CHAPTER XVIITHOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHINDThat 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 theMarigny, reached the Rue d'Assas. The street door was already closed for the night, and so he had to ring for thecordon. 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 littleloge."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.[image]"'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?"[image]"'What can we do, Richard? What can we do?'"CHAPTER XVIIIA CONVERSATION OVERHEARDIn 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'sLe Duel, Maeterlinck'sPelleas et Melisande,Don Quixote de la Mancha, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil'sEclogues, and theLife of the Chevalier Bayardby 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 theBayardand 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 theBayardand 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: andhers. 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 theKnickerbocker, 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 theGay White Way. It is not called theGay White Waynow. 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 aWoildor aChoinalor, if it's after twelve at night, aMorning 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 theKnickerbocker(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 theMarigny, 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?"[image]"'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 saturninechevalier 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 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 theMarigny, reached the Rue d'Assas. The street door was already closed for the night, and so he had to ring for thecordon. 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 littleloge.
"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.
[image]"'Ste. Marie has disappeared? How very extraordinary!'"
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"'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?"
[image]"'What can we do, Richard? What can we do?'"
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"'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'sLe Duel, Maeterlinck'sPelleas et Melisande,Don Quixote de la Mancha, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil'sEclogues, and theLife of the Chevalier Bayardby 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 theBayardand 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 theBayardand 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: andhers. 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 theKnickerbocker, 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 theGay White Way. It is not called theGay White Waynow. 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 aWoildor aChoinalor, if it's after twelve at night, aMorning 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 theKnickerbocker(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 theMarigny, 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?"
[image]"'Tell me about him, this Ste. Marie! Do you know anything about him?'"
[image]
[image]
"'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 saturninechevalier 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!