The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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Hôtel Saint Ange.
Here were rough garrets, oppressively hot on a day like this, but each and all obviously serving some absent client of the hotel as temporary dwelling-place.
Madame Poulain looked quite exhausted. "I think," she said plaintively, "I will remain here, monsieur, at the end of the passage. You will find every door unlocked. Perhaps we ought to tell you that these rooms are not as a rule inhabited, or indeed used by us in any way. That must excuse their present condition. But in a season like this--well, dame! we could fill every cranny twice over!"
Gerald and the three Frenchmen walked along the corridor, the latter flinging open door after door of the curious cell-like little bedrooms furnished for the most part with only an iron bed, a couple of chairs, and the usual walnut-wood wardrobe.
"What's this?" asked one of the men sharply. "We find a door plastered up here, Monsieur Poulain."
But it was Madame Poulain who came languidly forward from the end of the passage. "Yes," she said. "If you wish to see that room you will have to get a ladder and climb up from the outside. A young Breton priest died here last January from scarlet fever, monsieur--" she lowered her voice instinctively--"and the sanitary authorities forced us to block up the room in this way--most unfortunately for us."
"It is strange," said the man, "that the seal of the sanitary authorities is not affixed to the door."
"To tell you the truth," said Madame Poulain uncomfortably, "the seal was there, but I removed it. You see, monsieur, it would not have been pleasant, even when all danger of infection was gone, to say anything to our other clients about so sad an event."
The man nodded his head, and went on.
But the incident made a disagreeable impression on Gerald Burton. And when they all finally came down to the courtyard, the Police Agents being by this time on far better terms with Monsieur and Madame Poulain than they had been at the beginning--on such good terms indeed that they were more than willing to attack the refreshments the hotel-keeper had made ready for them--he drew the head Agent aside.
"There was one thing," he said, "which rather troubled me--"
The man looked at him attentively. "Yes, monsieur?" He realised that this young man, whom he took for an Englishman, had been present on behalf of the people at whose request the Perquisition had been ordered. He was therefore inclined to treat him with civility.
"I mean that closed room on the top floor," said Gerald hesitatingly. "Is there no way of ascertaining whether Madame Poulain's story is true--whether, that is, the room was ever condemned by the sanitary authorities?"
"Yes," said the Agent, "nothing is easier, monsieur, than to find that out."
He took a note-book out of his pocket, tore out a sheet, and wrote a few lines on it. Then he called one of his subordinates to him and said a few words of which Gerald caught the sense. It was an order to go to the office of the sanitary inspector of the district and bring back an answer at once.
In a quarter of an hour the man was back.
"The answer is 'Yes,'" he said a little breathlessly, and he handed his chief a large sheet of paper, headed:
VILLE DE PARIS,
Sanitary Inspector's Department.
In answer to your question, I have to report that we did condemn a room in the Hôtel Saint Ange for cause of infectious disease.
The Police Agent handed it to Gerald Burton. "I felt sure that in that matter," he observed, "Madame Poulain was telling the truth. But, of course, a Perquisition in a house of this kind is a mere farce, without a plan to guide us. Think of the strange winding passages along which we were led, of the blind rooms, of the deep cupboards into which we peeped! For all we can tell, several apartments may have entirely escaped our knowledge."
"Do you make many of these Perquisitions?" asked Gerald curiously.
"No, monsieur. We are very seldom asked to search a whole house. Almost always we have some indication as to the special room or rooms which are to be investigated. In fact since I became attached to the police, six years ago, this is the first time I have ever had to carry out a thorough Perquisition," he laughed a little ruefully, "and it makes one dry!"
Gerald Burton took the hint. He put a twenty-franc piece into the man's hand. "For you and your men," he said. "Go and get a good lunch: I am sure you need it."
The Police Agent thanked him cordially. "One word, monsieur? Perhaps I ought to tell you that we of the police are quite sure that the gentleman about whom you are anxious left this hotel--if indeed he was ever in it. The Poulains bear a very good character--better than that of many hotel-keepers of whom I could tell you--better than that of certain hotel-keepers who own grand international hotels the other side of the river. Of course I had to be rough with them at first--one has to keep up one's character, you know. But, monsieur? I was told confidentially that this Perquisition would probably lead to nothing, and, as you see, it has led to nothing."
Gerald sighed, rather wearily, for he too was tired, he too would be glad of his luncheon. Yes, this search had been, as the Police Agent hinted, something of a farce after all, and he had led not only himself, but, what he regretted far more, poor Nancy Dampier down a blind alley.
He found her waiting, feverishly eager and anxious to hear the result of the Perquisition. When the door of the salon opened, she got up and turned to him, a strained look on her face.
"Well?" she said. "Well, Mr. Burton?"
He shook his head despondently. "We found nothing, absolutely nothing which could connect your husband with any one of the rooms which we searched, Mrs. Dampier. If, after leaving you, he did spend the night in the Hôtel Saint Ange, the Poulains have obliterated every trace of his presence."
She gave a low cry of pain, of bitter disappointment, and suddenly sinking down into a chair, buried her head in her hands--"I can't bear it," she wailed. "I only want to know the truth, whatever the truth may be! Anything would be better than what I am going through now."
Gerald Burton came and stood by the bowed figure. He became curiously pale with that clear, not unhealthy, pallor which is induced by exceptional intensity of feeling.
"Mrs. Dampier?" he said, in a very low voice.
She lifted her head and looked at him fixedly.
"Everything that a man can do I will do to find your husband. If I fail to find him living I will find him dead."
Chapter XII
But it is far easier to form such a resolution and to make such a promise as that which Gerald Burton had made to Nancy Dampier than it is to carry it out.
The officials of the Prefecture of Police grew well accustomed to the sight of the tall, good-looking young American coming and going in their midst, and they all showed a sympathetic interest in his quest. But though the police officials were lavish in kindly words, and in permits and passes which he found an open sesame to the various places where it was just conceivable that John Dampier, after having met with some kind of accident, might have been carried, they were apparently quite unable to elucidate the growing mystery of the English artist's disappearance.
Early on the Friday morning Gerald Burton telephoned to Nancy Dampier's friend and lawyer the fact that they were still entirely without any clue to the whereabouts of the missing man. And, true to his word, Mr. Stephens arrived in Paris that same evening.
He found his poor young client awaiting him in the company of the new friends to whom she owed so deep a debt of gratitude, and this lessened, to a certain extent, the awkwardness of their meeting. Even so, the shrewd, kindly Englishman felt much shocked and distressed by the change which had taken place in Nancy.
Just a month ago he had seen her standing, most radiant as well as prettiest