As he heard the door shut on the Prefect of Police, Vanderlyn felt his
nerve give way. There had come a moment during the conversation, when,
as if urged by some malignant power outside himself, he had felt a
sudden craving to take the old official into his confidence, and tell
him the whole truth--so magnetic were the personality, the compelling
will, of the man who had just left him.
He walked over to the corner window of his sitting-room, and stepped
onto the stone balcony which overlooked the twinkling lights of the
Place de la Concorde.
Then, flung out, merged in the deep roar below, there broke from
Laurence Vanderlyn a bitter cry; the keen night air had brought with it
a sudden memory of that moment when he had opened the railway carriage
door and stepped out into the rushing wind.... He asked himself why he
had not followed his first impulse, why he had not allowed himself to
die, with Peggy in his arms? Why, above all, had he undertaken a task
which it was becoming beyond his strength to carry through?
So wondering, so questioning, he leaned over the balustrade dangerously
far; then he drew quickly back, and placing his hands on the parapet,
stood for a moment as if holding at bay an invisible, yet to himself
most tangible, enemy.
With a sigh which was a groan, he walked back into the room. He had
never yet failed Peggy; he would not fail her now----
Vanderlyn sat down; he was determined not to be beaten by his nerves. He
took up the _New York Herald_; but a moment later he had laid the paper
down again on the table. What had been going on in America a week ago
could not compel his attention. He took another paper off the table; it
was the London _Daily Telegraph_, of which one of the most successful
features for many years has been a column entitled "Paris Day by
Day,"--an _olla podrida_ of news, grave and gay, domestic and
sensational, put together with infinite art, and a full understanding of
what is likely to appeal to the British middle-class reader. There, as
Vanderlyn knew well, was certain to be some reference to the
disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter.
Yes--here it was!
"No trace of Mrs. Pargeter, the wife of the well-known sportsman and
owner of Absinthe, has yet been found; but the lady's relations think it
possible that she went unexpectedly to stay with some friends, and that
the letter informing her household of her whereabouts has miscarried."
The Paris correspondent of the great London newspaper had proved himself
very discreet.
Vanderlyn's eyes glanced idly down the long column of paragraphs which
make up "Paris Day by Day." Again he remembered the look of deep
astonishment which had crossed a colleague's face at his ignorance of
some new sensation of which at that moment all Paris was apparently
talking. So it was that he applied himself to read the trifling items of
news with some care, for here would be found everything likely to keep
him in touch with the gossip of the day.