He dropped his eyes to the glass of Pernod which stood beside him, and he took it in his hand and turned it slowly and watched the light gleam in strange pearl colors upon it.  He glanced up again with a little smile which the two younger men found oddly pathetic.

“I should like to see you succeed,” said Captain Stewart.  “I like to see youth and courage and high hope succeed.”  He said:  “I am past the age of romance, though I am not so very old in years.  Romance has passed me by, but—­I love it still.  It still stirs me surprisingly when I see it in other people—­young people who are simple and earnest, and who—­and who are in love.”  He laughed gently, still turning the glass in his hand.  “I am afraid you will call me a sentimentalist,” he said, “and an elderly sentimentalist is, as a rule, a ridiculous person.  Ridiculous or not, though, I have rather set my heart on your success in this undertaking.  Who knows?  You may succeed where we others have failed.  Youth has such a way of charging in and carrying all before it by assault—­such a way of overleaping barriers that look unsurmountable to older eyes!  Youth!  Youth!  Eh, my God,” said he, “to be young again, just for a little while!  To feel the blood beat strong and eager!  Never to be tired!  Eh, to be like one of you youngsters!  You, Ste. Marie, or you, Hartley!  There’s so little left for people when youth is gone!”

He bent his head again, staring down upon the glass before him, and for a while there was a silence which neither of the younger men cared to break.

“Don’t refuse a helping hand,” said Captain Stewart, looking up once more.  “Don’t be over-proud.  I may be able to set you upon the right path.  Not that I have anything definite to work upon—­I haven’t, alas!  But each day new clews turn up.  One day we shall find the real one, and that may be one that I have turned over to you to follow out.  One never knows.”

Ste. Marie looked across at Richard Hartley, but that gentleman was blowing smoke-rings and to all outward appearance giving them his entire attention.  He looked back to Captain Stewart, and Stewart’s eyes regarded him, smiling a little wistfully, he thought.  Ste. Marie scowled out of the window at the trees of the Luxembourg Gardens.

“I hardly know,” said he.  “Of course, I sound a braying ass in hesitating even a moment; but, in a way, you understand, I’m so anxious to do this or to fail in it quite on my own.  You’re—­so tremendously kind about it that I don’t know what to say.  I must seem very ungrateful, I know; but I’m not.”

“No,” said the elder man, “you don’t seem ungrateful at all.  I understand exactly how you feel about it, and I applaud your feeling—­but not your judgment.  I am afraid that for the sake of a sentiment you’re taking unnecessary risks of failure.”

For the first time Richard Hartley spoke.

“I’ve an idea, you know,” said he, “that it’s going to be a matter chiefly of luck.  One day somebody will stumble on the right trail, and that might as well be Ste. Marie or I as your trained detectives.  If you don’t mind my saying so, sir—­I don’t want to seem rude—­your trained detectives do not seem to accomplish much in two months, do they?”