Ste. Marie raised his own voice to a sort of cry. He said—
"Wait! I tell you to wait, Benham! I must have a word with you. I come from your family—from Helen!" To his amazement the lad turned about and began to run towards where the girl stood waiting; and so, without a moment's hesitation Ste. Marie threw himself across the top of the wall, hung for an instant by his hands, and dropped upon the soft turf. Scarcely waiting to recover his balance he stumbled forward, shouting—
"Wait! I tell you, wait! Are you mad? Wait, I say! Listen to me!"
Vaguely, in the midst of his great excitement, he had heard a whistle sound as he dropped inside the wall. He did not know then from whence the shrill call had come, but afterwards he knew that Coira had blown it. And now, as he ran forward towards the two who stood at a distance staring at him, he heard other steps and he slackened his pace to look.
A man came running down amongst the black-boled trees, a strange, squat, gnome-like man, whose gait was as uncouth as his dwarfish figure. He held something in his two hands as he ran, and when he came near he threw this thing with a swift movement up before him, but he did not pause in his odd scrambling run.
Ste. Marie felt a violent blow upon his left leg between hip and knee. He thought that somebody had crept up behind him and struck him, but, as he whirled about, he saw that there was no one there, and then he heard a noise, and knew that the gnome-like running man had shot him. He faced about once more towards the two young people. He was very angry, and he wished to say so, and very much he wished to explain why he had trespassed there, and why they had no right to shoot him as if he were some wretched thief. But he found that in some quite absurd fashion he was as if fixed to the ground. It was as if he had suddenly become of the most ponderous and incredible weight like lead—or like that other metal, not gold, which is the heaviest of all. Only the metal, seemingly, was not only heavy but fiery hot, and his strength was incapable of holding it up any longer. His eyes fixed themselves in a bewildered stare upon the figure of Mlle. Coira O'Hara, he had time to observe that she had put up her two hands over her face, then he fell down forward, his head struck upon something very hard, and he knew no more.
CHAPTER XV
A CONVERSATION AT LA LIERRE
Captain Stewart walked nervously up and down the small inner drawing-room at La Lierre, his restless hands fumbling together behind him, and his eyes turning every half-minute with a sharp eagerness to the closed door. But at last, as if he were very tired, he threw himself down in a chair which stood near one of the windows, and all his tense body seemed to relax in utter exhaustion. It was not a very comfortable chair that he had sat down in, but there were no comfortable chairs in the room—nor for that matter in all the house. When he had taken the place—about two months before this time—he had taken it furnished, but that does not mean very much in France. No French country houses—or town houses either—are in the least comfortable, by Anglo-Saxon standards, and that is at least one excellent reason why Frenchmen spend just as little time in them as they possibly can. Half the cafés in Paris would promptly put up their shutters if Parisian homes could all at once turn themselves into something like English or American ones. As for La Lierre it was even more dreary and bare and tomb-like than other country houses, because it was after all a sort of ruin, and had not been lived in for fifteen years, save by an ancient caretaker and his nearly as ancient wife. And that was perhaps why it could be taken, on a short lease, at a very low price.
The room in which Captain Stewart sat was behind the large drawing-room, which was always kept closed now, and it looked out by one window to the west, and by two windows to the north, over a corner of the kitchen-garden, and a vista of trees beyond. It was a high-ceiled room with walls bare, except for two large mirrors in the Empire fashion, which stared at each other across the way with dull and flaking eyes. Under each of these stood a heavy gilt and ebony console with a top of chocolate-coloured marble, and in the centre of the room there was a table of a like fashion to the consoles. Further than this there was nothing save three chairs, upon one of which lay Captain Stewart's dust-coat and motoring cap and goggles.