CHAPTER XVIII

A GHOST RISES

For a time the two were silent in that close communion which is possible only to father and son, who are all in all to each other. Then the father's face lit up with a whimsical smile.

"Mind you, I don't expect that Helene will be very rich," he said. Raymond laughed.

"I don't either!" he replied.

"You have the 125,000 francs of your mother's fortune and I will add as much as I can myself."

"Oh, we'll get along all right," his son assured him with a smile. "You seem to forget my briefs."

"Impossible!" laughed his father. "You haven't any."

"I have one that isn't bringing in anything in the way of money but it is giving me advertisement that will lead to profitable cases."

M. the President, being of the old school of lawyers, shook his head at this value set on publicity; but he made no comment.

"Are you ready for to-morrow?" he asked. Raymond nodded.

"I saw the presiding judge this morning and he was full of praise for you," went on his father with a fond gleam in his eyes. "They are going to make a place for me to-morrow."

"So you told me. But you'll make me terribly nervous!" protested Raymond.

"Not a bit of it! Have you really an interesting case?"

"Well, yes and no," replied the young advocate. "A wretched woman who has killed her lover for no reason that anyone can find out--and she won't speak. For the last three months she has not uttered a word in the prison that can be of any interest to anybody. We don't know who she is, where she comes from or what her name is. I haven't even seen her or heard the sound of her voice; and when the names of the judges, the public prosecutor and her defending lawyer were sent in to her, she tore up the paper without looking at it."

"And couldn't the Examining Magistrate get anything out of her?"

"Nothing! He dubbed her Madame X," added Raymond with a smile.

"What sort of a woman is she?"

"Oh, like all women of her kind. She is, I understand, addicted to the use of drugs, and her supply being cut off she naturally turns from stupidity to hysteria all the time. I'm afraid it's one of the cases that are worked out before they come to trial. I don't see how the court proceedings can last much longer than five minutes. But I'll do my best."

"Try pathos," suggested his father. "Try to work on the sympathies of the judge and jury."

"That's what I'm going to do," smiled Raymond. "I've been practising tears in my voice for the last three days, but I'm not going to have an easy time of it. It's rather hard to find excuses for a woman when you don't know why the crime was committed." And he shook his head dubiously.

"On the contrary, that gives you every chance," declared his father. "See here! Your client won't speak and so she can't contradict. This gives you a fine opportunity to invent a host of reasons. Make the jury respect her silence! Throw a veil of mystery over the whole crime and give your imagination play. Say that she is the victim of heredity--say anything you can think of that will work on the jury's feelings and you have a good chance to win."

Raymond listened with eager attention.

"I had something of that in mind," he said, "but I'll work it up stronger than I intended. I didn't----"

He was interrupted by a cheery shout from the house-door and both turned quickly to see M. Noel hurrying across the garden. The elder men greeted each other with hearty affection.

"And how is the young disciple of St. Yves?" asked Noel.

"St. Yves?" questioned Raymond with a puzzled smile as he shook hands.

"Why, certainly! St. Yves of Brittany! Don't you know----? How does the Latin go, Louis?"

M. the President threw up his hands and laughed.

"Let me see! 'Advocatus sed non latro--latro'--I can't remember it. Anyway, it fits your case, Maître Raymond. He was an advocate but not a thief, and devoted his life to the service of the poor. So he is supposed to be the patron saint of the lawyers--though more of them to-day are rather inclined to lay votive offerings on the shrine of Mammon. So to-morrow is the great day, eh?"

"Yes, to-morrow is the day."

"Feel frightened?"

"A little excited," the young man admitted. "Have you really come all the way from Paris to be here to-morrow?"

"Of course I have!" The lined face softened. "I'd have come from Kamschatka to see you fight your first battle!"

"Chennel is coming, too," remarked Floriot.

"Good! You were not particularly blooming the day I met the worthy doctor, young man," said Noel, turning to Raymond.

"No, so I've been told," smiled Raymond; "Dr. Chennel is going to take a practice at Biarritz. He often comes here to see me. Now, I think I'll go over my brief again, father, and see if I can't work in some of the things you suggested."

"Yes, that's it! Shake them up, my lad!" nodded his father. "After all she may be more sinned against than sinning--or you can make them think so, anyway. Well, what do you think of the boy?" he demanded, as Raymond disappeared in the direction of the large bush near the gate.

"You ought to be proud of him."

"I am! Very proud!" said Floriot, softly. There was a long pause. Floriot motioned his friend to a seat on the bench in the rustic house and sat beside him. He felt the need of comfort and counsel; for the hour that he had dreaded for years was upon him at last. He must tell Raymond the truth about his mother.

Twenty years of tireless searching had, indeed, proved utterly vain. There was every reason to believe that Jacqueline was dead and that the true story of the boy's mother might be buried with the three men and one woman who knew it. But this loophole of escape from the ordeal did not even present itself to a man with Floriot's stem sense of honor.

How would he take it? Floriot had no idea of defending himself or trying to distort the facts in the least degree. If anything, he would take more than his share of the blame for the wreck of his home. It would be terrible enough to tell Raymond that his mother had fallen, but what would he say when he was told that she had repented and pressed her forehead against her husband's shoes only to be hurled out, friendless, on the world--condemned to death, or worse than death?

Would the boy--at last knowing why he had grown up without a mother's love, and all the million priceless and nameless joys the phrase contains--rise in the wrath of his outraged youth and denounce the father who had robbed him? What would he say to the neglect that had driven his mother to shame and placed the brand on his own pure life? And now, whatever the cost, he must tell him....

In the twenty years they had pursued a common quest, these long silences were not unusual when the two friends met. Noel divined a little--but only a very little--of what was passing in the Other's mind. He had not foreseen this crisis.

"I never look at him without thinking of his mother!" he said, softly. "Louis, it's awful to think that in all these years we have never been able to find a trace."

Floriot's only reply was a somber shake of the head.

"God knows we've hunted!"

"I've done all I can--we've done all we can!" returned the husband in bitter hopelessness. "Detectives, advertising--everything! I haven't told you that I went to Monte Carlo a few days ago to see a woman that seemed to answer the description. The usual result!" And he gazed out across the garden.

"And last week I thought I had come to the end of the hunt," returned Noel. "The first night that I reached Paris I dropped into a music hall and thought that I recognized her on the stage. I got an introduction to the woman. She had Jacqueline's eyes to a line almost, but that was all. I was sure from the front of the house! You remember those eyes?"

"If I could only forget them!" groaned the other, burying his face in his hands. There was a long silence. In the last few years growing despair and the inaction that is the inevitable outgrowth of the conviction of failure had succeeded the constantly reviving hope that had fed the energy of the search. Their talks, recently, had been bitter reminiscences instead of optimistic plans. At last Floriot raised his head and spoke in a low voice.

"I think sometimes that she must be dead or we should have found her!" he said. Noel, staring at the ground between his feet, did not answer at once; then:

"Perhaps!" he said in the same low tone. "And perhaps that is the best thing that could have happened!"

The other understood his meaning and shuddered. There was another pause and then Floriot spoke of the matter that lay heaviest on his mind.

"I have never--dared yet--to tell Raymond--the truth about his mother," he said, unsteadily; "but I have to now!"

Noel stared at his friend in amazement.

"Tell Raymond!" he exclaimed, "Why?"

"He wants to marry and--and--I must tell him the truth!"

There was a smothered exclamation from Noel as he grasped the situation. He was silent a few moments and then he asked with meaning emphasis:

"Will you tell him the _whole_ truth?"

Floriot straightened up with a determined expression.

"Yes!" he declared, "I am going to tell him everything! He must know the whole unvarnished truth and--God knows what he'll think of me!"

Noel confusedly murmured something meant to be reassuring but Floriot interrupted.

"Oh, I have no illusions!" he cried bitterly. "Youth doesn't make allowances! It is possible that he may love me a little after he has heard all of it but he will never forgive me for having robbed him of his mother!"

Noel pulled himself together and replied with a heartiness that he did not feel.

"Why, of course, he will!" he declared. "He knows what kind of a man you are--what a father you have been to him--and he will not need to be told how you have suffered and repented."

The other shook his head hopelessly.

"The boy is in love!" he groaned. "If it were not for that there might be some hope. But, don't you see?--He is madly in love with a pure, beautiful girl. He will try to put himself in my place and fail! He will try to imagine himself throwing Helene out into the street in the rain after she has grovelled at his feet--and he will think I am a monster!"

Before Noel could think of a counter-argument Rose hurried out from the house with a visiting card in her hand. Composing himself, Floriot looked up and asked:

"What is it, Rose?"

She handed him the card with:

"It's the two gentlemen who were here before and wanted to see you, M. the President."

"Perissard! Perissard!" mused the President, studying the bit of pasteboard. "I don't know the name. However, Rose, show them in and take M. Noel up to his room."

The friends silently gripped hands as a mute promise that they would renew the conversation later and Noel went in with the housekeeper.