The Strange Adventures of Mr. John Smith in Paris/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
IT was nearly midnight when Mr. John Smith ushered Edna Clarke into a small private dining room of a quaint little place back in the Latin Quarter, a place where they might talk undisturbed. She had roused herself from the faint, to find that she was being carried through a forest, borne lightly as a child in great arms which were rigid as steel, arms that held her close, close as a mother holds a frightened little one. Her pallid face went scarlet as she slipped to the ground. Mr. Smith gave a word of explanation, and then they had taken a taxicab back the way they had come, and beyond to the Latin Quarter. They had both been strangely silent on the long ride. She had asked only two questions, and he had answered them—no more.
“Are you a detective?”
“No, ma’am. Some people in Paris may think I am; but I am not.”
Edna gasped, it was a sigh of relief, and Mr. Smith leaned toward her suddenly. He thought she was going to faint again.
“Then, what is your business?” curiously.
“I am assistant paying teller in your father’s bank in Passaic, New Jersey.”
“Oh!”
Then followed a long, moody silence, unbroken until Mr. Smith offered his hand to assist her from the taxi. In the small dining room a sip of wine brought the color back to her cheeks, and a certain tense fear passed, leaving the blue eyes clear again. To Mr. Smith the last hour had seemed all a dream. He couldn’t believe it had happened, and yet here—here before him was the girl. He waited, waited patiently for her to speak.
IT’S all very—very strange, isn’t it?” she queried at last, as their eyes met.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“From the time I knew you were searching for my father I thought you were a detective. It’s strange that I should never have seen you in the bank.”
“It’s stranger that I didn’t see you, ma’am. I’m tucked away in a cage all the time, where you wouldn’t see me unless you looked for me. I don’t believe I ever saw you in the bank; but I know who you are. Years ago, when you were in Paris, I used to write letters to you at your father’s dictation. I was his private secretary. And once I saw a picture of you. I don’t recall ever having seen you, though, until that first day in Paris, in front of the Hotel Ritz.”
“You didn’t see me on shipboard?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t recall that I saw anybody on board ship. All the time I wasn’t worrying about the business that was bringing me to Paris I was trying to invent a way to hold my breakfast down. I was quite busy.”
The girl’s eyes had been softly aglow; but now the old troubled look that Mr. Smith had seen in them before came back.
“It is of that business that I want to speak to you now,” she said slowly.
“Yes, ma’am. I know it.”
“Know it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
For an instant she sought to read the straight staring eyes; there was nothing there save masterful assurance. “You are not a detective, Mr. Smith. You have told me that, and I believe it. Then why did you come all the way to Paris to search for my father? Were you sent?”
“No, ma’am. I was not sent.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I’d rather not tell you, ma’am. It’s a little personal matter between us.”
“And why, that day at the Café de la Paix, did you permit yourself to be arrested under the name of my father, when my father was there within reach, and you knew he was there?”
“I’d rather not tell you, ma’am. It wouldn’t do any good for you to know.”
“I must know, Mr. Smith! Either I have done my father a great injustice, or you have. He will tell me nothing. It seems to be within your power to make it all clear to me, and certainly it is within my power to rectify a—a grave error, if it all means what I’m afraid it means.” She came back to the original question. “Why did you follow my father to Paris? I must know. Don’t think you must spare my feelings. I must know!”
MR. SMITH squirmed uneasily in his seat and after a moment rose and stared out the window for a long time. “I am thirty-three years old,” he said at last, irrelevantly. “Twenty years of that time I have worked for your father. I was his office boy first. Then I studied shorthand and used to help the stenographers in the bank. One day I was called upon to assist your father in some special work. He liked the way I did it, and a year or so later I became his private secretary. I held down that job until about six years ago, and in that time, of course, ma’am, I learned a great deal about his personal business. It was then that I used to write letters to you, here in Paris.” He paused.
“Go on,” the girl urged.
“The bank’s business grew, ma’am, and finally there was need of an assistant paying teller. Mr. Clarke gave me the job, and I have held it ever since. Being assistant paying teller isn’t of any particular importance; but it carries responsibilities. That is, ma’am, I don’t mean that the fate of the world hangs upon a man in such a position; but in the course of a month he will handle, perhaps, millions and millions of other people’s money. That’s the sort of responsibility I mean. All paying tellers have that kind; but I had another kind. For instance, sometimes stocks and bonds are left with a bank as security for a loan, say. Those securities are in my care; I am responsible for them. They are sealed by the president of the bank in my presence, and my own seal is added in his presence before the securities are placed in the vault. It comes down to this, ma’am: there are two persons responsible for the safety of such securities, and either can call the other to an accounting in the event of any irregularity.”
He stopped suddenly, struck by the frightened, haunted look in her eyes. Her slim white fingers, bare of gloves, were interlocked fiercely.
“Well?” she insisted.
“I guess I hadn’t better go on, ma’am.”
“You must!” she commanded. “I must understand it!”
“It will hurt you, ma’am.” After a little pause, “I’d hate to feel that I had hurt you.”
The girl rose and went to him pleadingly. Her hands were at rest on his arm, her face, white again, upturned to his. the faint perfume of her hair was in his nostrils. “You must go on!” she commanded. “Whatever you may say cannot be worse than this agony of suspense, uncertainty.”
WELL, about four months ago one hundred and fifty ten thousand-dollar United States bonds—that is, a million and a half dollars in negotiable securities—were left in our keeping,” Mr. Smith continued. “They were sealed by your father in my presence; I added my seal in his presence. They were put into the vault. About two months ago your father, as you know, came to Paris. About three weeks ago I had occasion to rummage around in the vault, and I discovered that mice had gnawed a hole, as big as a silver dollar, say, in that sealed package. Then I discovered, ma’am, that the bonds were gone. There was only blank paper inside the package.”
“They were stolen, you mean?” The words came with an effort.
“They were missing, ma’am. The seals had been tampered with, broken, and new seals affixed. It had been done cleverly, so cleverly that even I should not have detected it if I hadn’t known that the bonds supposed to be inside were gone. I had no choice in reaching a conclusion, ma’am. The bonds were missing, and your father was gone.” His voice softened suddenly. “I don’t mean to hurt you, ma’am; I’m telling you merely because you insist.”
“I understand,” Edna said faintly. “What else?”
“I patched up the hole in the package, replaced it where it was, and the following day I asked for leave of absence for several weeks. I remained there a couple of days while experts went over my books,—they wouldn’t dare to open the package of bonds in your father’s absence,—then I sailed for France. I came, as you know, to find your father.” His tone hardened suddenly. “I believe that day in the café, if I had not seen that he had been ill, and you had not been with him, I should have killed him! I want you to understand, ma’am, what all this meant to me.”
“Killed him!” the girl repeated. “And yet, when he was in danger of discovery and arrest, you permitted the officer to take you. Why?”
THAT requires some more explaining. Bear in mind, please, that the fact that those bonds are missing is not known to any person connected with the bank, except your father and myself. If I could come to Paris, find your father, compel him to return the bonds and replace them in the vault, no one connected with the bank need ever have known.
“When the detective came and arrested me as Clarke, I allowed him to do it for the reason that I knew I should find your father the second time. If I had pointed out the real Clarke to the detective then, your father would have assumed that the loss of the bonds had been discovered, and brought about a snarl that these funny little policemen in Paris would never have solved. It would have meant his arrest and mine ultimately on a charge of embezzlement, where, if I could keep them away from him, it meant nothing particularly, unless of course the theft—er—the bonds had been missed. As a matter of fact, that arrest eased my mind a lot, because I learned from the police that there was no charge against your father, which means that the bonds have not been missed, and there was no charge against me. Some one in the United States has asked a private detective agency to locate your father, and the police, thinking I was Mr. Clarke, pinched me to bring the matter to a climax.”
“That search was instituted, I imagine, at the direction of my uncle in New York,” the girl explained. “We knew father had come to Paris, and then we had been unable to hear from him for weeks. It was because he was ill with typhoid, and unconscious, of course.”
“Yes, ma’am. It sounds awfully complicated; but it isn’t. The theft—I don’t quite mean that, ma’am the disappearance of the bonds has not been discovered. That is all, ma’am, I think.”
FOR a long time the girl stood, her hands gripping his, staring, staring into the rugged face. “I think I am beginning to understand,” she said slowly at last. “If the bonds are returned, it means that my father is not a—a thief? It means that this matter would never become public? It means—”
“It means the saving of your father’s business reputation, and the saving of mine,” Mr. Smith interrupted. “Frankly, the saving of his reputation was not the first thing in my mind when I came to Paris; it was the saving of my own. I am leaving the bank within a few months to become cashier of another bank. It is a promotion, ma’am. If this matter comes out, not only is your father ruined, but I am ruined. I am ambitious, ma’am,” he apologized.
“I understand, Mr. Smith,” said the girl softly. “Suppose—suppose those missing bonds should be placed in your hands? Is it too late to save my father, to save yourself?”
“It isn’t too late, unless they have found out at the bank that the bonds are gone,” Mr. Smith replied. “If they were placed in my hands, I should do the thing I intended to do,—take them back, replace them in the vault, and—that’s all.”
“A million and a half dollars!” the girl mused. “Suppose I should tell you, Mr. Smith, that my father hasn’t the bonds now?”
“I know it, ma’am.”
She seemed startled. “How did you know it?” He didn’t answer. “Perhaps you know where they are?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where?”
“You have them.”
THE girl turned away suddenly with a meaningless gesture of her slender hands and dropped into a chair at the table. At last she looked up resolutely, defiantly. “Yes. I stole them, Mr. Smith—stole them from my father!” she said. “He kept them in a little leather bag in his bed. I heard a strange conversation between my father and Marquis d’Aubigny, and afterward—”
“I have met him,” interposed Mr. Smith grimly.
“—and afterward I found the key to the bag and removed the bonds,” Edna rushed on. “I didn’t know what I intended to do with them then; but I knew they had been—I knew they were not my father’s, and—” She spread her hands in a little helpless movement. “My father was very ill again after that meeting with you. He is ill now, and it was necessary to have a nurse, the man who nursed him during all those weeks when we didn’t know where he was. The nurse came. I was afraid he would discover that the bag was empty, and—and I sent him away, bribed him to go. Now my father knows the bonds are gone and another nurse has come. I stole the bonds, Mr. Smith!”
Mr. Smith stared as if expecting her to go on. She dropped her head on her hands, and her shoulders shook with a storm of emotion. He took a step toward her. then stopped. “Yes, ma’am,” he said helplessly.
“I sent the note to you because I thought—I knew—you would understand.” she continued. “When I left the house to meet you, I was followed. I don’t know why, but it frightened me.”
“I know why,” said Mr. Smith. “I’ll tell you sometime.”
“I’m going to place the bonds in your hands, because I know you will do the necessary thing, whatever it is.” Edna rose suddenly and came to him. “I don’t know why,” she said frankly, “but I have more faith in you than any person I ever met. You will take the bonds home, and you know what else to do. I don’t. You will?”
Mr. Smith nodded.
“And you will do all you can to protect my father until he is well enough to return?”
Mr. Smith had come to Paris with the avowed intention of pounding Clarke to a pulp. He was being asked to protect him now—and he nodded a promise that he would!
“I was so sure of you,” and Edna’s pleading hands fluttered and came to rest on his arm, “that I engaged passage for you from Cherbourg on Wednesday.”
“Yes, ma’am. I know that.”
She didn’t ask how he knew. From the folds of the light coat she wore she produced a package, carefully wrapped. “Here are the bonds,” she said simply. “Whatever your motive in returning them, you are doing me—doing my father—the greatest favor that one can do. Some day it may be within my power to repay you, after a manner. You’ll have to take my word that I shall do it if the opportunity ever offers.”
For the first time in his business life Mr. John Smith forgot the bank, forgot his commercial integrity, forgot all else in the world save this wonderful woman, with eyes aglow, with hair shimmering in the soft radiance of the light, with scarlet lips pleading. She read the hungriness in the straight staring eyes and impetuously extended both hands. Bending low, he kissed them.