The Uttermost Farthing Part 8

Did she give her name?"

"Mademoiselle de la Tour de Nesle," said Vanderlyn, with curling lip.

"Oh Lord! What a plague women are!" said the other, crossly. "Sometimes I think it's a pity G.o.d ever made Eve! Such impudence, her ringing up here! Still, she's an amusing little devil."

"Are you going to see her?" asked Vanderlyn, "because if so I think I had better be getting back to my place. You see, I've rather neglected my work to-day."

Something in the other's tone impressed Pargeter disagreeably.

"I say, don't be shirty!" he exclaimed, "I know you've had a lot of bother, and I'm awfully grateful to you, and so will Peggy be when she knows. I sha'n't make up my mind about going to see Nelly till the last minute----"

"Nelly?" repeated Vanderlyn, puzzled--"Who's Nelly?"

"You know, Grid,--the--the person who rang me up. I always call her Nelly. Her name's such a mouthful--still, it's Nelly's Tower, isn't it?

See? Perhaps to-day as there's all this fuss on I'd better not go and see her, eh, Grid? I wish I was like you," he added, a little shamefacedly, "you're such a puritan. I suppose that's why Peggy's so fond of you. Birds of a feather, eh? what?" his manner grew sensibly more affectionate and confidential.

The two men smoked on in silence. Vanderlyn was trying to choose a form of words with which he could bid the other farewell; he longed with a miserable longing to be alone, but that first day's ordeal was not yet over.

"I can't face dinner here," said Pargeter suddenly, "let's go and dine at that new place, the Coq d'Or."

Vanderlyn lacked the energy to say him nay, and they went out, leaving word where they were to be found.

Le Coq d'Or was a reconst.i.tution of what had been, in a now deserted suburban resort, a famous restaurant dedicated to the memory and cult of Rabelais. Vanderlyn had already been there with American friends, but to Pargeter the big room, with its quaint mediaeval furnishings and large panels embodying adventures of Gargantua, was new, and for a moment distracted his mind from what was still more of a grievance than an anxiety.

But they had not long been seated at one of the narrow oak tables which were supposed to be exact copies of those used in a mediaeval tavern, when Pargeter began to turn sulky. The maitre d'hotel of the Coq d'Or was not aware of how important a guest was honouring him that night, and for a few moments no attention was paid to the two friends.

"I say, this is no good!" exclaimed Pargeter angrily, "let's go somewhere else--to the Cafe de Paris."

"For G.o.d's sake, Tom," exclaimed Vanderlyn harshly, "sit down! Can't you see I'm tired out? Let's stay where we are."

"All right. But I can tell you that at this rate we sha'n't get anything till midnight!" Still Pargeter sat down again, and fortunately there soon came up a waiter who had known the great sportsman elsewhere; and a moment later he was absorbed in the amusing occupation of making out a careful menu from a new bill of fare.

During the long course of the meal, Vanderlyn listened silently to Pargeter's conjectures concerning Peggy's disappearance--conjectures broken by lamentations over the contretemps which had made it impossible for him to leave Paris that day. Absorbed as he was in himself and his own grievances, Pargeter was yet keenly aware when his companion's attention seemed in any way to wander, and at last there came a moment when, leaving his cup of black coffee half full, he pushed his chair away with a gesture of ill-temper.

"I'm afraid, Grid, all this must be an infernal bore for you!" he said; "after all, Peggy's not your wife--no woman has the right to lead you such a dance as she has led me to-day. Let's try to forget her for a bit; let's go along to 'The Wash'?"

Vanderlyn shook his head; he felt spent, worn out. He muttered that he had work to do, that it was time for him to turn in.

Each man paid his portion of the bill, and, as they went through the gla.s.s doors giving onto the Boulevard, Vanderlyn noticed that on each side of the entrance to the Coq d'Or a man was standing, sentinel-wise, as if waiting for someone to go in or come out.

For a moment the two friends stood on the pavement.

"Let's take a fiacre," said Pargeter suddenly, "and I'll drive you to your place." The warm spring weather had brought out a number of open cabs. They hailed one of these, and, as they did so, Vanderlyn noticed that the two men who had been standing at the door of the restaurant entered another just behind them.

When at last he found himself in his own flat, and at last alone, Vanderlyn stood for a few moments in his empty sitting-room. Terrible as had been the companioned hours of the day, he now feared to be alone. It was too early to go to bed--and he looked back with horror to the wakeful hours which had been his the night before. So standing there he told himself that an hour's walk--he had not walked at all that day--would quiet his nerves, prepare him for the next day's ordeal.

As he made his way down the broad shallow stairs, his mind seemed to regain its elasticity. He realised that it must be his business to keep fit. A greater ordeal than anything which had yet befallen him lay there--in front of him. Soon, perhaps to-morrow, the Prefecture of Police would connect the finding of a woman's dead body in the train which had left Paris for Orange the night before, with Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance.

It would be then that he would need all his strength and self-control.

He remembered with a thrill of anger the curious measuring glance the head of the Paris detective force had cast on him that morning. He wondered uneasily how far he had betrayed himself.

Pa.s.sing through the porte cochere, he noticed that the concierge was talking to a neat, stout little Frenchman with whose appearance he felt himself familiar. Vanderlyn looked straight at the man; yes, this was undoubtedly one of the two watchers who had been standing outside the door of the Coq d'Or.

Then he was being followed, tracked? The Paris police evidently already connected him in some way with the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter?

Instead of crossing the road to the deserted pavement which bounds the gardens of the Tuileries, the American turned to the left, and became merged in the slowly moving stream of men and women under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. As he walked along he became conscious, and that without once turning round, that his pursuer was close behind; when he walked slowly, the other, as far as possible, did the same, and when he hurried on, he could hear the tap-tap d.o.g.g.i.ng his footsteps through the crowd.

At last, finding himself opposite the Hotel Continental, Vanderlyn stopped and deliberately read over the bill of fare attached to the door of the restaurant. As he did so, the light of a large reverbere beat down on his face; from the human current sweeping slowly on behind him a man quietly detached himself, and, standing for a moment by the side of the American diplomatist, looked up into his face with a long deliberate stare.

VII.

The fact that he was being watched had a curious effect on Laurence Vanderlyn. It roused in him the fighting instinct which he had had to keep in leash the whole of that terrible first day of repression, save during the moments when he had been confronted with the head of the detective department at the Prefecture of Police.

As at last he walked on, now choosing deliberately quiet and solitary streets, the footsteps of his unknown companion echoed loudly behind him, and he allowed himself, for the first time since the night before, the cruel luxury of recollection. For the first time, also, he forced himself to face the knowledge that any hour might bring as unexpected a development as had been the prolonged presence of Pargeter in Paris. He realised that he must, if possible, be prepared, forearmed, with the knowledge of what had occurred after he had left the darkened railway carriage at Dorgival. News travels slowly in provincial France, yet, even so, the fact that the dead body of a woman had been found in a first-cla.s.s carriage of the Paris demi-rapide must soon have become known, and made its way into the local press.

Out of the past there came to Vanderlyn the memory of an old-fashioned reading-room frequented by him long years before when he was studying in Paris.

The place had been pointed out to him by one of the professors at the Sorbonne as being by far the best lending library on the left side of the Seine; and there, in addition to the ordinary reading-room, was an inner room, where, by paying a special fee, one could see all the leading provincial papers.

In some such sheet,--for in France every little town has its own newspaper,--would almost certainly appear the first intimation of so sinister and mysterious a discovery as the finding of a woman's dead body in the Paris train.

Vanderlyn wondered if the library--the Bibliotheque Cardinal was its name--still existed. If yes, there was every chance that he might find there what was vital to him to know, both in order to rid himself of the obsessing vision which he saw whenever he shut his tired eyes, and also that he might be prepared for any information suddenly forwarded to Pargeter from the Prefecture of Police.

The next morning Vanderlyn was scarcely surprised to see the man who had shadowed him the night before lying in wait for him before the house.

The American measured the other's weary face and stout figure, and then he began quietly walking up the now deserted arcades of the Rue de Rivoli; with a certain grim amus.e.m.e.nt, he gradually increased his pace, and when at last he turned into the great court of the Louvre, and stood for a moment at the base of the Gambetta Monument, he a.s.sured himself that he had out-distanced his pursuer.

Striding quickly across the most historic of Paris bridges, he threaded the narrow, tortuous thoroughfares dear to every lover of old Paris, till he reached the Place St. Sulpice. There, forming one of the corners of the square, was the house wherein was housed the Bibliotheque Cardinal, looking exactly as Vanderlyn remembered its having looked twenty years before. Even the huge leather-bound books in the windows seemed to be the same as in the days when the future American diplomatist had been, if not a merry-hearted, then a most enthusiastic student, making eager acquaintance with "The Quarter."

He walked into the shop, and recognised, in the stout, middle-aged woman sitting there, the trim young bourgeoise to whom he had often handed a fifty centime piece in those days which seemed so distant as almost to belong to another life.

"Have you still a provincial paper room?" he asked, in a low tone.

"Yes," said the dame du comptoir, suavely, "but we have to charge a franc for admission."

Vanderlyn smiled. "It used to be fifty centimes," he said.

"Ah! Monsieur, that was long ago! There are ten times as many provincial papers now as then!"

He put the piece of silver on the counter. As he did so, he heard the door of the shop quietly open, and, with a disagreeable feeling of surprise, he saw the man, the detective he believed he had shaken off, come up un.o.btrusively to where he was standing.

Vanderlyn hesitated----Then he reminded himself that what he was about to do belonged to the part he had set himself to play: "Well, Madame,"

he said, "I will go through into your second reading-room and glance over the papers;" he forced himself to add, "I am anxious to find news of a person who has disappeared--who has, I fear, met with an accident."