted to torpedo tubes. Here he selected a
latest pattern German navy automatic pistol with three
extra cartridge clips and, after some hesitation, a pecu-
liarly devilish magazine rifle firing explosive bullets.
The latter he placed handily, yet out of sight, near the


144
THE FALSE FACES
foot of the companion ladder. The pistol fitted snugly
a trousers pocket, its bulk hidden by the sag of his
sweater.
Some time later the lieutenant, slipping down the
ladder, found Lanyard studying with a convincing
aspect of childlike bewilderment the complicated com-
binations of machinery which crowded the central
operating compartment.
Fresh from a bath and shave and wearing a clean
uniform, the Prussian showed vast improvement in looks
if not in equilibrium. But his mouth twitched fitfully,
his eyes wandered and disclosed a disquieting super-
abundance of white, and his tongue was noticeably
thicker than before
"Well, my friend!” he said—"you are truly disappoint-
ing. The watch said you had made no sound since
going below. I was afraid of another of those famous
naps of yours.
“With the prospect of a bottle with you? Impossible!
I have been waiting and waiting, with my tongue hanging
out."
“Too bad. Why did you not look around, help
yourself? Why not?” the lieutenant demanded. “Have
I not given you freedom of ship? It is yours, everything
here 'yours!"
"I want nothing but an end to this great thirst,”
Lanyard protested.
“Then—God in Heaven!—why we standing here?
Come!”
Releasing the handrail the Prussian took careful aim
for the alleyway door, launched himself toward it, slipped


THE FALSE FACES
145
on the greasy metal grating, and would have fallen
heavily but for Lanyard.
Cursing pettishly, he stood up, threw off Lanyard's
arms without thanks, and made a new attempt, this time
shooting headlong through the alleyway, to bring up
against the wing table in the third forward compartment,
the kitchen and messroom in one.
“A great pity," he muttered, opening a locker and
fumbling in its depths—"rotten pity
“What?"
"Keep you waiting so long. Not my fault.” The
lieutenant brought forth two bottles of champagne and
one of brandy. “You open them, Herr Doctor, like
'good fellow," he said, placing the three on the table.
"I just wish you ’understand no discourtesy meant
unavoidably detained ... beastly comman-
der
drunk. Give 'my word, hopelessly drunk.
Poor fool
“If my judgment is sound,” Lanyard said, “this noble
vessel will soon need a new commander.”
“True. Quite true.” The Prussian placed two alu-
minium cups upon the table and half filled one with
brandy, then brimmed it with champagne. “Try that,"
he said thickly. "That will keep your tail up, my
friend."
“Many thanks,” Lanyard protested, filling another cup
with undiluted champagne. “I prefer one thing at a
time.
“Unfortunate. don't know what is good
King's peg
wonderful drink. No
matter. To 'new commander-prosit!"
.


146
THE FALSE FACES
He drained his cup at a gulp.
“To the new commander!" Lanyard echoed, and drank
judiciously. “Excellent.
How long can he
last, do you think, at this pace?"
“No telling—not long-too long for my liking. Shall
I tell 'something?” He filled his cup again, half and
half, and sat down, his wicked, rat-like face more than
ever pale and repulsive. “Not 'whisper of this, mind-
though I think 'crew sometimes suspects: he's going
mad!”
"Not that Bavarian?”
The lieutenant nodded wisely. "If 'knew him as I
know him, 'never be surprised, my friend. You think
too much drink. Yes, but not entirely. He keeps
seeing things, hearing them, especially by night.”
“What sort of things?”
"Faces." The Prussian licked his lips, glanced fur-
tively over his shoulder, and drank. “Dead faces, eyes
eaten out, seaweed in their hair.
And voices
he's forever hearing voices
people trying to
talk, 'can't make him understand because 'mouths 'full
of water, you know. But they understand one another,
keep discussing how to get at him.
He tells me
about it
I tell you, it is Hell to hear him talk
especially when submerged, as last night. Then
he hears them fumbling all over the hull with their stumpy
fingers, trying to find 'way in, talking about him. And
he tells me, and keeps insisting, till sometimes I seem to
hear them, too. But I don't. Before God, I don't!
You don't believe I do, do you?”
His eyes rolled wildly.
.
.


THE FALSE FACES
147
.
"Why should you?"
“Just so: why should I?” The lieutenant's accents
rose to a shrill pitch. "I have not his record
still in training when he sent ’Lusitania to the bottom.
Yes: it was he, second-in-command, in charge of torpedo
tubes. His own hand fired that torpedo
He fell silent, staring moodily into his cup, perhaps
thinking of the number of torpedoes it had been his
own lot to discharge upon errands of slaughter.
And the dead silence of the ship was made audible by a
stealthy drip-drip of water from the seams, and the
furtive slaver of the tide on the outer plates.
A shiver ran through the body of the Prussian. He
pulled himself together with obvious effort, looked up
with an uncertain grin, and passed a shaking hand across
his writhing lips.
"All foolishness, of course, but 'gets on one's nerves
constant association with man like that.
'Know what he's doing now, or was, when I came away?
Sitting up with doors and windows locked and blinds
drawn, drinking brandy neat. He can't sleep by night
if sober, or without 'light in the room. If he does, he
knows they will get him people he hears crawling
up from the sea, slopping round the house, mumbling,
whimpering in the dark-
He broke off abruptly, with a whisper more dreadful
than a shriek-"God !”-and jumped to his feet, whipping
the automatic from his belt.
A footfall sounded in one of the after compartments.
Others followed.
.


148
THE FALSE FACES
Someone was coming slowly down the alleyway,
someone with dragging, heavy feet.
The lieutenant waited motionless, as one petrified
with terror.
The bulkhead doorway framed the figure of the com-
mander. He paused there, louring at his subaltern with
haunted eyes ablaze in a face like parchment.
“So!” he said, nodding. "As I thought. It is thus
I find you, fraternising with one who may be, for all we
know, an enemy to the Fatherland. You drunken,
babbling fool! Get ashore!" His angry foot thumped
the grating. “Get ashore, and report yourself under
arrest!"
With no more warning than a strangled snarl, the
lieutenant shot him through the head.


XI
UNDER THE ROSE
V
AGUE stupefaction replaced the scowl upon the
countenance of the commander. He swayed, a
hand faltering to his forehead, where dark blood
was beginning to well from a cleanly drilled puncture.
Then he collapsed completely, falling prone across the
raised sill of the bulkhead opening. A convulsive tremor
shook savagely his huge frame.
Thereafter he was quite still.
The report of that one shot had reverberated stun-
ningly within those narrow walls of steel. Momentarily
Lanyard looked to see the alarmed anchor watch appear;
so too, apparently, the lieutenant, who remained im-
mobile, pistol poised in a hand for the moment strangely
steady, gaze fixed upon the mouth of the alleyway.
But through a long minute no other sounds were
audible than that ceaseless dripping from frames and
seams, with that muted, terrible mouthing of waters on
the plates.
Unable either to fathom or forecast the workings of
the drink-maddened mentality masked by that rat-like
face, Lanyard waited with a hand covertly grasping the
automatic in his pocket. There was no telling; at any
moment that murderous mania might veer his way. And
he was not content to die, not yet, not in any event by the
hand of a decadent little beast of a Boche.
149


150
THE FALSE FACES
Slowly the arm of the lieutenant dropped, lowering the
pistol till its muzzle chattered on the top of the table: a
noise that broke the spell upon his senses. He looked
down in dull brutish wonder, then roused and with a
gesture of horror let the weapon fall clattering.
His glance shifting to the body of his commander, he
started violently, backing up against the plates to put
all possible distance between himself and his handiwork.
His lips moved, framing phrases at first incoherent,
presently articulate in part:
done it at last!
Knew I must
Soon
Abruptly he looked up at Lanyard.
“Bear witness," he cried: "I was provoked beyond
human endurance. He insulted me in your presence
me!
that scum!"
Lanyard said nothing, but met his gaze with a blank,
non-committal stare, under which the eyes of the hieu-
tenant wavered and fell.
Then with a start he realised anew the significance of
that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the
swagger back into his wretched, fear-racked being.
“A good job!” he muttered defiantly. “And
you
will
stand by me, I know.
Only there is nothing in
that, of course, no justification possible before a court
martial. Even your testimony could not save me
I am done for, utterly
He hung his head. Lanyard heard whispered words:
“degraded," "dishonour," "firing squad”
A chronometer in the central operating compartment
tolled eight bells.


THE FALSE FACES
151
With a sharp cry the lieutenant dropped to his knees.
“He can't be dead!” he shrilled. “It is all play-acting,
to frighten me!"
Frantically he sought to turn the body over.
Lanyard's hand shot swiftly out, capturing the auto-
matic on the table. With rapid and sure gestures he
extracted and pocketed the clip, drew back the breech,
ejecting into his palm the one shell in the barrel, and
replaced the weapon, all before the Prussian gave over
his insane efforts to resurrect the dead.
“He is dead enough,” he announced, eyeing Lanyard
morosely—“beyond helping
Look here; are
you with me or against me?”
"Need you ask?”
"I count on you, then. Good. I think we can cover
this up.
.
He checked and stood for a while lost in thought.
"How?” Lanyard roused him.
"Simply enough: I go on deck, send the watch ashore
on some trumped-up errand. They suspect nothing,
thinking the commander and I have you in charge. If
they heard that shot, I will say one of us dropped a bottle
of champagne, and it exploded.
When they are
gone, I bring the dory alongside; and with your help it
should be an easy matter to carry this body up, weight it,
row it out to the middle of the lagoon, dump it overboard.
Then we return. Our story is, the commander followed
the anchor watch ashore; if later he wandered off, got
lost in the woods in his alcoholic delirium, that is no
affair of ours. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” said Lanyard with a look of fatuous inno-


152
THE FALSE FACES
cence. “But how about the water-is it deep enough?"
The Prussian took no pains to dissemble his scorn of
this question, seemingly so witless. “To cover the
body? Why, even here there is sufficient depth at low
tide for us to submerge completely, barring the peri-
scopes. And it is deeper yet in the middle.”
“Thanks,” Lanyard replied meekly.
"Have another drink? No?” The Prussian tossed off
a half cupful of undiluted brandy, and shuddered. “Then
stop here. I'll be back in a -"
"Half a minute." The lieutenant halted in the act of
stepping across the body. Lanyard levelled a hand at
the automatic. “Do you mind taking that with you? I
have no desire to be found here with it and a dead man,
should anything prevent your return."
With a sickly grimace the murderer snatched up the
weapon, thrust it in its holster, and hurriedly departed.
Lanyard watched him pass through the alleyway and
turn toward the companion ladder, then followed
quietly.
As the lieutenant climbed out on deck, Lanyard
ascended to the conning tower and waited there, listen-
ing. He could not quite make out what was said; but
after a few brusque words of command two pair of boots
rang on the gangplank and thumped away down the
stage. At the same time Lanyard let himself noiselessly
out through the hatch.
As soon as his vision grew reconciled to the change from
light to darkness, he discovered the slender figure of the
lieutenant skulking on tip-toe after the retreating anchor
watch; about midway on the landing stage, however, he


THE FALSE FACES
153
paused and bent over one of the piles, apparently fum-
bling with the painter of a small boat moored in the
black shadows below.
At this Lanyard began to move along the deck, one
by one working the mooring lines clear of their cleats
and dropping them gently overboard, till but two were
left to hold the U-boat in place.
Throughout he kept watch upon the manoeuvres of the
lieutenant-saw him drop over the side of the stage,
heard a thump of feet as he landed in a boat, and a
subsequent creak of oar-locks.
The small boat was rounding the bows of the submarine
when the adventurer ducked back through conning tower
to hold.
He was standing where he had been left when the
lieutenant came below.
"It's all right," this last announced with shabby
bravado as he stepped over the body in the doorway.
“We are rid of that damned watch for a time. They won't
return within half an hour at least. I have the dory
moored amidships. If we are lively, this dirty job will
be over in no time at all.”
Lanyard nodded. “I am ready."
“No need to hurry-plenty of time for one more drink."
The Prussian splashed brandy into the cup, filling it to
the brim. “And God knows I need it!”
Lanyard watched critically as, with head well back,
he drained that staggering dose of raw spirit gulp by
gulp without once removing the cup from his lips. No
mortal man could drink like that and stand up under it:
it was now a mere question of time.


154
THE FALSE FACES
Hardly that: the hand of the murderer shook and
wavered widely as he put down the cup. For a moment
he swayed with eyes fixed and glazing, features visibly
losing plasticity, then lurched forward, knocking the
brandy bottle to the floor, swung around a full half turn
in blind effort to re-establish equilibrium, fell backward
upon the table, and lay racked from head to foot with
savage spasms, hands clawing empty air, chest labouring
vainly to win sufficient oxygen to combat the poison
with which his system was saturated.
Moving to his side, Lanyard laid a hand upon the left
breast. The man's heart was hammering his ribs with
agonizing blows, at first rapid, by degrees more slow and
feeble.
No power on earth could save him now: he had com-
mitted suicide as surely as murder.
Wasting not another glance or thought upon him
Lanyard hurried aft to the central operating room.
The time he had spent there, an hour earlier, was by
no means lost in purposeless marvelling. He boasted
a certain aptitude for mechanics, perhaps legitimately
inherited from that obscure origin of his, largely fostered
by the requirements of his craft; into the bargain, he
had been privileged ere now to gain some slight insight
into the principles of submersible operation. If obliged
to work swiftly and in some instances upon the advice
of intuition rather than practical knowledge, he went not
unintelligently about his task, made few false moves.
Turning first to the diving controls, he adjusted the
hydroplanes to their extreme downward inclination, then
made the rounds of the vent valves, opening all wide.


156
THE FALSE FACES
Methodically these were eclipsed as a moving figure
passed before tham.
Listening intently, Lanyard could distinguish the slow
footfalls of an unsuspecting sentry-no other sounds,
more than gentle voices of the night: murmurs of blind
wavelets, the plaintive whisper of a little breeze belated
amid the tree-tops of that dark forest, and a slow, weary
soughing of swells upon the distant ocean shore.
Perceiving as yet not the slightest indication of an
alarm ashore, Lanyard ventured to continue rowing,
but with utmost caution, lifting and dipping his blades as
gingerly as though they were fashioned of brittle glass,
and for want of a better guide keeping the stern of the
dory square to the shank of the T-stage.
In time the bows grounded lightly on sand. The
melancholy voice of the sea now seemed a heavier sighing
in the stillness. He pushed off and rowed on parallel
with a dark shore line, so close in that his starboard
oar touched bottom at each stroke.
At intervals he paused and rested, striving vainly to
garner some clue to his bearings. Inexorably the black-
ness forbade that. He might have failed ere dawn to
grope a way out of that trap had not the disappearance
of the submarine been discovered within the hour.
A sudden clamour rose in the quarter of the landing
stage, first one great shout of dismay, then two voices
bellowing together, then others. Several rifle-shots were
fired in the air. More lights broke out in windows
ashore. Many feet drummed resoundingly upon the
stage, and the confusion of voices attained a pitch of


THE FALSE FACES
157
wild, hysteric uproar. Of a sudden a flare was lighted
and tossed far out upon the bosom of the lagoon.
Surprised by that sharp and merciless blue glare,
Lanyard instinctively shipped oars and picked up the
rifle. He could see so clearly that huddle of figures
upon the head of the landing stage that he confidently
apprehended being fired upon at any moment; but
minutes lengthened and he was not. Either the Germans
were looking for bigger game than a dory adrift, or the
dazzling flare hindered more than aided their vision.
At length persuaded that he had not been detected,
Lanyard put aside the rifle and resumed the oars. Now
his course was made beautifully clear to him: the blue
light showed him that outlet to the sea which he sought
within a hundred yards' distance.
Presently the flare began to wane. It was not renewed.
Altogether unseen, unsuspected, Lanyard swung the
dory into the breach, and drove it seaward with all his
might.
Swiftly the lagoon was shut out by narrow closing
banks. The blue glare died out behind a black profile of
rounded dunes. Lanyard turned the bow eastward,
rowing broadside to the shore.
After something more than an hour of this mode of
progress, he struck in tuward the beach, disembarked
in ankle-deep waters, slung the rifle over his shoulder by
ils strap and, pushing the dory off, abandoned it to the
whim of the sea.
Then again he set his face to the east, following the
contour of the beach just within the wash of the tide:
thereby making sure that there should be no trail of


158
THE FALSE FACES
footprints in the sand to guide a possible pursuit in the
morning.
The rising sun found him purposefully splashing on,
weary but enheartened by the discovery that he had
left behind the more thickly wooded section of the island.
Presently, turning in to the dry beach for the first time,
he climbed to the summit of a dune somewhat higher
than its fellows, and took observations, finding that he
had come near to the eastern extremity of the island.
At some distance to his right a wagon road, faintly
rutted in sand and overgrown with beach grass, struck
inland.
Following this at a venture, he came, at about eight
o'clock, upon the outskirts of a waterside community.
Before proceeding he hid the magazine rifle in a thicket,
then made a wide detour, and picked up a roadway
which entered the village from the north.
If his disreputable appearance was calculated to
excite comment, readiness in disbursing money to
remedy such shortcomings made amends for Lanyard's
taciturnity. Within two hours, shaved, bathed, and
inconspicuously dressed in a cheap suit of ready-made
clothing, he was breakfasting famously upon the plain
fare of a commercial tavern.
The town, he learned, was the one-time important
whaling port of Edgartown. He would be able to leave
for the mainland on a ferry steamer sailing early in the
afternoon.
Ten minutes before going abroad he filed a long
telegram in code addressed to the head of the British
Secret Service in New York.


XII
RESURRECTION
T
HE early editions of those New York evening
newspapers which Lanyard purchased in Provi-
dence, when he changed trains there en route
from New Bedford to New York, carried multi-column
and most picturesque accounts of the Assyrian disaster.
But the whole truth was in none.
Lanyard laid aside the last paper privately satisfied
that, for no-doubt praiseworthy reasons of its own,
Washington had seen fit to dictate the suppression of a
number of extremely pertinent circumstances and facts
which could hardly have escaped governmental
knowledge.
Already, one inferred, a sort of censorship was at work,
an effective if comparatively modest precursor to that
noble volunteer committee which was presently with
touching spontaneity to fasten itself upon an astonished
Ship of State before it could gather enough way to escape
such cirripede attachments.
Presumably it was not thought wise to disconcert a
great people, in the complacence of its awakening to the
fact that it was remotely at war with the Hun, with
information that a Boche submersible was, or of late had
been, operating in the neighbourhood of Nantucket.
Unanimously the sinking of the Assyrian was ascribed
to an internal explosion of unknown origin. No paper
161


162
THE FALSE FACES
hinted that German secret agents might possibly have
figured incogniti among her passengers. There was
mention neither of the flare which had burned on her
after deck to make the Assyrian a conspicuous target
in the night, nor of any of the other untoward events
which had led up to the explosion. Nothing whatever
was said of the shot fired at the submerging U-boat by
a United States torpedo-boat destroyer speeding to the
rescue.
Still, the bare facts alone were sufficiently appalling.
Reading what had been permitted to gain publication,
Lanyard experienced a qualm of horror together with
the thought that, even had he drowned as he had ex-
pected to drown, such a fate had almost been preferable
to participation in those awful ten minutes precipitated
by that pale messenger of death which had so narrowly
missed Lanyard himself as he rested on the bosom of the
sea.
Within ten minutes after receiving her coup de grâce
the Assyrian had gone under; barely that much time
had been permitted a passenger list of seventy-two and
a personnel of nearly three hundred souls in which to
rouse from dreams of security and take to the life-
boats.
Thanks to the frenzied haste compelled by the swift
settling of the ship, more than one boat had been cap-
sized. Others had been sunk-literally driven under
by masses of humanity cascading into them from
slanting decks. Others, again, had never been launched
at all.
The utmost efforts of the destroyer, fortuitously so


THE FALSE FACES
163
near at hand, had served to rescue but thirty-one passen-
gers and one hundred and eighty of the crew.
In the list of survivors Lanyard found these names:
Becker, Julius New York
Brooke, Cecelia-London
Crane, Robert T.-New York
Dressler, Emil-Geneva
O'Reilly, Edmund-Detroit
Putnam, Bartlett-Philadelphia
Velasco, Arturo-Buenos Aires
Among the injured, Lieutenant Lionel Thackeray,
D. S. O., was listed as suffering from concussion of the
brain, said to have been contracted through a fall while
attempting to aid the launching of a lifeboat.
In the long roster of the drowned these names appeared:
Bartholomew, Archer-London
Duchemin, André-Paris
Von Harden, Baron Gustav-Amsterdam
Osborne, Captain E. W.-London
Of all the officers, Mr. Sherry was a solitary survivor,
fished out of the sea after going down with his ship.
No list boasted the name "Karl."
Lacking accommodations for the rescued, it was
stated, the destroyer had summoned by wireless the
east-bound freight steamship Saratoga, which had
trans-shipped the unfortunates and turned back to
New York. .
Throughout the best part of that journey from Provi-
dence to New York Lanyard sat blankly staring into the
black mirror of the window beside his chair, revolving
schemes for his immediate future in the light of infor-
mation derived, indirectly as much as directly, from
these newspaper stories.
Retrospective consideration of that voyage left little


THE FALSE FACES
165
at any time to espy and recognise him without his
knowledge.
This situation imposed upon him two major tasks of
immediate moment: he must hunt down those four one
by one and either satisfy himself as to their innocence
of harmful intent or put them permanently hors de com-
bat; and he must extinguish utterly, once and for all
time, that amiable personality whose brief span had been
restricted to the decks of the Assyrian, Monsieur André
Duchemin.
That one must be buried deep, beyond all peradven-
ture of involuntary resurrection.
Fortunately the last step toward the positive meta-
morphosis indicated had been taken that very morning,
when the Gallic beard of Monsieur Duchemin was erased
by the razor of a New England barber, whose shears had
likewise eradicated every trace of a Continental mode of
hair-dressing. There remained about Lanyard little to
remind of André Duchemin but his eyes; and the look
of one's eyes, as every good actor knows, is something
far more easy to disguise than is commonly believed.
But it was hardly in human nature not to mourn the
untimely demise of so useful a body, one who carried
such beautiful credentials and serviceable letters of
introduction, whose character boasted so much charm
with a solitary fault-too facile vulnerability to the
prying eyes of those to whom Paris meant those days
and social strata in which Michael Lanyard had moved
and had his being. Witness—according to Crane--the
demoniac cleverness of the Brazilian in unmasking the
Duchemin incognito.


166
THE FALSE FACES
Suspicion was taking form in Lanyard's reflections that
he had paid far too little attention to Señor Arturo
Velasco of Buenos Aires, whose avowed avocation of
amateur criminologist might easily be synonymous with
interests much less innocuous.
Or why had Velasco been so quick to communicate
recognition of Lanyard to an employee of the United
States Secret Service?
For that matter, why had he felt called so publicly to
descant upon the natural history of the Lone Wolf? In
order to focus upon that one the attentions of his enemies?
Or to put him on guard?
It was altogether perplexing. Was one to esteem
Velasco friend or foe?
Lanyard could comfort himself only with the promise
he should one day know, and that without undue delay.
Alighting in Grand Central Terminus late at night,
he made his way to Forty-second Street and there, in the
staring headlines of a “Late Extra," read the news that
the steamship Saratoga had suffered a crippling engine-
room accident and was limping slowly toward port, still
something like eighteen hours out.
Wondering if it were presumption to construe this as
an omen that the stars in their courses fought for him,
Lanyard went west to Broadway afoot, all the way beset
with a sense of incredulity; it was difficult to believe that
he was himself, alive and at large in this city of wonder
and space, where people moved at leisure and without
fear broad streets that resembled deep-bitten channels
for rivers of light. He was all too wont with nights of
dread and trembling, with the medieval gloom that


168
THE FALSE FACES
On impulse, despite the lateness of the hour, albeit
with misgivings justified in the issue, he hailed a taxicab
and had himself driven to the headquarters of the British
Secret Service in America, an unostentatious dwelling
on the northwest corner of West End Avenue at Ninety-
fifth Street.
Here a civil footman answered the door and Lanyard's
enquiries with the information that Colonel Stanistreet
had unexpectedly been called out of town and would not
return before evening of the next day, while his secre-
tary, Mr. Blensop, had gone to a play and might not
come home till all hours.
More impatient than disappointed, Lanyard climbed
back into his cab, and in consequence of consultation
with its friendly minded chauffeur, eventually put up
for the night in an Eighth Avenue hotel of the class that
made Senator Raines famous, a hostelry brazenly pro-
claiming accommodations "for gentlemen only," whereas
it offered entertainment for both man and beast and
catered rather more to beast than to man.
However, it served; it was inconspicuous and made
no demands upon a shabby traveller sans luggage,
more than payment in advance.
Early abroad, Lanyard breakfasted with attention
fixed to the advertising columns of the Herald, and by
mid-morning was established as sub-tenant of a furnished
bachelor apartment on Fifty-eighth Street near Seventh
Avenue, a tiny nest of few rooms on the street level, with
entrances from both the general lobby and the street
direct: 'an admirable arrangement for one who might
choose to come and go without supervision or challenge.


THE FALSE FACES
169
Lacking local references as to his character, Lanyard
was obliged to pay three months' rent in advance in
addition to making a substantial deposit to cover possible
damage to the furnishings.
His name, a spur-of-the-moment selection, was re-
corded in the lease as Anthony Ember.
At noon he brought to his lodgings two trunks salvaged
from a storage warehouse wherein they had been de-
posited more than three years since, on the eve of his
flight with his family from America, an affair of haste and
secrecy forbidding the handicap of heavy impedimenta.
Thus Lanyard became once more possessor of a toler-
ably comprehensive wardrobe.
But: those trunks released more than his personal
belongings; intermingled were possessions that had been
his wife's and his boy's. As he unpacked, memories
peopled those perfunctorily luxurious lodgings of the
transient with melancholy ghosts as sweet and sad as
lavender and rue.
For hours on end the man sat idle, head bowed down,
hands plucking aimlessly at small broidered garments.
And if in the sweep and turmoil of late events he
seemed to have forgotten for a little that feud which had
brought him overseas, he roused from this brief interlude
of saddened dreaming with the iron of deadly purpose
newly entered into his soul, and in his heart one dominant
thought, that now his hour with Ekstrom could not,
must not, be long deferred.
In the street there rose an uproar of inhuman bawling.
Lanyard went to the private door, hailed one of the
husky authors of the din, an itinerant news-vendor, and


170
THE FALSE FACES
disbursed a nickel coin for one cent's worth of spushul
uxtry and four cents' worth of howling impudence.
He found no more of interest in the newspaper than
the information that the Saratoga had been sighted off
Fire Island and was expected to dock in New York not
later than eight o'clock that night.
This, however, was acceptable reading. Lanyard had
work to do which were better done before "Karl" and
his crew found opportunity to communicate directly
with their collaborators ashore, work which it were
unwise to initiate before nightfall lent a cloak of shadows
to hoodwink the ever-possible adventitious German spy.
Nor was he so fatuous as to fancy it would profit him
to call before nine o'clock at the house on West End
Avenue. No earlier might he hope to find Colonel the
Honourable George Fleetwood-Stanistreet near the end
of his dinner, and so in a mood approachable and re-
ceptive.
But there could be no harm in reconnaissance by day-
light.
He whiled away the latter part of the afternoon in
taxicabs, by dint of frequent changes contriving in the
most casual fashion imaginable to pass the Seventy-
ninth Street branch of the Wilhelmstrasse no less than
four times.
Little rewarded these tactics other than a fairly
accurate mental photograph of the building and its
situation-and a growing suspicion that the United
Government had profited nothing by England's
lessons of early war days in respect of the one way to
cope with resident enemy aliens.
*


THE FALSE FACES
171
The house stood upon a corner, occupying half of an
avenue block-the northern half of which was the site
of a towering apartment house in course of construction-
and loomed over its lesser neighbours a monumental
monstrosity of architecture, as formidable as a fortress,
its lower tiers of windows barred with iron, substantial
iron grilles ready to bar its main entrance, even heavier
gates guarding the carriage court in the side street. In
all a stronghold not easy for the most accomplished
house-breaker to force; yet the heart of it was Lanyard's
goal; for there, he believed, Ekstrom (under whatever
nom de guerre) lay hidden, or if not Ekstrom, at least a
clear lead to his whereabouts.
Certainly that one could not be far from the powerful
wireless station secretly maintained on the roof of this
weird jumble of architectural periods, its aërials cunningly
hidden in the crowning atrocity of its minaret: a station
reputedly so powerful that it could receive Berlin's
nightly outgivings of news and orders, and, in emergency,
transmit them to other secret stations in Cuba, Mexico,
and Venezuela.
Yet the shrewdest scrutiny of eyes trained to detect
police agents at sight, however well disguised, failed to
espy one sign of any sort of espionage upon this nest of
rattlesnakes.
Apparently its tenants came and went as they willed,
untroubled by and contemptuous of governmental
surveillance.
A handsome limousine car pulled up at its carriage
block as Lanyard drove by, one time, and a pretty woman,
exquisitely gowned, alighted and was welcomed by


172
THE FALSE FACES
hospitable front doors that opened before she could ring:
a woman Lanyard knew as one of the most daring,
diabolically clever, and unscrupulous creatures of the
Wilhelmstrasse, one whose life would not have been worth
an hour's purchase had she ventured to show herself in
Paris, London, or Petrograd at any time since the out-
break of the war.
He drove on, deep in amaze.
Indications were not wanting, on the other hand, that
enemy spies maintained close watch upon the move-
ments of those who frequented the house on West
End Avenue. A German agent whom Lanyard knew
by sight was strolling by as his taxi rounded its corner
and swung on down toward Riverside Drive.
This more modest residence possessed a brick-walled
garden at the back, on the Ninety-fifth Street side. And
if the top of the wall was crusted with broken glass in a
fashion truly British, it had a door, and the door a lock.
And Lanyard made a note thereon.
And when he went home to dress for dinner, he opened
up the false bottom of one of his trunks and selected from
a store of cloth-wrapped bundles therein one which con-
tained a small bunch of innocent-looking keys whose
true raison d'être was anything in the world but guileless.
Later he did himself very well at Delmonico's, enjoying
for the first time in many years a well-balanced dinner
faultlessly cooked and served amid quiet surroundings
that carried memory back half a decade to the Paris that
was, the Paris that nevermore will be.
At nine precisely he paid off a taxicab at the corner of
Ninety-fifth Street.


THE FALSE FACES
173
While waiting on the doorstep of the corner house, he
raked the street right and left with searching glances,
and was somewhat reassured. Apparently he called at an
hour when the Boche pickets were off duty; at the
moment there was no pedestrian visible within a block's
distance on either hand, nobody that he could see
skulked in the areas of the old-fashioned brownstone
houses across the way.
The neighbourhood was, indeed, quiet even for an
upper West Side residential quarter. A block over to
the east Broadway was strident in the flood of its noctur-
nal traffic; a like distance to the west Riverside Drive
hummed with pleasure cars taking advantage of the
first bland night of that belated spring. But here, now
that the taxi had wheeled away, there was never a car in
sight, nor even a strolling brace of sidewalk lovers.
The door opened, revealing the same footman.
“Colonel Stanistreet? I will see, sir.”
Lanyard entered.
"If you will be kind enough to be seated,” the foot-
man suggested, indicating a small waiting room. “And
what name shall I say?"
It had been Lanyard's intention to have himself an-
nounced simply as the author of that telegram from
Edgartown. Obscure impulse made him change his.
mind, some premonition so tenuous as to defy analysis.
“Mr. Anthony Ember.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After a little the footman returned.
“If you will come this way, sir
He led toward the back of the house, introducing
.


174
THE FALSE FACES
Lanyard to a spacious apartment, a library uncommonly
well furnished, rather more than comfortably yet
without a trace of ostentation in its complete luxury, a
warm room, a room intimately lived in, a room, in short,
characteristically British in atmosphere.
Waist-high bookcases lined the walls, broken on the
right by a cheerful fireplace with a grate of glowing cannel
coal, in front of it a great club lounge upholstered, like
all the chairs, in well-used leather. Opposite the chimney-
piece, a handsome thing in carved oak, a door was
draped with a curtain that swung with it. In the back
of the room two long and wide French windows stood
open to the night, beyond them that garden whose wall
had attracted Lanyard's attention. There were a number
of paintings, portraits for the most part, heavily framed,
with overhead picture-lights. In the middle of the room
was a table-desk, broad and long, supporting a shaded
reading lamp. On the far side of the table a young man
sat writing, with several dockets of papers arranged before
him.
As Lanyard entered, this one put down his pen, pushed
back his chair, and came round the table: a tallish, well-
made young man, dressed a shade too foppishly in spite
of an unceremonious dinner coat, his manner assured,
amiable, unconstrained, perhaps a little over-tolerant.
“Mr. Ember, I believe?” he said in a voice studiously
musical.
“Yes,” Lanyard replied, vaguely annoyed with him-
self because of an unreasoning resentment of this
musical quality. “Mr. Blensop?”
“I am Mr. Blensop,” that one admitted gracefully.


THE FALSE FACES
175
“And how may I have the pleasure of being of service?”
He waved a hand toward an easy chair beside the
table, and resumed his own. But Lanyard hesitated.
"I wished to see Colonel Stanistreet."
Mr. Blensop looked up with an indulgent smile. His
face was round and smooth but for a perfectly docile little
moustache, his lips full and red, his nose delicately
chiselled; but his eyes, though large, were set cannily
close together.
"Colonel Stanistreet is unfortunately not at home.
I am his secretary."
"Yes,” said Lanyard, still standing. "In that case I'd
be glad if you would be good enough to make an appoint-
ment for me with Colonel Stanistreet."
"I am afraid he will not be home till very late to-night.
but
“Then to-morrow?”
Mr. Blensop smiled patiently. “Colonel Stanistreet is
a very busy man," he uttered melodiously. "If you could
let me know something about the nature of your busi-
pess
“It is the King's,” said Lanyard bluntly.
The secretary went so far as to betray well-bred sur-
prise. "You are an Englishman, Mr. Ember?”
“Yes."
And for all he knew to the contrary, so Lanyard was.
“I am Colonel Stanistreet's secretary," the young man
again suggested hopefully.
“That is precisely why I ask you to make an
appointment for me with your employer," Lanyard
retorted politely.
.


THE FALSE FACES
177
“You refuse me the appointment?”
"Unless you can give me an inkling of your business
or perhaps bring a letter of introduction.”
"I can do neither, Mr. Blensop,” said Lanyard
earnestly. "I have information of the gravest moment
to communicate to the head of the British Secret Service
in this country.”
The secretary looked startled. “What makes you
think Colonel Stanistreet is connected with the British
Secret Service?"
“I don't think so; I know it.”
After a moment of hesitation Mr. Blensop yielded
graciously. "If you can come back at nine to-morrow
morning, Mr. Ember, I'll do my best to persuade Colonel
Stanistreet-"
"I repeat, my business is of the most pressing
nature. Can't you arrange for me to see your employer
to-night?”
“It is utterly impossible.”
Lanyard accepted defeat with a bow.
“To-morrow at nine, then,” he said, turning toward the
door by which he had entered.
“At nine,” said Mr. Blensop, generous in triumph.
“But do you mind going out this way?”
He moved toward the curtained door opposite the
chimney-piece. Lanyard paused, shrugged, and followed.
Mr. Blensop opened the door, disclosing a vista of Ninety-
fifth Street.
“Thank you, Mr. Ember. Good-night,” he intoned.
The door closed with the click of a spring latch.
Lanyard stood aloue in the street, looking swiftly


178
THE FALSE FACES
this way and that, his hand closing upon that little bunch
of keys in his pocket, his humour lawless.
For the name inscribed on that card which Mr. Blen-
sop had so carelessly dropped was one to fill Lanyard
with consuming anxiety for better acquaintance with
its present wearer.
Written in pencil, with all the individual angularity
of French chirography, the name was André Duchemin.


XIII
REINCARNATION
IT
IT TOOK a little time and patience but, on his third
essay, Lanyard found a key which agreed with the
lock. He permitted himself a sigh of relief; Ninety-
fifth Street was bare, the door set flush with the outside
of the wall afforded no concealment to the trespasser,
while the direct light of a street lamp at the corner made
his lonely figure uncomfortably conspicuous.
Apparently, however, he had not been observed.
Gently pushing the door open, he slipped in, as gently
closed it, then for a full minute stood stirless, spying out
the lay of the land.
Fitting precisely his anticipations, the garden discov-
ered a fine English flavour; it was well-kept, modest,
fragrant and, best of all, quite dark, especially so in the
shadow of the street wall. Only a glimmer of starlight
enabled him to pick out the course of a pebbled footpath.
A border of deep turf between this and the wall muffled
his footsteps as he moved toward the back of the house.
The library windows, deeply recessed, opened on
a low,
broad stoop of concrete, with a pergola effect above,
and a few wicker pieces upon a grass mat underfoot.
Noiselessly Lanyard stepped across the low sill and
paused in the cover of heavy draperies, commanding
a tolerably full view of the library if one
one somewhat
unsatisfactory, since the light within was by no means
bright. Still, this circumstance had its advantages for
179


180
THE FALSE FACES
him; with his dark topcoat buttoned to the throat and
its collar turned up to hide his linen, he was confident
he would not be detected unless he gave his presence
away by an abrupt movement--something which the
Lone Wolf never made.
At the moment Mr. Blensop seemed to be engaged in
the surprising occupation of discoursing upon art to his
caller.
The latter occupied that chair which Lanyard had
refused, on the far side of the table. Thus placed, the
lamplight masked more than revealed him, throwing a
dull glare into Lanyard's eyes. His man sat in a pose
of earnest attention, bending forward a trifle to follow
the exposition of Mr. Blensop, who stood beneath
a portrait on the wall between the chimney-piece and the
windows, his attitude incurably graceful, a hand on the
switch controlling the picture-light. Apparently he
had just finished speaking, for he paused, looking toward
his guest with a quiet and intimate smile as he turned off
the light.
“And that's all there is to it,” he declared, moving
back to the table.
"I see,” said the other thoughtfully.
Lanyard felt himself start almost uncontrollably:
rage swept through him, storming brain and body, like
a black squall over a hill-bound lake. For the moment
he could neither or hear clearly nor think
coherently.
For the voice of this latest incarnation of André
Duchemin was the voice of “Karl.”
When the tumult of his senses subsided he heard
see


THE FALSE FACES
181
Blensop saying, "I'll write it out for you,” and saw him
pick up a pad and pencil and jot down a memorandum.
“There you are," he added, ripping off the sheet and
passing it across the table. “Now you can't go wrong.”
“I precious seldom do,” his caller commented drily.
"I think-"Blensop began, and checked sharply as
the man Walker came into the room.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Blensop
There was an accent of impatience in those beautifully
modulated tones: “Well, what is it now?”
“A lady to see you, sir."
Blensop took the card from the proffered salver.
“Never heard of her,” he announced brusquely at a
glance. “She asked for Colonel Stanistreet or for me?”
“Colonel Stanistreet, sir. But when I said he was not
at home, she asked to see his secretary."
“Any idea what she wants?”
"She didn't say, sir—but she seemed much distressed.”
“They always are. H'm
Young and good-
looking?"
"Quite, sir."
“Dessay I may as well see her,” said Mr. Blensop
wearily. “Show her in when I ring."
Walker shut himself out of the room.
“It's just as well,” Blensop added to his caller. "You
understand, my dear fellow-?”
“Assuredly.” The man got up; but Blensop contrived
exasperatingly to keep between him and the windows.
“I'm to be back at midnight?”
“Twelve sharp; you'll be sure to find him here then.
Mind leaving by this emergency exit?”
.


182
THE FALSE FACES
"Not in the least."
“Then good-night, my dear Monsieur Duchemin!"
Was there a hint of irony in Blensop's employment
of that style? Lanyard half fancied there was, but did
not linger to analyse the impression. Already the sec-
retary had opened the side door.
In a bound Lanyard cleared the stoop, then ran back
to the door in the wall. But with all his quickness he
was all too slow; already, as he emerged to Ninety-fifth
Street, his quarry was rounding the Avenue corner.
Defiant of discretion, Lanyard gave chase at speed
but, though he had not thirty yards to cover, again was
baffled by the swiftness with which “Karl” got about.
He had still some distance to go when the peace of the
quarter was shattered by a door that slammed like a
pistol shot, and with roaring motor and grinding gears
a cab swung away from the curb in front of the Stanis-
treet residence and tore off down the Avenue.
Swearing petulantly in his disappointment, Lanyard
pulled up on the corner. The number on the license plate
was plainly revealed as the vehicle showed its back to the
street lamp. But what good was that to him? He
memorised it mechanically, in mutinous appreciation of
the fact that the taxi was setting a pace with which he
could not hope to compete afoot.
The rumble of another motor-car caught his ear, and
he looked round eagerly. A second taxicabundoubt-
edly that which had brought the young woman now
presumably closeted with Mr. Blensop—was moving
up into the place vacated by the first.
In two strides Lanyard was at its side.


THE FALSE FACES
183
“Follow that taxi!” he cried—"number seventy-six,
three-eighty-five. Don't lose sight of it, but don't pass
it-don't let them know we're following!”
“Engaged,” the driver growled.
“Hang your engagement! Here"-Lanyard pressed
a golden eagle into the fellow's palm-“there will be an-
other of those if you do as I say!"
“Le's go!" the driver agreed with resignation.
If the cab was moving before Lanyard could hop in and
shut the door, the other had already established a killing
lead; and though Lanyard's man demonstrated char-
acteristic contempt for municipal regulations governing
the speed of motor-driven vehicles, and racketed his
own madly down the Avenue, he was wholly helpless to
do more than keep the tail-lamp of the first in sight.
More than once that dull red eye seemed sardonically
to wink.
Still, Lanyard did not think “Karl” knew he was
pursued. His conveyance had passed the corner before
Lanyard emerged from the side street. There being no
reason that Lanyard knew of why the spy should believe
himself under suspicion, his haste seemed most probably
due to natural desire to avoid adventitious recognition,
coupled with, no doubt, other urgent business.
At Seventy-second Street the chase turned east, with
Lanyard two blocks behind, and for a few agonizing
moments was altogether lost to him. But at Broadway
the tide of southbound traffic hindered it momentarily,
and it swung into that stream with its pursuer only a
block astern.
Thereafter, through a ride of another mile and a half,


184
THE FALSE FACES
the distance between the two was augmented or abbre.
viated arbitrarily by the rules of the road.
At one time less than two cab-lengths separated them;
then a Ford, driven Fordishly, wandered vaguely out of a
crosstown street and hesitated in the middle of the
thoroughfare with precisely the air of a staring yokel on
a first visit to the city; and Lanyard's driver slammed on
the emergency brake barely in time to escape committing
involuntary but justifiable flivvercide.
When he was able once more to throw the gears into
high, the chase was a long block ahead.
They were entering Longacre Square before he made
up that loss.
And at Forty-fourth Street, again, a stream of east-
bound cars edged in between the two, reducing Lanyard's
driver to the verge of gibbering lunacy.
A car resembling “Karl's” was crossing Broadway at
Forty-second Street when Lanyard was still on Seventh
Avenue north of the Times Building.
But only a minute later his driver pulled up in front of
the Hotel Knickerbocker, and Lanyard, peering through
the forward window, saw the number 76-385 on the
license plate of a taxicab drawing away, empty, from
the curb beneath the hotel canopy.
He tossed the second gold piece to the driver as his
feet touched the sidewalk, and shouldered through a
cluster of men and women at the main entrance to the
lobby.
That rendezvous of Broadway was fairly thronged
despite the slack mid-evening hour, between the dinner
and the supper crushes; but Lanyard reviewed in vain
1


THE FALSE FACES
185
the little knots of guests and loungers; if "Karl” were
among them, he was nobody whom Lanyard had learned
to know by sight on board the Assyrian.
With as little success he searched unobtrusively all
public rooms on the main floor.
It was, of course, both possible and probable that
“Karl,” himself a guest of the hotel, had crossed directly
to the elevators and been whisked aloft to his room.
With this in mind, Lanyard paused at the desk, asked
permission to examine the register and, being accom-
modated, was somewhat consoled; if his chase had failed
of its immediate objective, it now proved not altogether
fruitless. A majority of the Assyrian survivors seemed
to have elected to stop at the Knickerbocker. One
after another Lanyard, scanning the entries, found these
names:
Edmund O'Reilly-Detroit
Arturo VelascoBuenos Aires
Bartlett Putnam-Philadelphia
Cecelia Brooke London
Emil Dressler-Genève
Half inclined to commit the imprudence of sending a
name up to Miss Brooke-
many name but André Duche-
min, Michael Lanyard, or Anthony Ember-together
with a message artfully worded to fix her interest without
giving comfort to the enemy, should it chance to go
astray, the adventurer hesitated by the desk; and of
a sudden was satisfied that such a move would be not
only injudicious but waste of time; for, now that he
paused to think of it, he surmised that the young woman-
"young and good-looking”, on Walker's word-who had


186
THE FALSE FACES
called to see Colonel Stanistreet was none other than
this same Cecelia Brooke.
What more natural than that she should make early
occasion to consult the head of the British Secret Service
in America?
A pity he had not waited there in the window! If he
had, no doubt the mystery with which the girl had
surrounded herself would be no more mystery to Lanyard;
he would have learned the secret of that paper cylinder
as well as the part the girl had played in the intrigue for
its possession, and so be the better advised as to his own
future conduct.
But in his insensate passion for revenge upon one who
had all but murdered him, he had forgotten all else but
the moment's specious opportunity.
With a grunt of impatience Lanyard turned away from
the desk, and came face to face with Crane.
The Secret Service man was coming from the direction
of the bar in company with Velasco, O'Reilly, and
Dressler.
Of the three last named but one looked Lanyard's
way, O'Reilly, and his gaze, resting transiently on the
countenance of André Duchemin minus the Duchemin
beard, passed on without perceptible glimmer of recog.
Inition.
Why not? Why should it enter his head that one
lived and had anticipated his own arrival in New York
by twenty hours whom be believed to be buried many
fathoms deep off Nantucket?
As for Crane, his cool gray, humorous eyes, half-
hooded with their heavy lids, favoured Lanyard with


THE FALSE FACES
187
casual regard and never a tremor of interest or surprise;
but as he passed his right eye closed deliberately and with
a significance not to be ignored.
To this Lanyard responded only with a look of blankest
amaze.
Chatting with an air of subdued self-congratulation
pardonable in such as have come safe to land through
many dangers of the deep, the quartet strolled round
the desk and boarded one of the elevators.
Not till its gate had closed did Lanyard stir. Then he
went away from there with all haste and cunning at his
command.
The route through the café to Broadway offered the
speediest and least conspicuous of exits. From the
side door of the hotel he plunged directly into the mouth
of the Subway kiosk and, chance favouring him, managed
to purchase a ticket and board a southbound local train
an instant before its doors ground shut.
Believing Crane would take the next elevator down,
once he had seen the others safely in their rooms, Lan-
yard was content to let him find the lobby destitute of
ghosts, to let him fume and wonder and think himself
perhaps mistaken.
The last thing he desired was entanglement with the
American Secret Service. For Crane he entertained
personal respect and temperate liking, thought the man
socially an amusing creature, professionally a deadly
peril to one who had a feud to pursue.
Leaving the train at Grand Central, the adventurer
passed through the back ways of the Terminus, into the
Hotel Biltmore, upstairs to its lobby, thence out by the


THE FALSE FACES
189
sideration. He was convinced that, whether or not
Velasco, O'Reilly, and Dressler were parties to the Hun
conspiracy, none of these was "Karl.”
As for the Brooke matter, he felt it incumbent upon
him immediately to find some safe means of communi-
cating with the girl. She could be trusted not to betray
him to the police, however much she might at first
incline to doubt him. But he would persuade her of
his sincerity, never fear!
The telephone offered one solution of his difficulty,
an agency non-committal enough, provided one were at
pains not to call from one's private station, to which
the call might be traced back.
With this in mind he stopped and dismissed his taxi-
cab at Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and availed
himself of a coin-box telephone booth in the corner
druggist's.
The experience that followed was nothing out of the
ordinary. Lanyard, connected with the Knickerbocker
promptly, with the customary expenditure of patience
laboriously spelled out the name B-r-double-o-k-e, and
was told to hold the wire.
Several minutes later he began to agitate the receiver
hook and was eventually rewarded with the advice that
the Knickerbocker operator, being informed his party
was in the rest'runt, was having her paged.
Still later the central operator told him his five minutes
was up and consented to continue the connection only
on deposit of an additional nickel.
Eventually, in sequel to more abuse of the hook, he


190
THE FALSE FACES
received this response from the Knickerbocker switch-
board: “Wait a min'te, can't you? Here's your party.”
Lanyard was surprised at the eagerness with which
he cried: "Hello!"
A click answered, and a bland voice which was not the
voice he had expected to hear: “Hello? That you, Jack?"
He said wearily: "I am waiting to speak with Miss
Cecelia Brooke."
“Oh, then there must be some mistake. This is Miss
Crooke speaking."
Lanyard uttered a strangled “Sorry!" and hung up,
abandoning further effort as hopeless.
That matter would have to standover till morning.
Time now pressed: it was nearly eleven; he had a
rendezvous with Destiny to keep at midnight, and meant
to be more than punctual.
Walking to his apartment house, he proceeded to
establish an alibi by entering through the public hallway
and registering with the telephone attendant a call for
seven o'clock the next morning.
In the course of the next half hour Lanyard let him-
self quietly out of the private door, slipped around the
block and boarded a Riverside Drive 'bus.
Alighting at Ninety-third Street, he walked two blocks
north on the Drive, turned east, and without misadven-
ture admitted himself a second time to the Stanistreet
garden.


XIV
DEFAMATION
I"
IT WAS hardly possible to watch Mr. Blensop func-
tioning in his vocational capacity without reflecting
on that cruel injustice which Nature only too often
practises upon her offspring in secreting most praise-
worthy qualities within fleshy envelopes of hopelessly
frivolous cast.
The flowing gestures of this young man, his fluting
accents, poetic eyes, and modestly ingratiating mous-
tache, the preciosity of his taste in dress, assorted sin-
gularly with an austere devotion to duty rare if un-
affected.
Beyond question, whether or not naturally a man of
studious and conscientious temper, Mr. Blensop figured
to admiration in the rôle of such an one.
Seated, the shaded lamplight an aureole for his fair
young head, he wrought industriously with a beautiful
gold-mounted fountain pen for fully five minutes after
Lanyard had stolen into the draped recess of the French
window, pausing only now and again to take a fresh
sheet of paper or consult one of the sheaves of documents
that lay before him.
At length, however, he hesitated with pen lifted and
abstracted gaze focussed upon vacancy, shook a bewil-
dered head, and rose, moving directly toward the
windows.
For as long as thirty breathless seconds Lanyard
191


192
THE FALSE FACES
remained in doubt; there was the barest chance that
in his preoccupation Blensop might pass through to the
garden without noticing that dark figure flattened against
the inswung half of the window, in the dense shadow of
the portière. Otherwise the game was altogether up;
Lanyard could see no way to avoid the necessity
of staggering Blensop with a blow, racing for freedom,
abandoning utterly further effort to learn the motive
of "Karl’s” impersonation of Duchemin.
He gathered himself together, waited poised in readi-
ness for any eventuality--and blessed his lucky stars to
find his apprehensions idle.
Three paces from the windows, Mr. Blensop made it
plain that he was after all not minded to stroll in the
garden. Pausing, he swung a high-backed wing chair
round to face the corner of the room, switched on a
reading lamp, sat down and selected a volume of some
work of reference from the well-stocked book shelves.
For several minutes, seated within arm's length of the
trespasser, he studied intently, then with a cluck of
satisfaction replaced the volume, extinguished the light,
and went back to his writing.
But presently he checked with a vexed little excla-
mation, shook his pen impatiently, and fixed it with a
frown of pained reproach.
But that did no good. The cussedness of the inanimate
was strong in this pen: since its reservoir was quite
empty it mulishly refused more service without refilling.
With a long-suffering sigh, Mr. Blensop found a filler
in one of the desk drawers, and unscrewed the nib of
the pen.


THE FALSE FACES
193
This accomplished, he paused, listened for a moment
with head cocked intelligently to one side, dropped the
dismembered implement, and got up alertly. At the
same moment the door to the hallway opened, and two
women entered, apparently sisters: one a lady of mature
and distinguished charm, the other an equally prepossess-
ing creature much her junior, the one strongly animated
with intelligent interest in life, the other a listless prey
to habitual ennui.
To these fluttered Mr. Blensop, offering to relieve them
of their wraps.
"Permit me, Mrs. Arden," he addressed the elder
woman, who tolerated him dispassionately. “And
Mrs. Stanistreet
I say, aren't you a bit late?”
"Frightfully," assented Mrs. Stanistreet in a weary
voice. “It must be all of midnight."
"Hardly that, Adele,” said Mrs. Arden with a humor-
ous glance.
“Dinner, the play, supper, and home before twelve!"
commented Blensop, shocked. “I say, that is going some,
.
you know.”
“George would insist on hurrying home," the young
wife complained. "Frightfully tiresome. We were so
comfy at the Ritz, too.
"The Crystal Room?” Dissembled envy poisoned
Blensop's accents.
“Frightfully interestin'-everybody was there. I
did so want to dance-missed you, Arthur.”
“I say, you didn't, did you, really?"
"Poor Mr. Blensop!” Mrs. Arden interjected with
just a hint of malice. "What a pity you must be chained


194
THE FALSE FACES
down by inexorable duty, while we fly round and amuse
ourselves.”
"I must not complain,” Blensop stated with humility
becoming in a dutiful martyr, a pose which he saw fit
quickly to discard as another man came briskly into
the room. "Ah, good evening, Colonel Stanistreet."
“Evening, Blensop.'
With a brusque nod, Colonel Stanistreet went straight-
way to the desk, stopping there to take up and examine
the work upon which his secretary had been engaged: a
gentleman considerably older than his wife, of grave and
sturdy cast, with the habit of standing solidly on his
feet and giving undivided attention to the matter in
hand.
“Anything of consequence turned up?” he enquired
abstractedly, running through the sheets of pen-blackened
paper.
"Three persons called,” Blensop admitted discreetly.
“One returns at midnight.”
Stanistreet threw him a keen look. "Eh!” he said,
making swift inference, and turned to his wife and sister-
in-law. "It is nearly twelve now. Forgive me if I hurry
you off.”
“Patience,” said Mrs. Arden indulgently. "Not for
worlds would I hinder your weighty affairs, dear old thing,
but I sleep more sound o'nights when I know my trinkets
are locked up securely in your safe."
With a graceful gesture she unfastened a magnificent
necklace and deposited it on the desk.
“Frightful rot,” her sister commented from the
doorway. “As if anybody would dare break in here."


THE FALSE FACES
195
“Why not?” Mrs. Arden enquired calmly, stripping her
fingers of their rings.
“With a watchman patrolling the grounds all night-
"Letty is sensible,” Stanistreet interrupted. “How-
son's faithful enough, and these American police de-
pendable, but second-storey men happen in the best-
guarded neighbourhoods. Be advised, Adele: leave
your things here with Letty's."
"No fear," his wife returned coolly. “Too frightfully
weird.
She drifted across the threshold, then hesitated, a
pretty figure of disdainful discontent.
“But really, Colonel Stanistreet is right,” Blensop
interposed vivaciously. “What do you imagine I heard
to-night? The Lone Wolf is in America!”
“What is that you say?” Mrs. Arden demanded
sharply.
“The Lone Wolf
Fact. Have it on most
excellent authority."
"The Lone Wolf!” Mrs. Stanistreet drawled. “If
you ask me, I think the Lone Wolf nothing in the world
but a scapegoat for police stupidity."
"You wouldn't say that,” Mrs. Arden retorted, "if
you had lived in Paris as long as I. There, in the dear
old days, we paid that rogue too heavy a tax not to
believe in him."
"Frightful nonsense,” insisted the other. "I'm off.
'Night, Arthur. Shall you be long, George?”
"Oh, half an hour or so,” her husband responded
absently as she disappeared.
With a little gesture consigning her jewellery, heaped
.
.
>>
>>


THE FALSE FACES
197
his business. Told him you might consent to see him at
nine in the morning."
"And the other?"
“A young woman-deuced pretty girl-also reticent.
What was her name? Brooke that was it: Cecelia
Brooke."
“The devil!” Stanistreet exclaimed, dropping the
papers. “What did you say to her?”
“What could I say, sir? She refused to divulge a
word about her business with us. I told her-
Warned by a gesture from Colonel Stanistreet, Blensop
broke off. Walker was opening the door.
“Well, Walker?”
"A Mr. Duchemin, sir, says Mr. Blensop made an
appointment with you for twelve to-night.”
“Show him in, please.”
The footman shut himself out. Blensop clutched
nervously at Mrs. Arden's jewels.
“Hadn't I better put these in the safe first?”
"Nono time.” Stanistreet opened a drawer of the
desk-"Here!”—and closed it as Blensop hastily swept
the jewellery into it. “Safe enough there-as long as he
doesn't know, at all events. But don't forget to put
them away after he goes.'
"No, sir."
Again the door opened. Walker announced: "Mr.
Duchemin.” Stanistreet rose in his place. A man
strode in with the assurance of one who has discounted a
cordial welcome.
Through the gap which he had quietly created between
the portière and the side of the window, Lanyard stared


198
THE FALSE FACES
hungrily, and for the second time that night damned
heartily the inadequate light in the library.
The impostor's face, barely distinguishable in the up-
thrown penumbra of the lampshade, wore a beard-
a rather thick, dark beard of negligent abundance, after
a mode popular among Frenchmen-above which his
features were an indefinite blur.
Lanyard endeavoured with ill success to identify the
fellow by his carriage; there was a perceptible suggestion
of a military strut, but that is something hardly to be
termed distinctive in these days. Otherwise, he was
tall, quite as tall as Lanyard, and had much the same
character of body, slender and lithe.
But he was “Karl” beyond question, confederate and
murderer of Baron von Harden, the man who had thrown
the light bomb to signal the U-boat, the brute with
whom Lanyard had struggled on the boat deck of the
Assyrian—though the latter, in the confusion of that
struggle, had thought the German's beard a masking
handkerchief of black silk.
Now by that same token he was no member of that
smoking-room coterie upon which Lanyard's suspicions
had centered.
On the other hand, any number of passengers had worn
beards, not a few of much the same mode as that sported
by this nonchalant fraud.
Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits to aid a laggard
memory, haunted by a feeling that he ought to know
this man instantly, even in so poor a light. Something
in his habit, something in that insouciance which so


THE FALSE FACES
199
.
5
narrowly escaped insolence, was at once strongly remi-
niscent and provokingly elusive.
Pausing a little ways within the room, the fellow
clicked heels and bowed punctiliously in Continental
fashion, from the hips.
“Colonel Stanistreet, I believe,” he said in a sonorous
voice "Karl's" unmistakable voice “chief of the
American bureau of the British Secret Service"
"I am Colonel Stanistreet," that gentleman admitted.
“And you, sir?"
“I have adopted the name of André Duchemin,” the
impostor stated. “With permission I retain it."
Colonel Stanistreet inclined his head slightly. “As
you will. Pray be seated.”
He dropped back into his chair, while "Karl" with a
murmur of acknowledgment again took the armchair
on the far side of the desk, where the lamp stood between
him and the secret watcher.
“My secretary tells me you have letters of intro-
duction
"Here.” Calmly "Karl” produced and offered those
purloined papers.
“You will smoke?” Stanistreet indicated a cigarette-
box and leaned back to glance through the letters.
During a brief pause Blensop busied himself with
collecting together the documents which had occupied
him and began reassorting them, while “Karl,” helping
himself to a cigarette, smoked with manifest enjoyment.
“These seem to be in order,” Stanistreet observed.
“I note from this code letter that your true name is
Michael Lanyard, you were once a professional French


200
THE FALSE FACES
Do we
.
thief known as 'The Lone Wolf", but have since displayed
every indication of desire to reform your ways, and have
been of considerable use to the Intelligence Office. I am
desired to employ your services in my discretion, con-
tingent-pardon meupon your continued good be-
haviour."
"Precisely,” assented “Karl.”
“Proceed, Monsieur Duchemin."
"It is an affair of some delicacy
speak alone, Colonel Stanistreet?"
“Mr. Blensop is my confidential secretary
“Oh, no objection. Still—if I may venture the sug-
gestion—those windows open upon a garden, I take it?”
“Yes. Blensop, be good enough to close the win-
dows."
-Certainly, sir.”
Stepping delicately, Blensop moved toward the end
of the room.
Again Lanyard was confronted with the alternatives
of incontinent flight or attempting to remain undetected
through the adoption of an expedient of the most desperate
audacity. He had prepared against such contingency,
he did not mean to go; but the feasibility of his contem-
plated manæuvre depended entirely upon chance, its
success in any event was forlornly problematic.
"Karl” remained hidden from him by the lamp, so he
from "Karl.” Colonel Stanistreet, facing his caller,
sat half turned away from the windows. Everything
rested with Blensop's choice, which of the two windows
he would elect first to close.
A right-handed man, he turned, as Lanyard had fore-


THE FALSE FACES
201
seen, to the right, and momentarily disappeared in the
recess of the farther window.
In the same instant Lanyard slipped noiselessly from
behind the portière, and dropped into that capacious
wing chair which Blensop had thoughtfully placed for
him some time since.
Thus seated, making himself as small and still as
possible, he was wholly concealed from all other occu-
pants of the library but Blensop; and even this last was
little likely to discover him.
He did not. He closed and latched the farther window,
then that wherein Lanyard had lurked, and ambled back
into the room with never a glance toward that shadowed
corner which held the wing chair.
And Lanyard drew a deep breath, if a quiet one.
Behind him the conversation had continued without
break. It was true, he could see nothing; but he could
hear all that was said, he had missed no syllable, and now
every second was informing him to his profit.
"Your secretary, no doubt, has told you I am a
survivor of the Assyrian disaster."
“Yes
“You were, I believe, expecting a certain communi-
cation of extraordinary character by the Assyrian, to be
brought, that is, by an agent of the British Secret
Service.”
After an almost imperceptible pause Stanistreet said
evenly: “It is possible.”
“A communication, in fact, of such character that it
was impossible to entrust it to the mails or to cable
transmission, even in code."
.


202
THE FALSE FACES
“And if so, sir
?”
“And you are aware that, of the two gentlemen en-
trusted with the care of this document, one was drowned
when the Assyrian went down, and the other so seriously
injured that he has not yet recovered consciousness, but
was transferred directly from the pier to a hospital when
the Saratoga docked."
“What then, Monsieur Duchemin?”
"Colonel Stanistreet," said the impostor deliberately,
“I have that communication. I will ask you not to
question me too closely as to how it came into my posses-
sion. I have it: that is sufficient."
"If you possess any document which you conceive
to be so valuable to the British Government, monsieur,
and consequently to the Allied cause, I have every
confidence in your intention to deliver it to me without
delay."
A note of mild derision crept into the accents of
"Karl.”
“I have every intention of so doing, my dear sir. .
But you must appreciate I have incurred considerable
personal danger, hardship, and inconvenience in taking
good care of this document, in seeing that it did not fall
into the wrong hands; in short, in bringing it safely
here to you to-night."
A slightly longer pause prefaced Stanistreet's reply,
something which he delivered in measured tones: “I am
able to promise you the British Government will show due
appreciation of your disinterested services, Monsieur
Duchemin."
“Not disinterested not that!” the cheat protested.


THE FALSE FACES
203
“Gentlemen of my kidney, sir, seldom put themselves
out except in lively anticipation of favours to come.”
“Be good enough to make yourself more clear.”
"Cheerfully. I possess this document. I under-
stand its character is such that Germany would pay a
round price for it. But I am a good patriot. In spite
of the fact that nobody knew I possessed it, in spite of
the fact that I need only have quietly taken it to Seventy-
ninth Street to-night-"
“Monsieur Duchemin!" Stanistreet's voice was icy.
“Your price?"
"Sorry you feel that way about it,” said “Karl” with
ill-concealed insincerity. “You must know thieving is
no more what it once was. Even I, too, often am put to
it to make both ends"
"If you please, sir-how much?”
"Ten thousand dollars."
Silence greeted this demand, a lull that to Lanyard
seemed endless. For in his fury he was trembling so that
he feared lest his agitation betray him. The very walls
before his eyes seemed to quake in sympathy. He was
aware of the ache of swollen veins in his temples, his
teeth hurt with the pressure put upon them, his breath
came heavily, and his nails were digging painfully into
his palms.
“Blensop?”
“Sir?”
“How much have we on hand, in the emergency
fund?"
"Between ten and twelve thousand dollars, sir."
“Intuition, monsieur, is an indispensable item in the


204
THE FALSE FACES
97
.
equipment of a successful chevalier d'industrie. So, at
least, the good novelists tell us
“Open the safe, Blenscp, and fetch me ten thousand
dollars."
"Very good, sir."
"I presume you won't object to satisfying me that you
really have this document, before I pay you your price."
"It is this which makes it a pleasure to deal with an
Englishman, monsieur: one may safely trust his word
of honour.”
"Indeed
"Permit me: here is the document. Use that magni.
fying glass I see by your elbow, monsieur; take you.
time, satisfy yourself.”
"Thanks; I mean to."
Another break in the dialogue, during which the eaves-
dropper heard an odd sound, a sort of muffled swishing
ending in a slight thud, then the peculiar metallic
whine of a combination dial rapidly manipulated, finally
the dull clank of bolts falling back into their sockets.
“Your coffre-fort—what do you say?-strong-box-
safe is cleverly concealed, Colonel Stanistreet."
There was no direct reply, but after a moment
Stanistreet announced quietly: “This seems to be an
authentic paper.
Monsieur Duchemin, what
knowledge precisely have you of the nature of this
document?”
"Surely monsieur cannot have overlooked the circum-
stance that its seals were intact."
“True,” Stanistreet admitted. “Still
"I trust Monsieur does not question my good faith?”
.


THE FALSE FACES
205
"Why not?" Stanistreet enquired drily.
"Monsieur!"
“Oh, damn your play-acting, sir! If you can be
capable of one infamy, you are capable of more. None
the less, you are right about an Englishman's word: here
is your money. Count it and-get out!”
“Thanks”-the impostor's tone was an impertinently
exact imitation of Stanistreet's—"I mean to."
"Permit me to excuse myself,” Stanistreet added;
and Lanyard heard the muffiled scrape of chair-legs on
the rug as the Englishman got up.
“Gladly," the spy returned—"and ten thousand
thanks, monsieur!"
The secretary intoned melodiously: “This way,
Monsieur Duchemin, if you please."
“Pardon. Is it material which way I leave?"
“What do you mean?” Stanistreet demanded.
"I should be far easier in my mind if monsieur would
permit me to go by way of his garden, rather than run
the risk of his front door."
“What's this?"
“In these little affairs, monsieur, I try to make it a
rule to avoid covering the same ground twice."
"You have the insolence to imply I would lend myself
to treachery!"
“I beg monsieur's pardon very truly for suggesting
such a thing. Nevertheless, one cannot well be over-
cautious when one is a hunted man."
“Blensop be good enough to see this man out
through the garden."
"Yes, sir."
.
.


206
THE FALSE FACES
“Again, monsieur, my thanks."
"Good-night,” said Stanistreet curtly.
Blensop passed Lanyard's chair, unlatched and opened
the window and stood aside. An instant later "Karl”
joined him, swung on a heel, facing back, clicked heels
again and bowed mockingly. Apparently he got no
response, for he laughed quietly, then turned and went
out through the window, Blensop mincing after.
With a struggle Lanyard mastered the temptation to
dash after the spy, overtake and overpower him, expose
and give him up to justice. Only the knowledge that
by remaining quiescent, by biding his time, he might be
enabled to redeem his word to the Brooke girl, gave him
strength to be still.
But he suffered exquisitely, maddened by the defama-
tion imposed upon his nick-name of a thief by this
brazen impostor.
Nor was wounded amour-propre mended by an ex-
clamation in the room behind his chair, the accents of
Colonel Stanistreet thick with contempt:
“The Lone Wolf! Faugh!"


XV
RECOGNITION
P
.
RESENTLY Blensop came back,closed the window,
and passed blindly by Lanyard, his reappearance
saluted by Stanistreet in tones that shook with
contained temper.
“You saw that animal outside the walls?”
Mildly injured surprise was indicated in the reply:
“Surely, sir!"
“And locked the door after him?"
“Yes, sir-securely."
“Howson anywhere about?”
"I didn't see him. Daresay he's prowling somewhere
within call. Do you wish to speak to him?"
“No
But you might, if you see anything of
him, tell him to keep an extra eye open to-night. I don't
trust this self-styled Lone Wolf.”
"Naturally not, sir, under the circumstances."
Stanistreet acknowledged this with an irritated snort.
“No matter," he thought aloud; “if it has cost us a
pretty penny, we have got this safe in hand at last. I've
not had too much sleep, I can promise you, since the
report came through of Bartholomew's death and
Thackeray's disablement. Nor am I satisfied that this
Monsieur Duchemin came by the document fairly-con-
found his impudence! If he hadn't put me on honour,
tacitly, I'd not hesitate an instant about informing the
police.”
99
207


208
THE FALSE FACES
.
"Rather chancy course to take in this business, what?"
"I don't know.
That Yankee invention
known as the 'frame-up' would easily make America too
small for the Lone Wolf without the British Secret Service
ever being mentioned in the matter."
“Yes; but suppose the beast knows the contents of
this paper, suspects the authorship of the 'frame-up'-
as he instinctively would—and blabs? Messages have
been unsealed and copied and resealed before this."
"That one consideration ties my hands.
Here,
my boy: take this and put it in the safe---and don't
forget Mrs. Arden's things, of course. Good-night."
“Trust me, sir. Good-night.”
A door closed with a slight jar, and for half a minute
the room was so positively quiet that Lanyard was
beginning to wonder if Blensop himself had gone out
with his employer, when he heard a low and musical
chuckle, followed by a soft clashing as the secretary
scooped Mrs. Arden's jewellery out of the desk drawer.
Itching with curiosity, Lanyard turned with infinite
care and peered round the wing of the chair, thus gaining
a view of the wall farthest from the street.
Blensop remaining invisible, Lanyard's interest cen-
tred immediately upon the safe the ingenuity of whose
concealment had excited "Karl's" favourable comment,
and with much excuse.
One of the portraits—that upon whose merits Blensop
had descanted to "Karl" earlier in the night-was,
Lanyard saw, so mounted upon a solid panel of
wood that, by means of hidden mechanism, it could be


THE FALSE FACES
209
moved sidelong from its frame, uncovering the face of a
safe built into the wall.
This last now stood open, its door, swung out toward
Lanyard, showing a simple arrangement of dials and
Jocks with which he was on terms of contemptuous
familiarity; only the veriest tyro of a cracksman would
want more than a good ear and a subtle sense of touch in
order to open it without knowledge of the combination.
With all its reputation for efficiency and astuteness
the British Secret Service entrusted its mysteries to an
antiquated contraption such as this!
Humming a blithe little air, Blensop moved into
Lanyard's field of vision and stopped between him and
the safe, deftly pigeonholing therein the docketed papers
and Mrs. Arden's jewels. Then, closing the door, he shot
its bolts, gave the dial a brisk twirl, located a lever in the
side of the frame and thrust it into its socket.
With the same swish and thud which had puzzled
Lanyard at first hearing, the portrait slipped back into
place.
Rounding on a heel, Blensop paused, head to one side,
a slight frown shadowing his bland countenance, and
stood briefly rooted in some perplexity of obscure origin.
Twice he shook a peevish head, then smiled radiantly
and brought his hands together in an audible clap.
“I have it!” he cried in delight and, dancing briskly
toward the desk, once more disappeared.
Now what was this which Mr. Blensop so spon-
taneously had, and from the having of which he derived
so much apparently innocent enjoyment? Wanting an
answer, Lanyard settled back in disgust, then sat sharply


210
THE FALSE FACES
forward, gaze riveted to the near sash of the adjacent
window.
In showing "Karl” out, Blensop had moved the
portières, exposing more glass than previously had been
visible. Now this mirrored darkly to the adventurer a
somewhat distorted vision of Blensop standing over the
desk, seemingly employed in no more amusing occupa-
tion than filling his fountain-pen. But undoubtedly he
was in the highest spirits; for the lilt of his humming
rose sweet and clear and ever louder.
To this accompaniment he pocketed his pen, two-
stepped to the windows, drew the portières jealously
close, returned to the desk, switched off the reading
lamp, and left the room completely dark but for a dim
glow from the ash-filmed embers of the fire.
But before he went out the secretary interrupted his
humming to laugh with a mischievous élan which com-
pletely confounded Lanyard. He was not unacquainted
with the Blensop type, but the secret glee which seemed
to animate this specimen was something far beyond his
comprehension.
As the door softly closed Lanyard moved silently
across the room and bent an ear to its panels, meanwhile
drawing over his hands a pair of thin white kid gloves.
From beyond came no sound other than a faint creaking
of stair-treads quickly silenced.
Opening the door, Lanyard peered out, finding the
hallway deserted and dimly lighted by a single bulb of
little candle-power at its far end, then scouted out as far
as the foot of the stairs, listened there for a little, hear-
ing no sounds above, and reconnoitred through the


212
THE FALSE FACES
3
O
But the interior arrangement was disconcertingly
simple. Lanyard saw no sign of waste space in which
such a drawer might be secreted. Unless, to be sure, one
of the pigeonholes had a false back
He began a fresh examination, again emptying each
pigeonhole and sounding its rear wall without result till
there remained only that in which Blensop had placed
the Arden jewels.
It was necessary to move these, but Lanyard long
withheld his hand, reluctant to touch them, for that same
reason which had influenced him to avoid them in his
first search.
Jewels such as these he both worshipped and desired
with the passionate adoration of connoisseur and lover
in one. He feared violently the temptation of physical
contact with such stuff.
For his was no thief's errand to-night, but a matter,
as he conceived it, of his private honour, something apart
and distinct from the code of rogue's ethics which guided
his professional activities. He had pledged his word to
Cecelia Brooke to keep safe for her that cylinder of paper,
to return it upon her demand for whatsoever disposition
she might choose to make of it. It was no concern of his
what that choice might turn out to be, any more than it
was his affair if the document were a paper of internation-
al importance. But she must and should, if act of his
could compass it, be given opportunity to redeem her
word of honour if, as one believed, that likewise were
involved in the fate of the document.
He had stolen into this house like a thief because he
had given his pledge and perforce had been made false


214
THE FALSE FACES
Instantly and instinctively, in two simultaneous
gestures, Lanyard dropped the necklace into an inner
pocket of his coat and switched off the picture-light.
With hands now as steady and sure as they had been
vacillant a moment since, he closed the safe door noise-
lessly, shot its bolts, and was yards away, crouching
behind an armchair, before the man outside had ceased
to fumble with the window fastenings.
If this were the watchman Howson, doubtless he would
be satisfied with finding the room dark and apparently
untenanted, and would go off upon his rounds unsus-
pecting. If he did not, or if he noticed the displaced
panel, then would come Lanyard's time to break cover
and run for it.
With a faint creak one of the windows swung inward.
Curtain-rings clashed dully on their poles. Someone
came through the portières and paused, pulling them
together behind him. The beam of an electric flash-
lamp lanced the gloom and its spotlight danced errati-
cally round the walls.
Now there was no more thought of flight in Lanyard's
humour, but rather a firm determination to stand his
ground. This was no night watchman, but a house-
breaker, one with no more title to trespass upon those
premises than himself; and at that an unskilled hand at
such work, the rawest of amateurs practising methods as
clumsy and childish as any actor playing at burglary on
a stage before a simple-minded audience.
The noise he made on entering alone proved that, then
this fatuous business with the flash-lamp. And as he
moved inward from the windows it became evident that


THE FALSE FACES
217
“Ten thousand dollars," he said grimly—“precisely my
fee for the use of my name—to say nothing of its abuse!"
A torrent of untranslatable German blasphemy
answered him. Intelligible was the half-frantic demand:
“Who the devil are you?”
“Take a look, assassin-see for yourself!” Lanyard
twisted the spy around to face him, holding him helpless
against the wall with a knee in his middle and a hand
gripping his throat inexorably. “Do you know me now
-the man you thought you'd drowned a hundred
fathoms deep?”
Blows thundered on the hallway door. Neither
heeded. The spy was staring into Lanyard's face, his
eyes starting with horror and affright.
“Lanyard!” he gasped. "Good God! will you never
die?"
"Never by your hand" Lanyard began, but
stopped sharply.
For a moment he glared incredulously, and in that
moment knew his enemy.
“Ekstrom!” he cried; and the man at his mercy winced
and quailed.
The din in the hallway grew louder. Voices cried out
for the key. Somebody threw himself against the door
so heavily that it shook.
The emergency forced itself upon Lanyard's conscious-
ness, would not be denied. Its dilemma seemed calcu-
lated to unseat his reason. If he lingered, he was lost.
Either he must grant this creature new lease of life, or be
caught and pay the penalty of murder for an execution
as surely just as any in the history of mankind.


6
XVI
AU PRINTEMPS
'N THOSE days New York nights were long; this was
still young when Lanyard sauntered sedately from
a side street and stopped on a corner of Broadway
in the Nineties; he had not long to wait ere a south-
bound taxicab hove in sight and sheered over to the curb
in answer to his signal.
It was still something short of one o'clock when he
was set down at his door.
Wearily he let himself in by the private entrance, made
a light, and without troubling even to discard his over-
coat threw himself into a chair. Leaden depression
weighed down his heart, and the flavour of failure was as
aloes in his mouth. Thrice within an hour he had fallen
short of his promises, to Cecelia Brooke, to himself, to
his idée fixe. His three chances, to redeem his word to
the girl, to measure up to his queer criterion of honour, to
rid his world of Ekstrom, all had slipped through fingers
seemingly too infirm to profit by them.
He felt of a sudden old; old, and tired, and lonely.
The uses of his world, how weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable! What was his life? An emptiness. Him-
self? A shuttlecock, the helpless sport of his own
failings, a vain thing alternately strutting and stumbling,
now swaggering in the guise of an avenger self-appointed,
now sneaking in the shameful habiliments of a felon self-
condemned.


THE FALSE FACES
223
“What of him?"
“Why, he bulge in heah an' say we done send a call,
an' we tell him we don' know nuffin' 'bout no call,
an' he sweah an' carry on, an' aftuh you done gone in he
ast whut is yo' name, an' somebody tell him an' he go
away. An' then 'bout haffanour aftuhwuds he come back
with that theah lettuh-say to stick it undeh yo' do,
ef yo' ain't home. Leastways he look to me lak th' same
boy. Ah dunno fo' suah."
Repeated efforts failing to extract more enlightenment
from this source, Lanyard again shut himself in with the
puzzle.
Somebody had set a messenger boy to dog him and
find out his name and address. Not Crane: Lanyard
had seen that one disappear in the elevator of the Knick-
erbocker and had thereafter moved too quickly to permit
of Crane’s returning to the lobby, calling a messenger
boy, and pointing out Lanyard.
For that matter, Lanyard was prepared to swear
nobody had followed him from the Knickerbocker to
the Biltmore.
Vaguely he seemed to recall a first impression of the
boy at the time when he emerged from the drug store
after his unprofitable effort to telephone Cecelia Brooke,
an indefinite memory of a shambling figure with nose
flattened against the druggist's window, apparently
fascinated by the display of a catch-penny corn cure.
Was there a link between that circumstance and the
long delay which Lanyard had suffered in the telephone
booth? Had the Knickerbocker operator been less
stupid and negligent than she seemed? Was the truth


224
THE FALSE FACES
of the matter that Crane had surmised Lanyard would
attempt communication with the Brooke girl and had
set a watch on the switchboard for the call?
Assuming that the Secret Service man had been clever
enough for that, it was not difficult to understand that
Lanyard had purposely been kept dangling at the other
end of the wire till the call could be traced back to its
source and a messenger despatched from the nearest
Western Union office with instructions to follow the man
who left the booth, and report his name and local
habitation.
Sharp work, if these inferences were reasonable. And,
.satisfied that they were, Lanyard inclined to accord
increased respect to the detective abilities of the
American.
But this note, this hurried, unsigned scrawl of five
unintelligible words: what the deuce did it mean?
On the evidence of the handwriting a woman had
penned it. Cecelia Brooke? Who else? Crane might
well have been taken into her confidence, subsequent to
the sinking of the Assyrian, and on discovering that Lan-
yard had survived have used this means of relieving
the girl's distress of mind.
But its significance?
"Au Printemps" trans-
lated literally meant “in the springtime,” and “in the
springtime at one o'clock” was mere gibberish, incom-
prehensible. There is in Paris a department store
calling itself “Au Printemps”; but surely no one was
suggesting to Lanyard in New York a rendezvous in
Paris!
Nevertheless that “Please!" intrigued with a note al
O


226
THE FALSE FACES
ments whose insolence outrivalled the most Byzantine
nights of L'Abbaye Thêlème.
Drawn in with the current through the turnstile door,
Lanyard found himself in an absurdly little lobby
thronged to suffocation, largely with people of the half-
world-here and there a few celebrities, here and there
small tight clusters of respectabilities making a brave
show of feeling at ease all waiting their turn to be
lifted to delectable regions aloft in an elevator barely
big enough to serve in a private residence.
For a moment Lanyard lingered unnoticed on the
outskirts of this assemblage, searching its pretty faces
for the prettier face he had come to find and wondering
that she should have chosen for her purpose with him a
resort of this character. His memory of her was sweet
with the clean smell of the sea; there was incongruity
to spare in this atmosphere heady with the odours of
wine, flesh, scent, and tobacco. Perplexing
A harpy with a painted leer and predacious eyes
pounced upon him, tore away his hat and coat, gave him a
numbered slip of pasteboard by presenting which he would
be permitted to ransom his property on extortionate
terms.
And still he saw no Cecelia Brooke, though his aloof
attitude coupled with an intent but impersonal inspection
of every feminine face within his radius of vision earned
him more than one smile at once furtively provocative
and unwelcome.
By degrees the crowdemptied itself into the toy elevator
-such of it, that is, as was passed by a committee on
membership consisting of one chubby, bearded gentleman


THE FALSE FACES
227
with the look of a French diplomatist, the empressement
of a head waiter and the authority of the Angel with the
Flaming Sword. Persona non grata to the manage-
ment-inexplicably so in most instances—were civilly
requested to produce membership cards and, upon
failure to comply, were inexorably rejected, and departed
strangely shamefaced. Others of acceptable aspect
were permitted to mingle with the upper circles of the
elect without being required to prove their“membership.'
In the person of this suave but inflexible arbiter Lan-
yard identified a former maître d'hôtel of the Carlton
who had abruptly and discreetly fled London soon after
the outbreak of war.
He fancied that this one knew him and was sedulous
both to keep him in the corner of his eye and never to
meet his regard directly.
And once he saw the man speak covertly with the
elevator attendant, guarding his lips with a hand, and
suspected that he was the subject of their communi-
cation.
The lobby was still comfortably filled, a constant
trickle of arrivals replacing in measure the losses by
election and rejection, when Lanyard, watching the
revolving doors, saw Cecelia Brooke coming in.
She was alone, at least momentarily; and in his sight
very creditably turned out, remembering that all her
luggage must have been lost with the Assyrian. But
what English woman of her caste ever permitted herself
to be visible after nightfall except in an evening gown of
some sort, even though a shabby sort? Not that Miss
Brooke to-night was shabbily attired: she was much


230
THE FALSE FACES
.
“I'm sure
.
“indeed, somehow wrong. I've a feeling one has no
right to encourage so much frivolity. And yet
“Yes,” she responded quickly. “It is good to hear
people laugh once more. That is why Mr. Crane
suggested coming here to-night, to cheer me up. He
said Au Printemps was unique, promised I'd find it most
amusing.”
Lanyard began as Crane entered,
breezing through the turnstile and comprehending the
situation in a glance.
“Hello!” he cried. “Didn't I tell you everybody alive
would be here?"
Nor was Cecelia Brooke less ready. “But fancy
meeting Mr. Ember here! I had no idea he was in
New York-had you?”
"Perhaps a dim suspicion,” Crane admitted with a
twinkle, taking Lanyard's hand. "Howdy, Ember?
Glad to see you, gladder'n you'd'think."
“How is that?” Lanyard asked, returning the cordiality
of his grasp.
Crane's penetrating accents must have been audible
in the remotest corner of the ground floor rooms: he
made no effort to modulate them to a quieter pitch.
"You can help me out of a fix if you feel like it. You
see, I promised Miss Brooke if she'd take me for her guide,
she'd see life to-night; and now, just when we're going
good, I've got to renig. Man I know held me up outside,
says I'm wanted down town on special business and must
go. I might be able to toddle back later, but can't bank
on it. Do you mind taking over my job?"
“Chaperoning Miss Brooke's investigations into the


232
THE FALSE FACES
to his lodgings, had framed that note to entice him to this
place to-night? In the latter event, who was conceivably
responsible but Velasco, Dressler, O'Reilly—any one
of these, or all three working in concert? The last-
named had looked Lanyard squarely in the face without
sign of recognition, back there in the lobby of the Knick-
erbocker, precisely as he should, if implicated in the
conspiracies of the Boche; though it might easily have
been Velasco or Dressler who had recognized the adven-
turer without his knowledge.
The car stopped, a narrow-chested door slid open, a
gush of hectic light coloured morbidly the faces of
alighting passengers, a blare of syncopated noise singu-
larly unmusical saluted the astonished ears of Lanyard
and Cecelia Brooke. She met his gaze with a smiling
moue and slightly lifted eyebrows.
"More than we bargained for?” he laughed. “But
there is always something new in this America, I promise
you. Au Printemps itself is new, at all events did not
exist when I was last in New York.”
Following her out, he paused beside the girl in a con-
stricted space hedged about with tables, waiting for the
maître d'hôtel to seat those who had been first to leave
the elevator.
The room, of irregular conformation, held upward
of two hundred guests and habitués seated at tables
large and small and so closely set together that waiters
with difficulty navigated narrow and tortuous channels
of communication. In the middle, upon a small dancing
floor, rudely octagonal in shape, made smaller by tables
crowded round its edge to accommodate the crush, a


234
THE FALSE FACES
Dubiously Lanyard followed. He likewise had known
the maitre d'hôtel at sight: a beastly little decadent
whose cabaret on the rue d'Antin, just off the avenue
de l'Opéra, had been a famous rendezvous of international
spies till war had rendered it advisable for him to efface
himself from the ken of Paris with the same expedition
and discretion which had marked the departure from
London of his confrère who now guarded the lower gate-
way to these ethereal regions of Au Printemps.
The coincidence of finding those two so closely associ-
ated worked with the riddle of that note further to trouble
Lanyard's mind.
Was he to believe Au Printemps the legitimate suc-
cessor in America of that less pretentious establishment
on the rue d'Antin, an overseas headquarters for Secret
Service agents of the Central Powers?
He began to regret heartily, not so much that he had
presented himself in answer to that note, but the re-
sponsibility which now devolved upon him of caring for
Miss Brooke. Much as he had wished to see her an
hour ago, now he would willingly be rid of her
company.
Why had he been lured to this place, if its character
were truly what he feared? Conceivably because he
was believed-since it now appeared he had cheated
death-still to possess either that desired document or
knowledge of its whereabouts.
Naturally the enemy would not think otherwise. He
must not forget that Ekstrom was playing double; as
yet none but Lanyard knew he had stolen the document
and done a murder to cover the theft from his associates


THE FALSE FACES
235
and leave him free to sell to England without exciting
their suspicion.
Consequently, Lanyard believed, he had been invited
to this place to be sounded, to be tempted, bribed, intimi-
dated—if need be, and possible---somehow to be won
over to the uses of the Prussian spy system.
Leading them to the farther side of the room, the
maître d'hôtel paused bowing and mowing beside a large
table already in the possession of a party of three.
Lanyard's eyes narrowed. One of the three was
Velasco, another a young man unknown to him, a
mannerly little creature who might have been written
by the author of "What the Man Will Wear" in the
theatre programmes. The third was Sophie Weringrode,
the Wilhelmstrasse agent whom he had only that after-
noon observed entering the house in Seventy-ninth
Street.
He stopped short, in a cold rage. Till that moment
a mirror-sheathed pillar had hidden from him Velasco
and the Weringrode; else Lanyard had refused to come
so far; for obviously there were no unreserved tables,
indeed few vacant chairs, in that part of the room.
Not that he minded the cynical barefacedness of the
dodge; that was indeed amusing; he was sanguine as to
his ability to dominate any situation that might arise,
and to a degree indifferent if the upshot should prove his
confidence misplaced; and he did not in the least object
to letting the enemy show his cards. But he did enor-
mously resent what was, after all, something quite
outside the calculations of these giddy conspirators, the
fact that he must either beat incontinent retreat or


236
THE FALSE FACES
introduce Cecelia Brooke to the company of Sophie
Weringrode.
His face darkened, a stinging reproof for the maître
d'hôtel trembled on his tongue's tip; but that one was
busily avoiding his eye on the far side of the table,
drawing out a chair for “mademoiselle," while Velasco
and the Weringrode were alert to read Lanyard's counte-
nance and forestall any steps he might contemplate in
defiance of their designs.
At first glimpse of the Brooke girl Velasco jumped up
and hastened to her, with eager Latin courtesy expressing
his unanticipated delight in the prospect of her consenting
to join their party. And she was suffering with quiet
graciousness his florid compliments.
At the same time the Weringrode was greeting Lan-
yard in the most intimate fashion--and damning him
in the understanding of Cecelia Brooke with every
word.
“My dear friend!” she cried gayly, extending a bediz-
ened hand. "I had begun to despair of you. Is it part
of your system with women always to be a little late,
always to keep us wondering?"
Schooling his features to a civil smile, Lanyard bowed
over the hand.
"In warfare such as ours, my dear Sophie,” he said
with meaning, "one uses all weapons, even the most
primitive, in sheer self-defense."
The woman laughed delightedly. "I think," she said,
“if you rose from the dead at the bottom of the sea, Tony,
it would be with wit upon your lips.
have brought a friend with you? How charming!"
And you
0


240
THE FALSE FACES
toward the middle of the room. “You are missing
something. Me, I never tire of her."
The floor had been cleared. A drummer on the dais
was sounding the long-roll crescendo. At the culminat-
ing crash the lights were everywhere darkened save for an
örange-coloured spot-light set in the ceiling immediately
above the dancing floor. Into that circular field of torrid
glare bounded a woman wearing little more than an
abbreviated kirtle of grass strands with a few festoons of
artificial flowers. Applause roared out to her, the orches-
tra sounded the opening bars of an Americanised Hawai-
ian melody, the woman with extraordinary vivacity be-
gan to perform a denatured hula: a wild and tawny
animal, superbly physical, relying with warrant upon the
stark sensuality of her body to make amends for the cen-
sored phrases of the primitive dance. The floor resounded
like a great drum to the stamping of her bare feet, till one
marvelled at such solidity of flesh as could endure that
punishment.
Sophie Weringrode lounged negligently upon the
table, bringing her head near Lanyard's shoulder.
“Play fair,” she said between lips that barely moved.
Without looking round Lanyard answered in the same
manner: “Why ask more than you are prepared to give?”
“The police ran you out of America once. We need
only publish the fact that Mr. Anthony Ember is the
Lone Wolf
“Well?”
“Leave Berlin out of it before this girl.”
Lanyard shrugged and laughed quietly. “What else?"
“We can't talk now. Ask me for the next dance.”


THE FALSE FACES
241
The woman sat back in her chair, attentive to the
posturing of the dancer, slowly fanning herself.
Lanyard's semblance of as much interest was nothing
more; furtively his watchfulness alternated between two
quarters of the room.
On the farther edge of the circle of tropical radiance he
had marked down a table at which two men were seated,
Dressler and O'Reilly. No more question now as to the
personnel of the conspiracy; even Velasco had thrown
off the mask. The enemy had come boldly into the open,
indicating a sense of impudent assurance, indicating even
more, contempt of opposition. No longer afraid, they
no longer skulked in shadows. Lanyard experienced a
premonition of events impending.
In addition he was keeping an eye on the door to the
elevator shaft. Once already it had opened, letting a
bright window into the farther wall of the shadowed
room, discovering the figure of the maître d'hôtel in sil-
houette, anxiety in his attitude. He was waiting for
somebody, waiting tensely. So were the others waiting,
all that crew and their fellow workers scattered among
the guests. Lanyard told himself he could guess for
whom.
Only Ekstrom was wanting to complete the circle.
When he appeared—if by chance he should-things
ought to begin to happen.
If tolerably satisfied that Ekstrom would not come
not that night, at all events-Lanyard, none the less, con-
tinued to be jealously heedful of that doorway.
But the hula came to an end without either his vigilance
or the impatience of the maître d'hôtel being rewarded.


242
THE FALSE FACES
Writhing with serpentine grace to the edge of the
illuminated area, the dancer leaped back into darkness
and the folds of a wrap held by a maid, in which garment
she was seen, bowing and laughing, when the lights
again blazed up.
Without ceasing to play, changing only the time of
the tune, the orchestra swung into a fox-trot. Lanyard
glanced across the table to see Cecelia Brooke rising in
response to the invitation of dapper Mr. Revel.
In his turn, he rose with Sophie Weringrode. "Be
patient with me,” he begged. “It is long since I danced
to music more frivolous than a cannonade."
“But it is simple,” the woman promised—“simple, at
least, to one who can dance as you could in the old days.
Just follow me till you catch the step. It doesn't matter,
anyway; I desire only the opportunity to converse.'
Yielding to his arms, she shifted into French when
next she spoke.
“You do admirably, my friend. Never again de-
preciate your dancing. If you knew how one suffers
at the feet of these Americans!"
"Excellent!” he said. "Now that is settled: what is it
you are instructed to propose to me?”
She laughed softly. “Always direct! Truly you
would never shine as a secret agent."
“Not as they shine," Lanyard countered—"in the
dark.”
“Don't be a fraud. We are what we are, and so are
you. Let us not begin to be censorious of one another's
methods of winning a living."
“Agreed. But when do we begin to talk business?"


THE FALSE FACES
243
“Why do you continue so persistently antago-
nistic?"
"I am French."
“That is silly. You are an outlaw, a man without a
country. Why not change all that?"
“And how does one effect miracles?”
“Germany offers you a refuge, security, freedom to
ply your trade unhindered-within reasonable limits."
“And in exchange what do I give?”
“Your services, as and when required, in our service."
"Beginning when?”
“To-night.”
“With what specific performance?”
“We want, we must without fail have, that document
you took from the Brooke girl.”
"Perhaps we had better continue in English. You
are speaking a tongue unknown to me."
"Don't talk rot. You know well what I mean. We
know you have the thing. You didn't steal it to turn
it over to England or the States. What is your price to
Germany?”
“Whatever you have in mind, believe me when I say
I have nothing to sell to the Wilhelmstrasse."
“But what else can you do with it? What other
market?"
"My dear Sophie, upon my word I haven't got what
you want."
“Then why so keen to get the Brooke girl on the
telephone as soon as you found out where she was
stopping?"
“How did you learn about that, by the way?”


THE FALSE FACES
249
missthis opportunity.” Something had happened even since
their dance; she had observed something momentous, and
was warning him to act quickly if he meant to act at all.
With unruffled amiability, amused, urbane, Lanyard
bowed his petition across the talle, and was rewarded by
a bright nod of promise.
Lighting another cigarette, he lounged back, poised
his wine glass delicately, with the eye of a connoisseur
appraised its pale amber tint, touched it lightly to his
lips, inhaling critically its bouquet, sipped, and signified
approval of the vintage by sipping again: all without
missing one bit of business in a scene enacted on the far
side of the room, directly behind him but reflected in a
mirror panel of the wall he faced.
The diplomatist charged with the task of discriminat-
ing the sheep from the goats in the lower lobby had come
up to confer with his colleague, the maître d'hôtel of the
upper storey. When Lanyard first saw the man he was
standing by the elevator shaft, none too patiently await-
ing the attention of the other, who, caught by inadvert-
ence at some distance, was moving to join him, with what
speed he could manage threading the thick-set tables.
Was this what Sophie had noticed? Had she likewise,
perhaps, received some secret signal from the guardian
of the lower gateway?
A signal possibly indicating that Ekstrom had
arrived
met at last, those two, and discreetly confabu-
lated, the maître d'hôtel betraying welcome miti-
gation of that nervous tension which had heretofore so
palpably affected him; and, as the other stepped back


250
THE FALSE FACES
into the elevator, Lanyard saw this one's glance irresist-
ibly attracted to the table dedicated to the service of the
Princess de Alavia. Something much resembling satis-
faction glimmered in the fellow's leaden eyes: it was
apparent that he anticipated early relief from a distaste-
ful burden of responsibility.
Then, at ease in the belief that he was unobserved, he
turned to a near-by table round which four sat with-
out the solace of feminine society-four men whose
stamp was far from reassuring despite their strikingly
quiet demeanour and inconspicuously correct investi-
ture of evening dress.
Two were unmistakable sons of the Fatherland; all
were well set up, with the look of men who would figure
to advantage in any affair calling for physical competence
and courage, from coffee and pistols at sunrise in the
Parc aux Princes to a battle royal in a Tenderloin dive.
Their table commanded both ways out, by the stairs
and by the elevator, much too closely for Lanyard's
peace of mind.
And more than one looked thoughtfully his way while
the maître d'hôtel hovered above them, murmuring
confidentially.
Four nods sealed an understanding with him. He
strutted off with far more manner than had been his at
any time since the arrival of Lanyard, and vented an
excess of spirits by berating bitterly an unhappy clown
of a waiter for some trivial fault.
The first bars of another dance number sang through
the confusion of voices: truly, as Sophie had foretold, a
waltz,


252
THE FALSE FACES
.
"Mademoiselle, do you know you can be an excellent
actress?”
As if in resentment the girl glanced upward sharply,
with clouded eyes.
“So can most women, in emergency.'
“I mean
I have something serious to say;
nobody must guess your thoughts."
She said simply: "I will do my best."
“You must-you must appear quite charmed. Also,
should you catch me smirking like an infatuated ninny,
remember I am only doing my own indifferent best to
act.”
Laughter trembled deliciously in her voice: “I promise
faithfully to bear in mind your heartlessness!"
"I am an ass," he enunciated with the humility of
conviction. “But that can't be helped. Attend to me,
if you please--and do not start. This place turns out to
be a nest of Prussian spies. I was brought here by a
trick. I understand the order is I may not leave
alive."
Playing her part so well as almost to embarrass Lan-
yard himself, the girl smiled daringly into his eyes.
“Because of that packet?” she breathed.
“Because of that, mademoiselle."
“Where is it?"
For an instant Lanyard lost countenance absolutely.
Through sheer good fortune the girl was now dancing
with face averted, her head so nearly touching his shoul-
der that it seemed to rest upon it.
Nevertheless, it was at cost of an heroic struggle that
he fought down all signs of that shock with which it had


THE FALSE FACES
253
been borne in upon him that he dared not assure the
girl her packet was in safe hands.
If he had failed in his efforts to restore the thing to her,
that she might consign it as she saw fit and so discharge
her personal trust, till now Lanyard had solaced himself
with a hazy notion that she would in turn be comforted
when she learned the document was in the keeping of her
country's Secret Service.
Impossible to tell her that: his own act had rendered it
impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with
his infirmity, his itch for thieving.
Of a sudden the pilfered necklace secreted in an inner
pocket of his waistcoat, above his heart, seemed to have
gained the weight of so much lead. The hideous
consciousness of the thing stung like the bite of live
coals.
This woman was in distress; he yearned to lighten her
burden; he could do that with half a dozen words; his
guilt prohibited.
A thief!
Now indeed the Lone Wolf tasted shame and realized
its bitterness.
Puzzled by his constraint, the girl's eyes again sought
his; and warned in time by the movement of her head,
he mustered impudence to meet their question with the
look of tenderness that went with the rôle she suffered
him to play.
“What is the matter?”
“I am ashamed that I have failed you
"Don't think of that. I know you did your best,
Only tell me what became of it."
.


254
THE FALSE FACES
"It was stolen; when I returned to my stateroom that
night I was held up and robbed. The thief shot at me,
killed his confederate, decamped by way of the port.
I pursued. Another aided him to overpower and cast
me overboard."
“Yet you escaped
!"
Strange she should seem more intrigued by that than
concerned about her loss!
“I escaped, no matter how
"You don't know who stole the packet?"
“I don't recall the man among
the
passengers, but he
may have been in one of the boats, a fellow of about my
stature, with a flowing beard.
He sketched broadly Ekstrom as he had seen him in
the Stanistreet library.
Her eyes quickened.
"One such escaped in our boat, the second steward;
I think his name was Anderson."
“Doubtless the same.
“Then it is gone!”
For once in his acquaintance with her, that brave
spirit seemed to falter: she became a burden, bereft for a
little of all grace and spontaneity.
He was constrained to swing her forcibly into time.
Almost instantly she recollected herself, covered her
lapse with a little laugh innocent of any hint of its forced
falsity, and showed him and the room as well a radiant
countenance: all with such address and art that the inci-
dent might well have escaped notice, otherwise have
passed for a bit of natural by-play.
22


THE FALSE FACES
255
Yet distress was too eloquent in the broken query:
“What am I to do?”
Heartsick, self-sick to boot, he essayed to suggest that
she consult Colonel Stanistreet, but lacking so much
effrontery, stammered and fell silent.
Perhaps misinterpreting, she cried in quick contrition:
“I am forgetting! Forgive me. I should have said:
what are you to do?”
He whipped his wits together.
“Look down, turn your face aside, smile. . . I
have a plan, a desperate remedy, but the best I can con-
trive. When next the lift comes up, we must try to be
near it.
There is one row of tables which we must break
through by main force. Leave that to me, follow as I
clear a way, go straight into the lift. If anything hap-
pens, run down the stairway on the left. The ground
floor is two flights below. If I am any way detained,
don't stop-go on, get your wraps, take the first taxi
you see, return directly to the Knickerbocker. I will
telephone you later."
"If you live," she breathed.
"Never fear for me
“But if I do? Do you imagine I could rest if I thought
you had sacrificed yourself for me?"
“You must not think that. I am far too selfish-
“That is not so. And I refuse positively to do as you
wish unless you tell me how I may communicate with
you.”
Resigned to humour her, he recited his address and the
number of the house telephone, and when she had memo-
rized both by iteration, resumed:


THE FALSE FACES
257
then turned, swung an arm round the girl's waist, all but
threw her through the lane he had created, followed with-
out an instant's pause.
It was all so quickly accomplished that the girl was in
the car before another person in the room appreciated
what was happening. And Lanyard, in the act of slam-
ming the door shut without heed for the protesting
operator, saw only a room full of amazed faces with gap-
ing mouths and rounded eyes and one man of the four
at the near-by table in the act of rising uncertainly, with
a stupefied look.
Elbowing the boy aside, he seized the operating lever
and thrust it to the notch labelled “Descend.” An
instant of pause followed: like its attendant the elevator
seemed stalled in inertia of stupefaction.
Beyond the door somebody loosed an infuriated
screech. Angry hands drummed on the glass panel.
With a premonitory shudder the car started spasmodi-
cally, moved downward at first gently, then with greater
speed, coming to an abrupt stop at the street level with a
shock that all but threw its passengers from their feet.
Up the shaft that senseless punishment of the panel
continued. Some other intelligence conceived the notion
for ringing for the car to return: its annunciator buzzed
stridently, continuously.
Unlatching the lower door, Lanyard threw it back,
stepped out, finding the lobby deserted but for a simper-
ing group of coat-room girls, to one of whom he flipped a
silver dollar.
“Find this lady's wraps-be quick!"
Deftly catching the coin, the girl snatched the check


258
THE FALSE FACES
from Cecelia Brooke, and darted into the women's
dressing room.
Throughout a wait of agonising suspense, the elevator
boy remained cowering in a corner of the car, staring at
Lanyard as at some shape of terror, while the ignored
buzzer droned without cessation to persistent pressure
from above.
Out of the dark entrance to the lower dining room the
bearded diplomatist popped with the distracted look of a
jack-in-the-box about to be ravished of its young.
“Monsieur is not leaving?” he expostulated shrilly,
darting forward.
Lanyard stopped him with a look whose menace was
like a kick.
“I am seeing this lady to her cab," he said in a cold
and level voice.
The coat-room girl emerged from her lair with an
armful of wraps and furs.
Again the bearded one made as if to block the doorway.
“But, monsieur-mademoiselle!"
Lanyard caught the fellow's arm and sent him spin-
ning like a top.
“Out of the way, you rat!” he snapped; then to the
girl: “Be quick!”
As she shouldered into a compartment of the revolving
door incoherent yells began to echo down the staircase
well. · At length it had occurred to those above to utilize
that means of descent.
Wedged in the wheeling door, a final glimpse of the
lobby showed Lanyard the startled, putty-like mask of
the maître d'hôtel at the head of the stairway with,
-


THE FALSE FACES
259
beyond him, the head of one who, though in shadow,
uncommonly resembled Ekstrom-but Ekstrom as he
was in the old days, without his beard.
That picture passed like a flash on a cinema screen.
They were on the sidewalk, and the girl was running
toward a taxicab, the only vehicle of its sort in sight, at
the curb just above the entrance.
Coatless and bareheaded, Lanyard swung to face the
door porter, a towering, brawny animal in livery, self-
confident and something more than keen to interfere;
but his mouth, opening to utter some sort of protest,
shut suddenly without articulation when Lanyard dis-
played for his benefit a .22 Colt's automatic. And he
fell back smartly.
Jerking open the cab door, the girl stumbled into the
far corner of the seat. The motor was churning in
promising fashion, the chauffeur settling into place at
the wheel. Into his hand Lanyard thrust a ten-dollar bill.
"The Knickerbocker," he ordered. "Stop for nobody.
If followed steer for the nearest policeman. There'll
be no change."
He closed the door sharply, leaned over it, dropped
the little pistol into the girl's lap.
“Chances are you won't want that—but you may."
She bent forward quickly, eyes darkly lustrous with
alarm, and placed a hand upon his arm.
“But you?”
“It is I whom they want, not you. I won't subject
you to the hazard of my company.”
Gently Lanyard lifted the hand from his sleeve, brushed
it gallantly with his lips, released it.


262
THE FALSE FACES
Avenue shut out the western sector of the Circle, he saw
the roadster, driven insanely, shoot crabwise toward
the curb, than answer desperate work at the wheel and
whirl madly, executing a volte-face so violent that Ek-
strom's bold was broken and he was hurled a dozen feet
away. And Lanyard's chances were measurably ad-
vanced by the delay required in order to pick up the
sprawling one, start the engine anew, and turn more
cautiously to resume the pursuit.
Striking diagonally across Broadway the 'bus swung
into Fifty-seventh Street at the moment when the
roadster turned the corner of Columbus Circle.
The head of the guard lifted above the edge of the roof.
Clinging to the supports of the stairway, he addressed
Lanyard in accents of blended suspicion and respect.
“Lis'n, boss: is this all right, on the level, now?"
“Absolutely, unless that racing-car catches up with
us, in which case you'll have a dead man-myself-on
your hands."
“Well .. we don't wanna lose our jobs, that's all."
"You won't unless I lose my life."
"Anything you'd like me to do?”
“Go down, wait on the platform, if anybody attempts
to get aboard kick him in the act."
"Sure I will!"
The guard disappeared.
Wallowing like a barge in a strong seaway, the omnibus
crossed Seventh Avenue and sped downbill toward Sixth
with dangerous momentum. Shortly, however, this
began to be modified by the brakes, a precaution
against mishap which even the fugitive must approve.


264
THE FALSE FACES
and so gained the old station on the west side
of Fifty-eighth Street, for years dedicated to the uses of
desuetude. Through this he crept, then down the stairs,
encountering at the lower landing an iron gate which
obliged him to climb over and jump.
Not a soul paid the least attention to this matter of a
gentleman in evening dress without hat or top coat
dropping from the stairway of a disused elevated station
at two o'clock in the morning.
In New York anything can happen, and most things
do, without stirring up meddlesome impulses in innocent
bystanders.


XIX
FORCE MAJEURE
T
WHIS visit to his rooms was the briefest of the
several Lanyard made that night, considerations
of mortal urgency dictating its drastic abbre-
viation.
If the events of the last few hours had meant
anything whatever they had demonstrated two truths
which shone like beacon lights: that Manhattan Island
was overpopulated as long as both he and Ekstrom
remained on it; that Ekstrom had been goaded to the
verge of aberration by the discovery that Lanyard had
come safely through the Assyrian débâcle to take up
anew his self-appointed office of Nemesis to the Prussian
spy system in general and to the genius of its American
bureau in particular.
Henc rth that one would know no more rest while
Lanyard lived.
Thus that little street-level apartment forfeited what-
ever attractions it originally had possessed in the adven-
turer's estimation. Not only was the address known
to Ekstrom's associates, and so open to him, but its
peculiar characteristics, its facilities for access from the
street direct, rendered it a highly practicable death-trap
for a hunted man.
Lanyard was well persuaded he need only wait there
long enough to receive a deputation from Seventy-ninth
Street. And with any assurance that Ekstrom would
265


266
THE FALSE FACES
come alone, he might have been content to wait. Not
only had he through too intimate acquaintance with
his methods every assurance that Ekstrom would never
brave alone what he could induce another to risk with
him, but Lanyard was never one willing to play the
passive part.
A banal axiom of all warfare applied: The advantage
is with him who fights upon the offensive.
Since midnight the offensive had shifted from Lan-
yard's grasp to the enemy's. He was determined to
recapture it; and that was something never to be
accomplished by sitting still and waiting for events to
unfold, but only by carrying the war into the enemy's
camp.
He delayed, then, only long enough to change his
clothing and to conceal about him certain properties
which it seemed unwise to expose to chance discovery on
the part of Ekstrom or in the ever-possible event of
police intervention.
Within five minutes from the time of his return he was
closing behind him the private door.
Wearing a quiet lounge suit but no top coat, with a
hat not so soft as to lack character but soft enough to
stick upon one's head in time of action, and carrying a
stick neither brutishly stout nor ineffectively slender,
he strolled up to Seventh Avenue, turned north, entered
Central Park-and strolled no more.
Kindly shadows enfolded him, engulfed him alto-
gether. One minute after he had passed through the
gateway he would have defied unaided apprehension by


THE FALSE FACES
267
the most zealous officer of the peace. He went swiftly
and secretly, avoiding all lighted ways.
Not till then did conscience stir and remind him of his
slighted promise to call up Cecelia Brooke.
No time now for that; the errand that engaged him
was of a nature to brook no more procrastination. The
girl must wait. He was sorry if, as she had protested,
solicitude for his welfare must interfere with her night's
rest. But what must be, must: until he saw the end of
this adventure he could be influenced by no minor con-
sideration whatsoever.
Not that he seriously believed Cecelia's sleep would
be uneasy because of him. That was too much.
His temper was grim and skeptical. The resentment
roused by the trap that had so nearly laid him by the
heels, together with the subsequent effort to assassinate
him out of hand, had settled into a phase of smouldering
fury whose heat consumed like misty vapours every
lesser emotion, every humane consideration.
Some by-thought recalling the Weringrode's innuendo
that he was in love without his knowledge, moved him
to laugh outright if strangely, an unpleasant laugh that
held as much of pain as of derision.
What room in that dark heart of his for love?
the heart of a thief and a potential assassin, the heart of
the Lone Wolf!
How was he to know he had hardly left his lodgings
before their hush was interrupted by the grumble of the
house telephone?
Intermittently for upward of three minutes that sound
persisted. When at length it discontinued the quiet of


208
THE FALSE FACES
the untenanted rooms reigned undisturbed for a brief
time only.
An odd metallic stridor became audible, a succession
of scrapings of stealthy accent at the private entrance.
Its latch clicked. The door swung back against the
wall with a muffled bump. Two pairs of furtive feet
padded in the little private hallway. The flash of an
electric hand-lamp flickered hither and yon like a search-
ing poignard, picked out the door to the one bedchamber
and vanished. There was guarded whispering, then a
thud as one of the intruders gained the middle of the bed-
chamber in a bound. An instant later a switch snapped,
and the room was flooded with light.
Beneath the chandelier stood a man in evening dress
the worse for misadventure, one knee of his trousers cut
open, both legs caked with a film of half-dry mud, his
linen dingy with mud-stains, his top coat shockingly
bedraggled. He was bareheaded, apparently having
lost his hat; a black smear across one cheek added
emphasis to the pallor of newly shaven jowls; and his
eyes were blazing.
“Stole away!” he muttered briefly in disgust, then
called: "Ed!”
As quietly as a shadow a second man joined him,
greeting him with a "Hush!"
This gentleman was in far more presentable repair
and a more equable frame of mind. There was even a
glint of amusement in his hard blue eyes. His counte-
nance had an Irish cast.
“Hush?” the other iterated with contempt. "What
for? The hound's not here."


270
THE FALSE FACES
an' rung
“No'm, he ain't in."
The next enquiry was intelligible: the speaker had
entered the hallway.
"Are you sure?"
“Yas’m. Sumbody done call him up 'bout ten
min’tes ago, an’I rung
an' he don' answer. He
ain't in or he don'mean to answer nobody, tha's all.”
"I am very anxious about him. Have you a key
to his rooms?”
“Yas’m, I got a pass-key, but —
“Please use it. Take this. Go in and make sure he
is out, or if at home that he is all right.”
“Yas'm, thanky ma'am, but-"
“Do as I tell you. I will see that you don't get into
trouble.”
“All right, ma'am.” The negro chuckled, proba-
bly over his tip. “Yo' sho' has got the p’suadin'est
way
The Irishman caught the German's arm. “Come out
of this,” he pleaded.
"No fear. I'll see it through. That's the Brooke
girl the fool got in with on the boat. She may know
something.
"But
“Leave this to me. You look out for the negro. I'll
take care of Miss Cecelia Brooke."
Swearing unhappily, the Irishman flattened against
the wall to one side of the door. Karl waited behind it as
it admitted the hall attendant, who made directly toward
the central chandelier.
“Yo'jes' wait, ma'am, an' I'll mek a light an'--"


THE FALSE FACES
271
But the girl had impetuously followed him in.
The light went up, and Karl put a heavy shoulder
against the door, closing it with a slam. The negro
turned and stood with gaping mouth and staring eyes,
dumb with terror. The girl recognised Karl with a little
cry, and darted back toward the door. Immediately he
caught her in his arms. Her lips opened, but their
utterance was stifled by a handkerchief thrust between
them with the dexterity of a practised hand.
Without one word of warning the Irishman stepped
forward and struck the negro brutally in the face. The
boy reeled, whimpering. Two more blows delivered
with murderous ferocity silenced him altogether. He
collapsed like a broken puppet, insensible on the floor,
his face a curious ashen colour beneath its glossy skin
of brown.


THE FALSE FACES
275
.
courts facing south. On this seventh level the first
court was bridged by a single girder, the middle of which
was Lanyard's immediate objective. Since it lacked
uprights he took it cautiously on hands and knees until
approximately equidistant from both ends, when he
straddled it, took the cable from his shoulders, uncoiled a
length and made it fast round the girder with a clove
hitch: giddy work, in that darkness, on that greasy span,
fashioning by simple sense of touch the knot upon which
his life was to depend, half of the time prone upon the
girder and fishing blindly beneath it for the rope's end,
with nothing but a seventy-foot drop between him and
eternity, not even another girder to break a fall.
He was now immediately opposite the minaret, at an
elevation of about twenty feet above the roof he wished
to reach, and as far away, or perhaps a trifle farther.
Still he detected no signs of life about that nest of
spies: if the wireless were in operation its apparatus was
well-housed; there was no sound of the spark, never a
glimmer of its violet flash.
Laboriously—the knot completed to his satisfaction-
Lanyard returned via the eastern arm of the E, paying
out the coiled cable as he progressed, working round to
the north side of the court.
Once again pausing opposite the minaret, he knotted
the end of the cable loosely round an upright connecting
with the sixth level, let it slide down, followed it, repeated
the process, and rested finally on the fifth.
Now his ordeal approached a climax which he con-
templated with what calmness he could while securing
the
rope
beneath the arms.


THE FALSE FACES
2777
hideously protracted this last drew near, nearer, slowly,
ever more slowly.
And he was twisting dizzily.
With frantic effort he crooked an arm over the coping
at a juncture when, had he not acted instantly, he must
have swung back. There was a racking wrench, as
though his arm were being torn from its socket.
At the end of a struggle even more wearing he flung
his other arm across the ledge, and for some time hung
there, at the end of an almost taut rope, unable to over-
come its resistance and pull himself in over the coping,
stubbornly refusing to loose his grasp.
Presently, grown desperate, he let go with his right
hand, holding fast only with the left. fumbled in a pocket,
found his knife, opened it with his teeth, and began to
saw at the rope round his chest.
Strand after strand parted grudgingly till it fell away
altogether and reaction from its tension threw him
against the coping with such violence that he all but lost
his hold. Dropping the knife, he swept his right arm
up and once more hooked his fingers over the inside of
the ledge.
Far down the knife clinked suggestively upon stone.
Breathing deep, Lanyard braced knees and feet against
the wall, worried, heaved, hauled, squirmed like a mad
thing, in the end rolled over the top and fell at length
upon the roof, panting, trembling, bathed in sweat, tem-
porarily tormented by impulses to retch.
By degrees regaining physical control, he sat up, took
his bearings, and crept toward the foot of the minaret.
A small, narrow doorway in its base was on the latch.


THE FALSE FACES
279
flights to the ground floor, to which Velasco was descend-
ing.
The house seemed veritably to hum with secret and, to
judge by the pitch of its rumour, well-nigh panic activity.
One divined a scurrying as of rats about to desert a
sinking ship. Untoward events had thrown this estab-
lishment into a state of excited confusion: their nature
Lanyard could not surmise, but their conjunction with
his designs was exasperatingly inopportune. To search
this place and find his man-if he were there at all-
without being discovered, while its inmates buzzed about
like so many startled hornets, was a fair impossibility;
to attempt it was to court death.
None the less he was inflexible in determination to go
on, to push his luck to its extremity, by sheer force to
bend fortuity to his service and suffer without complaint
whatever the consequences of its recoil.
Yet even as he advanced a foot to begin the descent, he
withdrew it.
On the ground floor, a door closing with a resounding
crash had proved the signal for an outburst of expostu-
lant, acrimonious voices: some half a dozen men giving
angry tongue at one and the same time, their roars of
polysyllabic gutturalisms fusing into utterly unintelli-
gible clamour.
One thought of a mutiny in a German madhouse.
Moment after moment passed, the squall persisting
with unmitigated viciousness. If now and again it
subsided momentarily, it was only into uglier growls
and swiftly to rise once more to high frenzy of inco-
berence.


280
THE FALSE FACES
Two of the disputants appeared in the square frame of
the staircase well, oddly foreshortened figures brandishing
wild arms, one of them Velasco, the other a man whom
Lanyard failed to identify, seemingly united in common
anger directed at the head of some person invisible.
Abruptly, with a gesture of almost homicidal fury, the
Brazilian darted out of sight. The other followed.
Then the object of their wrath took to the stairs, stop-
ping at the rail of the first landing and gesticulating
savagely over the heads of his audience, Velasco and the
others returning amid a knot of fellows to bay round the
newel post.
His voice, full-throated, cried them all down—Ek,
strom's deep and resonant voice, domineering over the
uproar, hectoring one after another into sullen silence.
In the beginning employing nothing but terms and
phrases of insolence and objurgation untranslatable,
when he had secured a measure of attention he delivered
a short address in tones of unqualified contempt.
"I will have obedience!” he stormed. “Let no one
misunderstand my status here: I am come direct from
His Majesty the Emperor with full power and authority
to command and direct affairs which you have, individu-
ally, collectively, proved yourselves either unfit or unable
to cope
with. What I do, I do in my absolute discretion,
with the full sanction and confidence of the Kaiser. He
who questions my judgment or my actions, questions
the wisdom of the All-Highest. Let it be clearly under-
stood I am answerable to no one under God but myself
and my Imperial master. Henceforth be good enough


THE FALSE FACES
281
to hold your tongues or take the consequences
and be
damned to you all!”
Briefly he stood glowering down at their upturned
faces, then sneered, and turned away.
“Come along, O'Reilly,” he said. "Fetch the woman,
and give no more heed to swine-dogs!"
His hand slipped up the rail to the first floor, vanished.
If O'Reilly followed with the woman mentioned, both
kept back from the rail and so out of Lanyard's field of
vision.
The group at the foot of the stairs moved away, grum-
bling profanely.
At once Lanyard began to descend, rapidly and with-
sut care to avoid detection.
One flight down he met face to face a manservant, evi-
dently a footman, with an armful of clothing which he
was conveying from one chamber to another. The fellow
stopped short, jaw dropping, eyes popping; whereupon
Lanyard paused and addressed him in German with a
manner of overbearing contempt, that is to say, in
character.
"You're wanted upstairs in the radio room," he said
“at once!”
The servant bleated one word of protest: “But --!"
“Be silent. Do as I bid you. It is an emergency.
Drop those things and go! Do you hear, imbecile?"
Completely cowed and cheated, the man obeyed liter-
ally, letting his burden of garments fall to the floor and
bounding hurriedly up the stairs.
Another flight was negotiated without misadventure;
on this floor as well servants were flitting busily to and


THE FALSE FACES
283
action, in two bounds cleared landing and stairs, in an-
other threw himself upon the door. It opened readily.
Entering, he put his back to it, with his left hand groped
for, found and turned a key, his right holding ready the
automatic pistol he had taken from the lockers of the
U-boat.
The roc 2 was a combination of administrative bureau
and stud: . very handsomely if somewhat over-decorated
and furnished, with an atmosphere as distinctively Ger-
man as that of a Bierstube, the sombreness of its colour
scheme lending weight to its array of massive desks,
tables, chairs, bookcases, and lounges.
Between great draped windows and an impressive
chimney-piece opposite, beside a broad, long desk, in a
straight-backed chair sat a woman, gagged, bound as
to her wrists, strips of cloth which had but lately bound
ankles as well on the floor about her feet.
That woman was Cecelia Brooke.
Ekstrom stood behind her, in the act of loosening the
knots which held the gag secure.
For a space of thirty seconds, transfixed by the appari-
tion of his enemy, he did not stir other than to raise
weaponless hands in deference to the pistol trained upon
his head. But the blood ebbed from his face, leaving it a
ghastly mask in which shone the eyes of a man who sees
certain death closing in upon him and is powerless
to combat it, even to die fighting for life. And his lips
curled back in a snarl neither of contempt nor of hatred
but of terror.
And for as long Lanyard remained as motionless,
rooted in a despondency of thwarted hopes no less pro-


284
THE FALSE FACES
>
found than the despair of the Prussian, apprehending
what that one could not yet guess, that once more, and
now certainly for the last time, vengeance was denied
him, the fulfilment of all his labours and their sole pur-
pose snatched from his grasp.
The instincts of a killer were not his. Barring injudi-
cious attempt to summon aid or take the offensive,
Ekstrom was safe from injury at the hands of Michael
Lanyard. His cunning, his favour in the counte-
nance of fortune, or whatever it was that had enabled
him to make the girl his prisoner and bring her here, bade
fair to prove his salvation.
Deep in Lanyard's consciousness an echo stirred of
half-forgotten words: “Vengeance is mine
The sense of frustration brewed a hopelessness as stark
as that of a brow-beaten child. A blackness seemed to be
settling down upon his faculties. A mist wavered mo-
mentarily before his eyes. He gulped convulsively,
swallowing what had almost been a sob.
But he spoke in a voice positively dispassionate.
"Keep your hands up.
Lanyard removed and pocketed the key, crossed to
the middle of the room without once letting his gaze
waver from the face of the Prussian, passed behind him,
planted the muzzle of the pistol beneath Ekstrom's
shoulder-blade, and methodically searched him, finding
and putting aside on the desk one automatic, nothing
else.
"Stand aside!"
The almost puerile measure of his disappointment was
betrayed in the thrust with which he shouldered Ekstrom


THE FALSE FACES
287
exultation had transfigured his countenance on com-
prehension of Lanyard's purpose: thanks to the silly
scruples of this animal, one more chance for life was
granted him.
Nor would the Prussian give an inch when Lanyard
paused, confronting him squarely, within arm's length.
“Ekstrom," the adventurer began in a voice lacking
perceptible inflection
“what is between you
and me needs no recounting. You know it too well-I
likewise. It is my wish and my intention to kill you with
my two hands. Nothing can prevent that, not even
what you count upon, my reluctance to you incom-
prehensible—to commit an act of violence in the presence
of a woman. But because Miss Brooke is here, because
you have brought her here by force, because you are
what you are and so have treated her insolently
before we come to our final accounting, you shall get
down upon your knees and ask her pardon."
He saw no yielding in the eyes of the Prussian, only
arrogance; and when he paused, he was answered in one
phrase of the gutters of Berlin, couched in the imagery of
its lowest boozing-kens, so unspeakably vile in essence
and application that Lanyard heard it with an incredulity
almost stupefying-almost, not altogether.
It was barely spoken when those lips that framed it
were crushed by a blow of such lightning delivery that,
though he must have been prepared for it, Ekstrom's
guard was still lowered as he reeled back, lost footing,
and went to his knees.
Panting, snarling, uttering teeth and blasphemy, the
Prussian recoiled like a serpent, gathered himself together,
.


288
THE FALSE FACES
and launched headlong at Lanyard, only to be met full
tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless
than its predecessor, beating him down once more.
This time Lanyard did not wait for him to come back
for punishment, but closed in, catching him as he strove
to rise, meeting each fresh effort with ruthless accuracy,
battering him into insanity of despair, so that Ekstrom
came back again and again without thought, animated
only by frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his
tormenter, and ever and ever failing; till at length he
crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then subsided
into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs
and the spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ensan-
guined fingers.
With a start, a broken sigh, a slight movement of the
hand interpreting a crushing sense of the futility of
human passion, Lanyard relaxed, drew back from stand-
ing over his antagonist, abstractedly found a handker-
chief and dried his hands, of a sudden so inexpressibly
shamed and degraded in his own sight that he dared not
look the girl's way, but stood with hang-dog air, avoiding
her regard.
Yet, could he have mustered up heart, he might have
surprised in her eyes a light to lift him out from this
slough of humiliation, to obliterate chagrin in a flood of
wonder and misgivings.
When, however, he did after a moment turn to her,
that look was gone, replaced by one that reflected some-
thing of his own apprehension; for a heavy hand was
hammering on the study door, and more than one voice
on the other side was calling on “Karl” to open.


THE FALSE FACES
289
Either the servant whom Lanyard had met and vic-
timised on his way downstairs had given the alarm, or
else the noise of the encounter within the study had
brought that pack of spies to the door, wildly demanding
admission.
Steadied by one swift exchange of alarmed glances with
the girl, Lanyard hastily reviewed the room, seeking some
avenue of escape. None offered but the windows. He
ran to them, tore back their draperies, and found them
closed with shutters of steel and padlocked.
Simultaneously the din at the door redoubled.
With a worried shake Lanyard crossed to the chimney-
piece, ducked his head, and stepped into its huge fire-
place. One upward glance sufficed to dash his hopes:
here was no way out, arduous though feasible; immedi-
ately above the fireplace the flue narrowed so that not
even the most active man of normal stature might hope
to negotiate its ascent.
He returned with only a gesture of disconcertion to
answer the girl's look of appeal.
“Can we do nothing?" she asked, raising her voice a
trifle to make it heard above the tumult in the corridor.
"There's no help for it, I'm afraid,” he said, going to
the desk and taking up the pistols—"nothing to do but
shoot our way out, if we can. Take this," he added,
offering her one of the weapons, which she accepted with-
out spirit. "If you can't get your own consent to use it,
give it to me when I've emptied the other."
She breathed a dismayed “Yes
and won-
deringly consulted his face, since he did not stir other
.


290
THE FALSE FACES
than thoughtfully to replace his pistol on the desk, then
stood staring at his soot-smeared palms.
“What is it?" she demanded nervously. "Why do
you hesitate?”
As one fretted by inconsequential questions, he merely
shook his head, glancing sidelong once at the unconscious
Prussian, again with calculation toward the door.
This he saw quivering under repeated blows.
With brusque decision he said: "Get a chair-brace it
beneath the door-knob, please!”—and leaving her with-
out more explanation turned back to the fireplace.
Motionless, in dumb confusion, the girl stood staring
after him till roused by a blow of such splintering force as
to suggest that an axe had been brought into play upon
the door, then ran to a ponderous club chair and with
considerable exertion managed to trundle it to the door
and tip it over, wedging its back beneath the knob.
By this time it had become indisputably patent that
an axe was battering the panels. But the door, in
character with the room, was a substantial piece of work-
manship and needed more than a few blows, even of an
axe, to break down its barrier of solid oak.
She looked round to discover Lanyard kneeling beside
Ekstrom, insanely—so it seemed to the girl-engaged in
blackening the upper half of the man's face with a hand-
ful of soot.
Unconsciously uttering a little cry of distress she sped
to his side and caught his shoulder with an importunate
hand.
"In Heaven's name, Monsieur Duchemin, what are you
doing? Is this a time for childishness"


294
THE FALSE FACES
there, we might've had a lot more difficulty raiding this
joint.”
Quickly he wound an arm round the waist of Cecelia
Brooke when, without warning, she swayed blindly and
would have fallen.
“Here, now!” he protested. “That's no way to do.
Why, she's flickered out! Well, Monsieur
Duchemin-Lanyard-Ember, to a man up a tree this looks
like your job. You take this little lady off my hands and
see her home, and I'll just naturally try and finish what
I started-or what you did. For, son, I got to give you
credit: you sure are one grand li'l trouble-hound!”


XXI
QUESTION
T
HROUGH the breathing hush of that dark hour
which foreruns the dawn, that hour in which the
head that knows a wakeful pillow is prone to
sudden and disquieting apprehension of its insignificance
and it's soul's dread isolation, the cab sped swiftly south
upon the Avenue, shadowed reaches of the park upon
its right, upon its left the dull, tired faces of those homes
whose tenants lay wrapped in the cotton-wool of riches.
The rain had ceased. A little wind was blowing up.
There was a fresh smell in the air. Sidewalks began to
be maculated with spreading areas of dryness, but the
roadway was still wet and shining, the wide black mirror
of a myriad lights.
Through the windows of the speeding cab an orderly
procession of street lamps, marching past, threw each
its fugitive and pallid glimmer. Periods of modified
darkness intervened, when the face of the girl in her
corner seemed a vision subtle and wraithlike. But
ever the recurrent lights revealed her sweetly incarnate
if deep in enervation of crushing weariness.
Once she stirred and sighed profoundly; and Lanyard,
bending toward her, asked if he could be in any way of
service.
replied in an undertone scarcely better than a
whisper: "Thank you, I am quite comfortable.
Please what time is it?"
295


296
THE FALSE FACES
The cab was passing Sixtieth Street. Lanyard caught
a fleeting glimpse of a street clock with a dial like a
little golden moon.
“It's just four.”
"Thank you
.
“Very tired?”
“Very
He had the maddest notion that her head inclined
to droop toward his shoulder. Perhaps the motion of the
cab. If so, she recovered easily.
“Can I do anything?”
“No, thank you, only
An ungloved hand
stirred from her lap and for the merest instant rested
lightly above his own, or hovered rather, barely touching
it with a touch tenuous and elusive, no sooner realised
than gone. “I mean,” she murmured, "I am a bit too
overwrought, too tired, to talk."
"I quite understand,” he said. “Please forget I'm
here: just rest."
Perhaps she smiled drowsily. Or was that, too, a
freak of his imagination? Lanyard assured himself it
was, in excess of consideration even tried to persuade
himself he had dreamed that ghost of a caress upon his
hand. It seemed so little like her.
Not that anything had happened more than a gesture
of transient inadvertence due to fatigue. It could not
have been intentional, that act of intimacy, when the
girl was altogether engrossed in young Thackeray.
There was something one must not forget, something
that gave the lie flatly to that innuendo of the Wering-
rode's. Ignorant of the circumstances the intrigante
>>
.


THE FALSE FACES
297
had leaped blindly at conclusions, after the habit of her
kind.
True, Sophie had not implied that this girl cared for
him, but vice versa: either supposition, however, was
as absurd as the other. As if Lanyard could love a
woman who loved another! As if the name of love
meant aught to him but the memory of a sweetness like
a vagrant air of Spring that had breathed fitfully for a
season upon the Winter of his heart!
A corner of Lanyard's mouth lifted in a sneer. That
precious heart of his! the heart of a thief upon which
even now the fruits of his thieving weighed
Irritated, he wrenched his thoughts into another
channel, and began to piece together inconsecutive
snatches of information gained from Crane in the con-
fusion of the quarter hour just past, while the Secret
Service operatives were busy rounding up the inmates
of that spy-fold and searching for evidences of their
impudent activities.
It appeared that Washington had at length, however
tardily, roused out of its inertia and at midnight had
Lelegraphed instructions to arrest out of hand every
enemy alien in the land against whom there was evidence
of conspiracy or even a ponderable suspicion.
So unexpected was this order that Crane had volun-
teered to show Cecelia Brooke that midnight rendez-
vous of the Prussian spy system without the least notion
that he might be required before morning to lead a
raiding force against the establishment; and even when
a messenger stopped him as he turned to enter Au
Printemps, he was not advised concerning the cause of


298
THE FALSE FACES
this demand for his immediate presence at headquarters.
The first cast of what Crane aptly termed the drag-net
had brought in the management and service staff to
man, with a number of the restaurant's habitués, in-
cluding Sophie Wericgrode and her errand-boy, the ex-
quisite Mr. Revel.
Velasco, however, had somehow mysteriously managed
to slip through the meshes and had straightway hastened
to spread the alarm.
As for O'Reilly and Dressler, they had left with
Ekstrom in pursuit of Lanyard less than five minutes
before, and so had escaped not only arrest but all knowl-
edge of the raid prior to their return to Seventy-ninth
Street.
The second cast of the net had been made at the latter
place as soon as the watchers were able to assure Crane
that Ekstrom and O'Reilly had returned-Dressler hav-
ing anticipated them there by something like half an
hour.
By daybreak, then, these gentry would be interned on
Ellis Island.
And break of day impended visibly in grayish shades
that stole westward through the cross-town streets like
clouds of secret agents spying out the city against in-
vasion by the serried lances of the sun.
A garish twilight washed Forty-second Street from
wall to wall by the time the car swung round in front of
the Knickerbocker. As yet, however, there was little
evidence that the town was growing restive in its sleep
with premonition of the ardour of another day.
Lanyard stepped down and offered the girl a hand in
.


THE FALSE FACES
299
whose palm her slender fingers rested lightly for an in-
stant ere she passed on, while he turned to bid the driver
wait. Following, he overtook her in the entrance, where
by tacit consent both paused and lingered in an odd
constraint. There was so much to be said that was
impossible to say just then.
Visibly the woman drooped, betraying physical exhaus-
tion in every line of her pose, seeming scarcely strong
enough to lift the silken lashes that trembled upon
cheeks a little drawn and pale, with the faintest of bluish
rings beneath the eyes.
“I must not keep you,” Lanyard broke the silence.
"I merely wished to say good-night and ... I am
sorry.”
“Sorry?" she echoed.
“That you had such an unhappy experience,” he ex-
plained—“thanks to your thoughtfulness for me. I do
not deserve so much consideration; and that only makes
me feel all the more regretful.”
“It was silly of me,” she admitted with a shadowy, rue-
ful smile. “I'm afraid my silliness makes too much
trouble
He commented honestly: "I don't understand.”
“If I had only been patient enough to wait for you to
1
call me
.
.
“Forgive that oversight. I was pressed for time, as
you may imagine."
“Oh, it all comes back to my own stupidity. I might
have known you had come through all right.”
“How should you?”
“Why not?-when you turn up here in New York safe


THE FALSE FACES
301
bruised and sore, and scared beyond intelligible expres-
sion.
Freeing him and salving his injuries bodily and
spiritual with a liberal douceur, Lanyard exacted an
oath of silence, then turned him out.
He had approximately five hours to put in somehow
before his appointment with Colonel Stanistreet at nine,
and was too well versed in the lore of late hours to think
of giving any part of that time to sleep. By so doing he
would only insure a mutinous awakening, with mind and
body sluggish and unrested. If, on the other hand, he re-
mained awake, he would go to that interview in a state of
supernormal animation exceedingly to be desired if he
were to round out this adventure without discredit.
For its end was not yet. He had still a part to play
whose lines were not yet written, whose business re-
mained to be invented. He neither dared shirk that
appointment, for reasons of policy, nor wished to, while
there remained reparation to be accomplished, a wrong
to be righted, justice to be done, a question to be an-
swered.
Only when these matters had been put in order would
he feel his honour discharged of its burdens, himself free
once more to drop out and go in peace his lonely ways in
life, ways henceforth to be both lonely and aimless.
For, when he strove to peer into the future, only an
emptiness confronted him. With Ekstrom accounted
for finally and forevermore, there was nothing to come
but the final accounting of the Lone Wolf with that civ-
ilization which had bred and suffered him.
One way presented itself to make that reckoning even.


302
THE FALSE FACES
The Foreign Legion of France asks no embarrassing
questions of its recruits, and enlistment in its ranks
offers with anonymity a consoling certainty.
Thus alone might he find his way home to the heart of
that enigma whence he had emerged, a nameless waif
astray in grim Parisian by-ways.
This vision of his end contenting him, he began to
scheme a campaign for the day that was simple enough
in prospect: a little chicanery with Stanistreet, a per-
sonal appeal to Crane to restore the passports of Mon-
sieur André Duchemin which must have been found on
Ekstrom's body, a berth on some steamer sailing for
Europe, then the last evanishment.
One detail alone troubled him, his promise to the
Brooke girl that she should dine with him that night.
Reminded of this obligation, figuratively he seized
Michael Lanyard by the scruff of his neck and shook him
with a savage hand. What insensate folly was ever his,
what want of wit and strength to keep out of tempta-
tion's ways! Why must he have fallen in so readily with
her suggestion? Why this infatuate thirst for sympathy,
this eagerness to violate the seals of reticence at the wish
of a strange woman? Was there any reasonable explana-
tion of the strange lack of his wonted self-sufficiency in
the company of Cecelia Brooke?
No matter. If he might not contrive somehow to
squirm out of that engagement, he could at all events
school himself to decent reticence. He promised himself
to make his account of the submarine adventure drearily
bald and trite, to minimize to the last degree his part


THE FALSE FACES
303
therein, above all things to refrain from painting the
Lone Wolf in romantic colours.
She was much too good a sort, too straight, sincere,
fair-minded, honest—the sort of girl who deserved the
Thackeray sort of man, never a thief.
If she even dreamed
Lanyard brought forth from its hiding place the neck-
lace, weighed it in his hand, examined it minutely.
Granting its marvellous perfection, he recognized no
more its beauty, dispassionately reviewed in turn each
stone of matchless loveliness, no more susceptible to their
seductive purity, perceiving in them nothing but hard,
bright, translucent pebbles, cold, soulless, cruel.
One by one they slipped through his fingers like beads
of an unholy rosary.
At length, crushing them together in the hollow of his
palm, he stood a while in thought, then turning to his
writing-desk bundled the necklace in wrappings of white
tissue secured with rubber bands, counted carefully the
sheaf of þills he had taken from Ekstrom, sealed the
whole amount in a plain, long envelope, and put this
aside in company with the necklace.
Already two hours had passed and, since he meant to
call at the house on West End Avenue well in advance of
the hour when Cecelia Brooke might be there--presuming
Blensop to have given her the same appointment as he
had given "Mr. Ember," that is, nine o'clock-it was
now time to prepare.
Returning to his bedchamber, he laid out a carefully
selected change of clothing, shaved, parboiled himself in
a hot bath, chilled him to the pith in one of icy coldness,


(304
THE FALSE FACES
and dressed with scrupulous heed to detail, studiously
effacing every sign of his sleepless night.
That experience was in no way to be surmised from his
appearance when he sallied forth to breakfast at the
Plaza.
At eight precisely, presenting himself at the Stanistreet
residence, be desired the footman to announce him as the
author of a certain telegram from Edgartown.
He was obliged to wait less than a minute, the footman
returning in haste to request him to step into the library.
This apartment—which he found much as he had last
seen it, eight hours ago, its window shattered, the por-
tières down, the furniture in some disorder—was, on his
introduction, occupied by two persons, one an elderly,
iron-gray gentleman of untidy dress and unobtrusive
habit in spite of a discerning cool, gray eye, the other
Mr. Blensop in the neatest of one-button morning-coat
effects, with striped trouserings neither too smart nor
too sober for that state of life unto which it had pleased
God to call him, and fair white spats.
If his attire was radiant, so was the temper of the
secretary sunny. He tripped forward in sprightliest
fashion, offering cordial hands to the caller till he recog-
nized him, and even then was discountenanced only for
the briefest moment.
“My dear Mr. Ember!” he purred soothingly—“why
didn't you tell me last night it was you who had sent that
telegram? If I had for a moment suspected the truth
you should have had your appointment with Colonel
Stanistreet at any hour you might have cared to name, no
matter how ungodly!"


THE FALSE FACES
305
Lanyard bowed gravely. “Thank you,” he said.
"And Colonel Stanistreet?"
“Is just finishing breakfast. He will be down directly.
Please be seated, make yourself entirely at ease. And
will you excuse me -?"
“With pleasure,” Lanyard assured him, his gravity
unbroken.
A doubt clouded Mr. Blensop's bright eyes, but its
transit was instantaneous. He turned forthwith to join
the iron-gray man before the portrait which concealed
the safe.
“And now, Mr. Stone,” said Mr. Blensop, with
indulgence.
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Stone quietly, “if you'll be good
enough to show me how this contraption works, maybe
I'll find out something interesting, maybe not.”
Mr. Blensop proceeded to oblige by operating the lever
and sliding aside the portrait.
“Thanks,” said Mr. Stone, producing a magnifying
glass from a waistcoat pocket and beginning to peer
myopically at the face of the safe. “I take it nobody's
been pawing over this since the late, as you might say,
unpleasantness?”
"Not a soul has touched it. By Colonel Stanistreet's
order it was covered as soon as we found it had been
tampered with."
“Um-m,” Mr. Stone acknowledged, bending close to
his work.
Partially, perhaps, by way of administering an urbane
rebuke to Lanyard for his readiness to dispense with his
society, Mr. Blensop remained in the neighbourhood


306
THE FALSE FACES
of Mr. Stone, hovering round him like a domesticated
humming-bird.
“Do you find anything?” he enquired, when Stone
straightened up.
“Fingerprints a-plenty,” Mr. Stone admitted with a
hint of temper-"a slew of the damn things. Looks like
you must've called in the neighbours to help make a good
show. However, we'll see what we can make of 'em."
He conjured from some recess in his clothing a squat
bottle, from another a stopper in which was fitted a blow-
pipe, joined the two together, approached the safe with
one end of the pipe between his lips and sprayed it with
a thin film of white powder, the contents of the bottle.
"I say, do tell me what that's for?”
"That,” said Mr. Stone patiently, "is to make the
fingerprints stand out, so we can get a good likeness of
'em.”
He put the bottle aside, blinked at the safe approv-
ingly, and by further exercise of powers of legerdemain
materialized a pocket kodak and a flashlight pistol.
"Can't I help you?” Blensop offered eagerly. “I used
to be rather a dab at amateur photography, you know.”
“Well, I'm kind of stuck on pressing the button my-
self,” Stone confessed, adjusting the focus. “But if you
want to work that flashlight, I don't mind.”
“Delighted," Mr. Blensop asserted. “How does it go,
now?"
“Like this.” Stone set his camera down to demon-
strate. "Now just stand behind me," he concluded,
“and pull the trigger when I say ‘now'.”
"I'll do my best, but-I say--will it bang?”


XXN
CHICANE
C
NOLONEL STANISTREET put down the last of
the papers and slapped his hand upon it resound-
ingly.
“This is one of the most remarkable collections of data,
I venture to assert, that has ever come into the hands of
the British Government. Have you any idea of its
value?”
Lanyard lifted a whimsical eyebrow. "Some,” he
admitted drily.
“And what do you ask for it, sir?”
“Nothing."
The gaze of the Englishman bored into his eyes; but he
met their challenge with an unshaken countenance,
smiling.
“My dear sir,” Stanistreet demanded"who are
you?”
“The name under which I sailed for New York on
board the Assyrian,” Lanyard announced quietly,
“was André Duchemin."
Disturbed by a startled exclamation, together with a
sound of shuffling and a slight thump, he looked round in
mild curiosity to see Blensop staggered and astare, stand-
ing over a litter of documents which had slipped from
his grasp to the floor. Mastering his emotion quickly
enough, the secretary knelt with a mumbled apology and
began to pick up the papers.
311


THE FALSE FACES
313
of the Assyrian disaster, among others Mr. Sherry, the
second officer, Mr. Crane of the United States Secret
Service, and a countrywoman of yours, a Miss Cecelia
Brooke, whose acquaintance I was fortunate enough to
make.”
Stanistreet nodded heavily, and consulted his watch.
“Miss Brooke," he said, "should be here shortly. Blen-
sop made an appointment with her last night, which I
confirmed by telephone this morning."
“Then, with permission, I shall remain and ask her to
vouch for me,” Lanyard suggested in resignation, since
it appeared he was not to be permitted to escape this
girl, that destiny was not yet finished with their entangle-
ment.
“I shall be glad if you will, sir.
Monsieur
Duchemin," Stanistreet began, but hesitated—"or do
you prefer another style?”
"I am content with Duchemin."
“That is a matter for your own discretion, but I should
warn you it may already have acquired an evil odour on
this side. To my knowledge it has been used within the
last twenty-four hours, and the pretensions of its wearer
supported by your stolen credentials.”
"I am not surprised,” Lanyard stated reflectively.
“A chap with a beard, perhaps?”
"Why, yes
"Anderson,” the adventurer nodded: "that, at least,
was his alias when he jockeyed himself into the second
steward's berth aboard the Assyrian.
He glanced idly across the room, discovered Blensop
once more at pause in a stare, and grinned amiably.


THE FALSE FACES
315
"Simply enough. Miss Brooke requested me to take
care of it for her."
The eyes of the Englishman grew stony. “Miss
Brooke!” he repeated testily. “I don't understand.”
"It was a document—I do not seek to know its nature
from you, sir-of vital importance in this present crisis,
with the United States newly entered into the war.”
Stanistreet affirmed with an inclination of his head.
"I may tell you this much, Monsieur Duchemin: if it
had not reached this country safely
What am
I saying? If it be not recovered without delay, the
chances of America's early and efficient participation in
the war will suffer a tremendous setback.
Blensop, be good enough to call up the American Secret
Service at once and ask whether the document in question
was found on the body of this--ah-Ekstrom."
"Pardon," Lanyard interposed as Blensop hesitantly
approached the telephone. "It would be a waste of
time. I happen to know, because I was there, that no
such document was found on Ekstrom's body.”
"The devil!" Stanistreet grumbled. “What can have
become of it? This business grows only the blacker the
deeper one seeks to fathom it. I must own myself com-
pletely at a loss. How it came into the hands of Miss
Brooke
"I can explain that, I think. The document was in
the care of two gentlemen, Mr. Bartholomew and Lieu-
tenant Thackeray. The former was murdered by the
Huns in search of it, Lieutenant Thackeray murderously
assaulted. But for Miss Brooke's intervention the
assassins must have succeeded. As it was, the young


THE FALSE FACES.
817
.
.
His thick, spatulate fingers of an executive drummed
heavily upon the desk.
Stone's figure darkened the windows.
“Colonel Stanistreet?” he called diffidently.
"Yes, Mr. Stone?"
“There's something here I'd like to consult you about,
sir, if you can spare a minute."
“Certainly.” The Englishman rose. “If you will
excuse me, Monsieur Duchemin
.” Half way to
the windows he hesitated. "By the bye, Blensop, I wish
you'd call up Apthorp and ask after Howson's condition."
“Very good, sir,” Blensop intoned cheerfully.
"And do it without delay, please. I don't like to
think of the poor fellow suffering."
"Immediately, sir."
As his employer passed out into the garden with Stone,
the secretary discontinued his checking and came over
to the desk, drawing up a chair and sitting down to
telephone. At the same time Lanyard got up and began
to pace thoughtfully to and fro.
“Howson is the wounded night watchman, I take it,
Mr. Blensop?"
“Yes an excellent fellow.
Schuyler nine,
three hundred,” Blensop cooed into the transmitter.
Conceivably that ostensible discomfiture whose symp-
toms Lanyard had remarked had been a transitory
humour. Mr. Blensop was now in what seemed the
most equable and blithe of tempers. His very posture
at the telephone eloquently betokened as much: he had
thrown himself into the chair with picturesque non-
chalance, sitting with body half turned from the desk, his


318
THE FALSE FACES
right hand holding the receiver to his ear, his left thrust
carelessly into his trouser pocket, thus dragging back the
lapel of that impeccable morning-coat and exposing the
bright cap of his gold-mounted fountain pen.
Something in that implement seemed to possess for
Lanyard overpowering fascination. His gaze yearned
for it, returned again and again to it.
He changed his course to stroll up and down behind
Blensop, between him and the safe.
"I understood Colonel Stanistreet to say the watchman
was not seriously injured, I believe," he observed, with
interest.
"Shot through the shoulder, that is all.
Schuyler nine, three hundred? Dr. Apthorp, please.
This is Mr. Blensop speaking, secretary to Colonel
Stanistreet.
Are you there, Dr. Apthorp?”
With professional dexterity Lanyard en passant
dropped a hand over the young man's shoulder and
lightly lifted the pen from its place in the pocket of
Blensop's waistcoat; the even tempo of his step un-
broken, he tossed it toward the safe, where it fell without
sound upon a heavy Persian rug.
“Yes about Howson," the musical accents continued.
"Colonel Stanistreet is most solicitous
Swiftly Lanyard moved toward the safe, glanced
through the French windows to assure himself that
Stanistreet and Stone were safely preoccupied, whipped
out the envelope he had prepared, and thrust it into a
file of papers which did not crowd its pigeonhole; accom-
plishing the complete manœuvre with such adroitness
.


THE FALSE FACES
319
that, like the business of the pen, it passed utterly with-
out the knowledge of the secretary.
“Thank you so much. Good morning, Dr. Apthorp.”
Lanyard was passing the desk when Blensop rose, and
the footman was entering with his salver.
"A lady to see Colonel Stanistreet, sir-by appoint-
ment, she says."
Blensop glanced at the card. At the same time Stani-
street came in from the garden, leaving Stone to potter
about visibly in the distance.
“Miss Brooke is here, sir,” the secretary announced.
“Ask her to come in, please.”
The footman retired.
“Howson is resting easily, Dr. Apthorp reports,” Blen-
sop added, going back to the safe. "Has Stone turned
up anything of interest, sir?”
“Footprints,” Stanistreet replied with a snort of
moderate impatience. "He's quite upset since I've in-
formed him the man who made them is-
“Good God!”
The interruption was Blensop's in a voice strangely
out of tune. Stanistreet wheeled sharply upon him.
“What the deuce!" he snapped.
By every indication the secretary had suffered the
most severe shock of his experience. His face was
ghastly, his eyes vacant; his knees shook beneath him;
one hand pressed convulsively the bosom of his waist-
coat. His endeavours to reply evoked only a husky,
rattling sound.
“What the devil has come over you?" Stanistreet
insisted.


322
THE FALSE FACES
“Well, monsieur: the application of your adage?”
“Colonel Stanistreet, what would you think if I were to
tell you the combination of your safe?"
“I should be inclined to suspect that you were the
devil,” Stanistreet chuckled.
“By all accounts a gentleman of intelligence: one is
flattered.
Very well: I proceed to demonstrate
black art with the aid of this white paper pad. The com-
bination, monsieur, is as follows: nine, twenty-seven,
eighteen, thirty-six."
A low cry of bewilderment greeted this announcement.
Blensop had drawn near and was eyeing Lanyard as if
under the influence of hypnotism.
"How-how do you know that?” he asked in a
broken voice.
“Clairvoyance, Mr. Blensop. I seem to see, as I hold
this pad, somebody writing upon it the combination for
the information of another who had no right to have it-
somebody using a pencil with a hard lead, Mr. Blensop;
which was very foolish of him, since it made a distinct
impression on the under sheet. So you see my magic
is rather colourless, after all.
Now, a wiser
man, Mr. Blensop, would have used a pen, a fountain
pen by preference, with a soft gold nib, well broken.
That would leave no impression. If you will lend me
the beautiful pen I observe in your pocket, I will give a
further demonstration."
The eyes of the secretary shifted wildly. He hesi-
tated, moistening dry lips with the tip of a nervous
tongue.
“And don't try to get out of it, Mr. Blensop, because I


THE FALSE FACES
323
am armed and don't mean to let you escape. Besides,
that good Mr. Stone patrols the garden.” Lanyard's
tone changed to one of command. “That pen, mon-
sieur!"
Blensop's hand faltered to his waist-coat pocket,
hesitated, withdrew, and feebly extended the pen.
“I think you are the devil,” he stammered in an under-
tone-"the devil himself!"
Deftly unscrewing the pen-point, Lanyard inverted the
barrel above the desk.
The cylinder of paper dropped out.
“And now, Colonel Stanistreet, if you will call Mr.
Stone and have this traitor removed


XXIII
AMNESTY
WF
THEN Stanistreet had gone out in company
with Stone, and the broken, weeping Blensop,
ending a scene indescribably painful, a juli
almost as uncomfortable to Lanyard ensued,
Then-"How did you guess ? Cecelia Brooke asked
in wonder.
Discountenanced by the admiration glowingin her eyes,
Lanyard stood fumbling with the disjointed members of
Blensop's pen.
"Do not give me too much credit," he depreciated:
“anybody acquainted with that roll of paper could have
guessed that an empty fountain pen would furnish an
ideal place of concealment for it. Moreover, just before
you came in, that traitor missed his pen, and his con-
sternation betrayed him beyond more doubt to one whose
distrust was already astir. As for the other, it was true:
Blensop did write down the combination on this pad,
using a pencil with a hard lead; the marks are very
plain.”
“But for whose use?”
"Ekstrom-Anderson-was here last night, and saw
Blensop alone. Colonel Stanistreet was not at home.
Knowing what we know now, that Blensop was a crea-
ture of the German system here, bought body, soul, and
conscience through its studied pandering to his vices,
we know he could not well have refused to surrender the
combination on demand.”
324


326
THE FALSE FACES
"I have a whim to take the air in this garden. Will
you accompany me?”
"Why not?"
As she led the way through the French windows, he
noted with deeper misgivings how her action matched
the temper of her voice, how she seemed to-day more
deliciously alive and happier than any common mortal.
So light her heart! And all since she had found him
here!
At his wits' ends, he conceded now what he had so
long denied. With all her wit and wisdom, with all her
charm of beauty, winsomeness, and breeding, with all
her ingrained love of truth and honesty, she was no more
than Nature had meant her to be, a woman with woman's
weakness for the man she must admire. She liked him,
divined in him latent qualities somehow excellent.
Something in him worked upon her imagination, some-
thing, no doubt, in the overcoloured, romantic yarns
current about the Lone Wolf, and so had touched her
heart. She liked him too well already, and she was
willing to like him better.
But that must never be. He must rend ruthlessly
apart this illusion of romance with which she chose to
transfigure the prowling parasite of night, the sneaking
thief
The garden was sweet with the bright promise of
Spring. A few weeks more, and its formal walks would
wend a riot of flowers. Now its sunlight made amends
for what it lacked in beauty of growing things; and its
air was warm and fragrant and still in the shelter of the
red-brick walls.


THE FALSE FACES
327
Midway down that walk, by the side of which a thief
had skulked nine hours ago, near that door whose lock had
yielded to his cunning keys, the girl paused and con-
fronted Lanyard spiritedly as he came up with heavy
step and hang-dog head.
“Well, monsieur?” she demanded. “Do you mean to
tantalize me longer with your reticence?”
But something in the haggard eyes he showed her made
the girl catch her breath.
"What is it?" she cried anxiously. "Monsieur
Duchemin, what is your trouble?”
"Only this truth that I must tell you," he said bit-
terly: "I merely played a part back there, just now.
There was neither wit nor guess-work in that business;
once I had seen Blensop's panic over the fancied loss of his
pen, the rest was knowledge. I saw him and Ekstrom
together last night-skulking in those windows, I
watched them; and though in my denseness I didn't
understand, I saw him write upon that pad, tear off and
give the sheet to Ekstrom. And I knew Ekstrom had
not succeeded in stealing back what he had sold to
Colonel Stanistreet, knew he was guiltless in fact if not
in deed.”
“But-how could you know that?”
“Because I was there, in the room, when he entered
it after it had been shut up for the night."
Conscious of her hands that fluttered like wounded
things to her bosom, he looked away in misery.
“What were you doing there?” she whispered in the
end.
“Trying to find that paper, which I had seen


THE FALSE FACES
329
“Because it isn't fair to represent myself as what I am
not, mademoiselle. Once a thief, always
“No! It isn't true!"
“Again I am sorry, but I know. You have been most
generous to believe in me. If anything could save me
from myself, it would be your confidence. That, I pre-
sume, is why I felt called upon to undo my thieving, and
make good the loss. The money Colonel Stanistreet
paid Ekstrom is now in the safe, back there in the library.
The necklace is
here."
Blindly he thrust the tissue packet into her hands.
“If
you will consent to return it to its owner, when I
have gone, I shall be most grateful.”
Her hands shook so that, when she would open the
packet, it escaped her grasp and dropped into a little
pool of rain-water which had collected in a hollow of the
walk. Lanyard picked it up, stripped off the soiled and
sodden paper, dried the necklace with his handkerchief,
replaced it in her hand.
He heard the deep intake of her breath as she recog-
nized its beauty, then her quavering voice: "You give
this back because of me
"Because I cannot be an ingrate. I know no other
way to prove how I have prized your faith in me.
And now, with your leave, I will go away quietly by this
garden gate
"No-please, no!"
“But-
“I have more to say to you. It isn't fair of you to go
like this, when I-"
She interrupted herself, and when next she spoke he


THE FALSE FACES
331
"Excuse me!" he said suddenly. "I got to tell the
colonel something."
He got lankily into motion and presently passed in
through the windows.
Irresistibly her gaze drew Lanyard's. He lifted care-
worn eyes and realized her with a great wistfulness upon
him.
She awaited in silence his verdict, her chin proudly
high, her face adorably flushed, her shining eyes level and
brave to his, her generous hands outstretched.
"Must you go now?” she said tenderly, as he stood
hesitant and shamed. "Must you go now, my dear?”
THE END
THE COUNTRY LITE PERSS. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK









Date Due
NOT271
OCT 270
Demco 38-297
89006525091
b8900E525091 a


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