Chapter 14

"How's the leg?" he demanded, shortly. "Let me see it." He took off the bandages and cleansed and sprayed the wound with some antiseptic liquid that he had brought in a bottle. "There's a little fever," said he, "but that can't be avoided. You're going on very well--a good deal better than you'd any right to expect." He had to inflict not a little pain in his examination and redressing of the wound. He knew that, and once or twice he glanced up at Ste. Marie's face with a sort of reluctant admiration for the man who could bear so much without any sign whatever. In the end he put together his things and nodded with professional satisfaction. "You'll do well enough now for the rest of the day," he said. "I'll send up old Michel to valet you. He's the gardener who shot you yesterday, and he may take it into his head to finish the job this morning. If he does I sha'n't try to stop him."

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

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

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

The door opened, and Ste. Marie caught his breath.

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

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

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

The girl set the bowl which she carried down upon a table not far from the bed. "You will need a tray or something," said she. "I suppose you can sit up against your pillows? I'll bring a tray and you can hold it on your knees and eat from it." She spoke in a tone of very deliberate indifference and detachment. There seemed even to be an edge of scorn in it, but nothing could make that deep and golden voice harsh or unlovely. As the girl's extraordinary beauty had filled all the room with its light, so the sound of her voice seemed to fill it with a sumptuous and hushed resonance like a temple bell muffled in velvet. "I must bring something to eat, too," she said. "Would you prefer croissants or brioches or plain bread-and-butter? You might as well have what you like."

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

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

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

"Get out!" cried Ste. Marie. "Va t'en, sale petit animal! Go and eat birds! That's _my_ coffee. Va! Sauve toi! Hé, voleur que tu es!" He sought for something by way of missile, but there was nothing within reach.

The black cat turned its calm and yellow eyes toward him, looked back to the aromatic feast, and leaped expertly to the top of the table. Ste. Marie shouted and made horrible threats. He waved an impotent pillow, not daring to hurl it for fear of smashing the table's entire contents, but the black cat did not even glance toward him. It smelled the coffee, sneezed over it because it was hot, and finally proceeded to lap very daintily, pausing often to take breath or to shake its head, for cats disapprove of hot dishes, though they will partake of them at a pinch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mademoiselle," he cried, "it would have been more merciful to let your gardener shoot again yesterday. Much more merciful, Mademoiselle."

She stared at him under her straight, black brows.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "More merciful? What do you mean by that?"

Ste. Marie stretched out a pointing finger, and the girl followed it. She gave, after a tense instant, a single, sharp scream. And upon that:

"No, no! It's not true! It's not possible!"

Moving stiffly, she set down the bowl she carried, and the hot liquid splashed up round her wrists. For a moment she hung there, drooping, holding herself up by the strength of her hands upon the table. It was as if she had been seized with faintness. Then she sprang to where the cat crouched beside a chair. She dropped upon her knees and tried to raise it in her arms, but the beast bit and scratched at her feebly, and crept away to a little distance, where it lay struggling and very unpleasant to see.

"Poison!" she said, in a choked, gasping whisper. "Poison!" She looked once toward the man upon the bed, and she was white and shivering. "It's not true!" she cried again. "I--won't believe it! It's because the cat--was not used to coffee. Because it was hot. I won't believe it! I won't believe it!" She began to sob, holding her hands over her white face.

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

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

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

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

"Nothing?" she cried, in a loud voice. "Do you call poison nothing?" She began to shiver again very violently. "You would have drunk it!" she said, staring at him in a white agony. "But for a miracle you would have drunk it--and died!"

Abruptly she came beside the bed and threw herself upon her knees there. In her excitement and horror she seemed to have forgotten what they two were to each other. She caught him by the shoulders with her two hands, and the girl's violent trembling shook them both.

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

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

"I believe you, Mademoiselle," said the man, gently. "I believe you. Pray think no more about it."

He smiled up into the girl's beautiful face, though within him he was still cold and a-shiver, as even the bravest man might well be at such an escape, and after a moment she turned away again. With unsteady hands she put the new-made bowl of coffee and the brioches and other things together upon the tray and started to carry it across the room to the bed, but half-way she turned back again and set the tray down. She looked about and found an empty glass, and she poured a little of the coffee into it. Ste. Marie, who was watching her, gave a sudden cry.

"No, no, Mademoiselle, I beg you! You must not!"

But the girl shook her head at him gravely over the glass.

"There is no danger," she said, "but I must be sure."

She drank what was in the glass, and afterward went across to one of the windows and stood there with her back to the room for a little time.

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

"If I were not as helpless as a dead man, Mademoiselle," said he, "you should not have done that. If I could have stopped you, you should not have done it, Mademoiselle."

A wave of color spread up under the brown skin of the girl's face, but she did not speak. She stood by for a moment to see if he was supplied with everything he needed, and when Ste. Marie expressed his gratitude for her pains she only bowed her head. Then presently she turned away and left the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ste. Marie laughed.

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

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

* * * * *

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 curb. 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 he 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 apologize for.

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

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

"M. Ste. Marie n'est pas là,"

Now, the Parisian concierge, as every one knows who has lived under his iron sway, is a being set apart from the rest of mankind. He has, in general, no human attributes, and certainly no human sympathy. His hand is against all the world, and the hand of all the world is against him. Still, here and there among 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 gray 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 up-stairs," 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 learned 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 mantel 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 Marseilles, 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. "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 the 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 Mlle.---- Bertrand. Elise Bertrand. But I regret to say I haven't the address by me. She came with some friends. I will try and 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.