XI
A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS--THE EYES AGAIN
The music of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little, soft, whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly, and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way among the groups of seated or standing people and go to the outer door, which opened upon a tiny hallway. The song came to an end, and everybody was cheering and applauding and crying "Bravo!" or "Bis!" or one of the other things that people shout at such times, when, as if in unexpected answer to the outburst, a lady appeared between the yellow portières and came forward a little way into the room. She was a tall lady of an extraordinary and immediately noticeable grace of movement--a lady with rather fair hair; but her eyebrows and eyelashes had been stained darker than it was their nature to be. She had the classic Greek type of face--and figure, too--all but the eyes, which were long and narrow--narrow, perhaps, from a habit of going half closed; and when they were a little more than half closed they made a straight black line that turned up very slightly at the outer end with an Oriental effect which went oddly in that classic face. There is a popular piece of sculpture now in the Luxembourg Gallery for which this lady "sat" as model to a great artist. Sculptors from all over the world go there to dream over its perfect line and contour, and little schoolgirls pretend not to see it, and middle-aged maiden tourists, with red Baedekers in their hands, regard it furtively and pass on, and after a while come back to look again.
The lady was dressed in some very close-clinging material which was not cloth of gold, but something very like it, only much duller--something which gleamed when she stirred, but did not glitter--and over her splendid shoulders was hung an Oriental scarf heavily worked with metallic gold. She made an amazing and dramatic picture in that golden room. It was as if she had known just what her surroundings would be and had dressed expressly for them.
The applause ceased as suddenly as if it had been trained to break off at a signal, and the lady came forward a little way, smiling a quiet, assured smile. At each step her knee threw out the golden stuff of her gown an inch or two, and it flashed suddenly--a dull, subdued flash in the overhead light--and died and flashed again. A few of the people in the room knew who the lady was, and they looked at one another with raised eyebrows and startled faces; but the others stared at her with an eager admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so beautiful or so effective. Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable excitement. This was drama, and very good drama, too, and he suspected that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy.
He saw Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people half-way across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he knew that the man was very badly frightened.
So the host of the evening hung back, staring for what must have seemed to him a long and terrible time, though in reality it was but an instant; then he came forward quickly to greet the new-comer, and if his face was still yellow-white there was nothing in his manner but the courtesy habitual with him. He took the lady's hand, and she smiled at him, but her eyes did not smile--they were hard. Ste. Marie, who was the nearest of the others, heard Captain Stewart say:
"This is an unexpected pleasure, my dearest Olga!"
And to that the lady replied, more loudly: "Yes, I returned to Paris only to-day. You didn't know, of course. I heard you were entertaining this evening, and so I came, knowing that I should be welcome."
"Always!" said Captain Stewart--"always more than welcome!"
He nodded to one or two of the men who stood near, and when they approached presented them. Ste. Marie observed that he used the lady's true name--she had, at times, found occasion to employ others--and that he politely called her "Madame Nilssen" instead of "Mademoiselle." But at that moment the lady caught sight of Ste. Marie, and, crying out his name in a tone of delighted astonishment, turned away from the other men, brushing past them as if they had been furniture, and advanced holding out both her hands in greeting.
"Dear Ste. Marie!" she exclaimed. "Fancy finding you here! I'm so glad! Oh, I'm so very glad! Take me away from these people! Find a corner where we can talk. Ah, there is one with a big seat! Allons-y!"
She addressed him for the most part in English, which she spoke perfectly--as perfectly as she spoke French and German and, presumably, her native tongue, which must have been Swedish.
They went to the broad, low seat, a sort of hard-cushioned bench, which stood against one of the walls, and made themselves comfortable there by the only possible means, which, owing to the width of the thing, was to sit far back with their feet stuck straight out before them. Captain Stewart had followed them across the room and showed a strong tendency to remain. Ste. Marie observed that his eyes were hard and bright and very alert, and that there were two bright spots of color in his yellow cheeks. It occurred to Ste. Marie that the man was afraid to leave him alone with Olga Nilssen, and he smiled to himself, reflecting that the lady, even if indiscreetly inclined, could tell him nothing--save in details--that he did not already know. But after a few rather awkward moments Mile. Nilssen waved an irritated hand.
"Go away!" she said to her host. "Go away to your other guests! I want to talk to Ste. Marie. We have old times to talk over."
And after hesitating awhile uneasily, Captain Stewart turned back into the room; but for some time thereafter Ste. Marie was aware that a vigilant eye was being kept upon them and that their host was by no means at his ease.
When they were left alone together the girl turned to him and patted his arm affectionately. She said:
"Ah, but it is very good to see you again, mon cher ami! It has been so long!" She gave an abrupt frown. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
And she said an unkind thing about her fellow-guests. She called them "canaille." She said:
"Why are you wasting your time among these canaille? This is not a place for you. Why did you come?"
"I don't know," said Ste. Marie. He was still a little resentful, and he said so. He said: "I didn't know it was going to be like this. I came because Stewart went rather out of his way to ask me. I'd known him in a very different milieu."
"Ah, yes!" she said, reflectively. "Yes, he does go into the world also, doesn't he? But this is what he likes, you know." Her lips drew back for an instant, and she said: "He is a pig-dog!"
Ste. Marie looked at her gravely. She had used that offensive name with a little too much fierceness. Her face had turned for an instant quite white, and her eyes had flashed out over the room a look that meant a great deal to any one who knew her as well as Ste. Marie did. He sat forward and lowered his voice. He said:
"Look here, Olga! I'm going to be very frank for a moment. May I?"
For just an instant the girl drew away from him with suspicion in her eyes, and something else, alertly defiant. Then she put out her hands to his arm.
"You may be what you like, dear Ste. Marie," she said, "and say what you like. I will take it all--and swallow it alive--good as gold. What are you going to do to me?"
"I've always been fair with you, haven't I?" he urged. "I've had disagreeable things to say or do, but--you knew always that I liked you and--where my sympathies were."
"Always! Always, mon cher!" she cried. "I trusted you always in everything. And there is no one else I trust. No one! No one!--Ste. Marie!"
"What then?" he asked.
"Ste. Marie," she said, "why did you never fall in love with me, as the other men did?"
"I wonder!" said he. "I don't know. Upon my word, I really don't know."
He was so serious about it that the girl burst into a shriek of laughter. And in the end he laughed, too.
"I expect it was because I liked you too well," he said, at last. "But come! We're forgetting my lecture. Listen to your grandpère Ste. Marie! I have heard--certain things--rumors--what you will. Perhaps they are foolish lies, and I hope they are. But if not, if the fear I saw in Stewart's face when you came here to-night, was--not without cause, let me beg you to have a care. You're much too savage, my dear child. Don't be so foolish as to--well, turn comedy into the other thing. In the first place, it's not worth while, and, in the second place, it recoils always. Revenge may be sweet. I don't know. But nowadays, with police courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance than it is worth. Be wise, Olga!"
"Some things, Ste. Marie," said the golden lady, "are worth all the consequences that may follow them."
She watched Captain Stewart across the room, where he stood chatting with a little group of people, and her beautiful face was as hard as marble and her eyes were as dark as a stormy night, and her mouth, for an instant, was almost like an animal's mouth--cruel and relentless.
Ste. Marie saw, and he began to be a bit alarmed in good earnest. In his warning he had spoken rather more seriously than he felt the occasion demanded, but he began at last to wonder if the occasion was not in reality very serious, indeed. He was sure, of course, that Olga Nilssen had come here on this evening to annoy Captain Stewart in some fashion. As he put it to himself, she probably meant to "make a row," and he would not have been in the least surprised if she had made it in the beginning, upon her very dramatic entrance. Nothing more calamitous than that had occurred to him. But when he saw the woman's face turned a little away and gazing fixedly at Captain Stewart, he began to be aware that there was tragedy very near him--or all the makings of it.
Mlle. Nilssen turned back to him. Her face was still hard, and her eyes dark and narrowed with their oddly Oriental look. She bent her shoulders together for an instant and her hands moved slowly in her lap, stretching out before her in a gesture very like a cat's when it wakes from sleep and yawns and extends its claws, as if to make sure that they are still there and ready for use.
"I feel a little like Samson to-night," she said. "I am tired of almost everything, and I should like very much to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it--except you, Ste. Marie, dear; except you!--and be crushed under the ruins!"
"I think," said Ste. Marie, practically--and the speech sounded rather like one of Hartley's speeches--"I think it was not quite the world that Samson pulled down, but a temple--or a palace--something of that kind."
"Well," said the golden lady, "this place is rather like a temple--a Chinese temple, with the pig-dog for high-priest."
Ste. Marie frowned at her.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded, sharply. "What did you come here to do? Mischief of some kind--bien entendu--but what?"
"Do?" she said, looking at him with her narrowed eyes. "I? Why, what should I do? Nothing, of course! I merely said I should like to pull the place down. Of course, I couldn't do that quite literally, now, could I? No. It is merely a mood. I'm not going to do anything."
"You're not being honest with me," he said.
And at that her expression changed, and she patted his arm again with a gesture that seemed to beg forgiveness.
"Well, then," she said, "if you must know, maybe I did come here for a purpose. I want to have it out with our friend Captain Stewart about something. And Ste. Marie, dear," she pleaded, "please, I think you'd better go home first. I don't care about these other animals, but I don't want you dragged into any row of any sort. Please be a sweet Ste. Marie and go home. Yes?"
"Absolutely, no!" said Ste. Marie. "I shall stay, and I shall try my utmost to prevent you from doing anything foolish. Understand that! If you want to have rows with people, Olga, for Heaven's sake don't pick an occasion like this for the purpose. Have your rows in private!"
"I rather think I enjoy an audience," she said, with a reflective air, and Ste. Marie laughed aloud because he knew that the naïve speech was so very true. This lady, with her many good qualities and her bad ones--not a few, alas!--had an undeniable passion for red fire that had amused him very much on more than one past occasion.
"Please go home!" she said once more.
But when the man only shook his head, she raised her hands a little way and dropped them again in her lap, in an odd gesture which seemed to say that she had done all she could do, and that if anything disagreeable should happen now, and he should be involved in it, it would be entirely his fault because she had warned him.
Then quite abruptly a mood of irresponsible gayety seemed to come upon her. She refused to have anything more to do with serious topics, and when Ste. Marie attempted to introduce them she laughed in his face. As she had said in the beginning she wished to do, she harked back to old days (the earlier stages of what might be termed the Morrison régime), and it seemed to afford her great delight to recall the happenings of that epoch. The conversation became a dialogue of reminiscence which would have been entirely unintelligible to a third person, and was, indeed, so to Captain Stewart, who once came across the room, made a feeble effort to attach himself, and presently wandered away again.
They unearthed from the past an exceedingly foolish song all about one "Little Willie" and a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick. It was set to a well-known air from Don Giovanni, and when Duval, the basso, heard them singing it he came up and insisted upon knowing what it was about. He laughed immoderately over the English words when he was told what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two visiting-cards. So they made a trio out of "Little Willie," the great Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they were compelled to sing it over and over again, until Ste. Marie's falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether, since he was by nature barytone, if anything at all.
The other guests had crowded round to hear the extraordinary song, and when the song was at last finished several of them remained, so that Ste. Marie saw he was to be allowed an uninterrupted tête-à-tête with Olga Nilssen no longer. He therefore drifted away, after a few moments, and went with Duval and one of the other men across the room to look at some small jade objects--snuff-bottles, bracelets, buckles, and the like--which were displayed in a cabinet cleverly reconstructed out of a Japanese shrine. It was perhaps ten minutes later when he looked round the place and discovered that neither Mlle. Nilssen nor Captain Stewart was to be seen.
His first thought was of relief, for he said to himself that the two had sensibly gone into one of the other rooms to "have it out" in peace and quiet. But following that came the recollection of the woman's face when she had watched her host across the room. Her words came back to him: "I feel a little like Samson to-night.... I should like very much to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it!" Ste. Marie thought of these things, and he began to be uncomfortable. He found himself watching the yellow-hung doorway beyond, with its intricate Chinese carving of trees and rocks and little groups of immortals, and he found that unconsciously he was listening for something--he did not know what--above the chatter and laughter of the people in the room. He endured this for possibly five minutes, and all at once found that he could endure it no longer. He began to make his way quietly through the groups of people toward the curtained doorway.
As he went, one of the women near by complained in a loud tone that the servant had disappeared. She wanted, it seemed, a glass of water, having already had many glasses of more interesting things. Ste. Marie said he would get it for her, and went on his way. He had an excuse now.
He found himself in a square, dimly lighted room much smaller than the other. There was a round table in the centre, so he thought it must be Stewart's dining-room. At the left a doorway opened into a place where there were lights, and at the other side was another door closed. From the room at the left there came a sound of voices, and though they were not loud, one of them, Mlle. Olga Nilssen's voice, was hard and angry and not altogether under control. The man would seem to have been attempting to pacify her, and he would seem not to have been very successful.
The first words that Ste. Marie was able to distinguish were from the woman. She said, in a low, fierce tone:
"That is a lie, my friend! That is a lie! I know all about the road to Clamart, so you needn't lie to me any longer. It's no good."
She paused for just an instant there, and in the pause St. Marie heard Stewart give a sort of inarticulate exclamation. It seemed to express anger and it seemed also to express fear. But the woman swept on, and her voice began to be louder. She said:
"I've given you your chance. You didn't deserve it, but I've given it you--and you've told me nothing but lies. Well, you'll lie no more. This ends it."
Upon that Ste. Marie heard a sudden stumbling shuffle of feet and a low, hoarse cry of utter terror--a cry more animal-like than human. He heard the cry break off abruptly in something that was like a cough and a whine together, and he heard the sound of a heavy body falling with a loose rattle upon the floor.
CAPTAIN STEWART LAY HUDDLED
AND WRITHING UPON THE FLOOR
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.
The second fact I learned was that Miss Benham did not tell her uncle about her semi-engagement to you or about your volunteering to search for the boy. She thinks her grandfather must have told him. I didn't say so to her, but that is hardly possible in view of the fact that Stewart came on here to your rooms very soon after you had reached them yourself.
So that makes two lies for our gentle friend--and serious lies, both of them. To my mind, they point unmistakably to a certain conclusion. Captain S. has been responsible for putting his nephew out of the way. He has either hidden him somewhere and is keeping him in confinement, or he has killed him.
I wish we could talk it over to-day, but, as you see, I'm helpless. Remain in to-night, and I'll come as soon as I can get rid of these confounded people of mine.
One word more. Be careful! Miss B. is, up to this point, merely puzzled over things. She doesn't suspect her uncle of any crookedness, I'm sure. So we shall have to tread softly where she is concerned.
I shall see you to-night. R.H.
Ste. Marie read the closely written pages through twice, and he thought how like his friend it was to take the time and trouble to put what he had learned into this clear, concise form. Another man would have scribbled, "Important facts--tell you all about it to-night," or something of that kind. Hartley must have spent a quarter of an hour over his writing.
Ste. Marie walked up and down the room with all his strength forcing his brain to quiet, reasonable action. Once he said, aloud:
"Yes, you're right, of course. Stewart has been at the bottom of it all along." He realized that he had been for some days slowly arriving at that conclusion, and that since the night before he had been practically certain of it, though he had not yet found time to put his suspicions into logical order. Hartley's letter had driven the truth concretely home to him, but he would have reached the same truth without it--though that matter of the will was of the greatest importance. It gave him a strong weapon to strike with.
He halted before one of the front windows, and his eyes gazed unseeing across the street into the green shrubbery of the Luxembourg Gardens. The lace curtains had been left by the femme de ménage hanging straight down, and not, as usual, looped back to either side, so he could see through them with perfect ease, although he could not be seen from outside.
He became aware that a man who was walking slowly up and down a path inside the high iron palings was in some way familiar to him, and his eyes sharpened. The man was inconspicuously dressed, and looked like almost any other man whom one might pass in the streets without taking any notice of him; but Ste. Marie knew that he had seen him often, and he wondered how and where. There was a row of lilac shrubs against the iron palings just inside and between the palings and the path, but two of the shrubs were dead and leafless, and each time the man passed this spot he came into plain view; each time, also, he directed an oblique glance toward the house opposite. Presently he turned aside and sat down upon one of the public benches, where he was almost, but not quite, hidden by the intervening foliage.
Then at last Ste. Marie gave a sudden exclamation and smote his hands together.
"The fellow's a spy!" he cried, aloud. "He's watching the house to see when I go out." He began to remember how he had seen the man in the street and in cafés and restaurants, and he remembered that he had once or twice thought it odd, but without any second thought of suspicion. So the fellow had been set to spy upon him, watch his goings and comings and report them to--no need of asking to whom.
Ste. Marie stood behind his curtains and looked across into the pleasant expanse of shrubbery and greensward. He was wondering if it would be worth while to do anything. Men and women went up and down the path, hurrying or slowly, at ease with the world--laborers, students, bonnes with market-baskets in their hands and long bread loaves under their arms, nurse-maids herding small children, bigger children spinning diabolo spools as they walked. A man with a pointed black beard and a soft hat passed once and returned to seat himself upon the public bench that Ste. Marie was watching. For some minutes he sat there idle, holding the soft felt hat upon his knees for coolness. Then he turned and looked at the other occupant of the bench, and Ste. Marie thought he saw the other man nod, though he could not be sure whether either one spoke or not. Presently the new-comer rose, put on the soft hat again, and disappeared down the path going toward the gate at the head of the rue du Luxembourg.
Five minutes later the door-bell rang.