And after another little pause he asked—
"Was there any reason why he should have gone away? Any quarrel or that sort of thing?"
"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the sort. The boy's uncle—Captain Stewart, middle-aged, rather prim old party—you'll have met him, I dare say—he intimated to me one day, that there had been some trivial row. You see the lad isn't of age yet, though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house—the boy's father is dead. There's a quaint old beggar, if you like!—the grandfather. He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day it seems—rather an important swell. Now he's bedridden. He sits all day in bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes, he's a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an enormous square white beard, and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits up there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it seems he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing he'd be even."
"Ah well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favourable he will come back and be wept over and forgiven."
The other man walked a little way in silence.
"Ye—es," he said at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right. That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution. Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away with—so far as can be learned—almost no money, almost none at all. And he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham—his sister—is sure that something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so too. It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped but that no demand has been made for money."
"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie—"not the sort of young man to do anything desperate—make away with himself?"
Hartley laughed.
"O Lord, no!" said he. "Not that sort of young man at all. He was a very normal type of rich and spoilt and somewhat foolish American boy."
"Rich?" inquired the other quickly.
"Oh yes! they're beastly rich. Young Arthur is to come into something very good at his majority, I believe, from his father's estate, and the old grandfather is said to be indecently rich—rolling in it! There's another reason why the young idiot wouldn't be likely to stop away of his own accord. He wouldn't risk anything like a serious break with the old gentleman. It would mean a loss of millions to him, I dare say; for the old beggar is quite capable of cutting him off, if he takes the notion. Oh, it's a bad business, all through." And after they had gone on a bit he said it again, shaking his head—
"It's a bad business! That poor girl you know—it's hard on her. She was fond of the young ass for some reason or other. She's very much broken up over it."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, "it is hard for her—for all the family, of course. A bad business, as you say." He spoke absently, for he was looking ahead at something which seemed to be a motor accident. They had, by this time, got well up the Champs Elysées and were crossing the Rond Point. A motor-car was drawn up alongside the kerb just beyond, and a little knot of people stood about it and seemed to look at something on the ground.
"I think some one has been run down," said Ste. Marie. "Shall we have a look?" They quickened their pace and came to where the group of people stood in a circle looking upon the ground, and two gendarmes asked many questions and wrote voluminously in their little books. It appeared that a delivery boy mounted upon a tricycle cart had turned into the wrong side of the avenue, and had got himself run into and overturned by a motor-car going at a moderate rate of speed. For once the sentiment of those mysterious birds of prey which flock instantaneously from nowhere round an accident, was against the victim and in favour of the frightened and gesticulating chauffeur.
Ste. Marie turned an amused face from this voluble being to the other occupants of the patently hired car, who stood apart adding very little to the discussion. He saw a tall and bony man with very bright blue eyes and what is sometimes called a guardsman's moustache—the drooping walruslike ornament which dates back a good many years now. Beyond this gentleman he saw a young woman in a long grey silk coat and a motoring veil. He was aware that the tall man was staring at him rather fixedly and with a half-puzzled frown, as though he thought that they had met before and was trying to remember when, but Ste. Marie gave the man but a swift glance. His eyes were upon the dark face of the young woman beyond, and it seemed to him that she called aloud to him in an actual voice that rang in his ears. The young woman's very obvious beauty he thought had nothing to do with the matter. It seemed to him that her eyes called him. Just that. Something strange and very potent seemed to take sudden and almost tangible hold upon him—a charm, a spell, a magic—something unprecedented, new to his experience. He could not take his eyes from hers and he stood staring.
"It seemed to him that her eyes called him."
As before, on the Pont de la Concorde, Hartley touched him on the arm, and abruptly the chains that had bound him were loosened.
"We must be going on, you know," the Englishman said, and Ste. Marie said rather hurriedly—
"Yes! yes, to be sure. Come along!" But at a little distance he turned once more to look back. The chauffeur had mounted to his place, the delivery boy was upon his feet again, little the worse for his tumble, and the knot of bystanders had begun to disperse, but it seemed to Ste. Marie that the young woman in the long silk coat stood quite still where she had been, and that her face was turned towards him watching.
"Did you notice that girl?" said Hartley as they walked on at a brisker pace. "Did you see her face? She was rather a tremendous beauty, you know, in her gipsyish fashion. Yes, by Jove, she was!"
"Did I see her?" repeated Ste. Marie. "Yes. Oh yes. She had very strange eyes. At least I think it was the eyes. I don't know. I've never seen any eyes quite like them. Very odd!"
He said something more in French which Hartley did not hear, and the Englishman saw that he was frowning.
"Oh well, I shouldn't have said there was anything strange about them," Hartley said, "but they certainly were beautiful. There's no denying that. The man with her looked rather Irish I thought."
They came to the Etoile and cut across it towards the Avenue Hoche. Ste. Marie glanced back once more, but the motor-car and the delivery boy and the gendarmes were gone.
"What did you say?" he asked idly.
"I said the man looked Irish," repeated his friend. All at once Ste. Marie gave a loud exclamation—
"Sacred thousand devils! Fool that I am! Dolt! Why didn't I think of it before?" Hartley stared at him and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs Elysées like one in a trance.
"I say," said the Englishman, "we really must be getting on, you know, we're late." And as they went along down the Avenue Hoche, he demanded—
"Why are you a dolt and whatever else it was? What struck you so suddenly?"
"I remembered all at once," said Ste. Marie, "where I had seen that man before, and with whom I last saw him. I'll tell you about it later. Probably it's of no importance, though."
"You're talking rather like a mild lunatic," said the other. "Here we are at the house!"
CHAPTER II
THE LADDER TO THE STARS
Miss Benham was talking wearily to a