The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes (literature books to read .TXT) 📖

the study of the courteous Briton whose difficult and sometimes exasperating duty it is to look after the rights and interests of the motley world composed of those Englishmen and Englishwomen who make a short or long sojourn in Paris. Once they were in his presence nothing could have been kinder and more considerate than the British Consul’s reception of the American Senator and his companion.

In the Consular branch of the Diplomatic Service the post of Consul in the greater cities of the civilised world is almost invariably given to an ex-member of the Diplomatic Corps—to one, that is, who is a shrewd man of the world rather than a trained business official, and Senator Burton felt it to be a comfort indeed to deal with such a one rather than with an acute but probably conventionally-minded man of commercial experience.

The Consul was moved by Mrs. Dampier’s youth, her beauty, her evident, if subdued bewilderment and distress. She told her story very clearly and simply, but to the Senator’s excited and yes, it must be admitted, suspicious fancy, she seemed to slur over, as of no importance, the extraordinary discrepancy between her own and the Poulains’ account of what had happened on the night of her own and her husband’s arrival in Paris.

The Consul asked but few questions, but those were pertinent and to the point.

“I am glad, Mrs. Dampier, that you did not come to me yesterday,” he said at last, “for, thanks, as I understand, to this gentleman, you have done everything which I should have had to advise you to do.”

He then turned more particularly to his American visitor:—“I suppose you have now quite convinced yourself that no kind of street accident befell Mr. Dampier yesterday morning?”

The Senator shook his head dubiously; there was a look of hesitation, of unease, on his face.

“Perhaps it would be as well,” said the Consul suavely, “for Mrs. Dampier to go and wait awhile in the next room. Then you and I, Mr. Senator, might go into the matter more thoroughly?”

Unsuspiciously Nancy Dampier fell in with the plan.

And then, at last, Senator Burton was able to open out his heart, and, as the British Consul listened to the American’s version of all that had taken place, when he realised how entirely the story of this young lady, who called herself Mrs. Dampier, was uncorroborated, his face became graver and graver.

“From the little opportunity I have had of judging, she impresses me as being a truthful woman,” he said musingly. “Still, what I now know puts a very different complexion on the story as told me just now by her.”

“That is exactly what I feel,” said the Senator sighing. “From something you said just now I gather that you have heard of this Mr. John Dampier?”

“Why, yes, indeed I have—I know his name as being that of a distinguished English artist living in Paris; but he has never troubled me individually, and I can answer for it that he is very little known to our colony here. He evidently lives only amongst the French painters and their set—which means that to all intents and purposes he has become a Frenchman!” The Consul shrugged his shoulders—racial prejudice dies hard.

He looked doubtfully at his visitor:—“You see, Mr. Senator, if this lady’s tale is true, if the poor little woman is a three weeks’ bride, Mr. Dampier’s disappearance may mean a good many things, any one of which is bound to cause her pain and distress. I do not think it likely that there has been any kind of foul play. If, as Mrs. Dampier asserts, he had neither money nor jewels in his possession, we may dismiss that possibility from our minds.”

“If anything of that sort has happened—I mean, if there has been foul play,” said Senator Burton firmly, “then I would stake my life that neither of the Poulains are in any way associated with it.”

“Quite so. Still, as Mrs. Dampier has appealed to me very properly for help, these hotel people—if they are as worthy as you believe them to be—will not mind consenting to an informal interrogatory from one of my clerks. I have here a sharp young fellow who knows English as well as he does French. I’ll send him back with you. He can take down the Poulains’ story, even cross-examine them in a friendly manner. Mrs. Dampier might also give him her version of what took place.”

Senator Burton uttered a hesitating assent. He knew only too well that the Poulains would greatly resent the proposed interrogatory.

“One word more, Mr. Senator. If there is no news of this Mr. John Dampier by to-morrow, you must persuade Mrs. Dampier to write, or even to telegraph for her friends. For one thing, it isn’t at all fair that all this trouble should fall on an entire stranger, on one not even her own countryman! I cannot help seeing, too, that you do not altogether believe in Mrs. Dampier and her story. You can’t make up your mind—is not that so?”

The American Senator nodded, rather shamefacedly.

“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.”