Within the Tides | Page 9

there. It was much better for the business. I
say . . ."
Renouard, his hand grasping the back of a chair, stared down at him
dumbly.

"Phew! That's a stunning girl. . . Why do you want to sit on that chair?
It's uncomfortable!"
"I wasn't going to sit on it." Renouard walked slowly to the window,
glad to find in himself enough self-control to let go the chair instead of
raising it on high and bringing it down on the Editor's head.
"Willie kept on gazing at her with tears in his boiled eyes. You should
have seen him bending sentimentally over her at dinner."
"Don't," said Renouard in such an anguished tone that the Editor turned
right round to look at his back.
"You push your dislike of young Dunster too far. It's positively
morbid," he disapproved mildly. "We can't be all beautiful after
thirty. . . . I talked a little, about you mostly, to the professor. He
appeared to be interested in the silk plant--if only as a change from the
great subject. Miss Moorsom didn't seem to mind when I confessed to
her that I had taken you into the confidence of the thing. Our Willie
approved too. Old Dunster with his white beard seemed to give me his
blessing. All those people have a great opinion of you, simply because I
told them that you've led every sort of life one can think of before you
got struck on exploration. They want you to make suggestions. What
do you think 'Master Arthur' is likely to have taken to?"
"Something easy," muttered Renouard without unclenching his teeth.
"Hunting man. Athlete. Don't be hard on the chap. He may be riding
boundaries, or droving cattle, or humping his swag about the
back-blocks away to the devil--somewhere. He may be even
prospecting at the back of beyond--this very moment."
"Or lying dead drunk in a roadside pub. It's late enough in the day for
that."
The Editor looked up instinctively. The clock was pointing at a quarter
to five. "Yes, it is," he admitted. "But it needn't be. And he may have lit
out into the Western Pacific all of a sudden-- say in a trading schooner.

Though I really don't see in what capacity. Still . . . "
"Or he may be passing at this very moment under this very window."
"Not he . . . and I wish you would get away from it to where one can
see your face. I hate talking to a man's back. You stand there like a
hermit on a sea-shore growling to yourself. I tell you what it is,
Geoffrey, you don't like mankind."
"I don't make my living by talking about mankind's affairs," Renouard
defended himself. But he came away obediently and sat down in the
armchair. "How can you be so certain that your man isn't down there in
the street?" he asked. "It's neither more nor less probable than every
single one of your other suppositions."
Placated by Renouard's docility the Editor gazed at him for a while.
"Aha! I'll tell you how. Learn then that we have begun the campaign.
We have telegraphed his description to the police of every township up
and down the land. And what's more we've ascertained definitely that
he hasn't been in this town for the last three months at least. How much
longer he's been away we can't tell."
"That's very curious."
"It's very simple. Miss Moorsom wrote to him, to the post office here
directly she returned to London after her excursion into the country to
see the old butler. Well--her letter is still lying there. It has not been
called for. Ergo, this town is not his usual abode. Personally, I never
thought it was. But he cannot fail to turn up some time or other. Our
main hope lies just in the certitude that he must come to town sooner or
later. Remember he doesn't know that the butler is dead, and he will
want to inquire for a letter. Well, he'll find a note from Miss
Moorsom."
Renouard, silent, thought that it was likely enough. His profound
distaste for this conversation was betrayed by an air of weariness
darkening his energetic sun-tanned features, and by the augmented
dreaminess of his eyes. The Editor noted it as a further proof of that

immoral detachment from mankind, of that callousness of sentiment
fostered by the unhealthy conditions of solitude-- according to his own
favourite theory. Aloud he observed that as long as a man had not given
up correspondence he could not be looked upon as lost. Fugitive
criminals had been tracked in that way by justice, he reminded his
friend; then suddenly changed the bearing of the subject somewhat by
asking if Renouard had heard from