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

news, still in suspense, this morning, he would strongly advise that you send for someone to join you in Paris. Surely you have some near relation who would come to you?”

Nancy shook her head. “No. I daresay it may seem strange to you, Senator Burton, but I have no near relations at all. I was the only child of a father and mother who, in their turn, were only children. I have some very distant cousins, a tribe of acquaintances, a few very kind friends—” her lips quivered “but no one—no one of whom I feel I could ask that sort of favour.”

Senator Burton glanced at her in dismay. She looked very wan and fragile sitting there; whatever the truth, he could not but feel deeply sorry for her.

Suddenly she turned to him, and an expression of relief came over her sad eyes and mouth. “There is someone, Mr. Burton, someone I ought to have thought of before! There is a certain Mr. Stephens who was my father’s friend as well as his solicitor; and he has always managed all my money matters. I’ll write and ask Mr. Stephens if he can come to me. He was more than kind at the time of my marriage, though I’m afraid that he and Jack didn’t get on very well together.”

She looked up in Senator Burton’s face with a bewildered, pleading look, and he suddenly realised how difficult a task such a letter would be to her, supposing, that is, that the story she told, the story in which even now the Senator only half believed—were true.

“I’ll go up and write the letter now,” she said, and together they both went, once more, indoors.

But Gerald Burton, when he heard of the proposed letter to Mrs. Dampier’s lawyer, made an abrupt suggestion which both the Senator and Nancy welcomed with eagerness.

“Why shouldn’t we telephone to this Mr. Stephens?” he asked. “That would save a day, and it would be far easier to explain to him all that has happened by word of mouth than in a letter—” He turned to Nancy, and his voice unconsciously softened: “If you will trust me, I will explain the situation to your friend, Mrs. Dampier.”

The father and son’s drive to the Central Paris-London-Telephone office was curiously silent, though both the older and the younger man felt full of unwonted excitement.

“Now, at last, I am on the track of the truth!” such was the Senator’s secret thought. But he would not have been very much surprised had no such name as that of Davies P. Stephens, Solicitor, 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, appeared in the London Telephone Directory. But yes, there the name was, and Gerald showed it to his father with a gleam of triumph.

“You will want patience—a good deal of patience,” said the attendant mournfully.

Gerald Burton smiled. He was quite used to long-distance telephoning at home. “All right!” he said cheerily. “I’ve plenty of patience!”

But though the young man claimed to have plenty of patience he felt far too excited, far too strung up and full of suspense, for the due exercise of that difficult virtue.

The real reason why he had suggested this telephone message, instead of a letter or a telegram, was that he longed for his father’s suspicions to be set at rest.

Gerald Burton resented keenly, far more keenly than did his sister, the Senator’s lack of belief in Nancy Dampier’s story. He himself would have staked his life on the truthfulness of this woman whom he had only known three days.

At last the sharp, insistent note of the telephone bell rang out, and he stept up into the call-box.

“Mr. Stephens’ office?” He spoke questioningly: and after what seemed a long pause the answer came, muffled but audible. “Yes, yes! This is Mr. Stephens’ office. Who is it wants us from Paris?” The question was put in a Cockney voice, and the London twang seemed exaggerated by its transmission over those miles and miles of wire by land, under the sea, and then by land again.

“I want to speak to Mr. Stephens himself,” said Gerald Burton very distinctly.

“Mr. Stephens? Yes, he’s here all right. I’ll take a message.”

“Make him come himself.”

“Yes, he’s here. Give me your message—” the words were again a little muffled.

“I can’t send a message. You must fetch him.” Gerald Burton’s stock of patience was giving way. Again there was an irritating pause, but it was broken at last.

“Who is it? I can’t fetch him if you won’t say who you are.”

“I am speaking on behalf of Mrs. Dampier,” said Gerald reluctantly. Somehow he hated uttering Nancy’s name to this tiresome unknown.

And then began an absurd interchange of words at cross purposes.

“Mr. Larkspur?”

“No,” said Gerald. “Mrs. Dampier.”

“Yes,” said the clerk. “Yes, I quite understand. L. for London—”

Gerald lost his temper—“D. for damn!” he shouted, “Dampier.”

And then, at last, with a shrill laugh that sounded strange and eerie, the clerk repeated, “Dampier—Mr. John Dampier? Yes, sir. What can we do for you?”

“Mrs. Dampier!”

“Mrs. Dampier? Yes, sir. I’ll fetch Mr. Stephens.” The clerk’s voice had altered; it had become respectful, politely enquiring.

And at last with intense relief, Gerald Burton heard a low clear, incisive voice uttering the words: “Is that Mrs. Dampier herself speaking?”

Instinctively Gerald’s own voice lowered. “No, I am speaking for Mrs. Dampier.”

The English lawyer’s voice hardened, or so it seemed to the young American. It became many degrees colder. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Dampier. Yes? What can I do for you?”

And as Gerald, taken oddly aback by the unseen man’s very natural mistake, did not answer for a moment or two:

“Nothing wrong with Nancy, I hope?”

The anxious question sounded very, very clear.

“There is something very wrong with Mrs. Dampier—can you hear me clearly?”

“Yes, yes What is wrong with her?”

“Mrs. Dampier is in great trouble. Mr. Dampier has disappeared.”

The strange thing which had happened was told in those four words, but Gerald Burton naturally went on to explain, or rather to try to explain, the extraordinary situation which had arisen, to Nancy’s lawyer and friend.

Mr. Stephens did not waste any time in exclamations of surprise or pity. Once he had grasped the main facts, his words were few and to the point.

“Tell Mrs. Dampier,” he said, speaking very distinctly, “that if she has no news of her husband by Friday I will come myself to Paris. I cannot do so before. Meanwhile, I strongly advise that she, or preferably you for her, communicate with the police—try and see the Prefect of Police himself. I myself once obtained much courteous help from the Paris Prefect of Police.”

Gerald stept down from the stuffy, dark telephone box. He turned to the attendant:—“How much do I owe you?” he asked briefly.

“A hundred and twenty francs, Monsieur,” said the man suavely.

The Senator drew near. “That was an expensive suggestion of yours, Gerald,” he observed smiling, as the other put down six gold pieces. And then he said, “Well?”

“Well, father, there’s not much to tell. This Mr. Stephens will come over on Friday if there’s still no news of Mr. Dampier by then. He wants us to go to the Prefecture of Police. He says we ought to try and get at the Prefect of Police himself.”

There came a long pause: the two were walking along a crowded street. Suddenly Gerald stopped and turned to the Senator. “Father,” he said impulsively, “I suppose that now, at last, you do believe Mrs. Dampier’s story?”

The young man spoke with a vehemence and depth of feeling which disturbed his father. What a good thing it was that this English lawyer was coming to relieve them all from a weight and anxiety which was becoming, to the Senator himself, if not to the two younger people, quite intolerable.

“Well,” he said at last, “I am of course glad to know that everything, so far, goes to prove that Mrs. Dampier’s account of herself is true.”

“That being so, don’t you think the Hôtel Saint Ange ought to be searched?”

“Searched?” repeated Senator Burton slowly. “Searched for what?”

“If I had charge of this business—I mean sole charge—the first thing I would do would be to have the Hôtel Saint Ange searched from top to bottom!” said Gerald vehemently.

“Is that Mrs. Dampier’s suggestion?”

“No, father, it’s mine. I had a talk with that boy Jules last night, and I’m convinced he’s lying. There’s another thing I should like to do. I should like to go to the office of the ‘New York Herald’ and enlist the editor’s help. I would have done it long ago if this man Dampier had been an American.”

“And you would have done a very foolish thing, my boy.” The Senator spoke with more dry decision than was his wont. “Come, come, Gerald, you and I mustn’t quarrel over this affair! Let us think of the immediate thing to do.” He put his hand on his son’s arm.

“Yes, father?”

“I suppose that the first thing to do is to take this Mr. Stephens’ advice?”

“Why, of course, father! Will you, or shall I, go to the Prefecture of Police?”

“Well, Gerald, I have bethought myself of that courteous President of the French Senate who wrote me such a pleasant note when we first arrived in Paris this time. No doubt he would give me a personal introduction to the Prefect of Police.”

“Why, father, that’s a first rate idea! Hadn’t you better go right now and get it?”

“Yes, perhaps I had; and meanwhile you can tell the poor little woman that her friend will be here on Friday.”

“Yes, I will. And father? May I tell Daisy that now you agree with me about Mrs. Dampier—that you no longer believe the Poulains’ story?”

“No,” said Senator Burton a little sternly. “You are to say nothing of the sort, Gerald. I have only known this girl three days—I have known the Poulains nine years. Of course it’s a great relief to me to learn that Mrs. Dampier’s account of herself is true—so far as you’ve been able to ascertain such a fact in a few minutes’ conversation with an unknown man over the telephone—but that does not affect my good opinion of the Poulains.”

And on this the father and son parted, for the first time in their joint lives, seriously at odds the one with the other.

“Give you an introduction to our Prefect of Police? Why, certainly!”

The white-haired President of the French Senate looked curiously at the American gentleman who had sought him out at the early hour of eleven o’clock.

“You will find Monsieur Beaucourt a charming man,” he went on. “I hear nothing but good of the way he does his very difficult work. He is a type to whom you are used in America, my dear Senator, but whom we perhaps too often lack in France among those who govern us. Monsieur Beaucourt is a strong man—a man who takes his own line and sticks to it. I was told only the other day that crime had greatly diminished in our city since he became Prefect. He is thoroughly trusted by his subordinates, and you can imagine what that means when one remembers that our beautiful Paris is the resort of all the international rogues of Europe. And if they tease us by their presence at ordinary times, you can imagine what it is like during an Exhibition Year!”