Jason by Justus Miles Forman (page 3)

courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance than it is worth. Be wise, Olga!”

“Some things, Ste. Marie,” said the golden lady, “are worth all the consequences that may follow them.”

She watched Captain Stewart across the room, where he stood chatting with a little group of people, and her beautiful face was as hard as marble and her eyes were as dark as a stormy night, and her mouth, for an instant, was almost like an animal’s mouth–cruel and relentless.

Ste. Marie saw, and he began to be a bit alarmed in good earnest. In his warning he had spoken rather more seriously than he felt the occasion demanded, but he began at last to wonder if the occasion was not in reality very serious, indeed. He was sure, of course, that Olga Nilssen had come here on this evening to annoy Captain Stewart in some fashion. As he put it to himself, she probably meant to “make a row,” and he would not have been in the least surprised if she had made it in the beginning, upon her very dramatic entrance. Nothing more calamitous than that had occurred to him. But when he saw the woman’s face turned a little away and gazing fixedly at Captain Stewart, he began to be aware that there was tragedy very near him–or all the makings of it.

Mlle. Nilssen turned back to him. Her face was still hard, and her eyes dark and narrowed with their oddly Oriental look. She bent her shoulders together for an instant and her hands moved slowly in her lap, stretching out before her in a gesture very like a cat’s when it wakes from sleep and yawns and extends its claws, as if to make sure that they are still there and ready for use.

“I feel a little like Samson to-night,” she said. “I am tired of almost everything, and I should like very much to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it–except you, Ste. Marie, dear; except you!–and be crushed under the ruins!”

“I think,” said Ste. Marie, practically–and the speech sounded rather like one of Hartley’s speeches–“I think it was not quite the world that Samson pulled down, but a temple–or a palace–something of that kind.”

“Well,” said the golden lady, “this place is rather like a temple–a Chinese temple, with the pig-dog for high-priest.”

Ste. Marie frowned at her.

“What are you going to do?” he demanded, sharply. “What did you come here to do? Mischief of some kind–bien entendu–but what?”

“Do?” she said, looking at him with her narrowed eyes. “I? Why, what should I do? Nothing, of course! I merely said I should like to pull the place down. Of course, I couldn’t do that quite literally, now, could I? No. It is merely a mood. I’m not going to do anything.”

“You’re not being honest with me,” he said.

And at that her expression changed, and she patted his arm again with a gesture that seemed to beg forgiveness.

“Well, then,” she said, “if you must know, maybe I did come here for a purpose. I want to have it out with our friend Captain Stewart about something. And Ste. Marie, dear,” she pleaded, “please, I think you’d better go home first. I don’t care about these other animals, but I don’t want you dragged into any row of any sort. Please be a sweet Ste. Marie and go home. Yes?”

“Absolutely, no!” said Ste. Marie. “I shall stay, and I shall try my utmost to prevent you from doing anything foolish. Understand that! If you want to have rows with people, Olga, for Heaven’s sake don’t pick an occasion like this for the purpose. Have your rows in private!”

“I rather think I enjoy an audience,” she said, with a reflective air, and Ste. Marie laughed aloud because he knew that the naive speech was so very true. This lady, with her many good qualities and her bad ones–not a few, alas!–had an undeniable passion for red fire that had amused him very much on more than one past occasion.

“Please go home!” she said once more.

But when the man only shook his head, she raised her hands a little way and dropped them again in her lap, in an odd gesture which seemed to say that she had done all she could do, and that if anything disagreeable should happen now, and he should be involved in it, it would be entirely his fault because she had warned him.

Then quite abruptly a mood of irresponsible gayety seemed to come upon her. She refused to have anything more to do with serious topics, and when Ste. Marie attempted to introduce them she laughed in his face. As she had said in the beginning she wished to do, she harked back to old days (the earlier stages of what might be termed the Morrison regime), and it seemed to afford her great delight to recall the happenings of that epoch. The conversation became a dialogue of reminiscence which would have been entirely unintelligible to a third person, and was, indeed, so to Captain Stewart, who once came across the room, made a feeble effort to attach himself, and presently wandered away again.

They unearthed from the past an exceedingly foolish song all about one “Little Willie” and a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick. It was set to a well-known air from _Don Giovanni_, and when Duval, the basso, heard them singing it he came up and insisted upon knowing what it was about. He laughed immoderately over the English words when he was told what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two visiting-cards. So they made a trio out of “Little Willie,” the great Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they were compelled to sing it over and over again, until Ste. Marie’s falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether, since he was by nature barytone, if anything at all.

The other guests had crowded round to hear the extraordinary song, and when the song was at last finished several of them remained, so that Ste. Marie saw he was to be allowed an uninterrupted tete-a-tete with Olga Nilssen no longer. He therefore drifted away, after a few moments, and went with Duval and one of the other men across the room to look at some small jade objects–snuff-bottles, bracelets, buckles, and the like–which were displayed in a cabinet cleverly reconstructed out of a Japanese shrine. It was perhaps ten minutes later when he looked round the place and discovered that neither Mlle. Nilssen nor Captain Stewart was to be seen.

His first thought was of relief, for he said to himself that the two had sensibly gone into one of the other rooms to “have it out” in peace and quiet. But following that came the recollection of the woman’s face when she had watched her host across the room. Her words came back to him: “I feel a little like Samson to-night…. I should like very much to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it!” Ste. Marie thought of these things, and he began to be uncomfortable. He found himself watching the yellow-hung doorway beyond, with its intricate Chinese carving of trees and rocks and little groups of immortals, and he found that unconsciously he was listening for something–he did not know what–above the chatter and laughter of the people in the room. He endured this for possibly five minutes, and all at once found that he could endure it no longer. He began to make his way quietly through the groups of people toward the curtained doorway.

As he went, one of the women near by complained in a loud tone that the servant had disappeared. She wanted, it seemed, a glass of water, having already had many glasses of more interesting things. Ste. Marie said he would get it for her, and went on his way. He had an excuse now.

He found himself in a square, dimly lighted room much smaller than the other. There was a round table in the centre, so he thought it must be Stewart’s dining-room. At the left a doorway opened into a place where there were lights, and at the other side was another door closed. From the room at the left there came a sound of voices, and though they were not loud, one of them, Mlle. Olga Nilssen’s voice, was hard and angry and not altogether under control. The man would seem to have been attempting to pacify her, and he would seem not to have been very successful.

The first words that Ste. Marie was able to distinguish were from the woman. She said, in a low, fierce tone:

“That is a lie, my friend! That is a lie! I know all about the road to Clamart, so you needn’t lie to me any longer. It’s no good.”

She paused for just an instant there, and in the pause St. Marie heard Stewart give a sort of inarticulate exclamation. It seemed to express anger and it seemed also to express fear. But the woman swept on, and her voice began to be louder. She said:

“I’ve given you your chance. You didn’t deserve it, but I’ve given it you–and you’ve told me nothing but lies. Well, you’ll lie no more. This ends it.”

Upon that Ste. Marie heard a sudden stumbling shuffle of feet and a low, hoarse cry of utter terror–a cry more animal-like than human. He heard the cry break off abruptly in something that was like a cough and a whine together, and he heard the sound of a heavy body falling with a loose rattle upon the floor.

With the sound of that falling body he had already reached the doorway and torn aside the heavy portiere. It was a sleeping-room he looked into, a room of medium size with two windows and an ornate bed of the Empire style set sidewise against the farther wall. There were electric lights upon imitation candles which were grouped in sconces against the wall, and these were turned on, so that the room was brightly illuminated. Midway between the door and the ornate Empire bed Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor, and Olga Nilssen stood upright beside him, gazing down upon him quite calmly. In her right hand, which hung at her side, she held a little flat black automatic pistol of the type known as Brownings–and they look like toys, but they are not.

Ste. Marie sprang at her silently and caught her by the arm, twisting the automatic pistol from her grasp, and the woman made no effort whatever to resist him. She looked into his face quite frankly and unmoved, and she shook her head.

“I haven’t harmed him,” she said. “I was going to, yes–and then myself–but he didn’t give me a chance. He fell down in a fit.” She nodded down toward the man who lay writhing at their feet. “I frightened him,” she said, “and he fell in a fit. He’s an epileptic, you know. Didn’t you know that? Oh yes.”

Abruptly she turned away shivering, and put up her hands over her face. And she gave an exclamation of uncontrollable repulsion.

“Ugh!” she cried, “it’s horrible! Horrible! I can’t bear to look. I saw him in a fit once before–long ago–and I couldn’t bear even to speak to him for a month. I thought he had been cured. He said–Ah, it’s horrible!”

Ste. Marie had dropped upon his knees beside the fallen man, and Mlle. Nilssen said, over her shoulder:

“Hold his head up from the floor, if you can bear to. He might hurt it.”

It was not an easy thing to do, for Ste. Marie had the natural sense of repulsion in such matters that most people have, and this man’s appearance, as Olga Nilssen had said, was horrible. The face was drawn hideously, and in the strong, clear light of the electrics it was a deathly yellow. The eyes were half closed, and the eyeballs turned up so that only the whites of them showed between the lids. There was froth upon the distorted mouth, and it clung to the catlike mustache and to the shallow, sunken chin beneath. But Ste. Marie exerted all his will power, and took the jerking, trembling head in his hands, holding it clear of the floor.

“You’d better call the servant,” he said. “There may be something that can be done.”

But the woman answered, without looking:

“No, there’s nothing that can be done, I believe, except to keep him from bruising himself. Stimulants–that sort of thing–do more harm than good. Could you get him on the bed here?”

“Together we might manage it,” said Ste. Marie. “Come and help!”

“I can’t!” she cried, nervously. “I can’t–touch him. Please, I can’t do it.”

“Come!” said the man, in a sharp tone. “It’s no time for nerves. I don’t like it, either, but it’s got to be done.”

The woman began a half-hysterical sobbing, but after a moment she turned and came with slow feet to where Stewart lay.

Ste. Marie slipped his arms under the man’s body and began to raise him from the floor.

“You needn’t help, after all,” he said. “He’s not heavy.”

And, indeed, under his skilfully shaped and padded clothes the man was a mere waif of a man–as unbelievably slight as if he were the victim of a wasting disease. Ste. Marie held the body in his arms as if it had been a child, and carried it across and laid it on the bed; but it was many months before he forgot the horror of that awful thing shaking and twitching in his hold, the head thumping hideously upon his shoulder, the arms and legs beating against him. It was the most difficult task he had ever had to perform. He laid Captain Stewart upon the bed and straightened the helpless limbs as best he could.

“I suppose,” he said, rising again–“I suppose when the man comes out of this he’ll be frightfully exhausted and drop off to sleep, won’t he? We’ll have to–“

He halted abruptly there, and for a single swift instant he felt the black and rushing sensation of one who is going to faint away. The wall behind the ornate Empire bed was covered with photographs, some in frames, others left, as they had been received, upon the large squares of weird cardboard which are termed “art mounts.”

“Come here a moment, quickly!” said Ste. Marie, in a sharp voice.

Mlle. Nilssen’s sobs had died down to a silent, spasmodic catching of the breath, but she was still much unnerved, and she approached the bed with obvious unwillingness, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Ste. Marie pointed to an unframed photograph which was fastened to the wall by thumb-tacks, and his outstretched hand shook as he pointed. Beneath them the other man still writhed and tumbled in his epileptic fit.

“Do you know who that woman is?” demanded Ste. Marie, and his tone was such that Olga Nilssen turned slowly and stared at him.

“That woman,” said she, “is the reason why I wished to pull the world down upon Charlie Stewart and me to-night. That’s who she is.”

Ste. Marie gave a sort of cry.

“Who is she?” he insisted. “What is her name? I–have a particularly important reason for wanting to know. I’ve got to know.”

Mlle. Nilssen shook her head, still staring at him.

“I can’t tell you that,” said she. “I don’t know the name. I only know that–when he met her, he–I don’t know her name, but I know where she lives and where he goes every day to see her–a house with a big garden and walled park on the road to Clamart. It’s on the edge of the wood, not far from Fort d’Issy. The Clamart-Vanves-Issy tram runs past the wall of one side of the park. That’s all I know.”

Ste. Marie clasped his head with his hands.

“So near to it!” he groaned, “and yet–Ah!” He bent forward suddenly over the bed and spelled out the name of the photographer which was pencilled upon the brown cardboard mount. “There’s still a chance,” he said, “There’s still one chance.”

He became aware that the woman was watching him curiously, and nodded to her.

“It’s something you don’t know about,” he explained. “I’ve got to find out who this–girl is. Perhaps the photographer can help me. I used to know him.” All at once his eyes sharpened. “Tell me the simple truth about something!” said he. “If ever we have been friends, if you owe me any good office, tell me this: Do you know anything about young Arthur Benham’s disappearance two months ago, or about what has become of him?”

Again the woman shook her head.

“No,” said she. “Nothing at all. I hadn’t even heard of it. Young Arthur Benham! I’ve met him once or twice. I wonder–I wonder Stewart never spoke to me about his disappearance! That’s very odd.”

“Yes,” said Ste. Marie, absently, “it is.” He gave a little sigh. “I wonder about a good many things,” said he.

He glanced down upon the bed before them, and Captain Stewart lay still, save for a slight twitching of the hands. Once he moved his head restlessly from side to side and said something incoherent in a weak murmur.

“He’s out of it,” said Olga Nilssen. “He’ll sleep now, I think. I suppose we must get rid of those people and then leave him to the care of his man. A doctor couldn’t do anything for him.”

“Yes,” said Ste. Marie, nodding, “I’ll call the servant and tell the people that Stewart has been taken ill.”

He looked once more toward the photograph on the wall, and under his breath he said, with an odd, defiant fierceness: “I won’t believe it!” But he did not explain what he wouldn’t believe. He started out of the room, but, half-way, halted and turned back. He looked Olga Nilssen full in the eyes, saying:

“It is safe to leave you here with him while I call the servant? There’ll be no more–?”

But the woman gave a low cry and a violent shiver with it.

“You need have no fear,” she said. “I’ve no desire now to–harm him. The–reason is gone. This has cured me. I feel as if I could never bear to see him again. Oh, hurry! Please hurry! I want to get away from here!”

Ste. Marie nodded, and went out of the room.

* * * * *

XII

THE NAME OF THE LADY WITH THE EYES–EVIDENCE HEAPS UP SWIFTLY

Ste. Marie drove home to the rue d’Assas with his head in a whirl, and with a sense of great excitement beating somewhere within him–probably in the place where his heart ought to be. He had a curiously sure feeling that at last his feet were upon the right path. He could not have explained this to himself–indeed, there was nothing to explain, and if there had been he was in far too great an inner turmoil to manage it. It was a mere feeling–the sort of thing which he had once tried to express to Captain Stewart and had got laughed at for his pains.

There was, in sober fact, no reason whatever why Captain Stewart’s possession of a photograph of the beautiful lady whom Ste. Marie had once seen in company with O’Hara should be taken as significant of anything except an appreciation of beauty on the part of Miss Benham’s uncle–not even if, as Mlle. Nilssen believed, Captain Stewart was in love with the lady. But to Ste. Marie, in his whirl of reawakened excitement, the discovery loomed to the skies, and in a series of ingenious but very vague leaps of the imagination he saw himself, with the aid of this new evidence (which was no evidence at all, if he had been calm enough to realize it), victorious in his great quest: leading young Arthur Benham back to the arms of an ecstatic family, and kneeling at the feet of that youth’s sister to claim his reward. All of which seems a rather startling flight of the imagination to have had its beginning in the sight of one photograph of a young woman. But, then, Ste. Marie was imaginative if he was anything.

He fell to thinking of this girl whose eyes, after one sight of them, had so long haunted him. He thought of her between those two men, the hard-faced Irish adventurer, and the other, Stewart, strange compound of intellectual and voluptuary, and his eyes flashed in the dark and he gripped his hands together upon his knees. He said again:

“I won’t believe it! I won’t believe it!” Believe what? one wonders.

He slept hardly at all: only, toward morning, falling into an uneasy doze. And in the doze he dreamed once more the dream of the dim, waste place and the hill, and the eyes and voice that called him back–because they needed him.

As early as he dared, after his morning coffee, he took a fiacre and drove across the river to the Boulevard de la Madeleine, where he climbed a certain stair, at the foot of which were two glass cases containing photographs of, for the most part, well-known ladies of the Parisian stage. At the top of the stair he entered the reception-room of a young photographer who is famous now the world over, but who, at the beginning of his career, when he had nothing but talent and no acquaintance, owed certain of his most important commissions to M. Ste. Marie.

The man, whose name was Bernstein, came forward eagerly from the studio beyond to greet his visitor, and Ste. Marie complimented him chaffingly upon his very sleek and prosperous appearance, and upon the new decorations of the little salon, which were, in truth, excellently well judged. But after they had talked for a little while of such matters, he said:

“I want to know if you keep specimen prints of all the photographs you have made within the past few months, and, if so, I should like to see them.”

The young Jew went to a wooden portfolio-holder which stood in a corner, and dragged it out into the light.

“I have them all here,” said he–“everything that I have made within the past ten or twelve months. If you will let me draw up a chair you can look them over comfortably.”

He glanced at his former patron with a little polite curiosity as Ste. Marie followed his suggestion, and began to turn over the big portfolio’s contents; but he did not show any surprise nor ask questions. Indeed, he guessed, to a certain extent, rather near the truth of the matter. It had happened before that young gentlemen–and old ones, too–wanted to look over his prints without offering explanations, and they generally picked out all the photographs there were of some particular lady and bought them if they could be bought.

So he was by no means astonished on this occasion, and he moved about the room putting things to rights, and even went for a few moments into the studio beyond until he was recalled by a sudden exclamation from his visitor–an exclamation which had a sound of mingled delight and excitement.

Ste. Marie held in his hands a large photograph, and he turned it toward the man who had made it.

“I am going to ask you some questions,” said he, “that will sound rather indiscreet and irregular, but I beg you to answer them if you can, because the matter is of great importance to a number of people. Do you remember this lady?”

“Oh yes,” said the Jew, readily, “I remember her very well. I never forget people who are as beautiful as this lady was.” His eyes gleamed with retrospective joy. “She was splendid!” he declared. “Sumptuous! No, I cannot describe her. I have not the words. And I could not photograph her with any justice, either. She was all color: brown skin, with a dull-red stain under the cheeks, and a great mass of hair that was not black but very nearly black–except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it. She was a goddess, that lady, a queen of goddesses– the young Juno before marriage–the–“

“Yes,” interrupted Ste. Marie–“yes, I see. Yes, quite evidently she was beautiful; but what I wanted in particular to know was her name, if you feel that you have a right to give it to me (I remind you again that the matter is very important), and any circumstances that you can remember about her coming here: who came with her, for instance and things of that sort.”

The photographer looked a little disappointed at being cut off in the middle of his rhapsody, but he began turning over the leaves of an order-book which lay upon a table near by.

“Here is the entry,” he said, after a few moments. “Yes, I thought so, the date was nearly three months ago–April 5th. And the lady’s name was Mlle. Coira O’Hara.”

“What!” cried the other man, sharply. “What did you say?”

“Mlle. Coira O’Hara was the name,” repeated the photographer. “I remember the occasion perfectly. The lady came here with three gentlemen–one tall, thin gentleman with an eyeglass, an Englishman, I think, though he spoke very excellent French when he spoke to me. Among themselves they spoke, I think, English, though I do not understand it, except a few words, such as ”ow moch?’ and ‘sank you’ and ‘rady, pleas’, now.'”

“Yes! yes!” cried Ste. Marie, impatiently. And the little Jew could see that he was laboring under some very strong excitement, and he wondered mildly about it, scenting a love-affair.

“Then,” he pursued, “there was a very young man in strange clothes–a tourist, I should think, like those Americans and English who come in the summer with little red books and sit on the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix.” He heard his visitor draw a swift, sharp breath at that, but he hurried on before he could be interrupted. “This young man seemed to be unable to take his eyes from the lady–and small wonder! He was very much epris–very much epris, indeed. Never have I seen a youth more so. Ah, it was something to see, that–a thing to touch the heart!”

“What did the young man look like?” demanded Ste. Marie.

The photographer described the youth as best he could from memory, and he saw his visitor nod once or twice, and at the end he said:

“Yes, yes; I thought so. Thank you.”

The Jew did not know what it was the other thought, but he went on:

“Ah, a thing to touch the heart! Such devotion as that! Alas, that the lady should seem so cold to it! Still, a goddess! What would you? A queen among goddesses. One would not have them laugh and make little jokes–make eyes at love-sick boys. No, indeed!” He shook his head rapidly and sighed.

M. Ste. Marie was silent for a little space, but at length he looked up as if he had just remembered something.

“And the third man?” he asked.

“Ah, yes, the third gentleman,” said Bernstein. “I had forgotten him. The third gentleman I knew well. He had often been here. It was he who brought these friends to me. He was M. le Capitaine Stewart. Everybody knows M. le Capitaine Stewart–everybody in Paris.”

Again he observed that his visitor drew a little, swift, sharp breath, and that he seemed to be laboring under some excitement.

However, Ste. Marie did not question him further, and so he went on to tell the little more he knew of the matter–how the four people had remained for an hour or more, trying many poses; how they had returned, all but the tall gentleman, three days later to see the proofs and to order certain ones to be printed (the young man paying on the spot in advance), and how the finished prints had been sent to M. le Capitaine Stewart’s address.

When he had finished, his visitor sat for a long time silent, his head bent a little, frowning upon the floor and chafing his hands together over his knees. But at last he rose rather abruptly. He said:

“Thank you very much, indeed. You have done me a great service. If ever I can repay it, command me. Thank you!”

The Jew protested, smiling, that he was still too deeply in debt to M. Ste. Marie, and so, politely wrangling, they reached the door, and with a last expression of gratitude the visitor departed down the stair. A client came in just then for a sitting, and so the little photographer did not have an opportunity to wonder over the rather odd affair as much as he might have done. Indeed, in the press of work, it slipped from his mind altogether.

But down in the busy boulevard Ste. Marie stood hesitating on the curb. There were so many things to be done, in the light of these new developments, that he did not know what to do first.

“Mlle. Coira O’Hara!–_Mademoiselle!_” The thought gave him a sudden sting of inexplicable relief and pleasure. She would be O’Hara’s daughter, then. And the boy, Arthur Benham (there was no room for doubt in the photographer’s description) had seemed to be badly in love with her. This was a new development, indeed! It wanted thought, reflection, consultation with Richard Hartley. He signalled to a fiacre, and when it had drawn up before him sprang into it and gave Richard Hartley’s address in the Avenue de l’Observatoire. But when they had gone a little way he changed his mind and gave another address, one in the Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg. It was where Mlle. Olga Nilssen lived. She had told him when he parted from her the evening before.

On the way he fell to thinking of what he had learned from the little photographer Bernstein, to setting the facts, as well as he could, in order, endeavoring to make out just how much or how little they signified by themselves or added to what he had known before. But he was in far too keen a state of excitement to review them at all calmly. As on the previous evening, they seemed to him to loom to the skies, and again he saw himself successful in his quest–victorious–triumphant. That this leap to conclusions was but a little less absurd than the first did not occur to him. He was in a fine fever of enthusiasm, and such difficulties as his eye perceived lay in a sort of vague mist to be dissipated later on, when he should sit quietly down with Hartley and sift the wheat from the chaff, laying out a definite scheme of action.

It occurred to him that in his interview with the photographer he had forgotten one point, and he determined to go back, later on, and ask about it. He had forgotten to inquire as to Captain Stewart’s attitude toward the beautiful lady. Young Arthur Benham’s infatuation had filled his mind at the time, and had driven out of it what Olga Nilssen had told him about Stewart. He found himself wondering if this point might not be one of great importance–the rivalry of the two men for O’Hara’s daughter. Assuredly that demanded thought and investigation.

He found the prettily furnished apartment in the Avenue de la Tour Maubourg a scene of great disorder, presided over by a maid who seemed to be packing enormous quantities of garments into large trunks. The maid told him that her mistress, after a sleepless night, had departed from Paris by an early train, quite alone, leaving the servant to follow on when she had telegraphed or written an address. No, Mlle. Nilssen had left no address at all–not even for letters or telegrams. In short, the entire proceeding was, so the exasperated woman viewed it, everything that is imbecile.

Ste. Marie sat down on a hamper with his stick between his knees, and wrote a little note to be sent on when Mlle. Nilssen’s whereabouts should be known. It was unfortunate, he reflected, that she should have fled away just now, but not of great importance to him, because he did not believe that he could learn very much more from her than he had learned already. Moreover, he sympathized with her desire to get away from Paris–as far away as possible from the man whom she had seen in so horrible a state on the evening past.

He had kept the fiacre at the door, and he drove at once back to the rue d’Assas. As he started to mount the stair the concierge came out of her loge to say that Mr. Hartley had called soon after Monsieur had left the house that morning, had seemed very much disappointed on not finding Monsieur, and before going away again had had himself let into Monsieur’s apartment with the key of the femme de menage, and had written a note which Monsieur would find la haut.

Ste. Marie thanked the woman, and went on up to his rooms, wondering why Hartley had bothered to leave a note instead of waiting or returning at lunch-time, as he usually did. He found the communication on his table and read it at once. Hartley said:

I have to go across the river to the Bristol to see some relatives who are turning up there to-day, and who will probably keep me until evening, and then I shall have to go back there to dine. So I’m leaving a word for you about some things I discovered last evening. I met Miss Benham at Armenonville, where I dined, and in a tete-a-tete conversation we had after dinner she let fall two facts which seem to me very important. They concern Captain S. In the first place, when he told us that day, some time ago, that he knew nothing about his father’s will or any changes that might have been made in it, he lied. It seems that old David, shortly after the boy’s disappearance, being very angry at what he considered, and still considers, a bit of spite on the boy’s part, cut young Arthur Benham out of his will and transferred that share to _Captain S._ (Miss Benham learned this from the old man only yesterday). Also it appears that he did this after talking the matter over with Captain S., who affected unwillingness. So, as the will reads now, Miss B. and Captain S. stand to share equally the bulk of the old man’s money, which is several millions–in dollars, of course. Miss B.’s mother is to have the interest of half of both shares as long as she lives. Now mark this: Prior to this new arrangement, Captain S. was to receive only a small legacy, on the ground that he already had a respectable fortune left him by his mother, old David’s first wife (I’ve heard, by-the-way, that he has squandered a good share of this.)

Miss B. is, of course, much cut up over the injustice to the boy, but she can’t protest too much, as it only excites old David. She says the old man is much weaker.

You see, of course, the significance of all this. If David Stewart dies, as he’s likely to do, before young Arthur’s return, Captain S. gets the money.

The second fact I learned was that Miss Benham did not tell her uncle about her semi-engagement to you or about your volunteering to search for the boy. She thinks her grandfather must have told him. I didn’t say so to her, but that is hardly possible in view of the fact that Stewart came on here to your rooms very soon after you had reached them yourself.

So that makes two lies for our gentle friend–and serious lies, both of them. To my mind, they point unmistakably to a certain conclusion. _Captain S. has been responsible for putting his nephew out of the way_. He has either hidden him somewhere and is keeping him in confinement, or he has killed him.

I wish we could talk it over to-day, but, as you see, I’m helpless. Remain in to-night, and I’ll come as soon as I can get rid of these confounded people of mine.

One word more. Be careful! Miss B. is, up to this point, merely puzzled over things. She doesn’t suspect her uncle of any crookedness, I’m sure. So we shall have to tread softly where she is concerned.

I shall see you to-night. R.H.

Ste. Marie read the closely written pages through twice, and he thought how like his friend it was to take the time and trouble to put what he had learned into this clear, concise form. Another man would have scribbled, “Important facts–tell you all about it to-night,” or something of that kind. Hartley must have spent a quarter of an hour over his writing.

Ste. Marie walked up and down the room with all his strength forcing his brain to quiet, reasonable action. Once he said, aloud:

“Yes, you’re right, of course. Stewart has been at the bottom of it all along.” He realized that he had been for some days slowly arriving at that conclusion, and that since the night before he had been practically certain of it, though he had not yet found time to put his suspicions into logical order. Hartley’s letter had driven the truth concretely home to him, but he would have reached the same truth without it–though that matter of the will was of the greatest importance. It gave him a strong weapon to strike with.

He halted before one of the front windows, and his eyes gazed unseeing across the street into the green shrubbery of the Luxembourg Gardens. The lace curtains had been left by the femme de menage hanging straight down, and not, as usual, looped back to either side, so he could see through them with perfect ease, although he could not be seen from outside.

He became aware that a man who was walking slowly up and down a path inside the high iron palings was in some way familiar to him, and his eyes sharpened. The man was inconspicuously dressed, and looked like almost any other man whom one might pass in the streets without taking any notice of him; but Ste. Marie knew that he had seen him often, and he wondered how and where. There was a row of lilac shrubs against the iron palings just inside and between the palings and the path, but two of the shrubs were dead and leafless, and each time the man passed this spot he came into plain view; each time, also, he directed an oblique glance toward the house opposite. Presently he turned aside and sat down upon one of the public benches, where he was almost, but not quite, hidden by the intervening foliage.

Then at last Ste. Marie gave a sudden exclamation and smote his hands together.

“The fellow’s a spy!” he cried, aloud. “He’s watching the house to see when I go out.” He began to remember how he had seen the man in the street and in cafes and restaurants, and he remembered that he had once or twice thought it odd, but without any second thought of suspicion. So the fellow had been set to spy upon him, watch his goings and comings and report them to–no need of asking to whom.

Ste. Marie stood behind his curtains and looked across into the pleasant expanse of shrubbery and greensward. He was wondering if it would be worth while to do anything. Men and women went up and down the path, hurrying or slowly, at ease with the world–laborers, students, bonnes with market-baskets in their hands and long bread loaves under their arms, nurse-maids herding small children, bigger children spinning diabolo spools as they walked. A man with a pointed black beard and a soft hat passed once and returned to seat himself upon the public bench that Ste. Marie was watching. For some minutes he sat there idle, holding the soft felt hat upon his knees for coolness. Then he turned and looked at the other occupant of the bench, and Ste. Marie thought he saw the other man nod, though he could not be sure whether either one spoke or not. Presently the new-comer rose, put on the soft hat again, and disappeared down the path going toward the gate at the head of the rue du Luxembourg.

Five minutes later the door-bell rang.

* * * * *

XIII

THE VOYAGE TO COLCHIS

Ste. Marie turned away from the window and crossed to the door. The man with the pointed beard removed his soft hat, bowed very politely, and asked if he had the honor to address M. Ste. Marie.

“That is my name,” said Ste. Marie. “Entrez, Monsieur!” He waved his visitor to a chair and stood waiting.

The man with the beard bowed once more. He said:

“I have not the great honor of Monsieur’s acquaintance, but circumstances, which I will explain later, have put it in my power–have made it a sacred duty, if I may be permitted to say the word–to place in Monsieur’s hands a piece of information.”

Ste. Marie smiled slightly and sat down. He said:

“I listen with pleasure–and anticipation. Pray go on!”

“I have information,” said the visitor, “of the whereabouts of M. Arthur Benham.”

Ste. Marie waved his hand.

“I feared as much,” said he. “I mean to say, I hoped so. Proceed, Monsieur!”

“And learning,” continued the other, “that M. Ste. Marie was conducting a search for that young gentleman, I hastened at once to place this information in his hands.”

“At a price,” suggested his host. “At a price, to be sure.”

The man with the beard spread out his hands in a beautiful and eloquent gesture which well accompanied his Marseillais accent.

“Ah, as to that!” he protested. “My circumstances–I am poor, Monsieur. One must gain the livelihood. What would you? A trifle. The merest trifle.”

“Where is Arthur Benham?” asked Ste. Marie.

“In Marseilles, Monsieur. I saw him a week ago–six days. And, so far as I could learn, he had no intention of leaving there immediately–though it is, to be sure, hot.”

Ste. Marie laughed a laugh of genuine amusement, and the man with the pointed beard stared at him with some wonder. Ste. Marie rose and crossed the room to a writing-desk which stood against the opposite wall. He fumbled in a drawer of this, and returned holding in his hand a pink-and-blue note of the Banque de France. He said:

“Monsieur–pardon! I have forgotten to ask the name–you have remarked quite truly that one must gain a livelihood. Therefore, I do not presume to criticise the way in which you gain yours. Sometimes one cannot choose. However, I should like to make a little bargain with you, Monsieur. I know, of course, being not altogether imbecile, who sent you here with this story and why you were sent–why, also, your friend who sits upon the bench in the garden across the street follows me about and spies upon me. I know all this, and I laugh at it a little. But, Monsieur, to amuse myself further, I have a desire to hear from your own lips the name of the gentleman who is your employer. Amusement is almost always expensive, and so I am prepared to pay for this. I have here a note of one hundred francs. It is yours in return for the name–the _right_ name. Remember, I know it already.”

The man with the pointed beard sprang to his feet quivering with righteous indignation. All Southern Frenchmen, like all other Latins, are magnificent actors. He shook one clinched hand in the air, his face was pale, and his fine eyes glittered. Richard Hartley would have put himself promptly in an attitude of defence, but Ste. Marie nodded a smiling head in appreciation. He was half a Southern Frenchman himself.

“Monsieur!” cried his visitor, in a choked voice, “Monsieur, have a care! You insult me! Have a care, Monsieur! I am dangerous! My anger, when roused, is terrible!”

“I am cowed,” observed Ste. Marie, lighting a cigarette. “I quail.”

“Never,” declaimed the gentleman from Marseilles, “have I received an insult without returning blow for blow! My blood boils!”

“The hundred francs, Monsieur,” said Ste. Marie, “will doubtless cool it. Besides, we stray from our sheep. Reflect, my friend! I have not insulted you. I have asked you a simple question. To be sure, I have said that I knew your errand here was not–not altogether sincere, but I protest, Monsieur, that no blame attaches to yourself. The blame is your employer’s. You have performed your mission with the greatest of honesty–the most delicate and faithful sense of honor. That is understood.”

The gentleman with the beard strode across to one of the windows and leaned his head upon his hand. His shoulders still heaved with emotion, but he no longer trembled. The terrible crisis bade fair to pass. Then, abruptly, in the frank and open Latin way, he burst into tears, and wept with copious profusion, while Ste. Marie smoked his cigarette and waited.

When at length the Marseillais turned back into the room he was calm once more, but there remained traces of storm and flood. He made a gesture of indescribable and pathetic resignation.

“Monsieur,” he exclaimed, “you have a heart of gold–of gold, Monsieur! You understand. Behold us, two men of honor! Monsieur,” he said, “I had no choice. I was poor. I saw myself face to face with the misere. What would you? I fell. We are all weak flesh. I accepted the commission of the pig who sent me here to you.”

Ste. Marie smoothed the pink-and-blue bank-note in his hands, and the other man’s eye clung to it as though he were starving and the bank-note was food.

“The name?” prompted Ste. Marie.

The gentleman from Marseilles tossed up his hands.

“Monsieur already knows it. Why should I hesitate? The name is Ducrot.”

“What!” cried Ste. Marie, sharply. “What is that? Ducrot?”

“But naturally!” said the other man, with some wonder. “Monsieur said he knew. Certainly, Ducrot. A little, withered man, bald on the top of the head, creases down the cheeks, a mustache like this”–he made a descriptive gesture–“a little chin. A man like an elderly cat. M. Ducrot.”

Ste. Marie gave a sigh of relief.

“Yes, yes,” said he. “Ducrot is as good a name as another. The gentleman has more than one, it appears. Monsieur, the hundred-franc note is yours.”

The gentleman from Marseilles took it with a slightly trembling hand, and began to bow himself toward the door as if he feared that his host would experience a change of heart; but Ste. Marie checked him, saying:

“One moment. I was thinking,” said he, “that you would perhaps not care to present yourself to your–employer, M. Ducrot, immediately–not for a few days, at least, in view of the fact that certain actions of mine will show him your mission has–well, miscarried. It would, perhaps, be well for you not to communicate with M. Ducrot. He might be displeased with you.”

“Monsieur,” said the gentleman with the beard, “you speak with acumen and wisdom. I shall neglect to report myself to M. Ducrot, who, I repeat, is a pig.”

“And,” pursued Ste. Marie, “the individual on the bench across the street?”

“It is not necessary that I meet that individual, either!” said the Marseillais, hastily. “Monsieur, I bid you adieu!” He bowed again, a profound, a scraping bow, and disappeared through the door.

Ste. Marie crossed to the window and looked down upon the pavement below. He saw his late visitor emerge from the house and slip rapidly down the street toward the rue Vavin. He glanced across into the gardens and the spy still sat there on his bench, but his head lay back and he slept–the sleep of the unjust. One imagined that he must be snoring, for an incredibly small urchin in a blue apron stood on the path before him and watched with the open mouth of astonishment.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room, and began to tramp up and down as was his way in a perplexity or in any time of serious thought. He wished very much that Richard Hartley were there to consult with. He considered Hartley to have a judicial mind–a mind to establish, out of confusion, something like logical order, and he was very well aware that he himself had not that sort of mind at all. In action he was sufficiently confident of himself, but to construct a course of action he was afraid, and he knew that a misstep now, at this critical point, might be fatal–turn success into disaster.

He fell to thinking of Captain Stewart (alias M. Ducrot) and he longed most passionately to leap into a fiacre at the corner below, to drive at a gallop across the city to the rue du Faubourg St. Honore, to fall upon that smiling hypocrite in his beautiful treasure-house, to seize him by the withered throat and say:

“Tell me what you have done with Arthur Benham before I tear your head from your miserable body!”

Indeed, he was far from sure that this was not what it would come to, in the end, for he reflected that he had not only a tremendous accumulation of evidence with which to face Captain Stewart, but also a very terrible weapon to hold over his head–the threat of exposure to the old man who lay slowly dying in the rue de l’Universite! A few words in old David’s ear, a few proofs of their truth, and the great fortune for which the son had sold his soul–if he had any left to sell–must pass forever out of his reach, like gold seen in a dream.

This is what it might well come to, he said to himself. Indeed, it seemed to him at that moment far the most feasible plan, for to such accusations, such demands as that, Captain Stewart could offer no defence. To save himself from a more complete ruin he would have to give up the boy or tell what he knew of him. But Ste. Marie was unwilling to risk everything on this throw without seeing Richard Hartley first, and Hartley was not to be had until evening.

He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for he was quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a day or two. He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that its paroxysms were followed by great exhaustion, and he felt sure that Stewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severe call upon his strength. He remembered how light that burden had been in his arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgust went over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted and contorted face, felt again the shaking, thumping head as it beat against his shoulder. He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would be able to remember of the events of the evening before, and he was at a loss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures. Of one thing, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man could scarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit was over. If he had come at all to his proper senses before the ensuing slumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himself had gone away.

Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman from Marseilles–he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the gentleman from Marseilles–but he reflected that the two were, without doubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably been stalking him for some days before he found him at home.

He looked at his watch and it was half-past twelve. There was nothing to be done, he considered, but wait–get through the day somehow; and so, presently, he went out to lunch. He went up the rue Vavin to the Boulevard Montparnasse and down that broad thoroughfare to Lavenue’s, on the busy Place de Rennes, where the cooking is the best in all this quarter, and can, indeed, hold up its head without shame in the face of those other more widely famous restaurants across the river, frequented by the smart world and by the travelling gourmet.

He went through to the inner room, which is built like a raised loggia round two sides of a little garden, and which is always cool and fresh in summer. He ordered a rather elaborate lunch, and thought that he sat a very long time at it, but when he looked again at his watch only an hour and a half had gone by. It was a quarter-past two. Ste. Marie was depressed. There remained almost all of the afternoon to be got through, and Heaven alone could say how much of the evening, before he could have his consultation with Richard Hartley. He tried to think of some way of passing the time, but although he was not usually at a loss he found his mind empty of ideas. None of his common occupations recommended themselves to him. He knew that whatever he tried to do he would interrupt it with pulling out his watch every half-hour or so and cursing the time because it lagged so slowly. He went out to the terrace for coffee, very low in his mind.

But half an hour later, as he sat behind his little marble-topped table, smoking and sipping a liqueur, his eyes fell upon something across the square which brought him to his feet with a sudden exclamation. One of the big electric trams that ply between the Place St. Germain des Pres and Clamart, by way of the Porte de Versailles and Vanves, was dragging its unwieldy bulk round the turn from the rue de Rennes into the boulevard. He could see the sign-board along the imperiale–“Clamart-St. Germain des Pres,” with “Issy” and “Vanves” in brackets between.

Ste. Marie clinked a franc upon the table and made off across the Place at a run. Omnibuses from Batignolles and Menilmontant got in his way, fiacres tried to run him down, and a motor-car in a hurry pulled up just in time to save his life, but Ste. Marie ran on and caught the tram before it had completed the negotiation of the long curve and gathered speed for its dash down the boulevard. He sprang upon the step, and the conductor reluctantly unfastened the chain to admit him. So he climbed up to the top and seated himself, panting. The dial high on the facade of the Gare Montparnasse said ten minutes to three.

He had no definite plan of action. He had started off in this headlong fashion upon the spur of a moment’s impulse, and because he knew where the tram was going. Now, embarked, he began to wonder if he was not a fool. He knew every foot of the way to Clamart, for it was a favorite half-day’s excursion with him to ride there in this fashion, walk thence through the beautiful Meudon wood across to the river, and from Bellevue or Bas-Meudon take a Suresnes boat back into the city. He knew, or thought he knew, just where lay the house, surrounded by garden and half-wild park, of which Olga Nilssen had told him; he had often wondered whose place it was as the tram rolled along the length of its high wall. But he knew, also, that he could do nothing there, single-handed and without excuse or preparation. He could not boldly ring the bell, demand speech with Mile. Coira O’Hara, and ask her if she knew anything of the whereabouts of young Arthur Benham, whom a photographer had suspected of being in love with her. He certainly could not do that. And there seemed to be nothing else that–Ste. Marie broke off this somewhat despondent course of reasoning with a sudden little voiceless cry. For the first time it occurred to him to connect the house on the Clamart road and Mlle. Coira O’Hara and young Arthur Benham (it will be remembered that the man had not yet had time to arrange his suddenly acquired mass of evidence in logical order and to make deductions from it), for the first time he began to put two and two together. Stewart had hidden away his nephew; this nephew was known to have been much enamoured of the girl Coira O’Hara; Coira O’Hara was said to be living–with her father, probably–in the house on the outskirts of Paris, where she was visited by Captain Stewart. Was not the inference plain enough–sufficiently reasonable? It left, without doubt, many puzzling things to be explained–perhaps too many; but Ste. Marie sat forward in his seat, his eyes gleaming, his face tense with excitement.

“Is young Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road?”

He said the words almost aloud, and he became aware that the fat woman with a live fowl at her feet and the butcher’s boy on his other side were looking at him curiously. He realized that he was behaving in an excited manner, and so sat back and lowered his eyes. But over and over within him the words said themselves–over and over, until they made a sort of mad, foolish refrain.

“Is Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road? Is Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road?” He was afraid that he would say it aloud once more, and, he tried to keep a firm hold upon himself.

The tram swung into the rue de Sevres, and rolled smoothly out the long, uninteresting stretch of the rue Lecourbe, far out to where the houses, became scattered, where mounds and pyramids of red tiles stood alongside the factory where they had been made, where an acre of little glass hemispheres in long, straight rows winked and glistened in the afternoon sun–the forcing-beds of some market gardener; out to the Porte de Versailles at the city wall, where a group of customs officers sprawled at ease before their little sentry-box or loafed over to inspect an incoming tram.

A bugle sounded and a drum beat from the great fosse under the wall, and a company of piou-pious, red-capped, red-trousered, shambled through their evolutions in a manner to break the heart of a British or a German drill-sergeant. Then out past level fields to little Vanves, with its steep streets and its old gray church, and past the splendid grounds of the Lycee beyond. The fat woman got down, her live fowl shrieking protest to the movement, and the butcher’s boy got down, too, so that Ste. Marie was left alone upon the imperiale save for a snuffy old gentleman in a pot-hat who sat in a corner buried behind the day’s _Droits de l’Homme_.

Ste. Marie moved forward once more and laid his arms upon the iron rail before him. They were coming near. They ran past plum and apple orchards and past humble little detached villas, each with a bit of garden in front and an acacia or two at the gate-posts. But presently, on the right, the way began to be bordered by a high stone wall, very long, behind which showed the trees of a park, and among them, far back from the wall beyond a little rise of ground, the gables and chimneys of a house could be made out. The wall went on for perhaps a quarter of a mile in a straight sweep, but half-way the road swung apart from it to the left, dipped under a stone railway bridge, and so presently ended at the village of Clamart.

As the tram approached the beginning of that long stone wall it began to slacken speed, there was a grating noise from underneath, and presently it came to an abrupt halt. Ste. Marie looked over the guard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneeling in the dust beside the car peering at its underworks. The conductor strolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by, remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsion is subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague a number of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names, and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after the manner of a serpent until nothing could be seen of him but two unrestful feet. His voice, though muffled, was still tolerably distinct. It cursed, in an unceasing staccato and with admirable ingenuity, the tram, the conductor, the sacred dog of an impediment which had got itself wedged into one of the trucks, and the world in general.

Ste. Marie, sitting aloft, laughed for a moment, and then turned his eager eyes upon what lay across the road. The halt had taken place almost exactly at the beginning of that long stretch of park wall which ran beside the road and the tramway. From where he sat he could see the other wing which led inward from the road at something like a right angle, but was presently lost to sight because of a sparse and unkempt patch of young trees and shrubs, well-nigh choked with undergrowth, which extended for some distance from the park wall backward along the road-side toward Vanves. Whoever owned that stretch of land had seemingly not thought it worth while to cultivate it or to build upon it or even to clear it off.

Ste. Marie’s first thought, as his eye scanned the two long stretches of wall and looked over their tops to the trees of the park and the far-off gables and chimneys of the house, was to wonder where the entrance to the place could be, and he decided that it must be on the side opposite to the Clamart tram-line. He did not know the smaller roads hereabouts, but he guessed that there must be one somewhere beyond, between the route de Clamart and Fort d’Issy, and he was right. There is a little road between the two; it sweeps round in a long curve and ends near the tiny public garden in Issy, and it is called the rue Barbes.

His second thought was that this unkempt patch of tree and brush offered excellent cover for any one who might wish to pass an observant hour alongside that high stone wall; for any one who might desire to cast a glance over the lie of the land, to see at closer range that house of which so little could be seen from the route de Clamart, to look over the wall’s coping into park and garden.

The thought brought him to his feet with a leaping heart, and before he realized that he had moved he found himself in the road beside the halted tram. The conductor brushed past him, mounting to his place, and from the platform beckoned, crying out:

“En voiture, Monsieur! En voiture!”

Again something within Ste. Marie that was not his conscious direction acted for him, and he shook his head. The conductor gave two little blasts upon his horn, the tram wheezed and moved forward. In a moment it was on its way, swinging along at full speed toward the curve in the line that bore to the left and dipped under the railway bridge. Ste. Marie stood in the middle of that empty road, staring after it until it had disappeared from view.

* * * * *

XIV

THE WALLS OF AEA

Ste. Marie had acted upon an impulse of which he was scarcely conscious at all, and when he found himself standing alone in the road and watching the Clamart tram disappear under the railway bridge he called himself hard names and wondered what he was to do next. He looked before and behind him, and there was no living soul in sight. He bent his eyes again upon that unkempt patch of young trees and undergrowth, and once more the thought forced itself to his brain that it would make excellent cover for one who wished to observe a little–to reconnoitre.

He knew that it was the part of wisdom to turn his back upon this place, to walk on to Clamart or return to Vanves and mount upon a homeward-bound tram. He knew that it was the part of folly, of madness even, to expose himself to possible discovery by some one within the walled enclosure. What though no one there were able to recognize him, still the sight of a man prowling about the walls, seeking to spy over them, might excite an alarm that would lead to all sorts of undesirable complications. Dimly Ste. Marie realized all this, and he tried to turn his back and walk away, but the patch of little trees and shrubbery drew him with an irresistible fascination. “Just a little look along that unknown wall,” he said to himself, “just the briefest of all brief reconnaissances, the merest glance beyond the masking screen of wood growth, so that in case of sudden future need he might have the lie of the place clear in his mind;” for without any sound reason for it he was somehow confident that this walled house and garden were to play an important part in the rescue of Arthur Benham. It was once more a matter of feeling. The rather womanlike intuition which had warned him that O’Hara was concerned in young Benham’s disappearance, and that the two were not far from Paris, was again at work in him, and he trusted it as he had done before.

He gave a little nod of determination, as one who, for good or ill, casts a die, and he crossed the road. There was a deep ditch, and he had to climb down into it and up its farther side, for it was too broad to be jumped. So he came into the shelter of the young poplars and elms and oaks. The underbrush caught at his clothes, and the dead leaves of past seasons crackled underfoot; but after a little space he came to somewhat clearer ground, though the saplings still stood thick about him and hid him securely.

He made his way inward along the wall, keeping a short distance back from it, and he saw that after twenty or thirty yards it turned again at a very obtuse angle away from him and once more ran on in a long straight line. Just beyond this angle he came upon a little wooden door thickly studded with nails. It was made to open inward, and on the outside there was no knob or handle of any kind, only a large key-hole of the simple, old-fashioned sort. Slipping up near to look, Ste. Marie observed that the edges of the key-hole were rusty, but scratched a little through the rust with recent marks; so the door, it seemed, was sometimes used. He observed another thing. The ground near by was less encumbered with trees than at any other point, and the turf was depressed with many wheel marks–broad marks, such as are made only by the wheels of a motor-car. He followed these tracks for a little distance, and they wound in and out among the trees, and beyond the thin fringe of wood swept away in a curve toward Issy, doubtless to join the road which he had already imagined to lie somewhere beyond the enclosure.

Beyond the more open space about this little door the young trees stood thick together again, and Ste. Marie pressed cautiously on. He stopped now and then to listen, and once he thought that he heard from within the sound of a woman’s laugh, but he could not be sure. The slight change of direction had confused him a little, and he was uncertain as to where the house lay. The wall was twelve or fifteen feet high, and from the level of the ground he could, of course, see nothing over it but tree tops. He went on for what may have been a hundred yards, but it seemed to him very much more than that, and he came to a tall gnarled cedar-tree which stood almost against the high wall. It was half dead, but its twisted limbs were thick and strong, and by force of the tree’s cramped position they had grown in strange and grotesque forms. One of them stretched across the very top of the stone wall, and with the wind’s action it had scraped away the coping of tiles and bottle-glass and had made a little depression there to rest in.

Ste. Marie looked up along this natural ladder, and temptation smote him sorely. It was so easy and so safe! There was enough foliage left upon the half-dead tree to screen him well, but whether or no it is probable that he would have yielded to the proffered lure. There seems to have been more than chance in Ste. Marie’s movements upon this day; there seems to have been something like the hand of Fate in them–as doubtless there is in most things, if one but knew.

He left his hat and stick behind him, under a shrub, and he began to make his way up the half-bare branches of the gnarled cedar. They bore him well, without crack or rustle, and the way was very easy. No ladder made by man could have offered a much simpler ascent. So, mounting slowly and with care, his head came level with the top of the wall. He climbed to the next branch, a foot higher, and rested there. The drooping foliage from the upper part of the cedar-tree, which was still alive, hung down over him and cloaked him from view, but through its aromatic screen he could see as freely as through the window curtain in the rue d’Assas.

The house lay before him, a little to the left and perhaps a hundred yards away. It was a disappointing house to find in that great enclosure, for though it was certainly neither small nor trivial, it was as certainly far from possessing anything like grandeur. It had been in its day a respectable, unpretentious square structure of three stories, entirely without architectural beauty, but also entirely without the ornate hideousness of the modern villas along the route de Clamart. Now, however, the stucco was gone in great patches from its stone walls, giving them an unpleasantly diseased look, and long neglect of all decent cares had lent the place the air almost of desertion. Anciently the grounds before the house had been laid out in the formal fashion with a terrace and geometrical lawns and a pool and a fountain and a rather fine, long vista between clipped larches, but the same neglect which had made shabby the stuccoed house had allowed grass and weeds to grow over the gravel paths, underbrush to spring up and to encroach upon the geometrical turf-plots, the long double row of clipped larches to flourish at will or to die or to fall prostrate and lie where they had fallen.

So all the broad enclosure was a scene of heedless neglect, a riot of unrestrained and wanton growth, where should have been decorous and orderly beauty. It was a sight to bring tears to a gardener’s eyes, but it had a certain untamed charm of its own, for all that. The very riot of it, the wanton prodigality of untouched natural growth, produced an effect that was by no means all disagreeable.

An odd and whimsical thought came into Ste. Marie’s mind that thus must have looked the garden and park round the castle of the sleeping beauty when the prince came to wake her.

But sleeping beauties and unkempt grounds went from him in a flash when he became aware of a sound which was like the sound of voices. Instinctively he drew farther back into the shelter of his aromatic screen. His eyes swept the space below him from right to left, and could see no one. So he sat very still, save for the thunderous beat of a heart which seemed to him like drum-beats when soldiers are marching, and he listened–“all ears,” as the phrase goes.

The sound was in truth a sound of voices. He was presently assured of that, but for some time he could not make out from which direction it came. And so he was the more startled when quite suddenly there appeared from behind a row of tall shrubs two young people moving slowly together up the untrimmed turf in the direction of the house.

The two young people were Mlle. Coira O’Hara and Arthur Benham, and upon the brow of this latter youth there was no sign of dungeon pallor, upon his free-moving limbs no ball and chain. There was no apparent reason why he should not hasten back to the eager arms in the rue de l’Universite if he chose to–unless, indeed, his undissembling attitude toward Mlle. Coira O’Hara might serve as a reason. The young man followed at her heel with much the manner and somewhat the appearance of a small dog humbly conscious of unworthiness, but hopeful nevertheless of an occasional kind word or pat on the head.

The world wheeled multi-colored and kaleidoscopic before Ste. Marie’s eyes, and in his ears there was a rushing of great winds, but he set his teeth and clung with all the strength he had to the tree which sheltered him. His first feeling, after that initial giddiness, was anger, sheer anger, a bewildered and astonished fury. He had thought to find this poor youth in captivity, pining through prison bars for the home and the loved ones and the familiar life from which he had been ruthlessly torn. Yet here he was strolling in a suburban garden with a lady–free, free as air, or so he seemed. Ste. Marie thought of the grim and sorrowful old man in Paris who was sinking untimely into his grave because his grandson did not return to him; he thought of that timid soul–more shadow than woman–the boy’s mother; he thought of Helen Benham’s tragic eyes, and he could have beaten young Arthur half to death in that moment in the righteous rage that stormed within him.

But he turned his eyes from this wretched youth to the girl who walked beside, a little in advance, and the rage died in him swiftly.

After all, was she not one to make any boy–or any man–forget duty, home, friends, everything?

Rather oddly his mind flashed back to the morning and to the words of the little photographer, Bernstein. Perhaps the Jew had put it as well as any man could:

“She was a goddess, that lady, a queen of goddesses … the young Juno before marriage….”

Ste. Marie nodded his head. Yes, she was just that. The little Jew had spoken well. It could not be more fairly put–though without doubt it could have been expressed at much greater length and with a great deal more eloquence. The photographer’s other words came also to his mind, the more detailed description, and again he nodded his head, for this, too, was true.

“She was all color–brown skin with a dull-red stain under the cheeks, and a great mass of hair that was not black but very nearly black–except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it.”

It occurred to Ste. Marie, whimsically, that the two young people might have stepped out of the door of Bernstein’s studio straight into this garden, judging from their bearing each to the other.

“Ah, a thing to touch the heart! Such devotion as that! Alas, that the lady should seem so cold to it! … Still, a goddess! What would you? A queen among goddesses! … One would not have them laugh and make little jokes…. Make eyes at love-sick boys. No, indeed!”

Certainly Mlle. Coira O’Hara was not making eyes at the love-sick boy who followed at her heel this afternoon. Perhaps it would be going too far to say that she was cold to him, but it was very plain to see that she was bored and weary, and that she wished she might be almost anywhere else than where she was. She turned her beautiful face a little toward the wall where Ste. Marie lay perdu, and he could see that her eyes had the same dark fire, the same tragic look of appeal that he had seen in them before–once in the Champs-Elysees and again in his dreams.

Abruptly he became aware that while he gazed, like a man in a trance, the two young people walked on their way and were on the point of passing beyond reach of eye or ear. He made a sudden involuntary movement as if he would call them back, and for the first time his faithful hiding-place, strained beyond silent endurance, betrayed him with a loud rustle of shaken branches. Ste. Marie shrank back, his heart in his throat. It was too late to retreat now down the tree. The damage was already done. He saw the two young people halt and turn to look, and after a moment he saw the boy come slowly forward, staring. He heard him say:

“What’s up in that tree? There’s something in the tree.” And he heard the girl answer: “It’s only birds fighting. Don’t bother!” But young Arthur Benham came on, staring up curiously until he was almost under the high wall.

Then Ste. Marie’s strange madness, or the hand of Fate, or whatever power it was which governed him on that day, thrust him on to the ultimate pitch of recklessness. He bent forward from his insecure perch over the wall until his head and shoulders were in plain sight, and he called down to the lad below in a loud whisper:

“Benham! Benham!”

The boy gave a sharp cry of alarm and began to back away. And after a moment Ste. Marie heard the cry echoed from Coira O’Hara. He heard her say:

“Be careful! Be careful, Arthur! Come away! Oh, come away quickly!”

Ste. Marie raised his own voice to a sort of cry. He said:

“Wait! I tell you to wait, Benham! I must have a word with you. I come from your family–from Helen!”

To his amazement the lad turned about and began to run toward where the girl stood waiting; and so, without a moment’s hesitation, Ste. Marie threw himself across the top of the wall, hung for an instant by his hands, and dropped upon the soft turf. Scarcely waiting to recover his balance, he stumbled forward, shouting:

“Wait! I tell you, wait! Are you mad? Wait, I say! Listen to me!”

Vaguely, in the midst of his great excitement, he had heard a whistle sound as he dropped inside the wall. He did not know then whence the shrill call had come, but afterward he knew that Coira O’ Hara had blown it. And now, as he ran forward toward the two who stood at a distance staring at him, he heard other steps and he slackened his pace to look.

A man came running down among the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnomelike man whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause in his odd, scrambling run.

Ste. Marie felt a violent blow upon his left leg between hip and knee. He thought that somebody had crept up behind him and struck him; but as he whirled about he saw that there was no one there, and then he heard a noise and knew that the gnomelike running man had shot him. He faced about once more toward the two young people. He was very angry and he wished to say so, and very much he wished to explain why he had trespassed there, and why they had no right to shoot him as if he were some wretched thief. But he found that in some quite absurd fashion he was as if fixed to the ground. It was as if he had suddenly become of the most ponderous and incredible weight, like lead–or that other metal, not gold, which is the heaviest of all. Only the metal, seemingly, was not only heavy but fiery hot, and his strength was incapable of holding it up any longer. His eyes fixed themselves in a bewildered stare upon the figure of Mlle. Coira O’Hara; he had time to observe that she had put up her two hands over her face, then he fell down forward, his head struck something very hard, and he knew no more.

* * * * *

XV

A CONVERSATION AT LA LIERRE

Captain Stewart walked nervously up and down the small inner drawing-room at La Lierre, his restless hands fumbling together behind him, and his eyes turning every half-minute with a sharp eagerness to the closed door. But at last, as if he were very tired, he threw himself down in a chair which stood near one of the windows, and all his tense body seemed to relax in utter exhaustion. It was not a very comfortable chair that he had sat down in, but there were no comfortable chairs in the room–nor, for that matter, in all the house. When he had taken the place, about two months before this time, he had taken it furnished, but that does not mean very much in France. No French country-houses–or town-houses, either–are in the least comfortable, by Anglo-Saxon standards, and that is at least one excellent reason why Frenchmen spend just as little time in them as they possibly can. Half the cafes in Paris would promptly put up their shutters if Parisian homes could all at once turn themselves into something like English or American ones. As for La Lierre, it was even more dreary and bare and tomblike than other country-houses, because it was, after all, a sort of ruin, and had not been lived in for fifteen years, save by an ancient caretaker and his nearly as ancient wife. And that was, perhaps, why it could be taken on a short lease at such a very low price.

The room in which Captain Stewart sat was behind the large drawing-room, which was always kept closed now, and it looked out by one window to the west, and by two windows to the north, over a corner of the kitchen garden and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls bare except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of chocolate-colored marble, and in the centre of the room there was a table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart’s dust-coat and motoring cap and goggles.

A shaft of golden light from the low sun slanted into the place through the western window from which the Venetians had been pulled back, and fell across the face of the man who lay still and lax in his chair, eyes closed and chin dropped a little so that his mouth hung weakly open. He looked very ill, as, indeed, any one might look after such an attack as he had suffered on the night previous. That one long moment of deathly fear before he had fallen down in a fit had nearly killed him. All through this following day it had continued to recur until he thought he should go mad. And there was worse still. How much did Olga Nilssen know? And how much had she told? She had astonished and frightened him when she had said that she knew about the house on the road to Clamart, for he thought he had hidden his visits to La Lierre well. He wondered rather drearily how she had discovered them, and he wondered how much she knew more than she had admitted. He had a half-suspicion of something like the truth, that Mlle. Nilssen knew only of Coira O’Hara’s presence here, and drew a rather natural inference. If that was all, there was no danger from her–no more, that is, than had already borne its fruit, for Stewart knew well enough that Ste. Marie must have learned of the place from her. In any case Olga Nilssen had left Paris–he had discovered that fact during the day–and so for the present she might be eliminated as a source of peril.

The man in the chair gave a little groan and rolled his head wearily to and fro against the uncomfortable chair-back, for now he came to the real and immediate danger, and he was so very tired and ill, and his head ached so sickeningly that it was almost beyond him to bring himself face to face with it.

There was the man who lay helpless upon a bed up-stairs! And there were the man’s friends, who were not at all helpless or bedridden or in captivity!

A wave of almost intolerable pain swept through Stewart’s aching head, and he gave another groan which was almost like a child’s sob. But at just that moment the door which led into the central hall opened, and the Irishman O’Hara came into the room. Captain Stewart sprang to his feet to meet him, and he caught the other man by the arm in his eagerness.

“How is he?” he cried out. “How is he? How badly was he hurt?”

“The patient?” said O’Hara. “Let go my arm! Hang it, man, you’re pinching me! Oh, he’ll do well enough. He’ll be fit to hobble about in a week or ten days. The bullet went clean through his leg and out again without cutting an artery. It was a sort of miracle–and a damned lucky miracle for all hands, too! If we’d had a splintered bone or a severed artery to deal with I should have had to call in a doctor. Then the fellow would have talked, and there’d have been the devil to pay. As it is, I shall be able to manage well enough with my own small skill. I’ve dressed worse wounds than that in my time. By Jove, it was a miracle, though!” A sudden little gust of rage swept him. He cried out: “That confounded fool of a gardener, that one-eyed Michel, ought to be beaten to death. Why couldn’t he have slipped up behind this fellow and knocked him on the head, instead of shooting him from ten paces away? The benighted idiot! He came near upsetting the whole boat!”

“Yes,” said Captain Stewart, with a sharp, hard breath, “he should have shot straighter or not at all.”

The Irishman stared at him with his bright blue eyes, and after a moment he gave a short laugh.

“Jove, you’re a bloodthirsty beggar, Stewart!” said he. “That would have been a rum go, if you like! Killing the fellow! All his friends down on us like hawks, and the police and all that! You can’t go about killing people in the outskirts of Paris, you know–at least not people with friends. And this chap looks like a gentleman, more or less, so I take it he has friends. As a matter of fact, his face is rather familiar. I think I’ve seen him before, somewhere. You looked at him just now through the crack of the door; do you know who he is? Coira tells me he called out to Arthur by name, but Arthur says he never saw him before and doesn’t know him at all.”

Captain Stewart shivered. It had not been a pleasant moment for him, that moment when he had looked through the crack of the door and recognized Ste. Marie.

“Yes,” he said, half under his breath–“yes, I know who he is. A friend of the family.”

The Irishman’s lips puckered to a low whistle. He said:

“Spying, then, as I thought. He has run us to earth.”

And the other nodded. O’Hara took a turn across the room and back.

“In that case,” he said, presently–“in that case, then, we must keep him prisoner here so long as we remain. That’s certain.” He spun round sharply with an exclamation. “Look here!” he cried, in a lower tone, “how about this fellow’s friends? It isn’t likely he’s doing his dirty work alone. How about his friends, when he doesn’t turn up to-night? If they know he was coming here to spy on us; if they know where the place is; if they know, in short, what he seems to have known, we’re done for. We’ll have to run, get out, disappear. Hang it, man, d’you understand? We’re not safe here for an hour.”

Captain Stewart’s hands shook a little as he gripped them together behind him, and a dew of perspiration stood out suddenly upon his forehead and cheek-bones, but his voice, when he spoke, was well under control.

“It’s an odd thing,” said he–“another miracle, if you like–but I believe we are safe–reasonably safe. I–have reason to think that this fellow learned about La Lierre only last evening from some one who left Paris to-day to be gone a long time. And I also have reason to believe that the fellow has not seen the one friend who is in his confidence, since he obtained his information. By chance I met the friend, the other man, in the street this afternoon. I asked after this fellow whom we have here, and the friend said he hadn’t seen him for twenty-four hours–was going to see him to-night.”

“By the Lord!” cried the Irishman, with a great laugh of relief. “What luck! What monumental luck! If all that’s true, we’re safe. Why, man, we’re as safe as a fox in his hole. The lad’s friends won’t have the ghost of an idea of where he’s gone to…. Wait, though! Stop a bit! He won’t have left written word behind him, eh? He won’t have done that–for safety?”

“I think not,” said Captain Stewart, but he breathed hard, for he knew well enough that there lay the gravest danger. “I think not,” he said again.

He made a rather surprisingly accurate guess at the truth–that Ste. Marie had started out upon impulse, without intending more than a general reconnaissance, and therefore without leaving any word behind him. Still, the shadow of danger uplifted itself before the man and he was afraid. A sudden gust of weak anger shook him like a wind.

“In Heaven’s name,” he cried, shrilly, “why didn’t that one-eyed fool kill the fellow while he was about it? There’s danger for us every moment while he is alive here. Why didn’t that shambling idiot kill him?”

Captain Stewart’s outflung hand jumped and trembled and his face was twisted into a sort of grinning snarl. He looked like an angry and wicked cat, the other man thought.

“If I weren’t an over-civilized fool,” he said, viciously, “I’d go up-stairs and kill him now with my hands while he can’t help himself. We’re all too scrupulous by half.”

The Irishman stared at him and presently broke into amazed laughter.

“Scrupulous!” said he. “Well, yes, I’m too scrupulous to murder a man in his bed, if you like. I’m not squeamish, but–Good Lord!”

“Do you realize,” demanded Captain Stewart, “what risks we run while that fellow is alive–knowing what he knows?”

“Oh yes, I realize that,” said O’Hara. “But I don’t see why _you_ should have heart failure over it.”

Captain Stewart’s pale lips drew back again in their catlike fashion.

“Never mind about me,” he said. “But I can’t help thinking you’re peculiarly indifferent in the face of danger.”

“No, I’m not!” said the Irishman, quickly. “No, I’m not. Don’t you run away with that idea! I merely said,” he went oh–“I merely said that I’d stop short of murder. I don’t set any foolish value on life–my own or any other. I’ve had to take life more than once, but it was in fair fight or in self-defence, and I don’t regret it. It was your coldblooded joke about going up-stairs and killing this chap in his bed that put me on edge. Naturally I know you didn’t mean it. Don’t you go thinking that I’m lukewarm or that I’m indifferent to danger. I know there’s danger from this lad up-stairs, and I mean to be on guard against it. He stays here under strict guard until–what we’re after is accomplished–until young Arthur comes of age. If there’s danger,” said he, “why, we know where it lies, and we can guard against it. That kind of danger is not very formidable. The dangerous dangers are the ones that you don’t know about–the hidden ones.”

He came forward a little, and his lean face was as hard and as impassive as ever, and the bright blue eyes shone from it steady and unwinking. Stewart looked up to him with a sort of peevish resentment at the man’s confidence and cool poise. It was an odd reversal of their ordinary relations. For the hour the duller villain, the man who was wont to take orders and to refrain from overmuch thought or question, seemed to have become master. Sheer physical exhaustion and the constant maddening pain had had their will of Captain Stewart. A sudden shiver wrung him so that his dry fingers rattled against the wood of the chair-arms.

“All the same,” he cried, “I’m afraid. I’ve been confident enough until now. Now I’m afraid. I wish the fellow had been killed.”

“Kill him, then!” laughed the Irishman. “I won’t give you up to the police.”

He crossed the room to the door, but halted short of it and turned about again, and he looked back very curiously at the man who sat crouched in his chair by the window. It had occurred to him several times that Stewart was very unlike himself. The man was quite evidently tired and ill, and that might account for some of the nervousness, but this fierce malignity was something a little beyond O’Hara’s comprehension. It seemed to him that the elder man had the air of one frightened beyond the point the circumstances warranted.

“Are you going back to town,” he asked, “or do you mean to stay the night?”

“I shall stay the night,” Stewart said. “I’m too tired to bear the ride.” He glanced up and caught the other’s eyes fixed upon him. “Well!” he cried, angrily. “What is it? What are you looking at me like that for? What do you want?”

“I want nothing,” said the Irishman, a little sharply. “And I wasn’t aware that I’d been looking at you in any unusual way. You’re precious jumpy to-day, if you want to know…. Look here!” He came back a step, frowning. “Look here!” he repeated. “I don’t quite make you out. Are you keeping back anything? Because if you are, for Heaven’s sake have it out here and now! We’re all in this game together, and we can’t afford to be anything but frank with one another. We can’t afford to make reservations. It’s altogether too dangerous for everybody. You’re too much frightened. There’s no apparent reason for being so frightened as that.”

Captain Stewart drew a long breath between closed teeth, and afterward he looked up at the younger man coldly.

“We need not discuss my personal feelings, I think,” said he. “They have no–no bearing on the point at issue. As you say, we are all in this thing together, and you need not fear that I shall fail to do my part, as I have done it in the past…. That’s all, I believe.”

“Oh, _as_ you like! As you like!” said the Irishman, in the tone of one rebuffed. He turned again and left the room, closing the door behind him. Outside on the stairs it occurred to him that he had forgotten to ask the other man what this fellow’s name was–the fellow who lay wounded up-stairs. No, he had asked once, but in the interest of the conversation the question had been lost. He determined to inquire again that evening at dinner.

But Captain Stewart, left thus alone, sank deeper in the uncomfortable chair, and his head once more stirred and sought vainly for ease against the chair’s high back. The pain swept him in regular throbbing waves that were like the waves of the sea–waves which surge and crash and tear upon a beach. But between the throbs of physical pain there was something else that was always present while the waves came and went. Pain and exhaustion, if they are sufficiently extreme, can well nigh paralyze mind as well as body, and for some time Captain Stewart wondered what this thing might be which lurked at the bottom of him still under the surges of agony. Then at last he had the strength to look at it, and it was fear, cold and still and silent. He was afraid to the very depths of his soul.

True, as O’Hara had said, there did not seem to be any very desperate peril to face, but Stewart was afraid with the gambler’s unreasoning, half-superstitious fear, and that is the worst fear of all. He realized that he had been afraid of Ste. Marie from the beginning, and that, of course, was why he had tried to draw him into partnership with himself in his own official and wholly mythical search for Arthur Benham. He could have had the other man under his eye then. He could have kept him busy for months running down false scents. As it was, Ste. Marie’s uncanny instinct about the Irishman O’Hara had led him true–that and what he doubtless learned from Olga Nilssen.

If Stewart had been in a condition and mood to philosophize, he would doubtless have reflected that seven-tenths of the desperate causes, both good and bad, which fail in this world, fail because they are wrecked by some woman’s love or jealousy–or both. But it is unlikely that he was able just at this time to make such a reflection, though certainly he wondered how much Olga Nilssen had known, and how much Ste. Marie had had to put together out of her knowledge and any previous suspicions which he may have had.

The man would have been amazed if he could have known what a mountain of information and evidence had piled itself up over his head all in twelve hours. He would have been amazed and, if possible, even more frightened than he was, but he was without question sufficiently frightened, for here was Ste. Marie in the very house, he had seen Arthur Benham, and quite obviously he knew all there was to know, or at least enough to ruin Arthur Benham’s uncle beyond all recovery or hope of recovery–irretrievably.

Captain Stewart tried to think what it would mean to him–failure in this desperate scheme–but he had not the strength or the courage. He shrank from the picture as one shrinks from something horrible in a bad dream. There could be no question of failure. He had to succeed at any cost, however desperate or fantastic. Once more the spasm of childish, futile rage swept over him and shook him like a wind.

“Why couldn’t the fellow have been killed by that one-eyed fool?” he cried, sobbing. “Why couldn’t he have been killed? He’s the only one who knows–the only thing in the way. Why couldn’t he have keen killed?”

Quite suddenly Captain Stewart ceased to sob and shiver, and sat still in his chair, gripping the arms with white and tense fingers. His eyes began to widen, and they became fixed in a long, strange stare. He drew a deep breath.

“I wonder!” he said, aloud. “I wonder, now.”

* * * * *

XVI

THE BLACK CAT

That providential stone or tree-root, or whatever it may have been, proved a genuine blessing in disguise to Ste. Marie. It gave him a splitting headache for a few hours, but it saved him a good deal of discomfort the while his bullet wound was being more or less probed and very skilfully cleansed and dressed by O’Hara. For he did not regain consciousness until this surgical work was almost at its end, and then he wanted to fight the Irishman for tying the bandages too tight.

But when O’Hara had gone away and left him alone he lay still–or as still as the smarting, burning pain in his leg and the ache in his head would let him–and stared at the wall beyond his bed, and bit by bit the events of the past hour came back to him, and he knew where he was. He cursed himself very bitterly, as he well might do, for a bungling idiot. The whole thing had been in his hands, he said, with perfect truth–Arthur Benham’s whereabouts proved Stewart’s responsibility or, at the very least, complicity and the sordid motive therefor. Remained–had Ste. Marie been a sane being instead of an impulsive fool–remained but to face Stewart down in the presence of witnesses, threaten him with exposure, and so, with perfect ease, bring back the lost boy in triumph to his family.

It should all have been so simple, so easy, so effortless! Yet now it was ruined by a moment’s rash folly, and Heaven alone knew what would come of it. He remembered that he had left behind him no indication whatever of where he meant to spend the afternoon. Hartley would come hurrying across town that evening to the rue d’Assas, and would find no one there to receive him. He would wait and wait, and at last go home. He would come again on the next morning, and then he would begin to be alarmed and would start a second search–but with what to reckon by? Nobody knew about the house on the road to Clamart but Mlle. Olga Nilssen, and she was far away.

He thought of Captain Stewart, and he wondered if that gentleman was by any chance here in the house, or if he was still in bed in the rue du Faubourg St. Honore, recovering from his epileptic fit.

After that he fell once more to cursing himself and his incredible stupidity, and he could have wept for sheer bitterness of chagrin.

He was still engaged in this unpleasant occupation when the door of the room opened and the Irishman O’Hara entered, having finished his interview with Captain Stewart below. He came up beside the bed and looked down not unkindly upon the man who lay there, but Ste. Marie scowled back at him, for he was in a good deal of pain and a vile humor.

“How’s the leg–_and_ the head?” asked the amateur surgeon. To do him justice, he was very skilful, indeed, through much experience.

“They hurt,” said Ste. Marie, shortly. “My head aches like the devil, and my leg burns.”

O’Hara made a sound which was rather like a gruff laugh, and nodded.

“Yes, and they’ll go on doing it, too,” said he. “At least the leg will. Your head will be all right again in a day or so. Do you want anything to eat? It’s near dinner-time. I suppose we can’t let you starve–though you deserve it.”

“Thanks; I want nothing,” said Ste. Marie. “Pray don’t trouble about me.”

The other man nodded again indifferently and turned to go out of the room, but in the doorway he halted and looked back.

“As we’re to have the pleasure of your company for some time to come,” said he, “you might suggest a name to call you by. Of course I don’t expect you to tell your own name–though I can learn that easily enough.”

“Easily enough, to be sure,” said the man on the bed. “Ask Stewart. He knows only too well.”

The Irishman scowled. And after a moment he said:

“I don’t know any Stewart.”

But at that Ste. Marie gave a laugh, and a tinge of red came over the Irishman’s cheeks.

“And so, to save Captain Stewart the trouble,” continued the wounded man, “I’ll tell you my name with pleasure. I don’t know why I shouldn’t. It’s Ste. Marie.”

“What?” cried O’Hara, hoarsely. “What? Say that again!”

He came forward a swift step or two into the room, and he stared at the man on the bed as if he were staring at a ghost.

“Ste. Marie?” he cried, in a whisper. “It’s impossible! What are you,” he demanded, “to Gilles, Comte de Ste. Marie de Mont-Perdu? What are you to him?”

“He was my father,” said the younger man; “but he is dead. He has been dead for ten years.”

He raised his head, with a little grimace of pain, to look curiously after the Irishman, who had all at once turned away across the room and stood still beside a window with bent head.

“Why?” he questioned. “What about my father? Why did you ask that?”

O’Hara did not answer at once, and he did not stir from his place by the window, but after a while he said:

“I knew him…. That’s all.”

And after another space he came back beside the bed, and once more looked down upon the young man who lay there. His face was veiled, inscrutable. It betrayed nothing.

“You have a look of your father,” said he. “That was what puzzled me a little. I was just saying to–I was just thinking that there was something familiar about you…. Ah, well, we’ve all come down in the world since then. The Ste. Marie blood, though. Who’d have thought it?”

The man shook his head a little sorrowfully, but Ste. Marie stared up at him in frowning incomprehension. The pain had dulled him somewhat. And presently O’Hara again moved toward the door. On the way he said:

“I’ll bring or send you something to eat–not too much. And later on I’ll give you a sleeping-powder. With that head of yours you may have trouble in getting to sleep. Understand, I’m doing this for your father’s son, and not because you’ve any right yourself to consideration.”

Ste. Marie raised himself with difficulty on one elbow.

“Wait!” said he. “Wait a moment!” and the other halted just inside the door. “You seem to have known my father,” said Ste. Marie, “and to have respected him. For my father’s sake, will you listen to me for five minutes?”

“No, I won’t,” said the Irishman, sharply. “So you may as well hold your tongue. Nothing you can say to me or to any one in this house will have the slightest effect. We know what you came spying here for. We know all about it.”

“Yes,” said Ste. Marie, with a little sigh, and he fell back upon the pillows. “Yes, I suppose you do. I was rather a fool to speak. You wouldn’t all be doing what you’re doing if words could affect you. I was a fool to speak.”

The Irishman stared at him for another moment, and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

So he was left once more alone to his pain and his bitter self-reproaches and his wild and futile plans for escape. But O’Hara returned in an hour or thereabout with food for him–a cup of broth and a slice of bread; and when Ste. Marie had eaten these the Irishman looked once more to his wounded leg, and gave him a sleeping-powder dissolved in water.

He lay restless and wide-eyed for an hour, and then drifted away through intermediate mists into a sleep full of horrible dreams, but it was at least relief from bodily suffering, and when he awoke in the morning his headache was almost gone.

He awoke to sunshine and fresh, sweet odors and the twittering of birds. By good chance O’Hara had been the last to enter the room on the evening before, and so no one had come to close the shutters or draw the blinds. The windows were open wide, and the morning breeze, very soft and aromatic, blew in and out and filled the place with sweetness. The room was a corner room, with windows that looked south and east, and the early sun slanted in and lay in golden squares across the floor.

Ste. Marie opened his eyes with none of the dazed bewilderment that he might have expected. The events of the preceding day came back to him instantly and without shock. He put up an experimental hand, and found that his head was still very sore where he had struck it in falling, but the ache was almost gone. He tried to stir his leg, and a protesting pain shot through it. It burned dully, even when it was quiet, but the pain was not at all severe. He realized that he was to get off rather well, considering what might have happened, and he was so grateful for this that he almost forgot to be angry with himself over his monumental folly.

A small bird chased by another wheeled in through the southern window and back again into free air. Finally, the two settled down upon the parapet of the little shallow balcony which was there to have their disagreement out, and they talked it over with a great deal of noise and many threatening gestures and a complete loss of temper on both sides. Ste. Marie, from his bed, cheered them on, but there came a commotion in the ivy which draped the wall below, and the two birds fled in ignominious haste, and just in the nick of time, for when the cause of the commotion shot into view it was a large black cat, of great bodily activity and an ardent single-heartedness of aim.

The black cat gazed for a moment resentfully after its vanished prey, and then composed its sleek body upon the iron rail, tail and paws tucked neatly under. Ste. Marie chirruped, and the cat turned yellow eyes upon him in mild astonishment, as one who should say, “Who the deuce are you, and what the deuce are you doing here?” He chirruped again, and the cat, after an ostentatious yawn and stretch, came to him–beating up to windward, as it were, and making the bed in three tacks. When O’Hara entered the room some time later he found his patient in a very cheerful frame of mind, and the black cat sitting on his chest purring like a dynamo and kneading like an industrious baker.

“Ho,” said the Irishman, “you seem to have found a friend!”

“Well, I need one friend here,” argued Ste. Marie. “I’m in the enemy’s stronghold. You needn’t be alarmed; the cat can’t tell me anything, and it can’t help me to escape. It can only sit on me and purr. That’s harmless enough.”

O’Hara began one of his gruff laughs, but he seemed to remember himself in the middle of it and assumed an intimidating scowl instead.

“How’s the leg?” he demanded, shortly. “Let me see it.” He took off the bandages and cleansed and sprayed the wound with some antiseptic liquid that he had brought in a bottle. “There’s a little fever,” said he, “but that can’t be avoided. You’re going on very well–a good deal better than you’d any right to expect.” He had to inflict not a little pain in his examination and redressing of the wound. He knew that, and once or twice he glanced up at Ste. Marie’s face with a sort of reluctant admiration for the man who could bear so much without any sign whatever. In the end he put together his things and nodded with professional satisfaction. “You’ll do well enough now for the rest of the day,” he said. “I’ll send up old Michel to valet you. He’s the gardener who shot you yesterday, and he may take it into his head to finish the job this morning. If he does I sha’n’t try to stop him.”

“Nor I,” said Ste. Marie. “Thanks very much for your trouble. An