"You'll be welcome," promised Captain Stewart. "Good-bye to you! Good-day, Hartley. Come and see me, both of you. You know where I live."
He took his leave then, and Hartley, standing beside the window, watched him turn down the street, and at the corner get into one of the fiacres there and drive away.
Ste. Marie laughed aloud.
"There's the second time," said he, "that I've had him about O'Hara. If he is as careless as that about everything, I don't wonder he hasn't found Arthur Benham. O'Hara disappeared from Paris--publicly, that is--at about the time young Benham disappeared. As a matter of fact, he remains, or at least for a time remained, in the city without letting his friends know, because I made no mistake about seeing him in the Champs-Elysées. All that looks to me suspicious enough to be worth investigation. Of course," he admitted, doubtfully--"of course, I'm no detective; but that's how it looks to me."
"I don't believe Stewart is any detective, either," said Richard Hartley. "He's altogether too cocksure. That sort of man would rather die than admit he is wrong about anything. He's a good old chap, though, isn't he? I liked him to-day better than ever before. I thought he was rather pathetic when he went on about his age."
"He has a good heart," said Ste. Marie. "Very few men under the circumstances would come here and be as decent as he was. Most men would have thought I was a presumptuous ass, and would have behaved accordingly."
Ste. Marie took a turn about the room, and his face began to light up with its new excitement and exaltation.
"And to-morrow!" he cried--"to-morrow we begin! To-morrow we set out into the world and the Adventure is on foot! God send it success!"
He laughed across at the other man; but it was a laugh of eagerness, not of mirth.
"I feel," said he, "like Jason. I feel as if we were to set sail to-morrow for Colchis and the Golden Fleece."