"I have been hoping for some weeks to give myself the pleasure of
calling here, and to-day such an excellent pretext presented itself that
I came straight away."
Hartley heard him emit his mewing little laugh, and heard him say with
the elephantine archness affected by certain dry and middle-aged
gentlemen--
"I come with congratulations. My niece has told me all about it. Lucky
young man! Ah!----" He reached the door of the inner room and saw
Richard Hartley standing by the window, and he began to apologise
profusely, saying that he had had no idea that Ste. Marie was not alone.
But Ste. Marie said--
"It doesn't in the least matter. I have no secrets from Hartley.
Indeed, I have just been talking with him about this very thing." But
for all that he looked curiously at the elder man, and it struck him as
very odd that Miss Benham should have gone straight to her uncle and
told him all this. It did not seem in the least like her, especially as
he knew the two were on no terms of intimacy. He decided that she must
have gone up to her grandfather's room to discuss it with that old
gentleman--a reasonable enough hypothesis--and that Captain Stewart must
have come in during the discussion. Quite evidently he had wasted no
time in setting out upon his errand of congratulation.
"Then," said Captain Stewart, "if I am to be good-naturedly forgiven for
my stupidity, let me go on and say, in my capacity as a member of the
family, that the news pleased me very much. I was glad to hear it." He
shook Ste. Marie's hand, looking very benignant indeed, and Ste. Marie
was quite overcome with pleasure and gratitude: it seemed to him such a
very kindly act in the elder man. He produced things to smoke and
drink, and Captain Stewart accepted a cigarette and mixed himself a
rather stiff glass of absinthe--it was between five and six o'clock.
"And now," said he, when he was at ease in the most comfortable of the
low cane chairs, and the glass of opalescent liquor was properly curdled
and set at hand, "now, having congratulated you and--ah, welcomed you,
if I may put it so, as a probable future member of the family, I turn to
the other feature of the affair." He had an odd trick of lowering his
head and gazing benevolently upon an auditor as if over the top of
spectacles. It was one of his elderly ways. He beamed now upon Ste.
Marie in this manner, and, after a moment, turned and beamed upon
Richard Hartley, who gazed stolidly back at him without expression.
"You have determined, I hear," said he, "to join us in our search for
poor Arthur. Good! Good I I welcome you there, also."
Ste. Marie stirred uneasily in his chair.
"Well," said he, "in a sense, yes. That is, I've determined to devote
myself to the search, and Hartley is good enough to offer to go in with
me; but I think, if you don't mind---- Of course, I know it's very
presumptuous and doubtless idiotic of us--but, if you don't mind, I
think we'll work independently. You see--well, I can't quite put it
into words, but it's our idea to succeed or fail quite by our own
efforts. I dare say we shall fail, but it won't be for lack of trying."
Captain Stewart looked disappointed.
"Oh, I think," said he. "Pardon me for saying it! but I think you're
rather foolish to do that." He waved an apologetic hand. "Of course, I
comprehend your excellent motive. Yes, as you say, you want to succeed
quite on your own. But, look at the practical side! You'll have to go
over all the weary weeks of useless labour we have gone over. We could
save you that. We have examined and followed up and at last given over
a hundred clues that on the surface looked quite possible of success.
You'll be doing that all over again. In short, my dear friend, you will
merely be following along a couple of months behind us. It seems to me
a pity. I shan't like to see you wasting your time and efforts." He
dropped his eyes to the glass of Pernod which stood beside him, and he
took it in his hand and turned it slowly, and watched the light gleam in
strange pearl colours upon it. He glanced up again with a little smile
which the two younger men found oddly pathetic.
"I should like to see you succeed," said Captain Stewart. "I like to
see youth and courage and high hope succeed." He said--
"I am past the age of romance, though I am not so very old in years.
Romance has passed me by, but--I love it still. It still stirs me
surprisingly when I see it in other people--young people who are simple
and earnest and who--and who are in love." He laughed gently, still
turning the glass in his hands.
"I am afraid you will call me a sentimentalist," he said, "and an
elderly sentimentalist is, as a rule, a ridiculous person. Ridiculous
or not, though, I have rather set my heart on your success in this
undertaking. Who knows? you may succeed where we others have failed.
Youth has such a way of charging in and carrying all before it by
assault: such a way of overleaping barriers that look unsurmountable to
older eyes! Youth! Youth!
"Eh, my God!" said he, "to be young again just for a little while. To
feel the blood beat strong and eager. Never to be tired. Eh, to be
like one of you youngsters! You, Ste. Marie, or you, Hartley. There's
so little left for people when youth is gone." He bent his head again,
staring down upon the glass before him, and for a while there was a
silence which neither of the younger men cared to break.
"Don't refuse a helping hand!" said Captain Stewart, looking up once
more. "Don't be overproud! I may be able to set you upon the right
path. Not that I have anything definite to work upon. I haven't, alas!
But each day new clues turn up. One day we shall find the real one, and
that may be one that I have turned over to you to follow out. One never
knows."
[Illustration: "'Don't refuse a helping hand!' said Captain Stewart,
looking up once more. 'Don't be overproud!'"]
Ste. Marie looked across at Richard Hartley, but that gentleman was
blowing smoke rings and to all outward appearance giving them his entire
attention. He looked back to Captain Stewart, and Stewart's eyes
regarded him smiling a little wistfully, he thought.
Ste. Marie scowled out of the window at the trees of the Luxembourg
Gardens.
"I hardly know," said he. "Of course I sound a braying ass in
hesitating even a moment, but--in a way, you understand. I'm so anxious
to do this or to fail in it quite on my own! You're--so tremendously
kind about it that I don't know what to say. I must seem very
ungrateful, I know. But I'm not."
"No," said the elder man, "you don't seem ungrateful at all. I
understand exactly how you feel about it, and I applaud your
feeling--but not your judgment. I am afraid that for the sake of a
sentiment you're taking unnecessary risks of failure."
For the first time Richard Hartley spoke.
"I've an idea, you know," said he, "that it's going to be a matter
chiefly of luck. One day somebody will stumble on the right trail--and
that might as well be Ste. Marie or I as your trained detectives. If
you don't mind my saying so, sir--I don't want to seem rude--your
trained detectives do not seem to accomplish much in two months, do
they?"
Captain Stewart looked thoughtfully at the younger man.
"No," he said at last. "I am sorry to say they don't seem to have
accomplished much--except to prove that there are a great many places
poor Arthur has _not_ been to, and a great many people who have _not_
seen him. After all, that is something--the elimination of ground that
need not be worked over again." He set down the glass from which he had
been drinking.
"I cannot agree with your theory," he said. "I cannot agree that such
work as this is best left to an accidental solution. Accidents are too
rare. We have tried to go at it in as scientific a way as could be
managed--by covering large areas of territory, by keeping the police
everywhere on the alert, by watching the boy's old friends and searching
his favourite haunts. Personally I am inclined to think that he managed
to slip away to America very early in the course of events--before we
began to search for him. And of course, I am having a careful watch
kept there as well as here. But no trace has appeared as yet--nothing
at all trustworthy. Meanwhile I continue to hope and to work, but I grow
a little discouraged. In any case, though, we shall hear of him in
three months more if he is alive."
"Why three months?" asked Ste. Marie. "What do you mean by that?"
"In three months," said Captain Stewart, "Arthur will be of age, and he
can demand the money left him by his father. If he is alive he will
turn up for that. I have thought, from the first, that he is merely
hiding somewhere until this time should be past. He--you must know that
he went away very angry, after a quarrel with his grandfather. My
father is not a patient man. He may have been very harsh with the boy."
"Ah yes," said Hartley, "but no boy, however young or angry, would be
foolish enough to risk an absolute break with the man who is going to
leave him a large fortune. Young Benham must know that his grandfather
would never forgive him for staying away all this time if he stayed away
of his own accord. He must know that he'd be taking tremendous risks of
being cut off altogether."
"And besides," added Ste. Marie, "it is quite possible that your father,
sir, may die at any time--any hour. And he's very angry with his
grandson. He may have cut him off already."
Captain Stewart's eyes sharpened suddenly, but he dropped them to the
glass in his hand.
"Have you any reason for thinking that?" he asked.
"No," said Ste. Marie. "I beg your pardon. I shouldn't have said it.
That is a matter which concerns your family alone. I forgot myself.
The possibility occurred to me suddenly, for the first time." But the
elder man looked up at him with a smile.
"Pray don't apologise!" said he. "Surely we three can speak frankly
together. And frankly I know nothing of my father's will. But I don't
think he would cut poor Arthur off, though he is, of course, very angry
about the boy's leaving in the manner he did. No! I am sure he
wouldn't cut him off. He was fond of the lad, very fond--as we all
were."
Captain Stewart glanced at his watch and rose with a little sigh.
"I must be off," said he. "I have to dine out this evening, and I must
get home to change. There is a cab-stand near you?" He looked out of
the window. "Ah yes! Just at the corner of the Gardens." He turned
about to Ste. Marie, and held out his hand with a smile. He said--
"You refuse to join forces with us then? Well, I'm sorry. But for all
that, I wish you luck. Go your own way, and I hope you'll succeed. I
honestly hope that, even though your success may show me up for an
incompetent bungler." He gave a little kindly laugh and Ste. Marie
tried to protest.
"Still," said the elder man, "don't throw me over altogether. If I can
help you in any way, little or big, let me know. If I can give you any
hints, any advice, anything at all, I want to do it. And if you happen
upon what seems to be a promising clue, come and talk it over with me.
Oh, don't be afraid! I'll leave it to you to work out. I shan't spoil
your game."
"Ah, now that's very good of you," said Ste. Marie. "Only you make me
seem more than ever an ungrateful fool. Thanks, I will come to you with
my troubles if I may. I have a foolish idea that I want to follow out a
little first, but doubtless I shall be running to you soon for
information."
The elder man's eyes sharpened again with keen interest.
"An idea!" he said quickly. "You have an idea? What--may I ask what
sort of an idea?"
"Oh it's nothing," declared Ste. Marie. "You have already laughed at
it. I just want to find that man O'Hara, that's all. I've a feeling
that I should learn something from him."
"Ah!" said Captain Stewart slowly. "Yes, the man O'Hara. There's
nothing in that, I'm afraid. I've made inquiries about O'Hara. It
seems he left Paris six months ago, saying he was off for America. An
old friend of his told me that. So you must have been mistaken when you
thought you saw him in the Champs Elysees, and he couldn't very well
have had anything to do with poor Arthur. I'm afraid that idea is hardly
worth following up."
"Perhaps not," said Ste. Marie. "I seem to start badly, don't I? Ah
well, I'll have to come to you all the sooner, then."
"You'll be welcome," promised Captain Stewart. "Good-bye to you! Good
day, Hartley. Come and see me both of you. You know where I live."
He took his leave then, and Hartley, standing beside the window, watched
him turn down the street, and at the corner get into one of the fiacres
there and drive away.
Ste. Marie laughed aloud.
"There's the second time," said he, "that I've had him about O'Hara. If
he is as careless as that about everything, I don't wonder he hasn't
found Arthur Benham. O'Hara disappeared from Paris (publicly, that is)
at about the time young Benham disappeared. As a matter of fact he
remains, or at least for a time remained in the city without letting his
friends know, because I made no mistake about seeing him in the Champs
Elysees. All that looks to me suspicious enough to be worth
investigation.
"Of course," he admitted doubtfully--"of course I'm no detective, but
that's how it looks to me."
"I don't believe Stewart is any detective either," said Richard Hartley.
"He's altogether too cock-sure. That sort of man would rather die than
admit he is wrong about anything. He's a good old chap though, isn't
he? I liked him to-day better than ever before. I thought he was
rather pathetic when he went on about his age."
"He has a good heart," said Ste. Marie. "Very few men under the
circumstances would come here and be as decent as he was. Most men
would have thought I was a presumptuous ass and would have behaved
accordingly."
Ste. Marie took a turn about the room and his face began to light up
with its new excitement and exaltation.
"And to-morrow," he cried, "to-morrow we begin! To-morrow we set out
into the world and the Adventure is on foot. God send it success!" He
laughed across at the other man, but it was a laugh of eagerness not of
mirth.
"I feel," said he, "like Jason. I feel as if we were to set sail
to-morrow for Colchis and the Golden Fleece."
"Ye--es," said the other man a little drily. "Yes, perhaps. I don't
want to seem critical, but isn't your figure somewhat ill chosen?"
"'Ill chosen'?" cried Ste. Marie. "What d'you mean? Why ill chosen?"
"I was thinking of Medea," said Richard Hartley.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*STE. MARIE MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE AND DREAMS A DREAM*
So on the next day these two rode forth upon their quest, and no quest
was ever undertaken with a stouter courage or with a grimmer
determination to succeed. To put it fancifully they burnt their tower
behind them, for to one of them at least--to him who led--there was no
going back.
But after all they set forth under a cloud, and Ste. Marie took a heavy
heart with him. On the evening before an odd and painful incident had
befallen, a singularly unfortunate incident.
It chanced that neither of the two men had a dinner engagement that
evening, and so, after their old habit, they dined together. There was
some wrangling over where they should go, Hartley insisting upon
_Armenonville_ or the _Madrid_ in the Bois, Ste. Marie objecting that
these would be full of tourists so late in June, and urging the claims
of some quiet place in the Quarter, where they could talk instead of
listening perforce to loud music. In the end, for no particular reason,
they compromised on the little Spanish restaurant in the Rue Helder.
They went there about eight o'clock, without dressing; for it is a very
quiet place which the world does not visit, and they had a _sopa de
yerbas_, and some _langostinos_, which are shrimps, and a heavenly
_arroz_ with fowl in it, and many tender succulent strips of red pepper.
They had a salad made out of a little of everything that grows green,
with the true Spanish oil, which has a tang and a bouquet unappreciated
by the philistine; and then they had a strange pastry and some cheese
and green almonds. And to make them glad they drank a bottle of old red
Valdepenas, and afterwards a glass each of a special Manzanilla, upon
which the restaurant very justly prides itself. It was a simple dinner
and a little stodgy for that time of the year, but the two men were
hungry, and sat at table, almost alone in the upper room, for a long
time, saying how good everything was, and from time to time despatching
the saturnine waiter, a Madrileno, for more peppers. When at last they
came out into the narrow street and thence to the thronged Boulevard des
Italiens, it was nearly eleven o'clock. They stood for a little time in
the shelter of a kiosk, looking down the boulevard to where the Place de
l'Opera opened wide, and the lights of the Cafe de la Paix shone garish
in the night, and Ste. Marie said--
"There's a street _fete_ in Montmartre. We might drive home that way."
"An excellent idea," said the other man. "The fact that Montmartre lies
in an opposite direction from home makes the plan all the better. And
after that we might drive home through the Bois. That's much farther in
the wrong direction. Lead on!"
So they sprang into a waiting fiacre, and were dragged up the steep
stone-paved hill to the heights where _La Boheme_ still reigns, though
the glory of Moulin Rouge has departed, and the trail of tourist is over
all. They found Montmartre very much _en fete_. In the Place Blanche
were two of the enormous and brilliantly lighted merry-go-rounds which
only Paris knows--one furnished with stolid cattle, theatrical-looking
horses, and Russian sleighs, the other with the ever-popular galloping
pigs. When these dreadful machines were in rotation mechanical organs
concealed somewhere in their bowels emitted hideous brays and shrieks,
which mingled with the shrieks of the ladies mounted upon the galloping
pigs, and together insulted a peaceful sky.
The square was filled with that extremely heterogeneous throng which the
Parisian street _fete_ gathers together, but it was, for the most part,
a well-dressed throng, largely recruited from the boulevards, and it was
quite determined to have a very good time in the cheerful harmless Latin
fashion. The two men got down from their fiacre and elbowed a way
through the good-natured crowd to a place near the more popular of the
merry-go-rounds. The machine was in rotation. Its garish lights shone
and glittered, its hidden mechanical organ blared a German waltz tune,
the huge pink-varnished pigs galloped gravely up and down as the
platform upon which they were mounted whirled round and round. A little
group of American trippers, sight-seeing, with a guide, stood near by,
and one of the group, a pretty girl with red hair, demanded plaintively
of the friend upon whose arm she hung: "Do you think mamma would be
shocked if we took a ride? Wouldn't I love to!"
Hartley turned laughing from this distressed maiden to Ste. Marie. He
was wondering with mild amusement why anybody should wish to do such a
foolish thing, but Ste. Marie's eyes were fixed upon the galloping pigs
and the eyes shone with a wistful excitement. To tell the truth it was
impossible for him to look on at any form of active amusement without
thirsting to join it. A joyous and care-free lady in a blue hat, who
was mounted astride upon one of the pigs, hurled a paper serpentine at
him, and shrieked with delight when it knocked his hat off.
"That's the second time she has hit me with one of those things," he
said, groping about his feet for the hat. "Here, stop that boy with the
basket!" A vendor of the little rolls of paper ribbon was shouting his
wares through the crowd. Ste. Marie filled his pockets with the things,
and when the lady with the blue hat came round on the next turn, lassoed
her neatly about the neck and held the end of the ribbon till it broke.
Then he caught a fat gentleman, who was holding himself on by his
steed's neck, in the ear, and the red-haired American girl laughed
aloud.
"When the thing stops," said Ste. Marie, "I'm going to take a ride, just
one ride. I haven't ridden a pig for many years." Hartley jeered at
him, calling him an infant, but Ste. Marie bought more serpentines, and
when the platform came to a stop clambered up to it, and mounted the
only unoccupied pig he could find. His friend still scoffed at him and
called him names, but Ste. Marie tucked his long legs round the pig's
neck and smiled back, and presently the machine began again to revolve.
At the end of the first revolution Hartley gave a shout of delight, for
he saw that the lady with the blue hat had left her mount and was making
her way along the platform towards where Ste. Marie sat hurling
serpentines in the face of the world. By the next time round she had
come to where he was, mounted astride behind him, and was holding
herself with one very shapely arm round his neck, while with the other
she rifled his pockets for ammunition. Ste. Marie grinned, and the
public, loud in its acclaims, began to pelt the two with serpentines
until they were hung with many-coloured ribbons like a Christmas-tree.
Even Richard Hartley was so far moved out of the self-consciousness with
which his race is cursed as to buy a handful of the common missiles, and
the lady in the blue hat returned his attention with skill and despatch.
But as the machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and
blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his
friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward
away from the enthusiastic lady with the blue hat, and that the paper
serpentines had dropped from his hands. Hartley thought that the rapid
motion must have made him a little giddy, but presently, before the
merry-go-round had quite stopped, he saw the man leap down and hurry
towards him through the crowd. Ste. Marie's face was grave and pale. He
caught Hartley's arm in his hand and turned him round, crying in a low
voice--
"Come out of this as quickly as you can! No, in the other direction. I
want to get away at once."
"What's the matter?" Hartley demanded. "Lady in the blue hat too
friendly? Well, if you're going to play this kind of game, you might as
well play it."
"Helen Benham was down there in the crowd," said Ste. Marie. "On the
opposite side from you. She was with a party of people who got out of
two motor-cars, to look on. They were in evening things, so they had
come from dinner somewhere, I suppose. She saw me."
"The devil!" said Hartley under his breath. Then he gave a shout of
laughter, demanding--
"Well, what of it? You weren't committing any crime, were you? There's
no harm in riding a silly pig in a silly merry-go-round. Everybody does
it in these _fete_ things." But even as he spoke he knew how extremely
unfortunate the meeting was, and the laughter went out of his voice.
"I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, "she won't see the humour of it. Good
God, what a thing to happen! _You_ know well enough what she'll think
of me.
"At five o'clock this afternoon," he said bitterly, "I left her with a
great many fine high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my
days and nights to--for her sake. I went away from her like a--knight
going into battle--consecrated. I tell you, there were tears in her
eyes when I went. And now, now, at midnight, she sees me riding a
galloping pig in a street _fete_ with a girl from the boulevards sitting
on the pig with me and holding me round the neck before a thousand
people. What will she think of me? What but one thing can she possibly
think? Oh, I know well enough! I saw her face before she turned away.
"And," he cried, "I can't even go to her and explain--if there's
anything to explain, and I suppose there is not. I can't even go to
her. I've sworn not to see her."
"Oh, I'll do that," said the other man. "I'll explain it to her, if any
explanation's necessary. I think you'll find that she will laugh at it."
But Ste. Marie shook his head.
"No, she won't," said he. And Hartley could say no more, for he knew
Miss Benham, and he was very much afraid that she would not laugh.
They found a fiacre at the side of the square and drove home at once.
They were almost entirely silent all the long way, for Ste. Marie was
buried in gloom, and the Englishman, after trying once or twice to cheer
him up, realised that he was best left to himself just then, and so held
his tongue. But in the Rue d'Assas as Ste. Marie was getting
down--Hartley kept the fiacre to go on to his rooms in the Avenue de
l'Observatoire--he made a last attempt to lighten the man's depression.
He said--
"Don't you be a silly ass about this! You're making much too much of
it, you know. I'll go to her to-morrow or next day and explain, and
she'll laugh--if she hasn't already done so.
"You know," he said, almost believing it himself, "you are paying her a
dashed poor compliment in thinking she's so dull as to misunderstand a
little thing of this kind. Yes, by Jove, you are!"
Ste. Marie looked up at him, and his face, in the light of the cab-lamp,
showed a first faint gleam of hope.
"Do you think so?" he demanded. "Do you really think that? Maybe I am.
But-- O Lord, who would understand such an idiocy? Sacred imbecile that
I am: why was I ever born? I ask you." He turned abruptly and began to
ring at the door, casting a brief "Good-night," over his shoulder. And,
after a moment, Hartley gave it up and drove away.
Above, in the long shallow front room of his flat, with the three
windows overlooking the Gardens, Ste. Marie made lights, and after much
rummaging unearthed a box of cigarettes of a peculiarly delectable
flavour, which had been sent him by a friend in the Khedivial household.
He allowed himself one or two of them now and then, usually in sorrowful
moments, as an especial treat. And this seemed to him to be the moment
for smoking all there were left. Surely his need had never been
greater. In England he had, of course learnt to smoke a pipe, but pipe
smoking always remained with him a species of accomplishment; it never
brought him the deep and ruminative peace with which it enfolds the
Anglo-Saxon heart. The _vieux Jacob_ of old-fashioned Parisian Bohemia
inspired in him unconcealed horror, of cigars he was suspicious because,
he said, most of the unpleasant people he knew smoked cigars: so he
soothed his soul with cigarettes, and he was usually to be found with
one between his fingers.
He lighted one of the precious Egyptians, and after a first ecstatic
inhalation went across to one of the long windows, which was open, and
stood there with his back to the room, his face to the peaceful fragrant
night. A sudden recollection came to him of that other night a month
before, when he had stood on the Pont des Invalides with his eyes upon
the stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto. His heart gave a sudden
exultant leap within him when he thought how far and high he had
climbed, but after the leap it shivered and stood still when this
evening's misadventure came before him.
Would she ever understand? He had no fear that Hartley would not do his
best with her. Hartley was as honest and as faithful as ever a friend
was in this world. He would do his best. But even then---- It was the
girl's inflexible nature that made the matter so dangerous. He knew
that she was inflexible, and he took a curious pride in it. He admired
it. So must have been those calm-eyed ancient ladies for whom other
Ste. Maries went out to do battle. It was wellnigh impossible to
imagine them lowering their eyes to silly revelry. They could not stoop
to such as that. It was beneath their high dignity. And it was beneath
hers also. As for himself, he was a thing of patches. Here a patch of
exalted chivalry--a noble patch--there a patch of bourgeois child-like
love of fun; here a patch of melancholic asceticism, there one of
something quite the reverse. A hopeless patchwork he was. Must she not
shrink from him when she knew? He could not quite imagine her
understanding the wholly trivial and meaningless impulse that had
prompted him to ride a galloping pig and cast paper serpentines at the
assembled world.
Apart from her view of the affair he felt no shame in it. The moment of
childish gaiety had been but a passing mood. It had in no way slackened
his tense enthusiasm, dulled the keenness of his spirit, lowered his
high flight. He knew that well enough. But he wondered if she would
understand, and he could not believe it possible. The mood of
exaltation in which they had parted that afternoon came to him, and then
the sight of her shocked face as he had seen it in the laughing crowd in
the Place Blanche.
"What must she think of me?" he cried aloud. "What must she think of
me?"
So for an hour or more he stood in the open window staring into the
fragrant night, or tramped up and down the long room, his hands behind
his back, kicking out of his way the chairs and things which impeded
him--torturing himself with fears and regrets and fancies, until at last
in a calmer moment he realised that he was working himself up into an
absurd state of nerves over something which was done and could not now
be helped. The man had an odd streak of fatalism in his nature--that
will have come of his southern blood--and it came to him now in his
need. For the work upon which he was to enter with the morrow he had
need of clear wits, not scattered ones; a calm judgment, not disordered
nerves. So he took himself in hand, and it would have been amazing to
any one unfamiliar with the abrupt changes of the Latin temperament, to
see how suddenly Ste. Marie became quiet and cool and master of himself.
[Illustration: "So for an hour or more he stood in the open window
staring into the fragrant night."]
"It is done," he said with a little shrug, and if his face was for a
moment bitter it quickly enough became impassive. "It is done, and it
cannot be undone--unless Hartley can undo it. And now, _revenons a nos
moutons_!
"Or at least," said he, looking at his watch--and it was between one and
two--"at least to our beds!"
So he went to bed, and, so well had he recovered from his fit of
excitement, he fell asleep almost at once. But, for all that, the
jangled nerves had their revenge. He who commonly slept like the dead,
without the slightest disturbance, dreamed a strange dream. It seemed
to him that he stood spent and weary in a twilit place, a waste place at
the foot of a high hill. At the top of the hill She sat upon a sort of
throne, golden in a beam of light from heaven--serene, very beautiful,
the end and crown of his weary labours. His feet were set to the ascent
of the height whereon she waited, but he was withheld. From the shadows
at the hill's foot a voice called to him in distress, anguish of
spirit--a voice he knew, but he could not say whose voice. It besought
him out of utter need, and he could not turn away from it.
Then from those shadows eyes looked upon him, very great and dark eyes,
and they besought him too; he did not know what they asked, but they
called to him like the low voice, and he could not turn away.
He looked to the far height, and with all his power he strove to set his
feet towards it--the goal of long labour and desire--but the eyes and
the piteous voice held him motionless, for they needed him.
From this anguish he awoke trembling. And after a long time, when he
was composed, he fell asleep once more, and once more he dreamed the
dream.
So morning found him pallid and unrefreshed. But by daylight he knew
whose eyes had besought him, and he wondered, and was a little afraid.
*CHAPTER IX*
*STE. MARIE GOES UPON A JOURNEY AND
RICHARD HARTLEY PLEADS FOR HIM*
It may as well be admitted at the outset that neither Ste. Marie nor
Richard Hartley proved themselves to be geniuses, hitherto undeveloped,
in the detective science. They entered upon their self-appointed task
with a fine fervour, but, as Miss Benham had suggested, with no other
qualifications in particular. Ste. Marie had a theory that when engaged
in work of this nature you went into questionable parts of the city, ate
and drank cheek by jowl with questionable people; if possible got them
drunk while you remained sober (difficult feat), and sooner or later
they said things which put you on the right road to your goal, or else
confessed to you that they themselves had committed the particular crime
in which you were interested. He argued that this was the way it
happened in books, and that surely people didn't write books about
things of which they were ignorant.
Hartley, on the other hand, preferred the newer or scientific methods.
You sat at home with a pipe and a whisky and water--if possible in a
long dressing-gown with a cord round its middle. You reviewed all the
known facts of the case, and you did mathematics about them with Xs and
Ys and many other symbols, and in the end, by a system of elimination,
you proved that a certain thing must infallibly be true. The chief
difficulty for him in this was, he said, that he had been at Oxford
instead of at Cambridge, and so the mathematics was rather beyond him.
In practice, however, they combined the two methods, which was doubtless
as well as if they hadn't, because for some time they accomplished
nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer at the other's
stupidity.
This is not to say that they found nothing in the way of clues. They
found an embarrassment of them, and for some days went about in a fever
of excitement over these; but the fever cooled when clue after clue
turned out to be misleading. Of course Ste. Marie's first efforts were
directed towards tracing the movements of the Irishman, O'Hara, but the
efforts were altogether unavailing. The man seemed to have disappeared
as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself. He
was unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man's
departure from Paris. Some of O'Hara's old acquaintances maintained
that they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed
person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one evening
in Maxim's, and said he had heard that Ste. Marie was making inquiries
about M. O'Hara. Ste. Marie said he was, and that it was an affair of
money, whereupon the cheaply smart individual declared that M. O'Hara
had left Paris six months before to go to the United States of America,
and that he had had a picture postal card, some weeks since, from New
York. The informant accepted an expensive cigar and a Dubonnet by way
of reward, but presently departed into the night, and Ste. Marie was
left in some discouragement, his theory badly damaged.
He spoke of this encounter to Richard Hartley, who came on later to join
him, and Hartley, after an interval of silence and smoke, said--
"That was a lie. The man lied."
"Name of a dog, why?" demanded Ste. Marie, but the Englishman shrugged
his shoulders.
"I don't know," he said. "But I believe it was a lie. The man came to
you, sought you out to tell his story, didn't he? And all the others
have given a different date? Well, there you are! For some reason this
man or some one behind him--O'Hara himself, probably--wants you to
believe that O'Hara is in America. I dare say he's in Paris all the
while."
"I hope you're right," said the other. "And I mean to make sure, too.
It certainly was odd, this strange being hunting me out to tell me that.
I wonder, by the way, how he knew I'd been making inquiries about
O'Hara. I've questioned only two or three people, and then in the most
casual way. Yes, it's odd."
It was about a week after this--a fruitless week, full of the alternate
brightness of hope and the gloom of disappointment--that he met Captain
Stewart, to whom he had been more than once on the point of appealing.
He happened upon him quite by chance one morning in the Rue Royale.
Captain Stewart was coming out of a shop, a very smart-looking shop,
devoted, as Ste. Marie, with some surprise and much amusement, observed,
to ladies' hats, and the price of hats must have depressed him, for he
looked in an ill humour and older and more yellow than usual. But his
face altered suddenly when he saw the younger man, and he stopped, and
shook Ste. Marie's hand with every evidence of pleasure.
"Well met! well met!" he exclaimed. "If you are not in a hurry, come
and sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself."
They picked their way across the street to the terrace of the _Taverne
Royale_, which was almost deserted at that hour, and sat down at one of
the little tables well back from the pavement, in a corner.
"Is it fair?" queried Captain Stewart, "is it fair as a rival
investigator to ask you what success you have had?" Ste. Marie laughed
rather ruefully and confessed that he had as yet no success at all.
"I've just come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well,
and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy. Oh well,
we didn't expect it to be child's play."
Captain Stewart raised his little glass of dry vermouth in an
old-fashioned salute, and drank from it.
"You," said he, "you were--ah, full of some idea of connecting this man,
this Irishman, O'Hara, with poor Arthur's disappearance. You've found
that not so promising, as you went on, I take it."
"Well, I've been unable to trace O'Hara," said Ste. Marie. "He seems to
have disappeared as completely as your nephew. I suppose you have no
clues to spare? I confess I'm out of them, at the moment."
"Oh, I have plenty," said the elder man. "A hundred. More than I can
possibly look after." He gave a little chuckling laugh.
"I've been waiting for you to come to me," he said. "It was a little
ungenerous perhaps, but we all love to say, 'I told you so.' Yes, I
have a great quantity of clues, and, of course, they all seem to be of
the greatest and most exciting importance. That's a way clues have." He
took an envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and sorted several
folded papers which were in it.
"I have here," said he, "memoranda of two chances, shall I call
them?--which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every
clue seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking part of such
an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received,
one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been
searching the _bains de mer_ of the north coast. This agent writes that
some one very much resembling poor Arthur has been seen at Dinard and
also at Deauville, and he urges me to come there, or to send a man there
at once to look into the matter. You will ask, of course, why this
agent himself does not pursue the clue he has found. Unfortunately he
has been called to London upon some pressing family matter of his own;
he is an Englishman."
"Why haven't you gone yourself?" asked Ste. Marie. But the elder man
shrugged his shoulders and smiled a tired deprecatory smile.
"Oh, my friend," said he, "if I should attempt personally to investigate
one half of these things, I should be compelled to divide myself into
twenty parts. No, I must stay here. There must be, alas! the spider at
the centre of the web. I cannot go, but if you think it worth while I
will gladly turn over the memoranda of these last clues to you. They
may be the true clues, they may not. At any rate, some one must look
into them. Why not you and your partner--or shall I say assistant?"
"Why, thank you!" cried Ste. Marie. "A thousand thanks. Of course I
shall be--we shall be glad to try this chance. On the face of it, it
sounds very reasonable. Your nephew, from what I remember of him, is
much more apt to be in some place that is amusing--some place of
gaiety--than hiding away where it is merely dull, if he has his choice
in the matter, that is--if he is free. And yet----" he turned and
frowned thoughtfully at the elder man.
"What I want to know," said he, "is how the boy is supporting himself
all this time. You say he had no money, or very little, when he went
away. How is he managing to live, if your theory is correct--that he is
staying away of his own accord? It costs a lot of money to live as he
likes to live."
Captain Stewart nodded.
"Oh, that," said he, "that is a question I have often proposed to
myself. Frankly it's beyond me. I can only surmise that poor Arthur,
who had scattered a small fortune about in foolish loans, managed,
before he actually disappeared (mind you, we didn't begin to look for
him until a week had gone by), managed to collect some of this money,
and so went away with something in pocket. That, of course, is only a
guess."
"It is possible," said Ste. Marie doubtfully, "but--I don't know. It is
not very easy to raise money from the sort of people I imagine your
nephew to have lent it to. They borrow but they don't repay."
He glanced up with a half-laughing half-defiant air.
"I can't," said he, "rid myself of a belief that the boy is here in
Paris and he is not free to come or go. It's only a feeling, but it is
very strong in me. Of course I shall follow out these clues you've been
so kind as to give me. I shall go to Dinard and Deauville, and Hartley,
I imagine, will go with me; but I haven't great confidence in them."
Captain Stewart regarded him reflectively for a time, and in the end he
smiled.
"If you will pardon my saying it," he said, "your attitude is just a
little womanlike. You put away reason for something vaguely intuitive.
I always distrust intuition myself." Ste. Marie frowned a little and
looked uncomfortable. He did not relish being called womanlike--few men
do--but he was bound to admit that the elder man's criticism was more or
less just.
"Moreover," pursued Captain Stewart, "you altogether ignore the point of
motive--as I may have suggested to you before. There could be no
possible motive, so far as I am aware, for kidnapping or detaining or in
any way harming my nephew except the desire for money; but, as you know,
he had no large sum of money with him, and no demand has been made upon
us since his disappearance. I'm afraid you can't get round that."
"No," said Ste. Marie, "I'm afraid I can't. Indeed, leaving that aside
(and it can't be left aside), I still have almost nothing with which to
prop up my theory. I told you it was only a feeling."
He took up the memoranda which Captain Stewart had laid upon the
marble-topped table between them, and read the notes through.
"Please," said he, "don't think I am ungrateful for this chance. I am
not. I shall do my best with it, and I hope it may turn out to be
important." He gave a little wry smile.
"I have all sorts of reasons," he said, "for wishing to succeed as soon
as possible. You may be sure that there won't be any delays on my part.
And now I must be going on. I am to meet Hartley for lunch on the other
side of the river, and, if we can manage it, I should like to start
north this afternoon or evening.
"Good!" said Captain Stewart, smiling. "Good! that is what I call true
promptness. You lose no time at all. Go to Dinard and Deauville, by
all means, and look into this thing thoroughly. Don't be discouraged if
you meet with ill success at first. Take Mr. Hartley with you and do
your best." He paid for the two glasses of aperatif, and Ste. Marie
could not help observing that he left on the table a very small tip.
The waiter cursed him audibly as the two walked away.
"If you have returned by a week from to-morrow," he said, as they shook
hands, "I should like to have you keep that evening--Thursday--for me. I
am having a very informal little party in my rooms. There will be two
or three of the opera people there, and they will sing for us, and the
others will be amusing enough. All young. All young. I like young
people about me." He gave his odd little mewing chuckle. "And the
ladies must be beautiful as well as young. Come if you are here! I'll
drop a line to Mr. Hartley also." He shook Ste. Marie's hand and went
away down the street towards the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, where he
lived.
Ste. Marie met Hartley as he expected to do, at lunch, and they talked
over the possibilities of the Dinard and Deauville expedition. In the
end they decided that Ste. Marie should go alone, but that he was to
telegraph, later on, if the clue looked promising. Hartley had two or
three investigations on foot in Paris, and stayed on to complete these.
Also he wished, as soon as possible, to see Helen Benham and explain
Ste. Marie's ride on the galloping pigs. Ten days had elapsed since
that evening, but Miss Benham had gone into the country the next day to
make a visit at the de Saulnes' chateau on the Oise.
So Ste. Marie packed a portmanteau with clothes and things, and departed
by a mid-afternoon train to Dinard, and, towards five, Richard Hartley
walked down to the Rue de l'Universite. He thought it just possible
that Miss Benham might by now have returned to town, but if not he meant
to have half an hour's chat with old David Stewart, whom he had not seen
for some weeks.
At the door he learnt that Mademoiselle was that very day returned and
was at home. So he went in to the drawing-room, reserving his visit to
old David until later. He found the room divided into two camps. At
one side Mrs. Benham conversed in melancholic monotones with two elderly
French ladies, who were clad in depressing black of a dowdiness
surpassed only in English provincial towns. It was as if the three
mourned together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead amongst
them. Hartley bowed low with an uncontrollable shiver, and turned to
the tea-table, where Miss Benham sat in the seat of authority, flanked
by a young American lady, whom he had met before, and by Baron de Vries,
whom he had not seen since the evening of the de Saulnes' dinner party.
Miss Benham greeted him with evident pleasure, and to his great delight
remembered just how he liked his tea--three pieces of sugar and no milk.
It always flatters a man when his little tastes of this sort are
remembered. The four fell at once into conversation together, and the
young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.
"I thought you two always went about together," she said. "Were never
seen apart and all that--a sort of modern Damon and Phidias." Hartley
caught Baron de Vries' eye and looked away again hastily.
"My--ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the
lady, "got mislaid to-day. It shan't happen again, I promise you. He's
a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social
dissipation. I'm the butterfly of the pair." The lady gave a sudden
laugh.
"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her
eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham.
"Do you remember that evening we were going home from the _Madrid_, and
motored round by Montmartre to see the _fete_?"
"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."
"Your friend, Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was
distinctly the lion of the _fete_--at the moment we arrived, anyhow. He
was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer
things--what do you call them?--with both hands, and a genial lady in a
blue hat was riding the same pig and helping him out. It was just like
the _Vie de Boheme_ and the other books. I found it charming."
Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.
"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very
exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing
with toys the next, and--well, a rather commonplace social favourite the
third. It all comes of being romantic--imaginative. Ste. Marie--I know
nothing about this evening of which you speak--but Ste. Marie is quite
capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig--or
on his way to his own wedding.
"And the pleasant part of it is," said Baron de Vries, "that the lad
would turn up at either of these two ceremonies not a bit the worse,
outside or in, for his ride."
"Ah, now that's an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment,
looking towards Miss Benham, and said--
"I beg pardon! Were you going to speak?"
"No," said Miss Benham, moving the things about on the tea-table before
her, and looking down at them. "No, not at all!"
"You came oddly close to the truth," the man went on, turning back to
Baron de Vries. He was speaking for Helen Benham's ears, and he knew
she would understand that, but he did not wish to seem to be watching
her.
"I was with Ste. Marie on that evening," he said. "No! I wasn't riding
a pig, but I was standing down in the crowd throwing serpentines at the
people who were. And I happen to know that he--that Ste. Marie was on
that day, that evening, more deeply concerned about something, more
absolutely wrapped up in it, devoted to it, than I have ever known him
to be about anything since I first knew him. The galloping pig was an
incident that made, except for the moment, no impression whatever upon
him." Hartley nodded his head.
"Yes," said he, "Ste. Marie can be an angel one moment and a child
playing with toys the next. When he sees toys he always plays with
them, and he plays hard, but when he drops them they go completely out
of his mind."
The American lady laughed.
"Gracious me!" she cried. "You two are emphatic enough about him,
aren't you?"
"We know him," said Baron de Vries. Hartley rose to replace his empty
cup on the tea-table. Miss Benham did not meet his eyes, and as he moved
away again she spoke to her friend about something they were going to do
on the next day, so Hartley went across to where Baron de Vries sat at a
little distance, and took a place beside him on the chaise longue. The
Belgian greeted him with raised eyebrows and the little half-sad
half-humorous smile which was characteristic of him in his gentler
moments.
"You were defending our friend with a purpose," he said in a low voice.
"Good! I am afraid he needs it--here." The younger man hesitated a
moment. Then he said--
"I came on purpose to do that. Ste. Marie knows that she saw him on
that confounded pig. He was half wild with distress over it
because--well, the meeting was singularly unfortunate, just then. I
can't explain----"
"You needn't explain," said the Belgian gravely. "I know. Helen told me
some days since, though she did not mention this encounter. Yes, defend
him with all your power, if you will. Stay after we others have gone
and--have it out with her. The Phidias lady (I must remember that _mot_,
by the way) is preparing to take her leave now, and I will follow her at
once. She shall believe that I am enamoured--that I sigh for her.
"Eh!" said he, shaking his head. And the lines in the kindly old face
seemed to deepen, but in a sort of grave tenderness. "Eh, so love has
come to the dear lad at last! Ah! of course, the hundred other affairs!
Yes, yes. But they were light. No seriousness in them. The ladies may
have loved. He didn't very much. This time, I'm afraid----"
Baron de Vries paused as if he did not mean to finish his sentence, and
Hartley said--
"You say 'afraid'! Why, afraid?"
The Belgian looked up at him reflectively.
"Did I say 'afraid'?" he asked. "Well--perhaps it was the word I
wanted. I wonder if these two are fitted for each other. I am fond of
them both. I think you know that, but--she's not very flexible, this
child. And she hasn't much humour. I love her, but I know those things
are true. I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility
and without humour."
"If they love each other," said Richard Hartley, "I expect the other
things don't count. Do they?"
Baron de Vries rose to his feet, for he saw that the Phidias lady was
going.
"Perhaps not," said he; "I hope not. In any case, do your best for him
with Helen. Make her comprehend if you can. I am afraid she is unhappy
over the affair." He made his adieux and went away with the American
lady, to that young person's obvious excitement. And after a moment the
three ladies across the room departed also, Mrs. Benham explaining that
she was taking her two friends up to her own sitting-room to show them
something vaguely related to the heathen. So Hartley was left alone
with Helen Benham.
It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once.
He said, standing to say it more easily--
"You know why I came here to-day. It was the first chance I've had
since that--unfortunate evening. I came on Ste. Marie's account."