The Strange Adventures of Mr. John Smith in Paris/Chapter 8

USK had drawn a veil over Paris when Clarke awoke, and the only thing he was conscious of for a time, in the darkness of the shabby little room, was a vague white splotch, elusively outlined against the shadows. With an effort he focused it with his eyes, and after a long, long time he came to know it was the face of his daughter.

“Edna!” he said feebly.

“You are awake, father?” and a white hand, chilling as ice, rested for a moment on his brow. “Do you feel better?”

“I’m all right, Girly,” he assured her. “I was a little upset, that’s all.”

There was silence. He moved slightly, and something under the covers bumped against his side. One hand, exploring, came in contact with the little leather bag. The bonds! He smiled. They were safe yet! Smith hadn’t been able to get them!

“I’m quite well.” he continued, and there was a steadier note in the quavering voice. “In another week I’ll be good as new. It takes more than a little typhoid to knock out your daddy, girly.”

Edna didn’t stir. After one quick glance she didn’t even look at him. Instead she sat motionless, with pallid face, staring out the mottled window for a minute or more. The clear blue eyes had become somber and tense in the rigidity of their gaze.

“A gentleman called to see you while you were asleep,” she said irrelevantly at last. “I told him, of course, that he couldn’t see you; that you were ill.”

“Who was he?” Clarke asked quickly.

“He said he was the Marquis d’Aubigny,” the girl told him with deadly listlessness in her tone, “and he inquired for Mr. Charles Roebling.”

“But I should have seen him—I must see him!” Clarke blazed with a note of excitement in his voice. “You shouldn’t have sent him away! You should have—”

“He will return this evening; he said he would,” the girl interrupted. Then, after a pause, “Father, why Charles Roebling instead of Clarke?”

“For reasons you wouldn’t understand—business reasons,” he explained tersely. “Did he set an hour?”

“Eight o’clock,” she replied. “And why this dreadful little place instead of one of the hotels? We have always stopped at a hotel before, and—”

“Girly, you are asking about things now that I couldn’t explain—to you. Some day you’ll know; until then you wouldn’t understand.”

“And why that strange scene at the Café de la Paix?” Edna rushed on with sudden, dogged violence. “Why should Mr. Smith, or whatever his name is, be arrested under the name of Clarke—under your name? He seemed to know you, and you knew him. Why didn’t one of you explain that there had been a mistake? And why should W. Mandeville Clarke—you—be arrested at all?”

She stopped with an odd, cold feeling of numbness and, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, stared moodily at the floor. The scarlet had gone from her lips; her teeth were clenched desperately.

DNA, don’t disturb yourself with things you don’t understand,” Clarke reproved tartly. “Don’t ask silly questions.”

“I must know what it all means, Daddy—I must know!” The tenacity of purpose that characterized the father was born anew in the daughter. “I suppose Mr. Smith is locked up somewhere now under your name. How long is he to stay there? What has he done? What have you done?”

This was a new mood in his daughter. Clarke stared at her in sheer amazement, mingled with uneasiness. She had missed nothing of the meeting at the café! When he spoke again it was in the old voice of command she knew, the merciless, abrupt, triumphant business tone.

“If Smith remains locked up for a week, it means a fortune for me a fortune of millions,” he said. “If by any chance he is released and finds me the second time, it means—it means ruin, absolute ruin!”

“But why?” the girl insisted.

He didn’t answer the question, and for some reason she didn’t press it. Instead:

“You are not a rich man, are you, Daddy?” she asked curiously. “I mean rich in the sense of the great rich men of New York?”

“I’m a pauper, compared to the Wall Street crowd,” Clarke replied steadily. “I am worth perhaps three hundred thousand dollars, perhaps less. However, if Smith stays in jail for a week, just a week, I’ll be worth millions! Millions, Girly! Do you understand?”

There was some inarticulate noise in the girl’s throat, a sort of gasp, and she rose. Her slim hands closed tightly behind her back; she stood rigid.

“I shall not ask you, Daddy, why it is to your advantage for Mr. Smith to remain in jail: nor shall I ask you why he should have submitted to arrest under your name. But there is one thing I will ask, and I have a right to an answer! Why should anyone by your name be arrested? What have you done?”

Clarke picked nervously at the sheets with one hand, while the other gripped the little leather bag. “There’s nothing I can say to that question now,” he remarked slowly.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t answer it. Will you answer this: Has there been any act of—dishonesty?”

The words came hollowly, with an effort. Clarke stared at her for a long time. Finally, “It is useless to continue such a conversation. I will see the Marquis d’Aubigny when he calls.”

“Is it possible for a man in your position, a banker, to raise a large sum of money, a very large sum of money, or to have it intrusted to him for well, say for investment?”

“Why, Girly, that is my business.”

His fingers closed more tightly on the little leather bag as his eyes searched her face for the meaning of that singular question. And as he looked she seemed to be overcome suddenly by a violent revulsion of feeling and he found heron her knees beside the bed, her wet face buried in the sheets, sobbing.

“Forgive me, Daddy!” she pleaded. “Forgive me! It’s all so strange, so unreal! I can’t understand. I don’t suppose I ever shall. I think I am not—not quite myself.”

Clarke rested his hand on her radiant hair until the storm of sobs had passed and fiercely fought back some powerful emotion that halted his words. “Do you know what you need more than anything else in the world?” he queried gently at last, and this was the father speaking. She looked up expectantly.

“You need a good cry. Run along now, and don’t disturb yourself about horrid things you don’t understand.”

HAT night Marquis d’Aubigny, a little man of indeterminate age, immaculate, foppish even in dress, with that singularly loathsome expression of the eyes that one grows accustomed to seeing in the cafés of the Champs Elysées, called and remained with Clarke for an hour. Edna, in person, admitted him to the poor little apartment, and under his stare flushed crimson with intangible anger, a helpless rebellion against the things she saw there. With hot cheeks she turned away into the little cubbyhole of a room adjoining that in which her father lay and flung herself across the bed.

It was no fault of hers that she heard the conversation in that room, separated from that of her father by only a flimsy door which would not close perfectly; but when the Marquis had gone she stood for a time staring after him, then entered the room where her father lay. He was sitting straight up in bed in the act of opening the little leather bag. He tried to conceal it.

“What do you want?” he demanded harshly.

She stood silent an instant, waxing a little. “Nothing, Daddy,” she said falteringly. “I don’t want anything. I don’t think I am—I am quite well.”

As he glared she stretched out her hands to him imploringly, her lips moved silently, and she fell prone.