The Quest: A Romance

It may as well be admitted at the outset that neither Ste. Marie nor Richard Hartley proved themselves to be geniuses, hitherto undeveloped, in the detective science. They entered upon their self-appointed task with a fine fervour, but, as Miss Benham had suggested, with no other qualifications in particular. Ste. Marie had a theory that when engaged in work of this nature you went into questionable parts of the city, ate and drank cheek by jowl with questionable people; if possible got them drunk while you remained sober (difficult feat), and sooner or later they said things which put you on the right road to your goal, or else confessed to you that they themselves had committed the particular crime in which you were interested. He argued that this was the way it happened in books, and that surely people didn't write books about things of which they were ignorant.

Hartley, on the other hand, preferred the newer or scientific methods. You sat at home with a pipe and a whisky and water – if possible in a long dressing-gown with a cord round its middle. You reviewed all the known facts of the case, and you did mathematics about them with Xs and Ys and many other symbols, and in the end, by a system of elimination, you proved that a certain thing must infallibly be true. The chief difficulty for him in this was, he said, that he had been at Oxford instead of at Cambridge, and so the mathematics was rather beyond him.

In practice, however, they combined the two methods, which was doubtless as well as if they hadn't, because for some time they accomplished nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer at the other's stupidity.

This is not to say that they found nothing in the way of clues. They found an embarrassment of them, and for some days went about in a fever of excitement over these; but the fever cooled when clue after clue turned out to be misleading. Of course Ste. Marie's first efforts were directed towards tracing the movements of the Irishman, O'Hara, but the efforts were altogether unavailing. The man seemed to have disappeared as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself. He was unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man's departure from Paris. Some of O'Hara's old acquaintances maintained that they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one evening in Maxim's, and said he had heard that Ste. Marie was making inquiries about M. O'Hara. Ste. Marie said he was, and that it was an affair of money, whereupon the cheaply smart individual declared that M. O'Hara had left Paris six months before to go to the United States of America, and that he had had a picture postal card, some weeks since, from New York. The informant accepted an expensive cigar and a Dubonnet by way of reward, but presently departed into the night, and Ste. Marie was left in some discouragement, his theory badly damaged.

He spoke of this encounter to Richard Hartley, who came on later to join him, and Hartley, after an interval of silence and smoke, said —

"That was a lie. The man lied."

"Name of a dog, why?" demanded Ste. Marie, but the Englishman shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know," he said. "But I believe it was a lie. The man came to you, sought you out to tell his story, didn't he? And all the others have given a different date? Well, there you are! For some reason this man or some one behind him – O'Hara himself, probably – wants you to believe that O'Hara is in America. I dare say he's in Paris all the while."

"I hope you're right," said the other. "And I mean to make sure, too. It certainly was odd, this strange being hunting me out to tell me that. I wonder, by the way, how he knew I'd been making inquiries about O'Hara. I've questioned only two or three people, and then in the most casual way. Yes, it's odd."

It was about a week after this – a fruitless week, full of the alternate brightness of hope and the gloom of disappointment – that he met Captain Stewart, to whom he had been more than once on the point of appealing. He happened upon him quite by chance one morning in the Rue Royale. Captain Stewart was coming out of a shop, a very smart-looking shop, devoted, as Ste. Marie, with some surprise and much amusement, observed, to ladies' hats, and the price of hats must have depressed him, for he looked in an ill humour and older and more yellow than usual. But his face altered suddenly when he saw the younger man, and he stopped, and shook Ste. Marie's hand with every evidence of pleasure.

"Well met! well met!" he exclaimed. "If you are not in a hurry, come and sit down somewhere and tell me about yourself."

They picked their way across the street to the terrace of the Taverne Royale, which was almost deserted at that hour, and sat down at one of the little tables well back from the pavement, in a corner.

"Is it fair?" queried Captain Stewart, "is it fair as a rival investigator to ask you what success you have had?" Ste. Marie laughed rather ruefully and confessed that he had as yet no success at all.

"I've just come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well, and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy. Oh well, we didn't expect it to be child's play."

Captain Stewart raised his little glass of dry vermouth in an old-fashioned salute, and drank from it.

"You," said he, "you were – ah, full of some idea of connecting this man, this Irishman, O'Hara, with poor Arthur's disappearance. You've found that not so promising, as you went on, I take it."

"Well, I've been unable to trace O'Hara," said Ste. Marie. "He seems to have disappeared as completely as your nephew. I suppose you have no clues to spare? I confess I'm out of them, at the moment."

"Oh, I have plenty," said the elder man. "A hundred. More than I can possibly look after." He gave a little chuckling laugh.

"I've been waiting for you to come to me," he said. "It was a little ungenerous perhaps, but we all love to say, 'I told you so.' Yes, I have a great quantity of clues, and, of course, they all seem to be of the greatest and most exciting importance. That's a way clues have." He took an envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and sorted several folded papers which were in it.

"I have here," said he, "memoranda of two chances, shall I call them? – which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every clue seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking part of such an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received, one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been searching the bains de merof the north coast. This agent writes that some one very much resembling poor Arthur has been seen at Dinard and also at Deauville, and he urges me to come there, or to send a man there at once to look into the matter. You will ask, of course, why this agent himself does not pursue the clue he has found. Unfortunately he has been called to London upon some pressing family matter of his own; he is an Englishman."

"Why haven't you gone yourself?" asked Ste. Marie. But the elder man shrugged his shoulders and smiled a tired deprecatory smile.

"Oh, my friend," said he, "if I should attempt personally to investigate one half of these things, I should be compelled to divide myself into twenty parts. No, I must stay here. There must be, alas! the spider at the centre of the web. I cannot go, but if you think it worth while I will gladly turn over the memoranda of these last clues to you. They may be the true clues, they may not. At any rate, some one must look into them. Why not you and your partner – or shall I say assistant?"

"Why, thank you!" cried Ste. Marie. "A thousand thanks. Of course I shall be – we shall be glad to try this chance. On the face of it, it sounds very reasonable. Your nephew, from what I remember of him, is much more apt to be in some place that is amusing – some place of gaiety – than hiding away where it is merely dull, if he has his choice in the matter, that is – if he is free. And yet – " he turned and frowned thoughtfully at the elder man.

"What I want to know," said he, "is how the boy is supporting himself all this time. You say he had no money, or very little, when he went away. How is he managing to live, if your theory is correct – that he is staying away of his own accord? It costs a lot of money to live as he likes to live."

Captain Stewart nodded.

"Oh, that," said he, "that is a question I have often proposed to myself. Frankly it's beyond me. I can only surmise that poor Arthur, who had scattered a small fortune about in foolish loans, managed, before he actually disappeared (mind you, we didn't begin to look for him until a week had gone by), managed to collect some of this money, and so went away with something in pocket. That, of course, is only a guess."

"It is possible," said Ste. Marie doubtfully, "but – I don't know. It is not very easy to raise money from the sort of people I imagine your nephew to have lent it to. They borrow but they don't repay."

He glanced up with a half-laughing half-defiant air.

"I can't," said he, "rid myself of a belief that the boy is here in Paris and he is not free to come or go. It's only a feeling, but it is very strong in me. Of course I shall follow out these clues you've been so kind as to give me. I shall go to Dinard and Deauville, and Hartley, I imagine, will go with me; but I haven't great confidence in them."

Captain Stewart regarded him reflectively for a time, and in the end he smiled.

"If you will pardon my saying it," he said, "your attitude is just a little womanlike. You put away reason for something vaguely intuitive. I always distrust intuition myself." Ste. Marie frowned a little and looked uncomfortable. He did not relish being called womanlike – few men do – but he was bound to admit that the elder man's criticism was more or less just.

"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 glasses of aperatif, 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 towards the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, 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 clue 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, towards five, Richard Hartley walked down to the Rue de l'Université. 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 learnt 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 surpassed only in English provincial towns. It was as if the three mourned together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead amongst 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 shan'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 butterfly 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 fête?"

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

"Your friend, Ste. Marie," said the American lady to Hartley, "was distinctly the lion of the fête– 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 Bohême 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 favourite 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 towards 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 longue. 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 since, 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 humour. I love her, but I know those things are true. I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and without humour."

"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 adieux 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."

The Englishman frowned across at her.

"I didn't come to make apologies," said he. "I came to explain. Well, I have explained – Baron de Vries and I together. That's just how it happened, and that's just how Ste. Marie takes things. The point is, that you've got to understand it. I've got to make you."

The girl smiled up at him dolefully.

"You look," she said, "as if you were going to beat me if necessary. You look very warlike."

"I feel warlike," the man said, nodding. He said —

"I'm fighting for a friend to whom you are doing, in your mind, an injustice. I know him better than you do, and I tell you you're doing him a grave injustice. You're failing altogether to understand him."

"I wonder," the girl said, looking very thoughtfully down at the table before her.

"I know," said he.

Quite suddenly she gave a little overwrought cry, and she put up her hands over her face.

"Oh, Richard!" she said, "that day when he was here! He left me – Oh, I cannot tell you at what a height he left me! It was something new and beautiful. He swept me to the clouds with him. And I might – perhaps I might have lived on there. Who knows? But then that hideous evening! Ah, it was too sickening, the fall back to common earth again!"

"I know," said the man gently, "I know. And he knew, too. Directly he'd seen you he knew how you would feel about it. I'm not pretending that it was of no consequence. It was unfortunate, of course. But – the point is it did not mean in him any slackening, any stooping, any letting go. It was a moment's incident. We went to the wretched place by accident after dinner. Ste. Marie saw those childish lunatics at play, and for about two minutes he played with them. The lady in the blue hat made it appear a little more extreme, and that's all."

Miss Benham rose to her feet and moved restlessly back and forth.

"Oh, Richard!" she said, "the golden spell is broken – the enchantment he laid upon me that day. I'm not like him, you know. Oh, I wish I were! I wish I were! I can't change from hour to hour. I can't rise to the clouds again after my fall to earth. It has all – become something different.

"Don't misunderstand me," she cried; "I don't mean that I've ceased to care for him. No, far from that! But I was in such an exalted heaven, and now I'm not there any more. Perhaps he can lift me to it again. Oh yes, I'm sure he can when I see him once more; but I wanted to go on living there so happily while he was away! Do you understand at all?"

"I think I do," the man said, but he looked at her very curiously and a little sadly; for it was the first time he had ever seen her swept from her superb poise by any emotion, and he hardly recognised her. It was very bitter to him to realise that he could never have stirred her to this, never under any conceivable circumstances.

The girl came to him where he stood and touched his arm with her hand.

"He is waiting to hear how I feel about it all, isn't he?" she said. "He is waiting to know that I understand. Will you tell him a little lie for me, Richard? No! You needn't tell a lie; I will tell it. Tell him that I said I understood perfectly. Tell him that I was shocked for a moment, but that afterwards I understood and thought no more about it. Will you tell him I said that? It won't be a lie from you, because I did say it. Oh, I will not grieve him or hamper him now while he is working in my cause! I'll tell him a lie rather than have him grieve."

"Need it be a lie?" said Richard Hartley. "Can't you truly believe what you've said?"