He bent his head again, staring down upon the glass before him, and for a while there was a silence which neither of the younger men cared to break.
"Don't refuse a helping hand," said Captain Stewart, looking up once more. "Don't be over-proud. I may be able to set you upon the right path. Not that I have anything definite to work upon--I haven't, alas! But each day new clews turn up. One day we shall find the real one, and that may be one that I have turned over to you to follow out. One never knows."
Ste. Marie looked across at Richard Hartley, but that gentleman was blowing smoke-rings and to all outward appearance giving them his entire attention. He looked back to Captain Stewart, and Stewart's eyes regarded him, smiling a little wistfully, he thought. Ste. Marie scowled out of the window at the trees of the Luxembourg Gardens.
"I hardly know," said he. "Of course, I sound a braying ass in hesitating even a moment; but, in a way, you understand, I'm so anxious to do this or to fail in it quite on my own. You're--so tremendously kind about it that I don't know what to say. I must seem very ungrateful, I know; but I'm not."
"No," said the elder man, "you don't seem ungrateful at all. I understand exactly how you feel about it, and I applaud your feeling--but not your judgment. I am afraid that for the sake of a sentiment you're taking unnecessary risks of failure."
For the first time Richard Hartley spoke.
"I've an idea, you know," said he, "that it's going to be a matter chiefly of luck. One day somebody will stumble on the right trail, and that might as well be Ste. Marie or I as your trained detectives. If you don't mind my saying so, sir--I don't want to seem rude--your trained detectives do not seem to accomplish much in two months, do they?"
Captain Stewart looked thoughtfully at the younger man.
"No," he said, at last. "I am sorry to say they don't seem to have accomplished much--except to prove that there are a great many places poor Arthur has not been to and a great many people who have not seen him. After all, that is something--the elimination of ground that need not be worked over again." He set down the glass from which he had been drinking. "I cannot agree with your theory," he said. "I cannot agree that such work as this is best left to an accidental solution. Accidents are too rare. We have tried to go at it in as scientific a way as could be managed--by covering large areas of territory, by keeping the police everywhere on the alert, by watching the boy's old friends and searching his favorite haunts. Personally, I am inclined to think that he managed to slip away to America very early in the course of events, before we began to search for him, and, of course, I am having a careful watch kept there as well as here. But no trace has appeared as yet--nothing at all trustworthy. Meanwhile, I continue to hope and to work, but I grow a little discouraged. In any case, though, we shall hear of him in three months more if he is alive."
"Why three months?" asked Ste. Marie. "What do you mean by that?"