at's all right," said Ste. Marie, taking an ostentatious sip of
coffee. "That's understood. I know well enough who tried to poison me.
If you'll just keep your friend Stewart out of the kitchen I sha'n't
worry about my food."

The Irishman's cheeks reddened with a quick flush and he dropped his
eyes. But in an instant he raised them again and looked full into the
eyes of the man who sat in bed.

"You seem," said he, "to be laboring under a curious misapprehension.
There is no Stewart here, and I don't know any man of that name."

Ste. Marie laughed.

"Oh, don't you?" he said. "That's my mistake then. Well, if you don't
know him, you ought to. You have interests in common."

O'Hara favored his patient with a long and frowning stare. But at the
end he turned without a word and went out of the room.

* * * * *

XVII

THOSE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND

That meeting with Richard Hartley of which Captain Stewart, in the small
drawing-room at La Lierre, spoke to the Irishman O'Hara, took place at
Stewart's own door in the rue du Faubourg St. Honore, and it must have
been at just about the time when Ste. Marie, concealed among the
branches of his cedar, looked over the wall and saw Arthur Benham
walking with Mlle. Coira O'Hara. Hartley had lunched at Durand's with
his friends, whose name--though it does not at all matter here--was
Reeves-Davis, and after lunch the four of them, Major and Lady
Reeves-Davis, Reeves-Davis' sister, Mrs. Carsten, and Hartley, spent an
hour at a certain picture-dealer's near the Madeleine. After that Lady
Reeves-Davis wanted to go in search of an antiquary's shop which was
somewhere in the rue du Faubourg, and she did not know just where. They
went in from the rue Royale, and amused themselves by looking at the
attractive windows on the way.

During one of their frequent halts, while the two ladies were
passionately absorbed in a display of hats, and Reeves-Davis was making
derisive comments from the rear, Hartley, who was too much bored to pay
attention, saw a figure which seemed to him familiar emerge from an
adjacent doorway and start to cross the pavement to a large touring-car,
with the top up, which stood at the curb. The man wore a dust-coat and a
cap, and he moved as if he were in a hurry, but as he went he cast a
quick look about him and his eye fell upon Richard Hartley. Hartley
nodded, and he thought the elder man gave a violent start; but then h