Chapter 10
With the sound of that falling body he had already reached the doorway and torn aside the heavy portière. It was a sleeping-room he looked into, a room of medium size with two windows and an ornate bed of the Empire style set sidewise against the farther wall. There were electric lights upon imitation candles which were grouped in sconces against the wall, and these were turned on, so that the room was brightly illuminated. Midway between the door and the ornate Empire bed Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor, and Olga Nilssen stood upright beside him, gazing down upon him quite calmly. In her right hand, which hung at her side, she held a little flat black automatic pistol of the type known as Brownings--and they look like toys, but they are not.
Ste. Marie sprang at her silently and caught her by the arm, twisting the automatic pistol from her grasp, and the woman made no effort whatever to resist him. She looked into his face quite frankly and unmoved, and she shook her head.
"I haven't harmed him," she said. "I was going to, yes--and then myself--but he didn't give me a chance. He fell down in a fit." She nodded down toward the man who lay writhing at their feet. "I frightened him," she said, "and he fell in a fit. He's an epileptic, you know. Didn't you know that? Oh yes."
Abruptly she turned away shivering, and put up her hands over her face. And she gave an exclamation of uncontrollable repulsion.
"Ugh!" she cried, "it's horrible! Horrible! I can't bear to look. I saw him in a fit once before--long ago--and I couldn't bear even to speak to him for a month. I thought he had been cured. He said--Ah, it's horrible!"
Ste. Marie had dropped upon his knees beside the fallen man, and Mlle. Nilssen said, over her shoulder:
"Hold his head up from the floor, if you can bear to. He might hurt it."
It was not an easy thing to do, for Ste. Marie had the natural sense of repulsion in such matters that most people have, and this man's appearance, as Olga Nilssen had said, was horrible. The face was drawn hideously, and in the strong, clear light of the electrics it was a deathly yellow. The eyes were half closed, and the eyeballs turned up so that only the whites of them showed between the lids. There was froth upon the distorted mouth, and it clung to the catlike mustache and to the shallow, sunken chin beneath. But Ste. Marie exerted all his will power, and took the jerking, trembling head in his hands, holding it clear of the floor.
"You'd better call the servant," he said. "There may be something that can be done."
But the woman answered, without looking:
"No, there's nothing that can be done, I believe, except to keep him from bruising himself. Stimulants--that sort of thing--do more harm than good. Could you get him on the bed here?"
"Together we might manage it," said Ste. Marie. "Come and help!"
"I can't!" she cried, nervously. "I can't--touch him. Please, I can't do it."
"Come!" said the man, in a sharp tone. "It's no time for nerves. I don't like it, either, but it's got to be done."
The woman began a half-hysterical sobbing, but after a moment she turned and came with slow feet to where Stewart lay.
Ste. Marie slipped his arms under the man's body and began to raise him from the floor.
"You needn't help, after all," he said. "He's not heavy."
And, indeed, under his skilfully shaped and padded clothes the man was a mere waif of a man--as unbelievably slight as if he were the victim of a wasting disease. Ste. Marie held the body in his arms as if it had been a child, and carried it across and laid it on the bed; but it was many months before he forgot the horror of that awful thing shaking and twitching in his hold, the head thumping hideously upon his shoulder, the arms and legs beating against him. It was the most difficult task he had ever had to perform. He laid Captain Stewart upon the bed and straightened the helpless limbs as best he could.
"I suppose," he said, rising again--"I suppose when the man comes out of this he'll be frightfully exhausted and drop off to sleep, won't he? We'll have to--"
He halted abruptly there, and for a single swift instant he felt the black and rushing sensation of one who is going to faint away. The wall behind the ornate Empire bed was covered with photographs, some in frames, others left, as they had been received, upon the large squares of weird cardboard which are termed "art mounts."
"Come here a moment, quickly!" said Ste. Marie, in a sharp voice.
Mlle. Nilssen's sobs had died down to a silent, spasmodic catching of the breath, but she was still much unnerved, and she approached the bed with obvious unwillingness, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Ste. Marie pointed to an unframed photograph which was fastened to the wall by thumb-tacks, and his outstretched hand shook as he pointed. Beneath them the other man still writhed and tumbled in his epileptic fit.
"Do you know who that woman is?" demanded Ste. Marie, and his tone was such that Olga Nilssen turned slowly and stared at him.
"That woman," said she, "is the reason why I wished to pull the world down upon Charlie Stewart and me to-night. That's who she is."
Ste. Marie gave a sort of cry.
"Who is she?" he insisted. "What is her name? I--have a particularly important reason for wanting to know. I've got to know."
Mlle. Nilssen shook her head, still staring at him.
"I can't tell you that," said she. "I don't know the name. I only know that--when he met her, he--I don't know her name, but I know where she lives and where he goes every day to see her--a house with a big garden and walled park on the road to Clamart. It's on the edge of the wood, not far from Fort d'Issy. The Clamart-Vanves-Issy tram runs past the wall of one side of the park. That's all I know."
Ste. Marie clasped his head with his hands.
"So near to it!" he groaned, "and yet--Ah!" He bent forward suddenly over the bed and spelled out the name of the photographer which was pencilled upon the brown cardboard mount. "There's still a chance," he said, "There's still one chance."
He became aware that the woman was watching him curiously, and nodded to her.
"It's something you don't know about," he explained. "I've got to find out who this--girl is. Perhaps the photographer can help me. I used to know him." All at once his eyes sharpened. "Tell me the simple truth about something!" said he. "If ever we have been friends, if you owe me any good office, tell me this: Do you know anything about young Arthur Benham's disappearance two months ago, or about what has become of him?"
Again the woman shook her head.
"No," said she. "Nothing at all. I hadn't even heard of it. Young Arthur Benham! I've met him once or twice. I wonder--I wonder Stewart never spoke to me about his disappearance! That's very odd."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, absently, "it is." He gave a little sigh. "I wonder about a good many things," said he.
He glanced down upon the bed before them, and Captain Stewart lay still, save for a slight twitching of the hands. Once he moved his head restlessly from side to side and said something incoherent in a weak murmur.
"He's out of it," said Olga Nilssen. "He'll sleep now, I think. I suppose we must get rid of those people and then leave him to the care of his man. A doctor couldn't do anything for him."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, nodding, "I'll call the servant and tell the people that Stewart has been taken ill."
He looked once more toward the photograph on the wall, and under his breath he said, with an odd, defiant fierceness: "I won't believe it!" But he did not explain what he wouldn't believe. He started out of the room, but, half-way, halted and turned back. He looked Olga Nilssen full in the eyes, saying:
"It is safe to leave you here with him while I call the servant? There'll be no more--?"
But the woman gave a low cry and a violent shiver with it.
"You need have no fear," she said. "I've no desire now to--harm him. The--reason is gone. This has cured me. I feel as if I could never bear to see him again. Oh, hurry! Please hurry! I want to get away from here!"
Ste. Marie nodded, and went out of the room.
* * * * *
XII
THE NAME OF THE LADY WITH THE EYES--EVIDENCE HEAPS UP SWIFTLY
Ste. Marie drove home to the rue d'Assas with his head in a whirl, and with a sense of great excitement beating somewhere within him--probably in the place where his heart ought to be. He had a curiously sure feeling that at last his feet were upon the right path. He could not have explained this to himself--indeed, there was nothing to explain, and if there had been he was in far too great an inner turmoil to manage it. It was a mere feeling--the sort of thing which he had once tried to express to Captain Stewart and had got laughed at for his pains.
There was, in sober fact, no reason whatever why Captain Stewart's possession of a photograph of the beautiful lady whom Ste. Marie had once seen in company with O'Hara should be taken as significant of anything except an appreciation of beauty on the part of Miss Benham's uncle--not even if, as Mlle. Nilssen believed, Captain Stewart was in love with the lady. But to Ste. Marie, in his whirl of reawakened excitement, the discovery loomed to the skies, and in a series of ingenious but very vague leaps of the imagination he saw himself, with the aid of this new evidence (which was no evidence at all, if he had been calm enough to realize it), victorious in his great quest: leading young Arthur Benham back to the arms of an ecstatic family, and kneeling at the feet of that youth's sister to claim his reward. All of which seems a rather startling flight of the imagination to have had its beginning in the sight of one photograph of a young woman. But, then, Ste. Marie was imaginative if he was anything.
He fell to thinking of this girl whose eyes, after one sight of them, had so long haunted him. He thought of her between those two men, the hard-faced Irish adventurer, and the other, Stewart, strange compound of intellectual and voluptuary, and his eyes flashed in the dark and he gripped his hands together upon his knees. He said again:
"I won't believe it! I won't believe it!" Believe what? one wonders.
He slept hardly at all: only, toward morning, falling into an uneasy doze. And in the doze he dreamed once more the dream of the dim, waste place and the hill, and the eyes and voice that called him back--because they needed him.
As early as he dared, after his morning coffee, he took a fiacre and drove across the river to the Boulevard de la Madeleine, where he climbed a certain stair, at the foot of which were two glass cases containing photographs of, for the most part, well-known ladies of the Parisian stage. At the top of the stair he entered the reception-room of a young photographer who is famous now the world over, but who, at the beginning of his career, when he had nothing but talent and no acquaintance, owed certain of his most important commissions to M. Ste. Marie.
The man, whose name was Bernstein, came forward eagerly from the studio beyond to greet his visitor, and Ste. Marie complimented him chaffingly upon his very sleek and prosperous appearance, and upon the new decorations of the little salon, which were, in truth, excellently well judged. But after they had talked for a little while of such matters, he said:
"I want to know if you keep specimen prints of all the photographs you have made within the past few months, and, if so, I should like to see them."
The young Jew went to a wooden portfolio-holder which stood in a corner, and dragged it out into the light.
"I have them all here," said he--"everything that I have made within the past ten or twelve months. If you will let me draw up a chair you can look them over comfortably."
He glanced at his former patron with a little polite curiosity as Ste. Marie followed his suggestion, and began to turn over the big portfolio's contents; but he did not show any surprise nor ask questions. Indeed, he guessed, to a certain extent, rather near the truth of the matter. It had happened before that young gentlemen--and old ones, too--wanted to look over his prints without offering explanations, and they generally picked out all the photographs there were of some particular lady and bought them if they could be bought.
So he was by no means astonished on this occasion, and he moved about the room putting things to rights, and even went for a few moments into the studio beyond until he was recalled by a sudden exclamation from his visitor--an exclamation which had a sound of mingled delight and excitement.
Ste. Marie held in his hands a large photograph, and he turned it toward the man who had made it.
"I am going to ask you some questions," said he, "that will sound rather indiscreet and irregular, but I beg you to answer them if you can, because the matter is of great importance to a number of people. Do you remember this lady?"
"Oh yes," said the Jew, readily, "I remember her very well. I never forget people who are as beautiful as this lady was." His eyes gleamed with retrospective joy. "She was splendid!" he declared. "Sumptuous! No, I cannot describe her. I have not the words. And I could not photograph her with any justice, either. She was all color: brown skin, with a dull-red stain under the cheeks, and a great mass of hair that was not black but very nearly black--except in the sun, and then there were red lights in it. She was a goddess, that lady, a queen of goddesses-- the young Juno before marriage--the--"
"Yes," interrupted Ste. Marie--"yes, I see. Yes, quite evidently she was beautiful; but what I wanted in particular to know was her name, if you feel that you have a right to give it to me (I remind you again that the matter is very important), and any circumstances that you can remember about her coming here: who came with her, for instance and things of that sort."
The photographer looked a little disappointed at being cut off in the middle of his rhapsody, but he began turning over the leaves of an order-book which lay upon a table near by.
"Here is the entry," he said, after a few moments. "Yes, I thought so, the date was nearly three months ago--April 5th. And the lady's name was Mlle. Coira O'Hara."
"What!" cried the other man, sharply. "What did you say?"
"Mlle. Coira O'Hara was the name," repeated the photographer. "I remember the occasion perfectly. The lady came here with three gentlemen--one tall, thin gentleman with an eyeglass, an Englishman, I think, though he spoke very excellent French when he spoke to me. Among themselves they spoke, I think, English, though I do not understand it, except a few words, such as ''ow moch?' and 'sank you' and 'rady, pleas', now.'"
"Yes! yes!" cried Ste. Marie, impatiently. And the little Jew could see that he was laboring under some very strong excitement, and he wondered mildly about it, scenting a love-affair.
"Then," he pursued, "there was a very young man in strange clothes--a tourist, I should think, like those Americans and English who come in the summer with little red books and sit on the terrace of the Café de la Paix." He heard his visitor draw a swift, sharp breath at that, but he hurried on before he could be interrupted. "This young man seemed to be unable to take his eyes from the lady--and small wonder! He was very much épris--very much épris, indeed. Never have I seen a youth more so. Ah, it was something to see, that--a thing to touch the heart!"
"What did the young man look like?" demanded Ste. Marie.
The photographer described the youth as best he could from memory, and he saw his visitor nod once or twice, and at the end he said:
"Yes, yes; I thought so. Thank you."
The Jew did not know what it was the other thought, but he went on:
"Ah, a thing to touch the heart! Such devotion as that! Alas, that the lady should seem so cold to it! Still, a goddess! What would you? A queen among goddesses. One would not have them laugh and make little jokes--make eyes at love-sick boys. No, indeed!" He shook his head rapidly and sighed.
M. Ste. Marie was silent for a little space, but at length he looked up as if he had just remembered something.
"And the third man?" he asked.
"Ah, yes, the third gentleman," said Bernstein. "I had forgotten him. The third gentleman I knew well. He had often been here. It was he who brought these friends to me. He was M. le Capitaine Stewart. Everybody knows M. le Capitaine Stewart--everybody in Paris."
Again he observed that his visitor drew a little, swift, sharp breath, and that he seemed to be laboring under some excitement.
However, Ste. Marie did not question him further, and so he went on to tell the little more he knew of the matter--how the four people had remained for an hour or more, trying many poses; how they had returned, all but the tall gentleman, three days later to see the proofs and to order certain ones to be printed (the young man paying on the spot in advance), and how the finished prints had been sent to M. le Capitaine Stewart's address.
When he had finished, his visitor sat for a long time silent, his head bent a little, frowning upon the floor and chafing his hands together over his knees. But at last he rose rather abruptly. He said:
"Thank you very much, indeed. You have done me a great service. If ever I can repay it, command me. Thank you!"
The Jew protested, smiling, that he was still too deeply in debt to M. Ste. Marie, and so, politely wrangling, they reached the door, and with a last expression of gratitude the visitor departed down the stair. A client came in just then for a sitting, and so the little photographer did not have an opportunity to wonder over the rather odd affair as much as he might have done. Indeed, in the press of work, it slipped from his mind altogether.
But down in the busy boulevard Ste. Marie stood hesitating on the curb. There were so many things to be done, in the light of these new developments, that he did not know what to do first.
"Mlle. Coira O'Hara!--_Mademoiselle!_" The thought gave him a sudden sting of inexplicable relief and pleasure. She would be O'Hara's daughter, then. And the boy, Arthur Benham (there was no room for doubt in the photographer's description) had seemed to be badly in love with her. This was a new development, indeed! It wanted thought, reflection, consultation with Richard Hartley. He signalled to a fiacre, and when it had drawn up before him sprang into it and gave Richard Hartley's address in the Avenue de l'Observatoire. But when they had gone a little way he changed his mind and gave another address, one in the Boulevard de la Tour Maubourg. It was where Mlle. Olga Nilssen lived. She had told him when he parted from her the evening before.
On the way he fell to thinking of what he had learned from the little photographer Bernstein, to setting the facts, as well as he could, in order, endeavoring to make out just how much or how little they signified by themselves or added to what he had known before. But he was in far too keen a state of excitement to review them at all calmly. As on the previous evening, they seemed to him to loom to the skies, and again he saw himself successful in his quest--victorious--triumphant. That this leap to conclusions was but a little less absurd than the first did not occur to him. He was in a fine fever of enthusiasm, and such difficulties as his eye perceived lay in a sort of vague mist to be dissipated later on, when he should sit quietly down with Hartley and sift the wheat from the chaff, laying out a definite scheme of action.
It occurred to him that in his interview with the photographer he had forgotten one point, and he determined to go back, later on, and ask about it. He had forgotten to inquire as to Captain Stewart's attitude toward the beautiful lady. Young Arthur Benham's infatuation had filled his mind at the time, and had driven out of it what Olga Nilssen had told him about Stewart. He found himself wondering if this point might not be one of great importance--the rivalry of the two men for O'Hara's daughter. Assuredly that demanded thought and investigation.
He found the prettily furnished apartment in the Avenue de la Tour Maubourg a scene of great disorder, presided over by a maid who seemed to be packing enormous quantities of garments into large trunks. The maid told him that her mistress, after a sleepless night, had departed from Paris by an early train, quite alone, leaving the servant to follow on when she had telegraphed or written an address. No, Mlle. Nilssen had left no address at all--not even for letters or telegrams. In short, the entire proceeding was, so the exasperated woman viewed it, everything that is imbecile.
Ste. Marie sat down on a hamper with his stick between his knees, and wrote a little note to be sent on when Mlle. Nilssen's whereabouts should be known. It was unfortunate, he reflected, that she should have fled away just now, but not of great importance to him, because he did not believe that he could learn very much more from her than he had learned already. Moreover, he sympathized with her desire to get away from Paris--as far away as possible from the man whom she had seen in so horrible a state on the evening past.
He had kept the fiacre at the door, and he drove at once back to the rue d'Assas. As he started to mount the stair the concierge came out of her loge to say that Mr. Hartley had called soon after Monsieur had left the house that morning, had seemed very much disappointed on not finding Monsieur, and before going away again had had himself let into Monsieur's apartment with the key of the femme de ménage, and had written a note which Monsieur would find là haut.
Ste. Marie thanked the woman, and went on up to his rooms, wondering why Hartley had bothered to leave a note instead of waiting or returning at lunch-time, as he usually did. He found the communication on his table and read it at once. Hartley said:
I have to go across the river to the Bristol to see some relatives who are turning up there to-day, and who will probably keep me until evening, and then I shall have to go back there to dine. So I'm leaving a word for you about some things I discovered last evening. I met Miss Benham at Armenonville, where I dined, and in a tête-à-tête conversation we had after dinner she let fall two facts which seem to me very important. They concern Captain S. In the first place, when he told us that day, some time ago, that he knew nothing about his father's will or any changes that might have been made in it, he lied. It seems that old David, shortly after the boy's disappearance, being very angry at what he considered, and still considers, a bit of spite on the boy's part, cut young Arthur Benham out of his will and transferred that share to _Captain S._ (Miss Benham learned this from the old man only yesterday). Also it appears that he did this after talking the matter over with Captain S., who affected unwillingness. So, as the will reads now, Miss B. and Captain S. stand to share equally the bulk of the old man's money, which is several millions--in dollars, of course. Miss B.'s mother is to have the interest of half of both shares as long as she lives. Now mark this: Prior to this new arrangement, Captain S. was to receive only a small legacy, on the ground that he already had a respectable fortune left him by his mother, old David's first wife (I've heard, by-the-way, that he has squandered a good share of this.)
Miss B. is, of course, much cut up over the injustice to the boy, but she can't protest too much, as it only excites old David. She says the old man is much weaker.
You see, of course, the significance of all this. If David Stewart dies, as he's likely to do, before young Arthur's return, Captain S. gets the money.