"I've just come," said he, "from pricking one bubble that promised well, and Hartley is up in Montmartre destroying another, I fancy. Oh well, we didn't expect it to be child's play."
Captain Stewart raised his little glass of dry vermouth in an old-fashioned salute, and drank from it.
"You," said he, "you were—ah, full of some idea of connecting this man, this Irishman, O'Hara, with poor Arthur's disappearance. You've found that not so promising, as you went on, I take it."
"Well, I've been unable to trace O'Hara," said Ste. Marie. "He seems to have disappeared as completely as your nephew. I suppose you have no clues to spare? I confess I'm out of them, at the moment."
"Oh, I have plenty," said the elder man. "A hundred. More than I can possibly look after." He gave a little chuckling laugh.
"I've been waiting for you to come to me," he said. "It was a little ungenerous perhaps, but we all love to say, 'I told you so.' Yes, I have a great quantity of clues, and, of course, they all seem to be of the greatest and most exciting importance. That's a way clues have." He took an envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and sorted several folded papers which were in it.
"I have here," said he, "memoranda of two chances, shall I call them?—which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every clue seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking part of such an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received, one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been searching the bains de mer of the north coast. This agent writes that some one very much resembling poor Arthur has been seen at Dinard and also at Deauville, and he urges me to come there, or to send a man there at once to look into the matter. You will ask, of course, why this agent himself does not pursue the clue he has found. Unfortunately he has been called to London upon some pressing family matter of his own; he is an Englishman."
"Why haven't you gone yourself?" asked Ste. Marie. But the elder man shrugged his shoulders and smiled a tired deprecatory smile.
"Oh, my friend," said he, "if I should attempt personally to investigate one half of these things, I should be compelled to divide myself into twenty parts. No, I must stay here. There must be, alas! the spider at the centre of the web. I cannot go, but if you think it worth while I will gladly turn over the memoranda of these last clues to you. They may be the true clues, they may not. At any rate, some one must look into them. Why not you and your partner—or shall I say assistant?"
"Why, thank you!" cried Ste. Marie. "A thousand thanks. Of course I shall be—we shall be glad to try this chance. On the face of it, it sounds very reasonable. Your nephew, from what I remember of him, is much more apt to be in some place that is amusing—some place of gaiety—than hiding away where it is merely dull, if he has his choice in the matter, that is—if he is free. And yet——" he turned and frowned thoughtfully at the elder man.