*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE ROAD TO CLAMART*
Ste. Marie turned away from the window and crossed to the door. The manwith the pointed beard removed his soft hat, bowed very politely, andasked if he had the honour to address Monsieur Ste. Marie.
"That is my name," said Ste. Marie. "_Entrez_, monsieur!" He waved hisvisitor to a chair and stood waiting.
The man with the beard bowed once more. He said--
"I have not the great honour of monsieur's acquaintance, butcircumstances, which I will explain later, have put it in my power--havemade it a sacred duty, if I may be permitted to say the word--to placein monsieur's hands a piece of information."
Ste. Marie smiled slightly and sat down. He said--
"I listen with pleasure--and anticipation. Pray go on!"
"I have information," said the visitor, "of the whereabouts of M. ArthurBenham." Ste. Marie waved his hand.
"I feared as much," said he. "I mean to say, I hoped so. Proceed,monsieur!"
"And learning," continued, the other, "that M. Ste. Marie was conductinga search for that young gentleman, I hastened at once to place thisinformation in his hands."
"At a price," suggested his host. "At a price, to be sure."
The man with the beard spread out his hands in a beautiful and eloquentgesture which well accompanied his Marseillais accent.
"Ah, as to that!" he protested. "My circumstances--I am poor, Monsieur.One must gain the livelihood. What would you? A trifle. The meresttrifle."
"Where is Arthur Benham?" asked Ste. Marie.
"In Marseille, monsieur, I saw him a week ago--six days. And so far asI could learn he had no intention of leaving there immediately--thoughit is, to be sure, hot."
St. Marie laughed a laugh of genuine amusement, and the man with thepointed beard stared at him with some wonder. Ste. Marie rose andcrossed the room to a writing-desk which stood against the oppositewall. He fumbled in a drawer of this, and returned holding in his handa pink and blue note of the Banque de France. He said--
"Monsieur----Pardon! I have forgotten to ask the name. You haveremarked quite truly that one must gain a livelihood. Therefore I donot presume to criticise the way in which you gain yours. Sometimes onecannot choose. However, I should like to make a little bargain withyou, monsieur. I know, of course, being not altogether imbecile, whosent you here with this story and why you were sent--why also yourfriend who sits upon the bench in the garden across the street followsme about and spies upon me. I know all this and I laugh at it a little.But, monsieur, to amuse myself further I have a desire to hear from yourown lips the name of the gentleman who is your employer. Amusement isalmost always expensive, and so I am prepared to pay for this. I havehere a note of one hundred francs. It is yours in return for thename--the right name. Remember, I know it already."
The man with the pointed beard sprang to his feet, quivering withrighteous indignation. All southern Frenchmen like all other Latins,are magnificent actors. He shook one clenched hand in the air, his facewas pale and his fine eyes glittered. Richard Hartley would have puthimself promptly in an attitude of defence, but Ste. Marie nodded asmiling head in appreciation. He was half a southern Frenchman himself.
"Monsieur!" cried his visitor in a choked voice. "Monsieur, have a care!You insult me. Have a care, monsieur! I am dangerous. My anger whenroused is terrible!"
"I am cowed!" observed Ste. Marie, lighting a cigarette. "I quail."
"Never," declaimed the gentleman from Marseille, "have I received aninsult without returning blow for blow. My blood boils."
"The hundred francs, monsieur," said Ste. Marie, "will doubtless coolit. Besides, we stray from our sheep. Reflect, my friend! I have notinsulted you. I have asked you a simple question. To be sure I havesaid that I knew your errand here was not--not altogether sincere; but Iprotest, monsieur, that no blame attaches to yourself. The blame isyour employer's. You have performed your mission with the greatest ofhonesty--the most delicate and faithful sense of honour. That isunderstood."
The gentleman with the beard strode across to one of the windows andleant his head upon his hand. His shoulders still heaved with emotion,but he no longer trembled. The terrible crisis bade fair to pass. Thenabruptly, in the frank and open Latin way, he burst into tears, and weptwith copious profusion, while Ste. Marie smoked his cigarette andwaited.
When at length the Marseillais turned back into the room he was calmonce more, but there remained traces of storm and flood. He made agesture of indescribable and pathetic resignation.
"Monsieur," he exclaimed, "you have a heart of gold. Of gold, monsieur!You understand. Behold us! two men of honour.
"Monsieur," he said, "I had no choice. I was poor. I saw myself faceto face with the _misere_. What would you? I fell. We are all weakflesh. I accepted the commission of the pig who sent me here to you."
Ste. Marie smoothed the pink and blue banknote in his hands, and theother man's eye clung to it as though he were starving and the banknotefood.
"The name?" prompted Ste. Marie.
The gentleman from Marseille tossed up his hands.
"Monsieur already knows it. Why should I hesitate? The name isDucrot."
"What?" cried Ste. Marie sharply. "What is that? Ducrot?"
"But naturally!" said the other man with some wonder. "Monsieur said heknew. Certainly, Ducrot. A little withered man, bald on the top of thehead, creases down the cheeks, a moustache like this,"--he made adescriptive gesture--"a little chin. A man like an elderly cat. M.Ducrot."
Ste. Marie gave a sigh of relief.
"Yes, yes," said he. "Ducrot is as good a name as another. Thegentleman has more than one, it appears. Monsieur, the hundred-francnote is yours." The gentleman from Marseille took it with a slightlytrembling hand, and began to bow himself towards the door, as if hefeared that his host would experience a change of heart, but Ste. Mariechecked him, saying--
"One moment.
"I was thinking," said he, "that you would perhaps not care to presentyourself to your--employer, M. Ducrot, immediately: not for a few days,at least, in view of the fact that certain actions of mine will show himyour mission has--well, miscarried. It would perhaps be well for younot to communicate with M. Ducrot. He might be displeased with you."
"Monsieur," said the gentleman with the beard, "you speak with acumenand wisdom. I shall neglect to report myself to M. Ducrot--who, Irepeat, is a pig."
"And," pursued Ste. Marie, "the individual on the bench across thestreet?"
"It is not necessary that I meet that individual either!" said theMarseillais hastily. "Monsieur, I bid you adieu!" He bowed again, aprofound, a scraping bow, and disappeared through the door.
Ste. Marie crossed to the window and looked down upon the pavementbelow. He saw his visitor emerge from the house and slip rapidly downthe street towards the Rue Vavin. He glanced across into the Gardens,and the spy still sat there on his bench, but his head lay back and heslept--the sleep of the unjust. One imagined that he must be snoring,for an incredibly small urchin in a blue apron stood on the path beforehim, and watched with the open mouth of astonishment.
Ste. Marie turned back into the room and began to tramp up and down, aswas his way in a perplexity or in any time of serious thought. Hewished very much that Richard Hartley were there to consult with. Heconsidered Hartley to have a judicial mind--a mind to establish, out ofconfusion, something like logical order, and he was very well aware thathe himself had not that sort of mind at all. In action he wassufficiently confident of himself, but to construct a course of actionhe was afraid, and he knew that a misstep now, at this critical point,might be fatal--turn success into disaster.
He fell to thinking of Captain Stewart (alias M. Ducrot), and he longedmost passionately to leap into a fiacre at the corner below, to drive ata gallop across the city to the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, to fall uponthat smiling hypoc
rite in his beautiful treasure-house, to seize him bythe withered throat and say--
"Tell me what you have done with Arthur Benham before I tear your headfrom your miserable body!"
Indeed, he was far from sure that this was not what it would come to, inthe end; for he reflected that he had not only a tremendous accumulationof evidence with which to face Captain Stewart, but also a very terribleweapon to hold over his head--the threat of exposure to the old man wholay slowly dying in the Rue de l'Universite! A few words in old David'sear, a few proofs of their truth, and the great fortune for which theson had sold his soul (if he had any left to sell) must pass for everout of his reach, like gold seen in a dream.
This is what it might well come to, he said to himself. Indeed, itseemed to him at that moment far the most feasible plan, for to suchaccusations, such demands as that, Captain Stewart could offer nodefence. To save himself from a more complete ruin he would have togive up the boy, or tell what he knew of him. But Ste. Marie wasunwilling to risk everything on this throw without seeing RichardHartley first, and Hartley was not to be had until evening.
He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for hewas quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a dayor two. He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that itsparoxysms were followed by great exhaustion, and he felt sure thatStewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severecall upon his strength. He remembered how light that burden had been inhis arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgustwent over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted andcontorted face, felt again the shaking thumping head as it beat againsthis shoulder. He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would beable to remember, of the events of the evening before, and he was at aloss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures. Of onething, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man couldscarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit wasover. If he had come at all to his proper senses, before the ensuingslumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himselfhad gone away.
Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman fromMarseille (he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen thegentleman from Marseille), but he reflected that the two were, withoutdoubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably beenstalking him for some days before he found him at home.
He looked at his watch and it was half-past twelve. There was nothingto be done, he considered, but wait--get through the day somehow; andso, presently, he went out to lunch. He went up the Rue Vavin to theBoulevard Montparnasse, and down that broad thoroughfare to Lavenue's,on the busy Place de Rennes, where the cooking is the best in all thisquarter, and can indeed hold up its head without shame in the face ofthose other more widely famous restaurants, across the river, frequentedby the smart world and by the travelling gourmet.
He went through to the inner room, which is built like a raised loggiaround two sides of a little garden, and which is always cool and freshin summer. He ordered a rather elaborate lunch and thought that he sata very long time at it, but when he looked again at his watch only anhour and a half had gone by. It was a quarter-past two. Ste. Marie wasdepressed. There remained almost all of the afternoon to be gotthrough, and Heaven alone could say how much of the evening, before hecould have his consultation with Richard Hartley. He tried to think ofsome way of passing the time, but although he was not usually at a loss,he found his mind empty of ideas. None of his common occupationsrecommended themselves to him. He knew that whatever he tried to do hewould interrupt it with pulling out his watch every half-hour or so andcursing the time because it lagged so slowly. He went out to the_terrasse_ for coffee, very low in his mind.
But half an hour later, as he sat behind his little marble-topped table,smoking and sipping a liqueur, his eyes fell upon something across thesquare which brought him to his feet with a sudden exclamation. One ofthe big electric trams that ply between the Place St. Germain-des-Presand Clamart, by way of the Porte de Versailles and Vanves, was draggingits unwieldy bulk round the turn from the Rue de Rennes into theboulevard. He could see the sign-board along the _imperiale_:"Clamart--St. Germain-des-Pres" with "Issy" and "Vanves" in bracketsbetween.
Ste. Marie clinked a franc upon the table, and made off across the placeat a run. Omnibuses from Batignolles and Menilmontant got in his way,fiacres tried to run him down, and a motor-car in a hurry pulled up justin time to save his life, but Ste. Marie ran on, and caught the trambefore it had completed the negotiation of the long curve and gatheredspeed for its dash down the boulevard. He sprang upon the step, and theconductor reluctantly unfastened the chain to admit him. So he climbedup to the top and seated himself, panting. The dial high on the facadeof the Gare Montparnasse said ten minutes to three.
He had no definite plan of action. He had started off in this headlongfashion upon the spur of a moment's impulse, and because he knew wherethe tram was going. Now, embarked, he began to wonder if he was not afool. He knew every foot of the way to Clamart, for it was a favouritehalf-day's excursion with him to ride there in this fashion, walk thencethrough the beautiful Meudon wood across to the river, and, fromBellevue or Bas-Meudon, take a Suresnes boat back into the city. Heknew, or thought he knew, just where lay the house, surrounded by gardenand half-wild park, of which Olga Nilssen had told him; he had oftenwondered whose it was as the tram rolled along the length of its highwall. But he knew also that he could do nothing there, single-handedand without excuse or preparation. He could not boldly ring the bell,demand speech with Mlle. Coira O'Hara, and ask her if she knew any thingof the whereabouts of young Arthur Benham, whom a photographer hadsuspected of being in love with her. He certainly could not do that.And there seemed to be nothing else that---- Ste. Marie broke off thissomewhat despondent course of reasoning with a sudden little voicelesscry. For the first time it occurred to him to connect the house on theClamart road and Mlle. Coira O'Hara and young Arthur Benham.-- It willbe remembered that the man had not yet had time to arrange his suddenlyacquired mass of evidence in logical order and to make deductions fromit.--For the first time he began to put two and two together. Stewarthad hidden away his nephew: this nephew was known to have been muchenamoured of the girl Coira O'Hara: Coira O'Hara was said to be living(with her father? probably) in the house on the outskirts of Paris,where she was visited by Captain Stewart. Was not the inference plainenough--sufficiently reasonable? It left, without doubt, many puzzlingthings to be explained?--perhaps too many; but Ste. Marie sat forward inhis seat, his eyes gleaming, his face tense with excitement.
Was young Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road?
He said the words almost aloud, and he became aware that the fat womanwith a live fowl at her feet, and the butcher's boy on his other side,were looking at him curiously. He realised that he was behaving in anexcited manner, and so sat back and lowered his eyes. But over and overwithin him the words said themselves, over and over, until they made asort of mad foolish refrain--
"Is Arthur Benham in the house on the Clamart road? Is Arthur Benham inthe house on the Clamart road?" He was afraid that he would say italoud once more, and he tried to keep a firm hold upon himself.
The tram swung into the Rue de Sevres, and rolled smoothly out the longuninteresting stretch of the Rue Lecourbe, far out to where the housesbecame scattered, where mounds and pyramids of red tiles stood alongsidethe factory where they had been made, where an acre of little glasshemispheres in long straight rows winked and glistened in the afternoonsun--the forcing beds of some market gardener; out to the Porte deVersailles at the city wall, where a group of customs officers sprawledat ease before their little sentry-box, or loafed over to inspect ahincoming tram.
A bugle sounded and a drum beat from the great fosse under the wall, anda company of _piou-pious_, red capped, red trousered, shambled throughtheir evolutions in a manner to break the heart of a
British or a Germandrill-sergeant. Then out past level fields to little Vanves, with itssteep streets and its old grey church, and past the splendid grounds ofthe Lycee beyond. The fat woman got down, her live fowl shriekingprotest to the movement, and the butcher's boy got down too, so thatSte. Marie was left alone upon the _imperiale_ save for a snuffy oldgentleman in a pot-hat, who sat in a corner buried behind the day's_Droits de l'Homme_.
Ste. Marie moved forward once more, and laid his arms upon the iron railbefore him. They were coming near. They ran past plum and appleorchards, and past humble little detached villas, each with a bit ofgarden in front and an acacia or two at the gate posts. But presently,on the right, the way began to be bordered by a high stone wall, verylong, behind which showed the trees of a park, and among them, far backfrom the wall, beyond a little rise of ground, the gables and chimneysof a house could be made out. The wall went on for perhaps a quarter ofa mile in a straight sweep, but halfway the road swung apart from it tothe left, dipped under a stone rail way bridge, and so presently endedat the village of Clamart.
As the tram approached the beginning of that long stone wall it began toslacken speed, and there was a grating noise from underneath, andpresently it came to an abrupt halt. Ste. Marie looked over theguard-rail and saw that the driver had left his place and was kneelingin the dust beside the car, peering at its underworks. The conductorstrolled round to him after a moment and stood indifferently by,remarking upon the strange vicissitudes to which electrical propulsionwas subject. The driver, without looking up, called his colleague anumber of the most surprising and, it is to be hoped, unwarranted names,and suddenly began to burrow under the tram, wriggling his way after themanner of the serpent, until nothing could be seen of him but twounrestful feet. His voice though muffled was still tolerably distinct.It cursed in an unceasing staccato, and with admirable ingenuity, thetram, the conductor, the sacred dog of an impediment which had gotitself wedged into one of the trucks, and the world in general.
Ste. Marie, sitting aloft, laughed for a moment, and then turned hiseager eyes upon what lay across the road. The halt had taken placealmost exactly at the beginning of that long stretch of the park wallwhich ran beside the road and the tramway. From where he sat he couldsee the other wing, which led inward from the road at something like aright angle, but was presently lost to sight because of a sparse andunkempt patch of young trees and shrubs, well-nigh choked withundergrowth, which extended for some distance from the park wallbackward along the roadside towards Vanves. Whoever owned that stretchof land had seemingly not thought it worth while to cultivate it, or tobuild upon it, or even to clear it off.
Ste. Marie's first thought as his eye scanned the two long stretches ofwall, and looked over their tops to the trees of the park and thefar-off gables and chimneys of the house, was to wonder where theentrance to the place could be, and he decided that it must be on theside opposite to the Clamart tram-line. He did not know the smallerroads hereabouts, but he guessed that there must be one somewherebeyond, between the Route de Clamart and the Fort d'Issy; and he wasright. There is a little road between the two: it sweeps round in along curve, and ends near the tiny public garden in Issy, and it iscalled the rue Barbes.
His second thought was that this unkempt patch of trees and brushoffered excellent cover for any one who might wish to pass an observanthour alongside that high stone wall--for any one who might desire tocast a glance over the lie of the land, to see at closer range thathouse of which so little could be seen from the Route de Clamart, tolook over the wall's coping into park and garden.
The thought brought him to his feet with a leaping heart, and before herealised that he had moved he found himself in the road beside thehalted tram. The conductor brushed past him, mounting to his place, andfrom the platform he beckoned, crying out--
"_En voiture_, monsieur! _En voiture!_" Again something within Ste.Marie that was not his conscious direction acted for him, and he shookhis head. The conductor gave two little blasts upon his horn, the tramwheezed and moved forward. In a moment it was on its way, swingingalong at full speed towards the curve in the line that bore to the leftand dipped under the railway bridge. Ste. Marie stood in the middle ofthat empty road, staring after it until it had disappeared from view.
The Quest: A Romance Page 13
