Louis Joseph Vance

The False Faces Louis Joseph Vance

Excerpt: ...personality whose brief span had been restricted to the decks of the Assyrian, Monsieur Andre Duchemin. That one must be buried deep, beyond all peradventure of involuntary resurrection. Fortunately the last step toward the positive metamorphosis 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 Andre 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. Suspicion was taking form in Lanyard's reflections that he had paid far too little attention to Senor 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...