And hand-in-hand with the bitter recollection of the easy manner in which he had allowed himself to be blinded to the real state of Ida’s feelings towards him, came the thought that perhaps, after all, the bullet intended for Captain Culvers’s brain might more fitly find its home in his own.
XII
In his softer mood the voices of common sense and reason made themselves heard once more, counselling a suspension of judgement as well as of action, until the morrow put him in possession of the news that Lord Culvers would bring.
The circumstances under which the brooch had been found might possibly have thrown a fresh light on the whole affair, might have already swept away Lord Culvers’s wish to hush the matter up, and it might be that even now the whole machinery of French and English police had been set to work to trace the missing girl.
The hours that must intervene before his conjectures could have yea or nay given to them, stretched before him like so many months. It was all very well for common sense and reason to say, “Do nothing till you know what turn affairs are taking.” Inclination whispered, “There can be no harm in your taking a survey of No. 15, Rue Vervien, from the outside, and if by any chance you and Captain Culvers should meet face to face, and you—well, should have something to say to him, no great damage could possibly be done.”
So he took his hat, and, after despatching a telegram to Juliet, saying that without fail he would meet Lord Culvers on his arrival the next day, he turned his steps in the direction of the Rue Vervien.
It was nearly six o’clock in the evening, and the Boulevards were beginning to look somewhat deserted, cafés and restaurants to be somewhat thronged.
He had to ask his way once or twice, for he was not sure in which direction lay the Rue Vervien. He was directed down the Avenue de l’Opéra, and thence into a narrow street lined on either side with cafés and restaurants. Off this street at right angles led the Rue Vervien, a quiet, old-fashioned thoroughfare, with tall but irregularly-built houses, that were evidently occupied by tenants of various degrees of social rank.
There was not much traffic here, the street was a byway, and seemed to lead nowhere. Two girls in muslin caps were carrying between them a basket of well-starched linen; a nursemaid and some much be-frilled children went sauntering past. Two men were coming up the street at a somewhat rapid pace, and were talking loudly and excitedly as they came along.
It did not need a second glance at these men to discover their nationality; the cut of their clothes, the very tie of their cravat, proclaimed them Englishmen—Englishmen, too, of a type to be found mostly on the racecourse and in the betting-ring, and best described by that untranslateable word, “horsey.”
As they passed Clive he distinctly heard Captain Culvers’s name mentioned. Upon which one of them exclaimed:
“It’s the two B’s—baccarat and brandy—that’ll do for him. I doubt if he’ll be fit for play tonight.”
And then their voices passed out of earshot.
The remark did not strike pleasant keynotes of thought. They had most likely just come away from an interview with Captain Culvers, and no doubt had spoken with the veracity of eyewitnesses. Clive scowled at the row of tall houses now beginning to throw long shadows across the street. Now which was No. 15?
Here his attention was arrested by little Italian organ-boy, who, with a monkey mounted on his shoulder, was grinding out some doleful melody in front of one of the larger and more pretentious houses.
With the recollection of the little messenger of whom he had gone in pursuit still in his mind, he said to himself: “It will be strange if that boy is playing in front of No. 15.”
He went on a few paces and surveyed the house before which the boy stood. It was tall and narrow, with iron balconies, and windows filled in with fluted muslin blinds, much yellowed with sun and dirt.
And over its green-painted door, in brass figures, stood its number—15.
It might be nothing more than a strange coincidence, or it might be one of those “momentous trifles” which, in the annals of crime, have times without number led to the detection and punishment of criminals.
With his thoughts in their present condition, the latter supposition seemed the more probable.
He steadily scrutinised the boy’s features, so as to have them by heart in case of future need.
The child was of the usual type that one associates with a monkey and an organ—large-eyed and olive-skinned, with full, pouting lips and straight black hair.
He touched his slouching felt hat, and droned away more vigorously than ever when he saw that he had attracted the gentleman’s attention.
The well-trained monkey pulled off his little tasseled cap and presented it. Clive dropped a coin into it, and, accosting the lad, asked him in the best Italian he could command how long he had been in Paris, and if he had ever been in England.
The boy’s reply was voluble enough, but was given in a patois whose only word intelligible to Clive was “Signor.”
So Clive tried him with the same questions in French, only, however, with a similar result. Then an idea struck him, and taking a half-sovereign out of his purse, he held it up to the boy and beckoned to him to follow him.
The child, with something of wonder showing in his big black eyes, followed him out of the quiet thoroughfare into the street of many restaurants. Among these Clive selected one that had an Italian name over its doorway, and where the faces of the waiters, as they bustled in and out among their marble tables, proclaimed their nationality.
He called a waiter, and desired him to bring to the boy whatever he chose to have in the
