"Do you go to your hotel, monsieur," said Revailloud, "and leave the choice to me. I must go about it quietly. If you were to come with me, we should have to choose the first two guides upon the rota and that would not do for the Brenva climb."
He left them at the door of the hotel and went off upon his errand.
Sylvia turned at once to Hilary; her face was very pale, her voice shook.
"You will tell me everything now. Something terrible has happened. No doubt you feared it. You came to Chamonix because you feared it, and now you know that it has happened."
"Yes," said Chayne. "I hid it from you even as you spared me your bad news all this last year."
"Tell me now, please. If it is to be "you and I," as you said just now, you will tell me."
Chayne led the way into the garden, and drawing a couple of chairs apart from the other visitors told her all that he knew and she did not. He explained the episode of the lighted window, solved for her the riddle of her father"s friendship for Walter Hine, and showed her the reason for this expedition to the summit of Mont Blanc.
She uttered one low cry of horror. "Murder!" she whispered.
"To think that we are two days behind, that even now they are sleeping on the rocks, _he_ and Walter Hine, sleeping quite peacefully and quietly.
Oh, it"s horrible!" he cried, beating his hands upon his forehead in despair, and then he broke off. He saw that Sylvia was sitting with her hands covering her face, while every now and then a shudder shook her and set her trembling.
"I am so sorry, Sylvia," he cried. "Oh, my dear, I had so hoped we should be in time. I would have spared you this knowledge if I could. Who knows?
We may be still in time," and as he spoke Michel entered the garden with one other man and came toward him.
"Henri Simond!" said Michel, presenting his companion. "You will know that name. Simond has just come down from the Grepon, monsieur. He will start with you at daylight."
Chayne looked at Simond. He was of no more than the middle height, but broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and long of arm. His strength was well known in Chamonix--as well known as his audacity.
"I am very glad that you can come, Simond," said Chayne. "You are the very man;" and then he turned to Michel. "But we should have another guide. I need two men."
"Yes," said Michel. "Three men are needed for that climb," and Chayne left him to believe that it was merely for the climb that he needed another guide. "But there is Andre Droz already at Courmayeur," he continued. "His patron was to leave him there to-day. A telegram can be sent to him to-morrow bidding him wait. If he has started, we shall meet him to-morrow on the Col du Geant. And Droz, monsieur, is the man for you. He is quick, as quick as you and Simond. The three of you together will go well. As for to-morrow, you will need no one else. But if you do, monsieur, I will go with you."
"There is no need, Michel," replied Chayne, gratefully, and thereupon Sylvia plucked him by the sleeve.
"I must go with you to-morrow, Hilary," she pleaded, wistfully. "Oh, you won"t leave me here. Let me come with you as far as possible. Let me cross to Italy. I will go quick. If I get tired, you shall not know."
"It will be a long day, Sylvia."
"It cannot be so long as the day I should pa.s.s waiting here."
She wrung her hands as she spoke. The light from a lamp fixed in the hotel wall fell upon her upturned face. It was white, her lips trembled, and in her eyes Chayne saw again the look of terror which he had hoped was gone forever. "Oh, please," she whispered.
"Yes," he replied, and he turned again to Simond. "At two o"clock then.
My wife will go, so bring a mule. We can leave it at the Montanvert."
The guides tramped from the garden. Chayne led his wife toward the hotel, slipping his arm through hers.
"You must get some sleep, Sylvia."
"Oh, Hilary," she cried. "I shall bring shame on you. We should never have married," and her voice broke in a sob.
"Hush!" he replied. "Never say that, my dear, never think it! Sleep! You will want your strength to-morrow."
But Sylvia slept little, and before the time she was ready with her ice-ax in her hand. At two o"clock they came out from the hotel in the twilight of the morning. There were two men there.
"Ah! you have come to see us off, Michel," said Chayne.
"No, monsieur, I bring my mule," said Revailloud, with a smile, and he helped Sylvia to mount it. "To lead mules to the Montanvert--is not that my business? Simond has a rope," he added, as he saw Chayne sling a coil across his shoulder.
"We may need an extra one," said Chayne, and the party moved off upon its long march. At the Montanvert hotel, on the edge of the Mer de Glace, Sylvia descended from her mule, and at once the party went down on to the ice.
"Au revoir!" shouted Michel from above, and he stood and watched them, until they pa.s.sed out of his sight. Sylvia turned and waved her hand to him. But he made no answering sign. For his eyes were no longer good.
"He is very kind," said Sylvia. "He understood that there was some trouble, and while he led the mule he sought to comfort me," and then between a laugh and a sob she added: "You will never guess how. He offered to give me his little book with all the signatures--the little book which means so much to him."
It was the one thing which he had to offer her, as Sylvia understood, and always thereafter she remembered him with a particular tenderness. He had been a good friend to her, asking nothing and giving what he had. She saw him often in the times which were to come, but when she thought of him, she pictured him as on that early morning standing on the bluff of cliff by the Montanvert with the reins of his mule thrown across his arm, and straining his old eyes to hold his friends in view.
Later during that day amongst the seracs of the Col du Geant, Simond uttered a shout, and a party of guides returning to Chamonix changed their course toward him. Droz was amongst the number, and consenting at once to the expedition which was proposed to him, he tied himself on to the rope.
"Do you know the Brenva ascent?" Chayne asked of him.
"Yes, monsieur. I have crossed Mont Blanc once that way. I shall be very glad to go again. We shall be the first to cross for two years. If only the weather holds."
"Do you doubt that?" asked Chayne, anxiously. The morning had broken clear, the day was sunny and cloudless.
"I think there may be wind to-morrow," he replied, raising his face and judging by signs unappreciable to other than the trained eyes of a guide.
"But we will try, eh, monsieur?" he cried, recovering his spirits. "We will try. We will be the first on the Brenva ridge for two years."
But there Chayne knew him to be wrong. There was another party somewhere on the great ridge at this moment. "Had _it_ happened?" he asked himself.
"How was it to happen?" What kind of an accident was it to be which could take place with a guide however worthless, and which would leave no suspicion resting on Garratt Skinner? There would be no cutting of the rope. Of that he felt sure. That method might do very well for a melodrama, but actually--no! Garratt Skinner would have a better plan than that. And indeed he had, a better plan and a simpler one, a plan which not merely would give to any uttered suspicion the complexion of malignancy, but must even bring Mr. Garratt Skinner honor and great praise. But no idea of the plan occurred either to Sylvia or to Chayne as all through that long hot day they toiled up the ice-fall of the Col du Geant and over the pa.s.ses. It was evening before they came to the pastures, night before they reached Courmayeur.
There Chayne found full confirmation of his fears. In spite of effort to dissuade them, Garratt Skinner, Walter Hine and Pierre Delouvain had started yesterday for the Brenva climb. They had taken porters with them as far as the sleeping-place upon the glacier rocks. The porters had returned. Chayne sent for them.
"Yes," they said. "At half past two this morning, the climbing party descended from the rocks on to the ice-fall of the glacier. They should be at the hut at the Grands Mulets now, on the other side of the mountain, if not already in Chamonix. Perhaps monsieur would wish for porters to-morrow."
"No," said Chayne. "We mean to try the pa.s.sage in one day"; and he turned to his guides. "I wish to start at midnight. It is important. We shall reach the glacier by five. Will you be ready?"
And at midnight accordingly he set out by the light of a lantern. Sylvia stood outside the hotel and watched the flame diminish to a star, dance for a little while, and then go out. For her, as for all women, the bad hour had struck when there was nothing to do but to sit and watch and wait. Perhaps her husband, after all, was wrong, she said to herself, and repeated the phrase, hoping that repet.i.tion would carry conviction to her heart.
But early on that morning Chayne had sure evidence that he was right. For as he, Simond and Andre Droz were marching in single file through the thin forest behind the chalets of La Brenva, a shepherd lad came running down toward them. He was so excited that he could hardly tell the story with which he was hurrying to Courmayeur. Only an hour before he had seen, high up on the Brenva ridge, a man waving a signal of distress.
Both Simond and Droz discredited the story. The distance was too great; the sharpest eyes could not have seen so far. But Chayne believed, and his heart sank within him. The puppet and Garratt Skinner--what did they matter? But he turned his eyes down toward Courmayeur. It was Sylvia upon whom the blow would fall.
"The story cannot be true," cried Simond.
But Chayne bethought him of another day long ago, when a lad had burst into the hotel at Zermatt and told with no more acceptance for his story of an avalanche which he had seen fall from the very summit of the Matterhorn. Chayne looked at his watch. It was just four o"clock.
"There has been an accident," he said. "We must hurry."
CHAPTER XXIV