"I might advise you to go to the Préfecture de Police, nay, I might communicate with them myself, but I feel that in the interests of this young lady it would be better to go slow. Mr. Dampier may return as suddenly, as unexpectedly, as he went. And then he would not thank us, my dear sir, for having done anything to turn the Paris Police searchlight on his private life."
The Consul got up and held out his hand. "For your sake, as well as for that of my countrywoman, I hope most sincerely that you will find Mr. Dampier safe and sound when you get back to the Hôtel Saint Ange. But if the mystery still endures to-morrow, then you really must persuade this poor young lady to send for one of her relatives—preferably, I need hardly say, a man."
"At what time shall I expect your clerk?" asked Senator Burton. "I think I ought to prepare the Poulains."
"No, there I think you're wrong! Far better let him go back with you now, and hear what they have to say. Let him also get a properly signed statement from Mrs. Dampier. Then he can come back here and type out his report and her statement for reference. That can do no harm, and may in the future be of value."
He accompanied the American Senator to the door. "I wish I could help you more," he said cordially. "Believe me, I appreciate more than I can say your extraordinary kindness to my 'subject.' I shall, of course, be glad to know how you get on. But oh, if you knew how busy we are just now! When I think of how we are regarded—of how I read, only the other day, that a Consul is the sort of good fellow one likes to make comfortable in a nice little place—I wish the man who wrote that could have my 'nice little place' for a week, during an Exhibition Year! I think he would soon change his mind."
Mrs. Dampier was not present at the, to Senator Burton, odious half-hour which followed their return to the Hôtel Saint Ange.
At first the French hotel-keeper and his wife refused to say anything to the Consular official. Then, when they were finally persuaded to answer his questions, they did so as curtly and disagreeably as possible. Madame Poulain also made a great effort to prevent her nephew, young Jules, from being brought into the matter. But to her wrath and bitter consternation, he, as well as her husband and herself, was made to submit to a regular examination and cross-examination as to what had followed Mrs. Dampier's arrival at the Hôtel Saint Ange.
"Why don't you send for the police?" she cried at last. "We should be only too glad to lay all the facts before them!"
And as the young Frenchman, after his further interview with Nancy, was being speeded on his way by the Senator, "I'm blessed if I know what to believe!" he observed with a wink. "It's the queerest story I've ever come across; and as for the Poulains, it's the first time I've ever known French people to say they would like to see the police brought into their private affairs! One would swear that all the parties concerned were telling the truth, but I thought that boy, those people's nephew, did know something more than he said."