In practice, however, they combined the two methods, which was doubtless
as well as if they hadn't, because for some time they accomplished
nothing whatever, and so neither one was able to sneer at the other's
stupidity.

This is not to say that they found nothing in the way of clews. They
found an embarrassment of them, and for some days went about in a fever
of excitement over these; but the fever cooled when clew after clew
turned out to be misleading. Of course, Ste. Marie's first efforts were
directed toward tracing the movements of the Irishman O'Hara, but the
efforts were altogether unavailing. The man seemed to have disappeared
as noiselessly and completely as had young Arthur Benham himself. He was
unable even to settle with any definiteness the time of the man's
departure from Paris. Some of O'Hara's old acquaintances maintained that
they had seen the last of him two months before, but a shifty-eyed
person in rather cheaply smart clothes came up to Ste. Marie one evening
in Maxim's and said he had heard that Ste. Marie was making inquiries
about M. O'Hara. Ste. Marie said he was, and that it was an affair of
money; whereupon the cheaply smart individual declared that M. O'Hara
had left Paris six months before to go to the United States of America,
and that he had had a picture postal-card from him, some weeks since,
from New York. The informant accepted an expensive cigar and a Dubonnet
by way of reward, but presently departed into the night, and Ste. Marie
was left in some discouragement, his theory badly damaged.

He spoke of this encounter to Richard Hartley, who came on later to join
him, and Hartley, after an interval of silence and smoke, said: "That
was a lie! The man lied!"