The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ Senator and his daughter drove on from the American Embassy to the American Consulate, and it was with a feeling of considerable satisfaction that they were shown by a courteous janitor into the pleasant, airy waiting-room where a large engraving of Christopher Columbus, and a huge photograph of the Washington Monument, welcome the wandering American.

      Even in this waiting-room there was an air of cheerful activity, a constant coming and going, which showed that whatever might be the case with the Embassy, the Consulate, at any rate, was very much alive.

      "Mr. Senator Burton? Glad to see you, sir! What can we do for you?" The words fell with a cheering, refreshing sound on the Senator's ears, though the speaker went on a trifle less cordially, "We are simply overwhelmed with business just now! You can imagine--but no, no one could imagine, the length, the breadth, the scope of what people think to be our duties in an Exhibition Year!"

      The distinguished visitor and his daughter were being shown into the Consul's own pleasant study. Now this spacious, comfortable apartment is hung with fine engravings of the White House and of the Capitol, and Senator Burton felt a thrill of yearning as well as of pride when he gazed at these familiar, stately buildings which looked so homelike and dear when seen amid alien surroundings.

      And as he sat down, and prepared to state his business, there suddenly came over this kindly American a curious feeling of misgiving, of self-rebuke. Had he remained at home in Washington, content with all his familiar duties and pleasures, he would never have been brought into this association with a strange, unpleasant life-story.

      But he soon shook off this feeling of misgiving, and as the curious tale he had to tell was being listened to, kindly and patiently, he felt glad indeed that he had at last found a fellow-countryman in whom to confide, and on whose advice he could rely.

      But when Senator Burton had finished speaking, the American Consul shook his head. "I only wish we could help you!" he exclaimed. "But we can do nothing where a British subject is concerned. We've quite enough to do looking after those of our own people who disappear in Paris! Would you be surprised to learn, Mr. Senator, that four of our countrymen have completely vanished within the last two days?" And as Daisy uttered a little exclamation of incredulous dismay, "Don't feel so badly about it, my dear young lady, I quite expect all four of them to turn up again, after having given us and their friends a great deal of useless, expensive worry."

      "What I really want," said the Senator earnestly, "is not your official assistance, but a word of practical advice. What is it this unfortunate young lady, Mrs. Dampier, ought to do? We've tried the Commissaire de Police of the quarter, and he's perfectly useless: in fact my son, who's seen him twice, doesn't believe a word he says."

      The Consul gave what Senator Burton felt to be a very French shrug of the shoulders.

      "That don't surprise me! As regards the lower branch of the service the police here is very understaffed. The only thing for you to do is to take this poor lady to the British Consulate. They are driven to death there, just as we are here, and they'll naturally snatch at any excuse to avoid an extra job. But of course if this Mrs. Dampier is, as you say, a British subject--well, they're bound to do something for her. But you may believe me when I say, Mr. Senator, that there's probably nothing really mysterious about the case. You may find this Mr. Dampier at the hotel when you return there. It may interest you to learn"--he hesitated, and glanced at his young countrywoman--"that among our countrymen who vanish, I mean in a temporary way, there are more married men than bachelors."

      And with that enigmatic pronouncement the genial Consul courteously and smilingly dismissed Senator Burton and his daughter.

      The same afternoon saw the Senator and Mrs. Dampier on their way to the British Consulate.

      The day before Nancy had been unwilling to leave the hotel for even the shortest space of time, now she seemed sunk into apathetic despair--and yet, as they drove along together, the Senator still doubted, still wondered in the depths of his heart, whether the lovely young woman now sitting silent by his side, was not making a fool of him, as she had certainly done of his two children.

      He caught himself again and again thinking of her as "Nancy;" already his daughter and she were on Christian-name terms with one another; and as for Gerald, he had put everything else aside to devote himself entirely to solving the mystery of John Dampier's disappearance.

      At last they reached the British Consulate, and the American could not help feeling a thrill of pride as he mentally compared the Office where he had been that morning and that which represented, in this shabby side street, the commercial might and weight of the British Empire.

      The waiting-room into which they were shown was a gloomy apartment looking on to an inner courtyard, and Senator Burton's card did not produce the magic effect it had done at the American Consulate; in fact he and his companion had to take their turn with a crowd of other people, and the time they were kept waiting seemed very long.

      At last, however, they were ushered into the study of the courteous Briton whose difficult and sometimes exasperating duty it is to look after the rights and interests of the motley world composed of those Englishmen and Englishwomen who make a short or long sojourn in Paris. Once they were in his presence nothing could have been kinder and more considerate than the British Consul's reception of the American Senator and his companion.

      In the Consular branch of the Diplomatic Service the post of Consul in the greater cities of the civilised world is almost invariably given to an ex-member of the Diplomatic Corps--to one, that is, who is a shrewd man of the world rather than a trained business official, and Senator Burton felt it to be a comfort indeed to deal with such a one rather than with an acute but probably conventionally-minded man of commercial experience.

      The Consul was moved by Mrs. Dampier's youth, her beauty, her evident, if subdued bewilderment and distress. She told her story very clearly and simply, but to the Senator's excited and yes, it must be admitted, suspicious fancy, she seemed to slur over, as of no importance, the extraordinary discrepancy between her own and the Poulains' account of what had happened on the night of her own and her husband's arrival in Paris.

      The Consul asked but few questions, but those were pertinent and to the point.

      "I am glad, Mrs. Dampier, that you did not come to me yesterday," he said at last, "for, thanks, as I understand, to this gentleman, you have done everything which I should have had to advise you to do."

      He then turned more particularly to his American visitor:--"I suppose you have now quite convinced yourself that no kind of street accident befell Mr. Dampier yesterday morning?"

      The Senator shook his head dubiously; there was a look of hesitation, of unease, on his face.

      "Perhaps it would be as well," said the Consul suavely, "for Mrs. Dampier to go and wait awhile in the next room. Then you and I, Mr. Senator, might go into the matter more thoroughly?"

      Unsuspiciously Nancy Dampier fell in with the plan.

      And then, at last, Senator Burton was able to open out his heart, and, as the British Consul listened to the American's version of all that had taken place, when he realised how entirely the story of this young lady, who called herself Mrs. Dampier, was uncorroborated, his face became graver and graver.

      "From the little opportunity I have had of judging, she impresses me as being a truthful woman," he said musingly. "Still, what I now know puts a very different complexion on the story as told me just now by her."

      "That is exactly what I feel," said the Senator sighing. "From something you said just now I gather that you have heard of this Mr. John Dampier?"

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