Part 8

"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing with toys the next, and--well, a rather commonplace social favourite the third. It all comes of being romantic--imaginative. Ste. Marie--I know nothing about this evening of which you speak--but Ste. Marie is quite capable of stopping on his way to a funeral to ride a galloping pig--or on his way to his own wedding.

"And the pleasant part of it is," said Baron de Vries, "that the lad would turn up at either of these two ceremonies not a bit the worse, outside or in, for his ride."

"Ah, now that's an oddly close shot," said Hartley. He paused a moment, looking towards Miss Benham, and said--

"I beg pardon! Were you going to speak?"

"No," said Miss Benham, moving the things about on the tea-table before her, and looking down at them. "No, not at all!"

"You came oddly close to the truth," the man went on, turning back to Baron de Vries. He was speaking for Helen Benham's ears, and he knew she would understand that, but he did not wish to seem to be watching her.

"I was with Ste. Marie on that evening," he said. "No! I wasn't riding a pig, but I was standing down in the crowd throwing serpentines at the people who were. And I happen to know that he--that Ste. Marie was on that day, that evening, more deeply concerned about something, more absolutely wrapped up in it, devoted to it, than I have ever known him to be about anything since I first knew him. The galloping pig was an incident that made, except for the moment, no impression whatever upon him." Hartley nodded his head.

"Yes," said he, "Ste. Marie can be an angel one moment and a child playing with toys the next. When he sees toys he always plays with them, and he plays hard, but when he drops them they go completely out of his mind."

The American lady laughed.

"Gracious me!" she cried. "You two are emphatic enough about him, aren't you?"

"We know him," said Baron de Vries. Hartley rose to replace his empty cup on the tea-table. Miss Benham did not meet his eyes, and as he moved away again she spoke to her friend about something they were going to do on the next day, so Hartley went across to where Baron de Vries sat at a little distance, and took a place beside him on the chaise longue. The Belgian greeted him with raised eyebrows and the little half-sad half-humorous smile which was characteristic of him in his gentler moments.

"You were defending our friend with a purpose," he said in a low voice. "Good! I am afraid he needs it--here." The younger man hesitated a moment. Then he said--

"I came on purpose to do that. Ste. Marie knows that she saw him on that confounded pig. He was half wild with distress over it because--well, the meeting was singularly unfortunate, just then. I can't explain----"

"You needn't explain," said the Belgian gravely. "I know. Helen told me some days since, though she did not mention this encounter. Yes, defend him with all your power, if you will. Stay after we others have gone and--have it out with her. The Phidias lady (I must remember that _mot_, by the way) is preparing to take her leave now, and I will follow her at once. She shall believe that I am enamoured--that I sigh for her.

"Eh!" said he, shaking his head. And the lines in the kindly old face seemed to deepen, but in a sort of grave tenderness. "Eh, so love has come to the dear lad at last! Ah! of course, the hundred other affairs! Yes, yes. But they were light. No seriousness in them. The ladies may have loved. He didn't very much. This time, I'm afraid----"

Baron de Vries paused as if he did not mean to finish his sentence, and Hartley said--

"You say 'afraid'! Why, afraid?"

The Belgian looked up at him reflectively.

"Did I say 'afraid'?" he asked. "Well--perhaps it was the word I wanted. I wonder if these two are fitted for each other. I am fond of them both. I think you know that, but--she's not very flexible, this child. And she hasn't much humour. I love her, but I know those things are true. I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and without humour."

"If they love each other," said Richard Hartley, "I expect the other things don't count. Do they?"

Baron de Vries rose to his feet, for he saw that the Phidias lady was going.

"Perhaps not," said he; "I hope not. In any case, do your best for him with Helen. Make her comprehend if you can. I am afraid she is unhappy over the affair." He made his adieux and went away with the American lady, to that young person's obvious excitement. And after a moment the three ladies across the room departed also, Mrs. Benham explaining that she was taking her two friends up to her own sitting-room to show them something vaguely related to the heathen. So Hartley was left alone with Helen Benham.

It was not his way to beat about the bush, and he gave battle at once. He said, standing to say it more easily--

"You know why I came here to-day. It was the first chance I've had since that--unfortunate evening. I came on Ste. Marie's account."

Miss Benham said a weak--

"Oh!" And because she was nervous and overwrought and because the thing meant so much to her, she said cheaply--

"He owes me no apologies. He has a perfect right to act as he pleases, you know."

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 recognised her. It was very bitter to him to realise that he could never have stirred her to this, never under any conceivable circumstances.

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 afterwards 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 towards 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 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.

*CHAPTER 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 pronounced. 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 tram, and drove across the city in a fiacre to the Rue d'Assas. 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 passed 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 clue at all, and at that Baron de Vries nodded his grey head and said, "Ah!" in a tone of some significance. Afterwards 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 cock-sure. 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 would 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," said Ste. Marie. "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." He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him to the door.

"I've been asked to a sort of party at Stewart's rooms this week," Ste. Marie said. "I don't know whether I shall go or not. Probably not. I suppose I shouldn't find Olga Nilssen there?"

"Well, no," said the Belgian, laughing. "No, I hardly think so. Good-bye! Think over what I've told you. Good-bye!" He went away down the stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days. Hartley had unearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer, who swore to having seen the Irishman, O'Hara, in Paris within a month, but it was by no means certain that this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be desired of him, and in any case the information was of no especial value, since it was O'Hara's present whereabouts that was the point at issue. So it came to Thursday evening. Ste. Marie received a note from Captain Stewart during the day, reminding him that he was to come to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore that evening, and asking him to come early, at ten or thereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chat before any one else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go at all, but the courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham's uncle made it rather impossible for him to stay away. He tried to persuade Hartley to follow him later on in the evening, but that gentleman flatly refused, and went away to dine with some English friends at Armenonville.

So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper, dined quite alone at Lavenue's, beside the Gare Montparnasse, and towards ten o'clock drove across the river to the Rue du Faubourg. Captain Stewart's flat was up five stories, at the top of the building in which it was located, and so well above the noises of the street. Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and at the door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servant he kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond. They entered a large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape not unlike the sitting-room in the Rue d'Assas but very much bigger, and Ste. Marie uttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he had never before seen an interior anything like this. The room was decorated and furnished entirely in Chinese and Japanese articles of great age and remarkable beauty. Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of these two countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delight to the expert.

The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great age until it had ceased to glitter, and relieved by the dusty Chinese blue, and by old red faded to rose, and by warm ivory tints. The great expanse of the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coarse, like burlap, and against it round the room hung sixteen large panels representing the sixteen _Rakan_. They were early copies--fifteenth century, Captain Stewart said--of those famous originals by the Chinese _Sung_ master Ririomin, which have been for six hundred years or more the treasures of Japan. They were mounted upon Japanese brocade of blue and dull gold, framed in keyaki wood, and, out of their brown time-stained shadows, the great _Rakan_ scowled or grinned or placidly gazed, grotesquely graceful masterpieces of a perished art.

At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and at intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat; Buddha in many incarnations; Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy; Jizo Bosatzu; Hotei, pot-bellied, God of Contentment; Jingo-Kano, God of War. In the centre of the place was a Buddhist temple table; and priests' chairs, lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room. The floor was covered by Chinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers; and over a doorway which led into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving, gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figures of the hundred immortals.

It was indeed an extraordinary room. Ste. Marie looked about its mellow glow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the man beside him curiously, for here was another side to this many-sided character. Captain Stewart smiled.

"You like my museum?" he asked. "Few people care much for it except, of course, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends think it bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them by including those comfortable low divan couches (they refuse altogether to sit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy." He called his servant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat, and returned with smoking things.

"It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not an expert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panels are, for example; but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anything like it at all." He gave a little laugh.

"Will it sound very impertinent in me, I wonder, if I express surprise--not surprise at finding this magnificent room, but at discovering that this sort of thing is a taste and, very evidently, a serious study of yours? You--I remember your saying once with some feeling that it was youth and beauty and--well, freshness that you liked best to be surrounded by. This," said Ste. Marie, waving an inclusive hand, "was young so many centuries ago! It fairly breathes antiquity and death."

"Yes," said Captain Stewart thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true." The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad low benches which had been built into the place to satisfy the philistine.

"I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passions of mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it no longer in my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. It keeps my heart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquity and death, beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien country! I love this too. I didn't speak too strongly, it is a sort of passion with me--something quite beyond the collector's mania, quite beyond that. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and I sit here quite alone with the lights half on and, for hours together, I smoke and watch these things--the quiet, sure, patient smile of that Buddha for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, and waiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond all words in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile. No, I'll be hanged if it's crude! It is beyond our modern art. The dead men carved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with such simple means. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carve questions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."