Perhaps because he himself had a son who was Gerald's age, the English solicitor took, from the first, a very special interest in the young American architect. Soon they were on excellent terms with one another—indeed, it was with Gerald Burton that he found he had most to do. The young man naturally accompanied him to all those places where the presence of a first-rate interpreter was likely to be useful, and Gerald Burton also pursued a number of independent enquiries on his own account.
But nothing was of any avail; they were baffled at every turn, and soon this search for a vanished man became, to one of the two now so strenuously engaged in it, the most sinister and disturbing of the many problems with which he had had to deal as a trusted family lawyer.
The screen of memory bears many blurred and hazy impressions on its surface, but now and again some special dramatic happening remains fixed there in a series of sharply-etched pictures in which every line has its retrospective meaning and value.
Such was to be the case with Mr. Stephens and the curious days he spent in Paris seeking for John Dampier. He was there a whole week, and every succeeding day was packed with anxious, exciting interviews and expeditions, each of which it was hoped might yield some sort of clue. But what remained indelibly fixed on the English lawyer's screen of memory were three or four at the time apparently insignificant conversations which in no case could have done much to solve the problem he had set himself to solve.
The first of these was a short conversation, in the middle of that busy week, with Nancy Dampier.
After the first interview in which she had told him her version of what had happened the night of her own and her husband's arrival in Paris, he had had very little talk with her, and at no time had he expressed any opinion as to what could have happened to John Dampier. But at last he felt it his duty to try and probe a little more than he had felt it at first possible to do into the question of a possible motive or motives.
"I'm afraid," he began, "that there's very little more to do than has been already done. I mean, of course, for the present. And in your place, Nancy, I should come back to England, and wait there for any news that may reach you."
As she shook her head very decidedly, he went on gravely:—"I know it is open to you to remain in Paris; but, my dear, I cannot believe that your husband is in Paris. If he were, we must by now, with the help of the French police—the most expert in the world, remember—have come across traces of him, and that whether he be dead or alive."
But Nancy did not take the meaning he had hoped to convey by that last word. On the contrary:—
"Do you think," she asked, and though her lips quivered she spoke very quietly, "that Jack is dead, Mr. Stephens? I know that Senator Burton's son has come to believe that he is."