Captain Stewart shook his head sadly, frowning down upon the cigarette from which he had knocked the ash.

“I am afraid poor Arthur did not always choose his friends with the best of judgment,” said he.  “I am not squeamish, and I would not have boys kept in a glass case, but—­yes, I’m afraid Arthur was not always too careful.”  He replaced the cigarette neatly between his lips.  “This man, now—­this man whom you saw to-night—­what sort of looking man will he have been?”

“Oh, a tall, lean man,” said Ste. Marie.  “A tall man with blue eyes and a heavy, old-fashioned mustache.  I just can’t remember the name.”

The smoke stood still for an instant over Captain Stewart’s cigarette, and it seemed to Ste. Marie that a little contortion of anger fled across the man’s face and was gone again.  He stirred slightly in his chair.  After a moment he said: 

“I fancy, from your description—­I fancy I know who the man was.  If it is the man I am thinking of, the name is—­Powers.  He is, as you have said, a rather shady character, and I more than once warned my nephew against him.  Such people are not good companions for a boy.  Yes, I warned him.”

“Powers,” said Ste. Marie, “doesn’t sound right to me, you know.  I can’t say the fellow’s name myself, but I’m sure—­that is, I think—­it’s not Powers.”

“Oh yes,” said Captain Stewart, with an elderly man’s half-querulous certainty.  “Yes, the name is Powers.  I remember it well.  And I remember—­Yes, it was odd, was it not, your meeting him like that, just as you were talking of Arthur?  You—­oh, you didn’t speak to him, you say?  No, no, to be sure!  You didn’t recognize him at once.  Yes, it was odd.  Of course, the man could have had nothing to do with poor Arthur’s disappearance.  His only interest in the boy at any time would have been for what money Arthur might have, and he carried none, or almost none, away with him when he vanished.  Eh, poor lad!  Where can he be to-night, I wonder?  It’s a sad business, M. Ste. Marie—­a sad business.”

Captain Stewart fell into a sort of brooding silence, frowning down at the table before him, and twisting with his thin ringers the little liqueur glass and the coffee-cup which were there.  Once or twice, Ste. Marie thought, the frown deepened and twisted into a sort of scowl, and the man’s fingers twitched on the cloth of the table; but when at last the group at the other end of the board rose and began to move towards the door, Captain Stewart rose also and followed them.  At the door he seemed to think of something, and touched Ste. Marie upon the arm.

“This—­ah, Powers,” he said, in a low tone—­“this man whom you saw to-night!  You said he was one of two occupants of a motor-car.  Yes?  Did you by any chance recognize the other?”

“Oh, the other was a young woman,” said Ste. Marie.  “No, I never saw her before.  She was very handsome.”