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 passes.  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 passage 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 repetition 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