Part 15

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 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 Mademoiselle----Bertrand. Elise Bertrand. But I regret to say I haven't the address by me. She came with some friends. I will try to 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.

So there was no danger to be feared, and his terrors of the night past--he shivered a little to think of them--had been after all useless terrors! As for the prisoner out at La Lierre nothing was to be feared from him so long as a careful watch was kept. Later on he might have to be disposed of, since both bullet and poison had failed (he scowled over that, remembering a bad quarter of an hour with O'Hara early this morning), but that matter could wait. Some way would present itself. He thought of the wholly gratuitous lie he had told Hartley, a thing born of a moment's malice, and he laughed again. It struck him that it would be very humorous if Hartley should come to suspect his friend of turning aside from his great endeavours to enter upon an affair with a lady. He dimly remembered that Ste. Marie's name had, from time to time, been a good deal involved in romantic histories, and he said to himself that his lie had been very well chosen indeed, and might be expected to cause Richard Hartley much anguish of spirit.

After that he lighted a very large cigarette, half as big as a cigar, and he lay back in his low comfortable chair, and began to think of the outcome of all this plotting and planning. As is very apt to be the case when a great danger has been escaped, he was in a mood of extreme hopefulness and confidence. Vaguely he felt as if the recent happenings had set him ahead a pace towards his goal, though, of course, they had done nothing of the kind. The danger that would exist so long as Ste. Marie, who knew everything, was alive, seemed in some miraculous fashion to have dwindled to insignificance; in this rebound from fear and despair, difficulties were swept away and the path was clear. The man's mind leapt to his goal, and a little shiver of prospective joy ran over him. Once that goal gained he could defy the world. Let eyes look askance, let tongues wag, he would be safe then--safe for all the rest of his life, and rich, rich, rich!

For he was playing against a feeble old man's life. Day by day he watched the low flame sink lower, as the flame of an exhausted lamp sinks and flickers. It was slow, for the old man had still a little strength left, but the will to live--which was the oil in the lamp--was almost gone and the waiting could not be long now. One day, quite suddenly, the flame would sink down to almost nothing, as at last it does in the spent lamp. It would flicker up and down rapidly for a few moments, and all at once there would be no flame there. Old David would be dead, and a servant would be sent across the river in haste to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore. Stewart lay back in his chair and tried to imagine that it was true, that it had already happened, as happen it must before long, and once more the little shiver which was like a shiver of voluptuous delight ran up and down his limbs, and his breath began to come fast and hard.

But Richard Hartley drove at once back to the Rue d'Assas. He was not very much disappointed in having learnt nothing from Stewart, though he was thoroughly angry at that gentleman's hint about Ste. Marie and the unknown lady. He had gone to the Rue du Faubourg because, as he had said, he wished to leave no stone unturned, and, after all, he had thought it quite possible that Stewart could give him some information which would be of value. Hartley firmly believed the elder man to be a rascal, but, of course, he knew nothing definite save the two facts which he had accidentally learnt from Helen Benham, and it had occurred to him that Captain Stewart might have sent Ste. Marie off upon another wild-goose chase such as the expedition to Dinard had been. He would have been sure that the elder man had had something do to with Ste. Marie's disappearance if the latter had not been seen since Stewart's party, but instead of that Ste. Marie had come home, slept, gone out the next morning, returned again, received a visitor, and gone out to lunch. It was all very puzzling and mysterious.

His mind went back to the brief interview with Stewart and dwelt upon it. Little things which had at the time made no impression upon him began to recur and to take on significance. He remembered the elder man's odd and strained manner at the beginning, his sudden and causeless change to ease and a something that was almost like a triumphant excitement, and then his absurd story about Ste. Marie's flirtation with a lady. Hartley thought of these things, he thought also of the fact that Ste. Marie had disappeared immediately after hearing grave accusations against Stewart. Could he have lost his head, rushed across the city at once to confront the middle-aged villain, and then--disappeared from human ken? It would have been very like him to do something rashly impulsive upon reading that note.

Hartley broke into a sudden laugh of sheer amusement when he realised to what a wild and improbable flight his fancy was soaring. He could not quite rid himself of a feeling that Stewart was, in some mysterious fashion, responsible for his friend's vanishing. But he was unlike Ste. Marie; he did not trust his feelings, either good or bad, unless they were backed by excellent evidence, and he had to admit that there was not a single scrap of evidence, in this instance, against Miss Benham's uncle.

The girl's name recalled him to another duty. He must tell her about Ste. Marie. He was by this time halfway up the Boulevard St. Germain, but he gave a new order and the fiacre turned back to the Rue de l'Universite. The footman at the door said that mademoiselle was not in the drawing-room, as it was only four o'clock, but that he thought she was in the house. So Hartley sent up his name and went in to wait.

Miss Benham came down looking a little pale and anxious.

"I've been with grandfather," she explained. "He had some sort of sinking spell last night, and we were very much frightened. He's much better, but--well he couldn't have many such spells and live. I'm afraid he grows a good deal weaker, day by day, now. He sees hardly any one outside the family, except Baron de Vries." She sat down with a little sigh of fatigue and smiled up at her visitor.

"I'm glad you've come," said she. "You'll cheer me up and I rather need it. What are you looking so solemn about, though? You won't cheer me up if you look like that."

"Well, you see," said Hartley, "I came at this impossible hour to bring you some bad news. I'm sorry.

"Perhaps," he conditioned, "bad news is putting it with too much seriousness. Strange news is better. To be brief, Ste. Marie has disappeared--vanished into thin air. I thought you ought to know."

"Ste. Marie!" cried the girl. "How? What do you mean--vanished? When did he vanish?" She gave a sudden exclamation of relief.

"Oh, he has come upon some clue or other and has rushed off to follow it. That's all--How dare you frighten me so?"

"He went without luggage," said the man, shaking his head, "and he left no word of any kind behind him. He went out to lunch yesterday about noon, and, as I said, simply vanished, leaving no trace whatever behind him. I've just been to see your uncle, thinking that he might know something, but he doesn't."

The girl looked up quickly.

"My uncle?" she said. "Why my uncle?"

"Well," said Hartley, "you see Ste. Marie went to a little party at your uncle's flat on the night before he disappeared, and I thought your uncle might have heard him say something that would throw light on his movements the next day." Hartley remembered the unfortunate incident of the galloping pigs, and hurried on--

"He went to the party more for the purpose of having a talk with your uncle than for any other reason, I think. I was to have gone myself, but gave it up at the eleventh hour for the Cain's dinner at Armenonville.

"Well, the next morning after Captain Stewart's party he went out early. I called at his rooms to see him about something important that I thought he ought to know. I missed him, and so left a note for him, which he got on his return and read. I found it open on his table later on. At noon he went out again, and that's all. Frankly, I'm worried about him."

Miss Benham watched the man with thoughtful eyes and, when he had finished, she asked--

"Could you tell me what was in this note that you left for Ste. Marie?"

Hartley was by nature a very open and frank young man, and in consequence an unusually bad liar. He hesitated and looked away and he began to turn red.

"Well--no," he said after a moment, "no, I'm afraid I can't. It was something you wouldn't understand--wouldn't know about." And the girl said, "Oh!" and remained for a little while silent.

But at the end she looked up and met his eyes, and the man saw that she was very grave. She said--

"Richard, there is something that you and I have been avoiding and pretending not to see. It has gone too far now, and we're got to face it with perfect frankness. I know what was in your note to Ste. Marie. It was what you found out the other evening about--my uncle, the matter of the will and the other matter. He knew about the will, but he told you and Ste. Marie that he didn't. He said to you also that I had told him about my engagement and Ste. Marie's determination to search for Arthur, and that was--a lie. I didn't tell him, and grandfather didn't tell him. He listened in the door yonder and heard it himself. I have a good reason for knowing that.

"And then," she said, "he tried very hard to persuade you and Ste. Marie to take up your search under his direction, and he partly succeeded. He sent Ste. Marie upon a foolish expedition to Dinard, and he gave him and gave you other clues just as foolish as that one.

"Richard, do you believe that my uncle has hidden poor Arthur away somewhere, or--worse than that? Do you? Tell me the truth!"

"There is not," said Hartley, "one particle of real evidence against him that I'm aware of. There's plenty of motive, if you like, but motive is not evidence."

"I asked you a question," the girl said. "Do you believe my uncle has been responsible for Arthur's disappearance?"

"Yes," said Richard Hartley, "I'm afraid I do."

"Then," she said, "he has been responsible for Ste. Marie's disappearance also. Ste. Marie became dangerous to him and so vanished. What can we do, Richard? What can we do?"

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD*

In the upper chamber at La Lierre the days dragged very slowly by, and the man who lay in bed there counted interminable hours, and prayed for the coming of night with its merciful oblivion of sleep. His inaction was made bitterer by the fact that the days were days of green and gold, of breeze-stirred tree-tops without his windows, of vagrant sweet airs that stole in upon his solitude, bringing him all the warm fragrance of summer and of green things growing.

He suffered little pain. There was, for the first three or four days, a dull and feverish ache in his wounded leg, but presently even that passed and the leg hurt him only when he moved it. He thought sometimes that he would be grateful for a bit of physical anguish to make the hours pass more quickly.

The other inmates of the house held aloof from him. Once a day O'Hara came in to see to the wound, but he maintained a well-nigh complete silence over his work and answered questions only with a brief yes or no. Sometimes he did not answer them at all. The old Michel came twice daily, but this strange being had quite plainly been frightened into dumbness, and there was nothing to be got out of him. He shambled hastily about the place, his one scared eye upon the man in bed, and as soon as possible fled away, closing the door behind him. Sometimes Michel brought in the meals, sometimes his wife, a creature so like him that the two might well have passed for twin survivors of some unknown race; sometimes--thrice altogether in that first week--Coira O'Hara brought the tray, and she was as silent as the others.

So Ste. Marie was left alone to get through the interminable days as best he might, and ever afterwards the week remained in his memory as a sort of nightmare. Lying idle in his bed he evolved many surprising and fantastic schemes for escape--for getting word to the outside world of his presence here, and one by one he gave them up in disgust as their impossibility forced itself upon him. Plans and schemes were useless while he lay bed-ridden, unfamiliar even with the house wherein he dwelt, with the garden and park that surrounded it.

As for aid from any of the inmates of the place, that was to be laughed at. They were engaged together in a scheme so desperate that failure must mean utter ruin to them all. He sometimes wondered if the two servants could be bribed. Avarice unmistakable gleamed from their little glittering rat-like eyes, but he was sure that they would sell out for no small sum and, in so far as he could remember, there had been in his pockets when he came here not more than five or six louis. Doubtless the old Michel had managed to abstract those in his daily offices about the room, for Ste. Marie knew that the clothes hung in a closet across from his bed. He had seen them there once when the closet door was open.

Any help that might come to him must come from outside--and what help was to be expected there? Over and over again he reminded himself of how little Richard Hartley knew. He might suspect Stewart of complicity in this new disappearance, but how was he to find out anything definite? How was any one to do so?

It was at such times as this, when brain and nerves were strained and worn almost to breaking point that Ste. Marie had occasion to be grateful for the southern blood that was in him, the strong tinge of fatalism which is common alike to Latin and to Oriental. It rescued him more than once from something like nervous breakdown, calmed him suddenly, lifted his burdens from outwearied shoulders, and left him in peace to wait until some action should be possible. Then, in such hours, he would fall to thinking of the girl for whose sake, in whose cause, he lay bedridden, beset with dangers. As long before, she came to him in a sort of waking vision--a being but half earthly, enthroned high above him, calm-browed, very pure, with passionless eyes that gazed into far distance and were unaware of the base things below. What would she think of him, who had sworn to be true knight to her, if she could know how he had bungled and failed? He was glad that she did not know, that if he had blundered into peril the knowledge of it could not reach her to hurt her pride.

And sometimes also, with a great sadness and pity, he thought of poor Coira O'Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into. The girl was so patently fit for better things! Her splendid beauty was not a cheap beauty. She was no coarse-blown gorgeous flower, imperfect at telltale points. It was good blood that had modelled her dark perfection, good blood that had shaped her long and slim and tapering hands.

"A queen among goddesses!" The words remained with him and he knew that they were true. She might have held up her head among the greatest, this adventurer's girl; but what chance had she had? What merest ghost of a chance?

He watched her on the rare occasions when she came into the room. He watched the poise of her head, her walk, the movements she made, and he said to himself that there was no woman of his acquaintance whose grace was more perfect--certainly none whose grace was so native.

Once he complained to her of the desperate idleness of his days and asked her to lend him a book of some kind, a review, even a daily newspaper, though it be a week old.

"I should read the very advertisements with joy," he said.

She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books, which she laid upon the bed without comment.

"In my prayers, mademoiselle," cried Ste. Marie, "you shall be foremost forever!" He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheer astonishment.

"May I ask whose books these are?" he said.

"They are mine," said the girl. "I caught up the ones that lay first at hand. If you don't care for any of them I will choose others." The books were: _Diana of the Crossways_, _Richard Feverel_, Henri Lavedan's _Le Duel_, Maeterlinck's _Pelleas et Melisande_, _Don Quixote de la Mancha_, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil's _Eclogues_, and the _Life of the Chevalier Bayard_ by the "Loyal Servitor." Ste. Marie stared at her.

"Do you read Spanish?" he demanded, "and Latin, as well as French and English?"

"My mother was Spanish," said she. "And as for Latin, I began to read it with my father when I was a child. Shall I leave the books here?"

Ste. Marie took up the _Bayard_ and held it between his hands.

"It is worn from much reading, mademoiselle," he said.

"It is the best of all," said she. "The very best of all. I didn't know I had brought you that." She made a step towards him as if she would take the book away, and over it the eyes of them met and were held. In that moment it may have come to them both who she was, who so loved the knight without fear and without reproach--the daughter of an Irish adventurer of ill repute; for their faces began suddenly to flush with red and after an instant the girl turned away.

"It is of no consequence," said she. "You may keep the book if you care to." And Ste. Marie said very gently--

"Thank you, mademoiselle! I will keep it for a little while." So she went out of the room and left him alone.

This was at noon on the sixth day, and after he had swallowed hastily the lunch which had been set before him Ste. Marie fell upon the books like a child upon a new box of sweets. Like the child again it was difficult for him to choose among them. He opened one and then another, gloating over them all, but in the end he chose the _Bayard_ and for hours lost himself among the high deeds of the Preux Chevalier and his faithful friends (among whom, by the way, there was a Ste. Marie who died nobly for France). It was late afternoon when at last he laid the book down with a sigh and settled himself more comfortably among the pillows.

The sun was not in the room at that hour but, from where he lay, he could see it on the tree-tops, gold upon green. Outside his south window the leaves of a chestnut which stood there quivered and rustled gently under a soft breeze. Delectable odours floated in to Ste. Marie's nostrils, and he thought how very pleasant it would be if he were lying on the turf under the trees, instead of bed-ridden in this upper chamber, which he had come to hate with a bitter hatred.

He began to wonder if it would be possible to drag himself across the floor to that south window, and so to lie down for a while with his head in the tiny balcony beyond--his eyes turned to the blue sky. Astir with the new thought he sat up in bed and carefully swung his feet out till they hung to the floor. The wound in the left leg smarted and burnt, but not too severely, and with slow pains Ste. Marie stood up. He almost cried out when he discovered that it could be done quite easily. He essayed to walk and he was a little weak, but by no means helpless. He found that it gave him pain to raise his left leg in the ordinary action of walking, or to bend that knee, but he could get about well enough by dragging the injured member beside him, for when it was straight it supported him without protest.

He took his pillows across to the window and disposed them there, for it was a French window opening to the floor, and the level of the little balcony outside was but a few inches above the level of the room. Then the desire seized him to make a tour of his prison walls. He went first to the closet where he had seen his clothes hanging, and they were still there. He felt in the pockets and withdrew his little English pig-skin sovereign purse. It had not been tampered with, and he gave an exclamation of relief over that, for he might later on have use for money. There were eight louis in it, each in its little separate compartment, and in another pocket he found a fifty-franc note and some silver. He went to the two east windows and looked out. The trees stood thick together on that side of the house, but between two of them he could see the park wall fifty yards away. He glanced down, and the side of the house was covered thick with the ivy which had given the place its name, but there was no water pipe near nor any other thing which seemed to offer foot or hand hold--unless perhaps the ivy might prove strong enough to bear a man's weight. Ste. Marie made a mental note to look into that when he was a little stronger, and turned back to the south window, where he had disposed his pillows.

The unaccustomed activity was making his wound smart and prickle, and he lay down at once, with head and shoulders in the open air; and, out of the warm and golden sunshine and the emerald shade, the breath of summer came to him and wrapped him round with sweetness and pillowed him upon its fragrant breast.