The official left the room a moment; then he returned with a colleague.

This man, the chief of the detective force, proceeded with considerable tact to examine and cross-examine both Pargeter and Vanderlyn concerning the way in which Mrs. Pargeter had spent the earlier part of the previous day—that is, the day on which she had disappeared.

The man's manner—that of scenting a secret, of suspecting that more lay behind the matter than was admitted by the husband and friend of the woman they were seeking—produced a disagreeable impression on Vanderlyn. For the first time he felt himself faced by a vague, but none the less real, danger, and the feeling braced him.

"Then Monsieur did not see this lady yesterday at all?"

"No," said Vanderlyn, shortly; "the last time I saw Mrs. Pargeter in her house was the day before yesterday, when I called on her about five o'clock."

"Monsieur is not related to the lady," asked the detective quietly.

"No," said Vanderlyn again. "But I am an old friend of both Mr. and Mrs. Pargeter, and that is why he asked me to accompany him here to-day."

"Then when and how did you yourself first learn of Madame Pargeter's disappearance?" asked the other suddenly.

Vanderlyn hesitated; for a moment his tired brain refused to act—when was he supposed to have heard of Peggy's disappearance? He looked helplessly at Pargeter, then said suddenly, "I met my friend at L'Union last night."

"Then you already knew of Madame's disappearance last night?" said the official eagerly.

"No! no!" exclaimed Pargeter crossly. "Of course we didn't know then! We didn't know till just now—that is, till this morning, when Mr. Vanderlyn went out to Madame de Lera's villa to fetch my wife. It was Madame de Lera who told us that she had never arrived at Marly-le-Roi. She disappeared yesterday afternoon, but we did not know it till this morning."

"May I ask you, gentlemen, to wait for a moment while I make certain enquiries?" observed the detective politely. "You have not yet been shown our daily report concerning the stations of Paris—is it not possible that Madame Pargeter may have met with some accident at the Gare St. Lazare, if, as I understand, she was going to her friend by train, and not by automobile?"

Pargeter seemed struck by the notion. He turned to Vanderlyn. "I can't make out," he said in a puzzled tone, "why Peggy thought of going to Marly-le-Roi by train when she might so easily have gone in her new motor."

"Peggy gave her man a week's holiday," said Vanderlyn shortly. "You know, Tom, that he wanted to go to his own home, somewhere in Normandy."

"Yes, yes. Of course! But still she might have gone out in the big car—I wasn't using it yesterday."

The detective came back at the end of what seemed to both Vanderlyn and Pargeter a very long quarter of an hour.

"No incident of any sort took place last night at the Gare St. Lazare," he said briefly. "We shall now institute a thorough enquiry among our agents; every police-station in Paris shall be notified of the fact that Madame Pargeter is missing; and I shall almost certainly be able to send you some kind of news of her by four o'clock this afternoon. In any case you can trust us to do our best. Will Monsieur be returning to the Avenue du Bois"—he addressed Vanderlyn, "or is Monsieur going to his own flat in the Rue de Rivoli?"

Vanderlyn looked up quickly. His private address was not printed on the card he had shown; still it was reasonable enough that this man should have looked up his own as well as Pargeter's address and should have wished to verify their statements as far as was possible.

"Of course, Grid, you will come home with me!" exclaimed Pargeter fretfully.

"Then, Messieurs, I will send any news I get straight to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne."

As they walked through the long corridors, it became clear that whatever anxiety Pargeter had suffered had dropped off him, for the moment, like a cloak. "I shouldn't be surprised if I can get off to-night after all," he said cheerfully, "you heard what he said? This afternoon we shall certainly have news of her."

Then, as they emerged into the hall, and he caught sight of his motor-car and of its occupant, "For God's sake, Grid," he said frowning, "let's get rid of that old woman! There she sits, staring like a bird of prey; it's enough to give one the hump! Ask her if she would like us to drive her to her Paris house. If she wants to go back to the country, I'll send her in Peggy's Limousine—oh! I forgot, that's not available, is it? Never mind, she can go on in this car. Say we'll send her news as soon as we hear any!"

But Vanderlyn soon ascertained that Madame de Lera had no wish to go back to Marly-le-Roi. She accepted his brief account of what had occurred at the Prefecture of Police without comment, and, refusing Pargeter's offer to drive her to her house in the Faubourg St. Germain, asked only to be set down at the nearest telegraph-station.

* * * * *

Dreary hours followed—hours later remembered with special horror and shrinking by Laurence Vanderlyn. They were spent by the two ill-assorted friends in Tom Pargeter's own room on the ground-floor of the villa.

It was a long, well-lighted room, lined with the huge, splendidly decorative posters, signed Cheret and Mucha, which were then just being collected by those who admired that type of flamboyant art. In this apartment Peggy, as Vanderlyn was well aware, never put her feet, for it was there that her husband received his trainer and his sporting friends. Here also was his own private telephone.

Lunch was brought to them on a tray, and at two o'clock the butler came with the information that several police officials were in the house interrogating the servants. Far from annoying Pargeter, the fact seemed to afford him some gratification, for it proved that he was after all quite as important a personage as he believed himself to be. He gave orders that the men were to be liberally supplied with drink.

An hour later came a high official from the Prefecture. He was taken upstairs and shown into the drawing-room, and it was there that Pargeter joined him, leaving Vanderlyn for the first time alone.

The American lay back in the rocking-chair in which he had been sitting forward listening to the other's unconnected talk. What a relief, what an immense sense of sobbing relief—came over his weary senses, aye, even his weary limbs! He put away the thought, the anguished query, as to how long this awful ordeal was likely to endure. For the moment it was everything to be alone. He closed his smarting eyes.

Suddenly the telephone bell rang, violently. Vanderlyn got up slowly; stumblingly he walked across the room and took up the receiver. A woman's voice asked in French:

"Has Mr. Pargeter left Paris?"

"No," said Vanderlyn shortly. "Mr. Pargeter is still in Paris."

"Is it a friend of Mr. Pargeter who is speaking?"

There was a long pause,—then, "Yes," said Vanderlyn.

"Will you, Monsieur, kindly inform your friend," said the voice, shaking with a ripple of light laughter, "that Mademoiselle de la Tour de Nesle has something very urgent to say to him?"

"Mr. Pargeter is engaged, but I will give him any message."

"May I ask you, Monsieur, to have the gracious amiability to inform Mr. Pargeter that Mademoiselle de la Tour de Nesle will be expecting him at five o'clock this afternoon. She understood he was leaving Paris yesterday, but someone told her that he had been seen driving in his auto on the grand boulevards this morning."

A few moments later Pargeter burst into the room.

"They declare that Peggy must have left Paris!" he exclaimed. "I thought as much," he went on, angrily. "I felt certain that she was only hiding! Of course I didn't like to say so—at first," and, as Vanderlyn remained silent, he came and flung himself in a chair close to the other man.

"You see, Grid,"—his voice unconsciously lowered,—"she played me that trick once before—years ago! It was a regular bit of bad luck, the sort of thing that only seems to happen to me; other men escape. A woman came to our house,—we were living in London then,—an old friend of mine with whom I'd stupidly mixed up again; she brought a child with her, a squalling brat two or three months older than Jasper—Of course the child had nothing to do with me, but she said he had, and Peggy believed her!" he looked for sympathy to the silent man opposite to whom he was now sitting.

"Did you ever hear of this before?" he asked suspiciously, "did Peggy ever tell you about it?"

"No," said Vanderlyn. "This is the first time I have heard anything of it. How long did she stay away?" he forced himself to add, loathing himself the while: "Did she disappear like this—I mean, as she has done this time?"

"Well, not exactly," said Pargeter reluctantly, "for one thing she took Jasper and his nurse with her, but not her maid. They went off to her aunt,—the aunt who brought her up, you know,—but for two days I hadn't a notion where she was! Then one of her brothers came to see me. It was all made as damned unpleasant for me as possible, but they were of course determined that she should come back to me, and so she did—after about a week. But she was never nice to me again," he added, moodily, "not that she ever was really nice to me before we married. It was the aunt who hunted me——"

"Is there any special reason why Peggy should have thought of going away like that—now?" asked Vanderlyn in a strained voice.

"No," exclaimed Pargeter, "of course there isn't! I've always been nice to her, as you know well, Grid,—much nicer, I mean, than most men would have been to a wife who was so—so—" he sought intently for a word, "so superior and—and unsympathetic. But lately I have been specially nice to her, for my sister, Sophy, you know, had written me a long screed,—I didn't bother to read it right through, making out that Peggy's heart was weak, and that I ought to be very careful about her. The very day I got the letter I went out and bought her that grey Limousine Lady Prynne was so keen I should take off her hands! Peggy always had everything she wanted," he repeated; "I didn't have a penny with her, but I've never grudged her anything. In fact I should be pleased if she spent more on her clothes than she seems to care to do, for I like to see a woman well trigged out."

"Tom, I have a message for you," said Vanderlyn slowly, "a lady telephoned just now to say she's expecting you at five o'clock."

"Eh! what?" said Pargeter, his fair face flushing, "a lady? What lady? 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 God 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 reconstitution 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 God'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 glass 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.

Passing 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 dogging 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-class 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 amusement, 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 assured 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 unobtrusively 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."

The detective asked a question of the woman; he spoke in a low voice, but Vanderlyn heard what he said—that is, whether there was any other way out of the two reading-rooms except through the shop. On the woman's replying in the negative, he settled himself down and opened an illustrated paper.

Vanderlyn began systematically going through the provincial papers of the towns at which he knew the train was to stop after he had left it at Dorgival; and after the first uneasy quarter of an hour he forgot the watcher outside, and became absorbed in his task. To his mingled disappointment and relief, he found nothing.

It was of course possible that on the discovery of a dead body in a Paris train, the matter would at once be handed over to the Paris police; that would mean, in this case, that a body so found would be conveyed to the Morgue.

The thought that this might be so made Vanderlyn's heart quail with anguish and horror, and yet, if such a thing were within the bounds of possibility, had he not better go to the Morgue alone and now, rather than later in the company of Tom Pargeter?

As he passed out of the reading-room into the book-shop, and so into the square, he understood for the first time, how it was that he had made so foolish a mistake concerning the detective. The latter at once entered a fiacre which had evidently been waiting for him, and, as Vanderlyn plunged into the labyrinth of narrow streets leading from the Place St. Sulpice to Notre Dame, he could hear the cab crawling slowly behind him.

Well, what matter? This visit to the Morgue was also in the picture—in the picture, that is, of Laurence Vanderlyn, the kindly friend of Tom Pargeter, helping in the perplexing, the now agonising, search for Mrs. Pargeter.

But when at last he came in sight of the sinister triangular building which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers to whom the Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, he felt that he could not trust himself to go in and look at her.

He stood still for a few moments, and then, as he was about to turn on his heel, he saw coming towards him from out of the door of the Morgue a figure which struck a note of tragedy in the bright morning sunshine. It was Madame de Lera, her eyes full of tears, her heart oppressed by the sights she had just seen.

"There are three poor people there," she said, in a low voice, "two men and a woman, but not, thank God! our friend. I wonder if it is possible that we are mistaken—that there was no accident, Monsieur Vanderlyn? But then, if so, where is she—why has she not written to me?"

He shook his head with a hopeless gesture, afraid to speak lest he should be tempted to share with her his agony and complicated suspense.

"If she were a Catholic," added Madame de Lera pitifully, "I should be inclined to think—to hope—that she had gone to a convent; but—but for her there was no such place of refuge from temptation——" her voice as she uttered the last word became almost inaudible; more firmly she added, "Is it not possible that she may have gone to England, to her child?"

"No," said Vanderlyn, dully, "she has not done that."

He took her to her door, and then, as he had promised Tom Pargeter to do, went to the Avenue du Bois, there to spend with Margaret Pargeter's husband another term of weary waiting and suspense.

* * * * *

That second day, of which the closing hours were destined to bring to Laurence Vanderlyn the most dramatic and dangerous moments connected with the whole tragic episode of Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance, wore itself slowly, uneventfully away.

Tom Pargeter, alternating between real anxiety, and an angry suspicion that his wife was in very truth only hiding from him, poured into the ears of this man, whom he now regarded rather as his friend than his wife's, every theory which might conceivably account for Peggy's disappearance. He took note of every suggestion made to him by the members of the now intensely excited and anxious household, for Margaret Pargeter's gentle personality and thoughtful kindness had endeared her to her servants.

When Plimmer, her staid maid, evolved the idea that Mrs. Pargeter, on her way to the station, might have stopped to see some friend, and, finding that friend ill, have remained to nurse her,—the suggestion so seized hold of Pargeter's imagination that he insisted on spending the afternoon in making a tour of his own and his wife's acquaintances. To Vanderlyn's anger and pain, the only result of this action on his part was that Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance became known to a large circle, and that more than one of the evening papers contained a garbled reference to the matter.

Meanwhile, or so Pargeter complained, the officials of the Prefecture of Police remained curiously inactive. They were quite certain, so they told the anxious husband, of ultimately solving the mystery, but it was doubtful if any news could be procured before the next day, for they were now directing their researches to the environs of Paris—a new theory now evolved being that Mrs. Pargeter, having hired a motor cab to drive her to Marly-le-Roi, had met with an accident or sinister misadventure on the way thither.



VIII.

At last the long day wore itself out, and Vanderlyn, in the late afternoon, found himself once more in his own rooms, alone. He only owed his escape to-night to the fact that two of Mrs. Pargeter's relations had arrived from England—one of her many brothers, and a woman cousin who was fond of her. They, of course, were spending the evening with Pargeter, and so the American had a respite—till to-morrow.

Having eaten his solitary dinner with a zest of which he felt ashamed, he was now in his study leaning back in an easy-chair, with a pile of unread papers at his side.

As he sat there, in the quiet, almost shabby room, which was so curiously different from the splendours of the Pargeter villa, there came over him a sense of profound and not unpleasing lassitude.

He looked back to the last forty-eight hours as to a long nightmare, broken by the few solitary walks he had forced himself to take. But for these brief periods of self-communing, he felt that his body, as well as his mind, would and must have given way. Peggy's husband had leant helplessly on him, and from the first moment he had been—so indifferent onlookers would have told you—the sympathetic, helpful witness of the various phases Tom Pargeter had lived through during those long two days.

For something like a week Vanderlyn had been living so apart from the world about him that he had known nothing, cared nothing, about what had gone on in that world. That very day an allusion had been made in his presence to some public event of importance of which he was evidently quite ignorant, and the look of profound astonishment which had crossed an Embassy colleague's face, warned him that he could not go on as he had been doing without provoking considerable, and far from pleasant, comment.

Putting out his hand, he took up the New York Herald—not the Paris edition, in which there was almost certain to be allusions to that which he wished for the moment to forget—but the old home paper which had arrived by that day's mail, and which had been carefully opened and ironed out by the faithful Poulain.

The newspaper was a little over a week old; it bore the date, April 28. What had he been doing on the twenty-eighth of April? and then with a rush it all came back to him—everything he wished for the moment to forget. It was on the afternoon of that day, the first warm spring day of the year, that they had been tempted, he and Peggy, to make their way down into the heart of Paris, to the solitary Place des Vosges. It was there, it was then, that they had together planned that which had brought him to his present dreadful pass.

Vanderlyn put the paper back on the table, and his face fell forward on his hands; was he fated never to be allowed to forget—not even for a moment?

It was with relief that he welcomed the interruption caused by the entrance of his servant bearing a card in his hand. "A gentleman has come and insists on seeing Monsieur."

Poulain spoke in a mysterious, significant tone, one that jarred on Vanderlyn's sensitive nerves. The disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter had become an engrossing, a delightful drama, not only to the members of the Pargeter household, but also to Poulain and his worthy wife; and it had been one of the smaller ironical agonies of Vanderlyn's position that he did not feel himself able to check or discourage their perpetual and indiscreet enquiries.

"I have already told you," he said sternly, "that I receive no one to-night. Even if Mr. Pargeter himself comes, you are to say that I am out!"

"I'm afraid Monsieur will have to receive this gentleman."

"Poulain!" exclaimed Vanderlyn sharply. "This won't do! Go at once and inform this gentleman, whoever he may be, that I can see no one to-night."

"I did say so," observed Poulain, in an injured tone, "I explained to him that you would see no one. I said you were out—he said that he would wait. Then, Monsieur, not till then, he handed me his card. If Monsieur will give himself the trouble of looking at it, I think he will receive the gentleman."

Vanderlyn took the card with an impatient movement. He glanced at it. "Why did you not tell me at once," he said roughly, "who this—this person was? Of course I must see the Prefect of Police."

More than once, Vanderlyn had had proof of the amazing perfection and grip of the great, the mysterious organisation, that oligarchy within a republic, which has always played a paramount role in every section of Parisian life. The American diplomatist had not lived in France all these years without unconsciously acquiring an almost superstitious belief in the omnipotence of the French police.

He got up and placed himself between the lamp and the door. He knew slightly the formidable official whose presence here surely indicated some serious development in what had now become a matter of urgent interest to many quite outside the Pargeter circle.

The two or three moments' delay—doubtless the zealous Poulain was engaged in helping the important visitor off with his coat—were passed by Vanderlyn in a state of indescribable nervous tension and suspense. He was glad when they came to an end.

And yet the Frenchman who came into Vanderlyn's sitting-room, making a ceremonious bow, would have suggested no formidable or even striking personality to the eyes of the average Englishman or American. His stout figure, clad in an ill-cut suit of evening clothes, recalled rather a Gavarni caricature than a dapper modern official, the more so that his round, fleshy face was framed in the carefully trimmed mutton-chop whiskers which remain a distinguishing mark of the more old-fashioned members of the Parisian Bar. The red button, signifying that its wearer is an officer of the Legion of Honour, was exceptionally small and unobtrusive. Vanderlyn was well aware that his visitor was no up-start, owing promotion to adroit flattery of the Republican powers; the Prefect of Police came of good bourgeois stock, and was son to a legal luminary who had played a considerable part in '48. His manner was suave, his voice almost caressing in its urbanity——

"I have the honour, have I not, of speaking to Mr. Laurence Vanderlyn?"

Vanderlyn bowed; he turned and led the way to the fireplace. "Yes, Monsieur le Prefet, Laurence Vanderlyn at your service. I think we have already met, at the Elysee——" he drew forward a second armchair.

Monsieur le Prefet sat down; and for the first time the American diplomatist noticed that his visitor held a small, black, battered portfolio in his right hand. As the Frenchman laid it across his knee, he gave a scarcely perceptible glance round the room; then, at last, his gaze concentrated itself on the table where stood the lamp, and the spread-open newspaper.

"You probably divine, Monsieur," said the Prefect, after a short pause, "what has brought me here to-night. I have come to see you—perhaps I should say to consult you—in connection with the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter."

"Yes?" said Vanderlyn interrogatively, "I am, of course, quite at your disposal. I have been with Mr. Pargeter all to-day, but so far the mystery remains as great as ever." He stopped abruptly, feeling it wisest not to speak, but to listen.

"That, I repeat, is why I have come here," said Vanderlyn's formidable visitor. He spoke with a great deliberateness and mildness of manner. "I cannot help thinking, my dear sir, that with your help we may be, or rather I may be, on the eve of a discovery."

Vanderlyn looked surprised; his desolate eyes met the older man's hesitating glance quite squarely, but this time he remained silent.

The Prefect went on speaking, and his voice became more and more suave; he was certainly desirous of saving in every way his host's susceptibilities.

"The fact that I have taken the very unusual course of coming myself to see you, Mr. Vanderlyn, will prove to you the importance I attach to this interview. Indeed, I wish to be quite frank with you——"

Vanderlyn bent his head, and then he sat up, listening keenly while the other continued——

"This is not, I am convinced, an ordinary case of disappearance, and it is to us, and especially to me, disagreeably complicated by the fact that the lady is an English subject and that her husband is a well-known and highly thought of member of our English colony. This makes me the more anxious to avoid"—he hesitated, then firmly uttered the two words, "any scandal. It was suggested at the Prefecture to-day that it would be well to make a perquisition, not only in Mrs. Pargeter's own house, but also in the houses of some of her intimates. Mr. Pargeter, as you know, gave the police every possible facility. Nothing was found in the Villa Pargeter which could throw any light on Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance. Now, Monsieur, before subjecting you to such an unpleasant occurrence, I decided to approach you myself——"

Vanderlyn opened his lips, and then closed them again.

"I have come to ask you, Monsieur, one question, and I give you my word as an honest man that what you tell me shall be treated as confidential. I ask you if you know more of this mysterious matter than you are apparently prepared to divulge? In a word—I beg you to tell me where Mrs. Pargeter is hiding at the present moment? I have no wish to disturb her retreat, but I beg you most earnestly to entrust me with the secret."

Again the speaker's eyes took a discreet journey round the plain, now shadow-filled room; his glance rested on the book-shelves which formed so important a part of its decorations, lingered doubtingly on a carved walnut chest set between two of the windows, peered through these same unshuttered windows on to the dark stone balconies, then, baffled, his eyes came back and fixed themselves on the American diplomatist's face.

A feeling of indescribable relief stole over Vanderlyn's wearied and yet alert senses. It was clear that the Prefect of Police knew nothing of the truth; the directness of his question proved it. Yet, even so, Vanderlyn felt that he must steer his way very warily.

"You are in error," he said at last, "for you credit me, Monsieur le Prefet, with a knowledge I do not possess."

"Ah!" said the other mildly, "that is most unfortunate!"

"May I, on my side, put to you a question to which I should be glad of an honest answer?" said Vanderlyn abruptly. "Are you now engaged in making a wide-spread enquiry among those who had the honour of this lady's acquaintance?"

"No, Monsieur,"—the Prefect's manner showed an eager desire to be quite frank,—"I am confining my personal enquiries to only two persons; that is, to a certain Madame de Lera, to whom you will remember Mrs. Pargeter was about to pay a visit at the moment she disappeared, and to yourself."

Vanderlyn made a sudden nervous movement, but he checked the words which rose to his lips, for the Prefect was again speaking, and this time with a certain excitement of manner.

"I am convinced that Mrs. Pargeter never intended to go to Madame de Lera, and that the proposed visit was a blind! The facts speak for themselves. Madame de Lera had taken only one servant to the country, and this servant, an old woman whom she has had with her many years, and whom she can entirely trust, had no idea that her mistress was expecting a visitor! I repeat—that no preparations for Mrs. Pargeter's arrival had been made at Marly-le-Roi. It is my belief—nay, my conviction—that Madame de Lera knows perfectly well where her friend is now concealed."

It was then that Vanderlyn committed what was perhaps the only mistake he was destined to commit during this difficult interview. "Has Madame de Lera made any such admission?" he asked quickly.

"No," answered the Prefect, looking at him thoughtfully, "Madame de Lera has made no admission; but then I have learned, through long experience, never to believe, where there is a friend in the case, what a lady tells me. Women of the world, my dear sir, are more loyal the one to the other than we men may choose to believe!"

"And men, Monsieur? Are they more disloyal?" Vanderlyn spoke quietly, indifferently, as if the question was of no moment.

"Men," said Monsieur le Prefet, dryly, "are as a rule quite as loyal, especially where they feel their honour is engaged. But with a man it is possible to reason; a woman, especially a good woman, follows the dictates of instinct,—in other words, of her heart."

"I notice, Monsieur le Prefet, that you eliminate the possibility of material accident having occurred to Mrs. Pargeter?"

"Let us distinguish!" exclaimed the older man quickly. "If, by accident, you mean, Mr. Vanderlyn, the type of mishap which might have occurred to this lady when she was walking or driving in our Paris streets, then I certainly eliminate the possibility of accident to Mrs. Pargeter. Within six hours of such a thing having occurred the facts would have been laid before me, and, as you know, two nights and two days have elapsed since her disappearance. If, on the other hand, we envisage the possibility of suicide, then are opened up a new series of possibilities."

The Prefect gave a piercing look at the American's worn and sorrow-laden face, but he did not find written there any involuntary answer to his mute interrogation.

"Some years ago," went on the great official, "a man well known in Paris society made up his mind to take his own life. He hired a cellar, locked the door, and then shot himself. Months went by before his disappearance was accounted for, and then the body was only discovered by an accident. If Mrs. Pargeter has committed suicide, and if she, an intelligent woman, was determined that the fact should never be found out by her friends, then I admit our task becomes a very difficult one! But I do not believe," he continued, after a short silence, "that Mrs. Pargeter did this. I believe she is alive, and well. She was, by each account that has reached me, young, charming, and wealthy. She had a child whom she apparently adored. As for her relations with her husband——" the Prefect shrugged his shoulders, and again looked searchingly at Vanderlyn.

"Mr. Thomas Pargeter," he went on, smiling, "is not perhaps the perfect husband of whom every young girl dreams; but then no one is so foolish as to search for the perfect husband in the world to which your friend belongs! He is not exactly a viveur,—but he is, to use the slang of the day, essentially a jouisseur. Is not that so?" He added, with a rather twisted grin, "If every lady whose husband lives to enjoy himself were to commit suicide, there would be very few women left in our Paris world."

"I agree with you, Monsieur le Prefet, in thinking Mrs. Pargeter was the last woman in the world to commit suicide," said Vanderlyn brusquely, and then he got up.

There had come over him during the last few moments an inexplicable, instinctive feeling of dread,—that panting fear which besets the hunted creature. He was determined to bring to an end the interview. But the Prefect of Police had no intention of being disposed of so easily. He remained sitting where he was; and, placing his two fat hands firmly on his knees, sat looking at the American's tall figure. Slowly his eyes travelled up till they rested on his host's haggard face.

"Then I am to understand, Mr. Vanderlyn, that you are not in a position to give me any help? That is your last word?"

Vanderlyn suddenly determined to carry the war into the enemy's country.

"I can only repeat," he said, harshly, "what I said before, Monsieur le Prefet—namely, that you credit me with a knowledge which I do not possess. Further, that while, of course, I appreciate the kindly motive which has inspired your visit, I think I have a right to resent the suspicions which that visit indicates, I do not say on your part, but on that of your subordinates. I will not disguise from you my knowledge that for the last two days every step I have taken has been dogged; I suspect also, but of that I have no proof, that my servants, and the concierge of this house, have been questioned as to my movements, as to my daily life. I cannot help also suspecting—perhaps in this I am wrong—that the police are inclined to believe that Mrs. Pargeter—a woman, let me remind you, Monsieur le Prefet, of the highest and most unspotted character—is hiding here, in my chambers! You speak of having saved me from a perquisition,—a perquisition in the rooms of a diplomatist is a serious matter, Monsieur le Prefet, and I tell you quite frankly that I should have resisted such an outrage in every way in my power! But now, in the present very peculiar circumstances, I request,—nay, I demand,—that you should search my rooms. Every possible facility shall be afforded you." Vanderlyn's voice was shaking with undisguised anger,—aye, and disgust.

The Prefect of Police rose from his chair.

"I have no wish to subject you to any indignity," he said earnestly, "I absolutely accept your assurance that Mrs. Pargeter is not in hiding here. I am aware, Mr. Vanderlyn, that Americans do not lie,"—an ironic smile wavered for a moment over his large mouth.

Vanderlyn's face remained impassive. "You, on your side, must forgive my heat," he said, quietly. Then he suddenly determined to play for a high stake. "May I ask you to satisfy my curiosity on one point? What made you first suspect such a thing? What led you to—to suppose——"

"——That you knew where this lady was; that she might—say, after a little misunderstanding with her husband—have taken refuge with you? Well, yes, Mr. Vanderlyn, I admit that you have a right to ask me this, and it was because I feared you might lack the exquisite courtesy you have shown me, that I brought with me to-night a document which contains, in what I trust you will consider a discreet form, an answer to your delicate question."

Vanderlyn's visitor again sat down; he laid open on his knee the leather portfolio, and out of it he took a large sheet of foolscap, which, unfolding, he handed to Laurence Vanderlyn.

"This, Monsieur, is your dossier. If you can prove to me that it is incorrect in any particular, I will see that the error is rectified. We naturally take special care in compiling the dossiers of foreign diplomatists, for experience has shown that these often become of great value, even after the gentlemen in question have left Paris for some other capital."

Vanderlyn reddened. He glanced over the odd-looking document with eager, curious eyes. A few words here and there were printed, but the rest of the dossier was written in the round copying character which must be mastered by every French Government clerk hoping for promotion.

First came the American diplomatist's Christian name and surname, his place of birth, his probable age—right within two years,—a short epitome of his diplomatic career, a guess at his income, this item considerably under the right figure, and evidently based on his quiet way of living.

Then, under a printed heading "General Remarks," were written a few phrases in a handwriting very different from the rest—that is, in the small clear caligraphy of an educated Frenchman. Staring down at these, Vanderlyn felt shaken with anger and disgust, for these "General Remarks" concerned that part of his private life which every man believes to be hidden from his fellows:—

"Peu d'intimites d'hommes. Pas de femmes: par contre, une amitie amoureuse tres suivie avec Madame (Marguerite) Pargeter. Voir dossier Pargeter (Thomas)."

Amitie amoureuse? Friendship akin to love? The English language, so rich in synonyms, owns no exact equivalent for this French phrase, expressive though it be of a phase of human emotion as old as human nature itself.

Vanderlyn looked up. His eyes met squarely those of the other man.

"Your staff," he said, very quietly, "have served you well, Monsieur; my dossier is, on the whole, extraordinarily correct. There is but one word which I would have altered, and which, indeed, I venture to beg you to correct without loss of time. The young man—he is evidently a young man—who wrote the summary to which you have drawn my attention, must have literary tastes, otherwise there is one word in this document which would not be there." Vanderlyn put his finger down firmly on the word "amoureuse." "My relations with Mrs. Pargeter were, it is true, those of close friendship, but I must ask you to accept my assurance, Monsieur le Prefet, that they were not what the writer of this passage evidently believed them to have been."

"I will make a note of the correction," said the Prefect, gravely, "and I must offer you my very sincere excuses for having troubled you to-night."

As Vanderlyn's late visitor drove home that night, he said to himself, indeed he said aloud to the walls of the shabby little carriage which had heard so many important secrets, "He knows whatever there is to be known—but, then, what is it that is to be known? Of what mystery am I now seeking the solution?"



IX.

As he heard the door shut on the Prefect of Police, Vanderlyn felt his nerve give way. There had come a moment during the conversation, when, as if urged by some malignant power outside himself, he had felt a sudden craving to take the old official into his confidence, and tell him the whole truth—so magnetic were the personality, the compelling will, of the man who had just left him.

He walked over to the corner window of his sitting-room, and stepped onto the stone balcony which overlooked the twinkling lights of the Place de la Concorde.

Then, flung out, merged in the deep roar below, there broke from Laurence Vanderlyn a bitter cry; the keen night air had brought with it a sudden memory of that moment when he had opened the railway carriage door and stepped out into the rushing wind.... He asked himself why he had not followed his first impulse, why he had not allowed himself to die, with Peggy in his arms? Why, above all, had he undertaken a task which it was becoming beyond his strength to carry through?

So wondering, so questioning, he leaned over the balustrade dangerously far; then he drew quickly back, and placing his hands on the parapet, stood for a moment as if holding at bay an invisible, yet to himself most tangible, enemy.

With a sigh which was a groan, he walked back into the room. He had never yet failed Peggy; he would not fail her now——

Vanderlyn sat down; he was determined not to be beaten by his nerves. He took up the New York Herald; but a moment later he had laid the paper down again on the table. What had been going on in America a week ago could not compel his attention. He took another paper off the table; it was the London Daily Telegraph, of which one of the most successful features for many years has been a column entitled "Paris Day by Day,"—an olla podrida of news, grave and gay, domestic and sensational, put together with infinite art, and a full understanding of what is likely to appeal to the British middle-class reader. There, as Vanderlyn knew well, was certain to be some reference to the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter.

Yes—here it was!

"No trace of Mrs. Pargeter, the wife of the well-known sportsman and owner of Absinthe, has yet been found; but the lady's relations think it possible that she went unexpectedly to stay with some friends, and that the letter informing her household of her whereabouts has miscarried."

The Paris correspondent of the great London newspaper had proved himself very discreet.

Vanderlyn's eyes glanced idly down the long column of paragraphs which make up "Paris Day by Day." Again he remembered the look of deep astonishment which had crossed a colleague's face at his ignorance of some new sensation of which at that moment all Paris was apparently talking. So it was that he applied himself to read the trifling items of news with some care, for here would be found everything likely to keep him in touch with the gossip of the day.

At last he came to the final paragraph—

"Yet another railway mystery! The dead body of a woman has been found in a first-class compartment in a train which left Paris at 7 P. M. last Wednesday. As the discovery was not made till the train reached Orange, it is, of course, impossible to know where the unfortunate woman, who, by her dress, belonged to the leisured class, entered the train. Her hand baggage had disappeared, no doubt stolen at some intervening station by someone who, having made the gruesome discovery, thought it wise to make himself scarce. The police do not, however, consider that they are in the presence of a crime. Dr. Fortoul, the well-known physician of Orange, has satisfied himself that the lady died of heart disease."

Vanderlyn went on staring down at the printed words. They seemed to make more true, more inevitable, the fact of Margaret Pargeter's death, and of his own awful loss.

But with the agony of this thought came infinite relief, for this, or so he thought, meant that his own personal ordeal was at last drawing to a close. The fact of so strange and unwonted an occurrence as the finding of a woman's dead body in a train, would surely be at once connected by the trained intellects of the Paris Police with the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter.

He let the paper fall to the ground and began to think intently. When that came to pass, as it certainly must do within the next few hours, it would become his grim business to persuade Tom Pargeter that the clue was one worth following. The mystery solved, the question of how Margaret Pargeter came to be travelling in the demi-rapide would be comparatively unimportant—at any rate not a point which such a man as Tom Pargeter would give himself much trouble to clear up.

Then with some uneasiness he remembered that before such an item of news could have found its way into an English newspaper, the fact must have been known to the French police for at least twelve hours. If that were so, their acumen was not as great as that with which Vanderlyn credited them.

But stay! The Prefect of Police was convinced that Mrs. Pargeter was alive, and that he, Vanderlyn, knew her whereabouts; it was not for Peggy dead, but for Peggy living, that they were still searching so eagerly.

He opened the Figaro and the Petit Journal, and ran a shaking finger down the columns; there, in each paper, hidden away among unimportant items, and told more briefly and in much balder language, he at last found the story of the discovery which the Daily Telegraph had served up as a tit-bit to thrill the readers of its Paris news columns.

Vanderlyn made up his mind to spend the whole of the next day with Pargeter; he must be at the villa, ready to put in his word of advice,—even, if need be, of suggestion,—when the moment came for him to do so.

For the first time for many nights Vanderlyn's sleep was unbroken; and early the next morning he made his way to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.

As he walked through the hall of the villa, already peopled with a score of the Pargeters' acquaintances, eager to show their sympathy with the wealthy sportsman in this most untoward and extraordinary occurrence, the American was obliged to shake hands with many men whom he had hitherto only known by sight, and to answer questions some of which impressed him as strangely indiscreet. More than one of those with whom he found himself thus face to face looked at him with cruel, inquisitive eyes, and a scarcely veiled curiosity, for it was of course well known that Laurence Vanderlyn had been an intimate, not only of the husband, but also of the wife.

At last Pargeter's valet threaded his way up to him: "Will you please come upstairs, sir? Mr. Pargeter told me to say that he would be glad if you would go to his dressing-room as soon as you arrived."

"There's no news, Grid,—no news at all! It's getting awful, isn't it?—quite beyond a joke! You know what I mean—I'm sick of answering stupid questions. I was waked this morning at seven—had to see a man in bed! They don't seem to understand that I can tell them nothing beyond the bare fact that she's vanished; they actually sent two women here last night——"

"Two women?" echoed Vanderlyn. "What sort of women?"

"Ugly old hags," said Pargeter, briefly, "from the Prefecture of Police. They brought an impudent letter asking me to allow them to turn out Peggy's room and look over all her things! But I refused——" he looked at his friend for sympathy—and found it.

"You were quite right," said Vanderlyn quickly. His face became rigid with anger and disgust. "Quite right, Tom! Whatever made them think of suggesting such a thing? Where would be the use of it?"

"Oh! well, of course they had a reason. The police are particularly keen that we should look over any old letters of hers; they think that we might find some kind of clue. But I don't believe she kept her letters—why should she? I don't keep mine. However, I've promised to do the job myself——" he looked uncertainly at Vanderlyn. "Would you mind, Grid, coming with me into Peggy's room? Of course Plimmer, that's her maid, you know, will help us. She knows where Peggy keeps all her things."

"Why not ask Madame de Lera to do it?" said Vanderlyn, in a low voice.

He turned away and stared at a sporting print which hung just on the level of his eyes. Had he ever written imprudent letters to Peggy? Not lately, but in the early days,—in that brief time of uncertain ecstasy, and, on his part, of passionate expression, which had preceded their long successful pretence at friendship? He himself had preserved later letters of hers—not love-letters assuredly, but letters which proved clearly enough the strange closeness of their intimacy.

But what was this that Pargeter was saying? "Madame de Lera? Why should I ask her to interfere? I don't want to mix her up in this business more than I can help! If it hadn't been for her—and that ridiculous invitation of hers, Peggy would be here now! Peggy wouldn't mind your looking over her things, Grid. She's really fond of you—as fond of you as she can be of anyone, that is."

He got up, and, preceding Vanderlyn down a connecting passage, flung open the door giving access to a spacious airy bedchamber of which the pale mauve and grey furnishings reminded both men of Peggy's favourite flower and scent. The sun-blinds were down and the maid was standing, as if waiting for them, by the dressing-table.

They both instinctively hesitated on the threshold. "Tom," said Vanderlyn, hoarsely, "I don't think I ought to come in here——"

"Don't be a fool! I tell you she wouldn't mind a bit. Surely you're not going to cut—now?"

Pargeter took a step forward; then he stood for a moment looking round him, evidently perplexed, and ill at ease at finding himself thus suddenly introduced into his wife's intimate atmosphere.

"I don't believe she kept any letters," he repeated, then glanced uncertainly at the lady's-maid who stood primly by.

"Mrs. Pargeter kept some letters in that writing-desk over there, sir,—at least I think she did."

Close to the small tent-bed stood an old-fashioned rosewood davenport, a relic of Margaret Pargeter's childhood and girlhood, brought from her distant English home.

The maid waited for a moment, and then added, "The desk is locked, sir."

"Locked? Then did Mrs. Pargeter take her keys with her?"

"I suppose she did, sir."

"Then it's no use," said Pargeter, with a certain relief, "I don't want to force the thing open."

Vanderlyn looked across, coldly and steadily, at the woman. Her expression struck him as oddly enigmatical; meeting his glance, Plimmer reddened, her eyes dropped. "I expect any simple key would open it," he said, briefly.

"Well, sir, I did ask the housekeeper to lend me a bunch of keys. Here they are," she opened one of the dressing-table drawers. "Perhaps one of the smaller ones would fit the lock."

It was Vanderlyn who took the keys from her strangely reluctant hand, and it was he who at last felt the old-fashioned lock yield.

"Now, Pargeter," he said, sharply, "will you please come over here?"

The whole of the inside of the desk was filled with neat packets, each carefully tied up and docketed; on several had been written, "In the case of my death, to be burnt;" on other packets, "To be returned to Madame de Lera in case of my death."

Vanderlyn saw that here at least were none of his letters, and none from Peggy's child.

"It's no use bothering about any of these," said Pargeter, crossly, "they can't tell us anything. Why anyone should trouble to keep old letters is quite beyond me!"

"That little knob that you see there, sir," said Plimmer, in her diffident, well-trained voice, "is the head of a brass pin; if you draw it out, sir, it releases the side drawer. I think you will find more letters there,—at least that is where Master Jasper's letters are, I know."

She looked furtively at Vanderlyn, and her look said, "If you want to have the truth you shall have it!"

"I say, how queer!" exclaimed Pargeter. "A secret drawer! eh, Grid?"

"All old pieces of furniture have that kind of thing," said Vanderlyn, "there isn't any secret about it."

Pargeter fumbled at the brass-headed pin; he pulled it out, and a drawer which filled up the side of the davenport shot out. Yes, here were more packets inscribed with the words, "Jasper's letters, written at school," and then others, "To be returned to Laurence Vanderlyn in case of my death;" and two or three loose letters.

"Well, these won't tell us anything, eh, Grid?" Pargeter opened the first envelope under his hand:—

"Dear Mammy," (he read slowly),

"Please send me ten shillings. I have finished the French cherry-jam. I should like some more. Also some horses made of gingerbread. I have laid 3 to 1 on Absinthe. Betting is forbidden, but as it was Dad's horse I thought I might. My bat is the best in the school.

"Your loving "Jasper."

"He's a fine little chap, isn't he, Grid?" Pargeter was fingering absently a yellowing packet of Vanderlyn's letters: "Fancy keeping your old letters! What a queer thing to do!"

Vanderlyn said nothing. The maid stared at him stealthily.

At last Pargeter put the packet down, and deliberately opened yet another envelope which lay loose. "I suppose this is the last note you wrote to her?" he said, then, opening it, murmured its contents over to himself:—

"Dear Peggy,

"I hear the show at the Gardinets is worth seeing. I'll call for you at two to-morrow.

Yours sincerely, "L. V."

"Well, it's no use our wasting any more time here, is it? We'd better go downstairs and have a smoke. Why—why, Grid!—what's the matter?"

"It's nothing," said Vanderlyn, roughly, "I'll be all right in a minute or two——"

"I don't wonder you're upset," said the other, moodily. "But just think what it must be for me. I can't stand much more of it. It's been simply awful since Peggy's brother and that cousin of hers arrived. They treat me as if I were a murderer! They're at the Prefecture of Police now, making what they're pleased to call their own enquiries."

They had left Peggy's room, and as he spoke Pargeter was leading the way down a staircase which led into his smoking-room.

Once there, he shut the door and came and stood close by Vanderlyn.

"Grid," he said, lowering his voice, "I've been wondering—don't you think it would be a good plan if I were to go and see that fortune-teller of mine, Madame d'Elphis? I don't mind telling you that I'd a shot at her yesterday evening, but she was away. She does sometimes make mistakes, but still, she's a kind of Providence to me. I never do anything important—I mean at the stables—without consulting her."

Vanderlyn looked at the eager face, the odd twinkling green and blue eyes, with scarcely concealed surprise and contempt.

"Surely you don't think she could tell you where—what's happened to Peggy?" he said incredulously.

"If I could have seen her last night," went on Pargeter, "I'd have got away to England to-day. There's no object in my staying here; I can't help them to find Peggy. But La d'Elphis won't see me before to-morrow morning. If she can't clear up the mystery nobody can. I'm beginning to think, Grid"—he came close up to the other man,—"that something must have happened to her. I'm beginning to feel—worried!"



X.

An hour later Vanderlyn had escaped from Pargeter, and was standing alone in Madame de Lera's drawing-room.

He was scarcely conscious of how many hours he had spent during the last terrible three days, with the middle-aged Frenchwoman who had been so true and sure a friend of Margaret Pargeter. In Madame de Lera's presence alone was he able, to a certain extent, to drop the mask which he was compelled to wear in the presence of all others, and especially in that of the man who, as time went on, seemed more and more to lean on him and find comfort in his companionship.

Vanderlyn had walked the considerable distance from the Avenue du Bois to the quiet street near the Luxembourg where Adele de Lera lived, and all the way he had felt as if pursued by a mocking demon.

How much longer, so he asked himself, was his awful ordeal to endure? The moments spent by him and Pargeter in Peggy's room had racked heart and memory. He now fled to Madame de Lera as to a refuge from himself.

And yet? Yet he never looked round her pretty sitting-room, with its faded, rather austere furnishings, without being vividly reminded of the woman he had loved and whom he had now lost, for it was there that Peggy had spent the most peaceful hours of her life since Pargeter had first decided that henceforth they should live in Paris.

* * * * *

At last Madame de Lera came into the room; she gave her visitor a quick questioning look. "Have you nothing new to tell?" she asked.

And, after a moment of scarcely perceptible hesitation, Vanderlyn answered, "I have nothing new to tell," but as they both sat down, as he saw how sad and worn the kind face had become in the last three days, there came over him a strong wish to confide in her—to tell her the whole truth. He longed, with morbid longing, to share his knowledge. She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the uselessness, of their present search.

Since last night the secret no longer seemed to be his alone.

But Vanderlyn resisted the temptation. He had no right to cast even half his burden on another. Any moment the odious experience which had, it seemed, already befallen Madame de Lera might be repeated. She might again be cross-questioned by the police. In that event it was essential that she should be still able truthfully to declare that she knew nothing.

"I have just come from Tom Pargeter," he observed quietly. "I can't help being sorry for him. The police have been worrying him, and—and at their suggestion we have been seeking among her things—among her correspondence—for some clue. But of course we found nothing. Pargeter is longing to go away—to England. How I wish he would go,—God! how I wish he would go! After all, as he says himself, he can do no good by staying here. He would receive any news within an hour."

Madame de Lera leant forward. "Ah! but if Mr. Pargeter leaves Paris before—before something is discovered, his conduct would be regarded as very cruel—very heartless."

"Did you know," said Vanderlyn, in a low voice, "that Peggy once before disappeared for three days? Pargeter keeps harking back to that. He thinks that she found out something which made her leave him again."

"Yes," said Madame de Lera, "I knew of that episode in their early married life—but on that occasion, Mr. Vanderlyn, our poor friend cannot be said to have disappeared—she only returned to her own family."

"Why, having once escaped, did she ever go back to him?" asked Vanderlyn, sombrely.

"You forget," said Madame de Lera, gently, "that even then there was her son."

Her son? Nay, Vanderlyn at no moment ever forgot Peggy's child. To himself, he seemed to be the only human being who ever thought of the poor little boy lying ill in far-away England.

"Well, you need not be afraid," he said quickly, "that Pargeter will go away to-day. He intends to stay in Paris at least till to-morrow night, for he is convinced, it seems, that the fortune-teller, Madame d'Elphis,—the woman who by some incredible stroke of luck stumbled on the right name of that horse of his which won the Oaks,—will be able to tell him what has happened to—to Margaret Pargeter."

And, meeting Madame de Lera's troubled gaze, he added in a low bitter tone, "How entirely that gives one the measure of the man,—the absurd notion, I mean, that a fortune-teller can solve the mystery! Fortunately or unfortunately, this Madame d'Elphis has been away for two or three days, but she will be back, it seems, in time to give Pargeter, who is a favoured client, an appointment to-morrow morning."

Adele de Lera suddenly rose from her chair; with a nervous movement she clasped her hands together.

"Ah, but that must not happen!" she exclaimed. "We must think of a way by which we can prevent an interview between Mr. Pargeter and La d'Elphis! Unless," she concluded slowly, "there is no serious reason why he should not know the truth—now?"

Vanderlyn also got up. A look of profound astonishment came over his face.

"The truth?" he repeated. "But surely, Madame de Lera, it is impossible that this woman whom Pargeter is going to consult to-morrow morning can have any clue to the truth! Surely you do not seriously believe——" he did not conclude his sentence. That this broad-minded and religious Frenchwoman could possibly cherish any belief in the type of charlatan to which the American diplomatist supposed the famous Paris fortune-teller to belong was incredible to him.

"I beg of you most earnestly," she repeated, in a deeply troubled voice, "to prevent any meeting between Mr. Pargeter and Madame d'Elphis! Believe me, I do not speak without reason; I know more of this soothsayer and her mysterious powers than you can possibly know——"

"Do you mean me to understand that you yourself would ever consult such an oracle?" Vanderlyn could not keep a certain contemptuous incredulity out of his voice.

"No, indeed! But then I, unlike you, believe this woman's traffic to be of the devil. Listen, Mr. Vanderlyn, and I will tell you of a case in which La d'Elphis was closely concerned—a case of which I have absolute knowledge."

Madame de Lera went back to her chair; she sank into it, and, with Vanderlyn standing before her, she told him the story.

"If you cast back your mind to the time when you were first in Paris, you will probably recall my husband's niece, a beautiful girl named Jeanne de Lera?" Vanderlyn bent his head without speaking; nay more, a look of pain came over his tired face, and sunken eyes, for, strangely enough, there was a certain sinister parallel between the fate which had befallen the charming girl whose image was thus suddenly brought up before him, and that of the beloved woman who seemed to be now even more present to his emotional memory than she had been in life.

"As you know, for it was no secret, Jeanne had what English and American people call 'flirted' with Henri Delavigne, and he had sworn that he would kill himself on her wedding-day. Well, the poor foolish girl took this threat very seriously; it shadowed her happy betrothal, and on the very day before her marriage was to take place, she persuaded her married sister to go with her to a fortune-teller. It was not her own future, which stretched cloudless and radiant before her, that tempted Jeanne to peer into these mysteries; she only wished to be reassured as to Delavigne and his absurd threat——"

Madame de Lera stopped speaking a moment, and then she went on—

"Madame d'Elphis had just then become the rage, and so Jeanne decided to consult her, although the woman charged a higher fee than, I understand, the other fortune-tellers were then doing. When the two sisters found themselves there, my married niece bargained that the seance should be half-price, as Jeanne only wished to stay a very few minutes, and to ask but one question. After the bargain was concluded, Jeanne, it seems, observed—the story of the interview has been told to me, and before me, many many times—that she hoped the fortune-teller would take as much trouble as if she had paid the full fee. On this the woman replied, with a rather malignant smile, 'I can assure Mademoiselle that she will have plenty for her money!'

"Then began the seance. La d'Elphis gave, as those sorts of people always do, a marvellously accurate account of the poor child's past,—the simple, virginal past of a very young girl,—but when it came to the future, she declared that her vision had become blurred, and that she could see nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Both the sisters pressed her to say more, to predict something of the future; and at last, speaking very reluctantly, she admitted that she saw Jeanne, pale, deathly pale, clad in a wedding-dress, and she also evoked a wonderful vision of white flowers...."

Madame de Lera looked up at her visitor, but Vanderlyn made no comment; and so she went on:—

"Then, with some confusion, Jeanne summoned up courage to ask the one question she had come there to ask. The answer came at once, and was more than reassuring: 'As to the man concerning whom you are so anxious,' said Madame d'Elphis, 'you may count on his fidelity. The years will go on and others who loved you will forget you—but he will ever remember.' 'Then nothing will happen to him to-morrow?' asked Jeanne eagerly. 'To-morrow?' replied the woman, mysteriously, 'To-morrow I see him plunged in deep grief, and yet that which has brought him this awful sorrow will not perhaps be wholly regretted by him.'

"My poor little niece, if rather piqued, was yet much relieved, and the two sisters left the presence of this horrible, sinister creature."

Madame de Lera passed her hand with a nervous movement over her mouth—"It was while they were actually driving home from this seance with La d'Elphis that the terrible accident, which you of course remember, occurred,—an accident which resulted in the younger sister's death, while the elder miraculously escaped unhurt. Jeanne was buried in her wedding-dress—and the flowers—you recall the wonderful flowers? The woman's predictions as to Delavigne's constancy came strangely true; who now remembers Jeanne, save her poor mother—and Delavigne?"

"Yes, it's a very curious, striking story," said Vanderlyn, slowly, "but—forgive me for saying so—if your niece's marriage had taken place on the morrow, would anything of all this have been remembered by either herself or her sister? The predictions of Madame d'Elphis were of a kind which it would be safe to make of any French girl, belonging to your world, on the eve of her marriage——"

He stopped abruptly. In his wearied and yet morbidly active mind, an idea, a suggestion, of which he was half-ashamed, was beginning to germinate.

"I should be grateful," he said, slowly, "if you can tell me something more about La d'Elphis. I am quite sure that I shall not be able to prevent an interview between her and Pargeter,—but still something might be done—Is she respectable? Can she, for example,"—his eyes dropped,—"be bribed?"

Madame de Lera looked at Vanderlyn keenly. Perhaps she saw farther into his mind than an American or an Englishwoman would have done.

"All these sorts of people can be bribed," she said, quietly. "As to her private life, I know nothing of it, but either of my nephews would be able to tell you whatever is known of her, for since that tragic affair our family have always taken a morbid interest in La d'Elphis. Would you like to know something about her now, at once? Shall I send for my nephew?"

In answer to Vanderlyn's look, rather than to his muttered assent, Madame de Lera left the room.

During the few moments of her absence, a plan began to elaborate itself with insistent clearness in Vanderlyn's mind; he saw, or thought he saw, that here might be an issue out of his terrible dilemma. And yet, even while so seeing the way become clear before him, he felt a deep, instinctive repugnance from the method which would have to be employed....

There came the sound of footsteps, and, turning his back to the window, he prepared himself for the inevitable question with which, during the last three days, almost everyone he met had greeted him.

But the youth who came into the room with Madame de Lera, if a typical Parisian in the matter of his careful, rather foppish, dress, and in his bored expression, yet showed that he was possessed of the old-fashioned good breeding which is still to be found in France, if only in that peculiar section of French society known collectively as "the faubourg." Jacques de Lera, alone among the many men whom Vanderlyn had come across since the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter had become the talk of the town, made no allusion to the mystery, and asked no puerile question of the man who was known to be her friend.

"Mr. Vanderlyn has been asking me what I knew of the fortune-teller, Madame d'Elphis. But, beyond the story concerning your poor cousin Jeanne, I know nothing. You, Jacques, will doubtless be able to tell us something of her. Is it true, for instance, that she is sometimes employed by the police? I seem to have heard so—not lately, but long ago?"

"They say so," said Jacques de Lera, casting a quick glance at Vanderlyn. "They say she helped to catch Pranzini. Extraordinary stories are told of her gifts. But none of us have ever been at all anxious to consult her—after poor Jeanne's affair. You may have seen her,"—he turned to Vanderlyn,—"for she's sometimes at first nights and at private views. She's by way of being artistic and cultivated; and though she's strikingly handsome, she dresses oddly—poses as a Muse."

"She must make a great deal of money," said Madame de Lera, thoughtfully; with a half smile she asked her nephew the question: "Is there a Monsieur d'Elphis? Are there infant oracles?"

Jacques burst out laughing, and both Vanderlyn and Madame de Lera started. It was the first time for many days that they had heard the sound of simple human laughter.

"My dear aunt," said the young man, chuckling, "the husband—qua husband—is, I assure you, an unknown animal in that strange underworld of which our beautiful city is the chosen Mecca. No, no, Madame d'Elphis does not waste her time in producing little oracles! If you wish to hear the truth, I mean the whole truth, I will tell it you."

And then, as Madame de Lera nodded her head, he added, more seriously, "La d'Elphis is one of two sisters, the daughters of a very respectable notary at Orange. Both threw their caps over the windmill, the one to become an unsuccessful actress, the other a successful soothsayer. La d'Elphis has one virtue—she is a devoted sister, and lives with the other's smalah. As to her own private life, she has been for many years the friend of Achille de Florac. She became acquainted with him not long before his final crash; who knows, perhaps she helped to precipitate it! It is to be hoped she did, for since then he has practically lived on her. And so, my dear aunt, she is in a sense our cousin de la main gauche!"

Vanderlyn looked away from Madame de Lera. He was sorry the young man had been so frank, for the Marquis de Florac was not only by birth a member of her circle, but he was, as Jacques rather cruelly pointed out, a connection of the de Lera family.

"Poor creature!" exclaimed Adele de Lera; her voice was filled with involuntary pity.

"Yes," continued Jacques, in answer to her look, "you may well say 'poor creature!' For it's from La d'Elphis that our disreputable cousin draws the major part of his uncertain revenues. When Paris is credulous, his credit goes up, and he has plenty of money to play with. I'm told that the other night he lost ten thousand francs at 'Monaco Junior'!"

Vanderlyn made a slight movement. "Yes," he said, "that is true,—I was there."

"In the lean months," continued Jacques, who did not often find his conversation listened to with such respect and attention as was now the case, "I mean, of course, in the summer—poor Florac has to retrench, but La d'Elphis does not remain idle. She goes to Aix, to Vichy, to Dieppe for the Grande Semaine,—in fact, wherever rich foreigners gather; and wherever she goes she finds plenty eager to consult her!"

"Is that all you wanted to know?" said Madame de Lera to Vanderlyn.

"Yes," he said, slowly, "that is all. I did not know—I had no idea—that our poor old world was still so credulous!"



XI.

As Vanderlyn walked away from Madame de Lera's door, the plan, of which the first outline had come to him while she was telling the strange story concerning the fortune-teller and her niece, had taken final shape; and it now impressed itself upon him as the only way out of his terrible dilemma.

Vanderlyn was by nature a truthful man, and in spite of the ambiguous nature of his relations with Margaret Pargeter, he had never been compelled to lie in defence of their friendship. Even during these last few days, he had as far as was possible avoided untruth, and only to one person, that is, to the Prefect of Police, had he lied—lied desperately, and lied successfully. This was why, even while telling himself that he had at last found a way in which to convey the truth to Pargeter, he felt a deep repugnance from the methods which he saw he would be compelled to employ.

More than once the American diplomatist had had occasion to take part in delicate negotiations with one of those nameless, countryless individuals, whose ideal it is to be in the pay of a foreign Embassy, and who always set on their ignoble services a far higher value than those services generally deserve. But Vanderlyn belonged to the type of man who finds it far easier to fight for others, and especially for his country, than for himself. Still, in this case, was he not fighting for Margaret Pargeter? For what he knew she valued far more than life itself—her honour. What he was about to do was hateful to him—he was aware how severely he would have judged such conduct in another—but it seemed the only way, a way made miraculously possible by the superstitious folly of Tom Pargeter.

The offer Vanderlyn was about to convey to Madame d'Elphis was quite simple; in exchange for saying a very few words to Tom Pargeter,—words which would add greatly to the belief the millionaire already possessed in what he took to be her extraordinary gifts of divination,—the soothsayer would receive ten thousand francs.

There need be no difficulty even as to the words she should use to reveal the truth; Vanderlyn had cut out from the Petit Journal the paragraph which told of the strange discovery made three nights before at Orange. He would inform her that Mr. Pargeter's friends, having assured themselves that the unknown woman in question was Mrs. Pargeter, desired to break the sad news through her, instead of in a more commonplace fashion.

Vanderlyn knew enough of that curious underworld of Paris which preys on wealthy foreigners, to feel sure that this would not be the first time that Madame d'Elphis had been persuaded, in her own interest, to add the agreeable ingredient of certainty to one of her predictions. The diplomatist also believed he could carry through the negotiation without either revealing his identity, or giving the soothsayer any clue to his reason for making her so strange a proposal.

Having made his plan, Vanderlyn found it remarkably easy to carry out.

In London, such a man as himself would have found it difficult to have ascertained at a moment's notice the address of even a famous palmist or fortune-teller. But in everything to do with social life Paris is highly organised, London singularly chaotic.

On reaching home, he at once discovered, with a certain bitter amusement, that Madame d'Elphis disdained the artifices with which she might reasonably have surrounded her mysterious craft. Not only were her name, address, and even hours of consultation, to be found in the "Tout Paris," but there also was inscribed her telephone number.

Vanderlyn hated the telephone. He never used it unless he was compelled to do so; but now he went through the weary, odious preliminaries with a certain eagerness—"Alo! Alo! Alo!"

At last a woman's voice answered, "Yes—yes. Who is it?"

"Can Madame d'Elphis receive a client this evening?"

There was a pause. Then he heard a question asked, a murmured answer of which the sense evaded him, and then a refusal,—not, he fancied, a very decided refusal,—followed by a discreet attempt to discover his name, his nationality, his address, with a suggestion that Madame d'Elphis would be at his disposal the next morning.

A touch of doubt in the quick, hesitating accents of the unseen woman emboldened Vanderlyn. He conveyed, civilly and clearly, that he was quite prepared to offer a very special fee for the favour he was asking; and he indicated that, though he had been told the usual price of a seance was fifty francs, he—the mysterious stranger who was speaking to Madame d'Elphis through the telephone—was so exceedingly anxious to be received by her that evening that he would pay a fancy fee,—in fact as much as a thousand francs,—for the privilege of consulting the famous fortune-teller.

To Vanderlyn's vexation and surprise, there followed a long pause.

At last came the answer, the expected assent; but it was couched in words which surprised and vaguely disquieted him.

"Very well, sir, my sister will be ready to receive you at eight o'clock to-night; but she is going out, so she will not be able to give you a prolonged seance."

Then he had not been speaking to the soothsayer herself? Vanderlyn felt vaguely disquieted and discomfited. He had counted on having to take but one person into his half-confidence; and then—well, he had told himself while at the telephone that he would not find it difficult to conclude the bargain he desired to make with the woman whose highly-pitched, affected voice had given him, or so he had thought, the clue to a venal personality.

* * * * *

It was with a feeling of considerable excitement and curiosity that the diplomatist, that same evening, walked up the quiet, now deserted, streets where dwelt the most famous of Parisian fortune-tellers.

Madame d'Elphis had chosen a prosaic setting for the scene of her mysteries, for the large white house looked very new, a huge wedge of modern ugliness in the pretty old street, its ugliness made the more apparent by its proximity to one of those leafy gardens which form oases of fragrant stillness in the more ancient quarters of the town.

A curt answer was given by the concierge in reply to Vanderlyn's enquiry for Madame d'Elphis. "Walk through the courtyard; the person you seek occupies the entresol of the house you will see there."

And then he saw that lying back, quite concealed from the street, was another and very different type of dwelling, and one far more suited to the requirements of even a latter-day soothsayer.

As he made his way over the dimly-lighted, ill-paved court which separated the new building, that giving onto the street, from the seventeenth-century mansion, Vanderlyn realised that his first impression had been quite erroneous. Madame d'Elphis had evidently gauged, and that very closely, the effect she desired to produce on her patrons. Even in the daytime the mansarded house which now gloomed before him must look secret, mysterious. Behind such narrow latticed windows might well have dwelt Cagliostro, or, further back, the more sinister figure of La Voison.

But something of this feeling left him as he passed through the door which gave access to the old house; and, as he began to walk up the shabby gas-lit staircase, he felt that his repugnant task would be an easy one. The woman who, living here, allowed herself the luxury of such a lover as was the Marquis de Florac, would not—nay, could not—hesitate before such an offer as ten thousand francs.

There was but one door on the entresol, and on its panel was inscribed in small gold letters the word "d'Elphis." As Vanderlyn rang the bell, the odd name gleamed at him in the gas-light.

There followed a considerable delay, but at last he saw a face peering at him through the little grating—significantly styled a Judas, and doubtless dating from the Revolution,—still to be found in many an old-fashioned Parisian front-door.

The inspection having apparently proved satisfactory, the door opened, and Vanderlyn was admitted, by a young bonne a tout faire, into a hall filled with a strong smell of cooking, a smell that made it clear that Madame d'Elphis and her family—her smalah, as Jacques de Lera had called them—had the true Southern love of garlic.

Without asking his name or business, the servant showed him straight into a square, gold-and-white salon. Standing there, forgetful for a moment of his distasteful errand, Vanderlyn looked about him with mingled contempt and disgust, for his eyes, trained to observe, had at once become aware that the note of this room was showy vulgarity. The furniture was a mixture of imitation Louis XV. and sham Empire. On the woven tapestry sofa lay a child's toy, once costly, but now broken.

How amazing the fact that here, amid these pretentiously ugly and commonplace surroundings, innumerable human beings had stood, and would stand, trembling with fear, suspense, and hope! Vanderlyn reminded himself that here also Tom Pargeter, a man accustomed to measure everything by the money standard, had waited many a time in the sure belief that this was the ante-chamber to august and awe-inspiring mysteries; here, all unknowing of what the future held, he would come to-morrow morning, to learn, for once, the truth—the terrible truth—from the charlatan to whom he, poor fool, pinned his faith.

Suddenly a door opened, and Vanderlyn turned round with eager curiosity, a curiosity which became merged in astonishment. The woman advancing towards him made her vulgar surroundings sink into blurred insignificance; for Madame d'Elphis, with her slight, sinuous figure, draped in a red peplum, her pale face lit by dark tragic eyes, looked the sybil to the life....

Vanderlyn bowed, with voluntary deference. "Monsieur," she said, in a low, deep voice, "I must ask you to follow me; this is my sister's appartement. I live next door."

She preceding him, they walked through an untidy dining-room of which the furniture—the sham Renaissance chairs and walnut-wood buffet—looked strangely alien to Vanderlyn's guide, into a short, ill-lighted passage, which terminated in a locked, handleless door.

The woman whom he now knew to be Madame d'Elphis turned, and, facing Vanderlyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy eyes to rest full on her unknown visitor.

"You have your stick, your hat?" she asked. "Yes?—that is well; for when our seance is over, you will leave by another way, a way which leads into the garden, and so into the street."

She unlocked the door, and he followed her into a large book-lined study—masculine in its sober colouring and simple furnishings. Above the mantelpiece was arranged a trophy of swords and fencing-sticks; opposite hung a superb painting by Henner. Vanderlyn remembered having seen this picture exhibited in the Salon some five years before. It had been shown under the title "The Crystal-Gazer," and it was even now an admirable portrait of his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had Vanderlyn begun to regard the woman who was so little like what he had expected to find her.

Madame d'Elphis beckoned to him to follow her into yet another, and a much smaller, room. Ah! This was evidently the place where she pursued her strange calling; for here—so Vanderlyn, trying to combat the eerie impression she produced on him, sardonically told himself—were the stage properties of her singular craft.

The high walls were hung with red cloth, against which gleamed innumerable plaster casts of hands. The only furniture consisted of a round, polished table, which took up a good deal of the space in the room; on the table stood an old-fashioned lamp, and in the middle of the circle of light cast by the lamp on its shining surface, a round crystal ball. Two chairs were drawn up to the table.

An extraordinary sensation of awe—of vague disquiet—crept over Laurence Vanderlyn; he suddenly remembered the tragic story of Jeanne de Lera. Was it here that the sinister interview with the doomed girl had taken place?

It was Madame d'Elphis who broke the long silence:—

"I must ask you, Monsieur," she said, stiffly, "to depose the fee on the table. It is the custom."

Vanderlyn's thin nervous hand shot up to his mouth to hide a smile; the eerie feeling which had so curiously possessed him dropped away, leaving him slightly ashamed.

"Poor woman," he said to himself, "she cannot even divine that I am an honest man!"

He bent his head gravely, and took the roll of notes with which he had come provided out of his pocket. He placed a thousand-franc note on the table. "What a fool she must think me!" he mentally exclaimed; then came the consoling reflection, "But she won't think me a fool for long."

Madame d'Elphis scarcely glanced at the thousand-franc note; she left it lying where Vanderlyn had put it. "Will you please sit down, Monsieur?" she said.

Vanderlyn rather reluctantly obeyed her. As she seated herself opposite to him, he was struck by the sad intensity of her face; he told himself that she had once been—nay, that she was still—beautiful, but it was the tortured beauty of a woman who lives by and through her emotions.

He also realised that his task would not be quite as easy as he had hoped it would be; the manner of La d'Elphis was cold, correct, and ladylike—no other word would serve—to the point of severity. He saw that he would have to word his offer of a bribe in as least offensive a fashion as was possible. But while he was trying to find a sentence with which to embark on the delicate negotiation, he suddenly felt his left hand grasped and turned over, with a firm and yet impersonal touch.

The centre of the soothsayer's cool palm rested itself on the ring—his mother's wedding ring—loosely encircling his little finger, and then Madame d'Elphis began speaking in a low, quiet, and yet hesitating, voice,—a voice which suddenly recalled to her listener her Southern birth and breeding; it was strangely unlike the accents in which she had asked him to produce the promised fee.

Surprise, a growing, ever-deepening surprise, kept Vanderlyn silent. He soon forgot completely, for the time being, the business which had brought him there.

"For you the crystal," she whispered, "for others the Grand Jeu. You have not come, as others do, to learn the future; you do not care what happens to you—now."

She waited a moment, then, "the ring brings with it two visions," she said, fixing her eyes on the polished depths before her. "Visions of love and death—of pain and parting; one, if clear, yet recedes far into the past...."

She raised her voice, and began speaking in a monotonous recitative:

"I see you with a woman standing in a garden; behind you both is a great expanse of water. She is so like you that I think she must be your mother. She wears her grey hair in Madonna bands; she puts her arms round your neck; as she does so, I see on her left hand one ring—the ring which you are now wearing, and which I am now touching. She, your mother, is bidding you good-bye, she knows that she will never see you again, but you do not know it, so she smiles, for she is a brave woman——"

Madame d'Elphis stopped speaking. Vanderlyn stared at her with a sense of growing excitement and amazement; he was telling himself that this woman undoubtedly possessed the power of reading not only the minds, but even the emotional memories, of those who came to consult her.... Yes, it was true; his last parting with his mother had been out of doors, in the garden of their own family house on the shores of Lake Champlain.

As he looked fixedly at the crystal-gazer's downcast eyes, his own emotions seemed to become reflected in her countenance. She grasped his hand with a firmer, a more convulsive pressure.

"I see you again," she exclaimed, "and again with a woman! This vision is very clear; it evokes the immediate past—almost the present. The woman is young; her hair is fair, and in a cloud about her head. You are together on a journey. It is night——"

Madame d'Elphis stopped speaking abruptly; she looked up at Vanderlyn, and he saw that her dark eyes were brimming with tears, her mouth quivering.

"Do you wish me to describe what I see?" she asked, in an almost inaudible voice.

"No," said Vanderlyn, hoarsely,—he seemed to feel Peggy's arms about his neck, her soft lips brushing his cheek.

The soothsayer bent down till her face was within a few inches of the polished surface into which she was gazing.

"Now she is lying down," she whispered. "Her face is turned away. Is she asleep? No, she is dead!—dead!"

"Can you see her now?" asked Vanderlyn. "For God's sake tell me where she is! Can I hope to see her again—once more?"

Madame d'Elphis withdrew her hand from that of Vanderlyn.

"You will only see her face," she answered, slowly, "through the coffin-lid. That you will see. As to where she is now—I see her clearly, and yet,"—she went on, as if to herself, "nay, but that's impossible! I see her," she went on, raising her voice, "laid out for burial under a shed in a beautiful garden. The garden is that of Dr. Fortoul's house at Orange. At the head of the pallet on which she lies there are two blessed candles; a nun kneels on the ground. Stay,—who is that coming in from the garden? It is the wife of the doctor, it is Madame Fortoul,"—again there came a note of wavering doubt into the voice of the crystal-gazer. "She is whispering to the nun, and I hear her words; she says, 'Poor child, she is young, too young to have died like this, alone. I am having a mass said for her soul to-morrow morning.'"