Dross Part 27

I therefore hurried to Hyde Park Street, and had the good fortune to find all the party within. I made known the contents of Sander's letter, adding thereto, for the benefit of the ladies, John Turner's comments and my own suspicions.

"We shall catch him yet!" cried Alphonse, forgetting in the excitement of the moment the dignified reserve which had of late stood between us. "Bravo, Howard! we shall catch him yet."

He wrung my hand effusively, and then, remembering himself, glanced at Isabella, as I thought, and lapsed into attentive and suspicious silence.

Having made my report I withdrew, and at the corner of the street was nearly run over by a private hansom cab, at that time a fas.h.i.+onable vehicle among men about town. I caught a glimpse of a courteous gloved hand, and Mr. Devar's face wreathed in the pleasantest of smiles.

"You omitted to tell me at what hour you dine," was the remark with which Mr. Devar made his entrance. He refused to accept a chair, and took his stand on the hearth-rug without monopolising the fire, and with perfect ease and a word for every one.

"As I drove here I pa.s.sed your friend Mr. Howard," he said presently, and Isabella said "Ah!"

"Yes, and he looked somewhat absorbed."

Mr. Devar waited, and after a pause, kindly continued to interest himself in so unworthy a subject.

"Did you not tell me," he remarked, "that Mr. Howard is engaged on some--er--quixotic enterprise--the search for a fortune he has lost?"

"The fortune is Monsieur Giraud's," said the lady of the house.

Devar turned to Alphonse with a bow appropriately French.

"Then I congratulate Monsieur on his--possibilities."

His manner of speech was suggestive of a desire to conceal a glibness which is usually accounted a fault.

"And I hope that Mr. Howard's obvious absorption was not due to--discouragement."

"On the contrary," answered Isabella, "Mr. Howard has just given us a most hopeful report."

"Has he caught the thief?"

"No; but his agent, a Mr. Sander, writes from Brussels that he has traced the thief to the Netherlands, and there seems to be some probability that he will be taken."

"My experience of thieves," said Mr. Devar airily, "has been small.

But I imagine they are hard to take when they once get away. Mr.

Howard is, I fear, wasting his time."

Isabella answered nothing to this, though her pinched lips seemed to indicate a doubt whether such a waste was in reality going forward.

"Our neighbour's enterprise usually appears to be a waste of time, does it not?" he said, with the large tolerance of a man owning to many failings.

Alphonse shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands with a gesture of helplessness, further accentuated by the bandage on his wrist.

"I do not so much want to catch the thief as to possess myself of the money," he said.

"You are charitable, Monsieur Giraud."

"No--I am poor."

Devar laughed in the pleasantest manner imaginable.

"And of course," he said, indicating the Frenchman's maimed hand, which was usually in evidence, "you are unable to undertake the search yourself?"

"As yet."

"Then you intend ultimately to join in the chase--you are a great sportsman, I hear?"

The graceful compliment was not lost upon Alphonse, who beamed upon his interlocutor.

"In a small way--in a small way," he answered. "Yes, when they strike a really good scent I shall follow, wounds or no wounds."

At this Mr. Devar expressed some concern, and made himself additionally agreeable. He refused still to be seated, saying that he had but come to ascertain the dinner hour on the following Thursday.

Nevertheless, he prolonged his stay and made himself vastly fascinating.

Chapter XX

Underhand

"Le doute empoisonne tout et ne tue rien."

As I walked through the park towards Isabella's house on the evening of the dinner-party, Devar's hansom cab dashed past me and stopped a few yards farther on. The man must have had sharp eyes to recognise me in a London haze on a November evening. Devar leapt from his cab and came towards me.

"Shall I walk with you or will you drive with me?" he said.

Placed between two evil alternatives, I suggested that it would be better for his health to walk with me--hoping, although it was a dry night, that his s.h.i.+ny boots were too precious or tight for such exercise. Mr. Devar, however, made a sign to the groom to follow, and slipped his hand engagingly within my arm.

"Glad of the chance of a walk," he said. "Wish I was a free man like you, Howard, London would not often see me!"

"What would?" I asked, for I like to know where vermin harbours.

"Ah!"--he paused, and, as I thought, glanced at me. "The wide world.

Should like, for instance, a roving commission such as yours--to look for a scoundrel with a lot of money-bags, who may be in London or Timbuctoo."

I walked on in silence, never having had quick speech or the habit of unburthening my soul to the first listener.

"Not likely to stay in London in November if he is a man of sense as well as enterprise," he added, jerking up the fur collar of his coat.

We walked on a little farther.

"Suppose you have no notion where he is?" said my bland companion, to which I made no articulate reply.

"_Do_ you know?" he asked at length, as one in a corner.

"Do you _want_ to know?" retorted I.