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Having paid, and sent it away, I went upstairs and asked for a cup of chocolate at one of the little, deadly respectable-looking marble tables. Also I asked to see an evening paper. It was a shock to find Ivor's photograph, horribly reproduced, gazing at me from the front page.
"But if that's any use to you " He smiled a broad smile and shook his head, much amused. "Oh, thank you," he said, half laughing, with a very curious air. "I'm a policeman, as I told you. But I don't need tips. I'm the Chief Constable of Quebec there's my card; Major Tascherel, and I'm glad to be of use, I'm sure, to any friend of Dr. Ivor's."
At the moment, however, Mary's mind was not moved by these considerations. On the back of the postcard, next to the address, was written, in Ivor's bold, large hand, a single quatrain. "Hail, maid of moonlight! Bride of the sun, farewell! Like bright plumes moulted in an angel's flight, There sleep within my heart's most mystic cell Memories of morning, memories of the night."
I hadn't looked at the papers yet. My only knowledge of last night's dreadful happenings had come from Uncle Eric and Lord Robert West. I had said to myself that I didn't wish to read the newspaper accounts of the murder, and of Ivor's supposed part in it. I remembered now, however, that I did not even know in what part of Paris the house of the murder was.
If they could see the man with Ivor's blood in his veins, they'd feel he had come back to them risen from the dead. They'd believe it!" He beat his fists together in his frenzy of excitement. "It's the time! It's the time!" he cried. "No man could let such a chance go by! He must tell them he must. That must be what he's gone for. He knows he knows he's always known!"
Mary felt less sleepy than she had when she first came out. She sat up and looked over the parapet. Had Ivor been able to sleep? she wondered. And as though in answer to her mental question, from behind the chimney-stack at the farther end of the roof a white form noiselessly emerged a form that, in the moonlight, was recognisably Ivor's.
I started, and stared at her, breathless. "It has!" she answered for me. "Your face tells me so." "Has Ivor's message to do with that?" I almost gasped. "Perhaps. But he had no good news of it to give you. If you want news if you want the document, it must be through me."
He looked for a moment over his pince-nez in Ivor's direction and then, without saying anything, returned to the grimy little sixteenth-century account books which were now his favourite reading. He knew more about Sir Ferdinando's household expenses than about his own. The outdoor party, enrolled under Ivor's banner, consisted of Anne, Mary, Denis, and, rather unexpectedly, Jenny.
"And you shall be with me, to see that you're wrong. I know you will be wrong." "That's an engagement," said I. "At 10 o'clock, Victoria Station, just you and I, and nobody else in the house the wiser. If I'm right, and Ivor's there, shall you think it wise to give him up?"
One of them walked into the room with him I suppose he must have been a warder but he stopped near the door, and in a second I had forgotten all about him. He simply ceased to exist for me, when my eyes and Ivor's had met.
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