XIII

“Yes, yes, my boy, I’m quite well. Don’t trouble about me,” said Lord Culvers, as he shook hands with Clive. “I’m a trifle worried, that’s all, and a little tired. Juliet sent you to meet me! Ah! very thoughtful of her, I’m sure⁠—But⁠—but where is Sefton? Have you seen anything of him?”

They were standing within the station, just outside the barrier, through which a motley crowd of passengers of many nationalities was passing.

“I have not seen Captain Culvers, and know nothing of his movements,” answered Clive, curtly. “I have a carriage waiting for you; where will you like to drive? I suppose your man will look after your baggage?

“Ah yes, he’ll look after my portmanteau, and send it on to your hotel. But⁠—but where can Sefton be? He must have had my telegram. He must be ill, surely.”

“That’s very likely,” said Clive, coldly, and thinking of the two B’s.

“Then I think I’ll drive first to the Rue Vervien and look him up. Poor fellow, he may be frantic to learn the news I have to tell him.” Then he paused, with his foot on the step of the voiture, looking dubiously at Clive. “I⁠—I⁠—don’t think it will be necessary for you to go with me, Clive⁠—Don’t mistake, I’m only too glad of your company at such a time; but⁠—but you know you two don’t quite hit it off together.”

Clive could have laughed at any other time at the old gentleman’s nervous anxiety to keep him and Sefton apart. But the present was no time for smiling, even, so he answered, gloomily:

“I’ll walk up and down the street, or wait for you anywhere you like, while you call on Captain Culvers. But if you don’t mind, we’ll drive together to his house. There’s a great deal I want to know that you can tell me.”

So it was on their way to the Rue Vervien that Clive had the letter of the English priest read to him, with its story of the strange finding of Ida’s brooch.

Read one way, it seemed to confirm Mr. Redway’s supposition that Ida was in Paris at the present moment. Looked at in another light, it seemed to give a basis to their gloomiest fears.

“I suppose,” Clive said, savagely, “you feel bound to look up Culvers, otherwise I should say don’t lose a minute in going to the house of this priest, see the brooch, and drive straight away to the Palais de Justice.”

“Ah yes, my boy, I feel bound, as you say, to look up Sefton. You’re very good to⁠—to give me the pleasure of your company. But Sefton, as you know, is the right person to act with me in this matter. And⁠—and if you get tired of waiting, and go back to your hotel, I⁠—I shan’t feel affronted.”

Clive bit his lip to keep back an angry word. Lord Culvers had as good as dismissed him; he paused, even, on the doorstep of No. 15, as if expecting him to shake hands, and say that, as he was no longer of any use, he’d go back at once. But Clive did not choose to be dismissed. Instinctively he felt that they might be on the very verge of a crisis, that a single false step might ruin all, and that Lord Culvers, advised only by his nephew, might very easily take that false step.

So at the risk of being thought de trop, and of having to hear Sefton use that odious expression, “my wife,” again and again in his most offensively possessive tone, he told Lord Culvers that he would wait for him as long as he pleased, but at the same time he thought that three minutes was enough and to spare for Captain Culvers to get his hat and walk down the stairs into the street; nothing more than that was required of him.

It was, however, more than three minutes⁠—nearer quarter of an hour⁠—before Lord Culvers came out of the house and reentered the carriage. And when he did so it was unaccompanied by Sefton.

“I can’t make it out⁠—I’m bewildered utterly,” he said, when he had directed the coachman to drive to the Rue Bellarmine. “Sefton has behaved in the most extraordinary manner, refused point-blank to go with me to identify Ida’s brooch; that is, if I adhere to my resolve of driving to the Prefect of Police afterwards. He said the most outrageous things to me; claimed the brooch as his property; said that he would have no confounded fuss made over his wife’s diamonds.”

Clive’s remark on this was a short, sharp expression which, if Sefton had heard, he might have felt disposed to resent. Lord Culvers’s face grew more and more distressed as he went on with his story.

“It’s mystery upon mystery. I can’t think that Sefton altogether knew what he was saying; his face was flushed, his manner very excited. When I went in he had a newspaper in his hand, and he drew my attention to an advertisement which he said had appeared in several English and French journals, and asked me if I had had anything to do with its insertion. He’d teach people to meddle with his private affairs, he added. Such an extraordinary advertisement it was, ‘Sub signo et sub rosa,’ nothing more. My head is going round, Clive. Can you see a meaning in all this? I don’t like to say it, but the impression left on my mind is that Sefton had had a little more wine than was good for him, and did not quite know what he was saying.”

Then they had pulled up at the priest’s house in the Rue Bellarmine, and the task of identifying the brooch for the moment drove Sefton and his extraordinary conduct from their thoughts.

Father Baldwin did not keep them waiting. He entered the room brooch in hand.

“This is the exact condition in which it was when taken from the offertory bag,” he said as he handed it to Lord Culvers.

Lord Culvers took out his eyeglass and closely examined it. Then he started and turned a shade paler.

“Ida’s brooch, not a doubt. There is the emerald with the flaw in it; but it was not in this condition when she wore it last,” he said, as he passed it to Clive for inspection.

Clive saw at a glance that the brooch had been tampered with. The ruby eyes of the bird had disappeared; from its body here and there diamonds had been abstracted⁠—abstracted, too, with a rough hand, and some, no doubt, rough-and-ready tool⁠—assuredly not with the hand and the tool of a skilled jeweller. Also, sundry of the emeralds in the spray which the bird held in its beak, were missing, and the pin of the brooch was broken.

Questions addressed to the priest elicited no further information than that he had already given in his letter. He, however, strongly advised that the Commissaire of Police should at once be consulted on the matter.

There seemed to be no other course open to them now. So Lord Culvers, after writing his cheque for the promised reward and desiring Father Baldwin to pay it to the credit of any charity he pleased, ordered the voiturier to drive at once to the Palais de Justice.