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THE UTT-ERMOST FABTHING
l
The person charging this material is re-
sponsible for its return on or before the
Latest Date stamped below.
Theft, mulilulion and underlining of books
are reasons for disciplinary aclion and may
resuli in dismissal from the Universily.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

10H ii


OTHER BOOKS BY
MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
Six Shillings each
THE HEART OF PENELOPE
BARBARA REBELL '
THE PULSE OF LIFE
HEINEMANN’S SHORTER NOVELS
Uniform with “Th; U ttemost Farthing." 2s. 6d.
THE BLOTTING BOOK. By E. F. BENSON
THE POWER OF A LIE. By JOHAN BOJER. With
an Introduction by HALL CAINE
. o . 'LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.


The Uttermost
Farthing
By
MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
" Thou shalt by no means some out thence till thou
hast Paid the uttermast farthing " ‘
I


LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1908


Copyrig/H, 1908. London and Washington, U.S.A.,
by William Hn'nnnrmn.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 3
Margaret Pargeter was not free as Vander-
lyn was free; she was a wife,—not a happy
wife, but one on whose reputation no shadow
had ever rested,—and further, she was the
mother of a child, a son, whom she loved with
an anxious tenderness. . . . It was these two
facts which made what she was going to do
a matter of such moment not only to herself,
but to the man to whom she was now about
to commit her honour.
Striding up and down the platform to
_which he had bought early access by‘one of
those large fees for which the travelling
American of a certain type is famed, Vander-
lyn, with his long lean figure, and stem pre-
occupied face, did not suggest, to the French
eyes idly watching him, a lover,——still less
the happy third in one of those conjugal
comedies which play so much greater a part in
French literature and in French drama than
they do in French life. He had thrust far
back into his heart the leaping knowledge of
what was about to befall him, and he was
' 1—2


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 5
who had proposed to the man that they
should spend a quiet hour walking through
one of those quarters of old Paris unknown
to the travelling foreigner.
Eagerly Vanderlyn had assented, and so
they had driven quickly down the Rue de
Rivoli, right into the heart of that com-
mercial quarter which was the Paris of
Madame de Sévigné, of the bitter witty
dwarf, Scarron, of Ninon de l’Enclos, and,
more lately, of Victor Hugo. There, dis-
missing their cab, they had turned into
that still, stately square, once the old Place
Royale, now the Place des Vosges, of which
each arcaded house garners memories of
passionate romance.
Walking slowly up and down the solitary
garden there, the two had discussed the
coming August, and Margaret Pargeter had
admitted, with a rather weary sigh, that she
was as yet quite ignorant whether her hus-
band intended to yacht, to shoot, or to travel,
—whether he meant to take her with him, or


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 7
amazing nature of the proposal she was
making to him, she had deliberately offered
to go away with him—for a week. The way
in which this had come about had been
strangely simple; looking back, Vanderlyn
could scarcely believe that his memory was
playing him true. . . .
From the uncertain future they had
come back to the immediate present, and
Mrs. Pargeter said something of having
promised her only intimate friend, a French-
woman much older than herself, a certain
Madame de Léra, to go and spend a few days
in a villa near Paris—“ If you do that,” he
said, “ then I think I may as well go down
to Orange and see the house I’ve just
bought there.”
She had turned on him with a certain ex-
citement in her manner. “ You’ve bought
it? That strange, beautiful place near
Orange where you used to stay when you
were studying in Paris? Oh, Laurence, I’d
no idea that you really meant to buy it i”


8 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
A little surprised at the keenness of her
interest, he had answered quietly, " Yes,
when the owner was going through Paris
last week, I found he wanted the money, so—
so the house is mine, though none of the legal
formalities have yet been complied with.
I’m told that the old woman who was care-
taker there can make me comfortable enough
for the few days I can be away.” He
added in a different, a lower tone, “ Ah!
Peggy, if only it were possible for us to go
there together—how you would delight in
the place l”
“ Would you like me to come with you P
I will if you like, Laurence.” She had asked
the question very simply—but Vanderlyn,
looking at her quickly, had seen that her
hand was trembling, her eyes brimming with
tears. Then she had spoken gently, deliber-
ately—seeming to plead with herself, rather
than with him, for a few days of such dual
loneliness for which all lovers long, and which
during their long years of intimacy they had


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 9
never once, even innocently, enjoyed. And
he had grasped with exultant gratitude—
what man would have done otherwise P—
at what she herself came and offered him.
Walking up and down the solitary plat-
form, Vanderlyn lived over again each
instant of that strange momentous conver-
sation uttered four days ago in the stately
sunlit square which forms the heart of old
Paris. How the merry ghost of Marion
Delorme, peeping out of one of the long
narrow easements of the comer house which
was once hers, must have smiled to hear this
virtuous Englishwoman cast virtue to the
light Parisian winds !
Vanderlyn also recalled, with almost the
same surprise and discomfort as he had
experienced at the time itself, the way in
which Margaret Pargeter, so refined and so
delicately bred, had discussed all the material
details connected with their coming adven-
ture—details from which the American
diplomatist himself had shrunk, and which


10 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
he would have done almost anything to
spare her.
“ There is one person, and one alone,” she
had said with some decision, “ who muSt
know. I must tell Adele de Léra—she must
have my address, for I cannot remain with-
out news of my boy a whole week. As for
Tom—” she had flushed, and then gone on
steadily—“ Tom will believe that I am going
to stay with Adele at Marly-le-Roi, and my
letters will be sent to her house. Besides,”
she had added, “ Tom himself is going away,
to England, for a fortnight.”
To the man then walking by her side, and
even now, as he was remembering it all, the
discussion was inexpressibly odious. “ But
do you think,” he had ventured to ask, “ that
Madame de Léra will consent P Remember,
Peggy, she is Catholic, and what is more, a
pious Catholic.”
\ “ Of course she won’t like it—of course
she won’t approve ! But I’m sure—in fact,
Laurence, I know—that she will consent to


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING II
forward my letters. She understands that
it would make no difference—that I should
think of some other plan for getting them.
Should she refuse at the last moment—but
--but she will not refuse—” and her face
—the fair, delicately-moulded little face Van-
derlyn loved—had become flooded with colour.
For the first time since he had known
her, he had realised that there was a side to
her character of which he was ignorant, and
yet ?—and yet Laurence Vanderlyn knew
Margaret Pargeter too well, his love of
her implied too intimate a knowledge, for
him not to perceive that something lay
behind her secession from an ideal of con-
duct to which she had clung so unswervingly
and for such long years.
During the four days which had elapsed
between then and now,-—days of agitation,
of excitement, and of suspense,—he had more
than once asked himself whether it were
possible that certain things which all the
world had long known concerning Tom Par-


12 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
geter had only just become revealed to Tom
Pargeter’s wife. He hoped, he trusted, this
was not so; he had no desire to owe her
surrender to any ignoble longing for reprisal.
The world, especially that corner of Vanity
Fair which takes a frankly materialistic view
of life and of life’s responsibilities, is shrewder
than we generally credit, and the diploma-
tist’s intimacy with the Pargeter household
had aroused but small comment in the strange
polyglot society in which lived, by choice,
Tom Pargeter, the cosmopolitan millionaire
who was far more of a personage in Paris
and in the French sporting world than he
could ever have hoped to be in England.
To all appearance Laurence Vanderlyn
was as intimate with the husband as with
the wife, for he had tastes in common with
them both, his interest in sport and in horse-
flesh being a strong link with Tom Pargeter,
while his love of art, and his dilettante
literary tastes, bound him to Peggy. Also,
and perhaps above all, he was an American—


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I3


and Europeans cherish strange and some-
times fond illusions as to your American’s
lack of capacity for ordinary human emotion.
He alone knew that his tie with Mrs. Par-
‘ geter grew, if not more passionate, then more
absorbing and intimate as time went on, and
he was sometimes, even now, at considerable
pains to put the busybodies of their circle
off the scent.
‘ But indeed it would have required a very
sharp, a very keen, human hound to find the
scent of what had been so singular and so
innocent a tie. Each had schooled the
other to accept all that she would admit was
possible. True, Vanderlyn saw Margaret
Pargeter almost every day, but more often
than not in the presence of acquaintances.
She never came to his rooms, and she had
never seemed tempted to do any of the im-
prudent things which many a woman, secure
of her own virtue, will sometimes do as if to
prove the temper of her honour’s blade.
50 it was that Mrs. Pargeter had never


14 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
fallen into the ranks of those women who
become the occasion for even good-natured
gossip. The very way in which they had,
till to-night, conducted what she, the woman,
was pleased to call their friendship, made
this which was now happening seem, even
now, to the man who was actually waiting
for her to join him, as unsubstantial, as
likely to vanish, mirage-wise, as a dream.
And yet Vanderlyn passionately loved this
Woman whom most men would have thought
too cold to love, and who had known how to
repress and tutor, not only her own, but also
his emotions. He loved her, too, so foolishly
and fondly that he had fashioned the whole
of his life so that it should be in harmony
with hers, making sacrifices of which he had
told her nothing in order that he might sur-
round her—an ill-mated, neglected wife—
with a wordless atmosphere of devotion'
which had become to her as vital, as necessary,
as is that of domestic peace and happiness
to the average woman. But for Laurence


16 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
have spelt but one thing, and that thing love,
the French railway employé accepted without
question the information that the lady the
foreign gentleman was expecting was his
sister. Such a statement to the English
mind would have suggested the hero of an
innocent elopement, but as regards family
relations the French are curiously Eastern,
and then it may be said again that the
American’s stem, pre-occupied face and cold
manner were not those which to a Parisian
could suggest a happy lover.
As he walked up and down with long, even
strides, his armsladen with papers and novels,
it would have been difficult for anyone seeing
him there to suppose that Vanderlyn was
starting on anything but a solitary journey.
Indeed, for the moment he felt horribly alone.
He began to experience the need of human
companionship. She had said she would be
there at seven; it was now a quarter-past
the hour. In ten minutes the train would

be gone


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 17
Then came to him a thought which made
him unconsciously clench his hands. Was
it not possible, nay, even likely, that Mar-
garet Pargeter, like many another woman
before her, had found her courage fail her at
the last moment—that Heaven, stooping to
her feeble virtue, had come to save her in
spite of herself P
Vanderlyn’s steps unconsciously quick-
ened. They bore him on and on, to the
extreme end of the platform. He stood there
a moment staring out into the red-starred
darkness : how could he have ever thought
that Margaret Pargeter—his timid,scrupulous
little Peggy—would embark on so high and
dangerous an adventure P
There had been a moment, during that
springtime of passion which returns no more,
when Vanderlyn had for a wild instant hoped
that he would be able to take her away from
the life in which he had felt her to be playing
the terrible r61e of an innocent and yet
degraded victim.


18 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
Even to an old-fashioned American the
word divorce does not carry with it the
odious significance it bears to the most care-
less Englishwomah. He had envisaged a
short scandal, and then his and Peggy’s
marriage. But he had been compelled,
almost at once, to recognise that with her
any such solution was impossible.
As to another alternative Pv True, there
are women—he and Margaret Pargeter had
known many such—who regard what they
call love as a legitimate distraction ; to them
the ignoble, often sordid, shifts involved in
the pursuit of a secret intrigue are as the salt
of life; but this solution of their tragic
problem would have been—0r so Vanderlyn
would have sworn till four days ago—impos-
sible to the woman he loved, and this had
added one more stone to the pedestal on
which she had been placed by him from the
day they had first met.
And yet? Yet so inconsequent and so
illogical is our poor human nature, that she,


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 19
the virtuous woman, had completely lacked
the courage to break with the man who loved
her, even in those, the early friable days of
their passion. Nay more, whatever Peggy
might believe, Vanderlyn was well aware that
the good, knowing all, would have called
them wicked, even if the wicked, equally
well-informed, would have sneered at them
as absurdly good.
Vanderlyn wheeled abruptly round. He
looked at the huge station clock, and began
walking quickly back, down the now peopled
platform to the ticket barrier. As he did
so his eyes and mind, trained to note all that
was happening round him, together with an
unconscious longing to escape from the one
absorbing thought, made him focus those
of his fellow-travellers who stood about him.
They consisted for the most part of pro-
vincial men of business, and of young officers
in uniform, each and all eager to prolong to
the uttermost their golden moments in Paris ;
2—2


20 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING ‘
more than one was engaged in taking an
affectionate, deeply sentimental farewell from
a feminine companion who bore about her
those significant signs—the terribly pathetic,
battered air of wear and tear—which set
apart, in our sane workaday world, the
human plaything.
The sight of these leave-takings made the
American’s face flush darkly ; it was hateful
to him to think that Mrs. Pargeter must
suffer, even for a few moments, the proximity
of such women—of such men. . He felt a
violent shrinking from the thought that any
one of these gay, careless young Frenchmen
might conceivably know Peggy—if only by
sight—as the charming, “ elegant ” wife of
Tom Pargeter, the well—known sportsman
who had done France the signal honour of
establishing his racing stable at Chantilly
instead of at Newmarket! The thought
that such an encounter was within the
bounds of possibility made Vanderlyn for
a moment almost hope that the woman
a ___.>


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 21
for whom he was waiting would not come
after all.
He cursed himself for a fool. Why had
he not thought of driving her out to one of
the smaller stations on the line whence they
could have started, if not unseen, then
unobserved ?
But soon the slowly-growing suspicion that
she, after all,was perhaps not coming to-night,
brought with it an agonising pang. Very
suddenly there occurred to him the horrible
possibility of material accident. Mrs. Par—
geter was not used even to innocent adven-
ture; she lived the guarded, sheltered ex-
istence which belongs of right to those women
whose material good fortune all their less
fortunate sisters envy. The dangers of the
Paris streets rose up before Vanderlyn’s ex-
cited imagination, hideous, formidable. . . .
Then, quite suddenly, Margaret Pargeter
herself stood before him, smiling a little
tremulously.
She wa wearing a grey, rather austere


22 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
tailor-made gown ; it gave a girlish turn to
her slender figure, and on her fair hair was
poised the little boat-shaped hat and long
silvery gauze veil which have become in a
sense the uniform of a well-dressed Parisienne
on her travels.
As he looked at her, standing there by his
side, Vanderlyn realised how instinctively
tender, how passionately protective, was his
love for her ; and again there came over him
the doubt, the questioning, as to why she
was doing this. . . .
“ Messieurs, mesdames, en voiture,s’il vous
plait ! En voiture, s’il vous plait !"
He put his hand on her shoulder—her
head was very little higher than his heart—
and guided her to the railway carriage which
had been kept for them.


II
AND now Laurence Vanderlyn and Margaret
Pargeter were speeding through the night,
completely and physically alone as they had
never been during the years of their long
acquaintanceship ; and, as he sat there, with
the woman he had loved so long and so faith-
fully wholly in his power, there came over
Vanderlyn a sense of fierce triumph and-
conquest. -
The train had not started to time. There
had come a sound of eager talking on the
platform, and Vanderlyn, filled with a vague
apprehension, had leaned out of the window,
and with some difficulty ascertained the
cause of the delay. The guard in charge of
the train, the man, that is, whom he had
fee’d so well in order to secure privacy, had
23


THEgUTTERMOST FARTHING 25
nothing. Her head was turned away, and
she was staring out of the window, as if
fascinated by the flying lights. He knew
rather than saw that her eyes were shining,
her cheeks pink with excitement ; then she
took off her hat, and he told himself that her
fair hair gleaming against the grey-brown
furnishings of the railway carriage looked
like a golden aureole.
Suddenly Laurence Vanderlyn pressed the
hand he was holding to his lips, dropped it,
and then stood up. He pulled the blue silk
shade over the electric light globe which hung
in the centre of the carriage ; glanced through
one of the two tiny glazed apertures giving
a view of the next compartment; then he
sat down by her, and in the half darkness
gathered her into his arms.
“ Dear," he said, in a voice that sounded
strange and muffled even to himself, " do
you remember the passage at Bonnington P”
As he held her, she had been looking up
into his face, but now, hearing his question,


26 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
she flushed deeply, and her head fell forward
on his breast. Their minds, their hearts,
were travelling back to the moment, to the
trifling episode, which had revealed to each
the other’s love.
It had happened ten years ago, at a time
when Tom Pargeter, desiring to play the
role of country gentleman, had taken for a
while a certain historic country house. There,
he and his young wife had brought together
a great Christmas house-party composed of
the odd, ill-assorted social elements which
gather at the call of the wealthy host who
has exchanged old friends for new acquain-
tances. Peggy's own people, old-fashioned
country gentry, were regarded by Pargeter
as hopelessly dowdy and “ out of it,” so none
of them had been invited. With Laurence
Vanderlyn alone had the young mistress of
the house had any link of mutual interests
or sympathies ; but of flirtation, as that
protean word was understood by those about
them, there had been none.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 27
Then, on Christmas Eve, had come the
playing of childish games, though no children
were present, for the two-year-old child of
the host and hostess was safe in bed. It was
in the chances of one of these games that
Laurence Vanderlyn had for a moment
caught Margaret Pargeter in his arms——
He had released her almost at once, but not
before they had exchanged the long probing
look which had told to each their own as
well as the other’s secret. Till that moment
they had been strangers—from that moment
they were lovers, but lovers allowing them-
selves none of love’s license, and very soon
Vanderlyn had taught himself to be content
with all that Peggy's conscience allowed her
to think possible.
She had never known—how could she have
known ?—what his acquiescence had cost
him. Now and again, during the long years,
they had been compelled to discuss the
abnormal relation .which Peggy called their
friendship ; together they had trembled


28 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
at the fragile basis on which what most
human beings would have considered their
meagre happiness was founded.
More than once 'she had touched him to
the heart by asserting that she felt sure that
the inscrutable Providence in which she had
retained an almost childish faith, could never
be so cruel as to deprive her of the only
source of happiness, apart from her little
_son, which had come her way; and so,
although their intimacy had become closer,
the links which bound them not only re-
mained platonic but, as is the way with such
links, tended to become more platonic as the
time went on.
Even now, as he sat there with the woman
he loved wholly in his power, lying in his
arms with her face pressed to his breast,
Vanderlyn’s mind was in a maze of doubt
as to what was to be their relationship
during the coming days. Even now he was
not sure as to what Peggy had meant when
she had seemed to plead, more with herself


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 29
than with him, for a short space of such
happiness as during their long intimacy they
had never enjoyed.
All his acquaintances, including his official
chief, would have told you that Laurence
Vanderlyn was an accomplished man of the
world, and an acute student of human
nature, but now, to-night, he owned himself
at fault. Only one thing was quite clear ; he
told himself that the thought of again taking
up the thread of what had been so unnatural
an existence was hateful—impossible.
Perhaps the woman felt the man’s obscure
moment of recoil ; she gently withdrew her-
self from his arms. “ I’m tired,” she said,
rather plaintively, " the train sways so,
Laurence. I wonder if'I could lie down ”
He heaped up the cushions, spread out
the large rug, which he had purchased that
day, and which formed their only luggage,
for everything else, by her wish, had been
sent on the day before.
Very tenderly he wrapped the folds of the


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 31
“ Yes, for nothing ! For a long time I tried
to persuade myself that this was not so—
I tried to believe that you were as contented
as I had taught myself to be. I first realised
what a hindrance ”—she hesitated for a
moment, and then said the two words—“ our
friendship must have proved to you four
years ag0,—when you might have gone to
St. Petersburg.”
As Vanderlyn allowed an exclamation of
surprise to escape him, she went on, “ Yes,
Laurence, you have never known that I
knew of that chance—of that offer. Adele
de Léra heard of it, and told me ; she begged
me then, oh ! so earnestly, to give you up—
to let you go.”
“ It was no business of her’s," he mut-tered,
“ I never thought for a moment of accept-
ing ”
“ —But you would have done so if you
had never known me, if we had not been
friends?” She looked up at him, hoping,
longing, for a quick word of denial.


32 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
But Vanderlyn said no such word. In-
stead, he fell man-like into the trap she had
perhaps unwittingly laid for him.
“ If I had never known you P" he repeated,
“ why Peggy—dearest—my whole life would
have been different if I had never known
you! Do you really think that I should
have been here in Paris, doing what I am
now doing—or rather doing nothing-if we
had never met ?”
The honest, unmeditated answer made her
wince, but she went on, as if she had not
heard it—
“ As you know, I did not take Adele’s
advice, but I have never forgotten, Laurence,
some of the things she said.”
A look which crossed his face caused her
to redden, and add hastily, “ She’s not
given to speaking of you—of us; indeed
she's not ! She never again alluded to the
matter ; but the other day when I was
persuading her,—she required a good deal
of persuasion, Laurence,-—to consent to my

.Jr


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 33
plan, I reminded her of all she had said four
years ago.”
“ And what was it that she did say four
years ago ?” asked Vanderlyn with a touch
of angry curiosity; “ as Madame de Léra
is a Frenchwoman and a pious Catholic, I
presume she tried to make you believe that
our friendship was wrong, and could only
lead to one thing-—-” he stopped abruptly.
“ No,” said Peggy, quietly, “ she did not
think then that our friendship would lead
to—to this; she thought in some ways better
of me than I deserve. But she did tell me
that I was taking a great responsibility on
myself, and that if anything happened—for
instance, if I died ” Vanderlyn again
made a restless, almost a contemptuous
movement—“ I should have been the cause
of your wasting the best years of your life ;
I should have broken and spoilt your career,
and all—all for nothing.”
“ Nothing P” exclaimed Vanderlyn passion-
“ Ah! Peggy,":d0 not say that !

ately.


3


34 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
You know, you must know, that our love—
I will not call it friendship,” he went on
resolutely, “ for this one week let no such
false word be uttered between us—you must
know, I say, that our love has been every-
thing to me ! Till I met you, my life was
empty, miserable; since I met you it has
been filled, satisfied, and that even if I have
received what Madame de Léra dares to
call—nothing !”
He spoke with a fervour, a conviction,
which to the woman over whom he was now
leaning brought exquisite solace. At last
he was speaking as she had longed to hear
him speak.
“ You don’t know,” she whispered
brokenly, “how happy you make me by
saying this to-night, Laurence. I have
sometimes wondered lately if you cared for
me as much as you used to care P”
Vanderlyn’s dark face contracted with
pain; he was no Don Juan, learned in the
byways of a woman’saheart.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 35
Then, almost roughly, he caught her to
him, and she, looking up, saw a strange
glowing look come over his face—a look
which was, even to her, an all-sufficing
answer, for it told of the baffled longing, of
the abnegation, and, even now, of the
restraint and selflessness, of the man who
loved her. -
" Did you really think that, Peggy P” was
all he said ; then, more slowly, as the arms
about her relaxed their hold, “ Why, my
dear, you’ve always been—you are—my life."
A sudden sob, a cry of joy broke from her.
She sat up, and with a quick passionate
movement flung herself on his breast ; slowly
she raised her face to his: “ I love you,”
she whispered, “ Laurence, I love you !”
His lips trembled for a moment on her
closed eyelids, then sought and found her soft
quivering mouth. But even then Van-
derlyn’s love was reverent, restrained in its
expression, yet none the less, perhaps the
more, a binding sacrament.
3—2


36 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
At last, “ Why did you subject us," he
said, huskily, “ to such an ordeal? What
has made you give way—now? How can
you dream of going back, after a week, to
our old life P" But even as he asked the
searching questions, he laid her back gently
on her improvised couch.
Woman-like she did not give him a direct
response, then, quite suddenly, she yielded
him the key to the mystery.
“ Because, Laurence, the last time I was in
England, something happened which altered
my outlook on life.”
She uttered the words with strange solem-
nity, but Vanderlyn’s ears were holden ;
true, he heard her answer to his question, but
the words conveyed little or nothing to
him.
He was still riding the whirlwind of his
own poignant emotion; he was telling himself,
with voiceless and yet most binding oaths,
that never, never should the woman whose
heart had just beaten against his heart, whose


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 37
lips had just trembled beneath his lips, go
back to act the part of even the nominal wife
to Tom Pargeter. He would consent to any
condition imposed by her, as long as they
could be together; surely even she would
understand, if not now, then later, that
there are certain moments which can never
be obliterated or treated as if they have not
been. . . .
It was with difficulty—with a feeling that
he was falling from high heaven to earth—
that he forced himself to listen to her next
words.
" As you know, I stayed, when in England,
with Sophy Pargeter—”
Again she looked up at him, as if hesitating
what she should say.
“ Sophy Pargeter P” he repeated the name
mechanically, but with a sudden wincing.
Vanderlyn had always disliked, with a
rather absurd, unreasoning dislike, Peggy’s
plain-featured, rough-tongued sister-in-law.
To him Sophy Pargeter had ever been a


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 39
ill. I suppose the journey had tired me, for
I fainted—”
Again she hesitated, as if not knowing
how to frame her next sentence.
“ Sophy was horribly frightened. She
would send for her doctor, and though he
said there was nothing much the matter
with me, he insisted that I ought to see
another man—a specialist.”
Peggy looked up with an anxious ex-
pression in her blue eyes—but again Van-
derlyn’s ears and eyes were holden. He
habitually felt for the medical profession the
unreasoning dislike, almost the contempt,
your perfectly healthy human being, living
in an ailing world, often—in fact almost
always—does feel for those who play the
role of the old augurs in our modern life.
Mrs. Pargeter had never been a strong
woman; she was often ill, often in the
doctor’s hands. So it was that Vanderlyn
did not realise the deep import of her next
words—-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 41
would make up your mind, Peggy, once and
for all, never to see a doctor again ! I beg
of you, if only for my sake, to promise
me that you will not go again to any doctor
till I give you permission to do so. You
don’t know what I went through five years
ago when one of those charlatans declared
that he would not answer for the conse-
quences if you didn’t winter South, and—
and Tom would not let you go l”
He paused, and then added more gently,
“ And yet nothing happened—you were
none the worse for spending that winter in
cold Leicestershire !”
“ Yes, that’s true,” she answered sub-
missively, “ I will make you the promise
you ask, Laurence. I dare say I have been
foolish in going so often to doctors ; I don’t
know that they have ever done me much
good.”
His eyes, having now become quite accus-
tomed to the dim light, suddenly seemed to
see in her face a slight change; a look of


42 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
fatigue and depression had crept over her
mouth. He told himself with a pang that
after all she was a delicate, fragile human
being—or was it the blue shade which threw
a strange pallor on the face he was scrutinis-
ing with such deep, wistful tenderness ?
He bent over her and tucked the rug
round her feet.
“ Turn round and try to go to sleep,” he
whispered, “ It’s a long, long journey by
this train. I’ll wake you in good time
before we get to Dorgival.”
She turned, as he told her, obediently,
and then, acting on a sudden impulse, she
pulled him down once more to her, and
kissed him as a child might have done.
“ Good-night,” he said, “ good-night, my
love—‘ enchanting, noble little Peggy !’ ”
A smile lit up her face radiantly. It was
a long, long time since Vanderlyn had last
uttered the charming lines first quoted by
him very early in their acquaintance, when
he had seen her among her own people, one


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 43
of a. band of joyous English boys and girls
celebrating a family festival—the golden
wedding of her grandparents. Peggy had
been delicately, deliciously kind to the shy,
proud American youth, whom an introduc-
tion from valued friends had suddenly made
free of an English family clan.
That had been a year before her marriage
to Tom Pargeter, the inheritor of a patent
dye process which had made him master of
one of those fantastic fortunes which impress
the imagination of even the unimaginative.
That the young millionaire should deign to
throw the matrimonial handkerchief at
their little Peggy had seemed to her family
a piece of magic good fortune. She could
bring him good old blood, and certain great
social connections, in exchange for limitless
wealth; it had been regarded as an ideal
marriage.
More than four years went by before
Vanderlyn again saw Peggy, and then he
had found her changed—transformed from


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 47
lifted from his soul; the future was once
more full of infinite possibilities.
His darling little Peggy! What strange
beings women were! With what self-con-
tempt, with what scorpions would he have
lashed himself, had he been the one to
evolve this plan of this furtive flight, to be
followed at the end of a week by a return
to the life to which he now looked back with
shame as well as distaste! And yet she,
the woman he loved, had evolved it, and
thought out every detail of the scheme——
before telling him of what was in her
mind. . . .
As to the future P Vanderlyn threw back
his head; nay, nay, there could be no going
back to what had been. Even Peggy would
see that. She had herself broken down
the barrier erected with such care ; and soon,
very soon she would—she must—see that
such breaches can never be repaired or
treated as if they had not been made.
What had happened, what was happening,


48 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
to-night, was in very truth the beginning,
for them both, of a new life.
So Laurence Vanderlyn swore to himself,
taking many silent vows of chivalrous devo-
tion to the woman who, for love of him, had
broken, not only with lifelong traditions
of honour, but also with a conscience he
had known to be so delicately scrupulous.
From where he was standing in the middle
of the swaying carriage, something in the
way in which his sleeping companion’s head
was lying suddenly aroused Vanderlyn’s
quick, keen attention. Putting out a hand
to steady himself against the back of the
compartment, he bent down—indifferent to
the risk of rousing the still figure.
Then, with a rapid movement, he straight-
ened himself; his face had gone grey—ex-
pressionless. He pushed back the blue shade
off the globe of light, careless of the bright
rays which suddenly illumined every corner
of the railway carriage. . .


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 49
With an instinctive gesture, Vanderlyn
covered his eyes and shut out the blinding
light. He pressed his fingers on his eye-
balls ; every fibre of his body, every quiver-
ing nerve was in revolt, for he realised, even
then, that there was no room for hope, for
doubt,——he knew that what he had looked
upon in the dim light was death.
With an awful pang, he now understood
why Peggy had made him that strange
pathetic offer. How blind he had been!
The English doctor, the man on whom he
had poured such careless scorn, had been
right--terribly right.
At last he uncovered his eyes, and forced
himself to gaze upon what lay before him——
Margaret Pargeter had died in her sleep.
She was lying exactly as Vanderlyn had left
her, still folded closely in the rug he had
placed so tenderly about her. But a terrible
change had come over- the delicate features
—the sightless eyes were wide open, the
lips had fallen apart; his glance, travelling
4


50 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
down, saw that her left hand, the hand
where gleamed his mother’s wedding ring,
was slightly clenched.
Again Vanderlyn passed his hand over his
eyes. He stared about him with a touch of
helpless bewilderment, but he could do
nothing, even if there had been anything
to do ; it was she who had insisted that they
should be unencumbered by any luggage.
He crouched down, and, with an involun-
tary inward shrinking, took up the chilly,
heavy hand and tried to warm it against
his cheek ; then he shivered, his teeth
chattered, with a groan of which the sound
echoed strangely in his ears he hid his face
in the folds of her grey cloth gown—— For
a few moments the extent of his calamity
blotted out everything.
And then, as Vanderlyn lay there, there
suddenly opened before him a way of escape
from his intolerable agony and sense of loss,
and he welcomed it with eager relief. He
raised his head, and began to think intently.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 51
How inexplicable that he had not thought
of this—the only way—at once I It was so
simple and so easy ; he saw himself flinging
wide open the narrow carriage door, and
then, with that still figure clasped in his
arms, stepping out into the rushing dark-
ness. . . .
His mind was now working with incredible
quickness and clearness. How good it was
to know that here, in France, there need
be—there would be—no public scandal I
In England or America the supposed suicide
of two such people as were Margaret Pargeter
and himself could not hope to be concealed ;
not so in France.
Here, as Vanderlyn knew well, there was
every chance that a love tragedy such as the
one of which he and Mrs. Pargeter would be
supposed to have been hero and heroine,
would remain hidden — hidden, that is,
from everyone except those closely con-
nected with her and with himself. His own
chief, the American Ambassador, would be
4—2
lIBRARY -~
uwersnv or Mle


52 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
informed of what had happened, but he
was a wise old man, there was no fear of
indiscretion in that quarter; but—yes,
he, Vanderlyn, must face that fact—Tom
Pargeter would know the truth.
Vanderlyn’s hidden abhorrence of the
other man,—of the man whose friend he had
perforce compelled himself to be for so long,
rose in a great flood.
Tom Pargeter? The selfish, mean-
souled, dull-witted human being, whose
huge fortune, coupled with the masculine
virtues of physical courage and straight-
ness in matters of sport, made him not only
popular but in a small way a personage!
Pargeter, no doubt, would suffer, especially
in his self-esteem; on the other hand, he,
the husband, would feel that so had his own
conduct, his coarse infidelity, his careless
neglect of his wife, been fully condoned.
With a choking feeling of sharp pain,
Vanderlyn suddenly remembered that what
Torn Pargeter knew now, poor Peggy’s son


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 53
would some day have to know. For a
while, no doubt, the boy would be kept in
merciful ignorance of the tragedy, but then,
when the lad was growing into manhood,
some blundering fool, or more likely some
well-intentioned woman, probably his aunt,
Sophy Pargeter, would feel it her duty to
smirch for him his mother’s memory. . . .
Nay, that could not, that must never, be!
Vanderlyn’s head fell forward on his breast ;
there came back, wrapping him as in a
shroud, the awful feeling of desolation,
of life-long loss,—-for he now knew, with
inexorable knowledge, what the future held
for him.
It must be his fate to live, not die; he
must live in order to safeguard the honour
of Margaret Pargeter, the beloved woman
who had trusted him wholly, not only in
this, which was to have been their supreme
adventure, but during the whole of their
long, almost wordless, love. It was for her
sake that, she dead, he must go on living;


54 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
for her sake he must make what now, at this
moment, seemed to be a sacrifice almost
beyond his power, for reason told him that
he must leave her, and as soon as possible,
lying there dead—alone.
With tender, absent fingers he smoothed
out the woollen folds to which his face had
been pressed ; he slipped from her finger the
thin gold ring, and placed it once more
where he had always worn it from the day
of his mother's death till an hour ago.
Then he stood up, and turned deliber-
ately away.
There came the loud wailing whistle which
told that the train was nearing a station.
He leaned out of the window; the lights of
a town were flashing past, and he grimly
told himself that there was no time to lose.
Vanderlyn again bent down; the in-
stinctive repugnance of the living for the
dead suddenly left him. His darling little
Peggy! How could he bear to leave her
there—alone ? If he and she had been


56 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
a traveller now enter the carriage, he would
see nothing but a woman apparently plunged
in deep slumber.
Again Vanderlyn glanced, with far more
scrutinising eyes than he had done when first
entering the train, through the two glazed
apertures which commanded a view of the
next carriage ; it was, as he knew well, empty.
He turned once more the silk shade over
the lamp, jammed his hat down over his
forehead, set his lips together, and, averting
his eyes from what he was leaving, opened
the railway carriage door. . .
The train was slowing down ; a few
hundred yards ahead lay the station. Van-
derlyn stepped to one side of the footboard,
and waited till the door through which he
had just passed swung to; then he turned
the handle, securing it firmly. With soft,
swift steps, he walked past the window
of the now darkened carriage and slipped
into the next empty, brightly-lighted com-
partment. There came over him a strong


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 57
temptation to look through the little aper-
tures giving into the darkened carriage he
had just left, but it was a temptation which
he resisted. Instead, he leant out of the
window, as does a traveller who is nearing
his destination.
Soon there floated up to him the shouting
of “ Dorgival ! Cinq minutes d'arrét I“ and
when the train at last stopped, there arose
the joyous chatter which attends every
arrival in a French station.
Vanderlyn waited for a few moments;
then he stepped down from the carriage, and
began walking quietly down the platform.
With intense relief he remembered that the
guard of the train whom he had fee’d so
well, and who must have noticed him with
Peggy, had been left behind in Paris.
Having passed the end compartment
and guard’s van, he stood for a while
staring down at the permanent way, count-
ing the rails which gleamed in the half
darkness. He measured with his eyes the


58 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
distance which separated the platform on
which he was standing from that whence
the next train back to Paris must start.
There was very little risk either of acci-
dent or of detection, but it was his duty to
minimise whatever risk there was. He
dropped down gently on to the permanent
way, and stood for a moment in the deep
shadow cast by the rear of the train he had
just left; then, cautiously advancing, he
looked both up and down the line, and
made his way to the other side.
The platform on which he now found him~
self was deserted, for the whole life of the
station was still centred round the train
which had just arrived; but as he stared
across the rails Vanderlyn became possessed
with a feeling of acute, almost intolerable,
suspense. He longed with a feverish longing
to see the demi-rapide glide out into the
darkness. He told himself he had been a
fool to suppose that anyone could enter the
darkened carriage where the dead woman lay


IV
IT was only eleven o’clock when Vanderlyn
found himself once more in the Gare de
Lyon. He walked quickly out of the great
station which was henceforth to hold for
him such intimately tender and poignant
memories; and then, instead of taking a
cab, he made his way on foot down to the
lonely Seine-side quays.
There, leaning over and staring down into
the swift black waters of the river, he
planned out his drab immediate future.
In one sense the way was clear before
him,—he must of course go on exactly as
before; show himself, that is, in his usual
haunts; take the moderate part he had
hitherto taken in what he felt to be the
dreary round of so-called pleasures with
61


62 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
which Paris was now seething. That
must be his task—his easy and yet intoler-
able task—during the next week or ten
days, until the disappearance of Margaret
Pargeter became first suspected, and then
discovered.
But before that was likely to happen many
long days would certainly go by, for,—as is
so often the case when a man and woman
have become, in secret, everything to one
another,--Laurence Vanderlyn and Mrs.
Pargeter had gradually detached themselves
from all those whom they had once called
their friends, and even Peggy had had no
intimate who would miss a daily, or even
a weekly, letter.
Indeed, it was just possible, so Vanderlyn,
resting his arms on the stone parapet,
now told himself, that the first part of his
ordeal might last as long as a fortnight,
that is till Torn Pargeter came back from
England.
There was of course yet another possi-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 63
bility ; it was conceivable that everything
would not fall out as they, or rather Peggy,
had imagined. Pargeter, for instance,
might return sooner; and, if he did so, he
would certainly require his wife’s immediate
presence in Paris, for the millionaire was one
of those men who hate to be alone even in
their spare moments. Also, more than his
wife’s company, Pargeter valued her presence
as part of what the French so excellently
style the décor of his life; she was his thing,
for which he had paid a good price; some of
his friends, the sycophants with whom he
loved to be surrounded, would have said
that he had paid for her very dearly.
It was very unlikely, however, that Tom
Pargeter would return to Paris before he was
expected to do so. For many years past he
had spent the first fortnight of each May at
Newmarket, and, as is the curious custom
of his kind, he seldom varied the order of
his rather monotonous pleasures.
But stay—Vanderlyn suddenly remem-


64 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
bered Madame de Léra, that is the one
human being who had been in Peggy’s con-
fidence. She was a real and terrible point
of danger,—or rather she might at any
moment become so. It was with her, at the
de Léra villa in the little village of Marly-
le-Roi, that Mrs. Pargeter was, even now,
supposed to be staying. This being so, he,
Vanderlyn, must make it his business to
see Madame de Léra at the first possible
moment. Together they would have to
concoct some kind of possible story—he
shuddered with repugnance at the thought.
Long before Peggy’s confidences in the
train, the American diplomatist had been
well aware that Adele de Léra disapproved of
his close friendship with Mrs. Pargeter;
and she had never lent herself to any of
those innocent complicities with which even
good women are often so ready to help
those of their friends who are more foolish
—whom perhaps they know to be more
tempted—than themselves.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 65
The one thing of paramount importance,
so Vanderlyn suddenly reminded himself,
was that no one—not even Madame de Léra
—should ever know that he and Margaret
Pargeter had left Paris that night, together.
How could this fact be best concealed, and
concealed for ever P
To the unspoken question came swift
answer. It flashed on the man lingering
on the solitary river-side quay, that even
now, to-night, it was not too late for him
to establish the most effectual of alibis. By
taking a fiacre and bribing the man to drive
quickly, he could be back in his rooms in
the Rue de Rivoli, dressed, and at his club,
before midnight. Fool that he was to have
wasted even a quarter of an hour !
Vanderlyn struck sharply across the dimly-
lighted thoroughfare; he started walking
down one of the narrow streets which
connect the river quays with commer-
cial Paris. A few moments later, having
picked up a cab, he was driving rapidly
5


66 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
westward, down the broad, still seething
Boulevard du Temple, and, as he suddenly
became aware with a sharp pang at his
heart, past the entrance to the quiet
mediaeval square, where, only four short days
ago, he and Peggy, walking side by side,
had held the conversation which was to
prove pregnant of so much short-lived joy,
and of such long-lived pain.
Like so many modern Americans, to whom
every material manifestation of wealth has
become distasteful, Laurence Vanderlyn had
chosen to pitch his Paris tent on the top-
floor of one of those eighteenth-century
houses which, if lacking such conveniences
as electric light and lifts, can command in
their place the stately charm and spacious-
ness of which the modern Parisian architect
seems to have lost the secret. His appurte-
ment consisted of a few large airy, low-
pitched rooms, of which the stone balconies
overlooked the Tuileries gardens, while from
a comer window of his sitting-room Van-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 67
derlyn could obtain what was in very truth
a bird’s-eye view of the vast Place de la
Concorde.
Very soon after his arrival in Paris, the
diplomatist had had the good fortune to
come across a couple of French servants, a
husband and wife, who exactly suited his
simple and yet fastidious requirements.
They were honest, thrifty, clean, and their
only fault—that of chattering to one another
like magpies—was to Vanderlyn an agree—
able proof that they led a life quite in—
dependent of his own. Never had he been
more glad to know that this was so than
to-night, for they greeted his return home.
with an easy indifference, and real pleasure,
very unlike the surface respect and ill-
concealed resentment with which a master’s
unexpected appearance would have been
received by a couple of more cosmopolitan
servitors.
With nerves strung up to their highest
tension, forcing himself only to think of the
5—2


68 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
present, Vanderlyn put on his evening
clothes. It was still wanting some minutes
to midnight when he left the Rue de
Rivoli for the Boulevard de la Madeleine.
A few moments later he was at the door
of the club where he was sure of finding,
even at this time of night, plenty of friends
and acquaintances who would be able to
testify, in the very unlikely event of its
being desirable that they should do so,
to the fact that he had been there that
evening.
L’Union is the most interesting, as it is
in a certain sense the most exclusive, of
Paris clubs. Founded in memory of the
hospitality shown by the English gentry to
the French emigrés during the Revloution,
this, the most old-fashioned of Paris clubs,
impales the Royal arms of France, that
is, the old fleur-de-lys, with those of Eng-
land.
At all times L’Union has been in a special


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 69
sense a resort of diplomatists, and Vanderlyn
spent there a great deal of his spare time.
The American was popular among his French
fellow-members, to whom his excellent
French and his unobtrusive good breeding
made him an agreeable companion. There
could have been no greater proof of how
he was regarded there than the fact that,
thanks to his efforts, Tom Pargeter had been
elected to the club.
True, the millionaire sportsman did not
often darken the threshold of the stately
old club-house, but he was none the less
exceedingly proud of his membership of
L’Union, for it gave him an added stand-
ing in the cosmopolitan world in which he
had early elected to spend his life. Perhaps
it was fortunate that he had so little use
for a club where gambling games are not
allowed to be played—where, indeed, as the
younger members are apt to complain,
dominoes take the place of baccarat !
The tall Irish footman whose special duty


70 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
it was to wait on the foreign members, came
forward as Vanderlyn walked into the hall.
“ Mr. Pargeter has been asking for you,
sir ; he’s in the card-room.”
Vanderlyn felt a curious sensation sweep
over him. That which he had thought so
improbable as to be scarcely worth con-
sideration had come to pass. Pargeter had
not gone to England that night. He was here,
in Paris, at L’Union, and asking for him.
In a few moments they would be face to face.
As Vanderlyn walked up the broad stair-
case, he asked himself, with a feeling of
agonising uncertainty, whether it was in any
way possible that Peggy’s husband had found
out, even suspected, anything of their plan.
But no ! Reason told him that such a thing
was quite inconceivable. N0 compromising
word had been written by the one to the
other, and every detail had been planned
and carried out in such a way as to make
discovery or betrayal impossible.
But to-night reason had very little to say


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 71
to Laurence Vanderlyn, and his strongly
drawn face set in hard lines as he sauntered
through now fast thinning rooms, for the
habitué of L’Union generally seeks his quiet
home across the Seine about twelve.
As he returned the various greetings which
came to him from right and left,—for a
French club has about it none of the re-
pressive etiquette which governs similar
institutions in England and America,—the
diplomatist felt as doubtless feels any imagi-
native man who for the first time goes under
fire ; what he experienced was not so much
dread as a wonder how he was likely to bear
himself during this now imminent meeting
with Peggy’s husband.
Suddenly Vanderlyn caught sight of Par-
geter, and that some moments before he
himself was seen by him. The millionaire
was standing watching a game of whist, and
he looked as he generally looked when at
L’Union, that is, bored and ill at ease, but
otherwise much as usual.
5" a


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 73
past of which now nothing remained, had
tried to see what was best in a character
which, if fashioned meanly, was not wholly
bad. But now, to-night, he felt that he
despised, hated, and, what was to him far
worse, feared the human being towards
whom he was advancing with apparently
eager steps.
Suddenly the eyes of the two men met,
but Pargeter was far too pre-occupied with
himself and his own concems to notice any-
thing strained or unusual in Vanderlyn’s
face. All he saw was that here at last was
the man he wanted to see; his sulky face
lightened, and he walked forward with hand
outstretched.
“ Hullo! Grid,” he cried, “so here you
are at last ! You see I’ve not gone 9 There
came a wire from the boy; he’s hurt his
knee-cap !”
Vanderlyn murmured an exclamation of
concern ; as they met he had wheeled round,
thus avoiding the other’s hand.


74 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
" Nothing much," went on Pargeter
quickly, “ but of course Peggy will be wild
to go to him, so I thought I’d wait and take
her to-morrow, eh ! what ?”
Side by side they began walking down the
long reception-room. Vanderlyn was telling
himself, with a feeling of sore, dull pain, that
this was the first time, the very first time,
that he had ever known Tom Pargeter show
a kindly touch of consideration for his wife.
But then this concerned the boy, of whom
the father, in his careless way, was fond and
proud; their child had always remained a
link, if a slight link, between Tom and Peggy.
“ It was just too late to get a wire through
to her,” went on Pargeter, fretfully, “ I
mean to that God-forsaken place where she’s
staying with Madame de Léra ; but I’ve
arranged for her to be wired to early in the
morning. If I’d been half sharp I’d have
sent the trolley for her ”
“ The trolley P" repeated Vanderlyn me-
chanically.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 75
“ The motor—the motor, man! But it
never occurred to me to do it till it was too
late."
“ Would you like me to go out to-morrow
morning and fetch her back P” asked Van-
derlynilslowly.
“ I wish you would !” cried the other
eagerly, “ then I should be sure of her coming
back in time for us to start by the twelve-
twenty train. When shall I send the trolley
for you P"
“ I'll go by train," said Vanderlyn shortly.
“ Madame de Léra’s villa is at Marly-le-Roi,
isn’t it P“
“ Yes, haven’t you ever been there P”
Vanderlyn looked at Pargeter. “ No,”
he said very deliberately, “ I scarcely know
Madame de Léra.”
“ How odd,” said Pargeter indifferently.
“ Peggy’s always with her, and you and
Peggy are such pals."
“ One doesn’t always care for one’s friends’
friends,” said Vanderlyn dryly. He longed


76 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
to shake the other off, but Pargeter clung
closely to his side. Each put on the hat
and light coat handed to him; and, when
once out on the boulevard, Pargeter slipped
his hand confidingly through the other’s
arm.
His touch burnt Vanderlyn.
“ By the way, Grid, I’ve forgotten to tell
you why I wanted to see you to-night. I’d
be so much obliged if you would go down to
Chantilly at the end of the week and see how
that new josser is getting on. You might drop
me a line if everything doesn’t seem all right.”
Vanderlyn murmured a word of assent.
This, then, was the reason why Pargeter had
come to L’Union that night, simply in order
to ask Vanderlyn to keep an eye on his new
trainer! To save himself, too, the trouble
of writing a letter, for Tom Pargeter was one
of those modern savers—and users—of time
who prefer to conduct their correspondence
entirely by telegram.
They were now close to the Place de


78 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
good-nature, pressed him to go in. “ It's
quite early," he urged again, and his com-
panion was in no state of body or mind to re—
sist even the slight pressure of another’s will.
The brightly lighted rooms of “ Monaco
Junior ” were full of colour, sound, and
movement; the atmosphere was in almost
ludicrous contrast to that of the decorous
Union. The evening was only just begin-
ning, the rooms were full, and Pargeter was
greeted with boisterous warmth; here, if
nowhere else, his money made him king. ‘
He led the way to the card-room which,
with its crowd of men surrounding each of
the tables, was very evidently the heart of
the club. “ Do look at Florac !" he mur-
mured to Vanderlyn. “ When I left here a
couple of hours ago, he was winning a bit,
but I expect he’s losing now. I always like
to watch him play—he’s such a bad loser !"
The two men had threaded their way close
to the baccarat table, and now they formed


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 79
the centre of a group who were throwing
furtive glances at the banker, a pale lean
Frenchman of the narrow-jowled, Spanish
type so often repeated in members of the old
noblesse.
The Marquis de Florac was “ somebody,”
to use the expressive French phrase,—a
member of that small Parisian circle of
which each individual is known by reputa-
tion to every provincial bourgeois, and to
every foreign reader of French social news.
There had been a time when de Florac had
set the fashion, and that not only in waist-
coats and walking-sticks. He was a fine
swordsman, and was even now in some
request as second at fashionable duels. None
knew more certainly than he every punctilio
of those unwritten laws which govern affairs
of honour, and, had he been born to even a
quarter of the fortune of Tom Pargeter, his
record would probably have remained un-
stained. Unfortunately for him, this had not
been the case ; he had soon run through the


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 81
" Your money P” repeated Vanderlyn with
listless surprise, “ d’you mean to say that
you’ve been lending Florac money P” He
looked, with a pity in which there entered a
vague fellow-feeling, at the mask-like face
of the man against whom the luck seemed
to be going so dead.
“I’m not quite a fool !” exclaimed Par-
geter, piqued at the suggestion. “ All the
same, Grid, it is my money, or a little bit of
it at any rate !”
An English acquaintance of the two men
came up to them. “ The French are a
wonderful people,” he said rather crossly,
“ everybody says that Florac is ruined,—that
he’s living on ten francs a day allowed him by
a kind grandmother,-—and yet since I have
been standing here he’s dropped, at least
so I’ve calculated, not far short of four
hundred pounds l”
A grin came over Pargeter’s small neat
face, and lit up his odd, different-ooloured
" ’ he observed,
eyes. “ ‘ Cherchez la femme,
6


82 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
affecting an atrocious English accent; and
then he repeated, as if he were himself the
inventor, the patentee, of the admirable
aphorism, “ ‘ Cherchez la femme ! ' That’s
what you have got to do in the case of Florac,
and of a good many other Frenchmen of his
kind, I fancy !”
“ I’m going home now, Pargeter,” said
Vanderlyn with sudden, harsh decision. “ If
you really wish me to go out to Marly-le-Roi
in one of your cars to-morrow moming, will
you please give orders for it to be round at
my place at nine o’clock ?"


V
FROM what seemed an infinite distance, Van-
derlyn awoke the next morning to hear the
suave voice of his servant, Poulain, mur-
muring in his ear, “ The automobile is here
to take Monsieur for a drive in the country.
I did not wish to wake Monsieur, but the
chauffeur declared that Monsieur desired
the automobile to be here at nine."
Poulain’s master sat up in bed and stared
- at Poulain. Then suddenly he remembered
everything that had happened to him the
evening before. In a flash he even lived
once more the wakeful hours of the night
which had had so awful a beginning; only
at four o'clock had he found sleep.
“ Yes P” be said. Then again, “ Yes,
Poulain. I wished to start at nine o’clock.
83 6—2


84 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
Say that I shall be down in a quarter of an
hour."
“ And then, while Monsieur is dressing,
my wife will be preparing his little break-
fast—unless, indeed, Monsieur would rather
wait, and have his little breakfast in bed P"
“ No,” said Vanderlyn, quickly, “ I shall
not have time to wait for coffee."
The keen morning air, the swift easy
motion of the large car, revived Vanderlyn
and steadied his nerves. He elected to sit
in front by the side of Pargeter's silent
English chauffeur. At this early hour the
Paris streets were comparatively clear, and
a few moments brought them to the Avenue
du Bois de Boulogne. There, half way
down, was Tom Pargeter’s splendid villa;
as they passed it in a flash, Vanderlyn
averted his head. To his morbid fancy it
suddenly assumed the aspect of a great
marble tomb.
The car swung on through the now


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 85
deserted Bois; soon it was rushing up
the steep countrified streets of St. Cloud,
and then, settling down to a high speed,
they found themselves in the broad silent
alleys of those splendid royal woods which
form so noble a girdle about western Paris.
They sped through sunlit avenues of fresh
green foliage, past old houses which had
seen the splendid pageant of Louis the
Fifteenth and his Court sweep by on their
way to Marly-le-Roi, and s0 till they gained
the lofty ridge which dominates the wide
valley of the Seine.
Suddenly the chauffeur turned to Van-
derlyn, and spoke for the first time: “ Would
you like to slow down a bit, sir ? Mrs. Par-
geter generally stops the car here to have a
look at the view.”
“ No,” said Vanderlyn hoarsely, “ we
haven’t time to-day ; we’ve got to get back
to Paris in time for Mr. and Mrs. Pargeter
to catch, if possible, the twelve-twenty
train.”


86 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
He leant back—a feeling of horror and
self-contempt possessed him. His life was
now one long lie ; even when speaking to a
servant, he was compelled to imply what he
knew to be untrue.
They ran down into the quaint little town
which has scarcely altered since the days
when Madame du Barry was dragged hence,
screaming and wringing her hands, to Paris, to
prison, and to the guillotine. Vanderlyn’s dis-
traught imagination saw something sinister
in the profound quietude of the place; it
was full of shuttered villas, for through the
winter each village in the neighbourhood of
Paris hibernates, those whom the peasants
style les bourgeois still regarding country
life as essentially a summer pastime.
They now came to a high blank wall,
broken by an iron gate. “ This is the house,
sir,” said the chauffeur abruptly.
Vanderlyn jumped out, and rang a primi-
tive bell; he waited some minutes and then
rang again. At last he heard the sound


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 89
have stood. For the first time since the
terrible moment when he had watched the
train bearing her dead body disappear into
the darkness, Vanderlyn thought of her as
living; he seemed to feel her soft, warm
presence in this place which she had loved,
and where she had spent peaceful, happy
hours.
He heard the door open and shut, and,
turning round, found himself face to face
with the Frenchwoman whom he knew to
have been Margaret Pargeter’s devoted
friend. Although he was well aware that
Madame de Léra had never liked or trusted
him, he, on his side, had always admired
and appreciated her serenity and simple
dignity of demeanour. As she came for-
ward, clad in the austere dress of a French
widow, he noted the expression of con-
straint, of surprise, on her worn face.
” Mr. Vanderlyn ?” she said interroga-
tively; and, as she waited for an explana-
tion of the American's presence, surprise


90 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
gave way to a look of great sternness and
severity, almost of dislike. Nay more,
Madame de Léra's attitude was instinct
with protest—the protest of an honest
woman drawn unwillingly into what she
feels to be an atmosphere of untruth and
intrigue. She was telling herself that she
owed the fact of Vanderlyn’s visit to some
slight hitch in the plan in which she had
been persuaded to play the part of an accom-
plice ; she felt that Margaret Pargeter ought
not to have subjected her to an interview
with her lover.
Vanderlyn reddened. He felt suddenly
angered. Madame de Léra's manner was
insulting, not only to him, but—but to
Mrs. Pargeter, to his poor dead friend. Any
thought of telling Madame de Léra the
truth, or even part of the truth, left him.
“ You must forgive my intrusion,” he
said, coldly ; “ I have come with a message
from Mr. Pargeter. He believes his wife to
be here, and he wishes her to be informed


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 91
that her son, little Jasper, has had an acci—
dent. When the news arrived last night,
it was too late to telegraph, and so he asked
me to come here this morning in his motor
in order to bring Mrs. Pargeter back to Paris.
He proposes that she should accompany
him to England to-day by the twelve o’clock
train.”
An expression of deep bewilderment
crossed Madame de Léra’s face. For the
first time since she had glanced at Van-
derlyn, she became aware that she was in
the presence of a man who was suffering
under some keen stress of feeling. She
became oppressed with a great misgiving.
What did his presence here this morning,
his strange unreal words, signify? What
was the inward meaning of this sinister
comedy? It was of course clear that the
secret elopement had not taken place. But
then, where was Mrs. Pargeter P
She cast a long searching look at Laurence
Vanderlyn. The American’s face had be-


92 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
come expressionless. He seemed tired, like
a man who has not slept, but the look she
thought she had surprised,—that look telling
of the suppression of deep feeling, of hidden
anguish,—had gone. The fact that she did
not know how much Vanderlyn knew she
knew added to Madame de Léra’s per-
plexity. She was determined at all costs
not to betray her friend.
“ I regret to inform you,” she said, quietly,
“ that Mrs. Pargeter is not here. It is true
that I was expecting her to come yester-
day. But she disappointed me—she did
not come. Does no one know where she
is P” She threw as great an emphasis as
was possible in the impassive French lan-
guage into her question.
Vanderlyn avoided her perplexed, ques-
tioning glance. “ Since yesterday evening,”
he answered, “ all trace of Margaret Par-
geter has been lost. She seems to have left
her house about six o’clock, and then to
have disappeared—utterly. The servants


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 93
believed,” he added, after a pause, " that
she was coming straight to you ; she had, it
seems, taken some luggage to the station
the day before, and seen personally to its
despatch.”
There was a pause ; neither spoke for some
moments, and Madame de Léra noticed that
Vanderlyn had not asked her if Peggy's
luggage had arrived at her house.
“ Then, Monsieur, it is surely clear,” she
exclaimed at last, “ that there has been an
accident, a terrible accident to our poor
friend! I mean on her way to—to the
station. But doubtless that thought has
also occurred to you—if not to Mr. Par-
geter—and you have already made all
necessary enquiries P"
Vanderlyn, from being pale, flushed
deeply. “ No,” he said, “I am afraid
nothing of the kind has been done—yet.
You see, Pargeter believes her to be
here.”
The words “ But you—you knew she was


94 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
not here !” trembled on Madame de Léra's
lips, but she did not utter them. She felt
as if she were walking amid quicksands;
she told herself that there was far more
danger in saying a word too much than a
word too little.
“I regret,” she said, “ that you have
made a useless journey, Mr. Vanderlyn. I
must request you to go back and tell Mr.
Pargeter that his wife is not here, and I
beg, I entreat, you to inform the police
that she is missing! For all we know,”—
she looked at him with indignant severity,—
“ she may be lying ill, mortally injured, in
one of our terrible Paris hospitals !”
As he made no assent to her imploring
words, a look of anger came into Madame
de Léra’s eyes.
“ I will ask you to allow me to return with
you to Paris,” she said, quickly, “ I cannot
rest inactive here in the face of the possi-
bility, nay, the probability, I have indicated.
If you, Mr. Vanderlyn, do not feel justified


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 95
in making the inquiries I have suggested,
no such scruple need restrain me.”
She turned away, making no effort to
mask her displeasure, almost her contempt,
for the man who seemed to be so little
moved by the mysterious disappearance of
the woman he loved.
A few moments later Madame de Léra
came back dressed for the drive. As they
walked through into the hall of the villa,
she suddenly turned, and with a strange
gentleness asked her silent companion a
question, “ Mr. Vanderlyn, you look very
tired ; have you had any breakfast P"
He looked at her without answering, and
she repeated her words. -
“Yes,” said Vanderlyn,—“ that is, no,
I have not. I was up late last night—
there was no time this morning,” he spoke
hurriedly, confusedly; the sudden kindness
in her tone had brought scalding tears to
his eyes, and he felt a nervous fear that he
was about to break down. Madame de Léra


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 97
derlyn felt himself leaning, as against a
wall, on Madame de Léra’s strong upright
nature. She might dislike, disapprove, even
despise him,—but in this matter they would
be one in their desire to shield Peggy’s fair
fame. He would have given much to be
able to still her evident anxiety, but that
course was, he felt, forbidden to him; he
had no right to share with another human
being the burden of his knowledge, of his
awful grief. With a pang he reminded him-
self that even Madame de Léra’s state of
suspense was preferable to a knowledge of
the truth.
At last they turned into the Bois de
Boulogne, rushing through the leafy roads
at a high speed ; a few moments more would
see them in the beautiful avenue where
stood, isolated from its neighbours, the Villa
Pargeter, instinct with flamboyant luxury
and that perfection only achieved by the
lavish use of money.
Tom Pargeter had a supreme contempt

7


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 99
be for Mr. Pargeter to take what steps he
judges proper.”
As the powerful car swung through the
gates, Vanderlyn saw that the front door
was wide open, and that the English butler
was waiting to receive them ; when the man
saw that his mistress was not in the car, a
look of perplexity came over his impassive
face. ‘
“ Mr. Pargeter has been awaiting you, sir,
for the last half hour,” he said, “ he is very
anxious to catch the twelve o’clock express.
The luggage has already gone on to the
station. Mr. Pargeter wished the car to
wait,—-but—but is it to wait, sir P” he asked,
helplessly.
“ Yes," said Vanderlyn, shortly, “ the
car had better wait. Where is Mr. Par-
geter P” ~
“ He’s not down yet, sir; he is breakfast-
ing in his dressing-room. All the arrange-
ments were made last night, but I will let
him know you have arrived, sir.” He
7—2


100 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
looked doubtfully at Madame de Léra, too
well trained to ask any question, and yet
sufficiently human not to be able to conceal
his astonishment at Mrs. Pargeter’s non-
appearance. Then, preceding the two
visitors upstairs, he led them through the
suite of large reception rooms into a small
octagon boudoir which was habitually
used by Margaret Pargeter as her sitting-
room.
There he left them, and, standing amid
surroundings which all spoke to them, to
the woman of her friend, to the man of his
love,—from the hooded chair where Peggy
generally sat to the little writing-table where
she had written so many notes to them both,
—Madame de Léra and Laurence Vanderlyn
felt overwhelmed with a common feeling of
shame, of guilt. In silence they waited for
Tom Pargeter, avoiding each other’s eyes;
and the Frenchwoman’s fine austere face
grew rigid—this was the first time in her
long life that she had been connected with


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 101
an intrigue. She felt humiliated, horrified
at the part she now found herself compelled
to play.
In spite of its costly luxury, and its
wonderful beauty of decoration,—an ex-
quisite Nattier was let into a panel above
the fireplace, and a row of eighteenth-
century pastels hung on the light grey walls,
——the octagon apartment lacked the restful
charm which belongs to many a shabby
little sitting-room. The architect of the
villa had sacrificed everything to the great
reception rooms, and in the boudoir were
far too many doors. i
One of these, which Vanderlyn had never
noticed before, was now suddenly flung
open, and, outlined against a narrow wind-
ing staircase, stood a figure which appeared
at once grotesque and menacing to the man
and woman who stood staring at the un-
expected apparition. It was Tom Pargeter,
clad in a bright yellow dressing-gown, and
holding a fork in his left hand.


102 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
“ I say, Peggy, look sharp,—there’s no
time to be lost! I told Plimmer to pack
some of your things—not that there's any
reason why you should come if you don’t
want to—for there’s nothing much the
matter with the boy, and he’ll probably get
well all the quicker if you—”
The speaker suddenly broke short the
quick sentences; he stared round the little
room, and then, catching sight of Madame
de Léra, who had been partly concealed by
a screen, “ Damn !” he said, and turning,
scampered heavily up the staircase, leaving
the door behind him open.
Vanderlyn and his companion looked at
each other uncomfortably. Madame de Léra
was not perhaps quite so shocked, either
by Pargeter’s appearance, or by his one
exclamation apparently addressed to herself,
as the punctilious American supposed her
to be. She knew no word of the English
language, and in her heart regarded all
foreigners as barbarians.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 103
They waited,—it seemed a long, long
time, but as a matter of fact it was but a
very few minutes after Pargeter’s abrupt
entrance and exit, when his short quick
steps were heard resounding down the long
suite of reception rooms. As he walked
into the boudoir, the master of the house—-
this time dressed in a suit of the large checks
he generally wore—bowed awkwardly to
Madame de Léra, and then went over and
shut the door giving access to the winding
staircase, that which in his hurry he had
omitted to close behind him. Then, and
not till then, he turned to Laurence Van-
derlyn.
“ Well P” he said, “ what’s happened to
Peggy? I’m told she’s not here. Is she
ill P”
” Peggy never arrived at Marly-le-Roi,"
said Vanderlyn.
To himself his very voice seemed changed,
his words charged with terrible significance ;
but to Pargeter, the answer given to his


104 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
question sounded disagreeably indifferent
and matter-of-fact.
“ Never arrived?” he echoed. “ Where
is she then P You don’t mean to say she's
lost ?”
“ Madame de Léra,” said Vanderlyn, still
in the same quiet, emotionless voice,
“ thinks that she’s met with an accident,”
—-he looked imploringly at the French-
women ; surely it was time that she should
come to his help. “ I am telling Mr. Par—
geter,” he said to her in French, “ that you
fear she has met with an accident.”
“ Yes!” she exclaimed, eagerly turning
to Pargeter, “ how can it be otherwise,
Monsieur P” She hesitated, looked at Van-
derlyn, then quickly withdrew her eyes
from his face. His eyes were full of agony.
She felt as if she had peered through a
secret window of another’s soul.
“ That is why I have come back to Paris,”
she went on, addressing Peggy’s husband,
" for I feel that not a moment should be


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 107
she’s had an accident. Take my word for
it, old man, there’s nothing to be frightened
about. Why, you look quite pale !”
There came the distant sound of a tele-
phone bell. “ There !” he cried, “ I expect
that is Peggy, or news of her. What a bore
it is having three telephones in a house!”
He left the room, and a moment later they
heard him shouting to his butler.
Vanderlyn turned to Madame de Léra.
" He doesn’t believe that Mrs. Pargeter has
had an accident,” he said, quietly, “ you
must not judge him too harshly.” He
added after a moment, “ I think you must
know, Madame de Léra, that Mrs. Par-
geter’s husband has always been lacking in
imagination.”
Her only answer was a shrug of her
shoulders.


VI
ONCE a year the newspapers of each great
capital publish, among other statistics, a
record of the disappearances which have
occurred in their midst during the preceding
twelve months. These disappearances are
not counted by tens or by hundreds, but by
thousands ; and what is true of every great
city is in a very special sense true of Paris,
the human Cloaca Maxima of the world.
There, the sudden vanishing, the obliteration
as it were, of a human being, especially of a
foreigner, arouses comparatively little sur-
prise or interest among those whose weary
duty it is to try and find what has become of
the lost one.
To Madame de Léra,—even to Tom Par-
geter,—the beginning of what was to be so
:08


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 109
singular and perplexing a quest had about
it something awe-inspiring and absorbing.
So it was that during the few minutes which
elapsed between their leaving the Avenue
du Bois de Boulogne and their reaching the
ancient building where the Paris Police still
has its headquarters, not a word was spoken
by either of the two ill-assorted companions
who sat together in the rear of the car, for
Vanderlyn, the only one of the three who
knew where the Prefecture of Police is
situated, had been placed next to the
chauffeur in order that he might direct him
as to the way thither.
By such men as Tom Pargeter and their
like, the possibility of material misfortune
attacking themselves and those who form
what may be called their appanage, is never
envisaged; and therefore, when such mis-
fortune comes to them, as it does sooner
or later to all human beings, the grim
guest’s presence is never accepted without
an amazed sense of struggle and revolt.

’— r““‘ v"


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING III
two foreigners were sent from room to room
in the old-fashioned, evil-smelling building,
as endless forms were placed before them to
be filled up, it became increasingly clear that
the disappearance of a human being, especi-
ally of an Englishwoman, did not strike the
listless employees as being particularly re-
markable.
The more angry Pargeter grew and the
more violent his language, the more politely,
listlessly, indifferent became those to whom
he addressed his questions and indignant
complaints.
The cosmopolitan millionaire, who was
accustomed to receive a constant stream of
adulation and consideration from all those
with whom life brought him in contact, was
first amazed, and then angered, by the lack
of interest shown in him and in his affairs
at the Prefecture of Police.
Then, to his surprise and only half-con-
cealed mortification, a reference made by
Laurence Vanderlyn to an incident which


112 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
had taken place the year before—that is, to
the disappearance of an American citizen—
followed by the production of the diplo-
matist’s card, brought about a magic change.
Immediately the two friends were intro-
duced into the presence of an important
official; and a moment later Tom Pargeter’s
outraged dignity and sense of importance
were soothed by an outpouring of respectful
sympathy, while in an incredibly short time
the full particulars of every accident which
had occurred in the streets of Paris during
the last twenty-four hours were laid before
the anxious husband. But it soon became
clear that in none of these had Mrs. Pargeter
been concerned.
The official left the room a moment ; then
he returned with a colleague.
This man, the chief of the detective force,
proceeded with considerable tact to examine
and cross-examine both Pargeter and Van-
derlyn concerning the way in which Mrs.
Pargeter had spent the earlier part of the


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 113
previous day—that is, the day on which she
had disappeared.
The man’s manner—that of scenting a
secret, of suspecting that more lay behind
the matter than was admitted by the
husband and friend of the woman they
were seeking—produced a disagreeable im-
pression on Vanderlyn. For the first time
he felt himself faced by a vague, but none the
less real, danger, and the feeling braced
him.
“ Then Monsieur did not see this lady
yesterday at all P”
“ No,” said Vanderlyn, shortly; “ the last
time I saw Mrs. Pargeter in her house was
the day before yesterday, when I called on
her about five o’clock.”
“ Monsieur is not related to the lady P”
asked the detective quietly.
“N0,” said Vanderlyn again. “But I
am an old friend of both Mr. and Mrs.
Pargeter, and that is why he asked me
to accompany him here to-day.”
8


114 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
“ Then when and how did you yourself
first learn of Madame Pargeter’s disappear—
ance P" asked the other suddenly.
Vanderlyn hesitated; for a moment his
tired brain refused to act—when was he
supposed to have heard of Peggy’s disappear-
ance? He looked helplessly at Pargeter;
then said suddenly, “ I met my friend at
L’Union last night.”
“ Then you already knew of Madame’s
disappearance last night P” said the oflicial_
eagerly.
“ No! no !” exclaimed Pargeter crossly.
“ Of course we didn’t know then! We
didn’t know till just now—that is, till this
morning, when Mr. Vanderlyn went out to
Madame de Léra’s villa to fetch my wife.
It was Madame de Léra who told us that she
had never arrived at Marly-le-Roi. She
disappeared yesterday afternoon, but we
did not know it till this morning.”
“ May I ask you, gentlemen, to wait for a
moment while I make certain enquiries P”


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING II5
observed the detective politely. “ You have
not yet been shown our daily report con-
cerning the stations of Paris—is it not possible
that Madame Pargeter may have met with
some accident at the Gare St. Lazare, if, as I
understand, she was going to her friend by
train, and not by automobile P”
Pargeter seemed struck by the notion. He
turned to Vanderlyn. “ I can’t make out,”
he said in. a puzzled tone, “ why Peggy
thought of going to Marly-le-Roi by train
when she might so easily have gone in her
new motor.”
“ Peggy gave her man a week’s holiday,”
said Vanderlyn shortly. “ You know, Tom,
that he wanted to go to his own home, some-
where in Normandy.”
“ Yes, yes. Of course ! But still she
might have gone out in the big car—I wasn’t
using it yesterday.”
The detective came back at the end of
what seemed to both Vanderlyn and Par-
geter a very long quarter of an hour.
8—2


116 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
“ No incident of any sort took place last
night at the Gare St. Lazare," he said briefly.
“ We shall now institute a thorough enquiry
among our agents; every police station in
Paris shall be notified of the fact that Madame
Pargeter is missing ; and I shall almost
certainly be able to send you some kind of
news of her by four o’clock this afternoon.
In any case you can trust us to do our best.
Will Monsieur be returning to the Avenue
du Bois ”—he addressed Vanderlyn, “ or is
Monsieur going to his own flat in the Rue
de Rivoli P”
Vanderlyn looked up quickly. His private
address was not printed on the card he had
shown; still it was reasonable enough that
this man should have looked up his own as
well as Pargeter’s address, and should have
wished to verify their statements as far as
was possible.
“ Of course, Grid, you will come home with
me P” exclaimed Pargeter fretfully.
“ Then, Messieurs, I will send any


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 117
news I get straight to the Avenue du Bois
de Boulogne.”
As they walked back through the long cor-
ridors, it became clear that whatever anxiety
Pargeter had suffered had dropped off him,
for the moment, like a cloak. “ I shouldn’t
be surprised if I can get off to-night after all,”
he said cheerfully, “ you heard what he said P
This afternoon we shall certainly have news
of her.”
Then, as they emerged into the hall, and
he caught sight of his motor-car and of its
occupant, “ For God’s sake, Grid,” he
said, frowning, “let’s get rid of that old
woman ! There she sits, staring like a bird
of prey ; it’s enough to give one the hump !
Ask her if she would like us to drive her to
her Paris house. If she wants to go back
to the country, I’ll send her in Peggy’s
Limousine—oh ! I forgot, that’s not avail-
able, is it P Never mind, she can go on in
this car. Say we’ll send her news as soon
as we hear any !”


118 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
But Vanderlyn soon ascertained that
Madame de Léra had no wish to go back to
Marly-le-Roi. She accepted his brief
account of what had occurred at the Pre—
fecture of Police without comment, and,
refusing Pargeter’s offer to drive her to her
house in the Faubourg St. Germain, asked
only to be set down at the nearest telegraph
station.
Dreary hours followed—hours later re-
membered with special horror and shrinking
by Laurence Vanderlyn. They were spent by
the two ill-assorted friends in Tom Pargeter’s
own room on the ground floor of the villa.
It was a long, well-lighted room, lined
with the huge, splendidly decorative posters,
signed Chéret and Mucha, which were just
then being collected by those who admired
that type of flamboyant art. In this
apartment Peggy, as Vanderlyn was well
aware, never put her feet, for it was there
that her husband received his trainer and


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 119
his sporting friends. Here also was his own
private telephone.
Lunch was brought to them on a tray, and
at two o’clock the butler came with the infor-
mation that several police officials were in
the house interrogating the servants. Far
from annoying Pargeter, the fact seemed to
afford him some gratification, for it proved
that he was after all quite as important a
personage as he believed himself to be. He
gave orders that the men were to be liberally
supplied with drink.
An hour later came a high oflicial from the
Prefecture. He was taken upstairs and
shown into the drawing-room, and it was
there that Pargeter joined him, leaving
Vanderlyn for the first time alone.
The American lay back in the rocking
chair in which he had been sitting forward
listening to the other’s unconnected talk.
What a relief—what an immense sense of
sobbing relief—came over his weary senses,
aye, even his weary limbs! He put away


120 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
the thought, the anguished query, how
long this awful ordeal was likely to endure.
For the moment it was everything to be alone.
He closed his smarting eyes.
Suddenly the telephone bell rang, violently.
Vanderlyn got up; slowly, stumblingly he
walked across the room, and took up the
receiver. A woman’s voice asked in French :
“ Has Mr. Pargeter left Paris P”
“ No,” said Vanderlyn shortly, “ Mr. Par-
geter is still in Paris.”
“ Is it a friend of Mr. Pargeter who is
speaking P”
There was a long pause,-—then, “ Yes,"
said Vanderlyn.
“ Will you, Monsieur, kindly inform your
friend,” said the voice, shaking with a ripple
of light laughter, “ that Mademoiselle de la
Tour de Nesle has something very urgent to
say to him P”
“ Mr. Pargeter is engaged, but I will give
him any message.”
“ May I ask you, Monsieur, to have the
,4
MM, ""1 < w__/-~_.


122 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
whom I’d stupidly mixed up again; she
brought a child with her, a squalling brat
two or three months older than Jasper——
Of course the child had nothing to do with
me, but she said he had, and Peggy believed
her !” he looked for sympathy to the silent
man opposite to whom he was now sitting.
“ Did you ever hear of this before P” he
asked suspiciously, “ did Peggy ever tell you
about it P”
“ No,” said Vanderlyn. “ This is the first
time I have heard anything of it. How long
did she stay away P” He forced himself to
add, loathing himself the while : “ Did she
disappear like this—I mean, as she has done
this time P"
“ Well, not exactly,” said Pargeter re—
luctantly, “for one thing she took Jasper
and his nurse with her, but not her maid.
They went off to her aunt,—the aunt who
brought her up, you know,—but for two
days I hadn’t a notion where she was ! Then
one of her brothers came to see me. It was


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 123
all made as damned unpleasant for me as
possible, but they were of course determined
that she should come back to me, and so she
did—after about a week. But she was
never nice to me again,” he added, moodily,
“ not that she ever was really nice to me
before we married . It was the aunt who
hunted me——”
“ Is there any special reason why Peggy
should have thought of going away like that
—now P” asked Vanderlyn in a strained
voice.
“ No," exclaimed Pargeter, " of course
there isn’t ! I’ve always been nice to her, as
you know well, Grid,—much nicer, I mean,
than most men would have been to a wife
who was so—so—” he sought intently for
a word, “ so superior and—and unsympa-
thetic. But lately I’ve been specially nice
to her, for my sister, Sophy, you know,
had written me a long screed,—I didn’t
bother to read it right through,——making
out that Peggy’s heart was weak, and that


124 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
I ought to be very careful about her. The
very day I got the letter I went out and
bought her that grey Limousine Lady
Prynne was so keen I should take off her
hands! Peggy has always had everything
she wanted,” he repeated; “ I didn’t have a
penny with her, but I’ve never grudged her
anything. In fact I should be pleased if
she spent more on her clothes than she seems
to care to do, for I like to see a woman well
trigged out.”
“ Tom, I have a message for you,” said
Vanderlyn slowly, “ a lady telephoned just
now to say she’s expecting you at five
o’clock.”
“ Eh ! what P” said Pargeter, his fair face
flushing, “ a lady P What lady P Did she
give her name P”
“ Mademoiselle de la Tour de Nesle,” said
Vanderlyn, with curling lip.
“ Oh Lord ! what a plague women are !”
said the other, crossly. " Sometimes I think
it’s a pity God ever made Eve! Such im-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 125
pudence, her ringing up here! Still, she’s
an amusing little devil.”
“ Are you going to see her P” asked Van—
derlyn, “ because if so I think I had better
be getting back to my place. You see, I’ve
rather neglected my work to-day.”
Something in the other’s tone impressed
Pargeter disagreeably.
“I say, don’t be shirty!” he exclaimed,
“ I know you’ve had a lot of bother, and I’m
awftu grateful to you, and so will Peggy be
when she knows. I shan’t make up my
mind about going to see Nelly till the last
minute—”
“ Nelly P” repeated Vanderlyn, puzzled—-
“ Who’s Nelly P”
“ You know, Grid,—the—the person who
rang me up. I always call her Nelly. Her
name’s such a mouthful—still, it’s Nelly’s
Tower, isn’t it P SeeP Perhaps to-day as
there’s all this fuss on I’d better not go and
see her, eh, Grid P I wish I was like you,”
he added, a little shamefacedly, “ you’re such


126 THE. UTTERMOST FARTHING
a puritan. I suppose that’s why Peggy’s so
fond of you. Birds of a feather, eh P what P”
his manner grew sensibly more affectionate
and confidential.
The two men smoked on in silence. Van-
derlyn was trying to choose a form of words
with which he could bid the other farewell ;
he longed with a miserable longing to be
alone, but that first day’s ordeal was not yet
over.
“ I can’t face dinner here,” said Pargeter
suddenly, “let’s go and dine at that new
place, the Coq d’Or.”
Vanderlyn lacked the energy to say him
nay, and they went out, leaving word where
they were to be found.
Le C oq d’Or was a reconstitution of what
had been, in a now deserted suburban resort,
a famous restaurant dedicated to the memory
and cult of Rabelais. Vanderlyn had already
been there with American friends, but to
’ Pargeter the big room, with its quaint
mediaeval furnishings and large panels em-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 127
bodying the adventures of Gargantua, was
new, and for a moment distracted his mind
from what was still more of a grievance than
an anxiety.
But they had not long been seated at one
of the narrow oak tables which were sup-
posed to be exact copies of those used in a
mediaaval tavern, when Pargeter began to
turn sulky. The maitre d’hotel of the Coq
d’Or was not aware of how important a guest
was honouring him that night, and for a few
moments no attention was paid to the two
friends.
“ I say, this is no good !” exclaimed Par-
geter angrily, “ let’s go somewhere else—to
the Café de Paris.”
“ For God’s sake, Torn,” exclaimed Van-
derlyn harshly, “ sit down ! Can’t you see
I’m tired out P Let’s stay where we are.”
“ All right. But I can tell you that at
this rate we shan’t get anything till mid-
night !” Still Pargeter sat down again, and
fortunately there soon came up a waiter who


128 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
had known the great sportsman elsewhere ;
a moment later he was absorbed in the
amusing occupation of making out a careful
menu from a new bill of fare.
During the long course of the meal, Van-
derlyn listened silently to Pargeter's con-
jectures concerning Peggy’s disappearance—
conjectures broken by lamentations over the
contretemps which had made it impossible
for him to leave Paris that day. Absorbed
as he was in himself and his own grievances,
Pargeter was yet keenly aware when his
companion’s attention seemed in any way
to wander, and at last there came a moment
when, leaving his cup of black coffee half full,
he pushed his chair away with a gesture of
ill-temper.
“ I’m afraid, Grid, all this must be an
infernal bore for you 1” he said ; “ after all,
Peggy’s not your wife—no woman has the
right to lead you such a dance as she has led
me to-day. Let’s try to forget her for a
bit ; let’s go along to ‘ The Wash ’P ”


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I29
Vanderlyn shook his head ; he felt spent,
worn out. He muttered that he had work
to do, that it was time for him to turn in.
Each man paid his portion of the bill, and,
as they went through the glass doors giving
on to the Boulevard, Vanderlyn noticed that
on each side of the entrance to the Coq d’Or
a man was standing, sentinel - wise, as if
waiting for someone to go in or come out.
For a moment the two friends stood on the
pavement.
“ Let’s take a fiacre,” said Pargeter
suddenly, “ and I’ll drive you to your place.”
The warm spring weather had brought out a
number of open cabs. They hailed one of
these, and, as they did so, Vanderlyn noticed
that the two men who had been standing at
the door of the restaurant entered another
just behind them.
When at last he found himself in his own
flat, and at last alone, Vanderlyn stood for
a few moments in his empty sitting-room.


9


130 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING

Terrible as had been the companioned hours
of the day, he now feared to be alone. It was
too early to go to bed—~and he looked back
with horror to the wakeful hours which had
been his the night before. So standing there
he told himself that an hour's walk—he had
not walked at all that day—would quiet his
nerves, prepare him for the next day's
ordeal.
As he made his way down the broad
shallow stairs, his mind seemed to regain its
elasticity. He realized that it must be his
business to keep fit. A greater ordeal than
anything which had yet befallen him lay
there—in front of him. Soon, perhaps to-
morrow, the Prefecture of Police would
connect the finding of a woman’s dead body
in the train which had left Paris for Orange
the night before, with Mrs. Pargeter's dis-
appearance.
It would be then that he would need all
his strength and self-control. He remem-
bered with a thrill of anger the curious


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I31
measuring glance the head of the Paris
detective force had cast on him that
morning. He wondered uneasily how far
he had betrayed himself. . . .
Passing through the porte cochere, he
noticed that the concierge was talking to a
neat, stout little Frenchman with whose
appearance he felt himself familiar. Van-
derlyn looked straight at the man ; yes, this
was undoubtedly one of the two watchers
who had been standing outside the door of
the Coq d’Or.
Then he was being followed, tracked?
The Paris police evidently already connected
him in some way with the disappearance
of Mrs. Pargeter P
Instead of crossing the road to the deserted
pavement which bounds the gardens of the
Tuileries, the American turned to the left,
and became merged in the slowly moving
stream of men and women under the
arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. As he
walked along, he became conscious, and
9—2


132 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
that without once turning round, that his
pursuer was close behind; when he walked
slowly, the other, as far as possible, did the
same, and when he hurried on, he could hear
the tap-tap dogging his footsteps through the
crowd.
At last, finding himself opposite the
Hotel Continental, Vanderlyn stopped and
deliberately read over the bill of fare attached
to the door of the restaurant. As he did so,
the light of a large réverbére beat down on
his face; from the human current sweep-
ing slowly on behind him a man quietly
detached himself, and, standing for a moment
by the side of the American diplomatist,
looked up into his face with along deliberate
stare.


VII
THE fact that he was being watched had a
curious effect on Laurence Vanderlyn. It
roused in him the fighting instinct which
he had had to keep in leash the whole of
that terrible first day of repression, save
during the moments when he had been con-
fronted with the head of the detective
department at the Prefecture of Police.
As at last he walked on, now choosing
deliberately quiet and solitary streets, the
footsteps of his unknown companion echoed
loudly behind him, and he allowed himself,
for the first time since the night before, the
cruel luxury of recollection. For the first
time, also, he forced himself to face the
knowledge that any hour might bring as
unexpected a development as had been the
133


I34 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
prolonged presence of Pargeter in Paris.
He realised that he must, if possible, be
prepared, forearmed, with the knowledge
of what had occurred after he had left the
darkened railway carriage at Dorgival.
News travels slowly in provincial France,
yet, even so, the fact that the dead body of
a woman had been found in a first-class
carriage of the Paris demi-rapide must soon
have become known, and made its way into
the local press.
Out of the past there came to Vanderlyn
the memory of an old-fashioned reading-
room frequented by him long years before
when he was studying in Paris. 7
The place had been pointed out to him by
one of the professors at the Sorbonne as
being by far the best lending library on the
left side of the Seine ; and there, in addition
to the ordinary reading-room, was an inner
room, where, by paying a special fee, one
could see all the leading provincial papers.
In some such sheet,—f0r in France every


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I35
little town has its own newspaper,—would
almost certainly appear the first intimation
of so sinister and mysterious a discovery
as that of a woman’s dead body in the Paris
train.
Vanderlyn wondered if the library—the
Bibliotheque Cardinal was its name—still
existed. If yes, there was every chance that
he might find there what was vital to him
to know, both in order to rid himself of the
obsessing vision which he saw whenever he
shut his tired eyes, and also that he might
be prepared for any information suddenly
forwarded to Pargeter from the Prefecture
of Police.
The next morning Vanderlyn was scarcely
surprised to see the man who had shadowed
him the night before lying in wait for him
before the house.
The American measured the other’s weary
face and stout figure, and then he began
quietly walking up the now deserted arcades


136 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
of the Rue de Rivoli; with a certain grim
amusement, he gradually increased his pace,
and when at last he turned into the great
court of the Louvre, and stood for a moment
at the base of the Gambetta Monument, he
assured himself that he had out-distanced
his pursuer.
Striding quickly across the most historic
of Paris bridges, he threaded the narrow,
tortuous thoroughfares dear to every lover
of old Paris, till he reached the Place St.
Sulpice. There, forming one of the corners
of the square, was the house wherein was
housed the Bibliotheque Cardinal, looking
exactly as Vanderlyn remembered it’s having
looked twenty years before. Even the huge
leather-bound books in the window seemed
to be the same as in the days when the
future American diplomatist had been, if
not a merry-hearted, then a most enthusi-
astic student, making eager acquaintance
with “ The Quarter.’ ’
He walked into the shop, and recognised


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I37
in the stout, middle-aged woman sitting
there, the trim young bourgeoise to whom
he had often handed a fifty centime piece in
those days which seemed so distant as almost
to belong to another life.
“ Have you still a provincial paper
room P” he asked, in a low tone.
“ Yes,” said the dame du comptoir, suavely,
“ but we have to charge a franc for admission.”
Vanderlyn smiled. “ It used to be fifty
centimes,” he said.
“ Ah ! Monsieur, that was long ago !
There are ten times as many provincial
papers now as then !”
He put the piece of silver on the counter.
As he did so, he heard the door of the shop
quietly open, and, with a disagreeable feel-
ing of surprise, he saw the man, the detective
he believed he had shaken off, come up un-
obtrusively to where he was standing.
Vanderlyn hesitated—-— Then he re-
minded himself that what he was about to
do belonged to the part he had set himself


I38 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
to play. “ Well, Madame,” he said, “ I
will go through into your second reading-
room and glance over the papers ;” he forced
himself to add, “ I am anxious to find news
of a person who has disappeared—who has, I
fear, met with an accident.”
The detective asked a question of the
woman ; he spoke in a low voice, but Van-
derlyn heard what he said—that is, whether
there was any other way out of the two
reading-rooms except through the shop. On
the woman’s replying in the negative, he
settled himself down and opened an illus-
trated paper.
Vanderlyn began systematically going
through the provincial papers of the towns
at which he knew the train was to stop
after he had left it at Dorgival; and after
the first uneasy quarter of an hour he forgot
the watcher outside, and became absorbed
in his task. To his mingled disappointment
and relief, he found nothing.
It was of course possible that on the


140 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
Morgue was also in the picture—in the
picture, that is, of Laurence Vanderlyn, the
kindly friend of Tom Pargeter, helping in
the perplexing, the now agonising, search for
Mrs. Pargeter.
But when at last he came in sight of
the sinister triangular building which
crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the
great Cathedral, Vanderlyn’s heart failed
him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed
lying there, exposed to the careless, morbid
glances of those idle sightseers to whom the
Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, he felt
that he could not trust himself to go in and
look at her.
He stood still for a few moments, and then,
as he was about to turn on his heel, he saw
coming towards him from out of the door
of the Morgue a figure which struck a note
of tragedy in the bright morning sunshine.
It was Madame de Léra, her eyes full of
tears, her heart oppressed by the sights she
had just seen. ‘


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I41
“ There are three poor people there,” she
said, in a low voice, “ two men and a woman,
but not, thank God ! our friend. I wonder
if it is possible that we are mistaken—that
there was no accident, Monsieur Vanderlyn P
But then, if so, where is she—why has she
not written to me P”
He shook his head with a hopeless gesture,
afraid to speak lest he should be tempted
to share with her his agony and complicated
suspense.
“ If she were a Catholic,” added Madame
de Léra pitifully, “ I should be inclined to
think—to hope—that she had gone to a
convent ; but—but for her there was no
such place of refuge from temptation—”
her voice as she uttered the last word
became almost inaudible; more firmly she
added, “ Is it not possible that she may
have gone to England, to her child P”
“ No,” said Vanderlyn, dully, “ she has
not done that.”
He took her to her door, and then, as he


142 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
had promised Tom Pargeter to do, went to
the Avenue du Bois, there to spend with
Margaret Pargeter’s husband another term
of weary waiting and suspense.
That second day, of which the closing
hours were destined to bring to Laurence
Vanderlyn the most dramatic and dangerous
moments connected with the whole tragic
episode of Mrs. Pargeter’s disappearance,
wore itself slowly, uneventfully away.
Tom Pargeter, alternating between real
anxiety, and an angry suspicion that his
wife was in very truth only hiding from
him, poured into the ears of this man, whom
he now regarded rather as his friend than his
wife’s, every theory which might con-
ceivably account for Peggy’s disappearance.
He took note of every suggestion made to
him by the members of the now intensely
excited and anxious household, for Margaret
Pargeter’s gentle personality and thoughtful
kindness had endeared her to her servants.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 143
When Plimmer, her staid maid, evolved
the idea that Mrs. Pargeter, on her way to
the station, might have stopped to see some
friend, and, finding that friend ill, have
remained to nurse her,—the suggestion so
seized hold of Pargeter’s imagination that
he insisted on spending the afternoon in
making a tour of his own and his wife’s
acquaintances. To Vanderlyn’s anger and
pain, the only result of this action on
his part was that Mrs. Pargeter’s dis-
appearance became known to a large circle,
and that more than one of the evening
papers contained a garbled reference to the
matter.
Meanwhile, or so Pargeter complained,
the officials of the Prefecture of Police
remained curiously inactive. They were
quite certain, so they told the anxious hus-
band, of ultimately solving the mystery,
but it was doubtful if any news could be
procured before the next day, for they were
now directing their researches to the environs


144 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
of Paris—a new theory now evolved being
that Mrs. Pargeter, having hired a motor
cab to drive her to Marly-le-Roi, had met
with accident or sinister misadventure on
the way thither.


148 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
the heart of Paris, to the solitary Place
des Vosges. It was there, it was then,
that they had together planned that which
had brought him to his present dreadful
pass.
Vanderlyn put the paper back on the
table, and his face fell forward on his hands ;
was he fated never to be allowed to forget—
not even for a moment P
It was with relief that he welcomed the
interruption caused by the entrance of his
servant bearing a card in his hand. “ A
gentleman has come and insists on seeing
Monsieur.”
Poulain spoke in a mysterious, significant
tone, one that jarred on Vanderlyn’s sensi-
tive nerves. The disappearance of Mrs.
Pargeter had become an engrossing, a de-
lightful drama, not only to the members of
the Pargeter household, but also to Poulain
and his worthy wife; and it had been one
of the smaller ironical agonies of Vanderlyn's
position that he did not feel himself able to


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 149
check or discourage their perpetual and
indiscreet enquiries.
“ I have already told you,” he said
stemly, “ that I receive no one to-night.
Even if Mr. Pargeter himself comes, you are
to say that I am out.”
“ I’m afraid Monsieur will have to receive
this gentleman.”
“ Poulain !” exclaimed Vanderlyn sharply.
“ This won’t do ! G0 at once and inform this
gentleman, whoever he may be, that I can
see no one to-night.”
“ I did say so,” observed Poulain, in an
injured tone, “ I explained to him that you
would see no one. I said you were out—
he said that he would wait. Then, Monsieur,
not till then, he handed me his card. If
Monsieur will give himself the trouble of
looking at it, I think he will receive the
gentleman.”
Vanderlyn took the card with an im-
patient movement. He glanced at it.
" Why did you not tell me at once,” he said


I50 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
roughly, “ who this—this person was? Of
course I must see the Prefect of Police.”
More than once Vanderlyn had had proof
of the amazing perfection and grip of the
great, the mysterious organisation, that
oligarchy within a republic, which has
always played a paramount role in every
section of Parisian life. The American
diplomatist had not lived in France all these
years without unconsciously acquiring an
almost superstitious belief in the omni-
potence of the French police.
He got up and placed himself between
the lamp and the door. He knew slightly
the formidable official whose presence here
surely indicated some serious development
in what had now become a matter of urgent
interest to many quite outside the Pargeter
circle.
The two or three moments’ delay—doubt-
less the zealous Poulain was engaged in
helping the important visitor off with his
coat—were passed by Vanderlyn in a state


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 151
of indescribable nervous tension and sus-
pense. He was glad when they came to an
end.
And yet the Frenchman who came into
Vanderlyn’s sitting-room, making a cere-
monious bow, would have suggested no
formidable or even striking personality to
the eyes of the average Englishman or
American. His stout figure, clad in an ill-
cut suit of evening clothes, recalled rather a
Gavarni caricature than a dapper modern
oflicial, the more so that his round fleshy
face was framed in the carefully trimmed
mutton-chop whiskers which remain a dis-
tinguishing mark of the more old-fashioned
members of the Parisian Bar. The red
button, signifying that its wearer is an
officer of the Legion of Honour, was excep-
tionally small and unobtrusive.
Vanderlyn was well aware that his visitor
was no upstart, owing promotion to adroit
flattery of the Republican powers; the
Prefect of Police came of good bourgeois


152 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
stock, and was the son of a legal luminary
who had played a considerable part in ’48.
His manner was suave, his voice almost
caressing in its urbanity :—
“ I have the honour, have I not, of speak-
ing to Mr. Laurence Vanderlyn P”
Vanderlyn bowed ; he turned and led the
way to the fireplace. “ Yes, Monsieur le
Préfet, Laurence Vanderlyn at your service.
I think we have already met, at the
Elysée—” he drew forward a second
arm-chair.
Monsieur le Préfet sat down ; and for
the first time the American diplomatist
noticed that his visitor held a small, black,
battered portfolio in his right hand. As the
Frenchman laid it across his knee, he gave a
scarcely perceptible glance round the room ;
then, at last, his gaze concentrated itself on
the table where stood the lamp, and the
spread-open newspaper.
“ You probably divine, Monsieur,” said
the Prefect, after a short pause, “ what has
I - W.__‘._Ta_..__ _ .aa _a


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I53
brought me here to-night. I have come to
see you—perhaps I should say to consult
you—in connection with the disappearance
of Mrs. Pargeter.”
“ Yes P” said Vanderlyn interrogatively,
“ I am, of course, quite at your disposal. I
have been with Mr. Pargeter all to-day, but
so far the mystery remains as great as ever.”
He stopped abruptly, feeling it wisest not
to speak, but to listen.
“ That, I repeat, is why I have come here,”
said Vanderlyn’s formidable visitor. He
spoke with a great deliberateness and mild-
ness of manner. “ I cannot help thinking,
my dear sir, that with your help we may be,
or rather I may be, on the eve of a dis-
covery.”
Vanderlyn looked surprised ; his desolate
eyes met the older man’s hesitating glance
quite squarely, but this time he remained
silent.
The Prefect went on speaking, and his
voice became more and more suave ; he was


I54 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
certainly desirous of saving in every way
his host’s susceptibilities.
“ The fact that I have taken the very un-
usual course of coming myself to see you, Mr.
Vanderlyn, will prove to you the importance
I attach to this interview. Indeed, I wish
to be quite frank with you.”
Vanderlyn bent his head, then he sat
up, listening keenly while the other con-
tinued:— '
" This is not, I am convinced, an ordinary
case of disappearance, and it is to us, and
especially to me, disagreeably complicated
by the fact that the lady is an English
subject and that her husband is a well-
known and highly thought of member of
our English colony. This makes me the
more anxious to avoid ”——he hesitated, then
firmly uttered the two words, “ any scandal.
It was suggested at the Préfecture to-day
that it would be well to make a perquisition,
not only in Mrs. Pargeter’s own house,
but also in the houses of some of her inti-


156 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
which formed so important a part of its
decoration, lingered doubtingly on a carved
walnut chest set between two of the windows,
peered through these same unshuttered
windows on to the dark stone balconies;
then, baffled, his eyes came back and fixed
themselves on the American diplomatist's
face.
A feeling of indescribable relief stole over
Vanderlyn’s wearied and yet alert senses.
It was clear that the Prefect of Police knew
nothing of the truth; the directness of his
question proved it. Yet, even so, Van-
derlyn felt that he must steer his way very
warily.
“ You are in error,” he said at last, “ for
you credit me, Monsieur le Préfet, with a
knowledge I do not possess.”
“ Ah !” said the other mildly, “ that is
most unfortunate !”
“ May I, on my side, put to you a question
to which I shall be glad of an honest
answer P” said Vanderlyn abruptly. " Are


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 157
you now engaged in making a wide-spread
enquiry among those who had the honour of
this lady’s acquaintance P”
“No, Monsieur,”—the Prefect’s manner
showed an eager desire to be quite frank,—
“ I am confining my personal enquiries to
only two persons; that is, to a certain
Madame de Léra, to whom you will re-
member Mrs. Pargeter was about to pay a
visit at the moment she disappeared,—-—and
to yourself.”
Vanderlyn made a sudden nervous move-
ment, but he checked the words which rose
to his lips, for the Prefect was again speak-
ing, and this time with a certain excite-
ment of manner :—
“ I am convinced that Mrs. Pargeter
never intended to go to Madame de Léra,
and that the proposed visit was a blind!
The facts speak for themselves. Madame de
Léra had taken only one servant to the
country, and this servant, an old woman
whom she has had with her many years,


158 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
and whom she can entirely trust, had no
idea that her mistress was expecting a
visitor ! I repeat—no preparations for Mrs.
Pargeter’s arrival had been made at Marly-
le-Roi. It is my belief—nay, my conviction
—that Madame de Léra knows perfectly
well where her friend is concealed.”
It was then that Vanderlyn committed
what was perhaps the only error he was
destined to commit during this difiicult
interview. “ Has Madame de Léra made
any such admission P" he asked quickly.
“ N0,” answered the Prefect, looking at
him thoughtfully, “ Madame de Léra has
made no admission ; but then I have learned,
through long experience, mixer to believe,
where there is a friend in the case, what a
lady tells me. Women of the world, my
dear sir, are more loyal the one to the other
than we men choose to believe !”
“And men, Monsieur? Are they more
disloyal P” Vanderlyn spoke quietly, indiffer-
ently, as if the question was of no moment.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I59
“ Men,” said Monsieur le Préfet, dryly,
“ are as a rule quite as loyal, especially where
they feel their honour is engaged. But with
a man it is possible to reason; a woman,
especially a good woman, follows the dictates
of instinct,—in other words, of her heart.”
“ I notice, Monsieur le Préfet, that you
eliminate the possibility of material accident
having occurred to Mrs. Pargeter P”
“ Let us distinguish!” exclaimed the
older man quickly. “ If, by accident, you
mean, Mr. Vanderlyn, the type of mishap
which might have occurred to this lady
when she was walking or driving in our Paris
streets, then I certainly eliminate the possi-
bility of accident to Mrs. Pargeter. Within
six hours of such a thing having occurred
the facts would have been laid before me,
and, as you know, two nights and two days
have elapsed since her disappearance. If,
on the other hand, we envisage the possi-
bility of suicide, then is opened up a new
series of possibilities.”


160 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
The Prefect gave a piercing look at the
American’s worn and sorrow-laden face,
but he did not find written there any in-
voluntary answer to his mute interroga-
tion.
“ Some years ago,” went on the great offi-
cial, “ a man well known in Paris society
made up his mind to take his own life. He
hired a cellar, locked the door, and then
shot himself. Months went by before his
disappearance was accounted for, and then
the body was only discovered by an accident.
If Mrs. Pargeter has committed suicide,
and if she, an intelligent woman, was de-
termined that the fact should never be
found out by her friends, then I admit our
task becomes a very difficult one! But I
do not believe,” he continued, after a short
silence, “ that Mrs. Pargeter did this. I
believe she is alive and well. She was, by
each account that has reached me, young,
charming, and wealthy. She had a child
whom she apparently adored. As for her


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING r61
relations with her husband—" the Prefect
shrugged his shoulders, and again looked
searchingly at Vanderlyn.
“ Mr. Thomas Pargeter,” he went on,
smiling, “ is not perhaps the perfect husband
of whom every young girl dreams ; but
then no one is so foolish as to search for the
perfect husband in the world to which your
friend belongs ! He is not exactly a viveur,
-—but he is, to use the slang of the day, essen-
tially a jom'sseur. Is not that so P” He
added, with a rather twisted grin, “ If every
lady whose husband lives to enjoy himself
were to commit suicide, there would be very
few women left in our Paris world.”
“ I agree with you, Monsieur le Préfet, in
thinking Mrs. Pargeter was the last woman
in the world to commit suicide,” said Van-
derlyn brusquely,—and then he got up.
There had come over him during the last
few moments an inexplicable, instinctive
feeling of dread,—that panting fear which
besets the hunted creature. He was deter-
II


r62 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
mined to bring the interview to an end.
But the Prefect of Police had no intention
of being disposed of so easily. He remained
sitting where he was; and, placing his two
fat hands firmly on his knees, sat looking
at the American’s tall figure. Slowly his eyes
travelled up till they rested on his host’s
haggard face.
“ Then I am to understand, Mr. Vanderlyn,
that you are not in a position to give me any
help P That is your last word P”
Vanderlyn suddenly determined to carry
the war into the enemy’s country.
“ I can only repeat,” he said, harshly,
“ what I said before, Monsieur le Préfet—
namely, that you credit me with a knowledge
which I do not possess. Further, that,
while of course I appreciate the kindly
motive which has inspired your visit, I
think I have a right to resent the suspicions
whiCh that visit indicates, I do not say on
your part, but on that of your subordinates.
I will not disguise from you my knowledge


166 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
First came the American diplomatist’s
Christian name and surname, his place of
birth, his probable age—right within two
years,—-a short epitome of his diplomatic
career, a guess at his income, this item
considerably under the right figure, and
evidently based on his quiet way of living.
Then, under a printed heading " General
Remarks,” were written a few phrases in a
handwriting very different from the rest-—
that is, in the small clear caligraphy of an
educated Frenchman. Staring down at these,
Vanderlyn felt shaken with anger and disgust,
for these “ General Remarks ” concerned
that part of his private life which every man
believes to be hidden from his fellows :—
“ Peu d’intimités d’hommes. Pas de
femmes: par contre, arnitié amoureuse tres
suivie avec Madame (Marguerite) Pargeter.
Voir dossier Pargeter (Thomas).”
Amitié amoureuseP Friendship akin to
love P The English language, so rich in
synonyms, owns no exact equivalent for this


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 267
French phrase, expressive though it be of a
phase of human emotion as old as human
nature itself.
Vanderlyn looked up. His eyes met
squarely those of the other man.
“ Your staff,” he said, very quietly, “ have
served you well, Monsieur; my dossier is,
on the whole, extraordinarily correct. There
is but one word which I would have altered,
and which, indeed, I venture to beg you to
correct without loss of time. The young
man—he is evidently a young man—who
wrote the summary to which you have drawn
my attention, must have literary tastes,
otherwise there is one word in this document
which would not be there.” Vanderlyn
put his finger down firmly on the word
“ amoureuse.” “ My relations with Mrs.
Pargeter were, it is true, those of close
friendship, but I must ask you to accept my
assurance, Monsieur le Préfet, that they
were not what the writer of this passage
evidently believed them to have been.“


I68 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
“I will make a note of the correction,”
said the Prefect, gravely, “ and I must offer
you my very sincere excuses for having
troubled you to-night.”
As Vanderlyn’s late visitor drove home
that night, he said to himself, indeed he
said aloud to the walls of the Shabby little
carriage which had heard so many impor-
tant secrets, “ He knows whatever_ there is
to be known—but then, what is it that is to
be known? Of what mystery am I now
seeking the solution P”
..__. z i. I.
~\“ A!


IX
As he heard the door shut on the Prefect of
Police, Vanderlyn felt his nerve give way.
There had come a moment during the con-
versation, when, as if urged by some malig—
nant power outside himself, he had felt a
sudden craving to take the old official into
his confidence, and tell him the whole truth
-—so magnetic were the personality, the
compelling will, of the man who had just
left him.
He walked over to the corner window of
his sitting-room, and stepped on to the stone
balcony which overlooked the twinkling
lights of the Place de la Concorde.
Then, flung out, merged in the deep roar
below, there broke from Laurence Vanderlyn

169


170 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
a bitter cry ; the keen night air had brought
with it a sudden memory of that moment
when he had opened the railway carriage
door and stepped out into the rushing wind.
He asked himself why he had not fol-
lowed his first impulse, why he had not
allowed himself to die, with Peggy in his
arms? Why, above all, had he undertaken
a task which it was becoming beyond his
strength to carry through P
So wondering, so questioning, he leaned
over the balustrade dangerously far; then
he drew quickly back, and, placing his
hands on the parapet, stood for a moment
as if holding at bay an invisible, and yet to
himself most tangible, enemy.
With a sigh which was a groan, he walked
back into the room. He had never yet failed
Peggy; he would not fail her now
Vanderlyn sat down ; he was determined
not to be beaten by his nerves. He took up
the New York Herald ; but a moment later
he had laid the paper down again on the


172 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
The Paris correspondent of the great
London newspaper had proved himself very
discreet.
Vanderlyn’s eyes glanced idly down the
long column of paragraphs which make up
“ Paris Day by Day.” Again he remem-
bered the look of deep astonishment which
had crossed a colleague’s face at his ignorance
of some new sensation of which at that
moment all Paris was apparently talking.
So it was that he applied himself to read the
trifling items of news with some care, for
here would be found everything likely to
keep him in touch with the gossip of the
day.
At last he came to the final para-
graph——
“ Yet another railway mystery! The
dead body of a woman has been found in a
first-class compartment in a" train which
left Paris at 7 pm. last Wednesday. As
the discovery was not made till the train


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING r73
reached Orange, it is of course impossible
to know where the unfortunate woman,
who by her dress belonged to the leisured
class, entered the train. Her hand-baggage
had disappeared, no doubt stolen at some
intervening station by someone who, having
made the gruesome discovery, thought it
wise to make himself scarce. The police
do not, however, consider that they are in
the presence of a crime. Dr. Fortoul, the
well-known physician of Orange, has satis-
fied himself that the lady died of heart
disease.”
Vanderlyn went on staring down at the
printed words. They seemed-t0 make more
true, more inevitable, the fact of Margaret
Pargeter’s death, and of his own awful loss.
But with the agony of this thought came
infinite relief, for this, or so he thought,
meant that his own personal ordeal was
at last drawing to a close. The fact of
so strange and unwonted an occurrence


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 175
great as that with which Vanderlyn credited
them.
But stay! The Prefect of Police was con-
vinced that Mrs. Pargeter was alive, and
that he, Vanderlyn, knew her whereabouts ;
it was not for Peggy dead, but for Peggy
living, that they were still searching so
eagerly.
He opened the Figaro and the Petit
journal, and ran a shaking finger down the
columns; there, in each paper, hidden
away among unimportant items, and told
more briefly and in much balder language,
he at last found the story of the discovery
which the Daily Telegraph had served up as
a tit-bit to thrill the readers of its Paris
news column.
Vanderlyn made up his mind to spend the
Whole of the next day with Pargeter; he
must be at the villa, ready to put in his
word of .advice,—even, if need be, of sug-
gestion,-—when the moment came for him
to do so.


r76 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
For the first time for many nights Van-
derlyn’s sleep was unbroken ; and early the
next morning he made his way to the Avenue
du Bois de Boulogne.
As he walked through the hall of the villa,
already peopled with a score of the Pargeters'
acquaintances, eager to show their sym-
pathy with the wealthy sportsman in this
most untoward and extraordinary occur-
rence, the American was obliged to shake
hands with many men whom he had hitherto
only known by sight, and to answer ques-
tions some of which impressed him as
strangely indiscreet. More than one of
those with whom he found himself thus face
to face looked at him with cruel, inquisitive
eyes, and a scarcely veiled curiosity, for it
was of course well known that Laurence Van-
derlyn had been an intimate, not only of the
husband, but also of the wife.
At last Pargeter’s valet threaded his way
up to him : “ Will you please come up-
stairs, sirP Mr. Pargeter told me to say


178 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
and disgust: “ Quite right, Tom! What-
ever made them think of suggesting such a
thing? Where would be the use of it P"
“ Oh ! well, of course they had a reason.
The police are particularly keen that we
should look over any old letters of her’s;
they think that we might find Some kind of
clue. But I don’t believe she kept her
letters—why should she? I don’t keep
mine. However, I’ve promised to do the
job myself ” he looked uncertainly at
Vanderlyn. “ Would you mind, Grid,
coming with me into Peggy’s room? Of
course Plimmer,--that’s her maid, you
know,—will help us. She knows where
Peggy keeps all her things.”
“ Why not ask Madame de Léra to do it P"
said Vanderlyn, in a low voice.
He turned away and stared at a sporting
print which hung just on the level of his

eyes. Had he ever written imprudent
letters to Peggy? Not lately, but in the
early days,—in that brief time of uncertain


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING I79
ecstasy, and, on his part, of passionate ex-
pression, which had preceded their long,
successful pretence at friendship P He him-
self had preserved later letters of her’s—
not love-letters assuredly, but letters which
proved clearly enough the strange closeness
of their intimacy.
But what was this that Pargeter was
saying P “ Madame de Léra P Why should
I ask her to interfere P I don’t want to mix
her up in this business more than I can help !
If it hadn’t been for her, and that ridiculous
invitation of her’s, Peggy would be here
now! Peggy wouldn’t mind your looking
over her things, Grid. She’s really fond of
you—as fond of you as she can be of anyone,
that is.”
He got up, and, preceding Vanderlyn
down a connecting passage, flung open a
door giving access to a spacious airy bed-
chamber of which the pale mauve and grey
furnishings reminded both men of Peggy’s
favourite flower and scent. The sun-blinds
12—2


180 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
were down, and the maid was standing, as
if waiting, by the dressing-table.
They both instinctively hesitated on the
threshold. “ Tom,” said Vanderlyn,
hoarsely, “ I don’t think I ought to come in
here—”
“ Don’t be a fool ! I tell you she wouldn’t
mind a bit. Surely you’re not going to out
—now P”
Pargeter took a step forward; then he
stood for a moment looking round him,
evidently perplexed and ill at ease at finding
himself thus suddenly introduced into his
wife’s intimate atmosphere.
“ I don’t believe she kept any letters,"
he repeated, then glanced uncertainly at the
lady’s-maid who stood primly by.
“ Mrs. Pargeter kept some letters in that
writing-desk over there, sir,—at least I think
she did.”
Close to the small tent-bed stood an old-
fashioned rosewood davenport, a relic of
Margaret Pargeter’s childhood and girl-


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 181
hood, brought from her distant English
home.
The maid waited a moment, and then
added, “ The desk is locked, sir."
“ Locked P Then did Mrs. Pargeter take
her keys with her P"
“ I suppose she did, sir.”
“ Then it’s no use,” said Pargeter, with a
certain relief, “I don’t want to force the
thing open.”
Vanderlyn looked across, coldly and
steadily, at the woman. Her expression
struck him as oddly enigmatical; meeting
his glance, Plirnmer reddened, her eyes
dropped.
“ I expect that any simple key would
open it,” he said, briefly.
“ Well, sir, I did ask the housekeeper to
lend me a bunch of keys. Here they
are,” she opened one of the dressing-table
drawers. “ Perhaps one of the smaller ones
would fit the look.”
It was Vanderlyn who took the keys from


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 183
I think you will find more letters there,—at
least that is where Master Jasper’s letters
are, I know.”
She looked furtively at Vanderlyn, and her
look said, ” If you want to have the truth
you shall have it !”
" I say, how queer !” exclaimed Pargeter.
“ A secret drawer ! eh, Grid P”
“ All old pieces of furniture have that kind
of thing,” said Vanderlyn, “ there isn’t any
secret about it.”
Pargeter fumbled at the brass-headed
pin ; he pulled it out, and a drawer which
filled up the side of the davenport shot
out. Yes, here were more packets in-
scribed with the words, “Jasper’s letters,
written at school," and then others,
“ To be returned to Laurence Vanderlyn
in case of my death”; and two or three
loose letters.
“ Well, these won’t tell us anything, eh,
Grid P” Pargeter opened the first envelope
under his hand :—


184 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
“ DEAR MAMMY ” (he read slowly),
“ Please send me ten shillings. I
have finished the French cherry-jam. I
should like some more. Also some horses
made of gingerbread. I have laid 3 to 1 on
Absinthe. Betting is forbidden, but as it
was Dad’s horse I thought I might. My
bat is the best in the school.
“ Your loving
“JASPER.”
“ He’s a fine little chap, isn’t he, Grid P"
Pargeter was fingering absently a yellowing
packet of Vanderlyn’s letters : " Fancy
keeping your old letters ! What a queer
thing to do !"
Vanderlyn said nothing. The maid stared
at him stealthily.
At last Pargeter put the packet down,
and deliberately opened yet another envelope
which lay loose. “ I suppose this is the last
note you wrote to her P" he said ; then, opening
it, murmured its contents over to himself :—


X
AN hour later Vanderlyn had escaped from
Pargeter, and was standing alone in Madame
de Léra’s drawing-room.
He was scarcely conscious of how many
hours he had spent, during the last terrible
three days, with the middle-aged French-
woman who had been so true and sure a
friend of Margaret Pargeter. In Madame de
Léra’s presence alone was he able, to a certain
extent, to drop the mask which he was com-
pelled to wear in the presence of all others,
and especially in that of the man who, as
time went on, seemed more and more to
lean on him and find comfort in his com-
panionship.
Vanderlyn had walked the considerable
distance from the Avenue du Bois to the
188


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 191
she should be still able truthfully to declare
that she knew nothing.
“ I have just come from Tom Pargeter,”
he observed quietly. “ I can’t help being
sorry for him. The police have been worry-
ing him, and—and at their suggestion we
have been seeking among her things—
among her correspondence—for some clue.
But of course we found nothing. Pargeter
is longing to go aw‘ay—to England. How
I wish he would g0,—God! how I wish he
would go! After all, as he says himself,
he can do no good by staying here. He
would receive any news within an hour.”
Madame de Léra leant forward. “ Ah!
but if Mr. Pargeter leaves Paris before—
before something is discovered, his conduct
would be regarded as very cruel, very
heartless.”
“ Did you know,” said Vanderlyn, in a
low voice, “ that Peggy once before dis-
appeared for three days? Pargeter keeps
harking back to that. He thinks that she


196 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
charming girl whose image was thus sud—
denly brought up before him, and that of
the beloved woman who seemed to be now
even more present to his emotional memory
than she had been in life.
“ As you know, for it was no secret,
Jeanne had what English and American
people call ‘ flirted’ with Henri Delavigne,
and he had sworn that he would kill himself
on her wedding day. Well, the poor foolish
girl took this threat very seriously; it
shadowed her happy betrothal, and on the
very day before her marriage was to take
place, she persuaded her married sister to
go with her to a fortune-teller. It was not
her own future, which stretched cloudless
and radiant before her, that tempted Jeanne
to peer into these mysteries ; she only wished
to be reassured as to Delavigne and his
absurd threat ”
Madame de Léra stopped speaking a
moment, and then she went on—
“ Madame d’Elphis had just then become


198 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
become blurred, and that she could see
nothing ! Nothing ! Nothing ! Both the
sisters pressed her to say more, to predict
something of the future ; and at last, speak-
ing very reluctantly, she admitted that she
saw Jeanne, pale, deathly pale, clad in a
wedding dress, and she also evoked a
wonderful vision of white flowers. . . . ”
Madame de Léra looked up at her visitor,
but Vanderlyn made no comment; and so
she went on :—
“ Then, with some confusion, Jeanne
summoned up courage to ask the one ques-
tion she had come there to ask. The answer
came at once, and was more than reassuring :
‘ As to the man concerning whom you are so
anxious,’ said Madame d’Elphis, ‘ you may
count on his fidelity. The years will go on
and others who loved you will forget you——
but he will ever remember.’ ‘ Then nothing
will happen to him to-morrow P’ asked Jeanne
eagerly. ‘ To-morrow P’ replied the woman,
mysteriously. ‘ To-morrow I see him plunged


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 199
in deep grief, and yet that which has
brought him this awful sorrow will not
perhaps be wholly regretted by him.’ ”
“ My poor little niece, if rather piqued,
was yet much relieved, and the two sisters
left the presence of this horrible, sinister
creature."
Madame de Léra passed her hand with a
nervous movement over her mouth—“ It
was while they were actually driving home
from this séance with La d’Elphis that the
terrible accident, which you of course re-
member, occurred,—an accident which re— .
sulted in the younger sister’s death, while
the elder miraculously escaped unhurt.
Jeanne was buried in her wedding dress;
and the flowers—you recall the wonderful
flowers? The woman’s predictions as to
Delavigne’s constancy came strangely true ;
who now remembers Jeanne, save her poor
mother—and Delavigne P”
" Yes, it’s a very curious, striking story,”
said Vanderlyn, slowly, “ but—forgive me


202 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
pared himself for the inevitable question
with which, during the last three days,
almost everyone he met had greeted him.
But the youth who came into the room
with Madame de Léra, if a typical Parisian
in the matter of his careful, rather foppish,
dress, and in his bored expression, yet
showed that he was possessed of the old-
fashioned good breeding which is still to be
found in France, if only in that peculiar
section of French society known collectively
as " the Faubourg.” Jacques de Léra, alone
among the many men whom Vanderlyn had
come across since the disappearance of
Mrs. Pargeter had become the talk of the
town, made no allusion to the mystery,
and asked no puerile question of the man
who was known to be her friend.
“ Mr. Vanderlyn has been asking me
what I knew of the fortune-teller, Madame
d’Elphis. But, beyond the story concem-
ing your poor cousin Jeanne, I know nothing.
You. Jacques, will doubtless be able to tell


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 205
his final crash; who knows, perhaps she
helped to precipitate it ! It is to be hoped
she did, for since then he has practically
lived on her. And so, my dear aunt, she
is in a sense our cousin de la main gauche!"
Vanderlyn looked away from Madame
de Léra. He was sorry the young man had
been so frank, for the Marquis de Florac was
not only by birth a member of her circle,
but he was, as Jacques rather cruelly pointed
out, a connection of the de Léra family.
“ Poor creature !” exclaimed Adele de
Léra; her voice was filled with involuntary
pity.
f‘ Yes,” continued Jacques, in answer
to her look, “ you may well say ‘ poor
creature!’ For it’s from La d'Elphis that
our disreputable cousin draws the major
part of his uncertain revenues. When Paris
is credulous, his credit goes up, and he has
plenty of money to play with. I’m told
that the other night he lost ten thousand
francs at ‘ Monaco Junior’ 1”


208 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
that he had at last found a way in which
to convey the truth to Pargeter, he felt
a deep repugnance from the methods
which he saw he would be compelled to
employ.
More than once the American diploma-
tist had had occasion to take part in delicate
negotiations with one of those nameless,
countryless individuals, whose ideal it is
to be in the pay of a foreign Embassy,
and who always set on their ignoble ser-
vices a far higher value than those services
generally deserve. But Vanderlyn belonged
to the type of man who finds it far easier
to fight for others, and especially for his
country, than for himself.
Still, in this case was he not fighting for
Margaret Pargeter? For what he knew
she valued far more than life itself—her
honour? The thing he was about to do was
hateful to him,—he was aware how severely
he would have judged such conduct in
another,—but it seemed the only way, a way


210 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
be the first time that Madame d’Elphis had
been persuaded, in her own interest, to add
the agreeable ingredient of certainty to one
of her predictions. The diplomatist also
believed he could carry through the negotia-
tion without either revealing his identity, or
giving the soothsayer any clue to his reason
for making her so strange a proposal.
Having made his plan, Vanderlyn found
it remarkably easy to carry out.
In London, such a man as himself would
have found it difficult to have ascertained at
a moment’s notice the address of even a
famous palmist or fortune-teller. But in
everything to do with social life Paris is
highly organised, London singularly chaotic.
On reaching home, he at once discovered,
with a certain bitter amusement, that
Madame d’Elphis disdained the artifices
with which she might reasonably have
surrounded her mysterious craft. Not only
were her name, address, and even hours of
Consultation, to be found in the “ Tout


214 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
in reply to Vanderlyn’s enquiry for Madame
d’Elphis. " Walk through the courtyard;
the person you seek occupies the entresol
of the house you will see there.”
And then he saw that lying back, quite
concealed from the street, was another and
very different type of dwelling, and one far
more suited to the requirements of even a
latter-day soothsayer.
As he made his way over the dimly-lighted,
ill-paved court which separated the new
building, that giving on to the street, from
the seventeenth-century mansion, Vanderlyn
realised that his first impression had been
quite erroneous. Madame d’Elphis had
evidently gauged, and that very closely,
the effect she desired to produce on her
patrons. Even in the daytime the man-
sarded house which now gloomed before
him must look secret, mysterious. Behind
such narrow latticed windows might well
have dwelt Cagliostro, or, further back, the
more sinister figure of La Voison.


2I8 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
She preceding him, they walked through
an untidy dining-room of which the fumi-
ture—the sham Renaissance chairs and
walnut-wood buffet—looked strangely alien
to Vanderlyn’s guide, into a short, ill-lighted
passage, which terminated in a locked,
handleless door.
The woman whom he now knew to be
Madame d’Elphis turned, and, facing Vander-
lyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy
eyes to rest full on her unknown visitor.
“ You have your stick, your hat P” she
asked. “ Yes P—that is well ; for when our
séance is over, you will leave by another
way, a way which leads into the garden,
and so into the street.”
She unlocked the door, and he followed
her into a large book-lined study—mascu—
line in its sober colouring and simple fur-
nishings. Above the mantelpiece was ar-
ranged a trophy of swords and fencing
sticks ; opposite hung a superb painting by
Henner. Vanderlyn remembered having
4“ #— .


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 219
seen this picture exhibited in the Salon
some five years before. It had been shown
under the title “ The Crystal-Gazer,” and
it was even now an admirable portrait of
his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had
Vanderlyn begun to regard the woman who
was so little like what he had expected to
find her.
Madame d’Elphis beckoned to him to
follow her into yet another, and a much
smaller, room. Ah ! This was evidently
the place where she pursued her strange
calling; for here—so Vanderlyn, trying to
combat the eerie impression she produced
on him, sardonically told himself—were the
stage properties of her singular craft.
The high walls were hung with red cloth,
against which gleamed innumerable plaster
casts of hands. The only furniture consisted
of a round, polished table, which took up a
good deal of the space in the room ; on the
table stood an old-fashioned lamp, and in
the middle of the circle of light cast by the


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 227
last few moments it is my own past life that
has been rising before me, not the present
of this poor dead woman. When I am tired
——and I am very tired to-night—some such
trick is sometimes played me. I was born
at Orange; as a child I spent many hours
in the beautiful garden which just now rose
up before me; I once saw a dead body in
that shed Madame Fortoul, who is
devout, often has masses said for those who
meet with sudden death, and whose bodies
are brought to her husband.”
The soothsayer rose from her chair.
" If you will come to me to-morrow,” she
said, “ bringing with you something which
belonged to this lady, I am sure I shall be
able to tell you all you wish to know. For
that second séance," she added hurriedly,
“ I shall of course ask no further fee."
Vanderlyn, waking as from a dream,
heard sounds in the other room, the coming
and going of a man’s footsteps. He also
got up.

15-2


228 THE UTTERMOST FARTHING
" Madame," he said, quietly, “ I thank
you from my heart. I recognise the truth
of all you have told me, with one paramount
exception. It is true that the woman whom
you saw lying dead is now in the house of
Dr. Fortoul at Orange; the fact that you
once knew the place is an accident—and
nothing but an accident. You have, how-
ever, Madame, made one strange mis-
take.”
He took out of his pocket and held in his
hand the large open envelope containing,
in addition to the remainder of the notes
he had brought, the slip he had cut from
the newspaper. " Here is the proof that
all you have seen is true,” he repeated,
“ with one exception—This lady was alone
in the train. It. is important that this
should be thoroughly understood by you,
for to-morrow you will be called upon to
testify to the fact.” P
Madame d’Elphis stiffened into deep
attention.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 229
“ To-morrow morning,” continued Van-
derlyn, very deliberately, “ one of your
regular clients is coming to ask you to assist
him to solve a terrible mystery. I will tell you
his name—it is Mr. Pargeter, the well-known
sportsman. He is coming to ask you to
help him to find Mrs. Pargeter, who some
days ago mysteriously disappeared. This
lady’s death, but he does not yet know it,
took place while she was travelling—travel-
ling alone. I repeat, Madame, that she was
alone~quite alone—0n her fatal foumey."
Vanderlyn stopped speaking a moment;
then his voice lowered, became humble and
beseeching. -
" Once you have revealed the truth to
Mr. Pargeter,—and he will believe implicitly
all you say,-—then, Madame, you will not
only have accomplished a good action, but
a sum, bringing the fee for the séance
which is just concluded up to ten thousand
francs, will be placed at your disposal by
I,
me.


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 231
shamed expression on her face moved him
strangely.
“ When you next see Mr. Pargeter,” she
murmured, “ you shall have written proof
that I have carried out your wish."
She tapped the table twice, sharply,—
then led the way into the larger room. It
was empty, but Vanderlyn, even as he
entered, saw a door closing quietly.
Madame d’Elphis walked across to an
uncurtained window; she opened it and
stepped through on to a broad terrace
balcony.
“ Walk down the iron stairway,” she said,
in a low voice, “ there are not many steps.
A little door leads from the garden below
straight into the street; the door has been
left unlocked to-night."
Vanderlyn held out his hand; she took
it and held it for a moment. “ Ah I” she
said, softly. “ would that I had died when I
was still young, still beautiful, still
loved !"


XII
THE bright May sun was pouring into
Tom Pargeter’s large smoking - room,
making more alive and vivid the fantastic
and brilliantly-coloured posters lining the
walls.
Laurence Vanderlyn, standing there in a
peopled solitude, caught a glimpse of his
own strained and tired face in a mirror
which filled up the space between two win-
dows, and what he saw startled him, for it
seemed to him that none could look at his
countenance and not see written there the
tale of his anguish, remorse, and suspense.
And yet he knew that now his ordeal was
drawing to a close ; in a few moments Par-
geter Was due to return from his interview
with Madame d'Elphis.
232


THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 233
Walking up and down the sunny room
which held for him such agonising memories
of the long hours spent there during the
last three days in Tom Pargeter’s company,
Vanderlyn lived again every moment of his
own strange interview with the soothsayer.
The impression of sincerity which Madame
d’Elphis had produced on him had now had
time to fade, and he asked himself with
nervous dread whether she was, after all,
likely to do what she had promised. Nay,
was it in her power to lie,—or rather to tell
the half-truth which was all that he had
asked her to tell ?
At last there came the sounds of the front
door of the villa opening, shutting; and
then those made by Pargeter’s quick, short
footsteps striking the marble floor of the
hall, and echoing through the silent house.
Vanderlyn stopped short in his restless
pacing. He turned and waited.
The door was flung open, and Pargeter
came in. Quietly shutting the door behind