Jason: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

"And," pursued Ste. Marie, "the individual on the bench across the street?"

"It is not necessary that I meet that individual, either!" said the Marseillais, hastily. "Monsieur, I bid you adieu!" He bowed again, a profound, a scraping bow, and disappeared through the door.

Ste. Marie crossed to the window and looked down upon the pavement below. He saw his late visitor emerge from the house and slip rapidly down the street toward the rue Vavin. He glanced across into the gardens and the spy still sat there on his bench, but his head lay back and he slept--the sleep of the unjust. One imagined that he must be snoring, for an incredibly small urchin in a blue apron stood on the path before him and watched with the open mouth of astonishment.

Ste. Marie turned back into the room, and began to tramp up and down as was his way in a perplexity or in any time of serious thought. He wished very much that Richard Hartley were there to consult with. He considered Hartley to have a judicial mind--a mind to establish, out of confusion, something like logical order, and he was very well aware that he himself had not that sort of mind at all. In action he was sufficiently confident of himself, but to construct a course of action he was afraid, and he knew that a misstep now, at this critical point, might be fatal--turn success into disaster.

He fell to thinking of Captain Stewart (alias M. Ducrot) and he longed most passionately to leap into a fiacre at the corner below, to drive at a gallop across the city to the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, to fall upon that smiling hypocrite in his beautiful treasure-house, to seize him by the withered throat and say:

"Tell me what you have done with Arthur Benham before I tear your head from your miserable body!"

Indeed, he was far from sure that this was not what it would come to, in the end, for he reflected that he had not only a tremendous accumulation of evidence with which to face Captain Stewart, but also a very terrible weapon to hold over his head--the threat of exposure to the old man who lay slowly dying in the rue de l'Université! A few words in old David's ear, a few proofs of their truth, and the great fortune for which the son had sold his soul--if he had any left to sell--must pass forever out of his reach, like gold seen in a dream.

This is what it might well come to, he said to himself. Indeed, it seemed to him at that moment far the most feasible plan, for to such accusations, such demands as that, Captain Stewart could offer no defence. To save himself from a more complete ruin he would have to give up the boy or tell what he knew of him. But Ste. Marie was unwilling to risk everything on this throw without seeing Richard Hartley first, and Hartley was not to be had until evening.

He told himself that, after all, there was no immediate hurry, for he was quite sure the man would be compelled to keep to his bed for a day or two. He did not know much about epilepsy, but he knew that its paroxysms were followed by great exhaustion, and he felt sure that Stewart was far too weak in body to recuperate quickly from any severe call upon his strength. He remembered how light that burden had been in his arms the night before, and then an uncontrollable shiver of disgust went over him as he remembered the sight of the horribly twisted and contorted face, felt again the shaking, thumping head as it beat against his shoulder. He wondered how much Stewart knew, how much he would be able to remember of the events of the evening before, and he was at a loss there because of his unfamiliarity with epileptic seizures. Of one thing, however, he was almost certain, and that was that the man could scarcely have been conscious of who were beside him when the fit was over. If he had come at all to his proper senses before the ensuing slumber of exhaustion, it must have been after Mlle. Nilssen and himself had gone away.

Upon that he fell to wondering about the spy and the gentleman from Marseilles--he was a little sorry that Hartley could not have seen the gentleman from Marseilles--but he reflected that the two were, without doubt, acting upon old orders, and that the latter had probably been stalking him for some days before he found him at home.