Jason | Page 4

world," said Ste. Marie--and he spoke the truth--"there is not another such square. Regard it, mon brave! Bow yourself before it! It is a miracle."
The great bronze lamps were alight, and they cast reflections upon the still damp pavement about them. To either side, the trees of the Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs-Elysées lay in a solid black mass; in the middle, the obelisk rose slender and straight, its pointed top black against the sky; and beneath, the water of the Nèreid fountains splashed and gurgled. Far beyond, the gay lights of the rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster; and beyond these still, the tall columns of the Madeleine ended the long vista. Pedestrians and cabs crept across that vast space and seemed curiously little, like black insects, and round about it all the eight cities of France sat atop their stone pedestals and looked on. Ste. Marie gave a little sigh of pleasure, and the two moved forward, bearing to the left, toward the Champs-Elysées.
"And now," said he, "about these Benhams. What is the thing I cannot quite recall? What has happened to them?"
"I suppose," said the other man, "you mean the disappearance of Miss Benham's young brother a month ago--before you returned to Paris. Yes, that was certainly very odd--that is, it was either very odd or very commonplace. And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it. The boy's name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool, but not downright vicious, I should think. I never knew him at all well, but I know he spent his time chiefly at the Café de Paris and at the Olympia and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though the family has had a small army of detectives on his trail they've not discovered the smallest clew. It's deuced odd altogether. You might think it easy to disappear like that, but it's not."
"No--no," said Ste. Marie, thoughtfully. "No, I should fancy not.
"This boy," he said, after a pause--"I think I had seen him--had him pointed out to me--before I went away. I think it was at Henry's Bar, where all the young Americans go to drink strange beverages. I am quite sure I remember his face. A weak face, but not quite bad."
And after another little pause he asked:
"Was there any reason why he should have gone away--any quarrel or that sort of thing?"
"Well," said the other man, "I rather think there was something of the sort. The boy's uncle--Captain Stewart--middle-aged, rather prim old party--you'll have met him, I dare say--he intimated to me one day that there had been some trivial row. You see, the lad isn't of age yet, though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house. The boy's father is dead. There's a quaint old beggar, if you like--the grandfather. He was rather a swell in the diplomatic, in his day, it seems--rather an important swell. Now he's bedridden. He sits all day in bed and plays cards with his granddaughter or with a very superior valet, and talks politics with the men who come to see him. Oh yes, he's a quaint old beggar. He has a great quantity of white hair and an enormous square white beard and the fiercest eyes I ever saw, I should think. Everybody's frightened out of their wits of him. Well, he sits up there and rules his family in good old patriarchal style, and it seems he came down a bit hard on the poor boy one day over some folly or other, and there was a row and the boy went out of the house swearing he'd be even."
"Ah, well, then," said Ste. Marie, "the matter seems simple enough. A foolish boy's foolish pique. He is staying in hiding somewhere to frighten his grandfather. When he thinks the time favorable he will come back and be wept over and forgiven."
The other man walked a little way in silence.
"Ye-es," he said, at last. "Yes, possibly. Possibly you are right. That's what the grandfather thinks. It's the obvious solution. Unfortunately there is more or less against it. The boy went away with--so far as can be learned--almost no money, almost none at all. And he has already been gone a month. Miss Benham, his sister, is sure that something has happened to him, and I'm a bit inclined to think so, too. It's all very odd. I should think he might have been kidnapped but that no demand has been made for money."
"He was not," suggested Ste. Marie--"not