Jason Part 13

The Englishman frowned across at her. "I didn't come to make apologies,"

said he. "I came to explain. Well, I have explained--Baron de Vries and I together. That's just how it happened. And that's just how Ste. Marie takes things. The point is that you've got to understand it. I've got to make you."

The girl smiled up at him dolefully. "You look," she said, "as if you were going to beat me if necessary. You look very warlike."

"I feel warlike," the man said, nodding. He said: "I'm fighting for a friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an injustice. I know him better than you do, and I tell you you're doing him a grave injustice.

You're failing altogether to understand him."

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

"I know," said he.

Quite suddenly she gave a little overwrought cry, and she put up her hands over her face. "Oh, Richard!" she said, "that day when he was here! He left me--oh, I cannot tell you at what a height he left me! It was something new and beautiful. He swept me to the clouds with him. And I might--perhaps I might have lived on there. Who knows? But then that hideous evening! Ah, it was too sickening: the fall back to common earth again!"

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

Miss Benham rose to her feet and moved restlessly back and forth. "Oh, Richard," she said, "the golden spell is broken--the enchantment he laid upon me that day. I'm not like him, you know. Oh, I wish I were! I wish I were! I can't change from hour to hour. I can't rise to the clouds again after my fall to earth. It has all--become something different.

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

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

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

"He is waiting to hear how I feel about it all, isn't he?" she said. "He is waiting to know that I understand. Will you tell him a little lie for me, Richard? No, you needn't tell a lie. I will tell it. Tell him that I said I understood perfectly. Tell him that I was shocked for a moment, but that afterward I understood and thought no more about it. Will you tell him I said that? It won't be a lie from you, because I did say it.

Oh, I will not grieve him or hamper him now while he is working in my cause! I'll tell him a lie rather than have him grieve."

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

She shook her head slowly.

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

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

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

"He deserves good friends," said the young man, stoutly. "And besides,"

said he, "we're brothers in arms nowadays. We've enlisted together to fight for the same cause." The girl fell back with a little cry.

"Do you mean," she said, after a moment--"do you mean that _you_ are working with him--to find Arthur?"

Hartley nodded.

"But--" said she, stammering. "But, Richard--"

The man checked her.

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

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

X

CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS

Ste. Marie returned, after three days, from Dinard in a depressed and somewhat puzzled frame of mind. He had found no trace whatever of Arthur Benham, either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, he was unable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youth had been seen at either place. The matter of identification, it seemed to him, should be a rather simple one. In the first place, the boy's appearance was not at all French, nor, for that matter, English; it was very American. Also, he spoke French--so Ste. Marie had been told--very badly, having for the language that scornful contempt peculiar to Anglo-Saxons of a certain type. His speech, it seemed, was, like his appearance, ultra-American--full of strange idioms and oddly p.r.o.nounced.

In short, such a youth would be rather sure to be remembered by any hotel management and staff with which he might have come in contact.

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

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

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

"You pa.s.sed me in the street just now," explained the Belgian, "and as I was a few minutes early for a lunch engagement I followed you up." He pointed with his stick at the open bag. "Ah, you have been on a journey!

Detective work?"

Ste. Marie pushed his guest into a chair, gave him cigarettes, and told him about the fruitless expedition to Dinard. He spoke, also, of his belief that Captain Stewart's agent had never really found a clew at all; and at that Baron de Vries nodded his gray head and said, "Ah!" in a tone of some significance. Afterward he smoked a little while in silence, but presently he said, as if with some hesitation: "May I be permitted to offer a word of advice?"

"But surely!" cried Ste. Marie, kicking away the half-empty portmanteau.

"Why not?"

"Do whatever you are going to do in this matter according to your own judgment," said the elder man, "or according to Mr. Hartley's and your combined judgments. Make your investigations without reference to our friend Captain Stewart." He halted there as if that were all he had meant to say, but when he saw Ste. Marie's raised eyebrows he frowned and went on, slowly, as if picking his words with some care. "I should be sorry," he said, "to have Captain Stewart at the head of any investigation of this nature in which I was deeply interested--just now, at any rate. I am afraid--it is difficult to say; I do not wish to say too much--I am afraid he is not quite the man for the position."

Ste. Marie nodded his head with great emphasis. "Ah," he cried, "that's just what I have felt, you know, all along! And it's what Hartley felt, too, I'm sure. No, Stewart is not the sort for a detective. He's too c.o.c.ksure. He won't admit that he might possibly be wrong now and then.

He's too--"

"He is too much occupied with other matters," said Baron de Vries.

Ste. Marie sat down on the edge of a chair. "Other matters?" he demanded. "That sounds mysterious. What other matters?"

"Oh, there is nothing very mysterious about it," said the elder man. He frowned down at his cigarette, and brushed some fallen ash neatly from his knees. "Captain Stewart," said he, "is badly worried, and has been for the past year or so--badly worried over money matters and other things. He has lost enormous sums at play, as I happen to know, and he has lost still more enormous sums at Auteuil and at Longchamps. Also, the ladies are not without their demands."

Ste. Marie gave a shout of laughter. "Comment donc!" he cried. "Ce vieillard?"

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

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

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

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

"Ah! there," said Baron de Vries, "you enter upon a terra incognita. No one can say what a woman sees in this man or in that. It's beyond our ken."