The long hot day drew to an end, and at last from the platform at the end of the electric train they saw the snow-fields lift toward the soaring peaks, and the peaks purple with the after glow stand solitary and beautiful against the evening sky.
"At last!" said Sylvia, with a catch in her breath, and the clasp of her hand tightened upon her husband's arm. But Chayne was remembering certain words once spoken to him in a garden of Dorsetshire, by a man who lay idly in a hammock and stared up between the leaves. "On the most sunny day, the mountains hold in their recesses mystery and death."
"You know where your father is staying?" Chayne asked.
"He wrote from the Hôtel de l'Arve," Sylvia replied.
"We will stay at Couttet's and walk over to see him this evening," said
Chayne, and after dinner they strolled across the little town. But at
the Hôtel de l'Arve they found neither Garratt Skinner nor his friend,
Walter Hine.
"Only the day before yesterday," said the proprietor, "they started for the mountains. Always they make expeditions."
Chayne drew no satisfaction from that statement. Garratt Skinner and his friend would make many expeditions from which both men would return in safety. Garratt Skinner was no blunderer. And when at the last he returned alone with some flawless story of an accident in which his friend had lost his life, no one would believe but that here was another mishap, and another name to be added to the Alpine death-roll.
"To what mountain have they gone?" Chayne asked.
"To no mountain to-day. They cross the Col du Géant, monsieur, to
Courmayeur. But after that I do not know."
"Oh, into Italy," said Chayne, in relief. So far there was no danger. The Col du Géant, that great pass between France and Italy across the range of Mont Blanc, was almost a highway. There would be too many parties abroad amongst its ice séracs on these days of summer for any deed which needed solitude and secrecy.