Renfrew's Record (Alva, Okla.), Vol. 15, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 1916 Page: 2 of 8
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RENFREW’S RECORD, ALVA, OKLAHOMA
Can crowding events change a man’s moral nature in one round of the clock? Was it
any one event or all of them combined that made Lanyard turn his back on his former
life? As the Lone Wolf leaps into action like a flash of self-controlled light in the scenes
that follow you may find a better answer than the obvious one given by the author.
CHAPTER I.
T royon's.
Troyon's occupied a corner In a
Jungle of side streets, well withdrawn ;
from the bustle of the adjacent boule-
vards of St. Germain and St. Michel,
and in Its day was a restaurant fa-
mous with a fame Jealously guardad
by a select circle of patrons. Its
looking was the best In Paris, its cel-
lar second to none. Its rates ridicu-
lously reasonable; yet Baedeker knew
It not. And In the wisdom of those
who did know this was well; It were
a pity to loose upon so excellent an
establishment those swarms of tour-
ists that profane every temple of gas-
tronomy on the right bank of the
(Seine.
The building was of three stories,
painted a dingy drab, and trimmed
with dull-green shutters. The restau-
rant occupied almost all of the street
front of the ground floor; a blank, non-
commita) double doorway at one ex-
treme of the plate-glass windows was
seldom open and even more seldom
noticed.
A medieval maze of corridors, long
and short, complicated by many unex-
pected steps and staircases and enlg
matte doors, running every which
way. and as a rule landing one in the
wrong room, linked together some
twoscore bedchambers. TBtr<* were
Do salons or reception rooms, there
was nevei a bathroom, there wasn't
even running water aside from two
hallwny taps, one to each story.
With such accommodations the
guests of Troyon’s were well content.
One did much us one pleased there,
providing one s bill was paid with tol-
erable regularity and the hand kept
supple that operated the cordon In the
small hours of the night. PapaTroyon
came from a tribe of Innkeepers and
was liberal minded; while as for
madame. Ills wife, she cared for noth-
ing but pieces of gold.
To Troyon's on a wet winter night
In the year 1893 came .he child who,
as a man. was to call himself Michael
Lanyard, lie must have been four or
five veurB old at that time; an age at
which consciousness is Just begin-
ning to recognize its individuality and
memory registers with capricious ir-
regularity. Me arrived at the hotel
In a state of excitement Involving an
almost abnormal sensitiveness to Im-
pressions; but that was soon drowned
deep in dreamless slumber of healthy
exhaustion; ami when he came to
look back through a haze of days, of
which each had made its separate and
lmperathe demand upon his budding
emotions, he found his store of mem-
ories strangely dulled and disarticu-
late. And the child soon gave over
his instinctive, but rather inconsecu-
tive. efforts to retrace his history—
life at Troyon's furnished hint with
compelling and obliterating Interests.
Madame saw to that.
It was raadame who took charge of
the child when the strange man
dragged him crying from the cab
through a cold, damp place gloomy
with shadows and upstairs to a warm,
bright bedroom; a formidable body,
this madame, with cold eyes and
many hairy moles, who made odd
noises in her throat while she un-
dressed the little boy with the man
standing by, nolBes meant to sound
compassionate and maternal, but, to
the child at least, hopelessly other-
wise.
Then drowsiness stealing upon one
over a pillow wet with tears—ob-
livion.
And madame It was who ruled with
iron hand the strange new’ world to
which the boy awakened.
The man was gone by morning, and
the child never saw him again; but
Inasmuch as those about him under-
stood no English and lie no French,
it was some time hefo.re lie compre-
hended the false assurances of
madame that his father had gone on
a Journey, but would presently return.
The child knew positively that the
man was not his father, but when lie
was aide to make this correction the
matter had faded into insignificance—
life had become too painful to leave
time or Inclination for the adjustment
of such minor and incidental quea-
tions as that of one's parentage.
Tlie little boy soon learned to know
himself us Marcel, which wasn't Ills
name, and before long was unaware
be had ever worn another. As ho
grew older he became known as Mar-
cel Trovon; out by then lie had for
gotten how to speak English
it was a few days after his arrival
that the warm, bright bedchamber
was exchangee' for a cold dark closet
opening oiT madame's boudoir, a cup-
board furnished with a rickety cot
and a broken chair, lacking any pro-
vision for beat or light and ventilated
solely by a transom over the door; and
Inasmuch as madame shared the
French horror of drafts and so kept
her boudoir hermetically sealed nine
months of the year, the transom didn't
help matters much. But that closet
formed the hoy's sole refuge, if n pre-
carious one, through several years;
tpero alone was he ever safe from
kirks and cuffs and scoldings for
faults bugoud his comprehension tout
THE LONE WOLF
By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
\ \ (Copyright by L011U Joseph Vmnce.i &
e was never permitted a candle, and a prescript ion apt to prove whole Marcel, reflecting that Bourke's tleman whose brilliant black hair and
I
he was never permitted a candle, and
the darkness and loneliness made the
place one of haunted terror to the sen-
sitive and Imaginative nature of tbe
growing child.
He soon learned an almost uncanny
cunning in tbe art of effacing himself
when she was Imminent, to be as still
as death and to move with the silence
of a wraith. Not Infrequently his hud-
dled immobility In a shadowy corner
escaped her notice as she passed. But
it exasperated her beyond measure to
look up. when Bhe fancied herself
alone, and become aware of the wide-
eyed. terrified stare of the transfixed
child.
That he was privileged to attend
schookat all was wholly due to a great
fear That obsessed madame of doing
anything to invite the interest of the
authorities. She was an honest wom-
an, according to her lights, an honest
wife, ami kept an honest house; but
she feared the gendarmerie more than
the wrath of God. And by ukase of
government a certain amount of edu-
cation was compulsory. So Marcel
learned, among other things, to read,
and thereby took bis first blind step
toward salvation.
Before Marcel was eleven he had
read “Lea Mlserables" with intense ap-
preciation. His reading, however, was
not long confined to works in the
French language. Now and again
some departing guest would leave an
English noved In his room, and these
Marcel treasured beyond all other
books; they seemed to him, in a way.
a pprt of his birthright, lie called
himself, secretly, English In those
days, because he knew be wasn’t
French—that much, at least, he re-
membered. And then some accident
threw his way a small English-French
dictionary. He was able to read Eng-
lish before he could speak it.
Out of school hours a drudge ami
scullion, the associate of scullions and
their immediate betters, drawn from
that caste of loose tongues and looser
morals which breeds servants for small
hotels, Marcel at eleven—as nearly as
his age can be computed—possessed
a comprehension of life at once exact,
exhaustive and appalling.
By fifteen he had developed Into a
long. lank, loutish youth, with a face
of extraordinary pallor, a sullen
mouth, hot. black eyes, and dark hair
like a mane, so seldom was it trimmed.
He looked considerably older than he
was, and the slightness of his body
was deceptive, disguising a power of
sinewy strength. More than this, he
could care very handily for himself
in a scrimmage—la savate (lighting
with the feet) had no secrets from
him, and he had picked up tricks from
the Apaches quite as effectual as any
in the manual of jiujitsu.
Baris he knew as you and 1 know
the palms ol our hands, and he could
converse with the precision of the
native-born in any one of the city's
several odd argots. To those accom-
plishments he added that of a thor-
oughly practiced petty thief.
His duties were by day those of
valet de ehambre on the third floor;
by night he acted as omnibus in the
restaurant. For ttiese services he re-
ceived no pay and less consideration
from tiis employers—who would have
; been horrified by an Innuendo that
they countenanced slavery only his
I board and a bed in a room on the
j ground floor at the back of tlie house
1 boasting a small window overlooking
' a narrow alley
He was routed out before daylight.
| and bis working day ended, as a rule,
at ten in the evening—but once back
I in his kennel, its door closed. Marcel
was free to squirm out of tbe window
and roam and range Baris at will. And
it was thus that he came by most of
his knowledge of the city.
But for the most part Marcel pre-
; ferred to lie abed and read himself
half blind by the light of purloined
candle-ends. Ilooks he borrowed as
of old from the rooms of guests or
else pilfered from quayside stalls
But now and again the guests would
pay further, if unconscious tribute,
through the sly abstraction of small
coins. Your true Parisian, however,
keeps track of his money to tlip ulti-
mate sou. an idiosyncrasy which
obliged the boy to practice most of his
peculations on the fugitive guest of
foreign extraction.
In the number of these, perhaps
the one best known to Troyon's was
Bourxe.
He wns n quick, compart, dangerous
little Irishman who hud fullpn into the
habit of “resting" at Troyon's when-
ever a vacation from Lonaon seemed
a prescription apt to prove whole
some for a gentleman of his kidney;
which was rather frequently, arguing
that Bourke's professional activities
were fairly onerous.
Having received most of his educa
tion in Dublin university. Bourke
spoke the purest English known, or
could when so minded, while his facile
Irish tongue had caught the trick of
an accent which passed unchallenged
on the boulevards He hud an alert
eye for pretty women, a heart as big
as all outdoors, no scruples worth men-
tioning. a secret sorrow, and a pet su-
perstition.
The hue of his hair, a clamorous
red, was the spring of his secret sor-
row. By that token he was a marked
man.
His pet superstition was that as
long as he refrained from practicing
his profession in Paris, Paris would
stand toward him as an impregnable
tower of refuge. The world owed
Bourke a living, or he so considered,
but Paris was tax-exempt as long as
Paris let him alone.
Not only did Paris suit his tastes
excellently, but there was no plare in
Bourke's esteem, comparable with
Troyon's for peace and quiet. Hence
his visits were unpunctuated by trials
of rival hostelries. and Troyon's was
always expeeling Bourke for the
simple reason that he invariably ar-
rived unexpectedly, with neither warn-
ing nor ostentation, stopped as long as
he liked, whether a day or a week or
a month, and departed in the same
manner.
His daily routine, as Troyon's came
to know it, varied but slightly—he
breakfasted abed, about half after ten.
dined early and well, but always alone,
and shortly afterward departed bv
cab for some well-known bar on the
Rive Drolte; and the hour of his re-
turn remained a secret between him-
self and tlie concierge.
On retiring Bourke would empty his
pockets upon the dressing table,
w’here the boy. Marcel, bringing up
Bourke's petit dejeuner the next morn
ing. would see displayed a tempting
confusion of gold and silver and cop-
per, with a wad of banknotes, and the
cuslomary assortment of personal
hardware.
Now inasmuch as Bourke was nevei
wide awake at that hour, and always,
after acknowledging Marcel's “bon-
Jour,” rolled over and snored for glory
and the saints. It was against human
nature to resist the lure of that dress-
ing table. Marcel seldom departed
without a coin or two.
He had yet to learn that Bourke’s
habits were those of an Englishman,
who never goes to bed without leav-
ing all his pocket money in plain sight
and—carefully catalogued in his mem
ory.
One morning in the spring of 1904
Marcel served Bourke his last break-
fast at Troyon's.
The irishman had been on the prowl
the previous night, and his rasping
snore was audible even through the
closed door when Marcel knocked and,
receiving no answer, used the pass
key and entered.
At this the snore was briefly interrupt-
ed ; liourke, visible at first only as a
flaming shock of liair protruding from
tlie bedclothes, squirmed an eye at'ove
his artificial horizon, opened it. n. p
hied inarticulate acknowledgment C'l
Ma.Tcl's sslji.tyion, and passed b)\
taut T into further slumbers.
Marcel deposited his tray on a table
beside the bed. then moved quietly to
tlie windows, closed them, and drew
the lace curtains together. The dress-
ing table between the two windows
displayed, amid the silver and copper,
more gold coins than it commonly did
— some eighteen or twenty louis alto-
gether. Adroitly abstracting in pass-
ing a piece of ten francs, Marcel went
j oti bis way rejoicing, touched a match
to Ihe lire ready laid in the grate, and
was nearing the door when, casting
one casual parting glance at the bed.
he became aware of a notable plienom
enon—the snoring was going on lus
tily, but Bourke was watching him
with both eyes wide and tilled with in-
terest.
Startled, and, to tell the truth, a
bit Indignant, the boy stopped as
though at word of command. But
after the first flush of astonishment
Ills young face hardened to immohil
tty. Only his eyes remained constant
to Bourke’s
The Irishman, sitting up In bed, de-
manded and received the gold ptece,
and went on to indict the boy for the
embezzlement of several sums run-
ning into s number of louts.
Marcel, reflecting that Bourke's
reckoning was still some louis shy,
made no bones about pleading guilty.
Interrogated, the culprit deposed that
he had taken the money because he
needed it to buy books. No, he wasn't
sorry. Yes, It was probable that,
granted further opportunity, he would
do It again Advised that he was ap-
parently a case-hardened young crimi-
nal, he replied that youth was not his
fault; with years and experience he
would certainly improve.
Puzzled by the boy’s attitude,
Bourke agitated his hair and won-
dered aloud how Marcel would like it
if his employers were informed of his
peculations.
Marcel looked pained, and pointed
out that such a course on the part of
Bourke would be obviously unfair; the
only real difference between them, he
explained, was that^ where he filched
a louis Bourke filched thousands, and
if Bourke insisted on turning him over
to the mercies of Mme. and Papa
Troyon, who would certainly summon
a sergeant de ville, he, Marcel, would
be quite justified in retaliating by
telling the prefecture de police all that
he knew about Bourke.
This was no chance shot, and went
home. When, dismayed, the Irishman
blustered, demanding to know what
the boy meant by his damned impu-
dence. Marcel quietly advised him
that one knew what one knew—if one
read the English newspaper in the
cafe, as Marcel did. one could hardly
fail to remark that monsieur always
came to Paris after some notable bur-
glary had been committed in London;
and if one troubled to follow mon
sleur by night, as Marcel had. it be-
came evident that monsieur's first
calls in Paris were invariably made
at tlie establishment of a famous
fence in the Rue des Trois Freres;
and. finally, one drew one's own con
elusions when strangers dining in the
restaurant—as on the night before, by
way of illustration—strangers who
wore ail the hallmarks of police de-
tleman whose brilliant black hair and
glowing pink complexion rendered him
a bit too conspicuous for his own com
fort, but also, in the second cabin, his
valet, a boy of sixteen who looked
eighteen.
The gentleman's name on the pas
senger list didn't, of course, in the
least resemble Bourke. His valet's
was given as Michael Lanyard.
The origin of this name is obscure;
Michael, being easily corrupted into
good Irish Mickey, may safely be at-
tributed to Bourke; Lanyard has a
tang of the sea which suggests a rem-
iniscence of some sea tale prized by
the pseudo Marcel Troyon.
In New York began the second stage
in the education of a professional
criminal. The boy would have
searched far to find a preceptor of
more sound attainments than Bourke.
It Is. however, only fair to say that
Bourke would have looked far for an
apter pupil.
Under his tutelage Michael Lan-
yard learned many things; he became
a mathematician of considerable prom-
ise, an expert mechanician, a con-
noisseur of armor plate and explosives
ip their more pacific applications, and
he learned to grade precious stones
with a glance. Also, because Bourke
was born of gentlefolk, he learned to
speak English and what clothes to
wear and when to wear them, as well
as the cultivated use of knife and
fork at table; and because Bourke was
a diplomatist doomed to blush unseen,
lie acquired the knack of being at ease
in every grade of society—he came to
know that a self-made millionaire,
taken the right way, is as approach-
able as one whose millions date back
even unto the third generation; he
could order a dinner at Sherry’s as
readily as drinks at Sharkey's. Most
valuable accomplishment of all. he
learned to laugh.
By way of by-products be picked up
a working acquaintance with Ameri-
can, English and German slang—
French slang he already knew as a
mother tongue — considerable geo-
graphical knowledge of the capitals of
Europe, America and Illinois, a taste
that discriminated between tobacco
and the stuff sold as such in France,
and a genuine passion for fine paint-
ings.
Finally Bourke drilled Into his ap-
prentice the three cardinal principles
of successful cracksmanship—to know
his ground thoroughly before ventur-
ing upon it; to strike and retreat with
the swift precision of a hawk; to
be friendless.
And the last of these was the great-
est.
“You’re a promising lad,” he said—
so often that Lanyard would almost
wince from that formula of Introduc-
tion—"a promising lad, though it's sad
I should be to say it Instead of proud
as ! am. For I've made ye—but foi
me you’d long since have matricu
lated at La Tour Polntue and gradu
ated with the canaille of the Sante
And in time you may become a first
chop operator, which I'm not and
never will be; but if you do, 'twill be
through fighting shy of two things.
The first of them’s woman, and the
second Is man. To make a friend of
a man you must lower your guard. Or-
t pass at length almost purely as an af-
I fair of impulse.
He had come through from London
i by the afternoon service—via Bou-
i logne—traveling light, with nothing
but a brace of handbags and his life
| in his hands. Two coups to his credit
since the previous midnight had made
the shift advisable, though only one
of them, the later, rendered it urgent.
Scotland Yard would, he reckoned,
require at least twenty-four hours to
unlimber for action on tbe Omber af-
fair; but the other, the disappearance
of the Huyaman plans, although not
consummated before noon, must have
set the chancelleries of at least three
The Boy Stopped as Though at Word
of Command.
tectives from England, catechized one
about a person whose description was
the portrait of Bourke. and promised
a hundred-franc note for information
concerning tlie habits and where-
abouts of that person, if seen.
Marcel added, while Bourke gasped
for breath, that the gentleman In ques-
tion had spoken to him alone, in the
absence of other waiters, and had
been fobbed off with a lie.
But why—Bourke wanted to know—
had Marcel lied to save him. when the
truth would have earned him a hun-
dred francs?
“Because.” Marcel explained coolly,
“I, too, am a thief. Monsieur will per-
ceive it was a matter of professional
honor.”
Now the Irish have their faultR, but
ingratitude is not of their number.
Bourke, packing hastily to leave
Paris. France, and Europe by the first
feasible route, still found time to ques-
tion Marcel briefly, and what he
learned from the boy about his ante-
cedents so worked with gratitude upon
the Irishman's sentimental nature that
when, on the third day following, the
t’utiarder Carpathla left Naples for
New York, she carried among her
flrat-claaa passengers not only a gen
powers by the ears before Lanyard
was fairly entrained at Charing Cross.
Now his opinion of Scotland Yard
was low; its emissaries must operate
gingerly to keep within tbe laws they
serve. But the agents of the various
continental secret services have a wav
of making their own laws as they go
along—and for these Lanyard enter-
tained a respect little short of pro-
found.
He would not have been surprised
had- he run foul of trouble on the pier
at Folkestone. Boulogne, as well, fig-
ured in his imagination as a crucial
point—its harbor lights, heaving up
over the grim, gray waste, peered
through the deepening violet dusk to
find him on the packet's deck, re-
sponding to their curious stare with
one no less insistently Inquiring. But
it wasn't until he reached the Gare di»
Nord itself that he found anything
to shy at.
Dropping from train to platform, he
surrendered his luggage to a ready
facteur and followed the fellow
through the crush, elbowed and shoul-
dered, offended by the pervasive reek
of chilled steam and coal gas and
dazzled by the brilliant glare of the
overhanging electric arcs.
Almost the first face he saw turned
his way was that of Roddy.
The man from Scotland Yard was
stationed at one side of the platform
gates. Opposite him stood another
decorative official from the prefecture
de police. Both were scanning nar-
rowly every face in the tide that
churned between them.
Wondering if through some fatal
freak of fortuity these were acting
under late telegraphic advices from
London, Lanyard held himself well In
hand. The first Indication of an in-
tent to hinder him would have proved
the signal for a spectacular demon-
stration of the ungentle art of not get-
ting caught with the goods.
And for twenty seconds, while the
crowd milled slowly through the nar-
row exit, he was as near to betraying
himself as he had ever been—nearer,
for he had marked down the point on
Roddy’s Jaw where his first blow
would fall and Just where to plant a
coup de savate most surely to in-
capacitate the minion of the prefec-
ture; and all the while he was look-
ing the two over with a manner of the
most calm and impersonal curiosity.
But beyond an almost imperceptible
narrowing of Roddy's eyes when they
met his own, as if the Englishman
were struggling with a faulty memory,
neither police agent betrayed U sign
of recognition.
And then Lanyard was outside the
station, his porter introducing him to
a ramshackle taxicab. >
“Troyon’s!” he told the cocher.
When at length his conveyance drew
up at the historic corner Lanyard,
alighting, could have rubbed his eyes
to see the windows of Troyon's all
bright with electric light.
Somehow, and most unreasonably,
he had always believed the place
would go to the hands of the house
wrecker unchanged.
A smart portier ducked out, seized
his luggage and held an umbrella.
Lanyard composed his features to im-
mobility as he entered the hotel, of
no mind to let the least flicker of rec-
dinarily 'tis fatal. As for woman, re ,
member this, m’ lad; to let love into 0*n‘t‘°" be detected in his eyes when
your life you must open a door no
mortal hand ran close. And God only
knows what'll follow In.
"If ever you find you’ve fallen In
love and can't fall out, rut the game
on the instant, or you’ll end wearing |
stripes or broad arrows—the same as
myself would, if this cursed cough
wasn't going to be the death of me
No, m’ lad: take a fool’s advice (you'll
never get better) and when you’re
shpt of me. which will he soon. I’m
thinking, take the lonesome road and
stick to the middle of it. ‘He travels
the fastest who travels alone’ is a
true saying, hut 'tis only half the
truth• he travels the farthest into the
bargain. Yet the lonesome road has
its drawbacks, lad—it's damned
lonely!"
Bourke died In Switzerland of con
sumption, in the winter of 1910—Lan-
yard at his side till the end.
Then the boy set his face against
the world—alone, lonely and remem-
bering.
CHAPTER It.
Return.
His return to Troyon's. although an
enterprise which Lanyard had been
contemplating for several years, ever
tinea 'be death of Boivko. came U>
they should encounter familiar faces.
And this was quite as well—for
again the first he saw was Roddy's!
The man front Scotland Yard had
just surrendered hat, coat and um-
brella to the porter in the lobby, and
was turning through swinging doors
to the dining room. Again taking in
Lanyard, his glance seemed devoid of
any sort of intelligible expression;
and before quitting the lobby Roddy
paused long enough to order a fire
laid in his room.
So he was stopping at Troyon s—
and didn't care who knew it!
H!s doubts altogether dissipated bv
this discovery, Lanyard followed his
natural enemy into the dining room
with an air as devil-may-care ns one
could wish and so impressive that the
niaitre d'hote! abandoned the detec-
tive to the mercies of one of his cap-
tains and himself hastened to seat
Lanyard and take his order.
This last disposed of. Lanyard sur-
rendered himself to new impressions—
of which the first proved a bit dis-
heartening.
(TO RE CONTINUED.)
Vinegar for Colored Clothes.
A cupful of vinegar added to th»
water In which colored clothes aro
washed will often prevent \he color
froat running.
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Renfrew, J. P. Renfrew's Record (Alva, Okla.), Vol. 15, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, March 17, 1916, newspaper, March 17, 1916; Alva, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1076499/m1/2/: accessed March 18, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.