Jason Part 12

"Moreover," pursued Captain Stewart, "you altogether ignore the point of motive--as I may have suggested to you before. There could be no possible motive, so far as I am aware, for kidnapping or detaining, or in any way harming, my nephew except the desire for money; but, as you know, he had no large sum of money with him, and no demand has been made upon us since his disappearance. I'm afraid you can't get round that."

"No," said Ste. Marie, "I'm afraid I can't. Indeed, leaving that aside--and it can't be left aside--I still have almost nothing with which to prop up my theory. I told you it was only a feeling."

He took up the memoranda which Captain Stewart had laid upon the marble-topped table between them, and read the notes through.

"Please," said he, "don't think I am ungrateful for this chance. I am not. I shall do my best with it, and I hope it may turn out to be important." He gave a little wry smile. "I have all sorts of reasons,"

he said, "for wishing to succeed as soon as possible. You may be sure that there won't be any delays on my part. And now I must be going on. I am to meet Hartley for lunch on the other side of the river, and, if we can manage it, I should like to start north this afternoon or evening."

"Good!" said Captain Stewart, smiling. "Good! That is what I call true promptness. You lose no time at all. Go to Dinard and Deauville, by all means, and look into this thing thoroughly. Don't be discouraged if you meet with ill success at first. Take Mr. Hartley with you, and do your best."

He paid for the two gla.s.ses of aperitif, and Ste. Marie could not help observing that he left on the table a very small tip. The waiter cursed him audibly as the two walked away.

"If you have returned by a week from to-morrow," he said, as they shook hands, "I should like to have you keep that evening--Thursday--for me. I am having a very informal little party in my rooms. There will be two or three of the opera people there, and they will sing for us, and the others will be amusing enough. All young--all young. I like young people about me." He gave his odd little mewing chuckle. "And the ladies must be beautiful as well as young. Come if you are here! I'll drop a line to Mr. Hartley also."

He shook Ste. Marie's hand, and went away down the street toward the rue du Faubourg St. Honore where he lived.

Ste. Marie met Hartley as he expected to do, at lunch, and they talked over the possibilities of the Dinard and Deauville expedition. In the end they decided that Ste. Marie should go alone, but that he was to telegraph, later on, if the clew looked promising. Hartley had two or three investigations on foot in Paris, and stayed on to complete these.

Also he wished, as soon as possible, to see Helen Benham and explain Ste. Marie's ride on the galloping pigs. Ten days had elapsed since that evening, but Miss Benham had gone into the country the next day to make a visit at the De Saulnes' chateau on the Oise.

So Ste. Marie packed a portmanteau with clothes and things, and departed by a mid-afternoon train to Dinard, and toward five Richard Hartley walked down to the rue de I'Universite. He thought it just possible that Miss Benham might by now have returned to town, but if not he meant to have half an hour's chat with old David Stewart, whom he had not seen for some weeks.

At the door he learned that mademoiselle was that very day returned and was at home. So he went in to the drawing-room, reserving his visit to old David until later. He found the room divided into two camps. At one side Mrs. Benham conversed in melancholic monotones with two elderly French ladies who were clad in depressing black of a dowdiness surpa.s.sed only in English provincial towns. It was as if the three mourned together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead among them.

Hartley bowed low, with an uncontrollable shiver, and turned to the tea-table, where Miss Benham sat in the seat of authority, flanked by a young American lady whom he had met before, and by Baron de Vries, whom he had not seen since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party.

Miss Benham greeted him with evident pleasure, and to his great delight remembered just how he liked his tea--three pieces of sugar and no milk.

It always flatters a man when his little tastes of this sort are remembered. The four fell at once into conversation together, and the young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.

"I thought you two always went about together," she said--"were never seen apart and all that--a sort of modern Damon and Phidias."

Hartley caught Baron de Vries' eye, and looked away again hastily.

"My--ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the lady, "got mislaid to-day. It sha'n't happen again, I promise you. He's a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social dissipation. I'm the b.u.t.terfly of the pair."

The lady gave a sudden laugh.

"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham. "Do you remember that evening we were going home from the Madrid and motored round by Montmartre to see the fete?"

"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."

"Your friend Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was distinctly the lion of the fete--at the moment we arrived, anyhow. He was riding a galloping pig and throwing those paper streamer things--what do you call them?--with both hands, and a genial lady in a blue hat was riding the same pig and helping him out. It was just like the _Vie de Boheme_ and the other books. I found it charming."

Baron de Vries emitted an amused chuckle.

"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 favorite 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 toward 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 lounge. 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 ago, 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 humor. I love her, but I know those things are true. I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and without humor."

"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 adieus, 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."