“’For God’s sake, Professor Rigaud, come out here immediately.’
“This time, my friends, I am more than disturbed.
“This time I am thoroughly well frightened, and I confess it!
“I got out my Ford; I drove out to their house as fast as I could, and with an even more execrable style of driving than usual. Still it would not rain properly, would not burst a hole in this hollow of thundery heat that enclosed us. When I reached Beauregard, it was like a deserted house. I called aloud in the downstairs hall, but nobody answered. Then I went into the drawing-room, where I found Mama Brooke sitting bolt upright on a sofa, making heroic efforts to keep her face from working, but with a damp handkerchief clutched in her hand.
“’Madame,’ I said to her, ‘what is happening? What is wrong between your good husband and Miss Seton?’
“And she cried out to me, having nobody else to whom she could appeal.
“’I don’t know!’ she said; it was plain she meant it. ‘Howard won’t tell me. Harry says it’s all nonsense, whatever it is, but he won’t tell me anything either. Nothing is real any longer. Only two days ago . . .’
“Only two days before, it appeared, there had been a shocking and unexplained incident.
“Near Beauregard, on the main road to Le Mans, lived a market-gardener named Jules Fresnac, who supplied them with eggs and fresh vegetables. Jules Fresnac had two children―a daughter of seventeen, a son of sixteen―to whom Fay Seton had been very kind, so that the whole Fresnac family was very fond of her. But two days ago Fay Seton had met Jules Fresnac driving his cart in the road, in the white road with the tall poplars and grain-fields on either side. Jules Fresnac got down from his cart, his face bluish and swollen with fury, and shouted and screamed at her until she put up a hand to cover her eyes.
“All this was witnessed by Mama Brooke’s maid, Alice. Alice was too far away to catch what was being said; the man’s voice, in any case, was so hoarse with rage as to be almost unrecognizable. But, as Fay Seton turned around to hurry away, Jules Fresnac picked up a stone and flung it at her.
“A pretty story, h?”
“This was what Mama Brooke told me, with helpless gestures of her hands, while she sat on the sofa in that drawing-room.
“’And now,’ she said, ‘Howard has gone out to that tower, to Henry the Fourth’s tower, to meet poor Fay. Professor Rigaud, you have go to help us. You have to do something.’
“’But, madame! What can do?”
“’I can’t tell you,’ she answered me; she might have once been pretty. ‘But something dreadful is going to happen! I know it!’
“Mr. Brooke, it developed, had returned from the bank at three o’clock with his brief-case full of money. He told his wife that he meant to have what he called a show-down with Fay Seton, and that he had arranged to meet her at the tower at four o’clock.
“He then asked Mama Brooke where Harry was, because he said he wanted Harry to be present at the show-down. She replied that Harry was upstairs in his room, writing a letter, so the father went upstairs to get him. He didn’t find Harry―who, actually, was tinkering with a motor in the garage―and presently he came downstairs again. ‘So pitiful looked,’ said Mama Brooke, ‘and so aged, and walking slowly as though he wee ill.’ That was how Papa Brooke went out of the house towards the tower.
“Not five minutes later, Harry himself turned up from the garage and asked where his father was. Mama Brooke told him, rather hysterically. Harry stood for a moment thinking to himself, murmuring, and then he went out of the house towards Henri Quatre’s tower. During this time there was no sign of Fay Seton.
“’Professor Rigaud,’ the mother cried to me, ‘you’ve got to follow them and do something. You’re the only friend we have here, and you’ve got to follow them!”
“A job, eh, for old Uncle Rigaud?”
“My word!
“And yet I followed them.
“There was a crack of thunder as I left the house, but still it would not rain in earnest. I walked northwards along the east bank of the river, until I came to the stone bridge. There I crossed the bridge to the west bank. The tower stood on that side, overhanging the bank a little farther up.
“It looks desolate enough, I tell you, when you stumble across the few old bits of blackened stone―fire-razed, overgrown in earth with weeds―which are all that remained of the original building. The entrance to the tower is only a rounded arch cut in the wall. This doorway faces west, away from the river, towards open grass and a wood of chestnut trees beyond. I approached there with the sky darkening, and the wind blowing still harder.
“In the doorway, looking at me, stood Fay Seton.
“Fay Seton, in a thin flowered-silk frock, stocking less, with white openwork leather sandals. She carried over her arm a bathing-dress, a towel, and a bathing-cap; but she had not been in to swim, since not even the edges of the shining dark-red hair were damp or tumbled. She breathed slowly and heavily.
“’Mademoiselle,’ I said to her, not at all certain what I was supposed to do, ‘I am looking for Harry Brooke and his father.’
“For some five seconds, which can seem a very long time, she did not answer.
“’They’re here,’ she told me. ‘Upstairs. On the roof of the tower.’ All of a sudden her eyes (I swear it!) wee the eyes of one who remembers a horrible experience of some kind. ‘They seem to be having an argument. I don’t think I shall intrude just now. Excuse me.’
“’But, mademoiselle!―
“’Please excuse me!’
“Then she was gone, keeping her face turned away from me. One or two raindrops stung the wind-blown grass, followed by others.
“I put my head inside the doorway. As I told you, that tower was no more than a stone shell, up whose wall a spiraling stone staircase climbed to a square opening giving on the flat roof. It smelt inside of age and the river. It was empty, as bare as your and, except for a couple of wooden benches and a broken chair. Long narrow windows along the staircase lighted it fairly well, though there was a wild enough stormlight flying over the sky now.
“Angry voice were speaking up there. I could hear them faintly. I gave them a shout, my voice making a hollow echo in that stone jug, and the voices stopped instantly.
“So I plodded up the corkscrew stair―a dizzy business, also very bad for one scan of breath―and emerged through the square opening on the roof.
“Harry Brooke and his father stood facing each other on a circular stone platform, with a high parapet, well above the trees. The father, in his raincoat and tweed cap, had his mouth set implacably. The son pleaded with him; Harry was hatless and coatless, in a corduroy suit whose windblown tie emphasized his state of mind. Both of them were pale and worked up, but both seemed rather relieved it was I who had interrupted them.
“’I tell you, sir―!’ Harry was beginning.
“’For the last time,’ said Mr. Brooke in a cold buttoned-up voice, ‘will you allow me to deal with this matter in my own way?’ He turned to me and added: ‘Professor Rigaud!’
“’Yes, my dear fellow?’
“’Will you take my son away from here until I have adjusted certain matters to my own satisfaction?’
“’Take him where, my dear fellow?’
“’Take him anywhere,’ replied Mr. Brooke, and turned his back on us.
“It was now, as I saw by a surreptitious glance at my watch, ten minutes to four o-clock. Mr. Brooke was due to meet Fay Seton there at four o’clock, and he meant to wait. Harry was beaten and deflated; that leapt to the eyes. I said nothing about having met Miss Fay a moment before, since I wanted to pour ointment on the situation instead of inflaming it. Harry allowed me to lead him away.