Lanyard indicated the direction: “Two blocks that way.”
“Thank you.” She advanced a step or two, but paused again. “Do you know, possibly, just where I could find a taxicab?”
“I’m afraid you won’t find any hereabouts at this hour,” he replied. “A fiacre, perhaps—with luck: I doubt if there’s one disengaged nearer than Montmartre, where business is apt to be more brisk.”
“Oh!” she cried in dismay. “I hadn’t thought of that. … I thought Paris never went to sleep!”
“Only about three hours earlier than most of the world’s capitals. … But perhaps I can advise you—”
“If you would be so kind! Only, I don’t like to be a nuisance—”
He smiled deceptively: “Don’t worry about that. Where do you wish to go?”
“To the Gare du Nord.”
That made him open his eyes. “The Gare du Nord!” he echoed. “But—I beg your pardon—”
“I wish to take the first train for London,” the girl informed him calmly.
“You’ll have a while to wait,” Lanyard suggested. “The first train leaves about half-past eight, and it’s now not more than five.”
“That can’t be helped. I can wait in the station.”
He shrugged: that was her own lookout—if she were sincere in asserting that she meant to leave Paris; something which he took the liberty of doubting.
“You can reach it by the Métro,” he suggested—“the Underground, you know; there’s a station handy—St. Germain des Prés. If you like, I’ll show you the way.”
Her relief seemed so genuine, he could have almost believed in it. And yet—!
“I shall be very grateful,” she murmured.
He took that for whatever worth it might assay, and quietly fell into place beside her; and in a mutual silence—perhaps largely due to her intuitive sense of his bias—they gained the boulevard St. Germain. But here, even as they emerged from the side street, that happened which again upset Lanyard’s plans: a belated fiacre hove up out of the mist and ranged alongside, its driver loudly soliciting patronage.
Beneath his breath Lanyard cursed the man liberally, nothing could have been more inopportune; he needed that uncouth conveyance for his own purposes, and if only it had waited until he had piloted the girl to the station of the Métropolitain, he might have had it. Now he must either yield the cab to the girl or—share it with her. … But why not? He could readily drop out at his destination, and bid the driver continue to the Gare du Nord; and the Métro was neither quick nor direct enough for his design—which included getting under cover well before daybreak.
Somewhat sulkily, then, if without betraying his temper, he signalled the cocher, opened the door, and handed the girl in.
“If you don’t mind dropping me en route …”
“I shall be very glad,” she said … “anything to repay, even in part, the courtesy you’ve shown me!”
“Oh, please don’t fret about that. …”
He gave the driver precise directions, climbed in, and settled himself beside the girl. The whip cracked, the horse sighed, the driver swore; the aged fiacre groaned, stirred with reluctance, crawled wearily off through the thickening drizzle.
Within its body a common restraint held silence like a wall between the two.
The girl sat with face averted, reading through the window what corner signs they passed: rue Bonaparte, rue Jacob, rue des Saints Pères, Quai Malquais, Pont du Carrousel; recognizing at least one landmark in the gloomy arches of the Louvre; vaguely wondering at the inept French taste in nomenclature which had christened that vast, louring, echoing quadrangle the place du Carrousel, unliveliest of public places in her strange Parisian experience.
And in his turn, Lanyard reviewed those well-remembered ways in vast weariness of spirit—disgusted with himself in consciousness that the girl had somehow divined his distrust. …
“The Lone Wolf, eh?” he mused bitterly. “Rather, the Cornered Rat—if people only knew! Better still, the Errant—no!—the Arrant Ass!”
They were skirting the Palais Royal when suddenly she turned to him in an impulsive attempt at self-justification.
“What must you be thinking of me, Mr. Lanyard?”
He was startled: “I? Oh, don’t consider me, please. It doesn’t matter what I think—does it?”
“But you’ve been so kind; I feel I owe you at least some explanation—”
“Oh, as for that,” he countered cheerfully, “I’ve got a pretty definite notion you’re running away from your father.”
“Yes. I couldn’t stand it any longer—”
She caught herself up in full voice, as though tempted but afraid to say more. He waited briefly before offering encouragement.
“I hope I haven’t seemed impertinent. …”
“No, no!”
Than this impatient negative his pause of invitation evoked no other recognition. She had subsided into her reserve, but—he fancied—not altogether willingly.
Was it, then, possible that he had misjudged her?
“You’ve friends in London, no doubt?” he ventured.
“No—none.”
“But—”
“I shall manage very well. I shan’t be there more than a day or two—till the next steamer sails.”
“I see.” There had sounded in her tone a finality which signified desire to drop the subject. None the less, he pursued mischievously: “Permit me to wish you bon voyage, Miss Bannon … and to express my regret that circumstances have conspired to change your plans.”
She was still eyeing him askance, dubiously, as if weighing the question of his acquaintance with her plans, when the fiacre lumbered from the rue Vivienne into the place de la Bourse, rounded that frowning pile, and drew up on its north side before the blue lights of the all-night telegraph bureau.
“With permission,” Lanyard said, unlatching the door, “I’ll stop off here. But I’ll direct the cocher very carefully to the Gare du Nord. Please don’t even tip him—that’s my affair. No—not another word of thanks; to have been permitted to be of service—it is a unique pleasure, Miss Bannon. And so, good night!”
With an effect that seemed little less than timid, the girl offered her hand.
“Thank you, Mr. Lanyard,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I am sorry—”
But she didn’t say what it was she regretted; and Lanyard, standing with bared head in the driving mist, touched her fingers coolly, repeated his farewells, and gave the driver both money and instructions, and watched the cab lurch away before he approached the
