Title: The Quest - A Romance
Author: Forman, Justus Miles, 1875-1915
Language: English
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[Illustration: "He fell on his knees at her feet" (Page 312).]



                               THE QUEST

                               A Romance


                                   By

                          JUSTUS MILES FORMAN

        _Author of "The Garden of Lies," "Tommy Carteret," etc_



                  _ILLUSTRATED BY W. HATHERELL, R.I._



                       WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
                     LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
                                  1909



                               *CONTENTS*


CHAP.

I  Ste. Marie Hears of a Mystery and Meets a Dark Lady
II  The Ladder to the Stars
III  Ste. Marie makes a Vow, but a Pair of Eyes haunt Him
IV  Old David Stewart
V  Ste. Marie sets forth upon the Great Adventure
VI  A Brave Gentleman Receives a Hurt, but Volunteers in a Good Cause
VII  Captain Stewart makes a Kindly Offer
VIII  Ste. Marie Meets with a Misadventure and Dreams a Dream
IX  Ste. Marie goes upon a Journey and Richard Hartley Pleads for Him
X  Captain Stewart Entertains
XI  A Golden Lady Enters—The Eyes again
XII  The Name of the Lady with the Eyes—Evidence heaps up Swiftly
XIII  The Road to Clamart
XIV  In the Garden
XV  A Conversation at La Lierre
XVI  The Black Cat
XVII  A Conversation Overheard
XVIII  Those who were Left Behind
XIX  The Invalid takes the Air
XX  The Stone Bench at the Rond Point
XXI  A Mist Dims the Shining Star
XXII  A Settlement Refused
XXIII  The Last Arrow—and a Promise
XXIV  The Joint in the Armour
XXV  Coira goes over to the Enemy
XXVI  "I won’t go!"
XXVII  The Night’s Work
XXVIII  Coira’s Little Hour
XXIX  The Scales of Injustice
XXX  Journey’s End



                            *Illustrations*


"He fell on his knees at her feet" . . . _Frontispiece_ (Page 312)

"It seemed to him that her eyes called him."

"’I fancy I know who the man was.’"

"’You’re twenty-two.  Have you ever fallen in love?’"

"He turned and went out of the room."

"’Don’t refuse a helping hand!’ said Captain Stewart, looking up once
more.  ’Don’t be overproud!’"

"So for an hour or more he stood in the open window staring into the
fragrant night."

"He saw Captain Stewart moving among them."

"Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor."

"There appeared two young people."

"’Michel is busy,’ said Coira O’Hara, ’so I have brought your coffee.’"

"’Ste. Marie has disappeared?  How very extraordinary!’"

"’What can we do, Richard?  What can we do?’"

"’Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie!  Do you know anything about him?’"

"Mlle. Coira O’Hara sat alone upon the stone bench."

"His hand went swiftly to his coat pocket."

"She did not move when he came before her."

"The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."

"Walking there in the tender moonlight."



                              *CHAPTER I*

         *STE. MARIE HEARS OF A MYSTERY AND MEETS A DARK LADY*


From Ste. Marie’s little flat which overlooked the gardens they drove
down the quiet Rue du Luxembourg, and, at the Place St. Sulpice, turned
to the left.  They crossed the Place St. Germain des Prés, where lines
of homebound working people stood waiting for places in the electric
trams, and groups of students from the Beaux Arts or from Julien’s sat
under the awnings of the Deux Magots, and so, beyond that busy square,
they came into the long and peaceful stretch of the Boulevard St.
Germain.  The warm sweet dusk gathered round them as they went, and the
evening air was fresh and aromatic in their faces.  There had been a
little gentle shower in the late afternoon, and roadway and pavement
were still damp with it. It had wet the new-grown leaves of the
chestnuts and acacias that bordered the street.  The scent of that
living green blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of
the last late-clinging chestnut blossoms: it caught up a fuller richer
burden from the overflowing front of a florist’s shop: it stole from
open windows a savoury whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke, and
the soft little breeze—the breeze of coming summer—mixed all together
and tossed them and bore them down the long quiet street; and it was the
breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony
of sweetness, so long as we may live and so wide as we may
wander—because we have known it and loved it: and in the end we shall go
back to breathe it when we die.

The strong white horse jogged evenly along over the wooden pavement, its
head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went.
The cocher, a torpid purplish lump of gross flesh, pyramidal, pear-like,
sat immobile in his place.  The protuberant back gave him an
extraordinary effect of being buttoned into his fawn-coloured coat
wrong-side-before.  At intervals he jerked the reins like a large
strange toy and his strident voice said—

"_Hè!_" to the stout white horse, which paid no attention whatever.
Once the beast stumbled and the pear-like lump of flesh insulted it,
saying—

"_Hè! veux, tu, cochon!_"

Before the War Office a little black slip of a milliner’s girl dodged
under the horse’s head, saving herself and the huge box slung to her arm
by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful
names, without turning his head, and in a perfunctory tone quite free
from passion.

Young Hartley laughed and turned to look at his companion, but Ste.
Marie sat still in his place, his hat pulled a little down over his
brows, and his handsome chin buried in the folds of the white silk
muffler with which, for some obscure reason, he had swathed his neck.

"This is the first time in many years," said the Englishman, "that I
have known you to be silent for ten whole minutes.  Are you ill or are
you making up little epigrams to say at the dinner party?"

Ste. Marie waved a despondent glove.

"I ’ave," said he, "w’at you call ze blue.  _Papillons noirs_—clouds in
my soul."  It was a species of jest with Ste. Marie—and he seemed never
to tire of it—to pretend that he spoke English very brokenly.  As a
matter of fact he spoke it quite as well as any Englishman and without
the slightest trace of accent.  He had discovered a long time before
this—it may have been while the two were at Eton together—that it
annoyed Hartley very much, particularly when it was done in company and
before strangers.  In consequence he became at such occasions a sort of
comic-paper caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added
to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the
torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered
his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere
literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring
Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear" before other men,
whereas at the equivalent "_mon cher_" the Englishman would doubtless
never, as the phrase goes, have batted an eye.

"Ye—es," he continued sadly, "I ’ave ze blue. I weep.  Weez ze tears
full ze eyes.  Yes."  He descended into English.  "I think something’s
going to happen to me.  There’s calamity—or something—in the air.
Perhaps I’m going to die."

"Oh, I know what you are going to do, right enough," said the other man,
"you’re going to meet the most beautiful woman—girl—in the world at
dinner, and of course you are going to fall in love with her."

"Ah, the Miss Benham!" said Ste. Marie with a faint show of interest.
"I remember now, you said that she was to be there.  I had forgotten.
Yes, I shall be glad to meet her.  One hears so much.  But why am I of
course going to fall in love with her?"

"Well, in the first place," said Hartley, "you always fall in love with
all pretty women as a matter of habit, and, in the second place,
everybody—well, I suppose you—no one could help falling in love with
her, I should think."

"That’s high praise to come from you," said the other, and Hartley said
with a short, not very mirthful laugh—

"Oh, I don’t pretend to be immune.  We all—everybody who knows her——
You’ll understand presently."

Ste. Marie turned his head a little and looked curiously at his friend,
for he considered that he knew the not very expressive intonations of
that young gentleman’s voice rather well, and this was something
unusual.  He wondered what had been happening during his six months’
absence from Paris.

"I dare say that’s what I feel in the air, then," he said after a little
pause.  "It’s not calamity. It’s love.

"Or maybe," he said quaintly, "it’s both.  _L’un n’empéche pas
l’autre._"  And he gave an odd little shiver, as if that something in
the air had suddenly blown chill upon him.

They were passing the corner of the Chamber of Deputies which faces the
Pont de la Concorde. Ste. Marie pulled out his watch and looked at it.

"Eight-fifteen," said he.  "What time are we asked for?  Eight-thirty?
That means nine. It’s an English house and nobody will be in time. It’s
out of fashion to be prompt nowadays."

"I should hardly call the Marquis de Saulnes English, you know!"
objected Hartley.

"Well, his wife is," said the other, "and they’re altogether English in
manner.  Dinner won’t be before nine.  Shall we get out and walk across
the bridge and up the Champs Elysées?  I should like to, I think.  I
like to walk at this time of the evening—between the daylight and the
dark."

Hartley nodded a rather reluctant assent, and Ste. Marie prodded the
pear-shaped cocher in the back with his stick.  So they got down at the
approach to the bridge.  Ste. Marie gave the cocher a piece of two
francs and they turned away on foot.  The pear-shaped one looked at the
coin in his fat hand as if it was something unclean and contemptible,
something to be despised.  He glanced at the dial of his taximeter,
which had registered one franc twenty-five, and pulled the flag up.  He
spat gloomily out into the street and his purple lips moved in words.
He seemed to say something like: "_Sale diable de métier!_" which,
considering the fact that he had just been overpaid, appears
unwarrantably pessimistic in tone.  Thereafter he spat again, picked up
his reins and jerked them, saying—

"Hè, Jean Baptiste!  Uip, uip!"  The unemotional white horse turned up
the boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little
bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that
the white horse was probably unique.  I doubt that there was another
horse in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.

But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la Concorde.
They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss Helen
Benham and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what. His gloom was
unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said about feeling
calamity in the air.  It was very unlike him to have nothing to say.
Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the river,
and the other man halted beside him.  The dusk was thickening almost
perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark.  The swift river ran leaden
beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles, darted
silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for the
day.  Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was still
faintly washed with colour, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin green.
A single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a lifeless
old rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk hangings of a
woman’s boudoir.  And black against this pallid wash of colours the
_Tour Eiffel_ stood high and slender and rather ghostly.  By day it is
an ugly thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man’s vanity
against God’s serene sky, but the haze of evening drapes it in a
merciful semi-obscurity, and it is beautiful.

Ste. Marie leant upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him
and eyes afar.  He began to sing, _à demi voix_, a little phrase out of
_Louise_,—an invocation to Paris—and the Englishman stirred uneasily
beside him.  It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top
hat and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back
and forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done.  He tried
to imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at
half-past eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the
thought.  It was not done at all he said to himself.  He looked a little
nervously at the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that they
stared at him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth they
did nothing of the sort.  He turned back and touched his friend on the
arm, saying—

"I think we’d best be getting along, you know," but Ste. Marie was very
far away and did not hear. So then he fell to watching the man’s dark
and handsome face, and to thinking how little the years at Eton and the
year or two at Oxford had set any real stamp upon him.  He would never
be anything but Latin in spite of his Irish mother and his public
school.  Hartley thought what a pity that was. As Englishmen go he was
not illiberal, but, no more than he could have altered the colour of his
eyes, could he have believed that anything foreign would not be improved
by becoming English.  That was born in him, as it is born in most
Englishmen, and it was a perfectly simple and honest belief.  He felt a
deeper affection for this handsome and volatile young man, whom all
women loved and who bade fair to spend his life at their successive
feet—for he certainly had never shown the slightest desire to take up
any sterner employment—he felt a deeper affection for Ste. Marie than
for any other man he knew, but he had always wished that Ste. Marie were
an Englishman, and he had always felt a slight sense of shame over his
friend’s un-English ways.

After a moment he touched him again on the arm, saying—

"Come along!  We shall be late, you know. You can finish your little
concert another time."

"Eh!" cried Ste. Marie.  "_Quoi, donc?_"  He turned with a start.

"Oh yes!" said he.  "Yes, come along!  I was mooning.  _Allons_!
_Allons_, my old!"  He took Hartley’s arm and began to shove him along
at a rapid walk.

"I will moon no more," he said.  "Instead, you shall tell me about the
wonderful Miss Benham whom everybody is talking of.  Isn’t there
something odd connected with the family?  I vaguely recall something
unusual, some mystery or misfortune or something.

"But first a moment!  One small moment, my old.  Regard me that!"  They
had come to the end of the bridge and the great Place de la Concorde lay
before them.

"In all the world," said Ste. Marie—and he spoke the truth—"there is not
another such square. Regard it, _mon brave_!  Bow yourself before it! It
is a miracle."

The great bronze lamps were alight, and they cast reflections upon the
still damp pavement about them.  To either side the trees of the
Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs Elysées lay
in a solid black mass.  In the middle the obelisk rose slender and
straight, its pointed top black against the sky, and beneath the water
of the Nereid fountains splashed and gurgled.  Far beyond, the gay
lights of the Rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster and, beyond these
still, the tall columns of the Madeleine ended the long vista.
Pedestrians and cabs crept across that vast space, and seemed curiously
little, like black insects, and round about it all the eight cities of
France sat atop their stone pedestals and looked on.  Ste. Marie gave a
little sigh of pleasure, and the two moved forward, bearing to the left,
towards the Champs Elysées.

"And now," said he, "about these Benhams. What is the thing I cannot
quite recall?  What has happened to them?"

"I suppose," said the other man, "you mean the disappearance of Miss
Benham’s young brother, a month ago, before you returned to Paris.  Yes,
that was certainly very odd.  That is, it was either very odd or very
commonplace.  And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it.
The boy’s name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool but not
downright vicious, I should think.  I never knew him at all well, but I
know he spent his time chiefly at the Café de Paris and at the Olympia
and at Longchamps and at _Henry’s Bar_.  Well, he just disappeared, that
is all.  He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though
the family has had a small army of detectives on his trail, they’ve not
discovered the smallest clue.  It’s deuced odd altogether.  You might
think it easy to disappear like that but it’s not."

"No—no," said Ste. Marie thoughtfully.  "No, I should fancy not.

"This boy," he said after a pause, "I think I had seen him—had him
pointed out to me—before I went away.  I think it was at _Henry’s Bar_
where all the young Americans go to drink strange beverages.  I am quite
sure I remember his face.  A weak face but not quite bad."

And after another little pause he asked—

"Was there any reason why he should have gone away?  Any quarrel or that
sort of thing?"

"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the
sort.  The boy’s uncle—Captain Stewart, middle-aged, rather prim old
party—you’ll have met him, I dare say—he intimated to me one day, that
there had been some trivial row.  You see the lad isn’t of age yet,
though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an
allowance doled out by his grandfather, who’s the head of the house—the
boy’s father is dead.  There’s a quaint old beggar, if you like!—the
grandfather.  He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day it
seems—rather an important swell.  Now he’s bedridden.  He sits all day
in bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior
valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him.  Oh yes,
he’s a quaint old beggar.  He has a great quantity of white hair and an
enormous square white beard, and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should
think.  Everybody’s frightened out of their wits of him.  Well, he sits
up there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it
seems he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or
other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing
he’d be even."

"Ah well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough.  A
foolish boy’s foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to
frighten his grandfather.  When he thinks the time favourable he will
come back and be wept over and forgiven."

The other man walked a little way in silence.

"Ye—es," he said at last.  "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right.
That’s what the grandfather thinks.  It’s the obvious solution.
Unfortunately there is more or less against it.  The boy went away
with—so far as can be learned—almost no money, almost none at all.  And
he has already been gone a month.  Miss Benham—his sister—is sure that
something has happened to him, and I’m a bit inclined to think so too.
It’s all very odd.  I should think he might have been kidnapped but that
no demand has been made for money."

"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie—"not the sort of young man to do
anything desperate—make away with himself?"

Hartley laughed.

"O Lord, no!" said he.  "Not that sort of young man at all.  He was a
very normal type of rich and spoilt and somewhat foolish American boy."

"Rich?" inquired the other quickly.

"Oh yes! they’re beastly rich.  Young Arthur is to come into something
very good at his majority, I believe, from his father’s estate, and the
old grandfather is said to be indecently rich—rolling in it!  There’s
another reason why the young idiot wouldn’t be likely to stop away of
his own accord. He wouldn’t risk anything like a serious break with the
old gentleman.  It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say; for
the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off, if he takes the
notion.  Oh, it’s a bad business, all through."  And after they had gone
on a bit he said it again, shaking his head—

"It’s a bad business!  That poor girl you know—it’s hard on her.  She
was fond of the young ass for some reason or other.  She’s very much
broken up over it."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her—for all the family, of
course.  A bad business, as you say."  He spoke absently, for he was
looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They
had, by this time, got well up the Champs Elysées and were crossing the
Rond Point.  A motor-car was drawn up alongside the kerb just beyond,
and a little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at
something on the ground.

"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie.  "Shall we have a
look?"  They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people
stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many
questions and wrote voluminously in their little books.  It appeared
that a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the
wrong side of the avenue, and had got himself run into and overturned by
a motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed.  For once the sentiment
of those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from
nowhere round an accident, was against the victim and in favour of the
frightened and gesticulating chauffeur.

Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other
occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart adding very little
to the discussion.  He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue
eyes and what is sometimes called a guardsman’s moustache—the drooping
walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this
gentleman he saw a young woman in a long grey silk coat and a motoring
veil.  He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly
and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met
before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but
a swift glance.  His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman
beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual
voice that rang in his ears.  The young woman’s very obvious beauty he
thought had nothing to do with the matter.  It seemed to him that her
eyes called him.  Just that.  Something strange and very potent seemed
to take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him—a charm, a spell, a
magic—something unprecedented, new to his experience.  He could not take
his eyes from hers and he stood staring.

[Illustration: "It seemed to him that her eyes called him."]

As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm,
and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.

"We must be going on, you know," the Englishman said, and Ste. Marie
said rather hurriedly—

"Yes! yes, to be sure.  Come along!"  But at a little distance he turned
once more to look back.  The chauffeur had mounted to his place, the
delivery boy was upon his feet again, little the worse for his tumble,
and the knot of bystanders had begun to disperse, but it seemed to Ste.
Marie that the young woman in the long silk coat stood quite still where
she had been, and that her face was turned towards him watching.

"Did you notice that girl?" said Hartley as they walked on at a brisker
pace.  "Did you see her face?  She was rather a tremendous beauty, you
know, in her gipsyish fashion.  Yes, by Jove, she was!"

"Did I see her?" repeated Ste. Marie.  "Yes. Oh yes.  She had very
strange eyes.  At least I think it was the eyes.  I don’t know.  I’ve
never seen any eyes quite like them.  Very odd!"

He said something more in French which Hartley did not hear, and the
Englishman saw that he was frowning.

"Oh well, I shouldn’t have said there was anything strange about them,"
Hartley said, "but they certainly were beautiful.  There’s no denying
that.  The man with her looked rather Irish I thought."

They came to the Etoile and cut across it towards the Avenue Hoche.
Ste. Marie glanced back once more, but the motor-car and the delivery
boy and the gendarmes were gone.

"What did you say?" he asked idly.

"I said the man looked Irish," repeated his friend. All at once Ste.
Marie gave a loud exclamation—

"Sacred thousand devils!  Fool that I am! Dolt!  Why didn’t I think of
it before?"  Hartley stared at him and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs
Elysées like one in a trance.

"I say," said the Englishman, "we really must be getting on, you know,
we’re late."  And as they went along down the Avenue Hoche, he demanded—

"Why are you a dolt and whatever else it was? What struck you so
suddenly?"

"I remembered all at once," said Ste. Marie, "where I had seen that man
before, and with whom I last saw him.  I’ll tell you about it later.
Probably it’s of no importance, though."

"You’re talking rather like a mild lunatic," said the other.  "Here we
are at the house!"



                              *CHAPTER II*

                       *THE LADDER TO THE STARS*


Miss Benham was talking wearily to a strange fair youth with an
impediment in his speech, and was wondering why the youth had been asked
to this house, where in general one was sure of meeting only interesting
people, when some one spoke her name, and she turned with a little sigh
of relief.  It was Baron de Vries, the Belgian First Secretary of
Legation, an old friend of her grandfather’s, a man made gentle and
sweet by infinite sorrow.  He bowed civilly to the fair youth and bent
over the girl’s hand.

"It is very good," he said, "to see you again in the world.  We have
need of you, _nous autres_. Madame your mother is well, I hope—and the
bear?"  He called old Mr. Stewart "the bear" in a sort of grave jest,
and that fierce octogenarian rather liked it.

"Oh yes," the girl said, "we’re all fairly well. My mother had one of
her headaches to-night and so didn’t come here, but she’s as well as
usual, and ’the bear’—yes, he’s well enough physically, I should think,
but he has not been quite the same since—during the past month.  It has
told upon him, you know.  He grieves over it much more than he will
admit."

"Yes," said Baron de Vries gravely.  "Yes, I know."  He turned about
towards the fair young man, but that youth had drifted away and joined
himself to another group.  Miss Benham looked after him and gave a
little exclamation of relief.

"That person was rather terrible," she said.  "I can’t think why he is
here.  Marian so seldom has dull people."

"I believe," said the Belgian, "that he is some connexion of de
Saulnes’.  That explains his presence."  He lowered his voice.

"You have heard no—news?  They have found no trace?"

"No," said she.  "Nothing.  Nothing at all. I’m rather in despair.  It’s
all so hideously mysterious.  I am sure, you know, that something has
happened to him.  It’s—very very hard.  Sometimes I think I can’t bear
it.  But I go on.  We all go on."

Baron de Vries nodded his head strongly.

"That, my dear child, is just what you must do," said he.  "You must go
on.  That is what needs the real courage and you have courage.  I am not
afraid for you.  And sooner or later you will hear of him—from him.  It
is impossible nowadays to disappear for very long.  You will hear from
him."  He smiled at her, his slow grave smile that was not of mirth but
of kindness and sympathy and cheer.

"And if I may say so," he said, "you are doing very wisely to come out
once more among your friends.  You can accomplish no good by brooding at
home.  It is better to live one’s normal life—even when it is not easy
to do it.  I say so who know."

The girl touched Baron de Vries’ arm for an instant with her hand—a
little gesture that seemed to express thankfulness and trust and
affection.

"If all my friends were like you!" she said to him.  And after that she
drew a quick breath as if to have done with these sad matters, and she
turned her eyes once more towards the broad room where the other guests
stood in little groups, all talking at once very rapidly and in loud
voices.

"What extraordinarily cosmopolitan affairs these dinner parties in new
Paris are!" she said.  "They’re like diplomatic parties, only we have a
better time and the men don’t wear their orders.  How many nationalities
should you say there are in this room now?"

"Without stopping to consider," said Baron de Vries, "I say ten."  They
counted, and out of fourteen people there were represented nine races.

"I don’t see Richard Hartley," Miss Benham said. "I had an idea he was
to be here.  Ah!" she broke off, looking towards the doorway.

"Here he comes now!" she said.  "He’s rather late.  Who is the
Spanish-looking man with him, I wonder?  He’s rather handsome, isn’t
he?"

Baron de Vries moved a little forward to look, and exclaimed in his
turn.  He said—

"Ah, I did not know he was returned to Paris. That is Ste. Marie."  Miss
Benham’s eyes followed the Spanish-looking young man as he made his way
through the joyous greetings of friends towards his hostess.

"So that is Ste. Marie!" she said, still watching him.  "The famous Ste.
Marie!"  She gave a little laugh.

"Well, I don’t wonder at the reputation he bears for—gallantry and that
sort of thing.  He looks the part, doesn’t he?"

"Ye—es," admitted her friend.  "Yes, he is sufficiently _beau garçon_.
But—yes, well, that is not all, by any means.  You must not get the idea
that Ste. Marie is nothing but a genial and romantic young
squire-of-dames.  He is much more than that.  He has very fine
qualities.  To be sure he appears to possess no ambition in particular,
but I should be glad if he were my son.  He comes of a very old house,
and there is no blot upon the history of that house—nothing but
faithfulness and gallantry and honour.  And there is, I think, no blot
upon Ste. Marie himself.  He is fine gold."

The girl turned and stared at Baron de Vries with some astonishment.

"You speak very strongly," said she.  "I have never heard you speak so
strongly of any one, I think."

The Belgian made a little deprecatory gesture with his two hands, and he
laughed.

"Oh well, I like the boy.  And I should hate to have you meet him for
the first time under a misconception.  Listen, my child!  When a young
man is loved equally by both men and women, by both old and young, that
young man is worthy of friendship and trust.  Everybody likes Ste.
Marie. In a sense that is his misfortune.  The way is made too easy for
him.  His friends stand so thick about him that they shut off his view
of the heights.  To waken ambition in his soul he has need of solitude
or misfortune or grief.

"Or," said the elderly Belgian, laughing gently, "or perhaps the other
thing might do it best—the more obvious thing?"

The girl’s raised eyebrows questioned him and, when he did not answer,
she said—

"What thing then?"

"Why, love," said Baron de Vries.  "Love, to be sure.  Love is said to
work miracles, and I believe that to be a perfectly true saying. Ah! he
is coming here."

The Marquise de Saulnes, who was a very pretty little Englishwoman with
a deceptively doll-like look, approached, dragging Ste. Marie in her
wake. She said—

"My dearest dear, I give you of my best.  Thank me, and cherish him!  I
believe he is to lead you to the place where food is, isn’t he?"  She
beamed over her shoulder, and departed, and Miss Benham found herself
confronted by the Spanish-looking man.

Her first thought was that he was not as handsome as he had seemed at a
distance but something much better.  For a young man she thought his
face was rather oddly weather-beaten, as if he might have been very much
at sea, and it was too dark to be entirely pleasing.  But she liked his
eyes, which were not brown or black, as she had expected, but a very
unusual dark grey—a sort of slate colour.

And she liked his mouth too.  It was her habit—and it is not an
unreliable habit—to judge people by their eyes and mouth.  Ste. Marie’s
mouth pleased her because the lips were neither thin nor thick, they
were not drawn into an unpleasant line by unpleasant habits, they did
not pout as so many Latin lips do, and they had at one corner a humorous
expression which she found curiously agreeable.

"You are to cherish me," Ste. Marie said. "Orders from headquarters.
How does one cherish people?"  The corner of his very expressive mouth
twitched and he grinned at her.  Miss Benham did not approve of young
men who began an acquaintance in this very familiar manner.  She thought
that there was a certain preliminary and more formal stage which ought
to be got through with first, but Ste. Marie’s grin was irresistible.
In spite of herself she found that she was laughing.

"I don’t quite know," she said.  "It sounds rather appalling, doesn’t
it?  Marian has such an extraordinary fashion of hurling people at each
other’s heads.  She takes my breath away at times."

"Ah well," said Ste. Marie, "perhaps we can settle upon something when
I’ve led you to the place where food is.  And, by the way, what are we
waiting for?  Are we not all here?  There’s an even number."  He broke
off with a sudden exclamation of pleasure, and, when Miss Benham turned
to look, she found Baron de Vries, who had been talking to some friends,
had once more come up to where she stood.  She watched the greeting
between the two men, and its quiet affection impressed her very much.
She knew Baron de Vries well, and she knew that it was not his habit to
show or to feel a strong liking for young and idle men. This young man
must be very worth while to have won the regard of that wise old
Belgian.

Just then Hartley, who had been barricaded behind a cordon of friends,
came up to her in an abominable temper over his ill luck, and, a few
moments later, the dinner procession was formed and they went in.

At table Miss Benham found herself between Ste. Marie and the same
strange fair youth who had afflicted her in the drawing-room.  She
looked upon him now with a sort of dismayed terror, but it developed
that there was nothing to fear from the fair youth.  He had no attention
to waste upon social amenities.  He fell upon his food with a wolfish
passion extraordinary to see and also, alas! to hear.  Miss Benham
turned from him to meet Ste. Marie’s delighted eye.

"Tell him for me," begged that gentleman, "that soup should be seen—not
heard."  But Miss Benham gave a little shiver of disgust.

"I shall tell him nothing whatever," she said. "He’s quite too dreadful
really.  People shouldn’t be exposed to that sort of thing.  It’s not
only the noises.  Plenty of very charming and estimable Germans, for
example, make strange noises at table. But he behaves like a famished
dog over a bone. I refuse to have anything to do with him.  You must
make up the loss to me, M. Ste. Marie.  You must be as amusing as two
people."  She smiled across at him in her gravely questioning fashion.

"I’m wondering," she said, "if I dare ask you a very personal question.
I hesitate because I don’t like people who presume too much upon a short
acquaintance—and our acquaintance has been very very short, hasn’t it?
even though we may have heard a great deal about each other beforehand.
I wonder."

"Oh, I should ask it, if I were you!" said Ste. Marie at once.  "I’m an
extremely good-natured person.  And besides I quite naturally feel
flattered at your taking interest enough to ask anything about me."

"Well," said she, "it’s this.  Why does everybody call you just ’Ste.
Marie’?  Most people are spoken of as Monsieur this or that—if there
isn’t a more august title—but they all call you Ste. Marie without any
Monsieur.  It seems rather odd."

Ste. Marie looked puzzled.

"Why," he said, "I don’t believe I know, just. I’d never thought of
that.  It’s quite true, of course. They never do use a Monsieur or
anything, do they? How cheeky of them!  I wonder why it is.  I’ll ask
Hartley."

He did ask Hartley later on and Hartley didn’t know either.  Miss Benham
asked some other people, who were vague about it, and in the end she
became convinced that it was an odd and quite inexplicable form of
something like endearment.  But nobody seemed to have formulated it to
himself.

"The name is really ’de Ste. Marie’," he went on, "and there’s a title
that I don’t use, and a string of Christian names that one employs.  My
people were Bearnais, and there’s a heap of ruins on top of a hill in
the Pyrenees where they lived.  It used to be Ste. Marie de
Mont-les-Roses, but afterwards, after the Revolution, they called it
Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu.  My great-grandfather was killed there, but
some old servants smuggled his little son away and saved him."

He seemed to Miss Benham to say that in exactly the right manner, not in
the cheap and scoffing fashion which some young men affect in speaking
of ancestral fortunes or misfortunes, nor with too much solemnity.  And
when she allowed a little silence to occur at the end he did not go on
with his family history, but turned at once to another subject. It
pleased her curiously.

The fair youth at her other side continued to crouch over his food,
making fierce and animal-like noises.  He never spoke or seemed to wish
to be spoken to, and Miss Benham found it easy to ignore him altogether.
It occurred to her once or twice that Ste. Marie’s other neighbour might
desire an occasional word from him, but after all, she said to herself,
that was his affair and beyond her control. So these two talked together
through the entire dinner period, and the girl was aware that she was
being much more deeply affected by the simple magnetic charm of a man
than ever before in her life.  It made her a little angry, because she
was unfamiliar with this sort of thing and distrusted it.  She was a
rather perfect type of that phenomenon before which the British and
Continental world stands in mingled delight and exasperation—the
American unmarried young woman, the creature of extraordinary beauty and
still more extraordinary poise, the virgin with the bearing and _savoir
faire_ of a woman of the world, the fresh-cheeked girl with the calm
mind of a _savant_ and the cool judgment, in regard to men and things,
of an ambassador. The European world says she is cold, and that may be
true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply.  It
says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of reasons,
she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to queens who
are the best of mothers.  In short, she remains an enigma, and like all
other enigmas forever fascinating.

Miss Benham reflected that she knew almost nothing about Ste. Marie,
save for his reputation as a carpet knight, and Baron de Vries’ good
opinion, which could not be despised.  And that made her the more
displeased when she realised how promptly she was surrendering to his
charm.  In a moment of silence she gave a sudden little laugh which
seemed to express a half-angry astonishment.

"What was that for?" Ste. Marie demanded. The girl looked at him for an
instant and shook her head.

"I can’t tell you," said she.  "That’s rude, isn’t it, and I’m sorry.
Perhaps I will tell you one day when we know each other better."

But inwardly she was saying: "Why, I suppose this is how they all begin:
all these regiments of women who make fools of themselves about him! I
suppose this is exactly what he does to them all!"

It made her angry and she tried quite unfairly to shift the anger, as it
were, to Ste. Marie—to put him somehow in the wrong.  But she was by
nature very just and she could not quite do that, particularly as it was
evident that the man was using no cheap tricks.  He did not try to flirt
with her and he did not attempt to pay her veiled compliments—though she
was often aware that when her attention was diverted for a few moments
his eyes were always upon her, and that is a compliment that few women
can find it in their hearts to resent.

"You say," said Ste. Marie, "’when we know each other better.’  May one
twist that into a permission to come and see you—I mean, really see you,
not just leave a card at your door to-morrow by way of observing the
formalities?"

"Yes," she said.  "Oh yes, one may twist it into something like that
without straining it unduly, I think.  My mother and I shall be very
glad to see you.  I’m sorry she is not here to-night to say it herself."

Then the hostess began to gather together her flock, and so the two had
no more speech.  But when the women had gone and the men were left about
the dismantled table, Hartley moved up beside Ste. Marie and shook a sad
head at him. He said—

"You’re a very lucky being.  I was quietly hoping, on the way here, that
I should be the fortunate man, but you always have all the luck. I hope
you’re decently grateful."

"_Mon vieux_," said Ste. Marie, "my feet are upon the stars."

"No!"  He shook his head as if the figure displeased him.  "No, my feet
are upon the ladder to the stars.  Grateful?  What does a foolish word
like grateful mean?  Don’t talk to me.  You are not worthy to trample
among my magnificent thoughts. I am a god upon Olympus."

"You said just now," objected the other man practically, "that your feet
were on a ladder.  There are no ladders from Olympus to the stars."

"Ho!" said Ste. Marie.  "Ho! aren’t there, though?  There shall be
ladders all over Olympus if I like.  What do you know about gods and
stars?  I shall be a god climbing to the heavens, and I shall be an
angel of light, and I shall be a miserable worm grovelling in the night
here below, and I shall be a poet, and I shall be anything else I happen
to think of, all of them at once, if I choose. And you, you shall be the
tongue-tied son of perfidious Albion that you are, gaping at my
splendours from a fog bank—a November fog bank in May. Who is the
dessicated gentleman bearing down upon us?"



                             *CHAPTER III*

         *STE. MARIE MAKES A VOW, BUT A PAIR OF EYES HAUNT HIM*


Hartley looked over his shoulder and gave a little exclamation of
distaste.

"It’s Captain Stewart, Miss Benham’s uncle," he said, lowering his
voice.  "I’m off.  I shall abandon you to him.  He’s a good old soul but
he bores me."  Hartley nodded to the man who was approaching, and then
made his way to the end of the table where their host sat discussing
Aero-Club matters with a group of the other men.

Captain Stewart dropped into the vacant chair, saying—

"May I recall myself to you, M. Ste. Marie? We met, I believe, once or
twice, a couple of years ago.  My name’s Stewart."

Captain Stewart—the title was vaguely believed to have been won some
years before in the American service, but no one appeared to know much
about it—was not an old man.  He could not have been, at this time, much
more than fifty, but English-speaking acquaintances often called him
"old Stewart" and others "_ce vieux_ Stewart."  Indeed, at a first
glance, he might have passed for anything up to sixty, for his face was
a good deal more lined and wrinkled than it should have been at his age.
Ste. Marie’s adjective had been rather apt.  The man had a dessicated
appearance.  Upon examination, however, one saw that the blood was still
red in his cheeks and lips, and, although his neck was thin and withered
like an old man’s, his brown eyes still held their fire.  The hair was
almost gone from the top of his large round head, but it remained at the
sides, stiff colourless hair with a hint of red in it.  And there were
red streaks in his grey moustache, which was trained outwards in two
loose tufts like shaving brushes.  The moustache and the shallow chin
under it gave him an odd cat-like appearance.  Hartley, who rather
disliked the man, used to insist that he had heard him mew.

Ste. Marie said something politely non-committal, though he did not at
all remember the alleged meeting two years before, and he looked at
Captain Stewart with a real curiosity and interest, in his character as
Miss Benham’s uncle.  He thought it very civil of the elder man to make
these friendly advances when it was in no way incumbent upon him to do
so.

"I noticed," said Captain Stewart, "that you were placed next my niece,
Helen Benham, at dinner. This must be the first time you two have met,
is it not?  I remember speaking of you to her some months ago, and I am
quite sure she said that she had not met you.  Ah! yes, of course, you
have been away from Paris a great deal since she and her mother—her
mother is my sister, that is to say, my half-sister—have come here to
live with my father."  He gave a little gentle laugh.

"I take an elderly uncle’s privilege," he said, "of being rather proud
of Helen.  She is called very pretty and she certainly has great poise."

Ste. Marie drew a quick breath and his eyes began to flash as they had
done a few moments before when he told Hartley that his feet were upon
the ladder to the stars.

"Miss Benham," he cried.  "Miss Benham is——"  He hung poised so for a
moment, searching, as it were, for words of sufficient splendour, but in
the end he shook his head, and the gleam faded from his eyes.  He sank
back in his chair sighing.

"Miss Benham," said he, "is extremely beautiful."  And again her uncle
emitted his little gentle laugh which may have deceived Hartley into
believing that he had heard the man mew.  The sound was as much like
mewing as it was like anything else.

"I am very glad," Captain Stewart said, "to see her come out once more
into the world.  She needs distraction.  We—you may possibly have heard
that the family is in great distress of mind over the disappearance of
my young nephew. Helen has suffered particularly because she is
convinced that the boy has met with foul play.  I myself think it very
unlikely, very unlikely indeed. The lack of motive, for one thing, and
for another——  Ah well, a score of reasons!  But Helen refuses to be
comforted.  It seems to me much more like a boy’s prank—his idea of
revenge for what he considered unjust treatment at his grandfather’s
hands. He was always a headstrong youngster, and he has been a bit
spoilt.  Still, of course, the uncertainty is very trying for us
all—very wearing."

"Of course," said Ste. Marie gravely.  "It is most unfortunate.  Ah, by
the way!"  He looked up with a sudden interest.  "A rather odd thing
happened," he said, "as Hartley and I were coming here this evening.  We
walked up the Champs Elysées from the Concorde, and on the way Hartley
had been telling me of your nephew’s disappearance. Near the Rond Point
we came upon a motor-car which was drawn up at the side of the
street—there had been an accident of no consequence, a boy tumbled over
but not hurt.  Well, one of the two occupants of the motor-car was a man
whom I used to see about Maxim’s and the Café de Paris and the
Montmartre places too, some time ago—a rather shady character whose name
I’ve forgotten.  The odd part of it all was that at the last occasion or
two on which I saw your nephew he was with this man.  I think it was in
_Henry’s Bar_. Of course it means nothing at all.  Your nephew doubtless
knew scores of people, and this man is no more likely to have
information about his present whereabouts than any of the others.
Still, I should have liked to ask him.  I didn’t remember who he was
till he had gone."

Captain Stewart shook his head sadly, frowning down upon the cigarette
from which he had knocked the ash.

"I am afraid poor Arthur did not always choose his friends with the best
of judgment," said he. "I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys
kept in a glass case, but——  Yes, I’m afraid Arthur was not always too
careful."  He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips.

"This man now, this man whom you saw to-night, what sort of looking man
will he have been?"

"Oh, a tall lean man," said Ste. Marie.  "A tall man with blue eyes and
a heavy old-fashioned moustache.  I just can’t remember the name."

The smoke stood still for an instant over Captain Stewart’s cigarette,
and it seemed to Ste. Marie that a little contortion of anger fled over
the man’s face and was gone again.  He stirred slightly in his chair.

After a moment he said—

"I fancy—from your description I fancy I know who the man was.  If it is
the man I am thinking of, the name is—Powers.  He is, as you have said,
a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew against
him.  Such people are not good companions for a boy.  Yes, I warned
him."

[Illustration: "’I fancy I know who the man was.’"]

"Powers," said Ste. Marie, "doesn’t sound right to me, you know.  I
can’t say the fellow’s name myself, but I’m sure—that is, I think—it’s
not Powers."

"Oh yes," said Captain Stewart with an elderly man’s half-querulous
certainty.  "Yes, the name is Powers.  I remember it well.  And I
remember——  Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that just
as you were talking of Arthur. You—oh, you didn’t speak to him, you say?
No! no, to be sure.  You didn’t recognise him at once. Yes, it was odd.
Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor Arthur’s
disappearance. His only interest in the boy at any time would have been
for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or almost none,
away with him when he vanished.  Eh, poor lad!  Where can he be
to-night, I wonder?  It’s a sad business, M. Ste. Marie.  A sad
business."

Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at
the table before him and twisting with his thin fingers the little
liqueur glass and the coffee cup which were there.  Once or twice, Ste.
Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and
the man’s fingers twitched on the cloth of the table, but when at last
the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards
the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them.

At the door he seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon
the arm.

"This, ah, Powers," he said in a low tone, "this man whom you saw
to-night.  You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car.  Yes?
Did you by any chance recognise the other?"

"Oh, the other was a young woman," said Ste. Marie.  "No, I never saw
her before.  She was very handsome."

Captain Stewart said something under his breath and turned abruptly
away.  But an instant later he faced about once more, smiling.  He said,
in a man-of-the-world manner which sat rather oddly upon him—

"Ah well, we all have our little love affairs.  I dare say this shady
fellow has his."  And for some obscure reason Ste. Marie found the
speech peculiarly offensive.

In the drawing-room he had opportunity for no more than a word with Miss
Benham, for Hartley, enraged over his previous ill success, cut in ahead
of him and manoeuvred that young lady into a corner, where he sat before
her turning a square and determined back to the world.  Ste. Marie
listlessly played bridge for a time, but his attention was not upon it,
and he was glad when the others at the table settled their accounts and
departed to look in at a dance somewhere.  After that he talked for a
little with Marian de Saulnes, whom he liked and who made no secret of
adoring him. She complained loudly that he was in a vile temper, which
was not true: he was only restless and distrait and wanted to be alone;
and so, at last, he took his leave without waiting for Hartley.

Outside in the street he stood for a moment hesitating, and an expectant
fiacre drew up before the house, the cocher raising an interrogative
whip.  In the end Ste. Marie shook his head and turned away on foot.  It
was a still sweet night of soft airs and a moonless starlit sky, and the
man was very fond of walking in the dark.  From the Etoile he walked
down the Champs Elysées, but presently turned towards the river.  His
eyes were upon the mellow stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto.  He
found himself crossing the Pont des Invalides, and halted midway to rest
and look.  He laid his arms upon the bridge’s parapet and turned his
face outwards.  Against it bore a little gentle breeze that smelt of the
purifying water below and of the night and of green things growing.
Beneath him the river ran black as flowing ink, and across its troubled
surface the coloured lights of the many bridges glittered very
beautifully—swirling arabesques of gold and crimson.  The noises of the
city—beat of hoofs upon wooden pavements, horn of tram or motor-car,
jingle of bell upon cab horse—came here faintly and as if from a great
distance.  Above the dark trees of the Cours la Reine the sky glowed
softly golden, reflecting the million lights of Paris.

Ste. Marie closed his eyes and, against darkness, he saw the beautiful
head of Helen Benham, the clear-cut exquisite modelling of feature and
contour, the perfection of form and colour.  Her eyes met his eyes, and
they were very serene and calm and confident.  She smiled at him, and
the new contours into which her face fell with the smile were more
perfect than before.  He watched the turn of her head, and the grace of
the movement was the uttermost effortless grace one dreams that a queen
should have.  The heart of Ste. Marie quickened in him and he would have
gone down upon his knees.

He was well aware that with the coming of this girl something
unprecedented, wholly new to his experience had befallen him—an
awakening to a new life.  He had been in love a very great many times.
He was usually in love.  And each time his heart had gone through the
same sweet and bitter anguish, the same sleepless nights had come and
gone upon him, the eternal and ever-new miracle had wakened spring in
his soul, had passed its summer solstice, had faded through autumnal
regrets to winter’s death; but through it all something within him had
waited asleep.

He found himself wondering dully what it was, wherein lay the great
difference, and he could not answer the question he asked.  He knew only
that whereas before he had loved, he now went down upon prayerful knees
to worship.  In a sudden poignant thrill the knightly fervour of his
forefathers came upon him, and he saw a sweet and golden lady set far
above him upon a throne. Her clear eyes gazed afar, serene and
untroubled. She sat wrapped in a sort of virginal austerity, unaware of
the base passions of men.  The other women whom Ste. Marie had, as he
was pleased to term it, loved, had certainly come at least halfway to
meet him, and some of them had come a good deal farther than that.  He
could not, by the wildest flight of imagination, conceive this girl
doing anything of that sort.  She was to be won by trial and high
endeavour, by prayer and self-purification, not captured by a warm eye
glance, a whispered word, a laughing kiss.  In fancy he looked from the
crowding cohorts of these others to that still sweet figure set on high,
wrapt in virginal pride, calm in her serene perfection, and his soul
abased itself before her.  He knelt in an awed and worshipful adoration.

So, before quest or tournament or battle, must those elder Ste.
Maries—Ste. Maries of Mont-les-Roses—have knelt, each knight at the feet
of his lady, each knightly soul aglow with the chaste ardour of
chivalry.

The man’s hands tightened upon the parapet of the bridge, he lifted his
face again to the shining stars whereamong, as his fancy had it, she sat
enthroned.  Exultingly he felt under his feet the rungs of the ladder,
and in the darkness he swore a great oath to have done for ever with
blindness and grovelling, to climb and climb, forever to climb, until at
last he should stand where she was—cleansed and made worthy by long
endeavour—at last meet her eyes and touch her hand.

It was a fine and chivalric frenzy, and Ste. Marie was passionately in
earnest about it, but his guardian angel, indeed Fate herself, must have
laughed a little in the dark, knowing what manner of man he was in less
exalted hours.

It was an odd freak of memory that at last recalled him to earth.  Every
man knows that when a strong and, for the moment, unavailing effort has
been made to recall something lost to mind, the memory, in some
mysterious fashion, goes on working long after the attention has been
elsewhere diverted, and sometimes hours afterwards, or even days,
produces quite suddenly and inappropriately the lost article.  Ste.
Marie had turned with a little sigh to take up once more his walk across
the Pont des Invalides, when seemingly from nowhere, and certainly by no
conscious effort, a name flashed into his mind.  He said it aloud——

"O’Hara!  O’Hara.  That tall thin chap’s name was O’Hara, by Jove!  It
wasn’t Powers at all."  He laughed a little as he remembered how very
positive Captain Stewart had been.  And then he frowned, thinking that
the mistake was an odd one since Stewart had evidently known a good deal
about this adventurer.  Captain Stewart though, Ste. Marie reflected,
was exactly the sort to be very sure he was right about things.  He had
just the neat and precise and semi-scholarly personality of the man who
always knows.  So Ste. Marie dismissed the matter with another brief
laugh, but a cognate matter was less easy to dismiss.  The name brought
with it a face, a dark and splendid face with tragic eyes that called.
He walked a long way thinking about them, and wondering.  The eyes
haunted him.  It will have been reasonably evident that Ste. Marie was a
fanciful and imaginative soul.  He needed but a chance word, the sight
of a face in a crowd, the glance of an eye, to begin story building, and
he would go on for hours about it and work himself up to quite a passion
with his imaginings.  He should have been a writer of fiction.

He began forthwith to construct romances about this lady of the
motor-car.  He wondered why she should have been with the shady
Irishman—if Irishman he was—O’Hara, and with some anxiety he wondered
what the two were to each other. Captain Stewart’s little cynical jest
came to his mind, and he was conscious of a sudden desire to kick Miss
Benham’s middle-aged uncle.

The eyes haunted him.  What was it they suffered?  Out of what misery
did they call?—and for what?  He walked all the long way home to his
little flat overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, haunted by those eyes.
As he climbed his stair it suddenly occurred to him that they had quite
driven out of his mind the image of his beautiful lady who sat amongst
the stars, and the realisation came to him with a shock.



                              *CHAPTER IV*

                          *OLD DAVID STEWART*


It was Miss Benham’s custom upon returning home at night from dinner
parties or other entertainments to look in for a few minutes on her
grandfather before going to bed.  The old gentleman, like most elderly
people, slept lightly, and often sat up in bed very late into the night
reading or playing piquet with his valet.  He suffered hideously at
times from the malady which was killing him by degrees, but when he was
free from pain the enormous recuperative power, which he had preserved
to his eighty-six years, left him almost as vigorous and clear-minded as
if he had never been ill at all.  Hartley’s description of him had not
been altogether a bad one—"a quaint old beggar ... a great quantity of
white hair and an enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I
ever saw——"  He was a rather "quaint old beggar" indeed!  He had let his
thick white hair grow long, and it hung down over his brows in unparted
locks as the ancient Greeks wore their hair.  He had very shaggy
eyebrows, and the deep-set eyes under them gleamed from the shadow with
a fierceness which was rather deceptive but none the less intimidating.
He had a great beak of a nose, but the mouth below could not be seen. It
was hidden by the moustache and the enormous square beard.  His face was
colourless, almost as white as hair and beard: there seemed to be no
shadow or tint anywhere except the cavernous recesses from which the
man’s eyes gleamed and sparkled.  Altogether he was certainly "a quaint
old beggar."

He had, during the day and evening, a good many visitors, for the old
gentleman’s mind was as alert as it ever had been, and important men
thought him worth consulting.  The names which the admirable valet,
Peters, announced from time to time were names which meant a great deal
in the official and diplomatic world of the day.  But if old David felt
flattered over the unusual fashion in which the great of the earth
continued to come to him he never betrayed it.  Indeed it is quite
probable that this view of the situation never once occurred to him.  He
had been thrown with the great of the earth for more than half a
century, and he had learnt to take it as a matter of course.

On her return from the Marquise de Saulnes’ dinner party Miss Benham
went at once to her grandfather’s wing of the house, which had its own
street entrance, and knocked lightly at his door.  She asked the
admirable Peters, who opened to her—

"Is he awake?"  And being assured that he was, went into the vast
chamber, dropping her cloak on a chair as she entered.  David Stewart
was sitting up in his monumental bed behind a sort of invalid’s table
which stretched across his knees without touching them.  He wore over
his night-clothes a Chinese Mandarin’s jacket of old red satin, wadded
with down, and very gorgeously embroidered with the cloud and bat
designs and with large round panels of the Imperial five-clawed dragon
in gold.  He had a number of these jackets, they seemed to be his one
vanity in things external, and they were so made that they could be
slipped about him without disturbing him in his bed, since they hung
down only to the waist or thereabouts.  They kept the upper part of his
body, which was not covered by the bedclothes, warm, and they certainly
made him a very impressive figure.

He said—

"Ah, Helen!  Come in!  Come in!  Sit down on the bed there and tell me
what you have been doing!"  He pushed aside the pack of cards which was
spread out on the invalid’s table before him, and with great care
counted a sum of money in francs and half-francs and nickel twenty-five
centime pieces.

"I’ve won seven francs fifty from Peters to-night," he said, chuckling
gently.  "That is a very good evening indeed.  Very good.  Where have
you been, and who were there?"

"A dinner party at the de Saulnes’," said Miss Benham, making herself
comfortable on the side of the great bed.  "It’s a very pleasant place.
Marian is, of course, a dear, and they’re quite English and
unceremonious.  You can talk to your neighbour at dinner instead of
addressing the house from a platform, as it were.  French dinner parties
make me nervous."

Old David gave a little growling laugh.

"French dinner parties at least keep people up to the mark in the art of
conversation," said he. "But that is a lost art anyhow, nowadays, so I
suppose one might as well be quite informal and have done with it.  Who
were there?"

"Oh, well—" she considered, "no one, I should think, who would interest
you.  Rather an indifferent set.  Pleasant people but not inspiring.
The Marquis had some young relative or connexion who was quite odious
and made the most surprising noises over his food.  I met a new man whom
I think I am going to like very much indeed.  He wouldn’t interest you
because he doesn’t mean anything in particular—and, of course, he
oughtn’t to interest me for the same reason. He’s just an idle pleasant
young man, but—he has great charm.  Very great charm.  His name is Ste.
Marie.  Baron de Vries seems very fond of him, which surprised me
rather."

"Ste. Marie!" exclaimed the old gentleman in obvious astonishment.
"Ste. Marie de Mont Perdu?"

"Yes," she said.  "Yes, that is the name, I believe.  You know him then?
I wonder he didn’t mention it."

"I knew his father," said old David.  "And his grandfather, for that
matter.  They’re Gascon, I think, or Bearnais, but this boy’s mother
will have been Irish, unless his father married again.

"So you’ve been meeting a Ste. Marie, have you? And finding that he has
great charm?"  The old gentleman broke into one of his growling laughs,
and reached for a long black cigar which he lighted, eyeing his
granddaughter the while over the flaring match.

"Well," he said, when the cigar was drawing, "they all have had charm.
I should think there has never been a Ste. Marie without it.  They’re a
sort of embodiment of romance, that family. This boy’s great-grandfather
lost his life defending a castle against a horde of peasants in 1799.
His grandfather was killed in the French campaign in Mexico in ’39—at
Vera Cruz, it was, I think; and his father died in a filibustering
expedition ten years ago.  I wonder what will become of the last Ste.
Marie?"  Old David’s eyes suddenly sharpened.

"You’re not going to fall in love with Ste. Marie and marry him, are
you?" he demanded.

Miss Benham gave a little angry laugh, but her grandfather saw the
colour rise in her cheeks for all that.

"Certainly not!" she said with great decision. "What an absurd idea!
Because I meet a man at a dinner party and say I like him, must I marry
him to-morrow?  I meet a great many men at dinners and things, and a few
of them I like. Heavens!"

"’Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’" muttered old David into his
huge beard.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Miss Benham politely.  But he shook his head,
still growling inarticulately, and began to draw enormous clouds of
smoke from the long black cigar.  After a time he took the cigar once
more from his lips and looked thoughtfully at his granddaughter where
she sat on the edge of the vast bed, upright and beautiful, perfect in
the most meticulous detail.  Most women when they return from a long
evening out, look more or less the worse for it.  Deadened eyes, pale
cheeks, loosened coiffure tell their inevitable tale.  Miss Benham
looked as if she had just come from the hands of a very excellent maid.
She looked as freshly _soignée_ as she might have looked at eight that
evening instead of at one.  Not a wave of her perfectly undulated hair
was loosened or displaced, not a fold of the lace at her breast had
departed from its perfect arrangement.

"It is odd," said old David Stewart, "you taking a fancy to young Ste.
Marie.  Of course it’s natural too in a way, because you are complete
opposites, I should think—that is, if this lad is like the rest of his
race.  What I mean is, that merely attractive young men don’t as a rule
attract you."

"Well, no," she admitted, "they don’t usually. Men with brains attract
me most, I think—men who are making civilisation, men who are ruling the
world or at least doing important things for it. That’s your fault, you
know.  You taught me that."

The old gentleman laughed.

"Possibly," said he.  "Possibly.  Anyhow that is the sort of men you
like and they like you.  You’re by no means a fool, Helen.  In fact,
you’re a woman with brains.  You could wield great influence married to
the proper sort of man."

"But not to M. Ste. Marie," she suggested, smiling across at him.

"Well, no," he said.  "No, not to Ste. Marie. It would be a mistake to
marry Ste. Marie—if he is what the rest of his house have been.  The
Ste. Maries live a life compounded of romance and imagination and
emotion.  You’re not emotional."

"No," said Miss Benham slowly and thoughtfully. It was as if the idea
were new to her.  "No, I’m not, I suppose.  No.  Certainly not."

"As a matter of fact," said old David, "you’re by nature rather cold.
I’m not sure it isn’t a good thing.  Emotional people, I observe, are
usually in hot water of some sort.  When you marry you’re very likely to
choose with a great deal of care and some wisdom.  And you’re also
likely to have what is called a career.  I repeat that you could wield
great influence in the proper environment."

The girl frowned across at her grandfather reflectively.

"Do you mean by that," she asked after a little silence, "do you mean
that you think I am likely to be moved by sheer ambition and nothing
else in arranging my life?  I’ve never thought of myself as a very
ambitious person."

"Let us substitute for ambition, common sense," said old David.  "I
think you have a great deal of common sense for a woman—and so young a
woman.  How old are you, by the way?  Twenty-two? Yes, to be sure.  I
think you have great common sense and appreciation of values.  And I
think you’re singularly free of the emotionalism that so often plays hob
with them all.  People with common sense fall in love in the right
places."

"I don’t quite like the sound of it," said Miss Benham.  "Perhaps I am
rather ambitious—I don’t know.  Yes, perhaps.  I should like to play
some part in the world.  I don’t deny that. But—am I as cold as you say?
I doubt it very much. I doubt that."

"You’re twenty-two," said her grandfather. "And you have seen a good
deal of society in several capitals.  Have you ever fallen in love?"

[Illustration: "’You’re twenty-two.  Have you ever fallen in love?’"]

Oddly, the face of Ste. Marie came before Miss Benham’s eyes as if she
had summoned it there. But she frowned a little and shook her head,
saying—

"No, I can’t say that I have.  But that means nothing.  There’s plenty
of time for that.

"And you know," she said after a pause, "you know I’m rather sure I
could fall in love—pretty hard.  I’m sure of that.  Perhaps I have been
waiting.  Who knows?"

"Ay, who knows?" said David.  He seemed all at once to lose interest in
the subject, as old people often do without apparent reason, for he
remained silent for a long time, puffing at the long black cigar or
rolling it absently between his fingers. After awhile he laid it down in
a metal dish which stood at his elbow and folded his lean hands before
him over the invalid’s table.  He was still so long that at last his
granddaughter thought he had fallen asleep, and she began to rise from
her seat, taking care to make no noise, but at that the old man stirred,
and put out his hand once more for the cigar.

"Was young Richard Hartley at your dinner party?" he asked.  And she
said—

"Yes.  Oh, yes, he was there.  He and M. Ste. Marie came together, I
believe.  They are very close friends."

"Another idler," growled old David.  "The fellow’s a man of parts—and a
man of family. What’s he idling about here for?  Why isn’t he in
Parliament where he belongs?"

"Well," said the girl, "I should think it is because he is too much a
man of family—as you put it.  You see, he’ll succeed his cousin, Lord
Risdale, before very long, and then all his work would have been for
nothing, because he’ll have to take his seat in the Lords.  Lord Risdale
is unmarried, you know, and a hopeless invalid.  He may die any day.  I
think I sympathise with poor Mr. Hartley. It would be a pity to build up
a career for one’s self in the lower House and then suddenly in the
midst of it have to give it all up.  The situation is rather paralysing
to endeavour, isn’t it?"

"Yes, I dare say," said old David absently.  He looked up sharply.
"Young Hartley doesn’t come here as much as he used to do."

"No," said Miss Benham, "he doesn’t."  She gave a little laugh.

"To avoid cross-examination," she said, "I may as well admit that he
asked me to marry him and I had to refuse.  I’m sorry, because I like
him very much indeed."

Old David made an inarticulate sound which may have been meant to
express surprise—or almost anything else.  He had not a great range of
expression.

"I don’t want," said he, "to seem to have gone daft on the subject of
marriage, and I see no reason why you should be in any haste about
it—certainly, I should hate to lose you, my child, but—Hartley, as the
next Lord Risdale, is undoubtedly a good match.  And you say you like
him."  The girl looked up with a sort of defiance, and her face was a
little flushed.

"I don’t love him," she said.  "I like him immensely but I don’t love
him, and after all—well, you say I’m cold and I admit I’m more or less
ambitious, but, after all—well, I just don’t quite love him.  I want to
love the man I marry."

Old David Stewart held up his black cigar and gazed thoughtfully at the
smoke which streamed thin and blue and veil-like from its lighted end.

"Love!" he said in a reflective tone.  "Love."  He repeated the word two
or three times slowly, and he stirred a little in his bed.

"I have forgotten what it is," said he.  "I expect I must be very old.
I have forgotten what love—that sort of love—is like.  It seems very far
away to me and rather unimportant.  But I remember that I thought it
important enough once, a century or two ago.  Do you know, it strikes me
as rather odd that I have forgotten what love is like. It strikes me as
rather pathetic."  He gave a sort of uncouth grimace and stuck the black
cigar once more into his mouth.

"Egad!" said he, mumbling indistinctly over the cigar, "how foolish love
seems when you look back at it across fifty or sixty years!"

Miss Benham rose to her feet smiling, and she came and stood near where
the old man lay propped up against his pillows.  She touched his cheek
with her cool hand, and old David put up one of his own hands and patted
it.

"I’m going to bed now," said she.  "I’ve sat here talking too long.  You
ought to be asleep and so ought I."

"Perhaps!  Perhaps!" the old man said.  "I don’t feel sleepy, though.  I
dare say I shall read a little."  He held her hand in his and looked up
at her.

"I’ve been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he.
"Put it out of your head! It’s all nonsense.  I don’t want you to marry
for a long time.  I don’t want to lose you."  His face twisted a little
quite suddenly.

"You’re precious near all I have left, now," he said.

The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was
nothing to say.  She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost
boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him.  She
often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its
course.

But after a moment she said very gently—

"We won’t give up hope.  We’ll never give up hope.  Think! he might come
home to morrow. Who knows?"

"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart
in a loud voice, "I’ll never forgive him—not if he comes to me to-morrow
on his knees!  Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"

The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush!  You mustn’t
excite yourself."  But old David’s grey face was working and his eyes
gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.

"If the boy is staying away out of spite," he repeated, "he need never
come back to me.  I won’t forgive him."  He beat his unemployed hand
upon the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and
danced.

"And if he waits until I’m dead and then comes back," said he, "he’ll
find he has made a mistake—a great mistake.  He’ll find a surprise in
store for him.  I can tell you that.  I won’t tell you what I have done,
but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur.  You may be
sure."

The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric
fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes, and his
hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him.  The girl
was silent because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she
could say.  She longed very much to plead her brother’s cause, but she
was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing
quieter after his burst of anger.  She bent down over him and kissed his
cheek.

"Try to go to sleep!" she said.  "And don’t torture yourself with
thinking about all this.  I’m as sure that poor Arthur is not staying
away out of spite as if he were myself.  He’s foolish and headstrong,
but he’s not spiteful, dear.  Try to believe that!  And now I’m really
going.  Good-night!"

She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as she closed the
door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which hung beside him
and summon the excellent Peters from the room beyond.



                              *CHAPTER V*

            *STE. MARIE SETS FORTH UPON THE GREAT ADVENTURE*


Miss Benham stood at one of the long drawing-room windows of the house
in the Rue de l’Université and looked out between the curtains upon the
rather grimy little garden, where a few not very prosperous cypresses
and chestnuts stood guard over the rows of lilac shrubs and the
box-bordered flower-beds and the usual moss-stained fountain.  She was
thinking of the events of the past month, the month which had elapsed
since the evening of the de Saulnes’ dinner party. They were not at all
startling events; in a practical sense there were no events at all, only
a quiet sequence of affairs which was about as inevitable as the night
upon the day—the day upon the night again.  In a word this girl, who had
considered herself very strong and very much the mistress of her
feelings, found, for the first time in her life, that her strength was
as nothing at all against the potent charm and magnetism of a man who
had almost none of the qualities she chiefly admired in men. During the
month’s time she had passed from a phase of angry self-scorn through a
period of bewilderment not unmixed with fear, and from that she had come
into an unknown world, a land very strange to her, where old standards
and judgments seemed to be valueless—a place seemingly ruled altogether
by new emotions, sweet and thrilling or full of vague terrors as her
mood veered here or there.

That sublimated form of guesswork which is called "woman’s intuition"
told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that
something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced.  It can be
proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other
gambling ventures, is bound to succeed about half the time, and it
succeeded on this occasion.  Even as Miss Benham stood at the window
looking out through the curtains Monsieur Ste. Marie was announced from
the doorway.

She turned to meet him with a little frown of determination, for in his
absence she was often very strong indeed, and sometimes she made up and
rehearsed little speeches of great dignity and decision, in which she
told him that he was attempting a quite hopeless thing, and, as a
well-wishing friend, advised him to go away and attempt it no longer.
But as Ste. Marie came quickly across the room towards her the little
frown wavered and at last fled from her face, and another look came
there. It was always so.  The man’s bodily presence exerted an absolute
spell over her.

"I have been sitting with your grandfather for half an hour," Ste. Marie
said, and she said—

"Oh, I’m glad!  I’m very glad.  You always cheer him up.  He hasn’t been
too cheerful, or too well of late."  She unnecessarily twisted a chair
about and after a moment sat down in it.  And she gave a little laugh.

"This friendship which has grown up between my grandfather and you,"
said she, "I don’t understand it at all.  Of course, he knew your father
and all that, but you two seem such very different types, I shouldn’t
think you would amuse each other at all.  There’s Mr. Hartley, for
example, I should expect my grandfather to like him very much better
than you, but he doesn’t—though I fancy he approves of him much more."

She laughed again, but a different laugh, and when he heard it Ste.
Marie’s eyes gleamed a little and his hands moved beside him.

"I expect," said she, "I expect, you know, that he just likes you,
without stopping to think why—as everybody else does.  I fancy it’s just
that. What do you think?"

"Oh, I?" said the man.  "I—how should I know?  I know it’s a great
privilege to be allowed to see him—such a man as that.  And I know we
get on wonderfully well.  He doesn’t condescend as most old men do who
have led important lives. We just talk as two men in a club might talk.
And I tell him stories and make him laugh.  Oh yes, we get on
wonderfully well."

"Oh!" said she.  "I’ve often wondered what you talk about.  What did you
talk about to-day?"

Ste. Marie turned abruptly away from her and went across to one of the
windows—the window where she had stood earlier looking out upon the
dingy garden.  She saw him stand there, with his back turned, the head a
little bent, the hands twisting together behind him, and a sudden fit of
nervous shivering wrung her.  Every woman knows when a certain thing is
going to be said to her, and usually she is prepared for it, though
usually also she says she is not.  Miss Benham knew what was coming now,
and she was frightened—not of Ste. Marie, but of herself.  It meant so
very much to her, more than to most women at such a time. It meant, if
she said yes to him, the surrender of almost all the things she had
cared for and hoped for.  It meant the giving up of that career which
old David Stewart had dwelt upon a month ago.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room.  He came a little way towards
where the girl sat and halted, and she could see that he was very pale.
A sort of critical second self noticed that he was pale, and was
surprised, because, although men’s faces often turn red, they seldom
turn noticeably pale except in very great nervous crises—or in works of
fiction; while women on the contrary may turn red and white twenty times
a day, and no harm done.  He raised his hands a little way from his
sides in the beginning of a gesture, but they dropped again as if there
were no strength in them.

"I—told him," said Ste. Marie in a flat voice, "I told your grandfather
that I—loved you more than anything in this world or in the next.  I
told him that my love for you had made another being of me—a new being.
I told him that I wanted to come to you and to kneel at your feet and to
ask you if you could give me just a little, little hope—something to
live for—a light to climb towards.  That is what we talked about, your
grandfather and I."

"Ste. Marie!  Ste. Marie!" said the girl in a half whisper.

"What did my grandfather say to you?" she asked after a silence.

Ste. Marie looked away.

"I cannot tell you," he said.  "He—was not quite sympathetic."

The girl gave a little cry.

"Tell me what he said!" she demanded.  "I must know what he said."  The
man’s eyes pleaded with her, but she held him with her gaze and in the
end he gave in.

"He said I was a damned fool," said Ste. Marie. And the girl, after an
instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous overwrought
laughter, and covered her face with her hands.

He threw himself upon his knees before her, and her laughter died away.
An Englishman or an American cannot do that.  Richard Hartley, for
example, would have looked like an idiot upon his knees and he would
have felt it.  But it did not seem extravagant with Ste. Marie.  It
became him.

"Listen! listen!" he cried to her, but the girl checked him before he
could go on.  She dropped her hands from her face and she bent a little
forward over the man as he knelt there.  She put out her hands and took
his head for a swift instant between them, looking down into his eyes.
At the touch a sudden wave of tenderness swept her—almost an engulfing
wave—almost it overwhelmed her and bore her away from the land she knew.
And so when she spoke her voice was not quite steady. She said—

"Ah, dear Ste. Marie!  I cannot pretend to be cold towards you.  You
have laid a spell upon me, Ste. Marie.  You enchant us all somehow,
don’t you?  I suppose I’m not as different from the others as I thought
I was.

"And yet," she said, "he was right, you know. My grandfather was right.
No, let me talk, now! I must talk for a little.  I must try to tell you
how it is with me—try somehow to find a way. He was right.  He meant
that you and I were utterly unsuited to each other, and so, in calm
moments, I know we are.  I know that well enough.  When you’re not with
me I feel very sure about it.  I think of a thousand excellent reasons
why you and I ought to be no more to each other than friends. Do you
know, I think my grandfather is a little uncanny.  I think he has
prophetic powers.  They say very old people often have.  He and I talked
about you when I came home from that dinner party at the de Saulnes’ a
month ago—the dinner party where you and I first met.  I told him that I
had met a man whom I liked very much—a man with great charm—and, though
I must have said the same sort of thing to him before about other men,
he was quite oddly disturbed, and talked for a long time about it, about
the sort of man I ought to marry and the sort I ought not to marry.  It
was unusual for him.  He seldom says anything of that kind.  Yes, he is
right.  You see, I’m ambitious in a particular way.  If I marry at all I
ought to marry a man who is working hard in politics or in something of
that kind.  I could help him.  We could do a great deal together."

"I could go into politics!" cried Ste. Marie, but she shook her head,
smiling down upon him.

"No, not you, my dear.  Politics least of all. You could be a soldier,
if you chose.  You could fight as your father and your grandfather and
the others of your house have done.  You could lead a forlorn hope in
the field.  You could suffer and starve and go on fighting.  You could
die splendidly but—politics, no!  That wants a tougher shell than you
have.

"And a soldier’s wife!  Of what use to him is she?"

Ste. Marie’s face was very grave.  He looked up to her smiling.

"Do you set ambition before love, my queen?" he asked, and she did not
answer him at once. She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as
he.

"Is love all?" she said at last.  "Is love all? Ought one to think of
nothing but love when one is settling one’s life for ever?

"I wonder?

"I look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my
friends—the people who seem to me to be most worth while—the people who
are making the world’s history for good or ill, and it seems to me that
in their lives love has the second place—or the third.  I wonder if one
has the right to set it first.

"There is, of course," she said, "the merely domestic type of woman—the
woman who has no thought and no interest beyond her home.  I am not that
type of woman.  Perhaps I wish I were. Certainly they are the happiest.
But I was brought up among—well, among important people—men of my
grandfather’s kind.  All my training has been towards that life.  Have I
the right, I wonder, to give it all up?"

The man stirred at her feet and she put out her hands to him quickly.

"Do I seem brutal?" she cried.  "Oh, I don’t want to be!  Do I seem very
ungenerous and wrapped up in my own side of the thing?  I don’t mean to
be that but—I’m not sure.  I expect it’s that.  I’m not sure, and I
think I’m a little frightened."  She gave him a brief anxious smile that
was not without its tenderness.

"I’m so sure," she said, "when I’m away from you.  But when you’re
here—oh, I forget all I’ve thought of.

"You lay your spell upon me."

Ste. Marie gave a little wordless cry of joy.  He caught her two hands
in his and held them against his lips.  Again that great wave of
tenderness swept her—almost engulfing.  But when it had ebbed she sank
back once more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp.

"You make me forget too much," she said.  "I think you make me forget
everything that I ought to remember.  Oh, Ste. Marie, have I any right
to think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon us?
While we don’t know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead?  You’ve seen
what it has brought my grandfather to.  It is killing him.  He has been
much worse in the last fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost of
herself in these days.  Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own
affairs—to dream of happiness at such a time."  She smiled across at him
very sadly.

"You see what you have brought me to!" she said.

Ste. Marie rose to his feet.  If Miss Benham, absorbed in that warfare
which raged within her, had momentarily forgotten the cloud of sorrow
under which her household lay, so much the more had he, to whom the
sorrow was less intimate, forgotten it.  But he was ever swift to
sympathy, Ste. Marie, as quick as a woman and as tender. He could not
thrust his love upon the girl at such a time as this.  He turned a
little away from her and so remained for a moment.  When he faced about
again the flush had gone from his cheeks and the fire from his eyes.
Only tenderness was left there.

"There has been no news at all this week?" he asked, and the girl shook
her head.

"None!  None!  Shall we ever have news of him, I wonder?  Must we go on
always and never know?  It seems to me almost incredible that any one
could disappear so completely.  And yet, I dare say, many people have
done it before and have been as carefully sought for.  If only I could
believe that he is alive!  If only I could believe that!"

"I believe it," said Ste. Marie.

"Ah," she said, "you say that to cheer me. You have no reason to offer."

"Dead bodies very seldom disappear completely," said he.  "If your
brother died anywhere there would be a record of the death.  If he were
accidentally killed there would be a record of that too, and, of course,
you are having all such records constantly searched?"

"Oh yes," she said.  "Yes, of course.  At least, I suppose so.  My uncle
has been directing the search.  Of course he would take an obvious
precaution like that."

"Naturally," said Ste. Marie.  "Your uncle, I should say, is an
unusually careful man."  He paused a moment to smile.

"He makes his little mistakes, though.  I told you about that man O’Hara
and about how sure Captain Stewart was that the name was Powers. Do you
know——"  Ste. Marie had been walking up and down the room, but he halted
to face her.

"Do you know, I have a very strong feeling that if one could find this
man O’Hara one would learn something about what became of your brother?
I have no reason for thinking that, but I feel it."

"Oh," said the girl doubtfully, "I hardly think that could be so.  What
motive could the man have for harming my brother?"

"None," said Ste. Marie; "but he might have an excellent motive for
hiding him away—kidnapping him.  Is that the word?  Yes, I know, you’re
going to say that no demand has been made for money, and that is where
my argument—if I can call it an argument—is weak.  But the fellow may be
biding his time.  Anyhow, I should like to have five minutes alone with
him.

"I’ll tell you another thing.  It’s a trifle and it may be of no
consequence, but I add it to my vague and—if you like—foolish feeling
and make something out of it.  I happened some days ago to meet at the
Café de Paris a man who, I knew, used to know this O’Hara.  He was not,
I think, a friend of his at all, but an acquaintance.  I asked him what
had become of O’Hara, saying that I hadn’t seen him for some weeks.
Well, this man said O’Hara had gone away somewhere a couple of months
ago.  He didn’t seem at all surprised, for it appears the Irishman—if he
is an Irishman—is decidedly a haphazard sort of person, here to-day,
gone to-morrow.  No, the man wasn’t surprised, but he was rather angry,
because he said O’Hara owed him some money.  I said I thought he must be
mistaken about the fellow’s absence, because I’d seen him in the street
within the month—on the evening of our dinner party you remember—but
this man was very sure that I had made a mistake.  He said that if
O’Hara had been in town he was sure to have known it.

"Well, the point is here.  Your brother disappears at a certain time.
At the same time this Irish adventurer disappears too, _and_ your
brother was known to have frequented the Irishman’s company.  It may be
only a coincidence, but I can’t help feeling that there’s something in
it."

Miss Benham was sitting up straight in her chair with a little alert
frown.

"Have you spoken of this to my uncle?" she demanded.

"Well—no," said Ste. Marie.  "Not the latter part of it; that is, not my
having heard of O’Hara’s disappearance.  In the first place, I learnt of
that only three days ago and I have not seen Captain Stewart since—I
rather expected to find him here to-day; and in the second place I was
quite sure that he would only laugh.  He has laughed at me two or three
times for suggesting that this Irishman might know something.  Captain
Stewart is—not easy to convince, you know."

"I know," she said, looking away.  "He’s always very certain that he’s
right.  Well, perhaps he is right.  Who knows?"

She gave a little sob.

"Oh!" she cried, "shall we ever have my brother back?  Shall we ever see
him again?  It is breaking my heart, Ste. Marie, and it is killing my
grandfather and, I think, my mother too! Oh, can nothing be done!"

Ste. Marie was walking up and down the floor before her, his hands
clasped behind his back. When she had finished speaking the girl saw him
halt beside one of the windows, and, after a moment, she saw his head go
up sharply and she heard him give a sudden cry.  She thought he had seen
something from the window which had wrung that exclamation from him, and
she asked—

"What is it?"  But abruptly the man turned back into the room and came
across to where she sat.  It seemed to her that his face had a new look,
a very strange exaltation which she had never before seen there.  He
said—

"Listen!  I do not know if anything can be done that has not been done
already, but if there is anything I shall do it, you may be sure."

"You, Ste. Marie!" she cried in a sharp voice.  "You?"

"And why not I?" he demanded.

"Oh, my friend," said she, "you could do nothing.  You wouldn’t know
where to turn, how to set to work.  Remember that a score of men who are
skilled in this kind of thing have been searching for two months.  What
could you do that they haven’t done?"

"I do not know, my queen," said Ste. Marie; "but I shall do what I can.
Who knows? Sometimes the fool who rushes in where angels have feared to
tread succeeds where they have failed.

"Oh, let me do this!" he cried out.  "Let me do it, for both our sakes,
for yours and for mine. It is for your sake most.  I swear that!  It is
to set you at peace again, bring back the happiness you have lost.  But
it is for my sake too, a little. It will be a test of me, a trial.  If I
can succeed here where so many have failed, if I can bring back your
brother to you—or at least, discover what has become of him—I shall be
able to come to you with less shame for my—unworthiness."

He looked down upon her with eager burning eyes, and, after a little,
the girl rose to face him. She was very white and she stared at him
silently.

"When I came to you to-day," he went on, "I knew that I had nothing to
offer you but my faithful love and my life, which has been a life
without value.  In exchange for that I asked too much. I knew it and you
knew it too.  I know well enough what sort of man you ought to marry,
and what a brilliant career you could make for yourself in the proper
place—what great influence you could wield.  But I asked you to give
that all up and I hadn’t anything to offer in its place—nothing but
love.

"My queen, give me a chance now to offer you more!  If I can bring back
your brother or news of him, I can come to you without shame and ask you
to marry me, because if I can succeed in that you will know that I can
succeed in other things. You will be able to trust me.  You’ll know that
I can climb.  It shall be a sort of symbol.  Let me go!"

The girl broke into a sort of sobbing laughter.

"Oh, divine madman!" she cried.  "Are you all mad, you Ste. Maries, that
you must be forever leading forlorn hopes?  Oh, how you are, after all,
a Ste. Marie!  Now at last I know why one cannot but love you.  You’re
the knight of old.  You’re chivalry come down to us.  You’re a ghost out
of the past when men rode in armour with pure hearts seeking the Great
Adventure.

"Oh, my friend," she said, "be wise!  Give this up in time.  It is a
beautiful thought and I love you for it, but it is madness—yes, yes, a
sweet madness, but mad nevertheless!  What possible chance would you
have of success?  And think! Think how failure would hurt you—and me!
You must not do it, Ste. Marie."

"Failure will never hurt me, my queen," said he; "because there are no
hurts in the grave, and I shall never give over searching until I
succeed or until I am dead."  His face was uplifted, and there was a
sort of splendid fervour upon it.  It was as if it shone.  The girl
stared at him dumbly. She began to realise that the knightly spirit of
those gallant long-dead gentlemen was indeed descended upon the last of
their house, that he burnt with the same pure fire which had long ago
lighted them through quest and adventure, and she was a little afraid
with an almost superstitious fear.

She put out her hands upon the man’s shoulders and she moved a little
closer to him, holding him.

"Oh, madness! madness!" she said, watching his face.

"Let me do it!" said Ste. Marie.

And after a silence that seemed to endure for a long time she sighed,
shaking her head, and said she—

"Oh, my friend, there is no strength in me to stop you.  I think we are
both a little mad, and I know that you are very mad, but I cannot say
no.  You seem to have come out of another century to take up this quest.
How can I prevent you? But listen to one thing.  If I accept this
sacrifice, if I let you give your time and your strength to this almost
hopeless attempt, it must be understood that it is to be within certain
limits.  I will not accept any indefinite thing.  You may give your
efforts to trying to find trace of my brother for a month if you like,
or for three months or six, or even a year, but not for more than that.
If he is not found in a year’s time we shall know that—we shall know
that he is dead, and that—further search is useless.  I cannot say how
I——  Oh, Ste. Marie, Ste. Marie, this is a proof of you indeed! And I
have called you idle!  I have said hard things of you.  It is very
bitter to me to think that I have said those things."

"They were true, my queen," said he, smiling. "They were quite true.  It
is for me to prove now that they shall be true no longer."  He took the
girl’s hand in his rather ceremoniously, and bent his head and kissed
it.  As he did so he was aware that she stirred, all at once, uneasily,
and when he had raised his head he looked at her in question.

"I thought some one was coming into the room," she explained, looking
beyond him.  "I thought some one started to come in between the
portières yonder.  It must have been a servant."

"Then it is understood," said Ste. Marie.  "To bring you back your
happiness and to prove myself in some way worthy of your love, I am to
devote myself with all my effort and all my strength to finding your
brother or some trace of him, and until I succeed I will not see your
face again, my queen."

"Oh, that!" she cried, "that too?"

"I will not see you," said he, "until I bring you news of him, or until
my year is passed and I have failed utterly.  I know what risk I run.
If I fail, I lose you.  That is understood too.  But if I succeed——"

"Then?" she said, breathing quickly.  "Then?"

"Then," said he, "I shall come to you and I shall feel no shame in
asking you to marry me, because then you will know that there is in me
some little worthiness, and that in our lives together you need not be
buried in obscurity—lost to the world."

"I cannot find any words to say," said she.  "I am feeling just now very
humble and very ashamed. It seems that I haven’t known you at all.  Oh
yes, I am ashamed."  The girl’s face, habitually so cool and composed,
was flushed with a beautiful flush, and it had softened and it seemed to
quiver between a smile and a tear.  With a swift movement she leant
close to him holding by his shoulder, and for an instant her cheek was
against his.  She whispered to him—

"Oh, find him quickly, my dear!  Find him quickly, and come back to me!"

Ste. Marie began to tremble, and she stood away from him.  Once he
looked up, but the flush was gone from Miss Benham’s cheeks, and she was
pale again.  She stood with her hands tight clasped over her breast.

So he bowed to her very low, and turned and went out of the room and out
of the house.

[Illustration: "He turned and went out of the room."]

So quickly did he move at this last that a man who had been for some
moments standing just outside the portières of the doorway had barely
time to step aside into the shadows of the dim hall. As it was, Ste.
Marie in a more normal moment must have seen that the man was there, but
his eyes were blind and he saw nothing.  He groped for his hat and stick
as if the place were a place of gloom, and, because the footman who
should have been at the door was in regions unknown, he let himself out
and so went away.

Then the man who stood apart in the shadows crossed the hall to a small
room which was furnished as a library but not often used.  He closed the
door behind him and went to one of the windows which gave upon the
street.  And he stood there for a long time drawing absurd invisible
pictures upon the glass with one finger, and staring thoughtfully out
into the late June afternoon.



                              *CHAPTER VI*

                 *A BRAVE GENTLEMAN RECEIVES A HURT BUT
                      VOLUNTEERS IN A GOOD CAUSE*


When Ste. Marie had gone Miss Benham sat alone in the drawing-room for
almost an hour.  She had been stirred that afternoon more deeply than
she thought she had ever been stirred before, and she needed time to
regain that cool poise, that mental equilibrium which was normal to her
and necessary for coherent thought.

She was still in a sort of fever of bewilderment and exaltation, still
all aglow with the man’s own high fervour; but the second self, which so
often sat apart from her and looked on with critical mocking eyes,
whispered that to-morrow, the fervour past, the fever cooled, she must
see the thing in its truer light—a glorious lunacy born of a moment of
enthusiasm.  It was finely romantic of him, this mocking second self
whispered to her: picturesque beyond criticism; but, setting aside the
practical folly of it, could even the mood last?

The girl rose to her feet with an angry exclamation. She found herself
intolerable at such times as this.

"If there’s a heaven," she cried out, "and by chance I ever go there, I
suppose I shall walk sneering through the streets, and saying to myself:
’Oh yes, it’s pretty enough, but how absurd and unpractical!’"

She passed before one of the small narrow mirrors which were let into
the walls of the room in gilt Louis Seize frames with candles beside
them, and she turned and stared at her very beautiful reflection with a
resentful wonder.

"Shall I always drag along so far behind him?" she said.  "Shall I never
rise to him, save in the moods of an hour?"

She began suddenly to realise what the man’s going away meant—that she
might not see him again for weeks, months, even a year.  For was it at
all likely that he could succeed in what he had undertaken?

"Why did I let him go?" she cried.  "Oh, fool, fool, to let him go!"
But even as she said it she knew that she could not have held him back.

She began to be afraid, not for him, but of herself. He had taught her
what it might be to love. For the first time love’s premonitory
thrill—promise of unspeakable uncomprehended mysteries—had wrung her,
and the echo of that thrill stirred in her yet; but what might not
happen in his long absence?  She was afraid of that critical and
analysing power of mind which she had so long trained to attack all that
came to her.  What might it not work with the new thing that had come?
To what pitiful shreds might it not be rent while he, who only could
renew it, was away?  She looked ahead at the weeks and months to come,
and she was terribly afraid.

She went out of the room and up to her grandfather’s chamber and knocked
there.  The admirable Peters who opened to her said that his master had
not been very well and was just then asleep, but as they spoke together
in low tones the old gentleman cried testily from within—

"Well?  Well?  Who’s there?  Who wants to see me?  Who is it?"

Miss Benham went into the dim shaded room, and when old David saw who it
was he sank back upon his pillows with a pacified growl.  He certainly
looked ill, and he had grown thinner and whiter within the past month,
and the lines in his waxlike face seemed to be deeper scored.

The girl went up beside the bed and stood there a moment, after she had
bent over and kissed her grandfather’s cheek, stroking with her hand the
absurdly gorgeous mandarin’s jacket—an imperial yellow one this time.

"Isn’t this new?" she asked.  "I seem never to have seen this one
before.  It’s quite wonderful."

The old gentleman looked down at it with the pride of a little girl over
her first party frock.  He came as near simpering as a fierce person of
eighty-six, with a square white beard, can come.

"Rather good, that!  What?" said he.  "Yes, it’s new.  De Vries sent it
me.  It is my best one. Imperial yellow.  Did you notice the little
_Show_ medallions with the _swastika_?  Young Ste. Marie was here this
afternoon."  He introduced the name with no pause or change of
expression, as if Ste. Marie were a part of the decoration of the
mandarin’s jacket.

"I told him he was a damned fool."

"Yes," said Miss Benham, "I know.  He said you did."

"I suppose," she said, "that in a sort of very informal fashion I am
engaged to him.  Well no, perhaps not quite that, but he seems to
consider himself engaged to me, and when he has finished something very
important that he has undertaken to do he is coming to ask me definitely
to marry him.  No, I suppose we aren’t engaged yet: at least I’m not.
But it’s almost the same, because I suppose I shall accept him whether
he fails or succeeds in what he is doing."

"If he fails in it, whatever it may be," said old David, "he won’t give
you a chance to accept him. He won’t come back.  I know him well enough
for that.  He’s a romantic fool, but he’s a thorough-going fool.  He
plays the game."  The old man looked up to his granddaughter, scowling a
little.

"You two are absurdly unsuited to each other," said he, "and I told Ste.
Marie so.  I suppose you think you’re in love with him."

"Yes," said the girl, "I suppose I do."

"Idleness and all?  You were rather severe on idleness at one time."

"He isn’t idle any more," said she.  "He has undertaken—of his own
accord—to find Arthur. He has some theory about it.  And he is not going
to see me again until he has succeeded—or until a year is past.  If he
fails, I fancy he won’t come back."

Old David gave a sudden hoarse exclamation, and his withered hands shook
and stirred before him.  Afterwards he fell to half-inarticulate
muttering.

"The young romantic fool!—Don Quixote—like all the rest of them—those
Ste. Maries.  The fool and the angels.  The angels and the fool."  The
girl distinguished words from time to time. For the most part he mumbled
under his breath. But when he had been silent a long time he said
suddenly—

"It would be ridiculously like him to succeed."

The girl gave a little sigh.

"I wish I dared hope for it," said she.  "I wish I dared hope for it."

She had left a book that she wanted in the drawing-room, and when
presently her grandfather fell asleep in his fitful manner, she went
down after it. In crossing the hall she came upon Captain Stewart, who
was dressed for the street and had his hat and stick in his hands.  He
did not live in his father’s house, for he had a little flat in the Rue
du Faubourg St. Honoré, but he was in and out a good deal. He paused
when he saw his niece and smiled upon her a benignant smile, which she
rather disliked, because she disliked benignant people.  The two really
saw very little of each other, though Captain Stewart often sat for
hours together with his sister up in a little boudoir which she had
furnished in the execrable taste which to her meant comfort, while that
timid and colourless lady embroidered strange tea-cloths with stranger
flora, and prattled about the heathen, in whom she had an academic
interest.

He said—

"Ah, my dear!  It’s you?"  Indisputably it was, and there seemed to be
no use of denying it, so Miss Benham said nothing, but waited for the
man to go on if he had more to say.

"I dropped in," he continued, "to see my father, but they told me he was
asleep and so I didn’t disturb him.  I talked a little while with your
mother instead."

"I have just come from him," said Miss Benham. "He dozed off again as I
left.  Still, if you had anything in particular to tell him, he’d be
glad to be wakened, I fancy.  There’s no news?"

"No," said Captain Stewart sadly, "no, nothing. I do not give up hope,
but I am, I confess, a little discouraged."

"We are all that, I should think," said Miss Benham briefly.  She gave
him a little nod, and turned away into the drawing-room.  Her uncle’s
peculiar dry manner irritated her at times beyond bearing, and she felt
that this was one of the times. She had never had any reason for
doubting that he was a good and kindly soul, but she disliked him
because he bored her.  Her mother bored her too—the poor woman bored
everybody—but the sense of filial obligation was strong enough in the
girl to prevent her from acknowledging this even to herself.  In regard
to her uncle she had no sense of obligation whatever, except to be as
civil to him as possible, and so she kept out of his way.

She heard the heavy front door close and gave a little sigh of relief.

"If he had come in here and tried to talk to me," she said, "I should
have screamed."


Meanwhile Ste. Marie, a man moving in a dream, uplifted,
cloud-enwrapped, made his way homeward.  He walked all the long
distance—that is, looking backward upon it later he thought he must have
walked, but the half-hour was a blank to him, an indeterminate, a
chaotic whirl of things and emotions.

In the little flat in the Rue d’Assas he came upon Richard Hartley, who,
having found the door unlocked and the master of the place absent, had
sat comfortably down with a pipe and a stack of _Courriers Français_ to
wait.  Ste. Marie burst into the doorway of the room where his friend
sat at ease. Hat, gloves and stick fell away from him in a sort of
shower.  He extended his arms high in air.  His face was, as it were,
luminous.  The Englishman regarded him morosely.  He said—

"You look as if somebody had died and left you money.  What the devil
are you looking like that for?"

"_Hè!_" cried Ste. Marie in a great voice.  "_Hè_, the world is mine!
Embrace me, my infant! Sacred name of a pig, why do you sit there?
Embrace me!"  He began to stride about the room, his head between his
hands.  Speech lofty and ridiculous burst from him in a sort of splutter
of fireworks, but the Englishman sat still in his chair, and a grey
bleak look came upon him, for he began to understand.  He was more or
less used to these outbursts, and he bore them as patiently as he could;
but though seven times out of the ten they were no more than spasms of
pure joy of living, and meant, "It’s a fine spring day," or "I’ve just
seen two beautiful princesses of milliners in the street," an inner
voice told him that this time it meant another thing.  Quite suddenly he
realised that he had been waiting for this, bracing himself against its
onslaught.  He had not been altogether blind through the past month.

Ste. Marie seized him and dragged him from his chair.

"Dance, lump of flesh! dance, sacred English _rosbif_ that you are!
Sing, _gros polisson_! Sing!"  Abruptly, as usual, the mania departed
from him, but not the glory; his eyes shone bright and triumphant.

"Ah, my old," said he, "I am near the stars at last.  My feet are on the
top rungs of the ladder. Tell me that you are glad!"  The Englishman
drew a long breath.

"I take it," said he, "that means that you’re—that she has accepted you,
eh?"  He held out his hand.  He was a brave and honest man.  Even in
pain he was incapable of jealousy.  He said—

"I ought to want to murder you, but I don’t. I congratulate you.  You’re
an undeserving beggar, but so were the rest of us.  It was an open
field, and you’ve won quite honestly.  My best wishes!"

Then at last Ste. Marie understood, and in a flash the glory went out of
his face.  He cried—

"Ah, _mon cher ami_!  Pig that I am to forget. Pig! pig! animal!"  The
other man saw that tears had sprung to his eyes, and was horribly
embarrassed to the very bottom of his good British soul.

"Yes! yes!" he said gruffly.  "Quite so, quite so!  No consequence!"  He
dragged his hands away from Ste. Marie’s grasp, stuck them in his
pockets, and turned to the window beside which he had been sitting.  It
looked out over the sweet green peace of the Luxembourg Gardens with
their winding paths and their clumps of trees and shrubbery, their
flaming flower-beds, their groups of weather-stained sculpture.  A youth
in labourer’s corduroys and an unclean beret strolled along under the
high palings, one arm was about the ample waist of a woman somewhat the
youth’s senior, but, as ever, love was blind.  The youth carolled in a
high, clear voice: "_Vous êtes si jolie_," a song of abundant sentiment,
and the young woman put up one hand and patted his cheek.  So they
strolled on and turned up into the Rue Vavin.

Ste. Marie, across the room, looked at his friend’s square back, and
knew that in his silent way the man was suffering.  A great sadness, the
recoil from his trembling heights of bliss, came upon him and enveloped
him.  Was it true that one man’s joy must inevitably be another’s pain?
He tried to imagine himself in Hartley’s place, Hartley in his; and he
gave a little shiver.  He knew that if that _bouleversement_ were
actually to take place he would be as glad for his friend’s sake as poor
Hartley was now for his; but he knew also that the smile of
congratulation would be a grimace of almost intolerable pain, and so he
knew what Hartley’s black hour must be like.

"You must forgive me," he said.  "I had forgotten. I don’t know why.
Well, yes, happiness is a very selfish state of mind, I suppose.  One
thinks of nothing but one’s self—and one other. I—during this past month
I’ve been in the clouds. You must forgive me."

The Englishman turned back into the room. Ste. Marie saw that his face
was as completely devoid of expression as it usually was, that his hands
when he chose and lighted a cigarette were quite steady, and he
marvelled.  That would have been impossible for him under such
circumstances.

"She has accepted you, I take it?" said Hartley again.

"Not quite that," said he.  "Sit down and I’ll tell you about it."  So
he told him about his hour with Miss Benham, and about what had been
agreed upon between them, and about what he had undertaken to do.

"Apart from wishing to do everything in this world that I can do to make
her happy," he said, "—and she will never be at peace again until she
knows the truth about her brother—apart from that, I’m purely selfish in
the thing.  I’ve got to win her respect as well as—the rest.  I want her
to respect me, and she has never quite done that. I’m an idler.  So are
you, but you have a perfectly good excuse.  I have not.  I’ve been an
idler because it suited me, because nothing turned up, and because I
have enough to eat without working for my living.  I know how she has
felt about all that.  Well, she shall feel it no longer."

"You’re taking on a big order," said the other man.

"The bigger the better," said Ste. Marie.  "And I shall succeed in it or
never see her again.  I’ve sworn that."  The odd look of exaltation that
Miss Benham had seen in his face, the look of knightly fervour, came
there again, and Hartley saw it and knew that the man was stirred by no
transient whim.  Oddly enough he thought, as had the girl earlier in the
day, of those elder Ste. Maries who had taken sword and lance and gone
out into a strange world, a place of unknown terrors, afire for the
Great Adventure.  And this was one of their blood.

"I’m afraid you don’t realise," he went on, "the difficulties you’ve got
to face.  Better men than you have failed over this thing, you know."

"A worse might nevertheless succeed," said Ste. Marie, and the other
said—

"Yes.  Oh, yes.  And there’s always luck to be considered, of course.
You might stumble on some trace."  He threw away his cigarette and
lighted another, and he smoked it down almost to the end before he
spoke.  At last he said—

"I want to tell you something.  The reason why I want to tell it comes a
little later.  A few weeks before you returned to Paris I asked Miss
Benham to marry me."

Ste. Marie looked up with a quick sympathy.

"Ah!" said he.  "I have sometimes thought—wondered. I have wondered if
it went as far as that.  Of course I could see that you had known her
well, though you seldom go there nowadays."

"Yes," said Hartley, "it went as far as that, but no farther.  She—well,
she didn’t care for me—not in that way.  So I stiffened my back and shut
my mouth, and got used to the fact that what I’d hoped for was
impossible.

"And now comes the reason for telling you what I’ve told.  I want you to
let me help you in what you’re going to do—if you think you can, that
is. Remember, I—cared for her too.  I’d like to do something for her.
It would never have occurred to me to do this until you thought of it,
but I should like very much to lend a hand, do some of the work.  D’you
think you could let me in?"

Ste. Marie stared at him in open astonishment, and, for an instant,
something like dismay.

"Yes, yes!  I know what you’re thinking," said the Englishman.  "You’d
hoped to do it all yourself.  It’s your game, I know.  Well, it’s your
game even if you let me come in.  I’m just a helper. Some one to run
errands, some one perhaps to take counsel with now and then.  Look at it
on the practical side!  Two heads are certainly better than one.
Certainly I could be of use to you.  And besides—well, I want to do
something for her. I—cared too, you see.  D’you think you could take me
in?"

It was the man’s love that made his appeal irresistible.  No one could
appeal to Ste. Marie on that score in vain.  It was true that he had
hoped to work alone, to win or lose alone, to stand, in this matter,
quite on his own feet, but he could not deny the man who had loved her
and lost her. Ste. Marie thrust out his hand.

"You love her too!" he said.  "That is enough. We work together.  I have
a possibly foolish idea that if we can find a certain man we will learn
something about Arthur Benham.  I’ll tell you about it."

But before he could begin the door-bell jangled.



                             *CHAPTER VII*

                 *CAPTAIN STEWART MAKES A KINDLY OFFER*


Ste. Marie scowled.

"A caller would come singularly malapropos, just now," said he.  "I’ve
half a mind not to go to the door.  I want to talk this thing over with
you."

"Whoever it is," objected Hartley, "has been told by the concierge that
you’re at home.  It may not be a caller anyhow.  It may be a parcel or
something.  You’d best go."  So Ste. Marie went out into the little
passage, blaspheming fluently the while.

The Englishman heard him open the outer door of the flat.  He heard him
exclaim in great surprise—

"Ah, Captain Stewart!  A great pleasure.  Come in!  Come in!"  And he
permitted himself a little blaspheming on his own account, for the
visitor, as Ste. Marie had said, came most malapropos, and besides he
disliked Miss Benham’s uncle.

He heard the American say—

"I have been hoping for some weeks to give myself the pleasure of
calling here, and to-day such an excellent pretext presented itself that
I came straight away."

Hartley heard him emit his mewing little laugh, and heard him say with
the elephantine archness affected by certain dry and middle-aged
gentlemen—

"I come with congratulations.  My niece has told me all about it.  Lucky
young man!  Ah!——"  He reached the door of the inner room and saw
Richard Hartley standing by the window, and he began to apologise
profusely, saying that he had had no idea that Ste. Marie was not alone.
But Ste. Marie said—

"It doesn’t in the least matter.  I have no secrets from Hartley.
Indeed, I have just been talking with him about this very thing."  But
for all that he looked curiously at the elder man, and it struck him as
very odd that Miss Benham should have gone straight to her uncle and
told him all this.  It did not seem in the least like her, especially as
he knew the two were on no terms of intimacy. He decided that she must
have gone up to her grandfather’s room to discuss it with that old
gentleman—a reasonable enough hypothesis—and that Captain Stewart must
have come in during the discussion. Quite evidently he had wasted no
time in setting out upon his errand of congratulation.

"Then," said Captain Stewart, "if I am to be good-naturedly forgiven for
my stupidity, let me go on and say, in my capacity as a member of the
family, that the news pleased me very much.  I was glad to hear it."  He
shook Ste. Marie’s hand, looking very benignant indeed, and Ste. Marie
was quite overcome with pleasure and gratitude: it seemed to him such a
very kindly act in the elder man.  He produced things to smoke and
drink, and Captain Stewart accepted a cigarette and mixed himself a
rather stiff glass of absinthe—it was between five and six o’clock.

"And now," said he, when he was at ease in the most comfortable of the
low cane chairs, and the glass of opalescent liquor was properly curdled
and set at hand, "now, having congratulated you and—ah, welcomed you, if
I may put it so, as a probable future member of the family, I turn to
the other feature of the affair."  He had an odd trick of lowering his
head and gazing benevolently upon an auditor as if over the top of
spectacles.  It was one of his elderly ways.  He beamed now upon Ste.
Marie in this manner, and, after a moment, turned and beamed upon
Richard Hartley, who gazed stolidly back at him without expression.

"You have determined, I hear," said he, "to join us in our search for
poor Arthur.  Good!  Good I I welcome you there, also."

Ste. Marie stirred uneasily in his chair.

"Well," said he, "in a sense, yes.  That is, I’ve determined to devote
myself to the search, and Hartley is good enough to offer to go in with
me; but I think, if you don’t mind——  Of course, I know it’s very
presumptuous and doubtless idiotic of us—but, if you don’t mind, I think
we’ll work independently.  You see—well, I can’t quite put it into
words, but it’s our idea to succeed or fail quite by our own efforts.  I
dare say we shall fail, but it won’t be for lack of trying."

Captain Stewart looked disappointed.

"Oh, I think," said he.  "Pardon me for saying it!  but I think you’re
rather foolish to do that."  He waved an apologetic hand.  "Of course, I
comprehend your excellent motive.  Yes, as you say, you want to succeed
quite on your own.  But, look at the practical side!  You’ll have to go
over all the weary weeks of useless labour we have gone over.  We could
save you that.  We have examined and followed up and at last given over
a hundred clues that on the surface looked quite possible of success.
You’ll be doing that all over again.  In short, my dear friend, you will
merely be following along a couple of months behind us.  It seems to me
a pity.  I shan’t like to see you wasting your time and efforts."  He
dropped his eyes to the glass of Pernod which stood beside him, and he
took it in his hand and turned it slowly, and watched the light gleam in
strange pearl colours upon it.  He glanced up again with a little smile
which the two younger men found oddly pathetic.

"I should like to see you succeed," said Captain Stewart.  "I like to
see youth and courage and high hope succeed."  He said—

"I am past the age of romance, though I am not so very old in years.
Romance has passed me by, but—I love it still.  It still stirs me
surprisingly when I see it in other people—young people who are simple
and earnest and who—and who are in love."  He laughed gently, still
turning the glass in his hands.

"I am afraid you will call me a sentimentalist," he said, "and an
elderly sentimentalist is, as a rule, a ridiculous person.  Ridiculous
or not, though, I have rather set my heart on your success in this
undertaking.  Who knows? you may succeed where we others have failed.
Youth has such a way of charging in and carrying all before it by
assault: such a way of overleaping barriers that look unsurmountable to
older eyes!  Youth!  Youth!

"Eh, my God!" said he, "to be young again just for a little while.  To
feel the blood beat strong and eager.  Never to be tired.  Eh, to be
like one of you youngsters!  You, Ste. Marie, or you, Hartley.  There’s
so little left for people when youth is gone."  He bent his head again,
staring down upon the glass before him, and for a while there was a
silence which neither of the younger men cared to break.

"Don’t refuse a helping hand!" said Captain Stewart, looking up once
more.  "Don’t be overproud!  I may be able to set you upon the right
path.  Not that I have anything definite to work upon.  I haven’t, alas!
But each day new clues turn up.  One day we shall find the real one, and
that may be one that I have turned over to you to follow out.  One never
knows."

[Illustration: "’Don’t refuse a helping hand!’ said Captain Stewart,
looking up once more.  ’Don’t be overproud!’"]

Ste. Marie looked across at Richard Hartley, but that gentleman was
blowing smoke rings and to all outward appearance giving them his entire
attention. He looked back to Captain Stewart, and Stewart’s eyes
regarded him smiling a little wistfully, he thought.

Ste. Marie scowled out of the window at the trees of the Luxembourg
Gardens.

"I hardly know," said he.  "Of course I sound a braying ass in
hesitating even a moment, but—in a way, you understand.  I’m so anxious
to do this or to fail in it quite on my own!  You’re—so tremendously
kind about it that I don’t know what to say.  I must seem very
ungrateful, I know.  But I’m not."

"No," said the elder man, "you don’t seem ungrateful at all.  I
understand exactly how you feel about it, and I applaud your feeling—but
not your judgment.  I am afraid that for the sake of a sentiment you’re
taking unnecessary risks of failure."

For the first time Richard Hartley spoke.

"I’ve an idea, you know," said he, "that it’s going to be a matter
chiefly of luck.  One day somebody will stumble on the right trail—and
that might as well be Ste. Marie or I as your trained detectives.  If
you don’t mind my saying so, sir—I don’t want to seem rude—your trained
detectives do not seem to accomplish much in two months, do they?"

Captain Stewart looked thoughtfully at the younger man.

"No," he said at last.  "I am sorry to say they don’t seem to have
accomplished much—except to prove that there are a great many places
poor Arthur has _not_ been to, and a great many people who have _not_
seen him.  After all, that is something—the elimination of ground that
need not be worked over again."  He set down the glass from which he had
been drinking.

"I cannot agree with your theory," he said.  "I cannot agree that such
work as this is best left to an accidental solution.  Accidents are too
rare.  We have tried to go at it in as scientific a way as could be
managed—by covering large areas of territory, by keeping the police
everywhere on the alert, by watching the boy’s old friends and searching
his favourite haunts.  Personally I am inclined to think that he managed
to slip away to America very early in the course of events—before we
began to search for him.  And of course, I am having a careful watch
kept there as well as here.  But no trace has appeared as yet—nothing at
all trustworthy. Meanwhile I continue to hope and to work, but I grow a
little discouraged.  In any case, though, we shall hear of him in three
months more if he is alive."

"Why three months?" asked Ste. Marie. "What do you mean by that?"

"In three months," said Captain Stewart, "Arthur will be of age, and he
can demand the money left him by his father.  If he is alive he will
turn up for that.  I have thought, from the first, that he is merely
hiding somewhere until this time should be past.  He—you must know that
he went away very angry, after a quarrel with his grandfather.  My
father is not a patient man.  He may have been very harsh with the boy."

"Ah yes," said Hartley, "but no boy, however young or angry, would be
foolish enough to risk an absolute break with the man who is going to
leave him a large fortune.  Young Benham must know that his grandfather
would never forgive him for staying away all this time if he stayed away
of his own accord.  He must know that he’d be taking tremendous risks of
being cut off altogether."

"And besides," added Ste. Marie, "it is quite possible that your father,
sir, may die at any time—any hour.  And he’s very angry with his
grandson. He may have cut him off already."

Captain Stewart’s eyes sharpened suddenly, but he dropped them to the
glass in his hand.

"Have you any reason for thinking that?" he asked.

"No," said Ste. Marie.  "I beg your pardon.  I shouldn’t have said it.
That is a matter which concerns your family alone.  I forgot myself.
The possibility occurred to me suddenly, for the first time."  But the
elder man looked up at him with a smile.

"Pray don’t apologise!" said he.  "Surely we three can speak frankly
together.  And frankly I know nothing of my father’s will.  But I don’t
think he would cut poor Arthur off, though he is, of course, very angry
about the boy’s leaving in the manner he did.  No!  I am sure he
wouldn’t cut him off.  He was fond of the lad, very fond—as we all
were."

Captain Stewart glanced at his watch and rose with a little sigh.

"I must be off," said he.  "I have to dine out this evening, and I must
get home to change.  There is a cab-stand near you?"  He looked out of
the window.  "Ah yes!  Just at the corner of the Gardens."  He turned
about to Ste. Marie, and held out his hand with a smile.  He said—

"You refuse to join forces with us then?  Well, I’m sorry.  But for all
that, I wish you luck.  Go your own way, and I hope you’ll succeed.  I
honestly hope that, even though your success may show me up for an
incompetent bungler."  He gave a little kindly laugh and Ste. Marie
tried to protest.

"Still," said the elder man, "don’t throw me over altogether.  If I can
help you in any way, little or big, let me know.  If I can give you any
hints, any advice, anything at all, I want to do it. And if you happen
upon what seems to be a promising clue, come and talk it over with me.
Oh, don’t be afraid!  I’ll leave it to you to work out.  I shan’t spoil
your game."

"Ah, now that’s very good of you," said Ste. Marie.  "Only you make me
seem more than ever an ungrateful fool.  Thanks, I will come to you with
my troubles if I may.  I have a foolish idea that I want to follow out a
little first, but doubtless I shall be running to you soon for
information."

The elder man’s eyes sharpened again with keen interest.

"An idea!" he said quickly.  "You have an idea?  What—may I ask what
sort of an idea?"

"Oh it’s nothing," declared Ste. Marie.  "You have already laughed at
it.  I just want to find that man O’Hara, that’s all.  I’ve a feeling
that I should learn something from him."

"Ah!" said Captain Stewart slowly.  "Yes, the man O’Hara.  There’s
nothing in that, I’m afraid.  I’ve made inquiries about O’Hara.  It
seems he left Paris six months ago, saying he was off for America.  An
old friend of his told me that. So you must have been mistaken when you
thought you saw him in the Champs Elysées, and he couldn’t very well
have had anything to do with poor Arthur. I’m afraid that idea is hardly
worth following up."

"Perhaps not," said Ste. Marie.  "I seem to start badly, don’t I?  Ah
well, I’ll have to come to you all the sooner, then."

"You’ll be welcome," promised Captain Stewart. "Good-bye to you!  Good
day, Hartley.  Come and see me both of you.  You know where I live."

He took his leave then, and Hartley, standing beside the window, watched
him turn down the street, and at the corner get into one of the fiacres
there and drive away.

Ste. Marie laughed aloud.

"There’s the second time," said he, "that I’ve had him about O’Hara.  If
he is as careless as that about everything, I don’t wonder he hasn’t
found Arthur Benham.  O’Hara disappeared from Paris (publicly, that is)
at about the time young Benham disappeared.  As a matter of fact he
remains, or at least for a time remained in the city without letting his
friends know, because I made no mistake about seeing him in the Champs
Elysées.  All that looks to me suspicious enough to be worth
investigation.

"Of course," he admitted doubtfully—"of course I’m no detective, but
that’s how it looks to me."

"I don’t believe Stewart is any detective either," said Richard Hartley.
"He’s altogether too cock-sure.  That sort of man would rather die than
admit he is wrong about anything.  He’s a good old chap though, isn’t
he?  I liked him to-day better than ever before.  I thought he was
rather pathetic when he went on about his age."

"He has a good heart," said Ste. Marie.  "Very few men under the
circumstances would come here and be as decent as he was.  Most men
would have thought I was a presumptuous ass and would have behaved
accordingly."

Ste. Marie took a turn about the room and his face began to light up
with its new excitement and exaltation.

"And to-morrow," he cried, "to-morrow we begin!  To-morrow we set out
into the world and the Adventure is on foot.  God send it success!"  He
laughed across at the other man, but it was a laugh of eagerness not of
mirth.

"I feel," said he, "like Jason.  I feel as if we were to set sail
to-morrow for Colchis and the Golden Fleece."

"Ye—es," said the other man a little drily.  "Yes, perhaps.  I don’t
want to seem critical, but isn’t your figure somewhat ill chosen?"

"’Ill chosen’?" cried Ste. Marie.  "What d’you mean?  Why ill chosen?"

"I was thinking of Medea," said Richard Hartley.



                             *CHAPTER VIII*

       *STE. MARIE MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE AND DREAMS A DREAM*


So on the next day these two rode forth upon their quest, and no quest
was ever undertaken with a stouter courage or with a grimmer
determination to succeed.  To put it fancifully they burnt their tower
behind them, for to one of them at least—to him who led—there was no
going back.

But after all they set forth under a cloud, and Ste. Marie took a heavy
heart with him.  On the evening before an odd and painful incident had
befallen, a singularly unfortunate incident.

It chanced that neither of the two men had a dinner engagement that
evening, and so, after their old habit, they dined together.  There was
some wrangling over where they should go, Hartley insisting upon
_Armenonville_ or the _Madrid_ in the Bois, Ste. Marie objecting that
these would be full of tourists so late in June, and urging the claims
of some quiet place in the Quarter, where they could talk instead of
listening perforce to loud music.  In the end, for no particular reason,
they compromised on the little Spanish restaurant in the Rue Helder.
They went there about eight o’clock, without dressing; for it is a very
quiet place which the world does not visit, and they had a _sopa de
yerbas_, and some _langostinos_, which are shrimps, and a heavenly
_arroz_ with fowl in it, and many tender succulent strips of red pepper.
They had a salad made out of a little of everything that grows green,
with the true Spanish oil, which has a tang and a bouquet unappreciated
by the philistine; and then they had a strange pastry and some cheese
and green almonds.  And to make them glad they drank a bottle of old red
Valdepeñas, and afterwards a glass each of a special Manzanilla, upon
which the restaurant very justly prides itself. It was a simple dinner
and a little stodgy for that time of the year, but the two men were
hungry, and sat at table, almost alone in the upper room, for a long
time, saying how good everything was, and from time to time despatching
the saturnine waiter, a Madrileno, for more peppers.  When at last they
came out into the narrow street and thence to the thronged Boulevard des
Italiens, it was nearly eleven o’clock.  They stood for a little time in
the shelter of a kiosk, looking down the boulevard to where the Place de
l’Opéra opened wide, and the lights of the Café de la Paix shone garish
in the night, and Ste. Marie said—

"There’s a street _fête_ in Montmartre.  We might drive home that way."

"An excellent idea," said the other man.  "The fact that Montmartre lies
in an opposite direction from home makes the plan all the better.  And
after that we might drive home through the Bois. That’s much farther in
the wrong direction.  Lead on!"

So they sprang into a waiting fiacre, and were dragged up the steep
stone-paved hill to the heights where _La Bohême_ still reigns, though
the glory of Moulin Rouge has departed, and the trail of tourist is over
all.  They found Montmartre very much _en fête_.  In the Place Blanche
were two of the enormous and brilliantly lighted merry-go-rounds which
only Paris knows—one furnished with stolid cattle, theatrical-looking
horses, and Russian sleighs, the other with the ever-popular galloping
pigs. When these dreadful machines were in rotation mechanical organs
concealed somewhere in their bowels emitted hideous brays and shrieks,
which mingled with the shrieks of the ladies mounted upon the galloping
pigs, and together insulted a peaceful sky.

The square was filled with that extremely heterogeneous throng which the
Parisian street _fête_ gathers together, but it was, for the most part,
a well-dressed throng, largely recruited from the boulevards, and it was
quite determined to have a very good time in the cheerful harmless Latin
fashion.  The two men got down from their fiacre and elbowed a way
through the good-natured crowd to a place near the more popular of the
merry-go-rounds.  The machine was in rotation. Its garish lights shone
and glittered, its hidden mechanical organ blared a German waltz tune,
the huge pink-varnished pigs galloped gravely up and down as the
platform upon which they were mounted whirled round and round.  A little
group of American trippers, sight-seeing, with a guide, stood near by,
and one of the group, a pretty girl with red hair, demanded plaintively
of the friend upon whose arm she hung: "Do you think mamma would be
shocked if we took a ride?  Wouldn’t I love to!"

Hartley turned laughing from this distressed maiden to Ste. Marie.  He
was wondering with mild amusement why anybody should wish to do such a
foolish thing, but Ste. Marie’s eyes were fixed upon the galloping pigs
and the eyes shone with a wistful excitement.  To tell the truth it was
impossible for him to look on at any form of active amusement without
thirsting to join it.  A joyous and care-free lady in a blue hat, who
was mounted astride upon one of the pigs, hurled a paper serpentine at
him, and shrieked with delight when it knocked his hat off.

"That’s the second time she has hit me with one of those things," he
said, groping about his feet for the hat.  "Here, stop that boy with the
basket!"  A vendor of the little rolls of paper ribbon was shouting his
wares through the crowd. Ste. Marie filled his pockets with the things,
and when the lady with the blue hat came round on the next turn, lassoed
her neatly about the neck and held the end of the ribbon till it broke.
Then he caught a fat gentleman, who was holding himself on by his
steed’s neck, in the ear, and the red-haired American girl laughed
aloud.

"When the thing stops," said Ste. Marie, "I’m going to take a ride, just
one ride.  I haven’t ridden a pig for many years."  Hartley jeered at
him, calling him an infant, but Ste. Marie bought more serpentines, and
when the platform came to a stop clambered up to it, and mounted the
only unoccupied pig he could find.  His friend still scoffed at him and
called him names, but Ste. Marie tucked his long legs round the pig’s
neck and smiled back, and presently the machine began again to revolve.

At the end of the first revolution Hartley gave a shout of delight, for
he saw that the lady with the blue hat had left her mount and was making
her way along the platform towards where Ste. Marie sat hurling
serpentines in the face of the world.  By the next time round she had
come to where he was, mounted astride behind him, and was holding
herself with one very shapely arm round his neck, while with the other
she rifled his pockets for ammunition.  Ste. Marie grinned, and the
public, loud in its acclaims, began to pelt the two with serpentines
until they were hung with many-coloured ribbons like a Christmas-tree.
Even Richard Hartley was so far moved out of the self-consciousness with
which his race is cursed as to buy a handful of the common missiles, and
the lady in the blue hat returned his attention with skill and despatch.

But as the machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and
blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his
friend’s manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward
away from the enthusiastic lady with the blue hat, and that the paper
serpentines had dropped from his hands.  Hartley thought that the rapid
motion must have made him a little giddy, but presently, before the
merry-go-round had quite stopped, he saw the man leap down and hurry
towards him through the crowd. Ste. Marie’s face was grave and pale.  He
caught Hartley’s arm in his hand and turned him round, crying in a low
voice—

"Come out of this as quickly as you can!  No, in the other direction.  I
want to get away at once."

"What’s the matter?" Hartley demanded. "Lady in the blue hat too
friendly?  Well, if you’re going to play this kind of game, you might as
well play it."

"Helen Benham was down there in the crowd," said Ste. Marie.  "On the
opposite side from you. She was with a party of people who got out of
two motor-cars, to look on.  They were in evening things, so they had
come from dinner somewhere, I suppose.  She saw me."

"The devil!" said Hartley under his breath. Then he gave a shout of
laughter, demanding—

"Well, what of it?  You weren’t committing any crime, were you?  There’s
no harm in riding a silly pig in a silly merry-go-round.  Everybody does
it in these _fête_ things."  But even as he spoke he knew how extremely
unfortunate the meeting was, and the laughter went out of his voice.

"I’m afraid," said Ste. Marie, "she won’t see the humour of it.  Good
God, what a thing to happen!  _You_ know well enough what she’ll think
of me.

"At five o’clock this afternoon," he said bitterly, "I left her with a
great many fine high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my
days and nights to—for her sake.  I went away from her like a—knight
going into battle—consecrated.  I tell you, there were tears in her eyes
when I went. And now, now, at midnight, she sees me riding a galloping
pig in a street _fête_ with a girl from the boulevards sitting on the
pig with me and holding me round the neck before a thousand people. What
will she think of me?  What but one thing can she possibly think?  Oh, I
know well enough! I saw her face before she turned away.

"And," he cried, "I can’t even go to her and explain—if there’s anything
to explain, and I suppose there is not.  I can’t even go to her.  I’ve
sworn not to see her."

"Oh, I’ll do that," said the other man.  "I’ll explain it to her, if any
explanation’s necessary. I think you’ll find that she will laugh at it."
But Ste. Marie shook his head.

"No, she won’t," said he.  And Hartley could say no more, for he knew
Miss Benham, and he was very much afraid that she would not laugh.

They found a fiacre at the side of the square and drove home at once.
They were almost entirely silent all the long way, for Ste. Marie was
buried in gloom, and the Englishman, after trying once or twice to cheer
him up, realised that he was best left to himself just then, and so held
his tongue. But in the Rue d’Assas as Ste. Marie was getting
down—Hartley kept the fiacre to go on to his rooms in the Avenue de
l’Observatoire—he made a last attempt to lighten the man’s depression.
He said—

"Don’t you be a silly ass about this!  You’re making much too much of
it, you know.  I’ll go to her to-morrow or next day and explain, and
she’ll laugh—if she hasn’t already done so.

"You know," he said, almost believing it himself, "you are paying her a
dashed poor compliment in thinking she’s so dull as to misunderstand a
little thing of this kind.  Yes, by Jove, you are!"

Ste. Marie looked up at him, and his face, in the light of the cab-lamp,
showed a first faint gleam of hope.

"Do you think so?" he demanded.  "Do you really think that?  Maybe I am.
But—  O Lord, who would understand such an idiocy? Sacred imbecile that
I am: why was I ever born? I ask you."  He turned abruptly and began to
ring at the door, casting a brief "Good-night," over his shoulder.  And,
after a moment, Hartley gave it up and drove away.

Above, in the long shallow front room of his flat, with the three
windows overlooking the Gardens, Ste. Marie made lights, and after much
rummaging unearthed a box of cigarettes of a peculiarly delectable
flavour, which had been sent him by a friend in the Khedivial household.
He allowed himself one or two of them now and then, usually in sorrowful
moments, as an especial treat.  And this seemed to him to be the moment
for smoking all there were left.  Surely his need had never been
greater.  In England he had, of course learnt to smoke a pipe, but pipe
smoking always remained with him a species of accomplishment; it never
brought him the deep and ruminative peace with which it enfolds the
Anglo-Saxon heart.  The _vieux Jacob_ of old-fashioned Parisian Bohemia
inspired in him unconcealed horror, of cigars he was suspicious because,
he said, most of the unpleasant people he knew smoked cigars: so he
soothed his soul with cigarettes, and he was usually to be found with
one between his fingers.

He lighted one of the precious Egyptians, and after a first ecstatic
inhalation went across to one of the long windows, which was open, and
stood there with his back to the room, his face to the peaceful fragrant
night.  A sudden recollection came to him of that other night a month
before, when he had stood on the Pont des Invalides with his eyes upon
the stars, his feet upon the ladder thereunto.  His heart gave a sudden
exultant leap within him when he thought how far and high he had
climbed, but after the leap it shivered and stood still when this
evening’s misadventure came before him.

Would she ever understand?  He had no fear that Hartley would not do his
best with her. Hartley was as honest and as faithful as ever a friend
was in this world.  He would do his best.  But even then——  It was the
girl’s inflexible nature that made the matter so dangerous.  He knew
that she was inflexible, and he took a curious pride in it.  He admired
it.  So must have been those calm-eyed ancient ladies for whom other
Ste. Maries went out to do battle.  It was wellnigh impossible to
imagine them lowering their eyes to silly revelry.  They could not stoop
to such as that.  It was beneath their high dignity.  And it was beneath
hers also.  As for himself, he was a thing of patches.  Here a patch of
exalted chivalry—a noble patch—there a patch of bourgeois child-like
love of fun; here a patch of melancholic asceticism, there one of
something quite the reverse. A hopeless patchwork he was.  Must she not
shrink from him when she knew?  He could not quite imagine her
understanding the wholly trivial and meaningless impulse that had
prompted him to ride a galloping pig and cast paper serpentines at the
assembled world.

Apart from her view of the affair he felt no shame in it.  The moment of
childish gaiety had been but a passing mood.  It had in no way slackened
his tense enthusiasm, dulled the keenness of his spirit, lowered his
high flight.  He knew that well enough.  But he wondered if she would
understand, and he could not believe it possible.  The mood of
exaltation in which they had parted that afternoon came to him, and then
the sight of her shocked face as he had seen it in the laughing crowd in
the Place Blanche.

"What must she think of me?" he cried aloud. "What must she think of
me?"

So for an hour or more he stood in the open window staring into the
fragrant night, or tramped up and down the long room, his hands behind
his back, kicking out of his way the chairs and things which impeded
him—torturing himself with fears and regrets and fancies, until at last
in a calmer moment he realised that he was working himself up into an
absurd state of nerves over something which was done and could not now
be helped.  The man had an odd streak of fatalism in his nature—that
will have come of his southern blood—and it came to him now in his need.
For the work upon which he was to enter with the morrow he had need of
clear wits, not scattered ones; a calm judgment, not disordered nerves.
So he took himself in hand, and it would have been amazing to any one
unfamiliar with the abrupt changes of the Latin temperament, to see how
suddenly Ste. Marie became quiet and cool and master of himself.

[Illustration: "So for an hour or more he stood in the open window
staring into the fragrant night."]

"It is done," he said with a little shrug, and if his face was for a
moment bitter it quickly enough became impassive.  "It is done, and it
cannot be undone—unless Hartley can undo it.  And now, _revenons à nos
moutons_!

"Or at least," said he, looking at his watch—and it was between one and
two—"at least to our beds!"

So he went to bed, and, so well had he recovered from his fit of
excitement, he fell asleep almost at once.  But, for all that, the
jangled nerves had their revenge.  He who commonly slept like the dead,
without the slightest disturbance, dreamed a strange dream.  It seemed
to him that he stood spent and weary in a twilit place, a waste place at
the foot of a high hill.  At the top of the hill She sat upon a sort of
throne, golden in a beam of light from heaven—serene, very beautiful,
the end and crown of his weary labours.  His feet were set to the ascent
of the height whereon she waited, but he was withheld.  From the shadows
at the hill’s foot a voice called to him in distress, anguish of
spirit—a voice he knew, but he could not say whose voice.  It besought
him out of utter need, and he could not turn away from it.

Then from those shadows eyes looked upon him, very great and dark eyes,
and they besought him too; he did not know what they asked, but they
called to him like the low voice, and he could not turn away.

He looked to the far height, and with all his power he strove to set his
feet towards it—the goal of long labour and desire—but the eyes and the
piteous voice held him motionless, for they needed him.

From this anguish he awoke trembling.  And after a long time, when he
was composed, he fell asleep once more, and once more he dreamed the
dream.

So morning found him pallid and unrefreshed. But by daylight he knew
whose eyes had besought him, and he wondered, and was a little afraid.



                              *CHAPTER IX*

                  *STE. MARIE GOES UPON A JOURNEY AND
                    RICHARD HARTLEY PLEADS FOR HIM*


It may as well be admitted at the outset that neither Ste. Marie nor
Richard Hartley proved themselves to be geniuses, hitherto undeveloped,
in the detective science.  They entered upon their self-appointed task
with a fine fervour, but, as Miss Benham had suggested, with no other
qualifications in particular.  Ste. Marie had a theory that when engaged
in work of this nature you went into questionable parts of the city, ate
and drank cheek by jowl with questionable people; if possible got them
drunk while you remained sober (difficult feat), and sooner or later
they said things which put you on the right road to your goal, or else
confessed to you that they themselves had committed the particular crime
in which you were interested. He argued that this was the way it
happened in books, and that surely people didn’t write books about
things of which they were ignorant.

Hartley, on the other hand, preferred the newer or scientific methods.
You sat at home with a pipe and a whisky and water—if possible in a long
dressing-gown with a cord round its middle. You reviewed all the known
facts of the case, and you did mathematics about them with Xs and Ys and
many other symbols, and in the end, by a system of elimination, you
proved that a certain thing must infallibly be true.  The chief
difficulty for him in this was, he said, that he had been at Oxford
instead of at Cambridge, and so the mathematics was rather beyond him.

In practice, however, they combined the two methods, which was doubtless
as well as if they hadn’t, because for some time they accomplished
nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer at the other’s
stupidity.

This is not to say that they found nothing in the way of clues.  They
found an embarrassment of them, and for some days went about in a fever
of excitement over these; but the fever cooled when clue after clue
turned out to be misleading.  Of course Ste. Marie’s first efforts were
directed towards tracing the movements of the Irishman, O’Hara, but the
efforts were altogether unavailing.  The man seemed to have disappeared
as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself.  He
was unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man’s
departure from Paris.  Some of O’Hara’s old acquaintances maintained
that they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed
person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one evening
in Maxim’s, and said he had heard that Ste. Marie was making inquiries
about M. O’Hara.  Ste. Marie said he was, and that it was an affair of
money, whereupon the cheaply smart individual declared that M. O’Hara
had left Paris six months before to go to the United States of America,
and that he had had a picture postal card, some weeks since, from New
York.  The informant accepted an expensive cigar and a Dubonnet by way
of reward, but presently departed into the night, and Ste. Marie was
left in some discouragement, his theory badly damaged.

He spoke of this encounter to Richard Hartley, who came on later to join
him, and Hartley, after an interval of silence and smoke, said—

"That was a lie.  The man lied."

"Name of a dog, why?" demanded Ste. Marie, but the Englishman shrugged
his shoulders.

"I don’t know," he said.  "But I believe it was a lie.  The man came to
you, sought you out to tell his story, didn’t he?  And all the others
have given a different date?  Well, there you are!  For some reason this
man or some one behind him—O’Hara himself, probably—wants you to believe
that O’Hara is in America.  I dare say he’s in Paris all the while."

"I hope you’re right," said the other.  "And I mean to make sure, too.
It certainly was odd, this strange being hunting me out to tell me that.
I wonder, by the way, how he knew I’d been making inquiries about
O’Hara.  I’ve questioned only two or three people, and then in the most
casual way. Yes, it’s odd."

It was about a week after this—a fruitless week, full of the alternate
brightness of hope and the gloom of disappointment—that he met Captain
Stewart, to whom he had been more than once on the point of appealing.
He happened upon him quite by chance one morning in the Rue Royale.
Captain Stewart was coming out of a shop, a very smart-looking shop,
devoted, as Ste. Marie, with some surprise and much amusement, observed,
to ladies’ hats, and the price of hats must have depressed him, for he
looked in an ill humour and older and more yellow than usual.  But his
face altered suddenly when he saw the younger man, and he stopped, and
shook Ste. Marie’s hand with every evidence of pleasure.

"Well met! well met!" he exclaimed.  "If you are not in a hurry, come
and sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself."

They picked their way across the street to the terrace of the _Taverne
Royale_, which was almost deserted at that hour, and sat down at one of
the little tables well back from the pavement, in a corner.

"Is it fair?" queried Captain Stewart, "is it fair as a rival
investigator to ask you what success you have had?"  Ste. Marie laughed
rather ruefully and confessed that he had as yet no success at all.

"I’ve just come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well,
and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy.  Oh well,
we didn’t expect it to be child’s play."

Captain Stewart raised his little glass of dry vermouth in an
old-fashioned salute, and drank from it.

"You," said he, "you were—ah, full of some idea of connecting this man,
this Irishman, O’Hara, with poor Arthur’s disappearance.  You’ve found
that not so promising, as you went on, I take it."

"Well, I’ve been unable to trace O’Hara," said Ste. Marie.  "He seems to
have disappeared as completely as your nephew.  I suppose you have no
clues to spare?  I confess I’m out of them, at the moment."

"Oh, I have plenty," said the elder man.  "A hundred.  More than I can
possibly look after."  He gave a little chuckling laugh.

"I’ve been waiting for you to come to me," he said.  "It was a little
ungenerous perhaps, but we all love to say, ’I told you so.’  Yes, I
have a great quantity of clues, and, of course, they all seem to be of
the greatest and most exciting importance. That’s a way clues have."  He
took an envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and sorted several
folded papers which were in it.

"I have here," said he, "memoranda of two chances, shall I call
them?—which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every
clue seems good.  That is the maddening, the heart-breaking part of such
an investigation.  I have made these brief notes from letters received,
one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been
searching the _bains de mer_ of the north coast.  This agent writes that
some one very much resembling poor Arthur has been seen at Dinard and
also at Deauville, and he urges me to come there, or to send a man there
at once to look into the matter.  You will ask, of course, why this
agent himself does not pursue the clue he has found. Unfortunately he
has been called to London upon some pressing family matter of his own;
he is an Englishman."

"Why haven’t you gone yourself?" asked Ste. Marie.  But the elder man
shrugged his shoulders and smiled a tired deprecatory smile.

"Oh, my friend," said he, "if I should attempt personally to investigate
one half of these things, I should be compelled to divide myself into
twenty parts.  No, I must stay here.  There must be, alas! the spider at
the centre of the web.  I cannot go, but if you think it worth while I
will gladly turn over the memoranda of these last clues to you.  They
may be the true clues, they may not.  At any rate, some one must look
into them.  Why not you and your partner—or shall I say assistant?"

"Why, thank you!" cried Ste. Marie.  "A thousand thanks.  Of course I
shall be—we shall be glad to try this chance.  On the face of it, it
sounds very reasonable.  Your nephew, from what I remember of him, is
much more apt to be in some place that is amusing—some place of
gaiety—than hiding away where it is merely dull, if he has his choice in
the matter, that is—if he is free.  And yet——" he turned and frowned
thoughtfully at the elder man.

"What I want to know," said he, "is how the boy is supporting himself
all this time.  You say he had no money, or very little, when he went
away.  How is he managing to live, if your theory is correct—that he is
staying away of his own accord? It costs a lot of money to live as he
likes to live."

Captain Stewart nodded.

"Oh, that," said he, "that is a question I have often proposed to
myself.  Frankly it’s beyond me.  I can only surmise that poor Arthur,
who had scattered a small fortune about in foolish loans, managed,
before he actually disappeared (mind you, we didn’t begin to look for
him until a week had gone by), managed to collect some of this money,
and so went away with something in pocket.  That, of course, is only a
guess."

"It is possible," said Ste. Marie doubtfully, "but—I don’t know.  It is
not very easy to raise money from the sort of people I imagine your
nephew to have lent it to.  They borrow but they don’t repay."

He glanced up with a half-laughing half-defiant air.

"I can’t," said he, "rid myself of a belief that the boy is here in
Paris and he is not free to come or go.  It’s only a feeling, but it is
very strong in me. Of course I shall follow out these clues you’ve been
so kind as to give me.  I shall go to Dinard and Deauville, and Hartley,
I imagine, will go with me; but I haven’t great confidence in them."

Captain Stewart regarded him reflectively for a time, and in the end he
smiled.

"If you will pardon my saying it," he said, "your attitude is just a
little womanlike.  You put away reason for something vaguely intuitive.
I always distrust intuition myself."  Ste. Marie frowned a little and
looked uncomfortable.  He did not relish being called womanlike—few men
do—but he was bound to admit that the elder man’s criticism was more or
less just.

"Moreover," pursued Captain Stewart, "you altogether ignore the point of
motive—as I may have suggested to you before.  There could be no
possible motive, so far as I am aware, for kidnapping or detaining or in
any way harming my nephew except the desire for money; but, as you know,
he had no large sum of money with him, and no demand has been made upon
us since his disappearance. I’m afraid you can’t get round that."

"No," said Ste. Marie, "I’m afraid I can’t. Indeed, leaving that aside
(and it can’t be left aside), I still have almost nothing with which to
prop up my theory.  I told you it was only a feeling."

He took up the memoranda which Captain Stewart had laid upon the
marble-topped table between them, and read the notes through.

"Please," said he, "don’t think I am ungrateful for this chance.  I am
not.  I shall do my best with it, and I hope it may turn out to be
important."  He gave a little wry smile.

"I have all sorts of reasons," he said, "for wishing to succeed as soon
as possible.  You may be sure that there won’t be any delays on my part.
And now I must be going on.  I am to meet Hartley for lunch on the other
side of the river, and, if we can manage it, I should like to start
north this afternoon or evening.

"Good!" said Captain Stewart, smiling.  "Good! that is what I call true
promptness.  You lose no time at all.  Go to Dinard and Deauville, by
all means, and look into this thing thoroughly.  Don’t be discouraged if
you meet with ill success at first.  Take Mr. Hartley with you and do
your best."  He paid for the two glasses of aperatif, and Ste. Marie
could not help observing that he left on the table a very small tip.
The waiter cursed him audibly as the two walked away.

"If you have returned by a week from to-morrow," he said, as they shook
hands, "I should like to have you keep that evening—Thursday—for me. I
am having a very informal little party in my rooms.  There will be two
or three of the opera people there, and they will sing for us, and the
others will be amusing enough.  All young.  All young.  I like young
people about me."  He gave his odd little mewing chuckle.  "And the
ladies must be beautiful as well as young.  Come if you are here!  I’ll
drop a line to Mr. Hartley also."  He shook Ste. Marie’s hand and went
away down the street towards the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, where he
lived.

Ste. Marie met Hartley as he expected to do, at lunch, and they talked
over the possibilities of the Dinard and Deauville expedition.  In the
end they decided that Ste. Marie should go alone, but that he was to
telegraph, later on, if the clue looked promising.  Hartley had two or
three investigations on foot in Paris, and stayed on to complete these.
Also he wished, as soon as possible, to see Helen Benham and explain
Ste. Marie’s ride on the galloping pigs.  Ten days had elapsed since
that evening, but Miss Benham had gone into the country the next day to
make a visit at the de Saulnes’ chateau on the Oise.

So Ste. Marie packed a portmanteau with clothes and things, and departed
by a mid-afternoon train to Dinard, and, towards five, Richard Hartley
walked down to the Rue de l’Université.  He thought it just possible
that Miss Benham might by now have returned to town, but if not he meant
to have half an hour’s chat with old David Stewart, whom he had not seen
for some weeks.

At the door he learnt that Mademoiselle was that very day returned and
was at home.  So he went in to the drawing-room, reserving his visit to
old David until later.  He found the room divided into two camps.  At
one side Mrs. Benham conversed in melancholic monotones with two elderly
French ladies, who were clad in depressing black of a dowdiness
surpassed only in English provincial towns.  It was as if the three
mourned together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead amongst
them.  Hartley bowed low with an uncontrollable shiver, and turned to
the tea-table, where Miss Benham sat in the seat of authority, flanked
by a young American lady, whom he had met before, and by Baron de Vries,
whom he had not seen since the evening of the de Saulnes’ dinner party.

Miss Benham greeted him with evident pleasure, and to his great delight
remembered just how he liked his tea—three pieces of sugar and no milk.
It always flatters a man when his little tastes of this sort are
remembered.  The four fell at once into conversation together, and the
young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.

"I thought you two always went about together," she said.  "Were never
seen apart and all that—a sort of modern Damon and Phidias."  Hartley
caught Baron de Vries’ eye and looked away again hastily.

"My—ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the
lady, "got mislaid to-day. It shan’t happen again, I promise you.  He’s
a very busy person just now, though.  He hasn’t time for social
dissipation.  I’m the butterfly of the pair."  The lady gave a sudden
laugh.

"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her
eyelids.  She turned to Miss Benham.

"Do you remember that evening we were going home from the _Madrid_, and
motored round by Montmartre to see the _fête_?"

"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."

"Your friend, Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was
distinctly the lion of the _fête_—at the moment we arrived, anyhow.  He
was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer things—what
do you call them?—with both hands, and a genial lady in a blue hat was
riding the same pig and helping him out.  It was just like the _Vie de
Bohême_ and the other books.  I found it charming."

Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.

"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very
exceptional young man.  He can be an angel one moment, a child playing
with toys the next, and—well, a rather commonplace social favourite the
third.  It all comes of being romantic—imaginative.  Ste. Marie—I know
nothing about this evening of which you speak—but Ste. Marie is quite
capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig—or
on his way to his own wedding.

"And the pleasant part of it is," said Baron de Vries, "that the lad
would turn up at either of these two ceremonies not a bit the worse,
outside or in, for his ride."

"Ah, now that’s an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment,
looking towards Miss Benham, and said—

"I beg pardon!  Were you going to speak?"

"No," said Miss Benham, moving the things about on the tea-table before
her, and looking down at them.  "No, not at all!"

"You came oddly close to the truth," the man went on, turning back to
Baron de Vries.  He was speaking for Helen Benham’s ears, and he knew
she would understand that, but he did not wish to seem to be watching
her.

"I was with Ste. Marie on that evening," he said. "No!  I wasn’t riding
a pig, but I was standing down in the crowd throwing serpentines at the
people who were.  And I happen to know that he—that Ste. Marie was on
that day, that evening, more deeply concerned about something, more
absolutely wrapped up in it, devoted to it, than I have ever known him
to be about anything since I first knew him.  The galloping pig was an
incident that made, except for the moment, no impression whatever upon
him."  Hartley nodded his head.

"Yes," said he, "Ste. Marie can be an angel one moment and a child
playing with toys the next.  When he sees toys he always plays with
them, and he plays hard, but when he drops them they go completely out
of his mind."

The American lady laughed.

"Gracious me!" she cried.  "You two are emphatic enough about him,
aren’t you?"

"We know him," said Baron de Vries.  Hartley rose to replace his empty
cup on the tea-table. Miss Benham did not meet his eyes, and as he moved
away again she spoke to her friend about something they were going to do
on the next day, so Hartley went across to where Baron de Vries sat at a
little distance, and took a place beside him on the chaise longue.  The
Belgian greeted him with raised eyebrows and the little half-sad
half-humorous smile which was characteristic of him in his gentler
moments.

"You were defending our friend with a purpose," he said in a low voice.
"Good!  I am afraid he needs it—here."  The younger man hesitated a
moment.  Then he said—

"I came on purpose to do that.  Ste. Marie knows that she saw him on
that confounded pig.  He was half wild with distress over it
because—well, the meeting was singularly unfortunate, just then. I can’t
explain——"

"You needn’t explain," said the Belgian gravely. "I know.  Helen told me
some days since, though she did not mention this encounter.  Yes, defend
him with all your power, if you will.  Stay after we others have gone
and—have it out with her. The Phidias lady (I must remember that _mot_,
by the way) is preparing to take her leave now, and I will follow her at
once.  She shall believe that I am enamoured—that I sigh for her.

"Eh!" said he, shaking his head.  And the lines in the kindly old face
seemed to deepen, but in a sort of grave tenderness.  "Eh, so love has
come to the dear lad at last!  Ah! of course, the hundred other affairs!
Yes, yes.  But they were light.  No seriousness in them.  The ladies may
have loved.  He didn’t very much.  This time, I’m afraid——"

Baron de Vries paused as if he did not mean to finish his sentence, and
Hartley said—

"You say ’afraid’!  Why, afraid?"

The Belgian looked up at him reflectively.

"Did I say ’afraid’?" he asked.  "Well—perhaps it was the word I wanted.
I wonder if these two are fitted for each other.  I am fond of them
both.  I think you know that, but—she’s not very flexible, this child.
And she hasn’t much humour.  I love her, but I know those things are
true.  I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and
without humour."

"If they love each other," said Richard Hartley, "I expect the other
things don’t count.  Do they?"

Baron de Vries rose to his feet, for he saw that the Phidias lady was
going.

"Perhaps not," said he; "I hope not.  In any case, do your best for him
with Helen.  Make her comprehend if you can.  I am afraid she is unhappy
over the affair."  He made his adieux and went away with the American
lady, to that young person’s obvious excitement.  And after a moment the
three ladies across the room departed also, Mrs. Benham explaining that
she was taking her two friends up to her own sitting-room to show them
something vaguely related to the heathen.  So Hartley was left alone
with Helen Benham.

It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once.
He said, standing to say it more easily—

"You know why I came here to-day.  It was the first chance I’ve had
since that—unfortunate evening.  I came on Ste. Marie’s account."

Miss Benham said a weak—

"Oh!"  And because she was nervous and overwrought and because the thing
meant so much to her, she said cheaply—

"He owes me no apologies.  He has a perfect right to act as he pleases,
you know."

The Englishman frowned across at her.

"I didn’t come to make apologies," said he. "I came to explain.  Well, I
have explained—Baron de Vries and I together.  That’s just how it
happened, and that’s just how Ste. Marie takes things.  The point is,
that you’ve got to understand it.  I’ve got to make you."

The girl smiled up at him dolefully.

"You look," she said, "as if you were going to beat me if necessary.
You look very warlike."

"I feel warlike," the man said, nodding.  He said—

"I’m fighting for a friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an
injustice.  I know him better than you do, and I tell you you’re doing
him a grave injustice.  You’re failing altogether to understand him."

"I wonder," the girl said, looking very thoughtfully down at the table
before her.

"I know," said he.

Quite suddenly she gave a little overwrought cry, and she put up her
hands over her face.

"Oh, Richard!" she said, "that day when he was here!  He left me——  Oh,
I cannot tell you at what a height he left me!  It was something new and
beautiful.  He swept me to the clouds with him.  And I might—perhaps I
might have lived on there.  Who knows?  But then that hideous evening!
Ah, it was too sickening, the fall back to common earth again!"

"I know," said the man gently, "I know.  And he knew, too.  Directly
he’d seen you he knew how you would feel about it.  I’m not pretending
that it was of no consequence.  It was unfortunate, of course.  But—the
point is it did not mean in him any slackening, any stooping, any
letting go.  It was a moment’s incident.  We went to the wretched place
by accident after dinner.  Ste. Marie saw those childish lunatics at
play, and for about two minutes he played with them.  The lady in the
blue hat made it appear a little more extreme, and that’s all."

Miss Benham rose to her feet and moved restlessly back and forth.

"Oh, Richard!" she said, "the golden spell is broken—the enchantment he
laid upon me that day.  I’m not like him, you know.  Oh, I wish I were!
I wish I were!  I can’t change from hour to hour.  I can’t rise to the
clouds again after my fall to earth.  It has all—become something
different.

"Don’t misunderstand me," she cried; "I don’t mean that I’ve ceased to
care for him.  No, far from that!  But I was in such an exalted heaven,
and now I’m not there any more.  Perhaps he can lift me to it again.  Oh
yes, I’m sure he can when I see him once more; but I wanted to go on
living there so happily while he was away!  Do you understand at all?"

"I think I do," the man said, but he looked at her very curiously and a
little sadly; for it was the first time he had ever seen her swept from
her superb poise by any emotion, and he hardly recognised her.  It was
very bitter to him to realise that he could never have stirred her to
this, never under any conceivable circumstances.

The girl came to him where he stood and touched his arm with her hand.

"He is waiting to hear how I feel about it all, isn’t he?" she said.
"He is waiting to know that I understand.  Will you tell him a little
lie for me, Richard?  No!  You needn’t tell a lie; I will tell it.  Tell
him that I said I understood perfectly. Tell him that I was shocked for
a moment, but that afterwards I understood and thought no more about it.
Will you tell him I said that?  It won’t be a lie from you, because I
did say it.  Oh, I will not grieve him or hamper him now while he is
working in my cause!  I’ll tell him a lie rather than have him grieve."

"Need it be a lie?" said Richard Hartley. "Can’t you truly believe what
you’ve said?"

She shook her head slowly.

"I’ll try," said she, "but—my golden spell is broken, and I can’t mend
it alone.  I’m sorry."

He turned with a little sigh to leave her, but Miss Benham followed him
towards the door of the drawing-room.

"You’re a good friend, Richard," she said, when she had come near.
"You’re a good friend to him."

"He deserves good friends," said the man stoutly. "And besides," said
he, "we’re brothers in arms nowadays.  We’ve enlisted together to fight
for the same cause."

The girl fell back with a little cry.  "Do you mean," she said, after a
moment, "do you mean that you are working with him—to find Arthur?"

Hartley nodded.

"But," said she stammering, "but, Richard——"

The man checked her.  "Oh, I know what I’m doing," said he.  "My eyes
are open.  I know that I’m not—well, in the running.  I work for no
reward except a desire to help you and Ste. Marie.  That’s all.  It
pleases me to be useful."

He went away with that, not waiting for an answer; and the girl stood
where he had left her, staring after him.



                              *CHAPTER X*

                      *CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS*


Ste. Marie returned, after three days, from Dinard in a depressed and
somewhat puzzled frame of mind.  He had found no trace whatever of
Arthur Benham either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, he
was unable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youth
had been seen at either place.  The matter of identification, it seemed
to him, should be a rather simple one.  In the first place, the boy’s
appearance was not at all French, nor for that matter English: it was
very American.  Also he spoke French—so Ste. Marie had been told—very
badly, having for the language that scornful contempt peculiar to
Anglo-Saxons of a certain type.  His speech, it seemed, was, like his
appearance, ultra-American, full of strange idioms and oddly pronounced.
In short, such a youth would be rather sure to be remembered by any
hotel management and staff with which he might have come in contact.

At first Ste. Marie pursued his investigations quietly and, as it were,
casually, but, after his initial failure, he went to the managements of
the various hotels and lodging-houses and to the cafés and bathing
establishments, and told them with all frankness a part of the
truth—that he was searching for a young man whose disappearance had
caused great distress to his family.  He was not long in discovering
that no such young man could have been either in Dinard or Deauville.

The thing which puzzled him was that, apart from finding no trace of the
missing boy, he also found no trace of Captain Stewart’s agent—the man
who had been first on the ground.  No one seemed able to recollect that
such a person had been making inquiries, and Ste. Marie began to suspect
that his friend was being imposed upon.  He determined to warn Stewart
that his agents were earning their fees too easily.

So he returned to Paris more than a little dejected and sore over this
waste of time and effort.  He arrived by a noon tram, and drove across
the city in a fiacre to the Rue d’Assas.  But as he was in the midst of
unpacking his portmanteau, for he kept no servant (a woman came in once
a day to "do" the rooms), the door-bell rang.  It was Baron de Vries,
and Ste. Marie admitted him with an exclamation of surprise and
pleasure.

"You passed me in the street just now," explained the Belgian, "and, as
I was a few minutes early for a lunch engagement, I followed you up."

He pointed with his stick at the open bag.

"Ah, you have been on a journey!  Detective work?"

Ste. Marie pushed his guest into a chair, gave him cigarettes, and told
him about the fruitless expedition to Dinard.  He spoke also of his
belief that Captain Stewart’s agent had never really found a clue at
all, and at that Baron de Vries nodded his grey head and said, "Ah!" in
a tone of some significance.  Afterwards he smoked a little while in
silence, but presently he said, as if with some hesitation—

"May I be permitted to offer a word of advice?"

"But surely!" cried Ste. Marie, kicking away the half-empty portmanteau.
"Why not?"

"Do whatever you are going to do in this matter according to your own
judgment," said the elder man.  "Or according to Mr. Hartley’s and your
combined judgments.  Make your investigations without reference to our
friend Captain Stewart."  He halted there as if that were all he had
meant to say, but when he saw Ste. Marie’s raised eyebrows, he frowned
and went on slowly as if picking his words with some care.

"I should be sorry," he said, "to have Captain Stewart at the head of
any investigation of this nature in which I was deeply interested—just
now, at any rate.  I am afraid—It is difficult to say.  I do not wish to
say too much—I am afraid he is not quite the man for the position."

Ste. Marie nodded his head with great emphasis.

"Ah!" he cried, "that’s just what I have felt, you know, all along.  And
it’s what Hartley felt too, I’m sure.  No, Stewart is not the sort for a
detective.  He’s too cock-sure.  He won’t admit that he might possibly
be wrong now and then. He’s too——"

"He is too much occupied with other matters," said Baron de Vries.  Ste.
Marie sat down on the edge of a chair.

"Other matters?" he demanded.  "That sounds mysterious.  What other
matters?"

"Oh, there is nothing very mysterious about it," said the elder man.  He
frowned down at his cigarette and brushed some fallen ash neatly from
his knees.

"Captain Stewart," said he, "is badly worried, and has been for the past
year or so—badly worried over money matters and other things.  He has
lost enormous sums at play, as I happen to know; and he has lost still
more enormous sums at Auteuil and at Longchamps.  Also the ladies are
not without their demands."

Ste. Marie gave a shout of laughter.

"_Comment donc!_" he cried.  "_Ce vieillard?_"

"Ah well," deprecated the other man, "_Vieillard_ is putting it rather
high.  He can’t be more than fifty, I should think.  To be sure he looks
older, but then, in his day, he lived a great deal in a short time.  Do
you happen to remember Olga Nilssen?"

"I do," said Ste. Marie.  "I remember her very well indeed; I was a sort
of go-between in settling up that affair with Morrison.  Morrison’s
people asked me to do what I could.  Yes, I remember her well, and with
some pleasure.  I felt sorry for her, you know.  People didn’t quite
know the truth of that affair.  Morrison behaved very badly to her."

"Yes," said Baron de Vries, "and Captain Stewart has behaved very badly
to her also.  She is furious with rage or jealousy or both.  She goes
about, I am told, threatening to kill him, and it would be rather like
her to do it one day.  Well, I have dragged in all this scandal by way
of showing you that Stewart has his hands full of his own affairs just
now, and so cannot give the attention he ought to give to hunting out
his nephew.  As you suggest, his agents may be deceiving him.  I don’t
know, I suppose they could do it easily enough. If I were you I would
set to work quite independently of him."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie in an absent tone.  "Oh yes, I shall do that, you
may be sure."  He gave a sudden smile.

"He’s a queer type, this Captain Stewart," said Ste. Marie.  "He begins
to interest me very much.  I had never suspected this side of him
(though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of a milliner’s
shop).  He looks rather an ascetic, rather donnish, don’t you think?  I
remember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically about feeling
his age and about liking young people round him.  He’s an odd character.
Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! or, rather, fancy her
involved in an affair with him!  What can she have seen in him?  She’s
not mercenary, you know.  At least she used not to be."

"Ah! there," said Baron de Vries, "you enter upon a _terra incognita_.
No one can say what a woman sees in this man or in that.  It’s beyond
our ken."  He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him to
the door.

"I’ve been asked to a sort of party at Stewart’s rooms this week," Ste.
Marie said.  "I don’t know whether I shall go or not.  Probably not.  I
suppose I shouldn’t find Olga Nilssen there?"

"Well, no," said the Belgian, laughing.  "No, I hardly think so.
Good-bye!  Think over what I’ve told you.  Good-bye!"  He went away down
the stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days.  Hartley had
unearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer, who swore to having seen the
Irishman, O’Hara, in Paris within a month, but it was by no means
certain that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be
desired of him, and in any case the information was of no especial
value, since it was O’Hara’s present whereabouts that was the point at
issue.  So it came to Thursday evening.  Ste. Marie received a note from
Captain Stewart during the day, reminding him that he was to come to the
Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré that evening, and asking him to come early,
at ten or thereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chat
before any one else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go at
all, but the courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham’s
uncle made it rather impossible for him to stay away.  He tried to
persuade Hartley to follow him later on in the evening, but that
gentleman flatly refused, and went away to dine with some English
friends at Armenonville.

So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper, dined quite alone at Lavenue’s, beside
the Gare Montparnasse, and towards ten o’clock drove across the river to
the Rue du Faubourg.  Captain Stewart’s flat was up five stories, at the
top of the building in which it was located, and so well above the
noises of the street.  Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and at
the door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servant
he kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond.  They
entered a large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape not
unlike the sitting-room in the Rue d’Assas but very much bigger, and
Ste. Marie uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he had
never before seen an interior anything like this. The room was decorated
and furnished entirely in Chinese and Japanese articles of great age and
remarkable beauty.  Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of these
two countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delight
to the expert.

The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great age
until it had ceased to glitter, and relieved by the dusty Chinese blue,
and by old red faded to rose, and by warm ivory tints. The great expanse
of the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coarse, like
burlap, and against it round the room hung sixteen large panels
representing the sixteen _Rakan_.  They were early copies—fifteenth
century, Captain Stewart said—of those famous originals by the Chinese
_Sung_ master Ririomin, which have been for six hundred years or more
the treasures of Japan.  They were mounted upon Japanese brocade of blue
and dull gold, framed in keyaki wood, and, out of their brown
time-stained shadows, the great _Rakan_ scowled or grinned or placidly
gazed, grotesquely graceful masterpieces of a perished art.

At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate
wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great
statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and at
intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat;
Buddha in many incarnations; Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy; Jizo Bosatzu;
Hotei, pot-bellied, God of Contentment; Jingo-Kano, God of War.  In the
centre of the place was a Buddhist temple table; and priests’ chairs,
lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room.  The floor was covered by
Chinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers; and over a doorway which
led into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving,
gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figures
of the hundred immortals.

It was indeed an extraordinary room.  Ste. Marie looked about its mellow
glow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the man beside
him curiously, for here was another side to this many-sided character.
Captain Stewart smiled.

"You like my museum?" he asked.  "Few people care much for it except, of
course, those who go in for the Oriental arts.  Most of my friends think
it bizarre—too grotesque and unusual.  I have tried to satisfy them by
including those comfortable low divan couches (they refuse altogether to
sit in the priests’ chairs), but still they are unhappy."  He called his
servant, who came to take Ste. Marie’s hat and coat, and returned with
smoking things.

"It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man.  "I’m not an
expert at all—I don’t know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panels
are, for example; but it is very beautiful.  I have never seen anything
like it at all."  He gave a little laugh.

"Will it sound very impertinent in me, I wonder, if I express
surprise—not surprise at finding this magnificent room, but at
discovering that this sort of thing is a taste and, very evidently, a
serious study of yours?  You—I remember your saying once with some
feeling that it was youth and beauty and—well, freshness that you liked
best to be surrounded by.  This," said Ste. Marie, waving an inclusive
hand, "was young so many centuries ago! It fairly breathes antiquity and
death."

"Yes," said Captain Stewart thoughtfully.  "Yes, that is quite true."
The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad low benches which
had been built into the place to satisfy the philistine.

"I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passions
of mine.  Youth—I could not exist without it.  Since I have it no longer
in my own body, I wish to see it about me.  It gives me life. It keeps
my heart beating.  I must have it near. And then this—antiquity and
death, beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien
country!  I love this too.  I didn’t speak too strongly, it is a sort of
passion with me—something quite beyond the collector’s mania, quite
beyond that.  Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and
I sit here quite alone with the lights half on and, for hours together,
I smoke and watch these things—the quiet, sure, patient smile of that
Buddha for example.  Think how long he has been smiling like that, and
waiting!  Waiting for what?  There is something mysterious beyond all
words in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile.
No, I’ll be hanged if it’s crude!  It is beyond our modern art.  The
dead men carved better than we do.  We couldn’t manage that with such
simple means.  We can only reproduce what is before us.  We can’t carve
questions—mysteries—everlasting riddles."

Through the pale blue wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewart
gazed down the room to where Eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally.
And from there the man’s eyes moved with slow enjoyment along the
opposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of the
ancient Rakan, over carved lotus and gilt contorted dragon for ever in
pursuit of the holy pearl.  He drew a short breath which seemed to
bespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and he
stirred a little where he sat and settled himself among the cushions.
Ste. Marie watched him, and the expression of the man’s face began to be
oddly revolting.  It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of his
desire.  He was uncomfortable and wished to say something to break the
silence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothing
to say.  So there was a brief silence between them.  But presently
Captain Stewart roused himself with an obvious effort.

"Here! this won’t do," said he, in a tone of whimsical apology.  "This
won’t do, you know. I’m floating off on my hobby (and there’s a mixed
metaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!) I’m boring
you to extinction, and I don’t want to do that, for I’m anxious that you
should come here again—and often.  I should like to have you form the
habit.

"What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah yes!  The journey to
Dinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless or you
would have let me know."

"Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie.  He went on to tell the elder man
of his investigation, and of his certainty that no one resembling Arthur
Benham had been at either of the two places.

"It’s no affair of mine, to be sure," he said; "but I rather suspect
that your agent was deceiving you—pretending to have accomplished
something by way of making you think he was busy."  Ste. Marie was so
sure the other would immediately disclaim this that he waited for the
word, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain Stewart said
promptly—

"Oh no!  No!  That is impossible.  I have every confidence in that man.
He is one of my best.  No, you are mistaken there.  I am more
disappointed than you could possibly be over the failure of your
efforts, but I am quite sure my man thought he had something worth
working upon.

"By the way, I have received another rather curious communication—from
Ostend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luck
there if you would care to."  He felt in his pockets and then rose.
"I’ve left the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me,
I’ll fetch it."  But before he had turned away the doorbell rang, and he
paused.

"Ah well," he said, "another time.  Here are some of my guests.  They
have come earlier than I had expected."

The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of them
an operatic light who chanced not to be singing that evening, and whom
Ste. Marie had met before.  The two others were rather difficult of
classification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysterious
borderland between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so many
people against whose characters nothing definite is known, but whose
antecedents and connexions are not made topics of conversation.  The
three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain Stewart,
and greeted him with much noisy delight.  One of the unclassified two,
when her host, with a glance towards Ste. Marie, addressed her formally,
seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for a long time.

Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and they
all seemed to know each other very well, and proceeded to make
themselves quite at home.  Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective
and not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had
been asked here to meet them.  He was as far from a prig or a snob as
any man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties
which were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people
seemed to him quite different.  The men, with the exception of two
eminent opera singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of
their voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend
and Monte Carlo, and Baden Baden in the race week.  That is not to say
that they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers:
there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently been
divorced by his American wife; but adventurers of a sort they
undoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie was
aware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented very
much being compelled to meet them.

Naturally enough he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies.
It is an undoubted and wellnigh universal truth that men who would
refuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show no
reluctance whatever over meeting the women of a corresponding
circle—that is, if the women are attractive.  It is a depressing fact,
and inclines one to sighs and head-shakes and some moral indignation,
until the reverse truth is brought to light: namely, that women have
identically the same point of view; that while they cast looks of
loathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet with
pleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.

Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him so
unnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer society
of Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type;
but, as he looked on and wondered, he became aware of a curious and, in
the light of a past conversation, significant fact.  All of the people
in the room were young, all of them in their varying fashions and
degrees very attractive to look upon, all full to overflowing of life
and spirits and the determination to have a good time.  He saw Captain
Stewart moving among them, playing very gracefully his role of host, and
the man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A
miracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him; his eyes were
bright and eager, the colour was high in his cheeks, and the dry
pedantic tone had gone from his voice.  Ste. Marie watched him, and at
last he thought he understood.  It was half revolting, half pathetic, he
thought, but it certainly was interesting to see.

[Illustration: "He saw Captain Stewart moving among them."]

Duval, the great basso of the Opéra, accompanied at the piano by one of
the unclassified ladies, was just finishing _Mefistofele’s_ drinking
song out of _Faust_ when the door-bell rang.



                              *CHAPTER XI*

                 *A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS: THE EYES AGAIN*


The music of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little
soft whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs
of ears in the big room.  It did not reach the host certainly, and
neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way
among the groups of seated or standing people and go to the outer door,
which opened upon a tiny hallway.  The song came to an end, and
everybody was cheering and applauding and crying _bravo_ or _bis_, or
one of the other things that people shout at such times, when, as if in
unexpected answer to the outburst, a lady appeared between the yellow
portières, and came forward a little way into the room.  She was a tall
lady of an extraordinary and immediately noticeable grace of movement, a
lady with rather fair hair, but her eyebrows and lashes had been stained
darker than it was their nature to be.  She had the classic Greek type
of face—and figure too—all but the eyes, which were long and narrow,
narrow perhaps from a habit of going half closed; and when they were a
little more than half closed, they made a straight black line that
turned up very slightly at the outer end with an Oriental effect, which
went oddly in that classic face.  There is a very popular piece of
sculpture now in the Luxembourg Gallery for which this lady "sat" as
model to a great artist.  Sculptors from all over the world go there to
dream over its perfect line and contour, and little schoolgirls pretend
not to see it, and middle-aged maiden tourists with red _Baedeckers_ in
their hands regard it furtively, and pass on, and after awhile come back
to look again.

The lady was dressed in some close clinging material, which was not
cloth-of-gold but something very like it, only much duller—something
which gleamed when she stirred but did not glitter; and over her
splendid shoulders was hung an Oriental scarf heavily worked with
metallic gold.  She made an amazing and dramatic picture in that golden
room. It was as if she had known just what her surroundings would be and
had dressed expressly for them.

The applause ceased as suddenly as if it had been trained to break off
at a signal, and the lady came forward a little way, smiling a quiet
assured smile.  At each step her knee threw out the golden stuff of her
gown an inch or two, and it flashed suddenly a dull subdued flash in the
overhead light, and died and flashed again.  A few of the people in the
room knew who the lady was, and they looked at one another with raised
eyebrows and startled faces; but the others stared at her with an eager
admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so beautiful or
so effective.  Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his chair.  His
eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable
excitement.  This was drama and very good drama too, and he suspected
that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy.

He saw Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people halfway
across the room, turn his head to look, when the cries and the applause
ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man’s face stiffen by swift degrees,
all the joyous buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and
rigid like a dead man’s face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of
the relations between these two people, nodded, _en connaisseur_, for he
knew that the man was very badly frightened.

So the host of the evening hung back staring for what must have seemed
to him a long and terrible time, though in reality it was but an
instant; then he came forward quickly to greet the newcomer; and if his
face was still yellow-white, there was nothing in his manner but the
courtesy habitual with him. He took the lady’s hand and she smiled at
him; but her eyes did not smile: they were hard. Ste. Marie, who was the
nearest of the others, heard Captain Stewart say—

"This is an unexpected pleasure, my dearest Olga!"  And to that the lady
replied more loudly—

"Yes, I returned to Paris only to-day.  You didn’t know, of course.  I
heard you were entertaining this evening and so I came, knowing that I
should be welcome."

"Always!" said Captain Stewart.  "Always more than welcome!"  He nodded
to one or two of the men who stood near, and, when they had approached,
presented them.  Ste. Marie observed that he used the lady’s true
name—she had, at times, found occasion to employ others—and that he
politely called her "Madame Nilssen" instead of "Mademoiselle."  But at
that moment the lady caught sight of Ste. Marie, and, crying out his
name in a tone of delighted astonishment, turned away from the other
men, brushing past them as if they had been furniture, and advanced,
holding out both her hands in greeting.

"Dear Ste. Marie!" she exclaimed.  "Fancy finding you here!  I’m so
glad!  Oh, I’m so very glad!  Take me away from these people!  Find a
corner where we can talk.  Ah! there is one with a big seat.
_Allons-y_!"  She addressed him for the most part in English, which she
spoke perfectly—as perfectly as she spoke French and German and,
presumably, her native tongue, which must have been Swedish.

They went to the broad low seat, a sort of hard-cushioned bench, which
stood against one of the walls, and made themselves comfortable there by
the only possible means, which, owing to the width of the thing, was to
sit far back with their feet stuck straight out before them.  Captain
Stewart had followed them across the room, and showed a strong tendency
to remain.  Ste. Marie observed that his eyes were hard and bright and
very alert, and that there were two bright spots of colour in his yellow
cheeks.  It occurred to Ste. Marie that the man was afraid to leave him
alone with Olga Nilssen, and he smiled to himself, reflecting that the
lady, even if indiscreetly inclined, could tell him nothing—save in
details—that he did not already know.

But, after a few rather awkward moments, Mlle. Nilssen waved an
irritated hand.

"Go away!" she said to her host.  "Go away to your other guests!  I want
to talk to Ste. Marie. We have old times to talk over."  And after
hesitating awhile uneasily, Captain Stewart turned back into the room;
but for some time thereafter Ste. Marie was aware that a vigilant eye
was being kept upon them, and that their host was by no means at his
ease.

When they were left alone together, the girl turned to him and patted
his arm affectionately.  She said—

"Ah, but it is very good to see you again, _mon cher ami_!  It has been
so long!"  She gave an abrupt frown.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. And she said an unkind thing
about her fellow-guests.  She called them _canaille_.  She said—

"Why are you wasting your time among these _canaille_?  This is not a
place for you.  Why did you come?"

"I don’t know," said Ste. Marie.  He was still a little resentful and he
said so.  He said—

"I didn’t know it was going to be like this.  I came because Stewart
went rather out of his way to ask me.  I’d known him in a very different
_milieu_."

"Ah yes!" she said reflectively.  "Yes, he does go into the world also,
doesn’t he!  But this is what he likes, you know."  Her lips drew back
for an instant and she said—

"He is a pig-dog."

Ste. Marie looked at her gravely.  She had used that offensive name with
a little too much fierceness. Her face had turned for an instant quite
white, and her eyes had flashed out over the room a look that meant a
great deal to any one who knew her as well as Ste. Marie did.  He sat
forward and lowered his voice.  He said—

"Look here, Olga!  I’m going to be very frank for a moment.  May I?"

For just an instant the girl drew away from him with suspicion in her
eyes, and something else, alertly defiant.  Then she put out her hands
to his arm.

"You may be what you like, dear Ste. Marie," she said.  "And say what
you like.  I will take it all—and swallow it alive—good as gold.  What
are you going to do to me?"

"I’ve always been fair with you, haven’t I?" he urged.  "I’ve had
disagreeable things to say or do but—you knew always that I liked you
and—where my sympathies were."

"Always!  Always, _mon cher_!" she cried. "I trusted you always in
everything.  And there is no one else I trust.  No one!  No one!

"Ste. Marie!"

"What then?" he asked.

"Ste. Marie," she said, "why did you never fall in love with me, as the
other men did?"

"I wonder," said he.  "I don’t know.  Upon my word, I really don’t
know."  He was so serious about it that the girl burst into a shriek of
laughter. And in the end he laughed too.

"I expect it was because I liked you too well," he said at last.  "But
come!  We’re forgetting my lecture.  Listen to your _grandpère_ Ste.
Marie! I have heard—certain things—rumours—what you will.  Perhaps they
are foolish lies, and I hope they are.  But if not, if the fear I saw in
Stewart’s face when you came here to-night was—not without cause, let me
beg you to have a care.  You’re much too savage, my dear child.  Don’t
be so foolish as to—well, turn comedy into the other thing.  In the
first place it’s not worth while, and in the second place it recoils,
always.  Revenge may be sweet.  I don’t know.  But nowadays, with police
courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance that 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
wakens 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 naïve 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 gaiety 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 régime, 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 baritone, 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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
were 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 very much like
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
group of people towards 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, Ste. 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 portière.  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
walls 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 toys but they are
not.

[Illustration: "Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the
floor."]

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 towards 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 cat-like moustache
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 haven’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 towards
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, halfway, 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.



                             *CHAPTER 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 realise 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, towards 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 last 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
towards 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 colour—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 5.  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 labouring 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 Café 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 _épris_, very much _épris_ 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 lovesick boys.  No indeed!"  He shook his head
rapidly and sighed.

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 labouring 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.

"Mademoiselle 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 learnt from the little
photographer Bernstein, to setting the facts, as well as he could, in
order, endeavouring 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
towards 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
learnt already.  Moreover, he sympathised 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 ménage_, and had
written a note which monsieur would find, _là 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 _tête-à-tête_
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 learnt 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 dols. 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 what he
had.)

"Miss B. is, of course, much cut up over this 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 learnt 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 learnt 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 realised 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 ménage_ hanging
straight down and not, as usual, looped back at either side, but 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 very inconspicuously dressed, and looked
like almost any other man whom one might pass in the street 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 towards 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 cafés 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—labourers, students, _bonnes_
with market baskets in their hands and long bread loaves under their
arms, nursemaids 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 newcomer rose, put on the soft hat again
and disappeared down the path, going towards the gate at the head of the
Rue de Luxembourg.

Five minutes later the door-bell rang.



                             *CHAPTER XIII*

                         *THE ROAD TO CLAMART*


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 honour to address Monsieur 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 honour 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 Marseille, 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."

St. 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 clenched 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 Marseille, "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 honour.  That is
understood."

The gentleman with the beard strode across to one of the windows and
leant 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 honour.

"Monsieur," he said, "I had no choice.  I was poor.  I saw myself face
to face with the _misère_. 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 banknote in his hands, and the
other man’s eye clung to it as though he were starving and the banknote
food.

"The name?" prompted Ste. Marie.

The gentleman from Marseille 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 moustache 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 Marseille took it with a slightly
trembling hand, and began to bow himself towards 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 visitor emerge from the house and slip rapidly down
the street towards 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. Honoré, 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’Université!  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 for ever
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
Marseille (he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the
gentleman from Marseille), 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
_terrasse_ 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-Prés
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 _impériale_:
"Clamart—St. Germain-des-Prés" 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 façade
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 favourite
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 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 Mlle. Coira O’Hara, and ask her if she knew any thing
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.

Was 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 realised 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 ah
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 grey church, and past the splendid grounds of
the Lycée 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 _impériale_ 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 halfway the road swung apart from it to
the left, dipped under a stone rail way 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, and 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
was 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 the 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 the 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 roadside towards 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 the 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 Barbés.

His second thought was that this unkempt patch of trees 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
realised 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 he 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 towards 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.



                             *CHAPTER XIV*

                            *IN THE GARDEN*


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 recognise 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 realised 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 woman-like 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 keyhole of
the simple old-fashioned sort. Slipping up near to look, Ste. Marie
observed that the edges of the keyhole 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 towards 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 care 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.

[Illustration: "There appeared two young people."]

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’Université if he chose to—unless indeed his undissembling attitude
towards 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-coloured 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 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 colour—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 heels 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
towards 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 Elysées 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 slowly come 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 towards 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 from whence
the shrill call had come, but afterwards he knew that Coira had blown
it.  And now, as he ran forward towards 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 amongst the black-boled trees, a strange, squat,
gnome-like 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 gnome-like running man had shot him.  He
faced about once more towards 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 like 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 upon something very hard, and he knew no
more.



                              *CHAPTER 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 cafés 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
tomb-like 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 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-coloured 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 upstairs!  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
recognised 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 learnt 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-civilised fool," he said viciously, "I’d go
upstairs 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 realise," demanded Captain Stewart, "what risks we run while
that fellow is alive—knowing what he knows?"

"Oh yes, I realise 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 cat-like 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!"  For the first time his hard face began to show
feeling.  He turned away with a quick nervous movement, and stood
staring out of the window into the late sunlight.

"I merely said," he went on, "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 cold-blooded joke
about going upstairs and killing this chap in his bed that put me on
edge.  Naturally, I know you didn’t mean it."  He swung back towards the
other man.

"So don’t you worry about me!" said he after a little pause.  "Don’t you
go thinking that I’m lukewarm or that I’m indifferent to danger. I know
there’s danger from this lad upstairs, 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 each other.  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 afterwards
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
upstairs.  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 wellnigh
paralyse 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 realised
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 philosophise, 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 been 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."



                             *CHAPTER 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. Honoré, 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
humour.

"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 turned 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 awhile 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 towards 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 thereabouts 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 odours, 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 realised 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 shan’t try to stop him."

"Nor I," said Ste. Marie.  "Thanks very much for your trouble.  An
excellent surgeon was lost in you."

O’Hara left the room, and presently the old caretaker, one-eyed,
gnome-like, shambling like a bear, sidled into the room and proceeded to
set things to rights.  He looked, Ste. Marie said to himself, like
something in an old German drawing, or in those imitations of old
drawings that one sometimes sees nowadays in Fliegende Blatter.  He
tried to make the strange creature talk, but Michel went about his task
with an air half frightened, half stolid, and refused to speak more than
an occasional "_oui_" or a "_bien, monsieur_," in answer to orders. Ste.
Marie asked if he might have some coffee and bread, and the old Michel
nodded and slipped from the room as silently as he had entered it.

Thereafter Ste. Marie trifled with the cat and got one hand well
scratched for his trouble, but in five minutes there came a knocking at
the door. He laughed a little.  "Michel grows ceremonious when it’s a
question of food," he said.  "_Entrez, mon vieux!_"  The door opened,
and Ste. Marie caught his breath.

"Michel is busy," said Coira O’Hara, "so I have brought your coffee."

[Illustration: "’Michel is busy,’ said Coira O’Hara, ’so I have brought
your coffee.’"]

She came into the sunlit room, holding the steaming bowl of _café au
lait_ before her in her two hands.  Over it her eyes went out to the man
who lay in his bed, a long and steady and very grave look. "A goddess
that lady, a queen among goddesses,"—thus the little Jew of the
Boulevard de la Madeleine. Ste. Marie gazed back at her, and his heart
was sick within him to think of the contemptible role Fate had laid upon
this girl to play: the candle to the moth, the bait to the eager
unskilled fish, the lure to charm a foolish boy.

The girl’s splendid beauty seemed to fill all that bright room with, as
it were, a richer subtler light. There could be no doubt of her potency.
Older and wiser heads than young Arthur Benham’s might well forget the
world for her.  Ste. Marie watched, and the heartsickness within him was
like a physical pain keen and bitter.  He thought of that first and only
previous meeting—the single minute in the Champs Elysées when her eyes
had held him, had seemed to beseech him out of some deep agony.  He
thought of how they had haunted him afterwards both by day and by
night—calling eyes—and he gave a little groan of sheer bitterness, for
he realised that all this while she was laying her snares about the feet
of an inexperienced boy, decoying him to his ruin.  There was a name for
such women, an ugly name.  They were called adventuresses.

The girl set the bowl which she carried down upon a table not far from
the bed.

"You will need a tray or something," said she. "I suppose you can sit up
against your pillows? I’ll bring a tray, and you can hold it on your
knees and eat from it."  She spoke in a tone of very deliberate
indifference and detachment.  There seemed even to be an edge of scorn
in it, but nothing could make that deep and golden voice harsh or
unlovely.  As the girl’s extraordinary beauty had filled all the room
with its light, so the sound of her voice seemed to fill it with a
sumptuous and hushed resonance like a temple bell muffled in velvet.

"I must bring something to eat too," she said. "Would you prefer
_croissants_ or _brioches_ or plain bread and butter?  You might as well
have what you like."

"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie.  "It doesn’t matter.  Anything.  You are
most kind.  You are Hebe, mademoiselle, server of feasts."  The girl
turned her head for a moment, and looked at him with some surprise.

"If I am not mistaken," she said, "Hebe served to gods."  Then she went
out of the room, and Ste. Marie broke into a sudden delighted laugh
behind her.  She would seem to be a young woman with a tongue in her
head.  She had seized the rash opening without an instant’s hesitation.

The black cat, which had been cruising, after the inquisitive fashion of
its kind, in far corners of the room, strolled back and looked up to the
table where the bowl of coffee steamed and waited.

"Get out!" cried Ste. Marie.  "_Va t’en, sale petit animal_!  Go and eat
birds! that’s my coffee.  _Va_!  _Sauve toi_!  _Hè voleur que tu es_!"
He sought for something by way of missile, but there was nothing within
reach.  The black cat turned its calm and yellow eyes towards him,
looked back to the aromatic feast, and leapt expertly to the top of the
table.  Ste. Marie shouted and made horrible threats.  He waved an
impotent pillow, not daring to hurl it for fear of smashing the table’s
entire contents, but the black cat did not even glance towards him.  It
smelt the coffee, sneezed over it because it was hot, and finally
proceeded to lap very daintily, pausing often to take breath or to shake
its head, for cats disapprove of hot dishes, though they will partake of
them at a pinch.

There came a step outside the door, and the thief leapt down with some
haste, yet not quite in time to escape observation.  Mlle. O’Hara came
in breathing terrible threats.

"Has that wretched animal touched your coffee?" she cried.  "I hope
not."  But Ste Marie laughed weakly from his bed, and the guilty beast
stood in mid-floor, brown drops beading its black chin and hanging upon
its whiskers.

"I did what I could, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie; "but there was
nothing to throw.  I am sorry to be the cause of so much trouble."

"It is nothing," said she.  "I will bring some more coffee, only it will
take ten minutes, because I shall have to make some fresh."  She made as
if she would smile a little in answer to him, but her face turned grave
once more, and she went out of the room with averted eyes.

Thereafter Ste. Marie occupied himself with watching idly the movements
of the black cat, and as he watched something icy cold began to grow
within him, a sensation more terrible than he had ever known before.  He
found himself shivering as if that summer day had all at once turned to
January, and he found that his face was wet with a chill perspiration.

When the girl at length returned she found him lying still, his face to
the wall.  The black cat was in her path as she crossed the room, so
that she had to thrust it out of the way with her foot, and she called
it names for moving with such lethargy.

"Here is the coffee at last," she said.  "I made it fresh.  And I have
brought some _brioches_.  Will you sit up and have the tray on your
knees?"

"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie.  "I do not wish anything."

"You do not——" she repeated after him. "But I have made the coffee
especially for you!" she protested.  "I thought you wanted it.  I don’t
understand."

With a sudden movement the man turned towards her a white and drawn
face.

"Mademoiselle!" he cried, "it would have been more merciful to let your
gardener shoot again yesterday.  Much more merciful, mademoiselle."  She
stared at him under her straight black brows.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.  "More merciful?  What do you mean by
that?"  Ste. Marie stretched out a pointing finger and the girl followed
it.  She gave, after a tense instant, a single sharp scream.  And upon
that—

"No! no!  It’s not true.  It’s not possible."  Moving stiffly she set
down the bowl she carried, and the hot liquid splashed up round her
wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping, holding herself up by the
strength of her hands upon the table.  It was as if she had been seized
with faintness.  Then she sprang to where the cat crouched beside a
chair.  She dropped upon her knees and tried to raise it in her arms,
but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and crept away to a
little distance, where it lay struggling and very unpleasant to see.

"Poison!" she said in a choked gasping whisper. "Poison!"  She looked
once towards the man upon the bed, and she was white and shivering.

"It’s not true!" she cried again.  "I—won’t believe it.  It’s because
the cat—was not used to coffee.  Because it was hot.  I won’t believe
it. I won’t believe it."  She began to sob, holding her hands over her
white face.

Ste. Marie watched her with puzzled eyes.  If this was acting, it was
very very good acting.  A little glimmer of hope began to burn in
him—hope that in this last shameful thing, at least, the girl had had no
part.

"It’s impossible!" she insisted piteously.  "I tell you it’s impossible.
I brought the coffee myself from the kitchen.  I took it from the pot
there—the same pot we had all had ours from.  It was never out of my
sight—or, that is—I mean——"

She halted there and Ste. Marie saw her eyes turn slowly towards the
door, and he saw a crimson flush come up over her cheeks and die away,
leaving her white again.  He drew a little breath of relief and
gladness, for he was sure of her now.  She had had no part in it.

"It is nothing, mademoiselle," said he cheerfully. "Think no more of it.
It is nothing."

"Nothing?" she cried in a loud voice.  "Do you call poison nothing?"
She began to shiver again very violently.

"You would have drunk it!" she said, staring at him in a white agony.
"But for a miracle you would have drunk it—and died!"  Abruptly she came
beside the bed and threw herself upon her knees there.  In her
excitement and horror she seemed to have forgotten what they two were to
each other.  She caught him by the shoulders with her two hands and the
girl’s violent trembling shook them both.

"Will you believe," she cried, "that I had nothing to do with this?
Will you believe me? You must believe me!"

There was no acting in that moment.  She was wrung with a frank anguish
and utter horror, and between her words there were hard and terrible
sobs.

"I believe you, mademoiselle," said the man gently.  "I believe you.
Pray think no more about it!"  He smiled up into the girl’s beautiful
face, though within him he was still cold and ashiver, as even the
bravest men might well be at such an escape, and after a moment she
turned away again. With unsteady hands she put the new-made bowl of
coffee and the _brioches_ and other things together upon the tray, and
started to carry it across the room to the bed, but halfway she turned
back again and set the tray down.  She looked about and found an empty
glass, and she poured a little of the coffee into it.  Ste. Marie, who
was watching her, gave a sudden cry—

"No! no! mademoiselle, I beg you.  You must not!"  But the girl shook
her head at him gravely over the glass.

"There is no danger," she said, "but I must be sure."  She drank what
was in the glass, and afterwards went across to one of the windows and
stood there with her back to the room for a little time.

In the end she returned and once more brought the breakfast tray to the
bed.  Ste. Marie raised himself to a sitting posture, and took the thing
upon his knees, but his hands were shaking.

"If I were not as helpless as a dead man, mademoiselle," said he, "you
should not have done that. If I could have stopped you, you should not
have done it, mademoiselle."  A wave of colour spread up under the brown
skin of the girl’s face, but she did not speak.  She stood by for a
moment to see if he was supplied with everything he needed, and when
Ste. Marie expressed his gratitude for her pains she only bowed her
head.  Then presently she turned away and left the room.

Outside the door she met some one who was approaching.  Ste. Marie heard
her break into rapid and excited speech, and he heard O’Hara’s voice in
answer.  The voice expressed astonishment and indignation and a sort of
gruff horror, but the man who listened could hear only the tones not the
words that were spoken.

The Irishman came quickly into the room.  He glanced once towards the
bed where Ste. Marie sat eating his breakfast with apparent unconcern
(there may have been a little bravado in this), and then bent over the
thing which lay moving feebly beside a chair.  When he rose again his
face was hard and tense, and his blue eyes glittered in a fashion that
boded trouble for somebody.

"This looks very bad for us," he said gruffly. "I should—I should like
to have you believe that neither my daughter nor I had any part in it.
When I fight I fight openly, I don’t use poison.  Not even with spies."

"Oh, that’s all right!" said Ste. Marie, taking an ostentatious sip of
coffee.  "That’s understood. I know well enough who tried to poison me.
If you’ll just keep your friend Stewart out of the kitchen, I shan’t
worry about my food."

The Irishman’s cheeks reddened with a quick flush, and he dropped his
eyes.  But in an instant he raised them again, and looked full into the
eyes of the man who sat in bed.

"You seem," said he, "to be labouring under a curious misapprehension.
There is no Stewart here, and I don’t know any man of that name."

Ste. Marie laughed.

"Oh, don’t you?" he said.  "That’s my mistake then.  Well, if you don’t
know him, you ought to.  You have interests in common."

O’Hara favoured his patient with a long and frowning stare.  But at the
end he turned without a word and went out of the room.



                             *CHAPTER XVII*

                      *THOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND*


That meeting with Richard Hartley of which Captain Stewart, in the small
drawing-room at La Lierre, spoke to the Irishman O’Hara, took place at
Stewart’s own door in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, and it must have
been at just about the time when Ste. Marie, concealed among the
branches of his cedar, looked over the wall and saw Arthur Benham
walking with Mlle. Coira O’Hara. Hartley had lunched at Durand’s with
his friends, whose name—though it does not at all matter here—was
Reeves-Davis, and after lunch the four of them, Major and Lady
Reeves-Davis, Reeves-Davis’ sister Mrs. Carsten, and Hartley, spent an
hour at a certain picture dealer’s near the Madeleine. After that Lady
Reeves-Davis wanted to go in search of an antiquary’s shop which was
somewhere in the Rue du Faubourg, and she did not know just where.  They
went in from the Rue Royale, and amused themselves by looking at the
attractive windows on the way.

During one of their frequent halts, while the two ladies were
passionately absorbed in a display of hats and Reeves-Davis was making
derisive comments from the rear, Hartley, who was too much bored to pay
attention, saw a figure which seemed to him familiar emerge from an
adjacent doorway, and start to cross the pavement to a large touring car
with the top up, which stood at the kerb.  The man wore a dust-coat and
a cap, and he moved as if he were in a hurry, but as he went he cast a
quick look about him, and his eye fell upon Richard Hartley. Hartley
nodded, and he thought the elder man gave a violent start—but then he
looked very white and ill and might have started at anything.  For an
instant Captain Stewart made as if he would go on his way without taking
notice, but the seemed to change his mind and turned back.  He held out
his hand with a rather wan and nervous smile, saying—

"Ah, Hartley!  It is you, then.  I wasn’t sure."  He glanced over the
other’s shoulder, and said—

"Is that our friend Ste. Marie with you?"

"No," said Richard Hartley, "some English friends of mine.  I haven’t
seen Ste. Marie to-day. I’m to meet him this evening.  You’ve seen him
since I have, as a matter of fact.  He came to your party last night,
didn’t he?  Sorry I couldn’t come.  They must have tired you out, I
should think.  You look ill."

"Yes," said the other man absently.  "Yes.  I had an attack of—an old
malady, last night.  I am rather stale to-day.  You say you haven’t seen
Ste. Marie?  No, to be sure.  If you see him later on you might say that
I mean to drop in on him to-morrow to make my apologies.  He’ll
understand.  Good day!"  So he turned away to the motor, which was
waiting for him, and Hartley went back to his friends, wondering a
little what it was that Stewart had to apologise for.

As for Captain Stewart he must have gone at once out to La Lierre.  What
he found there has already been set forth.

It was about ten that evening when Hartley, who had left his people,
after dinner was over, at the _Marigny_, reached the Rue d’Assas.  The
street door was already closed for the night, and so he had to ring for
the _cordon_.  When the door clicked open and he had closed it behind
him, he called out his name before crossing the court to Ste. Marie’s
stair, but as he went on his way the voice of the concierge reached him
from the little _loge_.

"_M. Ste. Marie n’est pas là._"

Now the Parisian concierge, as every one knows who has lived under his
iron sway, is a being set apart from the rest of mankind.  He has, in
general no human attributes, and certainly no human sympathy.  His hand
is against all the world and the hand of all the world is against him.
Still, here and there amongst this peculiar race are to be found a very
few beings who are of softer substance—men and women instead of spies
and harpies.  The concierge who had charge of the house wherein Ste.
Marie dwelt was an old woman, undeniably severe upon occasion, but for
the most part a kindly and even jovial soul.  She must have become a
concierge through some unfortunate mistake.

She snapped open her little square window, and stuck out into the
moonlit court a dishevelled grey head.

"_Il n’est pas là_," she said again, beaming upon Richard Hartley, whom
she liked, and when he protested that he had a definite and important
appointment with her lodger, went on to explain that Ste. Marie had gone
out, doubtless to lunch, before one o’clock and had never returned.

"He may have left word for me upstairs," Hartley said.  "I’ll go up and
wait, if I may."  So the woman got him her extra key, and he went up,
let himself into the flat and made lights there.

Naturally he found no word, but his own note of that morning lay spread
out upon a table where Ste. Marie had left it, and so he knew that his
friend was in possession of the two facts he had learnt about Stewart.
He made himself comfortable with a book and some cigarettes, and settled
down to wait. Ste. Marie out at La Lierre, with a bullet hole in his
leg, was deep in a drugged sleep just then, but Hartley waited for him,
looking up now and then from his book with a scowl of impatience, until
the little clock on the mantle said that it was one o’clock.  Then he
went home in a very bad temper, after writing another note, and leaving
it on the table, to say that he would return early in the morning.

But in the morning he began to be alarmed.  He questioned the concierge
very closely as to Ste. Marie’s movements on the day previous, but she
could tell him little (save to mention the brief visit of a man with an
accent of Toulouse or Marseille), and there seemed to be no one else to
whom he could go.  He spent the entire morning in the flat and returned
there after a hasty lunch.  But at mid-afternoon he took a fiacre at the
corner of the Gardens and drove to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.

Captain Stewart was at home.  He was in a dressing-gown and still looked
fagged and unwell. He certainly betrayed some surprise at sight of his
visitor, but he made Hartley welcome at once, and insisted upon having
cigars and things to drink brought out for him.  On the whole he
presented an astonishingly normal exterior, for within him he must have
been cold with fear, and in his ears a question must have rung and
shouted and rung again unceasingly.—

"What does this fellow know?  What does he know?"

Hartley’s very presence there had a perilous look.

The younger man shook his head at the servant who asked him what he
wished to drink.

"Thanks, you’re very good," he said to Captain Stewart, and that
gentleman eyed him silently. "I can’t stay but a moment.  I just dropped
in to ask if you’d any idea what can have become of Ste. Marie."

"Ste. Marie?" said Captain Stewart.  "What do you mean—’become of him’?"
He moistened his lips to speak, but he said the words without a tremor.

"Well, what I meant, was," said Hartley, "that you’d seen him last.  He
was here Thursday evening. Did he say anything to you about going
anywhere in particular the next day—yesterday?  He left his rooms about
noon and hasn’t turned up since."

Captain Stewart drew a short breath and sat down abruptly in a near-by
chair, for all at once his knees had begun to tremble under him.  He was
conscious of a great and blissful wave of relief and well-being, and he
wanted to laugh.  He wanted so much to laugh that it became a torture to
keep his face in repose.

So Ste Marie had left no word behind him, and the danger was past!

With a great effort he looked up from where he sat to Richard Hartley,
who stood anxious and frowning before him.

"Forgive me for sitting down!" he said, "and sit down yourself, I beg!
I’m still very shaky from my attack of illness.  Ste. Marie?  Ste. Marie
has disappeared?  How very extraordinary!  It’s like poor Arthur.
Still—a single day!  He might be anywhere for a single day, might he
not?  For all that, though, it’s very odd.  Why no!  No, I don’t think
he said anything about going away!  At least I remember nothing about
it."  The relief and triumph within him burst out in a sudden little
chuckle of malicious fun.

[Illustration: "’Ste. Marie has disappeared?  How very extraordinary!’"]

"I can think of only one thing," said he, "that might be of use to you.
Ste. Marie seemed to take a very great fancy to one of the ladies here
the other evening.  And, I must confess, the lady seemed to return it.
It had all the look of a desperate flirtation—a most desperate
flirtation.  They spent the evening in a corner together.

"You don’t suppose," he said, still chuckling gently, "that Ste. Marie
is taking a little holiday, do you?  You don’t suppose that lady could
account for him?"

"No," said Richard Hartley, "I don’t.  And if you knew Ste. Marie a
little better you wouldn’t suppose it either."  But after a pause he
said—

"Could you give me the—lady’s name, by any chance?  Of course I don’t
want to leave any stone unturned."  And once more the other man emitted
his pleased little chuckle that was so like a cat’s mew.

"I can give you her name," said he.  "The name is
Mademoiselle——Bertrand.  Elise Bertrand. But I regret to say I haven’t
the address by me. She came with some friends.  I will try to get it and
send it you.  Will that be all right?"

"Yes, thanks!" said Richard Hartley.  "You’re very good.  And now I must
be going on.  I’m rather in a hurry."

Captain Stewart protested against this great haste, and pressed the
younger man to sit down and tell him more about his friend’s
disappearance, but Hartley excused himself, repeating that he was in a
great hurry, and went off.

When he had gone Captain Stewart lay back in his chair and laughed until
he was weak and ached from it, the furious helpless laughter which comes
after the sudden release from a terrible strain.  He was not, as a rule,
a demonstrative man, but he became aware that he would like to dance and
sing, and probably he would have done both if it had not been for the
servant in the next room.

So there was no danger to be feared, and his terrors of the night
past—he shivered a little to think of them—had been after all useless
terrors!  As for the prisoner out at La Lierre nothing was to be feared
from him so long as a careful watch was kept.  Later on he might have to
be disposed of, since both bullet and poison had failed (he scowled over
that, remembering a bad quarter of an hour with O’Hara early this
morning), but that matter could wait.  Some way would present itself.
He thought of the wholly gratuitous lie he had told Hartley, a thing
born of a moment’s malice, and he laughed again.  It struck him that it
would be very humorous if Hartley should come to suspect his friend of
turning aside from his great endeavours to enter upon an affair with a
lady.  He dimly remembered that Ste. Marie’s name had, from time to
time, been a good deal involved in romantic histories, and he said to
himself that his lie had been very well chosen indeed, and might be
expected to cause Richard Hartley much anguish of spirit.

After that he lighted a very large cigarette, half as big as a cigar,
and he lay back in his low comfortable chair, and began to think of the
outcome of all this plotting and planning.  As is very apt to be the
case when a great danger has been escaped, he was in a mood of extreme
hopefulness and confidence. Vaguely he felt as if the recent happenings
had set him ahead a pace towards his goal, though, of course, they had
done nothing of the kind.  The danger that would exist so long as Ste.
Marie, who knew everything, was alive, seemed in some miraculous fashion
to have dwindled to insignificance; in this rebound from fear and
despair, difficulties were swept away and the path was clear.  The man’s
mind leapt to his goal, and a little shiver of prospective joy ran over
him.  Once that goal gained he could defy the world.  Let eyes look
askance, let tongues wag, he would be safe then—safe for all the rest of
his life, and rich, rich, rich!

For he was playing against a feeble old man’s life.  Day by day he
watched the low flame sink lower, as the flame of an exhausted lamp
sinks and flickers.  It was slow, for the old man had still a little
strength left, but the will to live—which was the oil in the lamp—was
almost gone and the waiting could not be long now.  One day, quite
suddenly, the flame would sink down to almost nothing, as at last it
does in the spent lamp.  It would flicker up and down rapidly for a few
moments, and all at once there would be no flame there.  Old David would
be dead, and a servant would be sent across the river in haste to the
Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.  Stewart lay back in his chair and tried to
imagine that it was true, that it had already happened, as happen it
must before long, and once more the little shiver which was like a
shiver of voluptuous delight ran up and down his limbs, and his breath
began to come fast and hard.

But Richard Hartley drove at once back to the Rue d’Assas.  He was not
very much disappointed in having learnt nothing from Stewart, though he
was thoroughly angry at that gentleman’s hint about Ste. Marie and the
unknown lady.  He had gone to the Rue du Faubourg because, as he had
said, he wished to leave no stone unturned, and, after all, he had
thought it quite possible that Stewart could give him some information
which would be of value. Hartley firmly believed the elder man to be a
rascal, but, of course, he knew nothing definite save the two facts
which he had accidentally learnt from Helen Benham, and it had occurred
to him that Captain Stewart might have sent Ste. Marie off upon another
wild-goose chase such as the expedition to Dinard had been.  He would
have been sure that the elder man had had something do to with Ste.
Marie’s disappearance if the latter had not been seen since Stewart’s
party, but instead of that Ste. Marie had come home, slept, gone out the
next morning, returned again, received a visitor, and gone out to lunch.
It was all very puzzling and mysterious.

His mind went back to the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon
it.  Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him
began to recur and to take on significance.  He remembered the elder
man’s odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless
change to ease and a something that was almost like a triumphant
excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie’s flirtation with
a lady.  Hartley thought of these things, he thought also of the fact
that Ste. Marie had disappeared immediately after hearing grave
accusations against Stewart.  Could he have lost his head, rushed across
the city at once to confront the middle-aged villain, and
then—disappeared from human ken?  It would have been very like him to do
something rashly impulsive upon reading that note.

Hartley broke into a sudden laugh of sheer amusement when he realised to
what a wild and improbable flight his fancy was soaring.  He could not
quite rid himself of a feeling that Stewart was, in some mysterious
fashion, responsible for his friend’s vanishing.  But he was unlike Ste.
Marie; he did not trust his feelings, either good or bad, unless they
were backed by excellent evidence, and he had to admit that there was
not a single scrap of evidence, in this instance, against Miss Benham’s
uncle.

The girl’s name recalled him to another duty. He must tell her about
Ste. Marie.  He was by this time halfway up the Boulevard St. Germain,
but he gave a new order and the fiacre turned back to the Rue de
l’Université.  The footman at the door said that mademoiselle was not in
the drawing-room, as it was only four o’clock, but that he thought she
was in the house.  So Hartley sent up his name and went in to wait.

Miss Benham came down looking a little pale and anxious.

"I’ve been with grandfather," she explained. "He had some sort of
sinking spell last night, and we were very much frightened.  He’s much
better, but—well he couldn’t have many such spells and live.  I’m afraid
he grows a good deal weaker, day by day, now.  He sees hardly any one
outside the family, except Baron de Vries."  She sat down with a little
sigh of fatigue and smiled up at her visitor.

"I’m glad you’ve come," said she.  "You’ll cheer me up and I rather need
it.  What are you looking so solemn about, though?  You won’t cheer me
up if you look like that."

"Well, you see," said Hartley, "I came at this impossible hour to bring
you some bad news.  I’m sorry.

"Perhaps," he conditioned, "bad news is putting it with too much
seriousness.  Strange news is better.  To be brief, Ste. Marie has
disappeared—vanished into thin air.  I thought you ought to know."

"Ste. Marie!" cried the girl.  "How?  What do you mean—vanished?  When
did he vanish?"  She gave a sudden exclamation of relief.

"Oh, he has come upon some clue or other and has rushed off to follow
it.  That’s all—How dare you frighten me so?"

"He went without luggage," said the man, shaking his head, "and he left
no word of any kind behind him.  He went out to lunch yesterday about
noon, and, as I said, simply vanished, leaving no trace whatever behind
him.  I’ve just been to see your uncle, thinking that he might know
something, but he doesn’t."

The girl looked up quickly.

"My uncle?" she said.  "Why my uncle?"

"Well," said Hartley, "you see Ste. Marie went to a little party at your
uncle’s flat on the night before he disappeared, and I thought your
uncle might have heard him say something that would throw light on his
movements the next day."  Hartley remembered the unfortunate incident of
the galloping pigs, and hurried on—

"He went to the party more for the purpose of having a talk with your
uncle than for any other reason, I think.  I was to have gone myself,
but gave it up at the eleventh hour for the Cain’s dinner at
Armenonville.

"Well, the next morning after Captain Stewart’s party he went out early.
I called at his rooms to see him about something important that I
thought he ought to know.  I missed him, and so left a note for him,
which he got on his return and read.  I found it open on his table later
on.  At noon he went out again, and that’s all.  Frankly, I’m worried
about him."

Miss Benham watched the man with thoughtful eyes and, when he had
finished, she asked—

"Could you tell me what was in this note that you left for Ste. Marie?"

Hartley was by nature a very open and frank young man, and in
consequence an unusually bad liar.  He hesitated and looked away and he
began to turn red.

"Well—no," he said after a moment, "no, I’m afraid I can’t.  It was
something you wouldn’t understand—wouldn’t know about."  And the girl
said, "Oh!" and remained for a little while silent.

But at the end she looked up and met his eyes, and the man saw that she
was very grave.  She said—

"Richard, there is something that you and I have been avoiding and
pretending not to see.  It has gone too far now, and we’re got to face
it with perfect frankness.  I know what was in your note to Ste. Marie.
It was what you found out the other evening about—my uncle, the matter
of the will and the other matter.  He knew about the will, but he told
you and Ste. Marie that he didn’t.  He said to you also that I had told
him about my engagement and Ste. Marie’s determination to search for
Arthur, and that was—a lie.  I didn’t tell him, and grandfather didn’t
tell him.  He listened in the door yonder and heard it himself.  I have
a good reason for knowing that.

"And then," she said, "he tried very hard to persuade you and Ste. Marie
to take up your search under his direction, and he partly succeeded. He
sent Ste. Marie upon a foolish expedition to Dinard, and he gave him and
gave you other clues just as foolish as that one.

"Richard, do you believe that my uncle has hidden poor Arthur away
somewhere, or—worse than that?  Do you?  Tell me the truth!"

"There is not," said Hartley, "one particle of real evidence against him
that I’m aware of. There’s plenty of motive, if you like, but motive is
not evidence."

"I asked you a question," the girl said.  "Do you believe my uncle has
been responsible for Arthur’s disappearance?"

"Yes," said Richard Hartley, "I’m afraid I do."

"Then," she said, "he has been responsible for Ste. Marie’s
disappearance also.  Ste. Marie became dangerous to him and so vanished.
What can we do, Richard?  What can we do?"

[Illustration: "’What can we do, Richard? What can we do?’"]



                            *CHAPTER XVIII*

                       *A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD*


In the upper chamber at La Lierre the days dragged very slowly by, and
the man who lay in bed there counted interminable hours, and prayed for
the coming of night with its merciful oblivion of sleep.  His inaction
was made bitterer by the fact that the days were days of green and gold,
of breeze-stirred tree-tops without his windows, of vagrant sweet airs
that stole in upon his solitude, bringing him all the warm fragrance of
summer and of green things growing.

He suffered little pain.  There was, for the first three or four days, a
dull and feverish ache in his wounded leg, but presently even that
passed and the leg hurt him only when he moved it.  He thought sometimes
that he would be grateful for a bit of physical anguish to make the
hours pass more quickly.

The other inmates of the house held aloof from him.  Once a day O’Hara
came in to see to the wound, but he maintained a well-nigh complete
silence over his work and answered questions only with a brief yes or
no.  Sometimes he did not answer them at all.  The old Michel came twice
daily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened into
dumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him.  He shambled
hastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and as
soon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him.  Sometimes
Michel brought in the meals, sometimes his wife, a creature so like him
that the two might well have passed for twin survivors of some unknown
race; sometimes—thrice altogether in that first week—Coira O’Hara
brought the tray, and she was as silent as the others.

So Ste. Marie was left alone to get through the interminable days as
best he might, and ever afterwards the week remained in his memory as a
sort of nightmare.  Lying idle in his bed he evolved many surprising and
fantastic schemes for escape—for getting word to the outside world of
his presence here, and one by one he gave them up in disgust as their
impossibility forced itself upon him. Plans and schemes were useless
while he lay bed-ridden, unfamiliar even with the house wherein he
dwelt, with the garden and park that surrounded it.

As for aid from any of the inmates of the place, that was to be laughed
at.  They were engaged together in a scheme so desperate that failure
must mean utter ruin to them all.  He sometimes wondered if the two
servants could be bribed. Avarice unmistakable gleamed from their little
glittering rat-like eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for
no small sum and, in so far as he could remember, there had been in his
pockets when he came here not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the
old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the
room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from
his bed.  He had seen them there once when the closet door was open.

Any help that might come to him must come from outside—and what help was
to be expected there?  Over and over again he reminded himself of how
little Richard Hartley knew.  He might suspect Stewart of complicity in
this new disappearance, but how was he to find out anything definite?
How was any one to do so?

It was at such times as this, when brain and nerves were strained and
worn almost to breaking point that Ste. Marie had occasion to be
grateful for the southern blood that was in him, the strong tinge of
fatalism which is common alike to Latin and to Oriental.  It rescued him
more than once from something like nervous breakdown, calmed him
suddenly, lifted his burdens from outwearied shoulders, and left him in
peace to wait until some action should be possible.  Then, in such
hours, he would fall to thinking of the girl for whose sake, in whose
cause, he lay bedridden, beset with dangers. As long before, she came to
him in a sort of waking vision—a being but half earthly, enthroned high
above him, calm-browed, very pure, with passionless eyes that gazed into
far distance and were unaware of the base things below.  What would she
think of him, who had sworn to be true knight to her, if she could know
how he had bungled and failed?  He was glad that she did not know, that
if he had blundered into peril the knowledge of it could not reach her
to hurt her pride.

And sometimes also, with a great sadness and pity, he thought of poor
Coira O’Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into.  The
girl was so patently fit for better things!  Her splendid beauty was not
a cheap beauty.  She was no coarse-blown gorgeous flower, imperfect at
telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark
perfection, good blood that had shaped her long and slim and tapering
hands.

"A queen among goddesses!"  The words remained with him and he knew that
they were true. She might have held up her head among the greatest, this
adventurer’s girl; but what chance had she had?  What merest ghost of a
chance?

He watched her on the rare occasions when she came into the room.  He
watched the poise of her head, her walk, the movements she made, and he
said to himself that there was no woman of his acquaintance whose grace
was more perfect—certainly none whose grace was so native.

Once he complained to her of the desperate idleness of his days and
asked her to lend him a book of some kind, a review, even a daily
newspaper, though it be a week old.

"I should read the very advertisements with joy," he said.

She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books,
which she laid upon the bed without comment.

"In my prayers, mademoiselle," cried Ste. Marie, "you shall be foremost
forever!"  He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheer
astonishment.

"May I ask whose books these are?" he said.

"They are mine," said the girl.  "I caught up the ones that lay first at
hand.  If you don’t care for any of them I will choose others."  The
books were: _Diana of the Crossways_, _Richard Feverel_, Henri Lavedan’s
_Le Duel_, Maeterlinck’s _Pelleas et Melisande_, _Don Quixote de la
Mancha_, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil’s _Eclogues_, and the _Life of
the Chevalier Bayard_ by the "Loyal Servitor."  Ste. Marie stared at
her.

"Do you read Spanish?" he demanded, "and Latin, as well as French and
English?"

"My mother was Spanish," said she.  "And as for Latin, I began to read
it with my father when I was a child.  Shall I leave the books here?"

Ste. Marie took up the _Bayard_ and held it between his hands.

"It is worn from much reading, mademoiselle," he said.

"It is the best of all," said she.  "The very best of all.  I didn’t
know I had brought you that."  She made a step towards him as if she
would take the book away, and over it the eyes of them met and were
held.  In that moment it may have come to them both who she was, who so
loved the knight without fear and without reproach—the daughter of an
Irish adventurer of ill repute; for their faces began suddenly to flush
with red and after an instant the girl turned away.

"It is of no consequence," said she.  "You may keep the book if you care
to."  And Ste. Marie said very gently—

"Thank you, mademoiselle!  I will keep it for a little while."  So she
went out of the room and left him alone.

This was at noon on the sixth day, and after he had swallowed hastily
the lunch which had been set before him Ste. Marie fell upon the books
like a child upon a new box of sweets.  Like the child again it was
difficult for him to choose among them. He opened one and then another,
gloating over them all, but in the end he chose the _Bayard_ and for
hours lost himself among the high deeds of the Preux Chevalier and his
faithful friends (among whom, by the way, there was a Ste. Marie who
died nobly for France).  It was late afternoon when at last he laid the
book down with a sigh and settled himself more comfortably among the
pillows.

The sun was not in the room at that hour but, from where he lay, he
could see it on the tree-tops, gold upon green.  Outside his south
window the leaves of a chestnut which stood there quivered and rustled
gently under a soft breeze.  Delectable odours floated in to Ste.
Marie’s nostrils, and he thought how very pleasant it would be if he
were lying on the turf under the trees, instead of bed-ridden in this
upper chamber, which he had come to hate with a bitter hatred.

He began to wonder if it would be possible to drag himself across the
floor to that south window, and so to lie down for a while with his head
in the tiny balcony beyond—his eyes turned to the blue sky.  Astir with
the new thought he sat up in bed and carefully swung his feet out till
they hung to the floor.  The wound in the left leg smarted and burnt,
but not too severely, and with slow pains Ste. Marie stood up.  He
almost cried out when he discovered that it could be done quite easily.
He essayed to walk and he was a little weak, but by no means helpless.
He found that it gave him pain to raise his left leg in the ordinary
action of walking, or to bend that knee, but he could get about well
enough by dragging the injured member beside him, for when it was
straight it supported him without protest.

He took his pillows across to the window and disposed them there, for it
was a French window opening to the floor, and the level of the little
balcony outside was but a few inches above the level of the room.  Then
the desire seized him to make a tour of his prison walls.  He went first
to the closet where he had seen his clothes hanging, and they were still
there.  He felt in the pockets and withdrew his little English pig-skin
sovereign purse. It had not been tampered with, and he gave an
exclamation of relief over that, for he might later on have use for
money.  There were eight louis in it, each in its little separate
compartment, and in another pocket he found a fifty-franc note and some
silver.  He went to the two east windows and looked out.  The trees
stood thick together on that side of the house, but between two of them
he could see the park wall fifty yards away.  He glanced down, and the
side of the house was covered thick with the ivy which had given the
place its name, but there was no water pipe near nor any other thing
which seemed to offer foot or hand hold—unless perhaps the ivy might
prove strong enough to bear a man’s weight.  Ste. Marie made a mental
note to look into that when he was a little stronger, and turned back to
the south window, where he had disposed his pillows.

The unaccustomed activity was making his wound smart and prickle, and he
lay down at once, with head and shoulders in the open air; and, out of
the warm and golden sunshine and the emerald shade, the breath of summer
came to him and wrapped him round with sweetness and pillowed him upon
its fragrant breast.

He became aware, after a long time, of voices below, and turned upon his
elbows to look.  The ivy had clambered upon and partly covered the iron
grille of the little balcony and he could observe without being seen.
Young Arthur Benham and Coira O’Hara had come out of the door of the
house, and they stood upon the raised and paved terrace which ran the
width of the façade, and seemed to hesitate as to the direction they
should take. Ste. Marie heard the girl say—

"It’s cooler here in the shade of the house," and, after a moment, the
two came along the shady terrace, whose outer margin was set at
intervals with stained and discoloured marble nymphs upon pedestals,
and, between the nymphs, with moss-grown stone benches.  They halted
before a bench upon which, earlier in the day, a rug had been spread out
to dry in the sun and had been forgotten, and, after a moment’s further
hesitation, they sat down upon it.  Their faces were turned towards the
house and every word that they spoke mounted in that still air clear and
distinct to the ears of the man above.

Ste. Marie wriggled back into the room and sat up to consider.  The
thought of deliberately listening to a conversation not meant for him
sent a hot flush to his cheeks.  He told himself that it could not be
done, and that there was an end to the matter. Whatever might hang upon
it it could not be asked of him that he should stoop to dishonour.  But
at that the heavy and grave responsibility which really did hang upon
him and upon his actions came before his mind’s eyes and loomed there
mountainous.  The fate of this foolish boy, who was set round with
thieves and adventurers—even though his eyes were open and he knew where
he stood—that came to Ste. Marie and confronted him: and the picture of
a bitter old man who was dying of grief came to him: and a mother’s
face: and _hers_.  There could be no dishonour in the face of all this,
only a duty very clear and plain.  He crept back to his place, his arms
folded beneath him as he lay, his eyes at the thin screen of ivy which
cloaked the balcony grille.

Young Arthur Benham appeared to be giving tongue to a rather sharp
attack of homesickness. It may be that long confinement within the walls
of La Lierre was beginning to try him somewhat.

"Mind you," he declared, as Ste. Marie’s ears came once more within
range, "mind you, I’m not saying that Paris hasn’t got its points.  It
has.  Oh yes!  And so has London, and so has Ostend, and so has Monte
Carlo—Verree much so!—I like Paris.  I like the theatres and the
vaudeville shows in the Champs Elysées, and I like Longchamps.  I like
the boys who hang around Henry’s bar.  They’re good sports, all right,
all right!  But, by Golly, I want to go home!  Put me off at the corner
of Forty-second Street and Broadway and I’ll ask no more.  Set me down
at seven p.m. right there on the corner outside the _Knickerbocker_, for
that’s where I would live and die."  There came into the lad’s somewhat
strident voice a softness that was almost pathetic.

"You don’t know Broadway, Coira, do you? Nix! of course not.  Little
girl, it’s the one, one street of all this large world.  It’s the
equator that runs north and south instead of east and west.  It’s a long
bright gay live wire, that’s what Broadway is. And I give you my word of
honour like a little man that it—is—not—slow.  No indeed!  When I was
there last it was being called the _Gay White Way_.  It is not called
the _Gay White Way_ now. It has had forty other new good names since
then, and I don’t know what they are, but I do know that it is forever
gay, and that the electric signs are still blazing all along the street,
and the street cars are still killing people in the good old fashion,
and the newsboys are still dodging under the automobiles to sell you a
_Woild_ or a _Choinal_ or, if it’s after twelve at night, a _Morning
Telegraph_.  Coira, my girl, standing on that corner after dark you can
see the electric signs of fifteen theatres, no one of them more than
five minutes’ walk away, and just round the corner there are more.

"I want to go home!  I want to take one large unparalleled leap from
here and come down at the corner I told you about.  D’you know what I’d
do?  We’ll say it’s seven p.m. and beginning to get dark.  I’d dive into
the _Knickerbocker_ (that’s the hotel that the bright and happy people
go to for dinner or supper), and I’d engage a table up on the terrace.
Then I’d telephone to a little friend of mine, whose name is Doe—John
Doe—and in about ten minutes he’d have left the crowd he was standing in
line with and he’d come galloping up that glad to see me you’d cry to
watch him. We’d go up on the terrace, where the potted palms grow, for
our dinner, and the tables all around us would be full of people that
would know Johnnie Doe and me, and they’d all make us drink drinks and
tell us how glad they were to see us aboard again.

"And after dinner," said young Arthur Benham, with wide and smiling
eyes, "after dinner we’d go to see one of the Roof Garden shows.  Let me
tell you they’ve got the _Marigny_, or the Ambassadeurs, or the Jardin
de Paris beaten to a pulp—to—a—pulp!  And after the show we’d slip round
to the stage door—you bet we would!—and capture the two most beautiful
ladies in the world and take ’em off to supper."  He wrinkled his young
brow in great perplexity.

"Now I wonder," said he anxiously.  "I wonder where we’d go for supper.

"You see," he apologised, "it’s two years since I left the Real Street,
and Gee, what a lot can happen on Broadway in two years!  There’s
probably half a dozen new supper places that I don’t know anything
about, and one of them’s the place where the crowd goes.  Well, anyhow,
we’d go to that place, and there’d be a band playing, and the electric
fans would go round, and round, and Johnnie Doe and I and the two most
beautiful ladies would put it all over the other pikers there."

Young Benham gave a little sigh of pleasure and excitement.

"That’s what I’d like to do to-night," said he, "and that’s what I’ll
do, you can bet your sh—boots, when all this silly mess is over and I’m
a free man. I’ll hike back to good old Broadway, and if ever you see any
one trying to pry me loose from it again, you can laugh yourself to
death, because he’ll never, never succeed.

"Nine more weeks shut in here by stonewalls!" said the boy, staring
about him with a sort of bitterness.  "Nine weeks more!"

"Is it so hard as that?" asked the girl.  There was no foolish coquetry
in her tone.  She spoke as if the words involved no personal question at
all, but there was a little smile at her lips, and Arthur Benham turned
towards her quickly and caught at her hands.

"No, no!" he cried.  "I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that.
You’re worth nine years’ waiting.  You’re the best, d’you hear? the best
there is.  There’s nobody anywhere that can touch you.  Only—well, this
place is getting on my nerves.  It’s got me worn to a frazzle.  I feel
like a criminal doing time."

"You came very near having to do time somewhere else," said the girl.
"If this M. Ste. Marie hadn’t blundered we should have had them all
round our ears, and you’d have had to run for it."

"Yes," the boy said, nodding gravely.  "Yes, that was great luck."  He
raised his head and looked up along the windows above him.

"Which is his room?" he asked, and Mlle. O’Hara said—

"The one just overhead, but he’s in bed far back from the window.  He
couldn’t possibly hear us talking."  She paused for a moment in frowning
hesitation, and, in the end, said—

"Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie!  Do you know anything about him?"

[Illustration: "’Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know
anything about him?’"]

"No," said Arthur Benham, "I don’t—not personally, that is.  Of course
I’ve heard of him. Lots of people have spoken of him to me.  And the odd
part of it is that they all had a good word to say.  Everybody seemed to
like him.  I got the idea that he was the best ever.  I wanted to know
him.  I never thought he’d take on a piece of dirty work like this."

"Nor I!" said the girl, in a low voice.  "Nor I!"  The boy looked up.

"Oh, you’ve heard of him too, then?" said he. And she said, still in her
low voice—

"I—saw him once."

"Well," declared young Benham, "it’s beyond me.  I give it up.  You
never can tell about people, can you?  I guess they’ll all go wrong when
there’s enough in it to make it worth while.  That’s what old Charlie
always says.  He says most people are straight enough when there’s
nothing in it, but make the pot big enough and they’ll all go crooked."
The young man’s face turned suddenly hard and old and bitter.

"Gee!  I ought to know that well enough, oughtn’t I?" he said.  "I guess
nobody knows that better than I do after what happened to me... Come
along and take a walk in the garden, Maud! I’m sick of sitting still."

Mlle. Coira O’Hara looked up with a start, as if she had not been
listening, but she rose, when the boy held out his hand to her, and the
two went down from the terrace and moved off towards the west.

Ste. Marie watched them until they had disappeared among the trees, and
then turned on his back, staring up into the softly stirring canopy of
green above him, and the little rifts of bright blue sky.  He did not
understand at all.  Something mysterious had crept in where all had
seemed so plain to the eye.  Certain words that young Arthur Benham had
spoken repeated themselves in his mind and he could not at once make
them out.  Assuredly there was something mysterious here.

In the first place what did the boy mean by "dirty work"?  To be sure
spying in its usual sense is not held to be one of the noblest of
occupations, but—in such a cause as this!  It was absurd, ridiculous, to
call it "dirty work."  And what did he mean by the words which he had
used afterwards?  Ste. Marie did not quite follow the idiom about the
"big enough pot," but he assumed that it referred to money.  Did the
young fool think he was being paid for his efforts?  That was ridiculous
too.

The boy’s face came before him as it had looked with that sudden hard
and bitter expression.  What did he mean by saying that no one knew the
crookedness of humanity under money temptation better than he knew it
after something that had happened to him?  In a sense his words were
doubtless very true.  Captain Stewart (and he must have been "old
Charlie"—Ste. Marie remembered that the name was Charles), O’Hara and
O’Hara’s daughter stood excellent samples of that bit of cynicism, but
obviously the boy had not spoken in that sense—certainly not before
Mlle. O’Hara! He meant something else, then.  But what?  What?

Ste. Marie rose with some difficulty to his feet, and carried the
pillows back to the bed whence he had taken them.  He sat down upon the
edge of the bed, staring in great perplexity across the room at the open
window, but all at once he uttered an exclamation, and he smote his
hands together.

"That boy doesn’t know!" he cried.  "They’re tricking him, these
others!"

The lad’s face came once more before him, and it was a foolish and
stubborn face perhaps, but it was neither vicious nor mean.  It was the
face of an honest headstrong boy, who would be incapable of the cold
cruelty to which all circumstances seemed to point.

"They’re tricking him somehow!" cried Ste. Marie again.  "They’re lying
to him and making him think——"

What was it they were making him think, these three conspirators?  What
possible thing could they make him think other than the plain truth?
Ste. Marie shook a weary head and lay down among his pillows.  He wished
that he had "old Charlie" in a corner of that room with his fingers
round "old Charlie’s" wicked throat.  He would soon get at the truth
then: or O’Hara either, that grim and saturnine _chevalier d’industrie_,
though O’Hara would be a bad handful to manage: or—Ste. Marie’s head
dropped back with a little groan when the face of young Arthur’s
enchantress came between him and the opposite wall of the room, and her
great and tragic eyes looked into his.

It seemed incredible that that queen among goddesses should be what she
was!



                             *CHAPTER XIX*

                      *THE INVALID TAKES THE AIR*


When O’Hara, the next morning, went through the formality of looking in
upon his patient, and after a taciturn nod was about to go away again,
Ste. Marie called him back.  He said—

"Would you mind waiting a moment?" and the Irishman halted inside the
door.

"I made an experiment yesterday," said Ste. Marie, "and I find that,
after a poor fashion, I can walk—that is to say, I can drag myself about
a little, without any great pain, if I don’t bend the left leg."

O’Hara returned to the bed and made a silent examination of the bullet
wound which, it was plain to see, was doing very well indeed.

"You’ll be all right in a few days," said he, "but you’ll be lame for a
week yet—maybe two. As a matter of fact, I’ve known men to march half a
day with a hole in the leg worse than yours, though it probably was not
quite pleasant."

"I’m afraid I couldn’t march very far," said Ste. Marie, "but I can
hobble a bit.  The point is, I’m going mad from confinement in this
room.  Do you think I might be allowed to stagger about the garden for
an hour, or sit there under one of the trees?  I don’t like to ask
favours, but—so far as I can see it could do no harm.  I couldn’t
possibly escape, you see.  I couldn’t climb a fifteen foot wall even if
I had two good legs: as it is, with a leg and a half, I couldn’t climb
anything."

The Irishman looked at him sharply, and was silent for a time as if
considering.  But at last he said—

"Of course there is no reason whatever for granting you any favours
here.  You’re on the footing of a spy—a captured spy, and you’re very
lucky not to have got what you deserved instead of a trumpery flesh
wound."  The man’s face twisted into a heavy scowl.

"Unfortunately," said he, "an—accident has put me—put us in as
unpleasant a position towards you as you had put yourself towards us.
We seem to stand in the position of having tried to poison you,
and—well, we owe you something for that.  Still, I’d meant to keep you
locked up in this room so long as it was necessary to have you at La
Lierre."  He scowled once more in an intimidating fashion at Ste. Marie,
and it was evident that he found himself embarrassed.

"And," he said awkwardly, "I suppose I owe something to your father’s
son....  Look here! if you’re to be allowed in the garden you must
understand that it’s at fixed hours and not alone. Somebody will always
be with you, and old Michel will be on hand to shoot you down if you try
to run for it, or if you try to communicate with Arthur Benham.  Is that
understood?"

"Quite!" said Ste. Marie gaily.

"Quite understood and agreed to.  And many thanks for your courtesy.  I
shan’t forget it.  We differ rather widely on some rather important
subjects, you and I, but I must confess that you’re very generous, and I
thank you.  The old Michel has my full permission to shoot at me if he
sees me trying to fly over a fifteen foot wall."

"He’ll shoot without asking your permission," said the Irishman grimly,
"if you try that on, but I don’t think you’ll be apt to try it for the
present—not with a crippled leg."  He pulled out his watch and looked at
it.

"Nine o’clock," said he.  "If you care to begin to-day you can go out at
eleven for an hour.  I’ll see that old Michel is ready at that time."

"Eleven will suit me perfectly," said Ste. Marie. "You’re very good.
Thanks once more!"  The Irishman did not seem to hear.  He replaced the
watch in his pocket and turned away in silence. But before he left the
room he stood a moment beside one of the windows, staring out into the
morning sunshine, and the other man could see that his face had once
more settled into the still and melancholic gloom which was
characteristic of it.  Ste. Marie watched and, for the first time, the
man began to interest him as a human being. He had thought of O’Hara
before merely as a rather shady adventurer of a not very rare type, but
he looked at the adventurer’s face now, and he saw that it was the face
of a man of unspeakable sorrows.  When O’Hara looked at one, one saw
only a pair of singularly keen and hard blue eyes set under a bony brow.
When those eyes were turned away, the man’s attention relaxed, the face
became a battleground furrowed and scarred with wrecked pride and with
bitterness and with shame and with agony.  Most soldiers of fortune have
faces like that, for the world has used them very ill, and they have
lost one precious thing after another until all are gone; and they have
tasted everything that there is in life, and the flavour which remains
is a very bitter flavour—dry like ashes.

It came to Ste. Marie, as he lay watching this man, that the story of
the man’s life, if he could be made to tell it would doubtless be one of
the most interesting stories in the world, as must be the tale of the
adventurous career of any one who has slipped down the ladder of
respectability rung by rung into that shadowy no-man’s-land, where the
furtive birds of prey foregather and hatch their plots.  It was plain
enough that O’Hara had, as the phrase goes, seen better days.  Without
question he was a villain, but after all a generous villain. He had been
very decent about making amends for that poisoning affair.  A cheaper
rascal would have behaved otherwise.  Ste. Marie suddenly remembered
what a friend of his had once said of this mysterious Irishman.  The two
had been sitting on the terrace of a café, and, as O’Hara passed by,
Ste. Marie’s friend pointed after him and said: "There goes some of the
best blood that ever came out of Ireland.  See what it has fallen to!"

Seemingly it had fallen pretty low.  He would have liked very much to
know about the downward stages, but he knew that he would never hear
anything of them from the man himself, for O’Hara was clad, as it were,
in an armour of taciturnity. He was incredibly silent.  He wore mail
that nothing could pierce.

The Irishman turned abruptly away and left the room, and Ste. Marie,
with all the gay excitement of a little girl preparing for her first
nursery party, began to get himself ready to go out.  The old Michel had
already been there to help him bathe and shave, so that he had only to
dress himself and attend to his one conspicuous vanity—the painstaking
arrangement of his hair, which he wore, according to the fashion of the
day, parted a little at one side and brushed almost straight back, so
that it looked rather like a close-fitting and incredibly glossy
skull-cap.  Richard Hartley, who was inclined to joke at his friend’s
grave interest in the matter, said that it reminded him of patent
leather.

When he was dressed—and he found that putting on his left boot was no
mean feat—Ste. Marie sat down in a chair by the window and lighted a
cigarette. He had half an hour to wait, and so he picked up the volume
of Bayard, which Coira O’Hara had not yet taken away from him, and began
to read in it at random.  He became so absorbed that the old Michel,
come to summon him, took him by surprise.  But it was a pleasant
surprise and very welcome.  He followed the old man out of the room with
a heart that beat fast with eagerness.

The descent of the stairs offered difficulties, for the wounded leg
protested sharply against being bent more than a very little at the
knee.  But, by aid of Michel’s shoulder, he made the passage in safety,
and so came to the lower story.  At the foot of the stairs some one
opened a door almost in their faces, but closed it again with great
haste, and Ste. Marie gave a chuckle of laughter, for, though it was
almost dark there, he thought he had recognised Captain Stewart.

"So old Charlie’s with us to-day, is he?" he said aloud, and Michel
queried: "_Comment, monsieur?_" because Ste. Marie had spoken in
English.

They came out upon the terrace before the house, and the fresh sweet air
bore against their faces, and little flecks of live gold danced and
shivered about their feet upon the moss-stained tiles.  The gardener
stepped back for an instant into the doorway and reappeared, bearing
across his arms the short carbine with which Ste. Marie had already made
acquaintance.  The victim looked at this weapon with a laugh, and the
old Michel’s gnome-like countenance distorted itself suddenly and a
weird cackle came from it.

"It is my old friend?" demanded Ste. Marie, and the gardener cackled
once more, stroking the barrel of the weapon as if it were a faithful
dog.

"The same, monsieur," said he.  "But she apologises for not doing
better."

"Beg her for me," said the young man, "to cheer up.  She may get another
chance."  Old Michel’s face froze into an expression of anxious and
rather frightened solicitude, but he waved his arm for the prisoner to
precede him, and Ste. Marie began to limp down across the littered and
unkempt sweep of turf.  Behind him at the distance of a dozen paces he
heard the shambling footfalls of his guard, but he had expected that,
and it could not rob him of his swelling and exultant joy at treading
once more upon green grass and looking up into blue sky.  He was like a
man newly released from a dungeon, rather than from a sunny and by no
means uncomfortable upper chamber.  He would have liked to dance and
sing, to run at full speed like a child until he was breathless and red
in the face.  Instead of that he had to drag himself with slow pains and
some discomfort, but his spirit ran ahead, dancing and singing, and he
thought that it even halted now and then to roll on the grass.

As he had observed, a week before from the top of his wall, a double row
of larches led straight down away from the front of the house, making a
wide and long vista interrupted, halfway to its end, by a _rond point_,
in the centre of which was a pool and a fountain.  The double row of
trees was sadly broken now, and the trees were untrimmed and uncared
for.  One of them had fallen, probably in a wind storm, and lay dead
across the way. Ste. Marie turned aside towards the west and found
himself presently among chestnuts, planted in close rows, whose tops
grew in so thick a canopy above that but little sunshine came through,
and there was no turf under foot, only black earth hard trodden, mossy
here and there.

From beyond, in the direction he had chanced to take and a little
towards the west, a soft morning breeze bore to him the scent of roses,
so constant and so sweet despite its delicacy that to breathe it was
like an intoxication.  He felt it begin to take hold upon and to sway
his senses like an exquisite, an insidious wine.

"The flower gardens, Michel?" he asked over his shoulder.  "They are
before us?"

"Ahead and to the left, monsieur," said the old man, and he took up once
more his slow and difficult progress.  But again, before he had gone
many steps, he was halted.  There began to reach his ears a rich but
slender strain of sound, a golden thread of melody.  At first he thought
that it was a cello or the lower notes of a violin, but presently he
became aware that it was a woman singing in a half-voice without thought
of what she sang—as women croon to a child, or over their work, or when
they are idle and their thoughts are far wandering.

The mistake was not as absurd as it may seem, for it is a fact that the
voice which is called a contralto, if it is a good and clear and fairly
resonant voice, sounds at a distance very much indeed like a cello or
the lower register of a violin.  And that is especially true when the
voice is hushed to a half-articulate murmur.  Indeed, this is but one of
the many strange peculiarities of that most beautiful of all human
organs.  The contralto can rarely express the lighter things, and it is
quite impossible for it to express merriment or gaiety, but it can
thrill the heart as can no other sound emitted by a human throat, and it
can shake the soul to its very innermost hidden deeps.  It is the soft
yellow gold of singing—the wine of sound: it is mystery: it is shadowy
unknown beautiful places: it is enchantment.

Ste. Marie stood still and listened.  The sound of low singing came from
the right.  Without realising that he had moved he began to make his way
in that direction, and the old Michel, carbine upon arm, followed behind
him.  He had no doubt of the singer.  He knew well who it was, for the
girl’s speaking voice had thrilled him long before this.  He came to the
eastern margin of the grove of chestnuts, and found that he was beside
the open _rond point_ where the pool lay within its stone circumference,
unclean and choked with lily pads, and the fountain, a naked lady
holding aloft a shell, stood above.  The _rond point_ was not in reality
round, it was an oval with its greater axis at right angles to the long
straight avenue of larches.  At the two ends of the oval there were
stone benches with backs, and behind these tall shrubs grew close and
overhung so that even at noonday the spots were shaded.



                              *CHAPTER XX*

                  *THE STONE BENCH AT THE ROND POINT*


Mlle. Coira O’Hara sat alone upon the stone bench at the hither end of
the _rond point_.  With a leisurely hand she put fine stitches into a
mysterious garment of white, with lace on it, and, over her not too
arduous toil, she sang _à demi voix_, a little German song all about the
tender passions.

[Illustration: "Mlle. Coira O’Hara sat alone upon the stone bench."]

Ste. Marie halted his dragging steps a little way off, but the girl
heard him and turned to look.  After that she rose hurriedly and stood
as if poised for flight, but Ste. Marie took his hat in his hands and
came forward.

"If you go away, mademoiselle," said he; "if you let me drive you from
your place, I shall limp across to that pool and fall in and drown
myself, or I shall try to climb the wall yonder and Michel will have to
shoot me."  He came forward another step.

"If it is impossible," he said, "that you and I should stay here
together for a few little moments, and talk about what a beautiful day
it is—if that is impossible, why then I must apologise for intruding
upon you and go on my way, inexorably pursued by the would-be murderer
who now stands six paces to the rear.

"Is it impossible, mademoiselle?" said Ste. Marie.

The girl’s face was flushed with that deep and splendid understain.  She
looked down upon the white garment in her hand and away across the broad
_rond point_, and, in the end, she looked up very gravely into the face
of the man who stood leaning upon his stick before her.

"I don’t know," she said in her deep voice, "what my father would wish.
I did not know that you were coming into the garden this morning or——"

"Or else," said Ste. Marie with a little touch of bitterness in his
tone, "or else you would not have been here.  You would have remained in
the house."

He made a bow.

"To-morrow, mademoiselle," said he, "and for the remainder of the days
that I may be at La Lierre, I shall stay in my room.  You need have no
fear of me."  All the man’s life he had been spoilt.  The girl’s bearing
hurt him absurdly, and a little of the hurt may have betrayed itself in
his face as he turned away, for she came towards him with a swift
movement, saying—

"No! no!  Wait!

"I have hurt you," she said with a sort of wondering distress.  "You
have let me hurt you.... And yet surely you must see ... you must
realise on what terms ... Do you forget that you are not among your
friends ... outside? ... This is so very different!"

"I had forgotten," said he.  "Incredible as it sounds, I had for a
moment forgotten.  Will you grant me your pardon for that?

"And yet," he persisted after a moment’s pause, "yet, mademoiselle,
consider a little!  It is likely that—circumstances have so fallen that
it seems I shall be here within your walls for a time, perhaps a long
time.  I am able to walk a little now.  Day by day I shall be stronger,
better able to get about. Is there not some way—are there not some terms
under which we could meet without embarrassment? Must we for ever glare
at each other and pass by warily, just because we—well, hold different
views about—something?"  It was not a premeditated speech at all.  It
had never until this moment occurred to him to suggest any such
arrangement with any member of the household at La Lierre. At another
time he would doubtless have considered it undignified if not downright
unwise to hold intercourse of any friendly sort with this band of
contemptible adventurers.  The sudden impulse may have been born of his
long week of almost intolerable loneliness, or it may have come of the
warm exhilaration of this first breath of sweet outdoor air, or perhaps
it needed neither of these things, for the girl was very
beautiful—enchantment breathed from her, and though he knew what she
was, in what despicable plot she was engaged, he was too much Ste. Marie
to be quite indifferent to her.  Though he looked upon her sorrowfully
and with pain and vicarious shame, he could not have denied the spell
she wielded.  After all he was Ste. Marie.

Once more the girl looked up very gravely under her brows and her eyes
met the man’s eyes.

"I don’t know," she said.  "Truly I don’t know. I think I should have to
ask my father about it.

"I wish," she said, "that we might do that.  I should like it.  I should
like to be able to talk to some one—about the things I like—and care
for. I used to talk with my father about things.  But not lately.  There
is no one now."  Her eyes searched him.

"Would it be possible, I wonder," said she. "Could we two put everything
else aside—forget altogether who we are and why we are here.  Is that
possible?"

"We could only try, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "If we found it a
failure we could give it up."  He broke into a little laugh.

"And besides," he said, "I can’t help thinking that two people ought to
be with me all the time I am in the garden here—for safety’s sake.  I
might catch the old Michel napping one day, you know, throttle him, take
his rifle away and escape.  If there were two I couldn’t do that."

For an instant she met his laugh with an answering smile, and the smile
came upon her sombre beauty like a moment of golden light upon darkness.
But afterwards she was grave again and thoughtful.

"Is it not rather foolish," she asked, "to warn us—to warn me of
possibilities like that?  You might quite easily do what you have said.
You are putting us on our guard against you."

"I meant to, mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie. "I meant to.  Consider my
reasons.  Consider what I was pleading for!"  And he gave a little laugh
when the colour began again to rise in the girl’s cheeks.

She turned away from him, shaking her head, and he thought that he had
said too much and that she was offended, but after a moment the girl
looked up and, when she met his eyes, she laughed outright.

"I cannot for ever be scowling and snarling at you," said she.  "It is
quite too absurd.  Will you sit down for a little while?  I don’t know
whether or not my father would approve, but we have met here by
accident, and there can be no harm surely in our exchanging a few civil
words.  If you try to bring up forbidden topics I can simply go away—and
besides Michel stands ready to murder you if it should become necessary.
I think his failure of a week ago is very heavy on his conscience."

Ste. Marie sat down in one corner of the long stone bench, and he was
very glad to do it, for his leg was beginning to cause him some
discomfort.  It felt hot, and as if there were a very tight band round
it above the knee.  The relief must have been apparent in his face, for
Mlle. O’Hara looked at him in silence for a moment, and she gave a
little troubled anxious frown.  Men can be quite indifferent to
suffering in each other if the suffering is not extreme, and women can
be too; but men are quite miserable in the presence of a woman who is in
pain, and women, before a suffering man, while they are not miserable
are always full of a desire to do something that will help.  And that
might be a small additional proof (if any more proof were necessary)
that they are much the more practical of the two sexes.

The girl’s sharp glance seemed to assure her that Ste. Marie was
comfortable, now that he was sitting down, for the frown went from her
brows, and she began to arrange the mysterious white garment in her lap
in preparation to go on with her work.

Ste. Marie watched her for awhile in a contented silence.  The leaves
overhead stirred under a puff of air, and a single yellow beam of
sunlight came down and shivered upon the girl’s dark head and played
about the bundle of white over which her hands were busy.  She moved
aside to avoid it, but it followed her, and when she moved back it
followed again and danced in her lap, as if it were a live thing with a
malicious sense of humour.  It might have been Tinker Bell out of _Peter
Pan_, only it did not jingle.  Mlle. O’Hara uttered an exclamation of
annoyance, and Ste. Marie laughed at her, but in a moment the leaves
overhead were still again, and the sunbeam with a sense of humour was
gone to torment some one else.

Still, neither of the two spoke, and Ste. Marie continued to watch the
girl bent above her sewing. He was thinking of what she had said to him
when he asked her if she read Spanish—that her mother had been Spanish.
That would account then for her dark eyes.  It would account for the
darkness of her skin too, but not for its extraordinary clearness and
delicacy, for Spanish women are apt to have dull skins of an opaque
texture.  This was, he said to himself, an Irish skin with a darker
stain, and he was quite sure that he had never before seen anything at
all like it.

Apart from colouring she was all Irish, of the type which has become
famous the world over, and which in the opinion of men who have seen
women in all countries, and have studied them, is the most beautiful
type that exists in our time.

Ste. Marie was dark himself and, in the ordinary nature of things, he
should have preferred a fair type in women.  In theory, for that matter,
he did prefer it; but it was impossible for him to sit near Coira
O’Hara, and watch her bent head and busy hovering hands and remain
unstirred by her splendid beauty.  He found himself wondering why one
kind of loveliness more than another should exert a potent and
mysterious spell by virtue of mere proximity, and when the woman who
bore it was entirely passive.  If this girl had been looking at him the
matter would have been easy to understand, for an eye-glance is often
downright hypnotic, but she was looking at the work in her hands and, so
far as could be judged, she had altogether forgotten his presence; yet
the mysterious spell, the potent enchantment, breathed from her like a
vapour, and he could not be insensible to it.  It was like sorcery.

The girl looked up so suddenly that Ste. Marie jumped.  She said—

"You are not a very talkative person.  Are you always as silent as
this?"

"No," said he, "I am not.  I offer my humblest apologies.  It seems as
if I were not being properly grateful for being allowed to sit here with
you, but to tell the truth I was buried in thought."  They had begun to
talk in French, but, midway of Ste. Marie’s speech, the girl glanced
towards the old Michel, who stood a short distance away, and so he
changed to English.

"In that case," she said, regarding her work with her head on one side
like a bird—"in that case you might at least tell me what your thoughts
were.  They might be interesting."  Ste. Marie gave a little embarrassed
laugh.

"I’m sorry," said he, "but I’m afraid they were too personal.  I’m
afraid if I told you, you’d get up and go away, and be frigidly polite
to me when next we passed each other in the garden here.

"But there’s no harm," he said, "in telling you one thing that occurred
to me.  It occurred to me that, as far as a young girl can be said to
resemble an elderly woman, you bear a most remarkable resemblance to a
very dear old friend of mine who lives near Dublin—Lady Margaret Craith.
She’s a widow and almost all of her family are dead, I believe (I didn’t
know any of them), and she lives there in a huge old house with a park,
quite alone, with her army of servants.  I go to see her whenever I’m in
Ireland, because she is one of the sweetest souls I have ever known."

He became aware suddenly that Mlle. O’Hara’s head was bent very low over
her sewing, and that her face, or as much of it as he could see, was
crimson.

"Oh I—I beg your pardon!" cried Ste. Marie. "I’ve done something
dreadful.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m very, very sorry.  Please
forgive me if you can!"

"It is nothing," she said in a low voice, and after a moment she looked
up for the swiftest possible glance and down again.

"That is my—aunt," she said.  "Only—please, let us talk about something
else!  Of course you couldn’t possibly have known."

"No," said Ste. Marie gravely.  "No, of course. You are very good to
forgive me."  He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told
him surprised him very much indeed, and touched him too. He remembered
again the remark of his friend when O’Hara had passed them on the
boulevard—

"There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland.  See
what it has fallen to!"

"It is a curious fact," said he, "that you and I are very close
compatriots in the matter of blood—if ’compatriots’ is the word.  You
are Irish and Spanish.  My mother was Irish and my people were Bearnais,
which is about as much Spanish as French—and indeed there was a great
deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married
Spanish wives."  He pulled the Bayard out of his pocket.

"The Ste. Marie in here married a Spanish lady, didn’t he?"

The girl looked up to him once more.

"Yes," she said.  "Yes, I remember.  He was a brave man, monsieur.  He
had a great soul. And he died nobly."

"Well, as for that," he said, flushing a little, "the Ste. Maries have
all died rather well."  He gave a short laugh.

"Though I must admit," said he, "that the last of them came precious
near falling below the family standard a week ago.  I should think that
probably none of my respected forefathers was killed in climbing over a
garden wall.  _Autres temps autres moeurs_."

He burst out laughing again at what seemed to him rather comic, but
Mlle. O’Hara did not smile. She looked very gravely into his eyes and
there seemed to be something like sorrow in her look. Ste. Marie
wondered at it, but after a moment it occurred to him that he was very
near forbidden ground, and that doubtless the girl was trying to give
him a silent warning of it.  He began to turn over the leaves of the
book in his hand.

"You have marked a great many pages here," said he, and she said—

"It is my best of all books.  I read in it very often.  I am so thankful
for it that there are no words to say how thankful I am—how glad I am
that I have such a world as that to—take refuge in sometimes when this
world is a little too unbearable. It does for me now what the fairy
stories did when I was little.  And to think that it’s true, true!  To
think that once there truly were men like that—_sans peur et sans
reproche_!  It makes life worth while to think that those men lived even
if it was long ago."

Ste. Marie bent his head over the little book, for he could not look at
Mlle. O’Hara just then.  It seemed to him wellnigh the most pathetic
speech that he had ever heard.  His heart bled for her. Out of what mean
shadows had the girl to turn her weary eyes upward to this sunlight of
ancient heroism!

"And yet, mademoiselle," said he gently, "I think there are such men
alive to-day if only one will look for them.  Remember! they were not
common even in Bayard’s time.  Oh yes, I think there are _preux
chevaliers_ nowadays—only perhaps they don’t go about things in quite
the same fashion.

"Other times, other manners!" he said again.

"Do you know any such men?" she demanded, facing him with shadowy eyes.
And he said—

"Yes.  I know men who are in all ways as honourable and as high-hearted
as Bayard was.  In his place they would have acted as he did, but
nowadays one has to practise heroism much less conspicuously—in the
little things that few people see and that no one applauds or writes
books about.  It is much harder to do brave little acts than brave big
ones."

"Yes," she agreed slowly.  "Oh yes, of course."  But there was no spirit
in her tone, rather a sort of apathy.  Once more the leaves overhead
swayed in the breeze, opened a tiny rift, and the little trembling rays
of sunshine shot down to her where she sat.  She stretched out one hand
cupwise, and the sunbeam, after a circling gyration, darted into it and
lay there like a small golden bird panting, as it were, from flight.

"If I were a painter," said Ste. Marie, "I should be in torture and
anguish of soul until I had painted you sitting there on a stone bench
and holding a sunbeam in your hand.  I don’t know what I should call the
picture, but I think it would be something figurative—symbolic.  Can you
think of a name?"

Coira O’Hara looked up at him with a slight smile, but her eyes were
gloomy and full of dark shadows.

"It might be called any one of a great number of things, I should
think," said she. "Happiness—belief—illusion.

"See!  The sunbeam is gone."



                             *CHAPTER XXI*

                     *A MIST DIMS THE SHINING STAR*


Ste. Marie remained in his room all the rest of that day, and he did not
see Mlle. O’Hara again, for Michel brought him his lunch and the old
Justine his dinner.  For the greater part of the time he sat in bed
reading, but rose now and then and moved about the room.  His wound
seemed to have suffered no great inconvenience from the morning’s
outing.  If he stood or walked too long it burned somewhat, and he had
the sensation of a tight band round the leg, but this passed after he
had lain down for a little while, or even sat in a chair with the leg
straight out before him, so he knew that he was not to be crippled very
much longer, and his thoughts began to turn more and more keenly upon
the matter of escape.

He realised of course that now, since he was once more able to walk, he
would be guarded with unremitting care every moment of the day, and
quite possibly every moment of the night as well, though the simple
bolting of his door on the outside would seem to answer the purpose save
when he was out of doors.  Once he went to the two east windows and hung
out of them testing, as well as he could with his hands, the strength
and tenacity of the ivy which covered that side of the house.  He
thought it seemed strong enough to give hand and foothold without being
torn loose, but he was afraid it would make an atrocious amount of noise
if he should try to climb down it, and besides he would need two very
active legs for that.

At another time a fresh idea struck him, and he put it at once into
action.  There might be just a chance, when out one day with Michel, of
getting near enough to the wall which ran along the Clamart road to
throw something over it when the old man was not looking.  In one of his
pockets he had a cardcase with a little pencil fitted into a loop at one
edge, and, in the case, it was his custom to carry postage stamps.  He
investigated, found pencil and stamps.  Of course he had nothing but
cards to write upon, and they were useless.  He looked about the room
and went through an empty chest of drawers in vain, but at last, on some
shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large
sheets of coarse white paper: the shelves were covered with it loosely
for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets and cut
it into squares of the ordinary note paper size, and he sat down and
wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that
Arthur Benham was there, the O’Haras and, he thought, Captain Stewart.
He did not write the names out, but put instead the initial letters of
each name, knowing that Hartley would understand.  He gave careful
directions as to how the place was to be reached, and he asked Hartley
to come as soon as possible by night to that wall where he himself had
made his entrance, to climb up by the cedar-tree, and to drop his answer
into the thick leaves of the lilac bushes immediately beneath—an answer
naming a day and hour, preferably by night, when he could return with
three or four to help him, surprise the household at La Lierre, and
carry off young Benham.

Ste. Marie wrote this letter four times, and each of the four copies he
enclosed in an awkwardly fashioned envelope, made with infinite pains so
that its flaps folded in together, for he had no gum.  He addressed and
stamped the four envelopes, and put them all in his pocket to await the
first opportunity.

Afterwards he lay down for awhile and, as, one after another, the books
he had in the room failed to interest him, his thoughts began to turn
back to Mlle. Coira O’Hara and his hour with her upon the old stone
bench in the garden.  He realized all at once that he had been putting
off this reflection as one puts off a reckoning that one a little dreads
to face, and rather vaguely he realised why.

The spell that the girl wielded—quite without being conscious of it: he
granted her that grace—was too potent.  It was dangerous, and he knew
it. Even imaginative and very unpractical people can be in some things
surprisingly matter-of-fact, and Ste. Marie was matter-of-fact about
this.  The girl had made a mysterious and unprecedented appeal to him at
his very first sight of her, long before, and ever since that time she
had continued, intermittently at least, to haunt his dreams.  Now he was
in the very house with her.  It was quite possible that he might see her
and speak with her every day, and he knew there was peril in that.

He closed his eyes and she came to him, dark and beautiful, magnetically
vital, spreading enchantment about her like a fragrance.  She sat beside
him on the moss-stained bench in the garden, holding out her hand
cupwise, and a sunbeam lay in the hand like a little golden fluttering
bird.  His thoughts ran back to that first morning when he had narrowly
escaped death by poison.  He remembered the girl’s agony of fear and
horror.  He felt her hands once more upon his shoulders, and he was
aware that his breath was coming faster and that his heart beat quickly.
He got to his feet and went across to one of the windows, and he stood
there for a long time frowning out into the summer day. If ever in his
life, he said to himself with some deliberation, he was to need a cool
and clear head, faculties unclouded and unimpaired by emotion, it was
now in these next few days.  Much more than his own well-being depended
upon him now.  The fates of a whole family and quite possibly the lives
of some of them were in his hands.  He must not fail and he must not, in
any least way, falter.

For enemies he had a band of desperate adventurers, and the very boy
himself, the centre and reason for the whole plot, had been, in some
incomprehensible way, so played upon that he too was against him.

The man standing by the window forced himself quite deliberately to look
the plain facts in the face. He compelled himself to envisage this
beautiful girl with her tragic eyes for just what his reason knew her to
be—an adventuress, a decoy, a lure to a callow impressionable foolish
lad, the tool of that arch-villain Stewart and of the lesser villain her
father. It was like standing by and watching something lovely and
pitiful vilely befouled.  It turned his heart sick within him, but he
held himself to the task.  He brought to aid him the vision of his lady
in whose cause he was pursuing this adventure.  For strength and
determination he reached eye and hand to her where she sat enthroned,
calm-browed, serene.

For the first time since the beginning of all things his lady failed
him, and Ste. Marie turned cold with fear.

Where was that splendid frenzy that had been wont to sweep him all in an
instant into upper air—set his feet upon the stars?  Where was it?  The
man gave a sudden voiceless cry of horror.  The wings that had such
countless times upborne him fluttered weakly near the earth and could
not mount. His lady was there: through infinite space he was aware of
her, but she was cold and aloof and her eyes gazed very serenely beyond,
at something he could not see.

He knew well enough that the fault lay somewhere within himself.  She
was as she had ever been, but he lacked the strength to rise to her.
Why?  Why?  He searched himself with a desperate earnestness, but he
could find no answer to his questioning.  In himself, as in her, there
had come no change.  She was still to him all that she ever had been—the
star of his destiny, the pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, to
guide him on his path.  Where then the fine pure fervour that should, at
thought of her, whirl him on high and make a god of him?

He stood wrapped in bewilderment and despair, for he could find no
answer.

In plain words, in commonplace black and white, the man’s anguish has an
over-fanciful, a wellnigh absurd look, but to Ste. Marie the thing was
very real and terrible: as real and as terrible as, to a half-starved
monk in his lonely cell, the sudden failure of the customary exaltation
of spirit after a night’s long prayer.

He went after a time back to the bed and lay down there, with one
upflung arm across his eyes to shut out the light.  He was filled with a
profound dejection and a sense of hopelessness.  Through all the long
week of his imprisonment he had been cheerful, at times even gay.
However evil his case might have looked, his elastic spirits had mounted
above all difficulties and cares, confident in the face of apparent
defeat.  Now at last he lay still, bruised, as it were, and battered and
weary.  The flame of courage burnt very low in him.  From sheer
exhaustion he fell after a time into a troubled sleep, but even there
the enemy followed him and would not let him rest.  He seemed to himself
to be in a place of shadows and fear.  He strained his eyes to make out
above him the bright clear star of guidance, for so long as that shone
he was safe, but something had come between—cloud or mist—and his star
shone dimly in fitful glimpses.

On the next morning he went out once more, with old Michel, into the
garden.  He went with a stronger heart, for the morning had renewed his
courage, as bright fresh mornings do.  From the anguish of the day
before he held himself carefully aloof.  He kept his mind away from all
thought of it, and gave his attention to the things about him. It would
return doubtless in the slow idle hours; he would have to face it again,
and yet again; he would have to contend with it: but for the present he
put it out of his thoughts, for there were things to do.

It was no more than human of him—and certainly it was very
characteristic of Ste. Marie—that he should be half glad and half
disappointed at not finding Coira O’Hara in her place at the _rond
point_. It left him free to do what he wished to do—make a careful
reconnaissance of the whole garden enclosure—but it left him empty of
something he had, without conscious thought, looked forward to.

His wounded leg was stronger and more flexible than on the day before:
it burnt and prickled less, and could be bent a little at the knee with
small distress, so he led the old Michel at a good pace down the length
of the enclosure, past the rose gardens—a tangle of unkempt
sweetness—and so to the opposite wall.  He found the gates there, very
formidable-looking, made of vertical iron bars connected by cross pieces
and an ornamental scroll.  They were fastened together by a heavy chain
and a padlock.  The lock was covered with rust, as were the gates
themselves, and Ste. Marie observed that the lane outside upon which
they gave was overgrown with turf and moss and even with seedling
shrubs, so he felt sure that this entrance was never used.  The lane, he
noted, swept away to the right, towards Fort d’Issy and not towards the
Clamart road.  He heard, as he stood there, the whirr of a tram from far
away at the left—a tram bound to or from Clamart—and the sound brought
to his mind what he wished to do.  He turned about and began to make his
way round the rose gardens, which were partly enclosed by a low brick
wall some two or three feet high.  Beyond them the trees and shrubbery
were not set out in orderly rows as they were near the house, but grew
at will without hindrance or care.  It was like a bit of the Meudon
wood.

He found the going more difficult here for his bad leg, but he pressed
on and in a little while saw before him that wall which skirted the
Clamart road.  He felt in his pocket for the four sealed and stamped
letters, but just then the old Michel spoke behind him.

"_Pardon, monsieur!  Il n’est pas permis._"

"What is not permitted?" demanded Ste. Marie, wheeling about.

"To approach that wall, monsieur," said the old man with an incredibly
gnome-like and apologetic grin.

Ste. Marie gave an exclamation of disgust.

"Is it believed that I could leap over it?" he asked.  "A matter of five
metres?  _Merci non_! I am not so agile.  You flatter me."

The old Michel spread out his two gnarled hands.

"_Pas de ma faute_.  I have orders, monsieur.  It will be my painful
duty to shoot if monsieur approaches that wall."  He turned his strange
head on one side and regarded Ste. Marie with his sharp and bead-like
eye.  The smile of apology still distorted his face, and he looked
exactly like the Punchinello in a street show.

Ste. Marie slowly withdrew from his pocket two louis d’or, and held them
before him in the palm of his hand.  He looked down upon them and Michel
looked too, with a gaze so intense that his solitary eye seemed to
project a very little from his withered face.  He was like a hypnotised
old bird.

"_Mon vieux,_" said Ste. Marie.  "I am a man of honour."

"_Sûrement_!  _Sûrement_, monsieur!" said the old Michel politely, but
his hypnotised gaze did not stir so much as a hair’s-breadth.

"_Ça va sans le dire._"

"A man of honour," repeated Ste. Marie.  "When I give my word I keep it.
_Voila_!  I keep it."

"And," said he, "I have here forty francs.  Two louis.  A large sum.  It
is yours, my brave Michel, for the mere trouble of turning your back
just thirty seconds."

"Monsieur," whispered the old man, "it is impossible.  He would kill
me—by torture."

"He will never know," said Ste. Marie, "for I do not mean to try to
escape.  I give you my word of honour that I shall not try to escape.
Besides, I could not climb over that wall, as you see.

"Two louis, Michel!  Forty francs!"

The old man’s hands twisted and trembled round the barrel of the
carbine, and he swallowed once with some difficulty.  He seemed to
hesitate but in the end he shook his head.  It was as if he shook it in
grief over the grave of his firstborn.

"It is impossible," he said again.  "Impossible."  He tore the bead-like
eye away from those two beautiful glowing golden things, and Ste. Marie
saw that there was nothing to be done with him just now.  He slipped the
money back into his pocket with a little sigh, and turned away towards
the rose gardens.

"Ah well," said he.  "Another time perhaps. Another time.  And there are
more louis still, _mon vieux_.  Perhaps three or four.  Who knows?"
Michel emitted a groan of extreme anguish, and they moved on.

But a few moments later Ste. Marie gave a sudden low exclamation and
then a soundless laugh, for he caught sight of a very familiar figure
seated in apparent dejection upon a fallen tree trunk and staring across
the tangled splendour of the roses.



                             *CHAPTER XXII*

                         *A SETTLEMENT REFUSED*


Captain Stewart had good reason to look depressed on that fresh and
beautiful morning when Ste. Marie happened upon him beside the rose
gardens.  Matters had not gone well with him of late.  He was ill and he
was frightened, and he was much nearer than is agreeable to a complete
nervous breakdown.

It seemed to him that perils beset him upon every side: perils both seen
and unseen.  He felt like a man who is hunted in the dark, hard pressed
until his strength is gone and he can go no farther.  He imagined
himself to be that man shivering in the gloom in a strange place, hiding
eyes and ears lest he see or hear something from which he cannot escape.
He imagined the morning light to come very slow and cold and grey, and
in it he saw round about him a silent ring of enemies, the men who had
pursued him and run him down.  He saw them standing there in the pale
dawn, motionless, waiting for the day, and he knew that at last the
chase was over and he was done for.

Crouching alone in the garden with the scent of roses in his nostrils,
he wondered with a great and bitter amazement at that madman—himself of
only a few months ago—who had sat down deliberately, in his proper
senses, to play at cards with Fate, the great winner of all games.  He
wondered if, after all, he had been in his proper senses, for the deed
now loomed before him gigantic and hideous in its criminal folly.  His
mind went drearily back to the beginning of it all, to the tremendous
debts which had hounded him day and night; to his fear to speak of them
with his father, who had never had the least mercy upon gamblers.  He
remembered, as if it were yesterday, the afternoon upon which he learnt
of young Arthur’s quarrel with his grandfather, old David’s senile
anger, and the boy’s tempestuous exit from the house, vowing never to
return.  He remembered his talk with old David later on about the will,
in which he learnt that he was now to have Arthur’s share under certain
conditions.  He remembered how that very evening, three days after his
disappearance, the lad had come secretly to the Rue du Faubourg St.
Honoré, begging his uncle to take him in for a few days, and how, in a
single instant that was like a lightning flash, the Great Idea had come
to him.

What gigantic and appalling madness it had all been!  And yet, for a
time, how easy of execution. For a time.  Now ... He gave another quick
shiver, for his mind came back to what beset him and compassed him round
about.  Perils seen and hidden.

The peril seen was ever before his eyes.  Against the light of day it
loomed a gigantic and portentous shadow, and it threatened him—the
figure of Ste. Marie _who knew_.  His reason told him that, if due care
were used, this danger need not be too formidable, and indeed in his
heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man’s
nerve was broken and, in these days, fear swept wave-like over reason
and had its way with him.  Fear looked up to this looming portentous
shadow, and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and
hopefulness, and (best of all armours) a righteous cause. How was an ill
and tired and wicked old man to fight against these?  It became an
obsession, the figure of this youth: it darkened the sun at noonday, and
at night it stood beside Captain Stewart’s bed in the darkness and
watched him and waited, and the very air he breathed came chill and dark
from its silent presence there.

But there were perils unseen as well as seen.  He felt invisible threads
drawing round him, weaving closer and closer, and he dared not even try
how strong they were lest they prove to be cables of steel.  He was
almost certain that his niece knew something or at the least suspected.
As has already been pointed out, the two saw very little of each other,
but on the occasions of their last few meetings it had seemed to him
that the girl watched him with a strange stare, and tried always to be
in her grandfather’s chamber when he called to make his inquiries. Once,
stirred by a moment’s bravado, he asked her if M. Ste. Marie had
returned from his mysterious absence, and the girl said—

"No.  He has not come back yet, but I expect him soon now—with news of
Arthur.  We shall all be very glad to see him, grandfather and Richard
Hartley and I."

It was not a very consequential speech, and to tell the truth it was
what, in the girl’s own country, would be termed pure "bluff," but to
Captain Stewart it rang harsh and loud with evil significance, and he
went out of that room cold at heart.  What plans were they perfecting
among them?  What invisible nets for his feet?

And there was another thing still.  Within the past two or three days he
had become convinced that his movements were being watched.  (And that
would be Richard Hartley at work, he said to himself.)  Faces vaguely
familiar began to confront him in the street, in restaurants and cafés.
Once he thought his rooms had been ransacked during his absence at La
Lierre, though his servant stoutly maintained that they had never been
left unoccupied save for a half-hour’s marketing.  Finally, on the day
before this morning by the rose gardens, he was sure that as he came out
from the city in his car he was followed at a long distance by another
motor. He saw it behind him after he had left the city gate, the Porte
de Versailles, and he saw it again after he had left the main route at
Issy, and entered the little Rue Barbes which led to La Lierre.  Of
course he promptly did the only possible thing under the circumstances.
He dashed on past the long stretch of wall, swung into the main avenue
beyond and continued, through Clamart, to the Meudon wood, as if he were
going to St. Cloud.  In the labyrinth of roads and lanes there he came
to a halt, and after a half-hour’s wait ran slowly back to La Lierre.

There was no further sign of the other car, the pursuer, if so it had
been; but he passed two or three men on bicycles and others walking, and
what one of these might not be a spy paid to track him down?

It had frightened him badly, that hour of suspense and flight, and he
determined to remain at La Lierre for at least a few days, and wrote to
his servant in the Rue du Faubourg to forward his letters there under
the false name by which he had hired the place.

He was thinking very wearily of all these things as he sat on the fallen
tree trunk in the garden and stared unseeing across tangled ranks of
roses. And after awhile his thoughts, as they were wont to do, returned
to Ste. Marie—that looming shadow which darkened the sunlight, that
incubus of fear which clung to him night and day.  He was so absorbed
that he did not hear sounds which might otherwise have roused him.  He
heard nothing, saw nothing, save that which his fevered mind projected,
until a voice spoke his name.

He looked over his shoulder thinking that O’Hara had sought him out.  He
turned a little on the tree trunk to see more easily, and the image of
his dread stood there a living and very literal shadow against the
daylight.

Captain Stewart’s overstrained nerves were in no state to bear a sudden
shock.  He gave a voiceless, whispering cry, and he began to tremble
very violently so that his teeth chattered.  All at once he got to his
feet and began to stumble away backwards, but a projecting limb of the
fallen tree caught him and held him fast.  It must be that the man was
in a sort of frenzy.  He must have seen through a red mist just then,
for when he found that he could not escape his hand went swiftly to his
coat pocket, and in his white and contorted face there was murder, plain
and unmistakable.

[Illustration: "His hand went swiftly to his coat pocket."]

Ste. Marie was too lame to spring aside or to dash upon the man across
intervening obstacles and defend himself.  He stood still in his place
and waited.  And it was characteristic of him that at that moment he
felt no fear, only a fine sense of exhilaration.  Open danger had no
terrors for him. It was secret peril that unnerved him, as in the matter
of the poison a week before.

Captain Stewart’s hand fell away empty and Ste. Marie laughed.

"Left it at the house?" said he.  "You seem to have no luck, Stewart.
First the cat drinks the poison and then you leave your pistol at home.
Dear!  dear!  I’m afraid you’re careless."

Captain Stewart stared at the younger man under his brows.  His face was
grey and he was still shivering, but the sudden agony of fear, which had
been after all only a jangle of nerves, was gone away. He looked upon
Ste. Marie’s gay and untroubled face with a dull wonder, and he began to
feel a grudging admiration for the man who could face death without even
turning pale.  He pulled out his watch and looked at it.

"I did not know," he said, "that this was your hour out of doors."  As a
matter of fact he had quite forgotten that the arrangement existed. When
he had first heard of it he had protested vigorously, but had been
overborne by O’Hara with the plea that they owed their prisoner
something for having come near to poisoning him, and Stewart did not
care to have any further attention called to that matter: it had already
put a severe strain upon the relations at La Lierre.

"Well," observed Ste. Marie, "I told you you were careless.  That proves
it.  Come!  Can’t we sit down for a little chat?  I haven’t seen you
since I was your guest at the other address—the town address.  It seems
to have become a habit of mine, doesn’t it?  being your guest."  He
laughed cheerfully, but Captain Stewart continued to regard him without
smiling.

"If you imagine," said the elder man, "that this place belongs to me you
are mistaken.  I came here to-day to make a visit."  But Ste. Marie sat
down at one end of the tree trunk and shook his head.

"Oh, come, come!" said he.  "Why keep up the pretence?  You must know
that I know all about the whole affair Why, bless you, I know it
all—even to the provisions of the will.  Did you think I stumbled in
here by accident?  Well, I didn’t, though I don’t mind admitting to you
that I remained by accident."  He glanced over his shoulder towards the
one-eyed Michel, who stood near by regarding the two with some alarm.

Captain Stewart looked up sharply at the mention of the will, and he
wetted his dry lips with his tongue.  But after a moment’s hesitation he
sat down upon the tree trunk, and he seemed to shrink a little together,
when his limbs and shoulders had relaxed, so that he looked small and
feeble, like a very tired old man.  He remained silent for a few
moments, but at last he spoke without raising his eyes.  He said—

"And now that you—imagine yourself to know so very much, what do you
expect to do about it?" Ste. Marie laughed again.

"Ah, that would be telling!" he cried.  "You see, in one way I have the
advantage (though outwardly all the advantage seems to be with your
side): I know all about your game.  I may call it a game?  Yes?  But you
don’t know mine.  You don’t know what I—what we may do at any moment.
That’s where we have the better of you."

"It would seem to me," said Captain Stewart wearily, "that since you are
a prisoner here and very unlikely to escape, we know with great accuracy
what you will do—and what you will not."

"Yes," admitted Ste. Marie.  "It would seem so.  It certainly would seem
so.  But you never can tell, can you?" And at that the elder man frowned
and looked away.  Thereafter another brief silence fell between the two,
but at its end Ste. Marie spoke in a new tone, a very serious tone. He
said—

"Stewart, listen a moment!" and the other turned a sharp gaze upon him.

"You mustn’t forget," said Ste. Marie, speaking slowly as if to choose
his words with care—"you mustn’t forget that I am not alone in this
matter. You mustn’t forget that there’s Richard Hartley—and that there
are others too.  I’m a prisoner, yes, I’m helpless here for the
present—perhaps—perhaps, but they are not, _and they know, Stewart.
They know_."

Captain Stewart’s face remained grey and still, but his hands twisted
and shook upon his knees until he hid them.

"I know well enough what you’re waiting for," continued Ste. Marie.
"You’re waiting—you’ve got to wait, for Arthur Benham to come of age,
or, better yet, for your father to die."  He paused and shook his head.

"It’s no good.  You can’t hold out as long as that—not by half.  We
shall have won the game long before.  Listen to me!  Do you know what
would occur if your father should take a serious turn for the worse
to-night—or at any time?  Do you?  Well, I’ll tell you.  A piece of
information would be given him that would make another change in that
will just as quickly as a pen could write the words.  That’s what would
happen."

"That is a lie!" said Captain Stewart in a dry whisper.  "A lie."  And
Ste. Marie contented himself with a slight smile by way of answer.  He
was by no means sure that what he said was true, but he argued that
since Hartley suspected or, perhaps by this time, knew so much, he would
certainly not allow old David to die without doing what he could do in
an effort to save young Arthur’s fortune from a rascal.  In any event,
true or false, the words had had the desired effect.  Captain Stewart
was plainly frightened by them.

"May I make a suggestion?" asked the younger man.  The other did not
answer him and he made it.

"Give it up!" said he.  "You’re riding for a tremendous fall, you know.
We shall smash you completely in the end.  It’ll mean worse than
ruin—much worse.  Give it up, now, before you’re too late.  Help me to
send for Hartley, and we’ll take the boy back to his home.  Some story
can be managed that will leave you out of the thing altogether, and
those who know will hold their tongues.  It’s your last chance, Stewart.
I advise you to take it."

Captain Stewart turned his grey face slowly and looked at the other man
with a sort of dull and apathetic wonder.

"Are you mad?" he asked in a voice which was altogether without feeling
of any kind.  "Are you quite mad?"

"On the contrary," said Ste. Marie, "I am quite sane, and I’m offering
you a chance to save yourself before it’s too late.

"Don’t misunderstand me!" he said.  "I am not urging this out of any
sympathy for you.  I urge it because it will bring about what I wish a
little more quickly, also because it will save your family from the
disgrace of your smash-up.  That’s why I’m making my suggestion."

Captain Stewart was silent for a little while, but after that he got
heavily to his feet.

"I think you must be quite mad," said he, as before, in a voice
altogether devoid of expression. "I cannot talk with madmen."  He
beckoned to the old Michel, who stood near-by leaning upon his carbine,
and when the gardener had approached, he said—

"Take this—prisoner back to his room!"

Ste. Marie rose with a little sigh.  He said—

"I’m sorry, but you’ll admit I have done my best for you.  I’ve warned
you.  I shan’t do it again.  We shall smash you now, without mercy."

"Take him away!" cried Captain Stewart in a sudden loud voice, and the
old Michel touched his charge upon the shoulder.  So Ste. Marie went
without further words.  From a little distance he looked back, and the
other man still stood by the fallen tree trunk, bent a little, his arms
hanging lax beside him, and his face, Ste. Marie thought fancifully, was
like the face of a man damned.



                            *CHAPTER XXIII*

                     *THE LAST ARROW—AND A PROMISE*


The one bird-like eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with a
glance of mingled cunning and humour.  It might have been said to
twinkle.

"To the east, monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.

"Precisely!" said Ste. Marie.  "To the east, _mon vieux_."  It was the
morning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart beside
the rose gardens.

The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently came
to the spot where a certain trespasser had once leapt down from the top
of the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel halted
and leant upon the barrel of his carbine.  With an air of complete
detachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a reverie, he gazed away
over the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under the
row of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a passer-by
might have thought the man looking for figs on thistles—for lilacs in
late July.  He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks and
bright eyes; he emerged, after some moments, moving slowly, with
downcast head.

"There are no lilac blooms now, monsieur," observed the old Michel, and
his prisoner said in a low voice—

"No, _mon vieux_.  No.  There are none."  He sighed and drew a long
breath.  So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a little
pale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behind
him: the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge.  But in the
end Ste. Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by the
gardener.  They went across the broad park, past the double row of
larches, through that space where the chestnut trees stood in straight
close rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road to
Clamart.  Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of the
four letters—the last there could be, for he had no more stamps.  The
others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the
day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel.  As he had
expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much
for that gnome-like being.

One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked
loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope in such a manner that
it would drop out when the letter struck the ground beyond.  And each
following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under
the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July.  But
there had been nothing there.

"Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie. And the old man said from a
little distance—

"It is turned, monsieur.  I see nothing.  Monsieur throws little stones
at the birds to amuse himself. It does not concern me."

Ste. Marie slipped a pebble under the flap of the envelope and threw his
letter over the wall.  It went like a soaring bird, whirling
horizontally, and it must have fallen far out in the middle of the road
near the tramway.  For the third time that morning the prisoner drew a
sigh.  He said—

"You may turn round now, my friend," and the old Michel faced him.

"We have shot our last arrow," said he.  "If this also fails, I
think—well, I think the _bon Dieu_ will have to help us then.

"Michel," he inquired, "do you know how to pray?"

"Sacred thousand swine, no!" cried the ancient gnome in something
between astonishment and horror.  "No, monsieur.  _Pas mon metier, ça!_"
He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a
shop window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot.  But all at once a gleam
of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye.

"There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "_Toujours sur les genoux,
cette imbécile la._"

"In that case," said Ste. Marie, "you might ask the lady to say one
little extra prayer for—the pebble I threw at the birds just now.
_Hein?_"  He withdrew from his pocket the last two louis d’or, and
Michel took them in a trembling hand. There remained but the note of
fifty francs and some silver.

"The prayer shall be said, monsieur," declared the gardener.  "It shall
be said.  She shall pray all night or I will kill her."

"Thank you!" said Ste. Marie.  "You are kindness itself.  A gentle
soul."

They turned away to retrace their steps, and Michel rubbed the side of
his head with a reflective air.

"The old one is a madman," said he.  The "old one" meant Captain
Stewart.  "A madman.  Each day he is madder, and this morning he struck
me—here on the head, because I was too slow. Eh! a little more of that,
and—who knows?  Just a little more, a small little!  Am I a dog, to be
beaten?  _Hein_?  _Je ne le crois pas_.  _Hè_!"  He called Captain
Stewart two unprintable names, and, after a moment’s thought, he called
him an animal, which is not so much of an anti-climax as it may seem,
because to call anybody an animal in French is a serious matter.

The gardener was working himself up into something of a quiet passion,
and Ste. Marie said—

"Softly, my friend!  Softly!"  It occurred to him that the man’s
resentment might be of use, later on, and he said—

"You speak the truth.  The old one is an animal, and he is also a great
rascal."  But Michel betrayed the makings of a philosopher.  He said
with profound conviction—

"Monsieur, all men are great rascals.  It is I who say it."  And at that
Ste. Marie had to laugh.


He had not consciously directed his feet, but without direction they led
him round the corner of the rose gardens and towards the _rond point_.
He knew well whom he would find there.  She had not failed him during
the past three days.  Each morning he had found her in her place, and,
for his allotted hour—which more than once stretched itself out to
nearly two hours, if he had but known—they had sat together on the stone
bench or, tiring of that, had walked under the trees beyond.

Long afterwards Ste. Marie looked back upon these hours with, among
other emotions, a great wonder, at himself and at her.  It seemed to him
then one of the strangest relationships—intimacies, for it might well be
so called—that ever existed between a man and a woman, and he was amazed
at the ease, the unconsciousness with which it had come about.

But during this time he did not allow himself to wonder or to
examine—scarcely even to think. The hours were golden hours, unrelated,
he told himself, to anything else in his life or in his interest. They
were like pleasant dreams, very sweet while they endured, but to be put
away and forgotten upon the waking.  Only, in that long afterwards, he
knew that they had not been put away, that they had been with him
always, that the morning hour had remained in his thoughts all the rest
of the long day, and that he had waked upon the morrow with a keen and
exquisite sense of something sweet to come.

It was a strange fool’s paradise that the man dwelt in, and in some
small vague measure he must, even at the time, have known it, for it is
certain that he deliberately held himself away from thought—realisation;
that he deliberately shut his eyes, held his ears, lest he should hear
or see.

That he was not faithless to his duty has been shown.  He did his utmost
there, but he was for the time helpless save for efforts to communicate
with Richard Hartley, and those efforts could consume no more than ten
minutes out of the weary day.

So he drifted, wilfully blind to bearings, wilfully deaf to sound of
warning or peril, and he found a companionship sweeter and fuller and
more perfect than he had ever before known in all his life, though that
is not to say very much, because sympathetic companionships between men
and women are very rare indeed, and Ste. Marie had never experienced
anything which could fairly be called by that name. He had had, as has
been related, many flirtations and not a few so-called love affairs; but
neither of these two sorts of intimacies are of necessity true
intimacies at all: men often feel varying degrees of love for women
without the least true understanding or sympathy or real companionship.

He was wondering as he bore round the corner of the rose gardens, on
this day, in just what mood he would find her.  It seemed to him that in
their brief acquaintance he had seen her in almost all the moods there
are, from bitter gloom to the irrepressible gaiety of a little child.
He had told her once that she was like an organ, and she had laughed at
him for being pretentious and high-flown, though she could upon occasion
be quite high-flown enough herself for all ordinary purposes.

He reached the cleared margin of the _rond point_, and a little cold
fear stirred in him when he did not hear her singing under her breath,
as she was wont to do when alone, but he went forward, and she was there
in her place upon the stone bench.  She had been reading, but the book
lay forgotten beside her and she sat idle, her head laid back against
the thick stems of shrubbery which grew behind, her hands in her lap.
It was a warm still morning with the promise of a hot afternoon, and the
girl was dressed in something very thin and transparent and
cool-looking, open in a little square at the throat and with sleeves
which came only to her elbows.  The material was pale and dull yellow
with very vaguely defined green leaves in it, and against it the girl’s
dark and clear skin glowed rich and warm and living, as pearls glow and
seem to throb against the dead tints of the fabric upon which they are
laid.

She did not move when he came before her, but looked up to him gravely
without stirring her head.

[Illustration: "She did not move when he came before her."]

"I didn’t hear you come," said she.  "You don’t drag your left leg any
more.  You walk almost as well as if you had never been wounded."

"I’m almost all right again," he answered.  "I suppose I couldn’t run or
jump, but I certainly can walk very much like a human being.  May I sit
down?"

Mlle. O’Hara put out one hand and drew the book closer to make a place
for him on the stone bench, and he settled himself comfortably there,
turned a little so that he was facing towards her.

It was indicative of the state of intimacy into which the two had grown
that they did not make polite conversation with each other, but indeed
were silent for some little time after Ste. Marie had seated himself.
It was he who spoke first.  He said—

"You look vaguely classical to-day.  I have been trying to guess why and
I cannot.  Perhaps it’s because your—what does one say: frock, dress,
gown? because it is cut out square at the throat."

"If you mean by classical, Greek," said she, "it wouldn’t be square at
the neck at all.  It would be pointed—V-shaped.  And it would be very
different in other ways too.  You are not an observing person after
all."

"For all that," insisted Ste. Marie, "you look classical.  You look like
some lady one reads about in Greek poems—Helen or Iphigenia or Medea or
somebody."

"Helen had yellow hair, hadn’t she?" objected Mlle. O’Hara.  "I should
think I probably look more like Medea: Medea in Colchis before Jason——"
She seemed suddenly to realise that she had hit upon an unfortunate
example, for she stopped short in the middle of her sentence, and a wave
of colour swept up over her throat and face.  For a moment Ste. Marie
did not understand, then he gave a low exclamation, for Medea certainly
had been an unhappy name.  He remembered something that Richard Hartley
had said about that lady a long time before.

He made another mistake, for to lessen the moment’s embarrassment he
gave speech to the first thought which entered his mind.  He said—

"Some one once remarked that you looked like the young Juno—before
marriage.  I expect it’s true too."

She turned upon him swiftly.

"Who said that?" she demanded.  "Who has ever talked to you about me?"

"I beg your pardon!" he said.  "I seem to be singularly stupid this
morning.  A mild lunacy. You must forgive me, if you can.  To tell you
what you ask would be to enter upon forbidden ground, and I mustn’t do
that."

"Still, I should like to know," said the girl watching him with sombre
eyes.

"Well then," said he, "it was a little Jewish photographer in the
Boulevard de la Madeleine."  And she said—

"Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.

"We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal
appearance," she said presently. "There must be other topics, if one
should try hard to find them.  Tell me stories!  You told me stories
yesterday; tell me more!  You seem to be in a classical mood.  You shall
be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress.  Tell me
about wanderings and things!  Have you any more islands for me?"

"Yes!" said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I have
more islands for you.  The seas are full of islands.  What kind do you
want?"

"A warm one," said the girl.  "Even on a hot day like this I choose a
warm one, because I hate the cold."  She settled herself more
comfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like a
child’s happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.

"I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would like
because it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of all
kinds. As well as I could make out when I went there nobody on the
island had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you’d like it.  The
people there are brown, and they’re as beautiful as their own island.
They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair and they very seldom do
any work."

"I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O’Hara. "I want to go there now,
this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"

"It’s in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa and
Fiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name is
Vavau.  It’s one of the Tongans.  It’s a high, volcanic island, not a
flat, coral one like the southern Tongans.  I came to it one evening,
sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like a
single big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against the
sunset.  It was very impressive.  But it isn’t a single mountain, it’s a
lot of high broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and set
round a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and at
the inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few white
traders.

"I’m afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head—"I’m afraid I can’t tell
you about it, after all.  I can’t seem to find the words.  You can’t put
into language—at least I can’t—those slow hot island days that are never
too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or the island nights
that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on it than anything
else.  You can’t describe the smell of orange-groves and the look of
palm-trees against the sky. You can’t tell about the sweet simple
natural hospitality of the natives.  They’re like little unsuspicious
children.

"In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just
because it’s too big for me.  I can only say that it’s beautiful and
unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go
back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go
hang."

Mlle. O’Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy
eyes, and her lips trembled a little.

"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again.  "I want to go there—and
rest—and forget everything!"

She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment.

"Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried.  "Oh yes, I know.  I
asked you, but——  Can’t you see?

"To hide oneself away in a place like that!" she said.  "To let the sun
warm you and the trade winds blow away—all that had ever tortured you!
Just to rest and be at peace!"

She turned her eyes to him once more.

"You needn’t be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island!
I see it.  I feel it.  It doesn’t need many words.  I can shut my eyes,
and I am there.  But it was a little cruel.  Oh, I know, I asked for it.

"It’s like the garden of the Hesperides, isn’t it?"

"Very like it," said Ste. Marie, "because there are oranges—groves of
them.  (And they were the golden apples, I take it.)  Also it is very
far away from the world, and the people live in complete and careless
ignorance of how the world goes on. Emperors and kings die, wars come
and go; but they hear only a little faint echo of it all, long
afterwards, and even that doesn’t interest them."

"I know," she said.  "I understand.  Didn’t you know I’d understand?"

"Yes," said he, nodding.  "I suppose I did. We—feel things rather alike,
I suppose.  We don’t have to say them all out."

"I wonder," she said in a low voice, "if I’m glad or sorry."  She stared
under her brows at the man beside her.

"For it is very probable that when we have left La Lierre you and I
shall never meet again.  I wonder if I’m——"  For some obscure reason she
broke off there and turned her eyes away, and she remained without
speaking for a long time.  Her mind, as she sat there, seemed to go back
to that southern island and to its peace and loveliness, for Ste. Marie,
who watched her, saw a little smile come to her lips, and he saw her
eyes half close and grow soft and tender, as if what they saw were very
sweet to her.  He watched many different expressions come upon the
girl’s face and go again, but at last he seemed to see the old
bitterness return there and struggle with something wistful and eager.

"I envy you your wide wanderings," she said presently.  "Oh, I envy you
more than I can find any words for.  Your will is the wind’s will.  You
go where your fancy leads you, and you’re free—free.

"We have wandered, you know," said she, "my father and I.  I can’t
remember when we ever had a home to live in.  But that is—that is
different—a different kind of wandering."

"Yes," said Ste. Marie.  "Yes, perhaps."  And within himself he said,
with sorrow and pity: "Different indeed!"

As if at some sudden thought the girl looked up at him quickly.

"Did that sound regretful?" she asked.  "Did what I say sound—disloyal
to my father?  I didn’t mean it to.  I don’t want you to think that I
regret it.  I don’t.  It has meant being with my father.  Wherever he
has gone I have gone with him, and if anything ever has been—unpleasant,
I was willing, oh, I was glad, glad to put up with it for his sake and
because I could be with him.  If I have made his life a little happier
by sharing it, I am glad of everything.  I don’t regret."

"And yet," said Ste. Marie gently, "it must have been hard sometimes."
He pictured to himself that roving existence lived among such people as
O’Hara must have known, and it sent a hot wave of anger and distress
over him from head to foot. But the girl said—

"I had my father.  The rest of it didn’t matter in the face of that."

After a little silence she said—

"M. Ste. Marie!"  And the man said—

"What is it, mademoiselle?"

"You spoke the other day," she said, hesitating over her words, "about
my aunt, Lady Margaret Craith.  I suppose I ought not to ask you more
about her, for my father quarrelled with his people very long ago, and
he broke with them altogether. But—surely it can do no harm—just for a
moment—just a very little!  Could you tell me a little about her, M.
Ste. Marie?  What she is like and—and how she lives—and things like
that?"

So Ste. Marie told her all that he could of the old Irishwoman who lived
alone in her great house and ruled with a slack Irish hand, a sweet
Irish heart, over tenants and dependants.  And when he had come to an
end the girl drew a little sigh and said—

"Thank you!  I am so glad to hear of her.  I—wish everything were
different, so that——I——think I should love her very much if I might."

"Mademoiselle," said Ste. Marie, "will you promise me something?"

She looked at him with her sombre eyes, and after a little she said—

"I am afraid you must tell me first what it is. I cannot promise
blindly."  He said—

"I want you to promise me that if anything ever should happen—any
difficulty, trouble—anything to put you in the position of needing care
or help or sympathy——"

But she broke in upon him with a swift alarm, crying—

"What do you mean?  You’re trying to hint at something that I don’t
know.  What difficulty or trouble could happen to me?  Please tell me
just what you mean."

"I’m not hinting at any mystery," said Ste. Marie. "I don’t know of
anything that is going to happen to you, but—will you forgive me for
saying it?—your father is, I take it, often exposed to danger of various
sorts.  I’m afraid I can’t quite express myself, only, if any trouble
should come to you, mademoiselle, will you promise me to go to Lady
Margaret, your aunt, and tell her who you are, and let her care for
you?"

"There was an absolute break," she said. "Complete."  But the man shook
his head, saying—

"Lady Margaret won’t think of that.  She’ll think only of you—that she
can mother you, perhaps save you grief—and of herself, that in her old
age she has a daughter.  It would make a lonely old woman very happy,
mademoiselle."

The girl bent her head away from him, and Ste. Marie saw, for the first
time since he had known her, tears in her eyes.  After a long time she
said—

"I promise then.

"But," she said, "it is very unlikely that it should ever come about—for
more than one reason. Very unlikely."

"Still, mademoiselle," said he, "I am glad you have promised.  This is
an uncertain world.  One never can tell what will come with the
to-morrows."

"I can," the girl said with a little tired smile that Ste. Marie did not
understand.  "I can tell. I can see all the to-morrows—a long, long row
of them.  I know just what they’re going to be like—to the very end."

But the man rose to his feet and looked down upon her as she sat before
him.  And he shook his head.

"You are mistaken," he said.  "Pardon me, but you are mistaken.  No one
can see to-morrow—or the end of anything.  The end may surprise you very
much."

"I wish it would!" cried Mlle. O’Hara.  "Oh, I wish it would!"



                             *CHAPTER XXIV*

                       *THE JOINT IN THE ARMOUR*


Ste. Marie put down a book as O’Hara came into the room and rose to meet
his visitor.

"I’m compelled," said the Irishman, "to put you on your honour to-day if
you are to go out as usual.  Michel has been sent on an errand, and I am
busy with letters.  I shall have to put you on your honour not to make
any effort to escape.  Is that agreed to?  I shall trust you altogether.
You could manage to scramble over the wall somehow, I suppose, and get
clean away; but I think you won’t try it if you give your word."

"I give my word gladly," said Ste. Marie.  "And thanks very much.
You’ve been uncommonly kind to me here.  I—regret more than I can say
that we—that we find ourselves on opposite sides, as it were.  I wish we
were fighting for the same cause."

The Irishman looked at the younger man sharply for an instant, and he
made as if he would speak, but seemed to think better of it.  In the end
he said—

"Yes, quite so!  Quite so!  Of course you understand that any
consideration I have used towards you has been by way of making amends
for—for an unfortunate occurrence."

Ste. Marie laughed.

"The poison!" said he.  "Yes, I know.  And, of course, I know who was at
the bottom of that. By the way, I met Stewart in the garden the other
day.  Did he tell you?  He was rather nervous and tried to shoot me, but
he had left his revolver at the house—at least, it wasn’t in his pocket
when he reached for it."

O’Hara’s hard face twitched suddenly, as if in anger, and he gave an
exclamation under his breath, so the younger man inferred that "old
Charlie" had not spoken of their encounter.  And after that the Irishman
once more turned a sharp, frowning glance upon his prisoner as if he
were puzzled about something.  But, as before, he stopped short of
speech and at last turned away.

"Just a moment!" said the younger man.  He asked—

"Is it fair to inquire how long I may expect to be confined here?  I
don’t want to presume upon your good nature too far, but if you could
tell me I should be glad to know."

The Irishman hesitated a moment, and then said—

"I don’t know why I shouldn’t answer that. It can’t help you, so far as
I can see, to do anything which would hinder us.  You’ll stay until
Arthur Benham comes of age, which will be in about two months from now."

"Yes," said the other.  "Thanks!  I thought so.  Until young Arthur
comes of age and receives his patrimony, or until old David Stewart
dies. Of course, that might happen at any hour."

The Irishman said—

"I don’t quite see what—Ah, yes, to be sure! Yes, I see.  Well, I should
count upon eight weeks, if I were you.  In eight weeks the boy will be
independent of them all, and we shall go to England for the wedding."

"The wedding?" cried Ste. Marie.  "What wedding?—Ah!"

"Arthur Benham and my daughter are to be married," said O’Hara, "so soon
as he reaches his majority.  I thought you knew that."

In a very vague fashion he realised that he had expected it.  And still
the definite words came to him with a shock which was like a physical
blow, and he turned his back with a man’s natural instinct to hide his
feeling.  Certainly that was the logical conclusion to be drawn from
known premises.  That was to be the O’Haras’ reward for their labour.
To Stewart the great fortune, to the O’Haras a good marriage for the
girl and an assured future.  That was reward enough surely for a few
weeks of angling and decoying and luring and lying.  That was what she
had meant, on the day before, by saying that she could see all the
to-morrows.  He realised that he must have been expecting something like
this, but the thought turned him sick nevertheless.  He could not forget
the girl as he had come to know her during the past week.  He could not
face with any calmness the thought of her as the adventuress who had
lured poor Arthur Benham on to destruction.  It was an impossible
thought.  He could have laughed at it in scornful anger, and yet—What
else was she?

He began to realise that his action in turning his back upon the other
man in the middle of a conversation must look very odd, and he faced
round again trying to drive from his expression the pain and distress
which he knew must be there plain to see.  But he need not have troubled
himself, for the other man was standing before the sext window and
looking out into the morning sunlight, and his hard bony face had so
altered that Ste. Marie stared at him with open amazement.  He thought
O’Hara must be ill.

"I want to see her married!" cried the Irishman suddenly.  And it was a
new voice, a voice Ste. Marie did not know.  It shook a little with an
emotion that sat uncouthly upon this grim stern man.

"I want to see her married and safe!" he said. "I want her to be rid of
this damnable, roving, cheap existence.  I want her to be rid of me and
my rotten friends and my rotten life."  He chafed his hands together
before him, and his tired eyes fixed themselves upon something that he
seemed to see out of the window, and glared at it fiercely.

"I should like," said he, "to die on the day after her wedding, and so
be out of her way for ever.  I don’t want her to have any shadows cast
over her from the past.  I don’t want her to open closet doors and find
skeletons there.  I want her to be free—free to live the sort of life
she was born to and has a right to."

He turned sharply upon the younger man.

"You’ve seen her!" he cried.  "You’ve talked to her, you know her!
Think of that girl dragged about Europe with me ever since she was a
little child!  Think of the people she’s had to know, the things she’s
had to see!  Do you wonder that I want to have her free of it all,
married and safe and comfortable and in peace?  Do you?  I tell you it
has driven me as nearly mad as a man can be. But I couldn’t go mad
because I had to take care of her.  I couldn’t even die because she’d
have been left alone, without any one to look out for her.

"She wouldn’t leave me!  I could have settled her somewhere in some
quiet place where she’d have been quit at least of shady rotten people,
but she wouldn’t have it.  She’s stuck to me always through good times
and bad.  She’s kept my heart up when I’d have been ready to cut my
throat if I’d been alone.  She’s been the—bravest and faithfullest—Well
I—And look at her!  Look at her now!  Think of what she’s had to see and
know—the people she’s had to live with—and look at her!  Has any of it
stuck to her?  Has it cheapened her in any littlest way?  No, by God!
She has come through it all like a—like a Sister of Charity through a
city slum—like an angel through the dark!"

The Irishman broke off speaking, for his voice was beyond control, but
after a moment he went on again more calmly—

"This boy, this young Benham, is a fool, but he’s not a mean fool.
She’ll make a man of him. And, married to him, she’ll have the comforts
that she ought to have and the care and—freedom.  She’ll have a chance
to live the life that she had a right to, among the sort of people she
has a right to know. I’m not afraid for her.  She’ll do her part and
more.  She’ll hold up her head among duchesses, that girl.  I’m not
afraid for her."

He said this last sentence over several times, standing before the
window and staring out at the sun upon the treetops.  "I’m not afraid
for her.... I’m not afraid for her."  He seemed to have forgotten that
the younger man was in the room, for he did not look towards him again
or pay him any attention for a long while.  He only gazed out of the
window into the fresh morning sunlight, and his face worked and quivered
and his lean hands chafed restlessly together before him.

But at last he seemed to realise where he was, for he turned with a
sudden start, and he stared at Ste. Marie frowning as if the younger man
were some one he had never seen before.  He said—

"Ah, yes, yes!  You were wanting to go out into the garden.  Yes, quite
so!  I—I was thinking of something else.  I seem to be absent-minded of
late.  Don’t let me keep you here!"  He seemed a little embarrassed and
ill at ease, and Ste. Marie said—

"Oh, thanks!  There’s no hurry.  However, I’ll go, I think.  It’s after
eleven.  I understand that I’m on my honour not to climb over the wall
or burrow under it or batter it down.  That’s understood.  I——"

He felt that he ought to say something in acknowledgment of O’Hara’s
long speech about his daughter; but he could think of nothing to say,
and besides, the Irishman seemed not to expect any comment upon his
strange outburst.  So, in the end, Ste. Marie nodded and went out of the
room without further ceremony.

He had been astonished almost beyond words at that sudden and
unlooked-for breakdown of the other man’s impregnable reserve, and dimly
he realised that it must have come out of some very extraordinary
nervous strain; but he himself had been in no state to give the
Irishman’s words the attention and thought that he would have given them
at another time.  His mind, his whole field of mental vision had been
full of one great fact—_the girl was to be married to young Arthur
Benham_. The thing loomed gigantic before him, and, in some strange way,
terrifying.  He could neither see nor think beyond it.  O’Hara’s burst
of confidence had reached his ears very faintly, as if from a great
distance—poignant but only half comprehended words, to be reflected upon
later in their own time.

He stumbled down the ill-lighted stair with fixed, wide, unseeing eyes,
and he said one sentence over and over aloud—as the Irishman standing
beside the window had said another.

"She is going to be married!  She is going to be married!"

It would seem that he must have forgotten his previous half knowledge of
the fact.  It would seem to have remained, as at the first hearing, a
great and appalling shock—thunderous out of a blue sky.

Below in the open his feet led him mechanically straight down under the
trees, through the tangle of shrubbery beyond, and so to the wall under
the cedar.  Arrived there he awoke all at once to his task, and with a
sort of frowning anger shook off the dream which enveloped him.  His
eyes sharpened and grew keen and eager.  He said—

"The last arrow!  God send it reached home!"  And so went in under the
lilac shrubs.

He was there longer than usual: unhampered now he may have made a larger
search, but when at last he emerged Ste. Marie’s hands were over his
face, and his feet dragged slowly like an old man’s feet.

Without knowing that he had stirred he found himself some distance away,
standing still beside a chestnut tree.  A great wave of depression and
fear and hopelessness swept him, and he shivered under it.  He had an
instant’s wild panic, and mad, desperate thoughts surged upon him.  He
saw utter failure confronting him.  He saw himself as helpless as a
little child, his feeble efforts already spent for naught, and, like a
little child, he was afraid.  He would have rushed at that grim
encircling wall and fought his way up and over it, but even as the
impulse raced to his feet the momentary madness left him and he turned
away.  He could not do a dishonourable thing even for all he held
dearest.

He walked on in the direction which lay before him, but he took no heed
of where he went; and Mlle. Coira O’Hara spoke to him twice before he
heard or saw her.



                             *CHAPTER XXV*

                     *COIRA GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY*


They were near the east end of the _rond point_, in a space where fir
trees stood and the ground underfoot was covered with dry needles.

"I was just on my way to—our bench beyond the fountain," said she, and
Ste. Marie nodded, looking upon her sombrely.  It seemed to him that he
looked with new eyes, and after a little time when he did not speak but
only gazed in that strange manner the girl said—

"What is it?  Something has happened.  Please tell me what it is!"
Something like the pale foreshadow of fear came over her beautiful face,
and shrouded her golden voice as if it had been a veil.

"Your father," said Ste. Marie heavily, "has just been telling me—that
you are to marry young Arthur Benham.  He has been telling me."

She drew a quick breath, looking at him, but, after a moment, she said—

"Yes, it is true.  You knew it before, though. Didn’t you?  Do you mean
that you didn’t know it before?  I don’t quite understand.  You must
have known that.

"What in Heaven’s name _did_ you think?" she cried, as if with a sort of
anger at his dulness.

The man rubbed one hand wearily across his eyes.

"I—don’t quite know," said he.  "Yes, I suppose I had thought of it.  I
don’t know.  It came to me with such a—shock!  Yes.  Oh, I don’t know.
I expect I didn’t think at all.  I—just didn’t think."  Abruptly his
eyes sharpened upon her and he moved a step forward.

"Tell me the truth!" he said.  "Do you love this boy?"

The girl’s cheeks burned with a swift crimson and she set her lips
together.  She was on the verge of extreme anger just then, but after a
little the flush died down again and the dark fire went out of her eyes.
She made an odd little gesture with her two hands.  It seemed to express
fatigue as much as anything—a great weariness.

"I like him," she said.  "I like him—enough, I suppose.  He is good—and
kind—and gentle. He will be good to me.  And I shall try very, very hard
to make him happy."  Quite suddenly and without warning the fire of her
anger burnt up again.  She flamed defiance in the man’s face.

"How dare you question me?" she cried. "What right have you to ask me
questions about such a thing?  You, what you are!"

Ste. Marie bent his head.

"No right, mademoiselle," said he in a low voice.  "I have no right to
ask you anything—not even forgiveness.  I think I am a little mad
to-day.  It—this news came to me suddenly.  Yes, I think I am a little
mad."  The girl stared at him and he looked back with sombre eyes.  Once
more he was stabbed with intolerable pain to think what she was.  Yet in
an inexplicable fashion it pleased him that she should carry out her
trickery to the end with a high head.  It was a little less base done
proudly.  He could not have borne it otherwise.

"Who are you," the girl cried in a bitter resentment, "that you should
understand?  What do you know of the sort of life I have led—we have led
together, my father and I?—Oh, I don’t mean that I’m ashamed of it!  We
have nothing to feel shame for, but you simply do not know what such a
life is."

Though he writhed with pain, the man nodded over her.  He was so glad
that she could carry it through proudly, with a high hand, an erect
head.

She spread out her arms before him, a splendid and tragic figure.

"What chance have I ever had?" she demanded.  "No, I am not blaming him.
I am not blaming my father!  I chose to follow him.  I chose it!  But
what chance have I had?  Think of the people I have lived among!  Would
you have me marry one of them—one of those men? I’d rather die!  And yet
I cannot go on—forever. I am twenty now.  What if my father—You yourself
said yesterday—Oh, I am afraid!  I tell you I have lain awake at night a
hundred times and shivered with cold, terrible fear of what would become
of me if—if anything should happen—to my father.

"And so," she said, "when I met Arthur Benham last winter and he—began
to—he said—when he begged me to marry him....  Ah, can’t you see? It
meant safety—safety—safety!  And I liked him.  I like him now—very, very
much.  He is a sweet boy.  I—shall be happy with him—in a peaceful
fashion.  And my father——

"Oh, I’ll be honest with you," said she.  "It was my father who decided
me.  He was—he is—so pathetically pleased with it!  He so wants me to be
safe!  It’s all he lives for now.  I—couldn’t fight against them both.
Arthur and my father.

"So I gave in.  And then when Arthur had to be hidden we came here with
him—to wait."

She became aware that the man was staring at her with something strange
and terrible in his gaze, and she broke off in wonder.  The air of that
warm summer morning turned all at once keen and sharp about them—charged
with moment.

"Mademoiselle!" cried Ste. Marie.  "Mademoiselle, are you telling me the
truth?"

For some obscure reason she was not angry. Again she spread out her
hands in that gesture of weariness.  She said—

"Oh, why should I lie to you?"  And the man began to tremble
exceedingly.  He stretched out an unsteady hand.

"You—knew Arthur Benham last winter?" he said.  "Long before his—before
he left his home?  Before that?"

"He asked me to marry him last winter," said the girl.  "For a long,
long time I—wouldn’t.... But he never let me alone.  He followed me
everywhere.  And my father——"

Ste. Marie clapped his two hands over his face, and a groan came to her
through the straining fingers.  He cried in an agony—

"Mademoiselle! mademoiselle!"

He fell upon his knees at her feet, his head bent in what seemed to be
an intolerable anguish, his hands over his hidden face.  The girl heard
hard-wrung, stumbling, incoherent words, wrenched each with an effort
out of extreme pain.

"Fool!  Fool!" the man cried, groaning.  "Oh, fool that I have been!
worm, animal!  Oh, fool not to see—not to know!  Madman; imbecile; thing
without a name!"

She stood white-faced, smitten with great fear over this abasement.  Not
the least and faintest glimmer reached her of what it meant.  She
stretched down a hand of protest and it touched the man’s head.  As if
the touch were a stroke of magic he sprang upright before her.

"Now at last, mademoiselle," said he, "we two must speak plainly
together.  Now at last I think I see clear, but I must know beyond doubt
or question.  Oh, mademoiselle, now I think I know you for what you are,
and it seems to me that nothing in this world is of consequence beside
that.  I have been blind, blind, blind! ... Tell me one thing!  Why did
Arthur Benham leave his home two months ago?"

"He had to leave it!" she said, wondering. She did not understand yet,
but she was aware that her heart was beating in loud and fast throbs,
and she knew that some great mystery was to be made plain before her.
Her face was very white.

"He had to leave it!" she said again.  "You know as well as I.  Why do
you ask me that? He quarrelled with his grandfather.  They had often
quarrelled before—over money—always over money!  His grandfather is a
miser, almost a madman.  He tried to make Arthur sign a paper releasing
his inheritance—the fortune he is to inherit from his father—and when
Arthur wouldn’t he drove him away.  Arthur went to his uncle—Captain
Stewart—and Captain Stewart helped him to hide. He didn’t dare go back
because they’re all against him, all his family.  They’d make him give
in."

Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation of amazement. The thing was
incredible—childish!  It was beyond the maddest possibilities.  But even
as he said the words to himself a face came before him—Captain Stewart’s
smiling and benignant face—and he understood everything.  As clearly as
if he had been present he saw the angry bewildered boy, fresh from David
Stewart’s berating, mystified over some commonplace legal matter
requiring a signature.  He saw him appeal for sympathy and counsel to
"old Charlie," and he heard "old Charlie’s" reply.  It was easy enough
to understand now.  It must have been easy enough to bring about.  What
absurdities could not such a man as Captain Stewart instil into the
already prejudiced mind of that foolish lad?

His thoughts turned from Arthur Benham to the girl before him, and that
part of the mystery was clear also.  She would believe whatever she was
told in the absence of any reason to doubt. What did she know of old
David Stewart or of the Benham family?  It seemed to Ste. Marie all at
once incredible that he could ever have believed ill of her—ever have
doubted her honesty.  It seemed to him so incredible that he could have
laughed aloud in bitterness and self-disdain.  But as he looked at the
girl’s white face and her shadowy, wondering eyes all laughter, all
bitterness, all cruel misunderstandings were swallowed up in the golden
light of his joy at knowing her, in the end, for what she was.

"Coira!  Coira!" he cried, and neither of the two knew that he called
her for the first time by her name.  "Oh, child," said he, "how they
have lied to you and tricked you!  I might have known, I might have seen
it, but I was a blind fool.  I thought—intolerable things.  I might have
known! They have lied to you most damnably, Coira."

She stared at him in a breathless silence without movement of any sort.
Only her face seemed to have turned a little whiter, and her great eyes
darker so that they looked almost black, and enormous in that still
face.

He told her, briefly, the truth, how young Arthur had had frequent
quarrels with his grandfather over his waste of money, how after one of
them, not at all unlike the others, he had disappeared, and how Captain
Stewart, in desperate need, had set afoot his plot to get the lad’s
greater inheritance for himself.  He described for her old David Stewart
and the man’s bitter grief, and he told her about the will, about how he
had begun to suspect Captain Stewart and of how he had traced the lost
boy to La Lierre.  He told her all that he knew of the whole matter and
he knew almost all there was to know, and he did not spare himself even
his misconception of the part she had played, though he softened that as
best he could.

Midway of his story Mlle. O’Hara bent her head and covered her face with
her hands.  She did not cry out or protest or speak at all.  She made no
more than that one movement, and after it she stood quite still, but the
sight of her, bowed and shamed, stripped of pride, as it had been of
garments, was more than the man could bear.  He cried her name—

"Coira!"  And when she did not look up, he called once more upon her.
He said—

"Coira, I cannot bear to see you stand so!  Look at me!  Ah, child, look
at me!

"Can you realise," he cried, "can you even begin to think what a great
joy it is to me to know at last that you have had no part in all this?
Can’t you see what it means to me?  I can think of nothing else.  Coira,
look up!"

She raised her white face and there were no tears upon it, but a still
anguish too great to be told. It would seem never to have occurred to
her to doubt the truth of his words.  She said—

"It is I who might have known.  Knowing what you have told me now it
seems impossible that I could have believed.—And Captain Stewart—I
always hated him—loathed him—distrusted him.

"And yet," she cried, wringing her hands, "how could I know?  How could
I know?"

The girl’s face writhed suddenly with her grief and she stared up at
Ste. Marie with terror in her eyes.  She whispered—

"My father!  Oh, Ste. Marie, my father!  It is not possible.  I will not
believe—He cannot have done this, knowing.  My father, Ste. Marie!"

The man turned his eyes away, and she gave a sobbing cry.

"Has he," she said slowly, "done even this for me?  Has he given—his
honour also—when everything else was—gone?  Has he given me his honour
too?

"Oh!" she said, "why could I not have died when I was a little child?
Why could I not have done that?  To think that I should have lived
to—bring my father to this!  I wish I had died.

"Ste. Marie!" she said, pleading with him. "Ste. Marie, do you think—my
father—knew?"

"Let me think!" said he.  "Let me think! Is it possible that Stewart has
lied to you all—to one as to another?  Let me think!"  His mind ran back
over the matter and he began to remember instances which had seemed to
him odd but to which he had attached no importance.  He remembered
O’Hara’s puzzled and uncomprehending face when he, Ste. Marie, had
spoken of Stewart’s villainy. He remembered the man’s indignation over
the affair of the poison, and his fairness in trying to make amends.  He
remembered other things, and his face grew lighter and he drew a great
breath of relief.  He said—

"Coira, I do not believe he knew.  Stewart has lied equally to you
all—tricked each one of you!"  And at that the girl gave a cry of
gladness, and began to weep.

As long as men and women continue to stand upon opposite sides of a
great gulf—and that will be as long as they exist together in this
world—just so long will men continue to be unhappy and ill at ease in
the face of women’s tears, even though they know vaguely that tears may
mean just anything at all, and by no means always grief.

Ste. Marie stood first upon one foot and then upon the other.  He looked
anxiously about him for succour.  He said: "There! there!" or words to
that effect, and once he touched the shoulder of the girl who stood
weeping before him, and he was very miserable indeed.

But quite suddenly, in the midst of his discomfort, she looked up to
him, and she was smiling and flushed, so that Ste. Marie stared at her
in utter amazement.

"So now at last," said she, "I have back my Bayard.  And I think the
rest—doesn’t matter very much."

"Bayard?" said he, wondering.  "I don’t understand," he said.

"Then," said she, "you must just go without understanding.  For I shall
never, never explain."

The bright flush went from her face and she turned grave once more.

"What is to be done?" she asked.  "What must we do now, Ste. Marie?—I
mean about Arthur Benham.  I suppose he must be told."

"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his
home by force."  He told her about the four letters which in four days
he had thrown over the wall into the Clamart road.

"It was on the chance," he said, "that some one would pick one of them
up and post it, thinking it had been dropped there by accident.  What
has become of them I don’t know.  I know only that they never reached
Hartley."

The girl nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes," said she, "that was the best thing you could have done.  It ought
to have succeeded.  Of course——"  She paused a moment and then nodded
again.  "Of course," said she, "I can manage to get a letter in the post
now.  We’ll send it to-day if you like.  But I was wondering—Would it be
better or not to tell Arthur the truth?  It all depends upon how he may
take it—whether or not he will believe you.  He’s very stubborn, and
he’s frightened about this break with his family, and he is quite sure
that he has been badly treated. Will he believe you?  Of course if he
does believe he could escape from here quite easily at any time and
there’d be no necessity for a rescue.  What do you think?"

"I think he ought to be told," said Ste. Marie. "If we try to carry him
away by force there’ll be a fight, of course, and—who knows what might
happen?  That we must leave for a last resort—a last desperate resort.
First we must tell the boy."

Abruptly he gave a cry of dismay, and the girl looked up to him,
staring.

"But—but _you_, Coira!" said he, stammering. "But _you_!  I hadn’t
realised—I hadn’t thought—it never occurred to me what this means to
you."  The full enormity of the thing came upon him slowly.  He was
asking this girl to help him in robbing her of her lover.

She shook her head with a little wry smile.

"Do you think," said she, "that knowing what I know now I would go on
with that until after he has made his peace with his family?  Before, it
was different.  I thought him alone and ill-treated and hunted down.  I
could help him then, comfort him.  Now I should be—all you ever thought
me, if I did not send him to his grandfather."  She smiled again, a
little mirthlessly.

"If his love for me is worth anything," she said, "he will come back—but
openly, this time, not in hiding.  Then I shall know that he is—what I
would have him be.  Otherwise——"

Ste. Marie looked away.

"But you must remember, Coira," said he, "that the lad is very young,
and that his family—They may try—It may be hard for him.  They may say
that he is too young to know—Ah, child, I should have thought of this!"

"Ste. Marie!" said the girl, and after a moment he turned to face her.

"What will you say to Arthur’s family, Ste. Marie," she demanded very
soberly, "when they ask you if I—if Arthur should be allowed to—come
back to me?"

A wave of colour flooded the man’s face and his eyes shone.  He cried—

"I shall tell them, Coira, that if that wretched half-baked lad should
search this wide world round, from Paris on to Paris again, and if he
should spend a lifetime searching, he would never find the beauty and
the sweetness and the tenderness and the true faith that he left behind
at La Lierre—nor the hundredth part of them.  I should say that you are
so much above him that he ought to creep to you on his knees from the
Rue de l’Université to this garden, thanking God that you were here at
the journey’s end, and kissing the ground that he dragged himself over
for sheer joy and gratitude. I should tell them—Oh, I have no words!  I
could tell them so pitifully little of you!  I think I should only say:
’Go to her and see!’  I think I should just say that."

The girl turned her head away with a little sob, but afterwards she
faced him once more, and she looked up to him with sweet, half-shut eyes
for a long time.  At last she said—

"For love of whom, Ste. Marie, did you undertake this quest—this search
for Arthur Benham? It was not in idleness or by way of a whim.  It was
for love.  For love of whom?"

For some strange and inexplicable reason the words struck him like a
blow, and he stared whitely.

"I came," he said at last, and his voice was oddly flat, "for his
sister’s sake.  For love of her."  Coira O’Hara dropped her eyes.  But
presently she looked up again with a smile.  She said—

"God make you happy, my friend!"  And she turned and moved away from him
up among the trees.  At a little distance she turned, saying—

"Wait where you are!  I will fetch Arthur or send him to you.  He must
be told at once."  Then she went on and was lost to sight.

Ste. Marie followed a few steps after her and halted.  His face was
turned, by chance, towards the east wall, and suddenly he gave a great
cry and smothered it with his hands over his mouth. His knees bent under
him and he was weak and trembling.  Then he began to run.  He ran with
awkward steps for his leg was not yet entirely recovered, but he ran
fast, and his heart beat within him until he thought it must burst.

He was making for that spot which was overhung by the half dead cedar
tree.



                             *CHAPTER XXVI*

                            *"I WON’T GO!"*


Ste. Marie came under the wall breathless and shaking.  What he had seen
there from a distance was no longer visible, but he pressed in close
among the lilac shrubs and called out in an unsteady voice.  He said—

"Who is there?  Who is it?"  And after a moment he called again.

A hand appeared at the top of the high wall. The drooping screen of
foliage was thrust aside, and he saw Richard Hartley’s face looking
down.  Ste. Marie held himself by the strong stems of the lilacs, for
once more his knees had weakened under him.

"There’s no one in sight," Hartley said.  "I can see for a long way.  No
one can see us or hear us."  And he said: "I got your letter this
morning—an hour ago.  When shall we come to get you out—you and the boy?
To-night?"

"To-night at two!" said Ste. Marie.  He spoke in a loud whisper.  "I’m
to talk with Arthur here in a few minutes.  We must be quick.  He may
come at any time.  I shall try to persuade him to go home willingly, but
if he refuses we must take him by force.  Bring a couple of good men
with you to-night and see that they’re armed.  Come in a motor and leave
it just outside the wall by that small door that you passed.  Have you
any money in your pockets?  I may want to bribe the gardener."

Hartley searched in his pockets, and while he did so the man beneath
asked—

"Is old David Stewart alive?"

"Just about!" Hartley said.  "He’s very low and he suffers a great deal,
but he’s quite conscious all the time.  If we can fetch the boy to him
it may give him a turn for the better.  Where is Captain Stewart?  I had
spies on his trail for some time but he has disappeared within the past
three or four days. Once I followed him in his motor out past here, but
I lost him beyond Clamart."

"He’s here, I think," said Ste. Marie.  "I saw him a few days ago."

The man on the wall had found two notes of a hundred francs each, and he
dropped them down to Ste. Marie’s hands.  Also he gave him a small
revolver which he had in his pocket, one of the little automatic weapons
such as Olga Nilssen had brought to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.
Afterwards he glanced up and said—

"Two people are coming out of the house, I shall have to go.  At two
to-night, then!—and at this spot.  We shall be in time."  He drew back
out of sight, and the other man heard the cedar-tree shake slightly as
he went down to the ground.  Then Ste. Marie turned and walked quickly
back to the place where Mlle. O’Hara had left him.  His heart was
leaping with joy and exultation, for now at last he thought that the end
was in sight—the end he had so long laboured and hoped for.  He knew
that his face must be flushed and his eyes bright, and he made a strong
effort to crush down these tokens of his triumph—to make his bearing
seem natural and easy.  He might have spared himself the pains.

Young Arthur Benham and Coira O’Hara came together down under the trees
from the house. They walked swiftly, and the boy was a step in advance,
his face white with excitement and anger. He began to speak while he was
still some distance away.  He cried out in his strident young voice—

"What the devil is all this silly nonsense about old Charlie and lies
and misunderstandings and—and all that guff?" he demanded.  "What the
devil is it?  D’you think I’m a fool?  D’you think I’m a kid?  Well, I’m
not!"  He came close to Ste. Marie, staring at him with an angry scowl,
but the scowl twitched and wavered, and his hands shook a little beside
him, and his breath came irregularly.  He was frightened.

"There is no nonsense," said Ste. Marie.  "There is no nonsense in all
this whole sorry business.  But there has been a great deal of
misunderstanding and a great many lies and not a little cruelty.  It’s
time you knew the truth at last."  He turned his eyes to where Coira
O’Hara stood near-by.

"How much have you told him?" he asked. And the girl said—

"I told him everything, or almost.  But I had to say it very quickly
and—he wouldn’t believe me.  I think you’d best tell him again."

The boy gave a short contemptuous laugh.

"Well, I don’t want to hear it," said he.  He was looking towards the
girl.  He said—

"This fellow may be able to hypnotize you, all right, but not Willie.
Little Willie’s wise to guys like him."  And swinging about to Ste.
Marie, he cried—

"Forget it!  Forget it!  I don’t want to listen to your little song
to-day.  Ah, you make me sick! You’d try to make me turn on old Charlie,
would you?  Why, old Charlie’s the only real friend I’ve got in the
world.  Old Charlie has always stood up for me against the whole bunch
of them.  Forget it, George!  I’m wise to your graft."

Ste. Marie frowned, for his temper was never of the most patient, and
the youth’s sneering tone annoyed him.  Truth to tell the tone was about
all he understood, for the strange words were incomprehensible.

"Look here, Benham!" he said sharply.  "You and I have never met, I
believe, but we have a good many friends in common, and I think we know
something about each other.  Have you ever heard anything about me which
would give you the right to suspect me of any dishonesty of any sort?
Have you?"

"Oh, slush!" said the boy.  "Anybody ’ll be dishonest if it’s worth his
while."

"That happens to be untrue," Ste. Marie remarked, "and as you grow older
you will know it. Leaving my honesty out of the question if you like, I
have the honour to tell you that I am, perhaps not quite formally,
engaged to your sister, and it is on her account, for her sake, that I
am here.  You will hardly presume, I take it, to question your sister’s
motive in wanting you to return home? Incidentally your grandfather is
so overcome by grief over your absence that he is expected to die at any
time.

"Come!" said he, "I have said enough to convince you that you must
listen to me.  Believe what you please, but listen to me for five
minutes! After that I have small doubt of what you will do."

The boy looked nervously from Ste. Marie to Mlle. O’Hara, and back
again.  He thrust his unsteady hands into his pockets, but withdrew them
after a moment and clasped them together behind him.

"I tell you!" he burst out at last—"I tell you it’s no good, your trying
to knock old Charlie to me.  I won’t stand for it.  Old Charlie’s my
best friend, and I’d believe him before I’d believe anybody in the
world.  You’ve got a knife out for old Charlie, that’s what’s the matter
with you."

"And your sister?" suggested Ste. Marie.  "Your mother?  You’d hardly
know your mother if you could see her to-day.  It has pretty nearly
killed her."

"Ah, they’re all—they’re all against me!" the lad cried.  "They’ve
always stood together against me.  Helen too!"

"You wouldn’t think they were against you if you could just see them
once, now," said Ste. Marie. And Arthur Benham gave a sort of shamefaced
sob, saying—

"Ah, cut it out!  Cut it out!

"Go on then and talk, if you want to," he said. "_I_ don’t care.  I
don’t have to listen.  Talk, if you’re pining for it."  And Ste. Marie,
as briefly as he could, told him the truth of the whole affair from the
beginning, as he had told it to Coira O’Hara. Only, he laid special
stress upon Charles Stewart’s present expectations from the new will;
and he assured the boy that no document his grandfather might have asked
him to sign could have given away his rights in his father’s fortune
since he was a minor, and had no legal right to sign away anything at
all even if he wished to.

"If you will look back as calmly and carefully as you can," he said,
"you will find that you didn’t begin to suspect your grandfather of
anything wrong until you had talked with Captain Stewart. It was your
uncle’s explanation of the thing that made you do that.  Well, remember
what he had at stake—I suppose it is a matter of several millions of
francs.  And he needs them.  His affairs are in a bad way."

He told also about the pretended search which Captain Stewart had so
long maintained, and of how he had tried to mislead the other searchers
whose motives were honest.

"It has been a gigantic gamble, my friend," he said at the last.  "A
gigantic and desperate gamble to get the money that should be yours.
You can end it by the mere trouble of climbing over that wall yonder,
and taking the Clamart tram back to Paris. As easily as that you can end
it—and, if I am not mistaken, you can at the same time save an old man’s
life—prolong it at the very least."  He took a step forwards.

"I beg you to go!" he said very earnestly. "You know the whole truth
now.  You must see what danger you have been and are in.  You must know
that I am telling you the truth.  I beg you to go back to Paris."

And from where she stood, a little aside, Coira O’Hara said—

"I beg you too, Arthur.  Go back to them!"

The boy dropped down upon a tree stump which was near, and covered his
face with his hands.  The two who watched him could see that he was
trembling violently.  Over him their eyes met and they questioned each
other with a mute and anxious gravity—

"What will he do?"  For everything was in Arthur Benham’s weak hands
now.

For a little time, which seemed hours to all who were there, the lad sat
still hiding his face, but suddenly he sprang to his feet and once more
stood staring into Ste. Marie’s quiet eyes.

"How do I know you’re telling the truth?" he cried, and his voice ran up
high and shrill, and wavered and broke.  "How do I know that? You’d tell
just as smooth a story if—if you were lying—if you’d been sent here to
get me back to—to what old Charlie said they wanted me for."

"You have only to go back to them and make sure," said Ste. Marie.
"They can’t harm you or take anything from you.  If they persuaded you
to sign anything—which they will not do—it would be valueless to them
because you’re a minor.  You know that as well as I do.  Go and make
sure!

"Or wait! wait!"  He gave a little sharp laugh of excitement.

"Is Captain Stewart in the house?" he demanded. "Call him out here!
That’s better still! Bring your uncle here to face me without telling
him what it’s for, without giving him time to make up a story!  Then we
shall see.  Send for him!"

"He’s not here," said the boy.  "He went away an hour ago.  I don’t know
whether he’ll be back to-night or not."  Young Arthur stared at the
elder man, breathing hard.

"Good God!" he said in a whisper, "if—old Charlie is rotten, who in this
world isn’t? I—don’t know what to believe."  Abruptly he turned with a
sort of snarl upon Coira O’Hara.

"Have you been in this game too?" he cried out.  "I suppose you and your
precious father and old Charlie cooked it up together!  What?  You’ve
been having a fine low-comedy time laughing yourselves to death at me,
haven’t you!  O Lord, what a gang!"

Ste. Marie caught the boy by the shoulder and spun him round.

"That will do!" he said sternly.  "You have been a fool; don’t make it
worse by being a coward and a cad.  Mlle. O’Hara knew no more of the
truth than you knew.  Your uncle lied to you all."  But the girl came
and touched his arm.  She said—

"Don’t be hard with him!  He is bewildered and nervous, and he doesn’t
know what he is saying. Think how sudden it has been for him.  Don’t be
hard with him, M. Ste. Marie."

Ste. Marie dropped his hand, and the lad backed a few steps away.  His
face was crimson.  After a moment he said—

"I’m sorry, Coira.  I didn’t mean that.  I didn’t mean it.  I beg your
pardon.  I’m about half dippy, I guess.  I—don’t know what to believe or
what to think or what to do."  He remained staring at her a little while
in silence, and presently his eyes sharpened.  He cried out—

"If I should go back there (mind you, I say, ’if’!) d’you know what
they’d do?  Well, I’ll tell you.  They’d begin to talk at me one at a
time. They’d get me in a corner and cry over me and say I was young and
didn’t know my mind, and that I owed them something for all that’s
happened, and not to bring their grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. And
the long and short of it would be that they’d make me give you up."  He
wheeled upon Ste. Marie.

"That’s what they’d do!" he said, and his voice began to rise again
shrilly.  "They’re three to one, and they know they can talk me into
anything. _You_ know it too."  He shook his head.

"I won’t go back!" he cried wildly.  "That’s what will happen if I do.
I don’t want granddad’s money.  He can give it to old Charlie or to a
gendarme if he wants to.  I’m going to have enough of my own.  I won’t
go back, and that’s all there is of it.  You may be telling the truth or
you may not, but I won’t go."

Ste. Marie started to speak, but the girl checked him.  She moved closer
to where Arthur Benham stood, and she said—

"If your love for me, Arthur, is worth having, it is worth fighting for.
If it is so weak that your family can persuade you out of it, then—I
don’t want it at all, for it would never last.  Arthur, you must go back
to them.  I want you to go."

"I won’t!" the boy cried.  "I won’t go.  I tell you they could talk me
out of anything.  You don’t know ’em.  I do.  I can’t stand against
them.  I won’t go, and that settles it.  Besides, I’m not so sure that
this fellow’s telling the truth. I’ve known old Charlie a lot longer
than I have him."

Coira O’Hara turned a despairing face over her shoulder towards Ste.
Marie.

"Leave me alone with him!" she begged.  "Perhaps I can win him over.
Leave us alone for a little while!"  Ste. Marie hesitated, and in the
end went away and left the two together.  He went farther down the park
to the _rond point_ and crossed it to the familiar stone bench at the
west side.  He sat down there to wait.  He was anxious and alarmed over
this new obstacle, for he had the wit to see that it was a very
important one.  It was quite conceivable that the boy, but half
convinced, half yielding before, would balk altogether when he realised,
as evidently he did realise, what returning home might mean to him—the
loss of the girl he hoped to marry.

Ste. Marie was sufficiently wise in worldly matters to know that the
boy’s fear was not unfounded. He could imagine the family in the Rue de
l’Université taking exactly the view young Arthur said they would take
towards an alliance with the daughter of a notorious Irish adventurer.
Ste. Marie’s cheeks burned hotly with anger when the words said
themselves in his brain, but he knew that there could be no doubt of the
Benhams’ and even of old David Stewart’s view of the affair.  They would
oppose the marriage with all their strength.

He tried to imagine what weight such considerations would have with him
if it were he who was to marry Coira O’Hara, and he laughed aloud with
scorn of them and with great pride in her.  But the lad yonder was very
young (too young: his family would be right to that extent).  Would he
be able to stand against them?

Ste. Marie shook his head with a sigh and gave over unprofitable
wonderings, for he was still within the walls of La Lierre, and so was
Arthur Benham. And the walls were high and strong.  He fell to thinking
of the attempt at rescue which was to be made that night, and he began
to form plans and think of necessary preparations.  To be sure Coira
might persuade the boy to escape during the day, and then the night
attack would be unnecessary; but in case of her failure it must be
prepared for.  He rose to his feet and began to walk back and forth
under the rows of chestnut trees, where the earth was firm and black and
mossy and there was no growth of shrubbery.  He thought of that hasty
interview with Richard Hartley and he laughed a little.  It had been
rather like an exchange of telegrams—reduced to the bare bones of
necessary question and answer.  There had been no time for conversation.

His eyes caught a far-off glimpse of woman’s garments, and he saw that
Coira O’Hara and Arthur Benham were walking towards the house.  So he
went a little way after them and waited at a point where he could see
any one returning.  He had not long to wait, for it seemed that the girl
went only as far as the door with her fiancé and then turned back.

Ste. Marie met her with raised eyebrows, and she shook her head.

"I don’t know," said she.  "He is very stubborn. He is frightened and
bewildered.  As he said, a while ago, he doesn’t know what to think or
what to believe.  You mustn’t blame him.  Remember how he trusted his
uncle!  He’s going to think it over, and I shall see him again this
afternoon. Perhaps when he has had time to reflect——  I don’t know.  I
truly don’t know."

"He won’t go to your father and make a scene?" said Ste. Marie, and the
girl shook her head.

"I made him promise not to."

"Oh, Bayard," she cried—and in his abstraction he did not notice the
name she gave him—"I am afraid, myself!  I am horribly afraid about my
father."

"I am sure he did not know," said the man. "Stewart lied to him."  But
Coira O’Hara shook her head, saying—

"I didn’t mean that.  I’m afraid of what will happen when he finds out
how he has been—how we have been played upon, tricked, deceived—what a
light we have been placed in.  You don’t know, you can’t even imagine,
how he has set his heart on—what he wished to occur.  I am afraid he
will do something terrible when he knows.  I am afraid he will kill
Captain Stewart."

"Which," observed Ste. Marie, "would be an excellent solution of the
problem.  But, of course, we mustn’t let it happen.  What can be done?"

"We mustn’t let him know the truth," said the girl, "until Arthur is
gone, and until Captain Stewart is gone too.  He is terrible when he’s
angry.  We must keep the truth from him until he can do no harm.  It
will be bad enough even then, for I think it will break his heart."

Ste. Marie remembered that there was something she did not know, and he
told her about his interview with Richard Hartley, and about their
arrangement for the rescue—if it should be necessary—on that very night.

She nodded her head over it, but for a long time after he had finished
she did not speak.  Then she said—

"I am glad, I suppose.  Yes, since it has to be done I suppose I am glad
that it is to come at once."  She looked up at Ste. Marie with shadowy
inscrutable eyes.

"And so, monsieur," said she, "it is at an end—all this."  She made a
little gesture which seemed to sweep the park and gardens.

"So we go out of each other’s lives as abruptly as we entered them.
Well——"  She had continued to look at him, but she saw the man’s face
turn white, and she saw something come into his eyes which was like
intolerable pain.  Then she looked away.

Ste. Marie said her name twice, under his breath, in a sort of soundless
cry, but he said no more, and after a moment she went on—

"Even so, I am glad that at last we know each other—for what we are....
I should have been sorry to go on thinking you ... what I thought
before....  And I could not have borne it, I’m afraid, to have you think
... what you thought of me ... when I came to know....  I’m glad we
understand at last."

Ste. Marie tried to speak, but no words would come to him.  He was like
a man defeated and crushed, not one on the highroad to victory.  But it
may have been that the look of him was more eloquent than anything he
could have said.  And it may have been that the girl saw and understood.

So the two remained there for a little while longer in silence, but at
last Coira O’Hara said—

"I must go back to the house now.  There is nothing more to be done, I
suppose—nothing left now but to wait for night to come.  I shall see
Arthur this afternoon and make one last appeal to him. If that fails you
must carry him off.  Do you know where he sleeps?  It is the room
corresponding to yours on the other side of the house—just across that
wide landing at the top of the stairs.  I will manage that the front
door below shall be left unlocked.  The rest you and your friends must
do.  If I can make any impression upon Arthur, I’ll slip a note under
your door this afternoon or this evening.  Perhaps even if he decides to
go it would be best for him to wait until night and go with the rest of
you.  In any case I’ll let you know."

She spoke rapidly, as if she were in great haste to be gone, and with
averted eyes.  And at the end she turned away without any word of
farewell, but Ste. Marie started after her.  He cried—

"Coira!  Coira!"  And, when she stopped, he said—

"Coira, I can’t let you go like this!  Are we to—simply to go our
different ways, like this, as if we’d never met at all?"

"What else?" said the girl.  And there was no answer to that.  Their
separate ways were determined for them—marked plain to see.

"But afterwards!" he cried.  "Afterwards—after we have got the boy back
to his home!  What then?"

"Perhaps," she said, "he will return to me."  She spoke without any show
of feeling.  "Perhaps he will return.  If not—well, I don’t know.  I
expect my father and I will just go on as we’ve always gone.  We’re used
to it, you know."

After that she nodded to him and once more turned away.  Her face may
have been a very little pale, but, as before, it betrayed no feeling of
any sort.  So she went up under the trees to the house, and Ste. Marie
watched her with strained and burning eyes.

When, half an hour later, he followed, he came unexpectedly upon the old
Michel, who had entered the park through the little wooden door in the
wall, and was on his way round to the kitchen with sundry parcels of
supplies.  He spoke a civil "_bon jour_, monsieur," and Ste. Marie
stopped him.  They were out of sight from the windows.  Ste. Marie
withdrew from his pocket one of the hundred-franc notes, and the single
bead-like eye of the ancient gnome fixed upon it and seemed to shiver
with a fascinated delight.

"A hundred francs!" said Ste. Marie unnecessarily, and the old man
licked his withered lips.  The tempter said—

"My good Michel, would you care to receive this trifling sum? a hundred
francs?"

The gnome made a choked croaking sound in his throat. "It is yours,"
said Ste. Marie, "for a small service—for doing nothing at all."  The
bead-like eye rose to his and sharpened intelligently.

"I desire only," said he, "that you should sleep well to-night, very
well—without waking."

"Monsieur," said the old man, "I do not sleep at all.  I watch.  I watch
monsieur’s windows. Monsieur O’ara watches until midnight, and I watch
from then until day."

"Oh, I know that," said the other.  "I’ve seen you more than once in the
moonlight, but to-night, _mon vieux_, slumber will overcome you.
Exhaustion will have its way and you will sleep.  You will sleep like
the dead."

"I dare not!" cried the gardener.  "Monsieur, I dare not!  The old one
would kill me.  You do not know him.  He would cut me into pieces and
burn the pieces.  Monsieur, it is impossible."

Ste. Marie withdrew the other hundred franc note and held the two
together in his hand.  Once more the gnome made his strange croaking
sound, and the withered face twisted with anguish.

"Monsieur! monsieur!" he groaned.

"I have an idea," said the tempter.  "A little earth rubbed upon one
side of the head—perhaps a trifling scratch to show a few drops of
blood. You have been assaulted, beaten down despite a heroic resistance
and left for dead.  An hour afterwards you stagger into the house a
frightful object. _Hein?_"

The withered face of the old man expanded slowly into a senile grin.

"Monsieur," said he with admiration in his tone, "it is magnificent.  It
shall be done.  I sleep like the good dead—under the trees, not too near
the lilacs, eh?  _Bien_, monsieur, it is done!"  Into his trembling claw
he took the notes, he made an odd bow, and shambled away about his
business.  Ste. Marie laughed and went on into the house.

He counted and there were fourteen hours to wait.  Fourteen hours, and
at the end of them—what? His blood began to warm to the night’s work.



                            *CHAPTER XXVII*

                           *THE NIGHT’S WORK*


The fourteen long hours dragged themselves by.  They seemed
interminable, but somehow they passed and the appointed time drew near.
Ste. Marie spent the greater part of the afternoon reading, but twice he
lay down upon the bed and tried to sleep, and once he actually dozed off
for a brief space.  The old Michel brought his meals.  He had thought it
possible that Coira might manage to bring the dinner-tray, as she had
already done on several occasions, and so make an opportunity for
informing him as to young Arthur’s state of mind.  But she did not come
and no word came from her.  So evening drew on and the dusk gathered and
deepened into darkness.

Ste. Marie walked his floor and prayed for the hours to pass.  He had
candles and matches, and there was even a lamp in the room so that he
could have read if he chose, but he knew that the words would have been
meaningless to him, that he was incapable of abstracting his thought
from the night’s stern work.  He began to be anxious over not having
heard from Mlle. O’Hara.  She had said that she would talk with Arthur
Benham during the afternoon, and then slip a note under Ste. Marie’s
door.  Yet no word had come from her, and, to the man pacing his floor
in the darkness, the fact took on proportions tremendous and fantastic.
Something had happened.  The boy had broken his promise, burst out upon
O’Hara, or more probably upon his uncle, and the house was by the ears.
Coira was watched—even locked in her room.  Stewart had fled!  A score
of such terrible possibilities rushed through Ste. Marie’s brain and
tortured him.  He was in a state of nervous tension that was almost
unendurable, and the little noises of the night outside, a wind-stirred
rustle of leaves, a bird’s flutter among the branches, the sound of a
cracking twig, made him start violently and catch his breath.

Then at his utmost need came reassurance and something like ease of
mind.  He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang
to his balconied window to listen.  Captain Stewart and O’Hara were
walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their
cigars.  The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against
the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear
their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him, he knew that
they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of strain or concern.

He drew back with a breath of relief, and at that moment a sound across
the room arrested him: a soft scraping sound such as a mouse might make.
He went where it was, and a little square of paper gleamed white through
the darkness just within the door.  Ste. Marie caught it up and took it
to the far side of the room away from the window.  He struck a match,
opened the folded paper, and a single line of writing was there—

"He will go with you.  Wait by the door in the wall."


The man nearly cried out with joy.

He struck another match and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to
ten.  Four hours left out of the fourteen.

Once more he lay down upon the bed and closed his eyes.  He knew that he
could not sleep, but he was tired from long tramping up and down the
room and from the strain of over-tried nerves. From hour to hour he
looked at his watch by match-light, but he did not leave the bed until
half-past one.  Then he rose and took a long breath, and the time was at
hand.

He stood a little while gazing out into the night. An old moon was high
overhead in a cloudless sky, and that would make the night’s work both
easier and more difficult, but, on the whole, he was glad of it.  He
looked to the east towards that wall where was the little wooden door,
and the way was under cover of trees and shrubbery for the whole
distance save a little space beside the house.  He listened and the
night was very still—no sound from the house below him—no sound anywhere
save the barking of a dog from far away, and, after an instant, the
whistle of a distant train.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room and pulled the sheets from his bed.
He rolled them, corner-wise, into a sort of rope and knotted them
together securely.  Then he went to one of the east windows. There was
no balcony there, but, as in all French upper windows, a wood and iron
bar fixed into the stone casing at both ends, with a little grille below
it.  It crossed the window-space a third of the distance from bottom to
top.  He bent one end of the improvised rope to this, made it fast, and
let the other end hang out.  The east side of the house was in shadow,
and the rolled sheet, a vague white line, disappeared into the darkness
below, but Ste. Marie knew that it must reach nearly to the ground. He
had made use of it because he was afraid there would be too much noise
if he tried to climb down the ivy.  The room directly underneath was the
drawing-room, and he knew that it was closed and shuttered and
unoccupied both by day and by night.  The only danger, he decided, was
from the sleeping-room behind his own, with its windows opening close
by; but though he did not know it he was safe there also, for the room
was Coira O’Hara’s.

He felt in his pocket for the pistol and it was ready to hand.  Then he
buttoned his coat round him and swung himself out of the window.  He
held his body away from the wall with one knee, and went down, hand
under hand.  It was so quietly done that it did not even rouse the birds
in the near-by trees.  Before he realised that he had come to the lower
windows his feet touched the earth and he was free.

He stood for a moment where he was, and then slipped rapidly across the
open moonlit space into the inky gloom of the trees.  He made a
half-circle round before the house and looked up at it.  It lay grey and
black and still in the night.  Where the moonlight was upon it it was
grey, where there was shadow black as black velvet, and the windows were
like open dead eyes.  He looked towards Arthur Benham’s room, and there
was no light, but he knew that the boy was awake and waiting there,
shivering probably in the dark.  He wondered where Coira O’Hara was, and
he pictured her lying in her bed fronting the gloom with sleepless open
eyes looking into those to-morrows which she had said she saw so well.
He wondered bitterly what the to-morrows were to bring her, but he
caught himself up with a stern determination and put her out of his
mind.  He did not dare think of her in that hour.

He turned and began to make his way silently under the trees towards the
appointed meeting place.  Once he thought of the old Michel, and
wondered where that gnarled and withered watch-dog had betaken himself.
Somewhere, within or without the house, he was asleep, or pretended to
sleep, and Ste. Marie knew that he could be trusted. The man’s cupidity
and his hatred of Captain Stewart together would make him faithful—or
faithless, as one chose to look upon it.

He came to that place where a row of lilac shrubs stood against the wall
and a half-dead cedar stretched gnarled branches above.  He was a little
before his time, and he settled himself to listen and wait, his sharp
ears keenly on the alert, his eyes turned towards the dark and quiet
house.

The little noises of the night broke upon him with exaggerated clamour.
A crackling twig was a thunderous crash, a bird’s sleepy stir was the
sound of pursuit and disaster.  A hundred times he heard the cautious
approach of Richard Hartley’s motor-car without the wall, and he fell
into a panic of fear lest that machine prove unruly, break down,
puncture a tyre, or burst into a series of ear-splitting explosions.
But at last—it seemed to him that he had waited untold hours and that
the dawn must be nigh—there came an unmistakable rustling from overhead
and the sound of hard-drawn breath.  The top of the wall, just at that
point, was in moonlight, and a man’s head appeared over it, then an arm
and then a leg.  Hartley called down to him in a whisper, and Ste.
Marie, from the gloom beneath, whispered a reply.  He said—

"The boy has promised to come with us.  We shan’t have to fight for it."
Richard Hartley said—

"Thank God!" He spoke to some one outside and then, turning about, let
himself down to arm’s length and dropped to the ground.

"Thank God!" he said again.  "The two men who were to have come with me
didn’t show up.  I waited as long as I dared, and then came on with only
the chauffeur.  He’s waiting outside by the car ready to crank up when I
give the word.  The car’s just a few yards away headed out for the road.
How are we to get back over the wall?"

Ste. Marie explained that Arthur Benham was to come out to join them at
the wooden door, and doubtless would bring a key.  If not, the three of
them could scale fifteen feet easily enough in the way soldiers and
firemen are trained to do it. He told his friend all that was necessary
for the time, and they went together along the wall to the more open
space beside the little door.

They waited there in silence for five minutes, and once Hartley, with
his back towards the house, struck a match under his sheltering coat,
looked to see what time it was, and it was three minutes past two.

"He ought to be here!" the man growled.  "I don’t like waiting.  Good
Lord, you don’t think he’s funked it, do you?  Eh?"  Ste. Marie did not
answer, but he was breathing very fast and he could not keep his hands
still.

The dog which he had heard from his window began barking again very far
away in the night, and kept it up incessantly.  Perhaps he was barking
at the moon.

"I’m going a little way towards the house," said Ste. Marie at last.
"We can’t see the terrace from here."  But before he had started they
heard the sound of hurrying feet, and Richard Hartley began to curse
under his breath.  He said—

"Does the young idiot want to rouse the whole place?  Why can’t he come
quietly?"

Ste. Marie began to run forward, slipping the pistol out of his pocket
and holding it ready in his hand, for his quick ears told him that there
was more than one pair of feet coming through the night.  He went to
where he could command the approach from the house and halted there, but
all at once he gave a low cry and started forward again, for he saw that
Arthur Benham and Coira O’Hara were running together, and that they were
in desperate haste.  He called out to them and the girl cried—

"Go to the door in the wall!  The door in the wall!  Oh, be quick!"  He
fell into step beside her, and, as they ran, he said—

"You’re going with him?  You’re coming with us?"  The girl answered him—

"No! no!" and she sprang to the little low door and began to fit the
iron key into the lock. The three men stood about her, and young Arthur
Benham drew his breath in great shivering gasps that were like sobs.

"They heard us!" he cried in a whisper. "They’re after us.  They heard
us on the stairs. I—stumbled and fell.  For God’s sake, Coira, be
quick!"

The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key, and dropped upon her
knees to see the better. Once she said in a whisper: "I can’t turn it.
It won’t turn," and at that Richard Hartley pushed her out of the way
and lent his greater strength to the task.

[Illustration: "The girl fumbled desperately with the clumsy key."]

A sudden loud cry came from the house, a hoarse screeching cry in a
voice which might have been either man’s or woman’s, but was as mad and
as desperate and as horrible in that still night as the screech of a
tortured animal—or of a maniac.  It came again and again and it was
nearer.

"Oh, hurry!  hurry!" said the girl.  "Can’t you be quick?  They’re
coming."  And, as she spoke, the little group about the wall heard the
engine of the motor-car outside start up with a staccato roar, and knew
that the faithful chauffeur was ready for them.

"I’m getting it, I think!" said Richard Hartley between his teeth.  "I’m
getting it.  Turn, you beast!  Turn!"

There was a sound of hurrying feet, and Ste. Marie spun about.  He
cried—

"Don’t wait for me!  Jump into the car and go!  Don’t wait anywhere.
Come back after you’ve left Benham at home!"  He began to run forward
toward those running feet, and he did not know that the girl followed
after him.  A short distance away there was a little open space of
moonlight, and in its midst, at full career, he met the Irishman O’Hara,
a gaunt and grotesque figure in his sleeping suit, barefooted, with
empty hands. Beyond him still, some one else ran stumbling, and sobbed
and uttered mad cries.

Ste. Marie dropped his pistol to the ground and sprang upon the
Irishman.  He caught him about the body and arms, and the two swayed and
staggered under the tremendous impact.  At just that moment, from
behind, came the crash of the opened door and triumphant shouts.  Ste.
Marie gave a little gasp of triumph too, and clung the harder to the man
with whom he fought.  He drove his head into the Irishman’s shoulder,
and set his muscles with a grip which was like iron.  He knew that it
could not endure long, for the Irishman was stronger than he; but the
grip of a nervous man who is keyed up to a high tension is incredibly
powerful for a little while.  Trained strength is nothing beside it.

It seemed to Ste. Marie in this desperate moment—it cannot have been
more than a minute or two at the most—that a strange and uncanny miracle
befel him.  It was as if he became two.  Soul and body, spirit and
straining flesh, seemed to him to separate, to stand apart each from the
other.  There was a thing of iron flesh and thews which had locked
itself about an enemy, and clung there madly with but one purpose, one
single thought—to grip and grip and never loosen until flesh should be
torn from bones.  But apart, the spirit looked on with a complete
detachment.  It looked beyond—he must have raised his head to glance
over O’Hara’s shoulder—saw a mad figure staggering forward in the
moonlight, and knew the figure for Captain Stewart.  It saw an upraised
arm and was not afraid, for the work was almost done now.  It listened
and was glad, hearing the motor-car without the walls leap forward into
the night, and its puffing grow fainter and fainter with distance.  It
knew that the thing of strained sinews received a crashing blow upon
back-flung head, and that the iron muscles were slipping away from their
grip, but it was still glad, for the work was done.

Only at the last, before red and whirling lights had obscured the view,
before consciousness was dissolved in unconsciousness, came horror and
agony, for the eyes saw Captain Stewart back away and raise the thing he
had struck with, a large revolver, saw Coira O’Hara, a swift and
flashing figure in the moonlight, throw herself upon him, before he
could fire, heard together a woman’s scream and the roar of the pistol’s
explosion, and so knew no more.



                            *CHAPTER XXVIII*

                         *COIRA’S LITTLE HOUR*


When Coira O’Hara came to herself from the moment’s swoon into which she
had fallen she rose to her knees and stared wildly about her.  She
seemed to be alone in the place, and her first thought was to wonder how
long she had lain there.  Captain Stewart had disappeared.  She
remembered her struggle with him to prevent him from firing at Ste.
Marie, and she remembered her desperate agony when she realised that she
could not hold him much longer.  She remembered the accidental discharge
of the revolver into the air, she remembered being thrown violently to
the ground—and that was all.

Where was her father and where was Ste. Marie? The first question
answered itself, for, as she turned her eyes towards the west, she saw
O’Hara’s tall ungainly figure disappearing in the direction of the
house.  She called his name twice, but it may be that the man did not
hear for he went on without pausing and was lost to sight.

The girl became aware of something which lay on the ground near her,
half in and half out of the patch of silver moonlight.  For some moments
she stared at it uncomprehending.  Then she gave a sharp scream and
struggled to her feet.  She ran to the thing which lay there motionless
and fell upon her knees beside it.  It was Ste. Marie, his face upturned
to the sky, one side of his head black and damp.  Stewart had not shot
him, but that crashing blow with the clubbed revolver had struck him
full and fair and he was very still.

For an instant the girl’s strength went out of her and she dropped lax
across the body, her face upon Ste. Marie’s breast.  But after that she
tore open coat and waistcoat and felt for a heartbeat.  It seemed to her
that she found life, and she began to believe that the man had only been
stunned.

Once more she rose to her feet and looked about her.  There was no one
to lend her aid.  She bent over the unconscious man and slipped her arms
about him.  Though Ste. Marie was tall he was slightly built, by no
means heavy, and the girl was very strong.  She found that she could
carry him a little way, dragging his feet after her.  When she could go
no farther she laid him down, and crouched over him, waiting until her
strength should return.  And this she did for a score of times; but each
time the distance she went was shorter, and her breathing came with
deeper gasps, and the trembling in her limbs grew more terrible.  At the
last she moved in a sort of fever, an evil dream of tortured body and
reeling brain.  But she had got Ste. Marie up through the park to the
terrace and into the house, and, with a last desperate effort, she had
laid him upon a couch in a certain little room which opened from the
lower hall.  Then she fell down before him and lay still for a long
time.

When she came to herself again the man was stirring feebly and muttering
to himself under his breath.  With slow and painful steps she got across
the room, and pulled the bell cord.  She remained there ringing until
the old Justine, blinking and half dressed, appeared with a candle in
the doorway. Coira told the woman to make lights and then to bring water
and a certain little bottle of aromatic salts which was in her room
upstairs.  The old Justine exclaimed and cried out, but the girl flew at
her in a white fury, and she tottered away as fast as old legs could
move, once she had set alight the row of candles on the mantel shelf.
Then Coira O’Hara went back to the man who lay outstretched on the low
couch, and knelt beside him looking into his face.  The man stirred and
moved his head slowly. Half articulate words came from his lips and she
made out that he was saying her name in a dull monotone—only her name,
over and over again. She gave a little cry of grief and gladness, and
hid her face against him as she had done once before, out in the night.

The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of
aromatic salts.  The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie’s
head and found that he had received a severe bruise, and that the flesh
had been cut before and above the ear.

"Thank God!" the girl said, "it is only a flesh wound.  If it were a
fracture he would be breathing in that horrible loud way they always do.
He’s breathing naturally.  He has only been stunned.

"You may go now!" she said.  "Only, bring a glass and some drinking
water—cold."

So the old woman went away to do her errand, returned and went away
again, and the two were left together.  Coira held the salts bottle to
Ste. Marie’s nostrils, and he gasped and sneezed and tried to turn his
head away from it, but it brought him to his senses—and doubtless to a
good deal of pain.  Once when he could not escape the thing he broke
into a fit of weak cursing, and the girl laughed over him tenderly and
let him be.

Very slowly Ste. Marie opened his eyes and, in the soft half light, the
girl’s face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful—near, so
near that her breath was warm upon his lips.  He said her name again in
an incredulous whisper—

"Coira!  Coira!"  And she said—

"I am here."  But the man was in a strange borderland of half
consciousness, and his ears were deaf.

He said, gazing up at her—

"Is it—another dream?"  And he tried to raise one hand from where it lay
beside him, but the hand wavered and fell aslant across his body.  It
had not the strength yet to obey him.

He said, still in his weak whisper—

"Oh, beautiful—and sweet—and true!"

The girl gave a little sob and hid her face.

"A goddess!" he whispered.  "’A queen among goddesses!’  That’s—what the
little Jew said. ’A queen among goddesses.—The young Juno, before——’"
He stirred restlessly where he lay, and he complained—

"My head hurts!  What’s the matter with my head?  It hurts."

She dipped one of the towels in the basin of cold water and held it to
the man’s brow.  The chill of it must have been grateful for his eyes
closed and he breathed a little satisfied.  "Ah!

"It mustn’t hurt to-night," said he.  "To-night at two—by the little
door in the garden wall.  And he’s coming with us.  The young fool is
coming with us....  So she and I go out of each other’s lives....

"Coira!" he cried with a sudden sharpness. "Coira, I won’t have it!  Am
I going to lose you ... like this?  Am I going to lose you after all ...
now that we know?"  He put up his hand once more—a weak and uncertain
hand.  It touched the girl’s warm cheek and a sudden violent shiver
wrung the man on the couch.  His eyes sharpened and stared with
something like fear.

"_Real!_" he cried, whispering.  "Real? ... Not a dream?"

"Oh, very real, my Bayard!" said she.  A thought came to her and she
drew away from the couch, and sat back upon her heels, looking at the
man with grave and sombre eyes.  In that moment she fought within
herself a battle of right and wrong.

"He doesn’t remember," she said.  "He doesn’t know.  He is like a little
child.  He knows nothing but that we two—are here together.  Nothing
else. Nothing!"

His state was plain to see.  He dwelt still in that vague borderland
between worlds.  He had brought with him no memories, and no memories
followed him save those her face had wakened.  Within the girl a great
and tender passion of love fought for possession of this little hour.

"It will be all I shall ever have!" she cried piteously.  "And it cannot
harm him.  He won’t remember it when he comes to his senses.  He’ll
sleep again and—forget.  He’ll go back to her and never know.  And I
shall never even see him again. Why can’t I have my little sweet hour?"

Once more the man cried her name, and she knelt forward and bent above
him.

"Oh, at last, Coira!" said he.  "After so long! ... And I thought it was
another dream."

"Do you dream of me, Bayard?" she asked. And he said—

"From the very first.  From that evening in the Champs Elysées.  Your
eyes, they’ve haunted me from the very first.

"There was a dream of you," he said, "that I had so often—but I cannot
quite remember because my head hurts.  What is the matter with my head?
I was—going somewhere.  It was so very important that I should go, but I
have forgotten where it was and why I had to go there.  I remember only
that you called to me—called me back—and I saw your eyes—and I couldn’t
go.  You needed me."

"Ah, sorely, Bayard!  Sorely!" cried the girl above him.

"And now," said he, whispering.

"Now?" she said.

"Coira, I love you," said the man on the couch. And Coira O’Hara gave a
single dry sob.  She said—

"Oh, my dear love! now I wish that I might die after hearing you say
that.  My life, Bayard, is full now.  It’s full of joy and gratefulness
and everything that is sweet.  I wish I might die before other things
come to spoil it."

Ste. Marie—or that part of him which lay at La Lierre, laughed with a
fine scorn, albeit very weakly.

"Why not live instead?" said he.  "And what can come to spoil our life
for us?

"_Our life!_" he said again in a whisper.  A flash of remembrance seemed
to come to him for he smiled, and said—

"Coira, we’ll go to Vavau."

"Anywhere!" said she.  "Anywhere!"

"So that we go together."

"Yes," she said gently, "so that we two go together."  She tried with a
desperate fierceness to make herself like the man before her, to put
away, by sheer power of will, all memory, the knowledge of everything
save what was in this little room, but it was the vainest of all vain
efforts.  She saw herself for a thief and a cheat—stealing, for love’s
sake, the mere body of the man she loved while mind and soul were
absent.  In her agony she almost cried out aloud as the words said
themselves within her. And she denied them.  She said—

"His mind may be absent but his soul is here. He loves me.  It is I, not
that other.  Can I not have my poor little hour of pretence?  A little
hour out of all a lifetime!  Shall I have nothing at all?"

But the voice which had accused her said—

"If he knew, would he say he loves you?"  And she hid her face, for she
knew that he would not—even if it were true.

"Coira!" whispered the man on the couch, and she raised her head.  In
the half darkness he could not have seen how she was suffering.  Her
face was only a warm blur to him, vague and sweet and beautiful, with
tender eyes.  He said—

"I think—I’m falling asleep.  My head is so very, very queer!  What is
the matter with my head?  Coira, do you think I might be kissed before I
go to sleep?"

She gave a little cry of intolerable anguish.  It seemed to her that she
was being tortured beyond all reason or endurance.  She felt suddenly
very weak and she was afraid that she was going to faint away.  She laid
her face down upon the couch where Ste. Marie’s head lay.  Her cheek was
against his and her hair across his eyes.

The man gave a little contented sigh and fell asleep.

Later, she rose stiffly and wearily to her feet. She stood for a little
while looking down upon him. It was as if she looked upon the dead body
of a lover.  She seemed to say a still and white and tearless farewell
to him.  Her little hour was done, and it had been, instead of joy,
bitterness unspeakable: ashes in the mouth.  Then she went out of the
room and closed the door.

In the hall outside she stood a moment considering, and finally mounted
the stairs and went to her father’s door.  She knocked and thought she
heard a slight stirring inside, but there was no answer. She knocked
twice again and called out her father’s name, saying that she wished to
speak to him, but still he made no reply, and, after waiting a little
longer, she turned away.  She went downstairs again and out upon the
terrace.  The terrace and the lawn before it were still chequered with
silver and deep black, but the moon was an hour lower in the west.  A
little cool breeze had sprung up and it was sweet and grateful to her.
She sat down upon one of the stone benches and leant her head back
against the trunk of a tree which stood beside, and she remained there
for a long time, still and relaxed in a sort of bodily and mental
languor—an exhaustion of flesh and spirit.

There came shambling footsteps upon the turf and the old Michel advanced
into the moonlight from the gloom of the trees, emitting mechanical and
not very realistic groans.  He had been hard put to it to find any one
before whom he could pour out his tale of heroism and suffering.  Coira
O’Hara looked upon him coldly, and the gnome groaned with renewed and
somewhat frightened energy.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked. "Why are you about at this
hour?"  The old Michel told his piteous tale with tears and passion,
protesting that he had succumbed only before the combined attack of
twenty armed men, and exhibiting his wounds.  But the girl gave a brief
and mirthless laugh.

"You were bribed to tell that, I suppose," said she.  "By M. Ste. Marie?
Yes, probably.  Well, tell it to my father to-morrow!  You’d better go
to bed now."  The old man stared at her with open mouth for a breathless
moment, and then shambled hastily away, looking over his shoulder, at
intervals, until he was out of sight.

But after that the girl still remained in her place from sheer weariness
and lack of impulse to move. She fell to wondering about Captain Stewart
and what had become of him, but she did not greatly care.  She had a
feeling that her world had come to its end, and she was quite
indifferent about those who still peopled its ashes—or about all of them
save her father.

She heard the distant sound of a motor-car, and at that sat up quickly,
for it might be Ste. Marie’s friend Mr. Hartley returning from Paris.
The sound came nearer and ceased, but she waited for ten minutes before
rapid steps approached from the east wall and Hartley was before her.

He cried at once—

"Where’s Ste. Marie?  Where is he?  He hasn’t tried to walk into the
city?"

"He is asleep in the house," said the girl.  "He was struck on the head
and stunned.  I got him into the house and he is asleep now.

"Of course," she said, "we could wake him, but it would probably be
better to let him sleep as long as he will if it is possible.  It will
save him a great deal of pain I think.  He’ll have a frightful headache
if he’s wakened now.  Could you come for him or send for him
to-morrow—towards noon?"

"Why—yes, I suppose so," said Richard Hartley. "Yes, of course, if you
think that’s better.  Could I just see him for a moment?"  He stared at
the girl a bit suspiciously and Coira looked back at him with a little
tired smile, for she read his thought.

"You want to make sure," said she.  "Of course! Yes, come in.  He’s
sleeping very soundly."  She led the man into that dim room where Ste.
Marie lay, and Hartley’s quick eye noted the basin of water and the
stained towels and the little bottle of aromatic salts.  He bent over
his friend to see the bruise at the side of the head, and listened to
the sleeper’s breathing.  Then the two went out again to the moonlit
terrace.

"You must forgive me," said he when they had come there.  "You must
forgive me for seeming suspicious, but—all this wretched business—and he
is my closest friend.—I’ve come to suspect everybody.  I was unjust, for
you helped us to get away. I beg your pardon!"

The girl smiled at him again, her little white tired smile, and she
said—

"There is nothing I would not do to make amends—now that I know—the
truth."

"Yes," said Hartley.  "I understand.  Arthur Benham told me how Stewart
lied to you all.  Was it he who struck Ste. Marie?"  She nodded.

"And then tried to shoot him—but he didn’t succeed in that.  I wonder
where he is—Captain Stewart?"

"I have him out in the car," Hartley said.  "Oh, he shall pay, you may
be sure!  If he doesn’t die and cheat us, that is.  I nearly ran the car
over him a few minutes ago.  If it hadn’t been for the moonlight I would
have done for him.  He was lying on his face in that lane that leads to
the Issy road. I don’t know what is the matter with him.  He’s only half
conscious and he’s quite helpless.  He looks as if he’d had a stroke of
apoplexy or something.  I must hurry him back to Paris, I suppose, and
get him under a doctor’s care.  I wonder what’s wrong with him?"  The
girl shook her head, for she did not know of Stewart’s epileptic
seizures.  She thought it quite possible that he had suffered a stroke
of apoplexy as Hartley suggested, for she remembered the half-mad state
he had been in.

Richard Hartley stood for a time in thought.

"I must get Stewart back to Paris at once," he said finally.  "I must
get him under care, and in a safe place from which he can’t escape.  It
will want some managing.  If I can get away, I’ll come out here again in
the morning; but if not, I’ll send the car out with orders to wait here
until Ste. Marie is ready to return to the city.  Are you sure he’s all
right—that he isn’t badly hurt?"

"I think he will be all right," she said, "save for the pain.  He was
only stunned."  And Hartley nodded.

"He seems to be breathing quite naturally," said he.  "That’s arranged
then.  The car will be here in waiting, and I shall come with it if I
can. Tell him when he wakes."  He put out his hand to her, and the girl
gave him hers very listlessly but smiling.  She wished he would go, and
leave her alone.

Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down
through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the motor
car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions.  And so she was
left to her solitary watch.  She noticed as she turned to go indoors
that the blackness of the night was just beginning to grey towards dawn.



                             *CHAPTER XXIX*

                       *THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE*


Ste. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning—that is to say, about ten
o’clock—and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of
extreme giddiness, which became something like vertigo when he attempted
to rise.  However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow
upstairs to his room, and made a rather sketchy toilet.

Coira came to him there and, while he lay still across the bed, told him
about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury.  She
told him also that the motor was waiting for him, outside the wall, and
that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur, to say that he
was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come
out of his strange state of half insensibility only to rave in a
delirium.

"So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready.  Arthur is with
his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You
ought to be glad—even though you are suffering pain."

Ste. Marie looked up at her.

"Do I seem glad, Coira?" said he.  And she said—

"You will be glad to-morrow—and always, I hope and pray.  Always,
always!"

The man held one hand over his aching eyes.

"I have," he said, "queer half-memories.  I wish I could remember
distinctly."

He looked up at her again.

"I dropped down by the gate in the wall.  When I awoke I was in a room
in the house.  How did that happen?"

"Oh," she said, turning her face away, "we got you up to the house
almost at once."  But Ste. Marie frowned thoughtfully.

"’We’?  Who do you mean by ’we’?"

"Well then, I," the girl said.  "It was not difficult."

"Coira!" cried the man, "do you mean that you carried me bodily all that
long distance?  You?"

"Carried or dragged," she said.  "As much one as the other.  It was not
very difficult.  I’m strong, for a woman."

"Oh, child, child!" he cried.  And he said—

"I remember more.  It was you who held Stewart, and kept him from
shooting me.  I heard the shot and I heard you scream.  The last thought
I had was that you had been killed in saving me. That’s what I went out
into the blank, thinking."

He covered his eyes again as if the memory were intolerable.  But after
a while he said—

"You saved my life, you know."  And the girl answered him—

"I had nearly taken it once before.  It was I who called Michel that day
you came over the wall, the day you were shot.  I nearly murdered you
once.  I owed you something.  Perhaps we’re even now."  She saw that he
did not at all remember that hour in the little room—her hour of
bitterness, and she was glad.  She had felt sure that it would be so.
For the present she did not greatly suffer; she had come to a state
beyond active suffering—a chill state of dulled sensibilities.

The old Justine knocked at the door to ask if monsieur was going into
the city soon, or if she should give the chauffeur his _déjeuner_ and
tell him to wait.

"Are you fit to go?" Coira asked.  And he said—

"I suppose as fit as I shall be."  He got to his feet, and the things
about him swam dangerously, but he could walk by using great care.  The
girl stood white and still, and she avoided his eyes.

"It is not good-bye," said he.  "I shall see you soon again—and I hope,
often—often, Coira."  The words had a flat and foolish sound, but he
could find no others.  It was not easy to speak.

"I suppose I must not ask to see your father?" said he, and she told him
that her father had locked himself in his own room and would see no one,
would not even open his door to take in food.

Ste. Marie went to the stairs, leaning upon the shoulder of the stout
old Justine, but, before he had gone, Coira checked him for an instant.
She said—

"Tell Arthur, if he speaks to you about me, that what I said in the note
I gave him last night, I meant quite seriously.  I gave him a note to
read after he reached home.  Tell him for me that it was final.  Will
you do that?"

"Yes, of course," said Ste. Marie.  He looked at her with some wonder
because her words had been very emphatic.

"Yes," he said, "I will tell him.  Is that all?"

"All but good-bye," said she.  "Good-bye, Bayard!"

She stood at the head of the stairs while he went down them.  And she
came after him to the landing halfway where the stairs turned in the
opposite direction for their lower flight.  When he went out of the
front door he looked back, and she was standing there above him—a
straight, still figure, dark against the light of the windows behind
her.

He went straight to the Rue d’Assas.  He found that while he sat still
in the comfortable tonneau of the motor his head was fairly normal, and
the world did not swing and whirl about in that sickening fashion.  But
when the car lurched or bumped over an obstruction it made him giddy,
and he would have fallen had he been standing.

The familiar streets of the Montparnasse and Luxembourg quarters had for
his eyes all the charm and delight of home things to the returned
traveller. He felt as if he had been away for months, and he caught
himself looking for changes, and it made him laugh.  He was much
relieved when he found that his concierge was not on watch, and that he
could slip unobserved up the stairs and into his rooms.  The rooms were
fresh and clean, for they had been aired and tended daily.

Arrived there he wrote a little note to a friend of his who was a doctor
and lived in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, asking this man to call as
soon as it might be convenient.  He sent the note by the chauffeur, and
then lay down, dressed as he was, to wait, for he could not stand or
move about without a painful dizziness.  The doctor came within a
half-hour, examined Ste. Marie’s bruised head and bound it up.  He gave
him a dose of something with a vile taste, which he said would take away
the worst of the pain in a few hours, and he also gave him a sleeping
potion, and made him go to bed.

"You’ll be fairly fit by evening," he said.  "But don’t stir until then.
I’ll leave word below that you’re not to be disturbed."

So it happened that when Richard Hartley came dashing up an hour or two
later he was not allowed to see his friend, and Ste. Marie slept a
dreamless sleep until dark.

He awoke then, refreshed but ravenous with hunger, and found that there
was only a dull ache in his battered head.  The dizziness and the
vertigo were almost completely gone.  He made lights and dressed with
care.  He felt like a little girl making ready for a party; it was so
long—or seemed so long—since he had put on evening clothes.  Then he
went out, leaving at the loge of the concierge a note for Hartley to say
where he might be found.  He went to Lavenue’s and dined in solitary
pomp, for it was after nine o’clock. Again it seemed to him that it was
months since he had done the like—sat down to a real table for a real
dinner.  At ten he got into a fiacre and drove to the Rue de
l’Université.

The man who admitted him said that mademoiselle was alone in the
drawing-room, and he went there at once.  He was dully conscious that
something was very wrong, but he had suffered too much within the past
few hours to be analytical, and he did not know what it was that was
wrong.  He should have entered that room with a swift and eager step,
with shining eyes, with a high-beating heart.  He went into it slowly,
wrapped in a mantle of strange apathy.

Helen Benham came forward to meet him and took both his hands in hers.
Ste. Marie was amazed to see that she seemed not to have altered at
all—in spite of this enormous lapse of time, in spite of all that had
happened in it.  And yet, unaltered, she seemed to him a stranger, a
charming and gracious stranger with an icily beautiful face, He wondered
at her and at himself, and he was a little alarmed, because he thought
that he must be ill.  That blow upon the head must, after all, have done
something terrible to him.

"Ah, Ste. Marie!" she said in her well-remembered voice—and again he
wondered that the voice should be so high-pitched, and so without colour
or feeling.  "How glad I am," she said, "that you are safely out of it
all!  How you have suffered for us, Ste. Marie!  You look white and ill.
Sit down, please!  Don’t stand!"  She drew him to a comfortable chair,
and he sat down in it obediently.  He could not think of anything to
say, though he was not, as a rule, tongue-tied, but the girl did not
seem to expect any answer, for she went on at once with a rather odd air
of haste—

"Arthur is here with us, safe and sound.  Richard Hartley brought him
back from that dreadful place, and he has talked everything over with my
grandfather, and it’s all right.  They both understand now, and there’ll
be no more trouble. We have had to be careful, very careful, and we have
had to—well, to rearrange the facts a little so as to leave—my uncle—to
leave Captain Stewart’s name out of it.  It would not do to shock my
grandfather by telling him the truth.  Perhaps, later; I don’t know.
That will have to be thought of. For the present we have left my uncle
out of it—and put the blame entirely upon this other man. I forget his
name."

"The blame cannot rest there," said Ste. Marie sharply.  "It is not
deserved, and I shall not allow it to be left so.  Captain Stewart lied
to O’Hara throughout.  You cannot leave the blame with an innocent man."

"Still—" she said, "such a man!"

Ste. Marie looked at her, frowning, and the girl turned her eyes away.
She may have had the grace to be a little ashamed.

"Think of the difficulty we were in!" she urged. "Captain Stewart is my
grandfather’s own son. We cannot tell him now, in his weak state, that
his own son is—what he is."

There was reason if not justice in that, and Ste. Marie was forced to
admit it.  He said—

"Ah well! for the present, then.  That can be arranged later.  The main
point is that I’ve found your brother for you.  I’ve brought him back."

Miss Benham looked up at him and away again, and she drew a quick
breath.  He saw her hands move restlessly in her lap, and he was aware
that for some odd reason she was very ill at ease.  At last she said—

"Ah, but—but have you, dear Ste. Marie?  Have you?"

After a brief silence she stole another swift glance at the man, and he
was staring in open and frank bewilderment.  She rushed into rapid
speech.

"Ah," she cried, "don’t misunderstand me! Don’t think that I’m brutal or
ungrateful for all you’ve—you’ve suffered in trying to help us. Don’t
think that!  I can—we can never be grateful enough, never!  But stop and
think!  Yes, I know this all sounds hideous, but it’s so terribly
important.  I shouldn’t dream of saying a word of it if it weren’t so
important, if so much didn’t depend upon it.  But stop and think!  Was
it, dear Ste. Marie, was it, after all, you?  Was it you who brought
Arthur to us?"

The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like.  He was beyond speech.

"Wasn’t it Richard?" she hurried on.  "Wasn’t it Richard Hartley?  Ah,
if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless!  If
only I needn’t say it at all!  But it must be said because of what
depends upon it.

"Think!  Go back to the beginning!  Wasn’t it Richard who first began to
suspect my uncle? Didn’t he tell you or write to you what he had
discovered, and so set you upon the right track? And after you had—well,
just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping, yourself—to
say nothing of bringing Arthur back—wasn’t it Richard who came to your
rescue and brought it all to victory?  Oh, Ste. Marie, I must be just to
him as well as to you!  Don’t you see that? However grateful I may be to
you for what you have done—suffered—I cannot, in justice, give you what
I was to have given you, since it is, after all, Richard who has saved
my brother.  I cannot, can I? Surely you must see it.  And you must see
how it hurts me to have to say it.  I had hoped that—you would
understand—without my speaking."

Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless.  For the
first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the
appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is
concerned.  This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged
the credit for rescuing her brother, and, lo! she believed it.  A score
of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted
her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind.  It is only women
who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.

Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end
shook his head and remained silent.  Through the whirl and din of
falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words. He
could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity.  He could
have shown her that before he ever read Hartley’s note he had decided
upon Stewart’s guilt—and for much better reasons than Hartley had.  He
could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who
discovered young Benham’s whereabouts; that it was he who summoned
Hartley there; and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come
at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.

He thought of all these things and more, and, in a moment of sheer anger
at her injustice, he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his
head and remained silent.  After all, of what use was speech?  He knew
that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why.  For some
reason, in some way, she had turned, during his absence, to Richard
Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said.  There was no treachery
on Hartley’s part.  He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to
blame his friend.  Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived.
It seemed to be nobody’s fault.  It had just happened.

He looked at the girl before him with a new expression, an expression of
sheer curiosity.  It seemed to him wellnigh incredible that any human
being could be so unjust and so blind.  Yet he knew her to be, in other
matters, one of the fairest of all women, just and tender and thoughtful
and true.  He knew that she prided herself upon her cool impartiality of
judgment.  He shook his head with a little sigh, and ceased to wonder
any more. It was beyond him.

He became aware that he ought to say something, and he said—

"Yes.  Yes, I—see.  I see what you mean.  Yes, Hartley did all you say.
I hadn’t meant to rob Hartley of the credit he deserves.  I suppose
you’re right."  He was possessed of a sudden longing to get away out of
that room, and he rose to his feet.

"If you don’t mind," he said, "I think I’d better go.  This is—well,
it’s a bit of a facer, you see.  I want to think it over.  Perhaps
to-morrow—you don’t mind?"  He saw a swift relief flash into Miss
Benham’s eyes, but she murmured a few words of protest that had a rather
perfunctory sound.  Ste. Marie shook his head.

"Thanks!  I won’t stay," said he.  "Not just now.  I—think I’d better
go."  He had a confused realisation of platitudinous adieux, of a silly
formality of speech, and he found himself in the hall.  Once he glanced
back, and Miss Benham was standing where he had left her, looking after
him with a calm and unimpassioned face.  He thought that she looked
rather like a very beautiful statue.

The butler came to him to say that Mr. Stewart would be glad if he would
look in before leaving the house, and so he went upstairs and knocked at
old David’s door.  He moved like a man in a dream, and the things about
him seemed to be curiously unreal and rather far away, as they seem
sometimes in a fever.

He was admitted at once, and he found the old man sitting up in bed,
clad in one of his incredibly gorgeous mandarin’s jackets—plum-coloured
satin, this time, with peonies—overflowing with spirits and good-humour.
His grandson sat in a chair near at hand.  The old man gave a shout of
welcome—

"Ah, here’s Jason, at last, back from Colchis. Welcome home to—whatever
the name of the place was.  Welcome home!"  He shook Ste. Marie’s hand
with hospitable violence, and Ste. Marie was astonished to see upon what
a new lease of life and strength the old man seemed to have entered.
There was no ingratitude or misconception here, certainly.  Old David
quite overwhelmed his visitor with thanks and with expressions of
affection.

"You’ve saved my life among other things!" he said in his gruff roar.
"I was ready to go, but, by the Lord, I’m going to stay a while longer
now! This world’s a better place than I thought—a much better place."
He shook a heavily-waggish head.

"If I didn’t know," said he, "what your reward is to be for what you’ve
done, I should be in despair over it all, because there is nothing else
in the world that would be anything like adequate.  You’ve been making
sure of the reward downstairs, I dare say?  Eh, what?  Yes?"

"You mean——?" asked the younger man.

And old David said—

"I mean Helen, of course.  What else?"

Ste. Marie was not quite himself.  At another time he might have got out
of the room with an evasive answer, but he spoke without thinking. He
said—

"Oh—yes!  I suppose—I suppose I ought to tell you that Miss Benham—well,
she has changed her mind.  That is to say——"

"What!" shouted old David Stewart, in his great voice.  "What is that?"

"Why, it seems," said Ste. Marie, "it seems that I only blundered.  It
seems that Hartley rescued your grandson, not I.  And I suppose he did,
you know.  When you come to think of it, I suppose he did."

David Stewart’s great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an
angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows.

"Do you mean to tell me that after all you’ve done and—and gone through,
Helen has thrown you over?  Do you mean to tell me that?"

"Well," argued Ste. Marie uncomfortably, "well, you see, she seems to be
right.  I did bungle it, didn’t I?  It was Hartley who came and pulled
us out of the hole."

"Hartley be damned!" cried the old man in a towering rage.  And he began
to pour out the most extraordinary flood of furious invective upon his
granddaughter and upon Richard Hartley, whom he quite unjustly termed a
snake-in-the-grass, and finally upon all women, past, contemporary or
still to be born.

Ste. Marie, in fear of old David’s health, tried to calm him, and the
faithful valet came running from the room beyond with prayers and
protestations, but nothing would check that astonishing flow of fury
until it had run its full course.  Then the man fell back upon his
pillows, crimson, panting and exhausted; but the fierce eyes glittered
still, and they boded no good for Miss Helen Benham.

"You’re well rid of her!" said the old gentleman, when at last he was
once more able to speak. "You’re well rid of her.  I congratulate you!
I am ashamed and humiliated, and a great burden of obligation is shifted
to me—though I assume it with pleasure—but I congratulate you.  You
might have found out too late what sort of a woman she is."

Ste. Marie began to protest and to explain, and say that Miss Benham had
been quite right in what she said, but the old gentleman only waved an
impatient arm to him; and presently, when he saw the valet making signs
across the bed, and saw that his host was really in a state of complete
exhaustion after the outburst, he made his adieux and got away.

Young Arthur Benham, who had been sitting almost silent during the
interview, followed him out of the room, and closed the door behind
them. For the first time Ste. Marie noted that the boy’s face was white
and strained.  Young Arthur pulled a crumpled square of folded paper
from his pocket and shook it at the other man.

"Do you know what this is?" he cried.  "Do you know what’s in this?"
Ste. Marie shook his head, but a sudden recollection came to him.

"Ah!" said he, "that must be the note Mlle. O’Hara spoke of.  She asked
me to tell you that she meant it—whatever it may be—quite seriously;
that it was final.  She didn’t explain.  She just said that; that you
were to take it as final."

The lad gave a sudden, very bitter sob.

"She has thrown me over!" he said.  "She says I’m not to come back to
her."

Ste. Marie gave a wordless cry, and he began to tremble.

"You can read it if you want to," the boy said. "Perhaps you can explain
it.  I can’t.  Do you want to read it?"  The elder man stood staring at
him whitely, and the boy repeated his words. He said—

"You can read it if you want to," and at last Ste. Marie took the paper
between stiff hands and held it to the light.  Coira O’Hara said briefly
that too much was against their marriage.  She mentioned his age, the
certain hostility of his family, their different tastes, a number of
other things.  But in the end she said she had begun to realise that she
did not love him as she ought to do if they were to marry.  And so, the
note said finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him
altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her or to urge her to
change her mind.  Also she made the trite but very sensible observation
that he would be glad of his freedom before the year was out.

Ste. Marie’s unsteady fingers opened, and the crumpled paper slipped
through them to the floor. Over it the man and the boy looked at each
other in silence.  Young Arthur Benham’s face was white, and it was
strained and contorted with its first grief.  But first griefs do not
last very long. Coira O’Hara had told the truth; before the year was out
the lad would be glad of his freedom. But the man’s face was white also,
white and still, and his eyes held a strange expression which the boy
could not understand, and at which he wondered.  The man was trembling a
little from head to foot.  The boy wondered about that too, but abruptly
he cried out—

"What’s up?  Where are you going?" for Ste. Marie had turned all at once
and was running down the stairs as fast as he could run.



                             *CHAPTER XXX*

                            *JOURNEY’S END*


In the hall below Ste. Marie came violently into contact with and nearly
overturned Richard Hartley, who was just giving his hat and stick to the
man who had admitted him.  Hartley seized upon him with an exclamation
of pleasure, and wheeled him round to face the light.  He said—

"I’ve been pursuing you all day.  You’re almost as difficult of access
here in Paris as you were at La Lierre.  How’s the head?"

Ste. Marie put up an experimental hand.  He had forgotten his injury.

"Oh, that’s all right," said he.  "At least I think so.  Anderson fixed
me up this afternoon. But I haven’t time to talk to you.  I’m in a
hurry. To-morrow we’ll have a long chin.  Oh, how about Stewart?"  He
lowered his voice, and Hartley answered him in the same tone.

"The man is in a delirium.  Heaven knows how it’ll end.  He may die, and
he may pull through. I hope he pulls through—except for the sake of the
family—because then we can make him pay for what he’s done.  I don’t
want him to go scot free by dying."

"Nor I!" said Ste. Marie fiercely.  "Nor I!  I want him to pay too—long
and slowly and hard, and, if he lives, I shall see that he does it,
family or no family.  Now I must be off."  Ste. Marie’s face was shining
and uplifted.  The other man looked at it with a little envious sigh.

"I see everything is all right," said he.  "And I congratulate you.  You
deserve it if ever any one did."

Ste. Marie stared for an instant uncomprehending. Then he saw.

"Yes," he said gently.  "Everything is all right."  It was plain that
the Englishman did not know of Miss Benham’s decision.  He was incapable
of deceit.  Ste. Marie threw an arm over his friend’s shoulder, and went
with him a little way towards the drawing-room.

"Go in there," he said.  "You’ll find some one glad to see you, I think.
And remember that I said everything is all right."  He came back after
he had turned away, and met Hartley’s puzzled frown with a smile.

"If you’ve that motor here, may I use it?" he asked.  "I want to go
somewhere in a hurry."

"Of course!" the other man said.  "Of course! I’ll go home in a cab."

So they parted, and Ste. Marie went out to the waiting car.

On the left bank the streets are nearly empty of traffic at night, and
one can make excellent time over them.  Ste. Marie reached the Porte de
Versailles, at the city’s limits, in twenty minutes, and dashed through
Issy five minutes later.  In less than half an hour from the time he had
left the Rue de l’Université he was under the walls of La Lierre.  He
looked at his watch, and it was not quite half-past eleven.

He tried the little door in the wall, and it was unlocked, so he passed
in and closed the door behind him.  Inside he found that he was running,
and he gave a little laugh, but of eagerness and excitement, not of
mirth.  There were dim lights in one or two of the upper windows, but
none below, and there was no one about.  He pulled at the door bell,
and, after a few impatient moments, pulled again and still again.  Then
he noticed that the heavy door was ajar, and since no one answered his
ringing he pushed the door open and went in.

The lower hall was quite dark, but a very faint light came down from
above through the well of the staircase.  He heard dragging feet in the
upper hall and then upon one of the upper flights, for the stairs, broad
below, divided at a half way landing and continued upward, in an
opposite direction, in two narrower flights.  A voice, very faint and
weary, called—

"Who is there?  Who is ringing, please?"  And Coira O’Hara, holding a
candle in her hand, came upon the stair landing, and stood gazing down
into the darkness.  She wore a sort of dressing gown, a heavy white
garment which hung in straight long folds to her feet, and fell away
from the arm that held the candle on high.  The yellow beams of light
struck down across her head and face, and, even at the distance, the man
could see how white she was, and hollow-eyed and worn—a pale wraith of
the splendid beauty that had walked in the garden at La Lierre.

"Who is there, please?" she asked again.  "I can’t see.  What is it?"

"It is I, Coira!" said Ste. Marie, and she gave a sharp cry.  The arm
which was holding the candle overhead shook and fell beside her, as if
the strength had gone out of it.  The candle dropped to the floor,
spluttered there for an instant, and went out, but there was still a
little light from the hall above.

Ste. Marie sprang up the stairs to where the girl stood, and caught her
in his arms, for she was on the verge of faintness.  Her head fell back
away from him, and he saw her eyes through half-closed lids, her white
teeth through parted lips.  She was trembling, but, for that matter, so
was he, at the touch of her, the heavy and sweet burden in his arms.
She tried to speak, and he heard a whisper—

"Why?  Why?  Why?"

"Because it is my place, Coira!" said he. "Because I cannot live away
from you.  Because we belong together."

The girl struggled weakly and pushed against him.  Once more he heard
whispering words, and made out that she tried to say—

"Go back to her!  Go back to her!  You belong there."  But at that he
laughed aloud.

"I thought so too," said he.  "But she thinks otherwise.  She’ll have
none of me, Coira.  It’s Richard Hartley now.  Coira, can you love a
jilted man?  I’ve been jilted—thrown over—dismissed."

Her head came up in a flash, and she stared at him, suddenly rigid and
tense in his arms.

"Is that true?" she demanded.

"Yes, my love!" said he, and she began to weep, with long, comfortable
sobs, her face hidden in the hollow of his shoulder.  On one other
occasion she had wept before him, and he had been horribly embarrassed,
but he bore this present tempest without, as it were, winking.  He
gloried in it. He tried to say so.  He tried to whisper to her, his lips
pressed close to the ear that was nearest them, but he found that he had
no speech.  Words would not come to his tongue; it trembled and
faltered, and was still for sheer inadequacy.

Rather oddly, in that his thoughts were chaos, swallowed up in the surge
of feeling, a memory struck through to him of that other exaltation
which had swept him to the stars.  He looked upon it and was amazed
because now he saw it, in clear light, for the thing it had been.  He
saw it for a fantasy, a self-evoked wraith of the imagination, a dizzy
flight of the spirit through spirit space. He saw that it had not been
love at all, and he realised how little a part Helen Benham had ever
really played in it.  A cold and still-eyed figure for him to wrap the
veil of his imagination round, that was what she had been.  There were
times when the sweep of his upward flight had stirred her a little,
wakened in her some vague response, but for the most part she had stood
aside and looked on, wondering.

The mist was rent away from that rainbow-painted cobweb, and at last the
man saw and understood. He gave an exclamation of wonder, and the girl
who loved him raised her head once more, and the two looked each into
the other’s eyes for a long time.  They fell into hushed and broken
speech.

"I have loved you so long, so long!" she said, "and so hopelessly.  I
never thought—I never believed.—To think that in the end you have come
to me!  I cannot believe it!"

"Wait and see!" cried the man.  "Wait and see!"  She shivered a little.

"If it is not true I should like to die before I find out.  I should
like to die now, Bayard, with your arms holding me up, and your eyes
close, close."

Ste. Marie’s arms tightened round her with a sudden fierceness.  He hurt
her, and she smiled up at him.  Their two hearts beat one against the
other, and they beat very fast.

"Don’t you understand," he cried, "that life’s only just beginning—day’s
just dawning, Coira? We’ve been lost in the dark.  Day’s coming now.
This is only the sunrise."

"I can believe it at last," she said, "because you hold me close, and
you hurt me a little, and I’m glad to be hurt.  And I can feel your
heart beating.  Ah, never let me go, Bayard!  I should be lost in the
dark again, if you let me go."  A sudden thought came to her, and she
bent back her head to see the better.

"Did you speak with Arthur?"  And he said—

"Yes.  He asked me to read your note, so I read it.  That poor lad!  I
came straight to you then.  Straight and fast!"

"You knew why I did it?" she said, and Ste. Marie said—

"Now I know."

"I could not have married him," said she.  "I could not.  I never
thought I should see you again, but I loved you and I could not have
married him.—Ah, impossible!  And he’ll be glad, later on.  You know
that.  It will save him any more trouble with his family, and
besides—he’s so very young! Already, I think, he was beginning to chafe
a little.  I thought so more than once.

"Oh, I’m trying to justify myself!" she cried. "I’m trying to find
reasons, but you know the true reason.  You know it."

"I thank God for it!" he said.

So they stood clinging together in that dim place, and broken whispering
speech passed between them or long silences when speech was done.  But
at last they went down the stairs and out upon the open terrace where
the moonlight lay.

"It was in the open sweet air," the girl said, "that we came to know
each other.  Let us walk in it now.  The house smothers me."  She looked
up when they had passed the west corner of the façade, and drew a little
sigh.

"I am worried about my father," said she. "He will not answer me when I
call to him, and he has eaten nothing all day long.  Bayard, I think his
heart is broken.  Ah! but to-morrow we shall mend it again.  In the
morning I shall make him let me in, and I shall tell him—what I have to
tell."

They turned down under the trees, where the moonlight made silver
splashes about their feet, and the sweet night air bore soft against
their faces.  Coira went a half step in advance, her head laid back upon
the shoulder of the man she loved, and his arm held her up from falling.

So at last we leave them, walking there in the tender moonlight, with
the breath of roses about them, and their eyes turned to the coming day.
It is still night, and there is yet one cloud of sorrow to shadow them
somewhat, for upstairs in his locked room a man lies dead across the
floor with an empty pistol beside him—heart-broken, as the girl had
feared.  But where a great love is shadows cannot last very long, not
even such shadows as this.  The morning must dawn—and joy cometh of a
morning.

[Illustration: "Walking there in the tender moonlight."]

So we leave them walking together in the moonlight, their faces turned
towards the coming day.



    Butler & Tanner.  The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.



           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



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