The End of Her Honeymoon Part 21

But the incident made a disagreeable impression on Gerald Burton. And when they all finally came down to the courtyard, the Police Agents being by this time on far better terms with Monsieur and Madame Poulain than they had been at the beginning--on such good terms indeed that they were more than willing to attack the refreshments the hotel-keeper had made ready for them--he drew the head Agent aside.

"There was one thing," he said, "which rather troubled me--"

The man looked at him attentively. "Yes, monsieur?" He realised that this young man, whom he took for an Englishman, had been present on behalf of the people at whose request the Perquisition had been ordered. He was therefore inclined to treat him with civility.

"I mean that closed room on the top floor," said Gerald hesitatingly. "Is there no way of ascertaining whether Madame Poulain's story is true--whether, that is, the room was ever condemned by the sanitary authorities?"

"Yes," said the Agent, "nothing is easier, monsieur, than to find that out."

He took a note-book out of his pocket, tore out a sheet, and wrote a few lines on it. Then he called one of his subordinates to him and said a few words of which Gerald caught the sense. It was an order to go to the office of the sanitary inspector of the district and bring back an answer at once.

In a quarter of an hour the man was back.

"The answer is 'Yes,'" he said a little breathlessly, and he handed his chief a large sheet of paper, headed:

VILLE DE PARIS, Sanitary Inspector's Department.

In answer to your question, I have to report that we did condemn a room in the Hotel Saint Ange for cause of infectious disease.

The Police Agent handed it to Gerald Burton. "I felt sure that in that matter," he observed, "Madame Poulain was telling the truth. But, of course, a Perquisition in a house of this kind is a mere farce, without a plan to guide us. Think of the strange winding pa.s.sages along which we were led, of the blind rooms, of the deep cupboards into which we peeped! For all we can tell, several apartments may have entirely escaped our knowledge."

"Do you make many of these Perquisitions?" asked Gerald curiously.

"No, monsieur. We are very seldom asked to search a whole house. Almost always we have some indication as to the special room or rooms which are to be investigated. In fact since I became attached to the police, six years ago, this is the first time I have ever had to carry out a thorough Perquisition," he laughed a little ruefully, "and it makes one dry!"

Gerald Burton took the hint. He put a twenty-franc piece into the man's hand. "For you and your men," he said. "Go and get a good lunch: I am sure you need it."

The Police Agent thanked him cordially. "One word, monsieur? Perhaps I ought to tell you that we of the police are quite sure that the gentleman about whom you are anxious left this hotel--if indeed he was ever in it.

The Poulains bear a very good character--better than that of many hotel-keepers of whom I could tell you--better than that of certain hotel-keepers who own grand international hotels the other side of the river. Of course I had to be rough with them at first--one has to keep up one's character, you know. But, monsieur? I was told confidentially that this Perquisition would probably lead to nothing, and, as you see, it has led to nothing."

Gerald sighed, rather wearily, for he too was tired, he too would be glad of his luncheon. Yes, this search had been, as the Police Agent hinted, something of a farce after all, and he had led not only himself, but, what he regretted far more, poor Nancy Dampier down a blind alley.

He found her waiting, feverishly eager and anxious to hear the result of the Perquisition. When the door of the salon opened, she got up and turned to him, a strained look on her face.

"Well?" she said. "Well, Mr. Burton?"

He shook his head despondently. "We found nothing, absolutely nothing which could connect your husband with any one of the rooms which we searched, Mrs. Dampier. If, after leaving you, he did spend the night in the Hotel Saint Ange, the Poulains have obliterated every trace of his presence."

She gave a low cry of pain, of bitter disappointment, and suddenly sinking down into a chair, buried her head in her hands--"I can't bear it," she wailed. "I only want to know the truth, whatever the truth may be! Anything would be better than what I am going through now."

Gerald Burton came and stood by the bowed figure. He became curiously pale with that clear, not unhealthy, pallor which is induced by exceptional intensity of feeling.

"Mrs. Dampier?" he said, in a very low voice.

She lifted her head and looked at him fixedly.

"Everything that a man can do I will do to find your husband. If I fail to find him living I will find him dead."

CHAPTER XII

But it is far easier to form such a resolution and to make such a promise as that which Gerald Burton had made to Nancy Dampier than it is to carry it out.

The officials of the Prefecture of Police grew well accustomed to the sight of the tall, good-looking young American coming and going in their midst, and they all showed a sympathetic interest in his quest. But though the police officials were lavish in kindly words, and in permits and pa.s.ses which he found an open sesame to the various places where it was just conceivable that John Dampier, after having met with some kind of accident, might have been carried, they were apparently quite unable to elucidate the growing mystery of the English artist's disappearance.

Early on the Friday morning Gerald Burton telephoned to Nancy Dampier's friend and lawyer the fact that they were still entirely without any clue to the whereabouts of the missing man. And, true to his word, Mr. Stephens arrived in Paris that same evening.

He found his poor young client awaiting him in the company of the new friends to whom she owed so deep a debt of grat.i.tude, and this lessened, to a certain extent, the awkwardness of their meeting. Even so, the shrewd, kindly Englishman felt much shocked and distressed by the change which had taken place in Nancy.

Just a month ago he had seen her standing, most radiant as well as prettiest of brides, by her proud husband's side. Perhaps because she had had so lonely a girlhood there had been no tears at Nancy Tremain's wedding, and when he had put her in the carriage which was to be the first little stage of her honeymoon, she had whispered, "Mr. Stephens? I feel as if I was going home." And the lawyer had known all that the dear, to her till then unfamiliar, word--had meant to her.

And now, here she was with strangers, wan, strained and unutterably weary-looking; as she stood, her hand clasped in his, looking, with dumb anguish, up into his face, Mr. Stephens felt a thrill of intense anger against John Dampier. For the present, at any rate, he refused to entertain the theory of crime or accident. But he kept his thoughts entirely to himself.

The irruption of any human being into a small and, for any reason, closely welded together set of people produces much the same effect as does the addition of a new product to a chemical mixture. And the arrival of the English lawyer affected not only Nancy herself but, in varying ways, Senator Burton and his son.

A very few moments spent in the Englishman's company brought to the American Senator an immense measure of relief. For one thing, he was sincerely glad to know that the poor young stranger's business was about to pa.s.s into capable and evidently most trustworthy hands: also a rapid interchange of words the first time they were left alone together put an end, and that for ever, to Senator Burton's uneasy suspicions--suspicions which had persisted to the end--as to Mrs. Dampier's account of herself.

Whatever else was obscure in this strange story, it was now clear that Nancy had told nothing but the truth concerning her short, simple past life. And looking back the Senator found it difficult, as a man so often finds it difficult when he becomes wise after an event, to justify, even to himself, his former att.i.tude of distrust.

As to Gerald Burton, he felt a little jealousy of the lawyer. Till the coming of Mr. Stephens it was to him that Mrs. Dampier had instinctively turned in her distress and suspense; now she naturally consulted, and deferred to the advice of, the older man and older friend.

But Mr. Stephens was not able to do more than had already been done. He listened to what all those about him had to say concerning John Dampier's disappearance, and he carefully went over the ground already covered by Senator Burton and his son. He, too, saw the British Consul; he, too, was granted a short but cordial interview with the Prefect of Police; but not even to the Senator did he advance any personal theory as to what could account for the extraordinary occurrence.

Members of the legal profession are the same all the world over. If they are wise men and good lawyers, they keep their own counsel.

Perhaps because he himself had a son who was Gerald's age, the English solicitor took, from the first, a very special interest in the young American architect. Soon they were on excellent terms with one another--indeed, it was with Gerald Burton that he found he had most to do.

The young man naturally accompanied him to all those places where the presence of a first-rate interpreter was likely to be useful, and Gerald Burton also pursued a number of independent enquiries on his own account.

But nothing was of any avail; they were baffled at every turn, and soon this search for a vanished man became, to one of the two now so strenuously engaged in it, the most sinister and disturbing of the many problems with which he had had to deal as a trusted family lawyer.

The screen of memory bears many blurred and hazy impressions on its surface, but now and again some special dramatic happening remains fixed there in a series of sharply-etched pictures in which every line has its retrospective meaning and value.

Such was to be the case with Mr. Stephens and the curious days he spent in Paris seeking for John Dampier. He was there a whole week, and every succeeding day was packed with anxious, exciting interviews and expeditions, each of which it was hoped might yield some sort of clue. But what remained indelibly fixed on the English lawyer's screen of memory were three or four at the time apparently insignificant conversations which in no case could have done much to solve the problem he had set himself to solve.

The first of these was a short conversation, in the middle of that busy week, with Nancy Dampier.

After the first interview in which she had told him her version of what had happened the night of her own and her husband's arrival in Paris, he had had very little talk with her, and at no time had he expressed any opinion as to what could have happened to John Dampier. But at last he felt it his duty to try and probe a little more than he had felt it at first possible to do into the question of a possible motive or motives.

"I'm afraid," he began, "that there's very little more to do than has been already done. I mean, of course, for the present. And in your place, Nancy, I should come back to England, and wait there for any news that may reach you."

As she shook her head very decidedly, he went on gravely:--"I know it is open to you to remain in Paris; but, my dear, I cannot believe that your husband is in Paris. If he were, we must by now, with the help of the French police--the most expert in the world, remember--have come across traces of him, and that whether he be dead or alive."

But Nancy did not take the meaning he had hoped to convey by that last word. On the contrary:--

"Do you think," she asked, and though her lips quivered she spoke very quietly, "that Jack is dead, Mr. Stephens? I know that Senator Burton's son has come to believe that he is."

"No," said the English lawyer very seriously, "no, Nancy, I do not believe that your husband is dead. It is clear that had he been killed or injured that first morning in the Paris streets we should know it by now. The police a.s.sert, and I have no reason to doubt them, that they have made every kind of enquiry. No, they, like me, believe that your husband has left Paris."