"Madame Horton, what is it?" she asked in French.
"It is a game we play, Madame Toupin. You shall hide me in your closet. And when Monsieur le Lieutenant comes you shall say that I have run out into the street. You understand?"
"Parfaitement, Madame. Ah, les jeux d'amour. Entrez vite." And she opened the door of the closet which Moira entered quickly.
Then Madame Toupin with a smile of wisdom composed herself to read her paper. And in a moment a clatter of boots upon the stairway and the sound of footsteps upon the paving of the courtyard announced the approach of the officer. Through a crack in the door Moira listened to the conversation which Madame conducted with her amiable smile, and presently Harry Horton withdrew frowning and went out hurriedly into the Rue de Tavennes.
But while she stood upright in the closet listening, Moira had formulated a plan. It was clear from the tone of Harry's voice and his haste to go that her escape had frightened him. For his judgment was not amiss when he decided that Moira was fully capable of carrying out her threat to tell the whole story to the military authorities. But instead of clinging to her original intention, a new idea had come to her.
If she followed him, she could perhaps get a clue to the mystery of Jim Horton's disappearance. She couldn't understand yet—couldn't make herself believe that this man that she had married could be capable of a thing so vile. But the evidence—his own words stammered in his fury, were damning. The familiar formulas seemed to have no bearing now. The war had made men demi-gods or devils and Harry.... It did not seem very difficult to decide to-night what Harry was.
She slipped on her heavy coat and the hat she had brought and with a word of explanation and caution to Madame Toupin, she went out into the street. Far down upon the opposite sidewalk she saw a tall figure striding away into the darkness. She followed, keeping at a distance, her coat collar turned up and her broad-brimmed hat pushed well down over her eyes. She hurried along, keeping in the shadow of the opposite side of the street, trembling with the excitement of her venture and wondering what was to be its outcome, but sure from his gait that the situation she had created had developed in Harry Horton's hazy brain some definite plan of action. She noticed too that he no longer swayed or stumbled and that he glanced furtively to left and right at the street corners, peering back toward her from time to time. But she matched her wits to his, crouching into corners as he turned and then running forward breathlessly in the dark places, keeping him in sight. He turned into the narrow reaches of the Rue de Monsieur le Prince, past the Lycée and the École de Médicine, and crossed the Boulevard St. Germain into the network of small streets in the direction of the river, twisting and turning in a way which confirmed her belief in the dishonesty of his purposes. It was now long after midnight, and the streets into which they moved were quiet and almost deserted. From the direction of the Boule' Miche' came a rumble of vehicles, the glare of lights, the distant grunt of an automobile-horn, the clatter of a cab horse down an echoing street. The neighborhood was unfamiliar to her, a part of old Paris near the Isle de la Cité, where the houses, relics of antiquity, were huddled into ghostly groups, clinging to one another, illumined fitfully by murky bracket-lamps which only served to make their grim façades more somber and fantastic. Dark shapes emerged from darker shadows and leered at her—evil figures, bent and bedraggled, or painted and bedizened, the foul night-creatures of the city, the scavengers, the female birds of prey, the nighthawks, the lepers. Twice she was accosted, once by a vile hag that clutched at her arm with skinny talons, and again by a man who tried to bar her way, but with a strength born of her desperation she thrust him aside and ran on, her gaze seeking the tall figure that she followed.
More than once she lost sight of him as he plunged deeper and deeper into the maze and she paused trembling in the shadows, not knowing which way to turn, but gathering courage again hurried on to catch the glint of a street light on his brown overcoat in the distance.
Above the roofs, almost hanging over her, she caught a glimpse of the grim towers of Notre Dame, the sentinels of a thousand years of time, and the sight of them gave her courage in this region of despair. With an effort she threw off her terror of the evil that seemed to hang in every shadow, trying to remember that this was Paris, her Paris, with familiar places close at hand; and that this man whom she followed was no creature of the middle ages, but Harry, her husband; that this was the Twentieth Century, and that here was the very heart of the civilization of the world. But the facts that had come to her were amazing, and Harry's confessions damnable. It was clear that his position was desperate and his intentions none less so. Here somewhere, hidden, she believed, Jim Horton lay, helpless and injured, if not by his brother's hand by that of some one in his employ. It was the only answer to the riddle of his failure to come back to her. She must find him—before they took him away—before they ... Her thoughts terrified her again. Harry wouldn't dare. He was a coward at heart. She knew it now. Besides, there must be some spark of decency and manhood left to restrain him from so desperate, so terrible an expedient to save himself.
She crept cautiously to the corner of a small street into which Harry Horton had turned. It was scarcely more than an alley-way—a vestige of the old city, hedged in by squat stone houses with peaked roofs, deserted it seemed and unoccupied. Beyond she could see the Quai, the loom of the Hôtel Dieu and Notre Dame. The house at which he had stopped was but a few yards from the river front. She stole into the blackness of an angle of wall and watched. He was knocking upon the door—three quick taps followed by two slower ones. For awhile he waited impatiently and then, as no one answered the summons, he tried the window and then started up a small passage at the side not twenty feet from where she crouched.