“You mean that? But you are magnificent, all of you! We lack only the solitary illumination of a candle-end—a grinning skull—a cup of blood upon the table—to make the farce complete! But as it is. … Messieurs, you must be rarely uncomfortable, and feeling as foolish as you look, into the bargain! Moreover, I’m no child. … Popinot, why not disembarrass your amiable features? And you, Mr. Wertheimer, I’m sure, will feel more at ease with an open countenance—as the saying runs,” he said, nodding to the man beside Popinot. “As for this gentleman,” he concluded, eyeing the third, “I haven’t the pleasure of his acquaintance.”
With a short laugh, Wertheimer unmasked and exposed a face of decidedly English type, fair and well-modelled, betraying only the faintest traces of Semitic cast to account for his surname. And with this example, Popinot snatched off his own black visor—and glared at Lanyard: in his shabby dress, the incarnate essence of bourgeoisie outraged. But the third, he of the grey lounge suit, remained motionless; only his eyes clashed coldly with the adventurer’s.
He seemed a man little if at all Lanyard’s senior, and built upon much the same lines. A close-clipped black moustache ornamented his upper lip. His chin was square and strong with character. The cut of his clothing was conspicuously neither English nor Continental.
“I don’t know you, sir,” Lanyard continued slowly, puzzled to account for a feeling of familiarity with this person, whom he could have sworn he had never met before. “But you won’t let your friends here outdo you in civility, I trust?”
“If you mean you want me to unmask, I won’t,” the other returned brusquely, in fair French but with a decided transatlantic intonation.
“American, eh?”
“Native-born, if it interests you.”
“Have I ever met you before?”
“You have not.”
“My dear Count,” Lanyard said, turning to De Morbihan, “do me the favour to introduce this gentleman.”
“Your dear Count will do nothing like that, Mr. Lanyard. If you need a name to call me by, Smith’s good enough.”
The incisive force of his enunciation assorted consistently with the general habit of the man. Lanyard recognized a nature no more pliable than his own. Idle to waste time bickering with this one. …
“It doesn’t matter,” he said shortly; and drawing back a chair, sat down. “If it did, I should insist—or else decline the honour of receiving the addresses of this cosmopolitan committee. Truly, messieurs, you flatter me. Here we have Mr. Wertheimer, representing the swell-mobsmen across Channel; Monsieur le Comte standing for the gratin of Paris; Popinot, spokesman for our friends the Apaches; and the well-known Mr. Goodenough Smith, ambassador of the gunmen of New York—no doubt. I presume one is to understand you wait upon me as representing the fine flower of the European underworld?”
“You’re to understand that I, for one, don’t relish your impudence,” the stout Popinot snapped.
“Sorry. … But I have already indicated my inability to take you seriously.”
“Why not?” the American demanded ominously. “You’d be sore enough if we took you as a joke, wouldn’t you?”
“You misapprehend, Mr.—ah—Smith: it is my first aim and wish that you do not take me in any manner, shape or form. It is you, remember, who requested this interview and—er—dressed your parts so strikingly!”
“What are we to understand by that?” De Morbihan interposed.
“This, messieurs—if you must know.” Lanyard dropped for the moment his tone of raillery and bent forward, emphasizing his points by tapping the table with a forefinger. “Through some oversight of mine or cleverness of yours—I can’t say which—perhaps both—you have succeeded in penetrating my secret. What then? You become envious of my success. In short, I stand in your light: I’m always getting away with something you might have lifted if you’d only had wit enough to think of it first. As your American accomplice, Mr. Mysterious Smith, would say, I ‘cramp your style.’ ”
“You learned that on Broadway,” the American commented shrewdly.
“Possibly. … To continue: so you get together, and bite your nails until you concoct a plan to frighten me into sharing my profits. I’ve no doubt you’re prepared to allow me to retain one-half the proceeds of my operations, should I elect to ally myself with you?”
“That’s the suggestion we are empowered to make,” De Morbihan admitted.
“In other words, you need me. You say to yourselves: ‘We’ll pretend to be the head of a criminal syndicate, such as the silly novelists are forever writing about, and we’ll threaten to put him out of business unless he comes to our terms.’ But you overlook one important fact: that you are not mentally equipped to get away with this amusing impersonation! What! Do you expect me to accept you as leading spirits of a gigantic criminal system—you, Popinot, who live by standing between the police and your murderous rats of Belleville, or you, Wertheimer, sneak-thief and blackmailer of timid women, or you, De Morbihan, because you eke out your income by showing a handful of second-storey men where to seek plunder in the homes of your friends!”
He made a gesture of impatience, and lounged back to wait the answer to this indictment. His gaze, ranging the four faces, encountered but one that was not darkly flushed with resentment; and this was the American’s.
“Aren’t you overlooking me?” this last suggested gently.
“On the contrary: I refuse to recognize you as long as you lack courage to show your face.”
“As you will, my friend,” the American chuckled. “Make your profit out of that any way you like.”
Lanyard sat up again: “Well, I’ve stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I’m to split my earnings with you, or you’ll denounce me to the police. That’s about it, isn’t it?”
“Not of necessity,” De Morbihan softly purred, twisting his moustache.
“For my part,” Popinot declared hotly, “I engage that Monsieur of the High Hand, here, will either work with us or conduct no more operations in Paris.”
“Or in New York,” the American amended.
“England is yet to be heard from,” Lanyard suggested mockingly.
To this Wertheimer replied, almost with diffidence: “If you
