The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
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to say that he could not call, as he was compelled to go to Hyères, but that he would dine at the Bristol that evening.
“And,” he added, “get your traps together. We’re leaving here, and we leave no trace behind—you understand?”
I nodded.
Was the game up? Were we flying because the police suspected us? I recollected the long-nosed man, and a serious apprehension seized me.
I confess I slept but little that night. At half-past six I went again to his room, and found him already dressed.
Motorists often start early on long excursions on the Riviera; therefore it was deemed nothing unusual when, at a quarter-past seven, we mounted on the car and Bindo gave orders—
“Through the town.”
By that I knew we were bound east, for Italy.
He spoke but little. Upon his face was a business-like look of settled determination.
At the little douane post near Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier, we paid the necessary deposit for the car, got the leaden seal attached, and then drew out upon the winding sea-road which leads right along the coast by San Remo, Alassio, and Savona to Genoa.
Hour after hour, with a perfect wall of white dust behind us, we kept on until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when we pulled up at an hotel close to the station in busy Genoa. Here we swallowed a hasty meal, and at Bindo’s directions we turned north up the Ronco valley for Alessandria and Turin, my companion explaining that it was his intention to re-enter France again by crossing the Mont Cenis.
Then I saw that our journey into Italy was in order to throw the French police off the scent. But even then I could not gather what had actually happened.
Through the whole night, and all next day, we travelled as hard as we could go, crossing the frontier and descending to Chambery, where we halted for six hours to snatch a brief sleep. Then on again by Bourg and Maçon. We took it in turns to drive—three hours each. While one slept in the back of the car, the other drove, and so we went on and on, both day and night, for the next forty-eight hours—a race against time and against the police.
From Dijon we left the Paris road and struck due north by Chaumont and Bar-le-duc to Verdun, Sedan, and Givet, where we passed into Belgium. At the Métropole, in Brussels, we spent a welcome twenty-four hours, and slept most of the time. Then on again, still due North, first to Boxtel, in Holland, and then on to Utrecht.
Until that day—a week after leaving Monte Carlo on our rush across Europe—Bindo practically preserved a complete silence as to his intentions or as to what had happened.
All I had been able to gather from him was that Mademoiselle was still at the Bristol, and that Blythe was still dancing attendance upon her and the ugly old lady who acted as chaperon.
With Utrecht in sight across the flat, uninteresting country, traversed everywhere by canals, we suddenly had a bad tyre-burst. Fortunately we had a spare one, therefore it was only the half-hour delay that troubled us.
Bindo helped me to take off the old cover, adjust a new tube and cover, and worked the pump with a will. Then, just as I was giving the nuts a final screw-up, preparatory to packing the tools away in the back, he said—
“I expect, Ewart, this long run of ours has puzzled you very much, hasn’t it?”
“Of course it has,” I replied. “I don’t see the object of it all.”
“The object was to get here before the police could trace us. That’s why we took such a roundabout route.”
“And now we are here,” I exclaimed, glancing over the dull, grey landscape, “what are we going to do?”
“Do?” he echoed. “You ought to ask what we’ve done, my dear fellow!”
“Well, what have we done?” I inquired.
“About the neatest bit of business that we’ve ever brought off in our lives,” he laughed.
“How?”
“Let’s get up and drive on,” he said; “we won’t stop in Utrecht, it’s such a miserable hole. Listen, and I’ll explain as we go along.”
So I locked up the back, got up to the wheel again, and we resumed our journey.
* * * *
“It was like this, you see,” he commenced. “I own I was entirely misled in the beginning. That little girl played a trick on me. She’s evidently not the ingenuous miss that I took her to be.”
“You mean Pierrette?” I laughed. “No, I quite agree with you. She’s been to Monte Carlo before, I believe.”
“Well,” exclaimed the debonnair Bindo, “I met her in London, as you know. Our acquaintance was quite a casual one, in the big hall of the Cecil—where I afterwards discovered she was staying with Madame. She was an adventurous little person, and met me at the lions, in Trafalgar Square, next morning, and I took her for a walk across St. James’s Park. From what she told me of herself, I gathered that she was the daughter of a wealthy Frenchman. Our conversation naturally turned upon her mother, as I wanted to find out if the latter possessed any jewels worth looking after. She told me a lot—how that her mother, an old marquise, had a quantity of splendid jewellery. Madame Vernet, who was with her at the Cecil, was her companion, and her father had, I understood, a fine château near Troyes. Her parents, religious bigots, were, however, sending her, very much against her will, to the seclusion of a convent close to Fontainebleau—not as a scholastic pupil—but to be actually trained for the Sisterhood! She seemed greatly perturbed about this, and I could see that the poor girl did not know how to act, and had no outside friend to assist her. To me, it at once occurred that by aiding her I could obtain her confidence, and so get to know this mother with the valuable sparklers. Therefore I arranged that you should, on a certain morning, travel to Fontainebleau, and that she should manage to escape from the good Sisters and travel down to Beaulieu. Madame Vernet was to be in the secret, and should join her later.”
“Yes,” I said, “I understood all that. She misled you regarding her mother.”
“And she was still more artful, for she never told me the truth as to who her father really was, or the reason why they were there in London—in search of him,” he remarked. “I learnt the truth for the first time from you—the truth that she was the daughter of old Dumont, of the Rue de la Paix, and that he and his clerk were missing with jewels of great value.”
“Then another idea struck you, I presume?”
“Of course,” he answered, laughing. “I wondered for what reason Mademoiselle was to be placed in a convent; why she had misled me regarding her parentage; and, above all, why she was so very desirous of coming to the Riviera. So I returned, first to Paris—where I found that Dumont and Martin were actually both missing. I managed to get photographs of both men, and then crossed to London, and there commenced active inquiries. Within a week I had the whole of the mysterious affair at my fingers’ ends, and moreover I knew who had taken the sparklers, and in fact the complete story. The skein was a very tangled one, but gradually I drew out the threads. When I had done so, however, I heard, to my dismay, that certain of our enemies had got to know the direction in which I was working, and had warned the Paris Sureté. I was therefore bound to travel back to Monte Carlo, if I intended to be successful, so I had to come by the roundabout route through Italy and by the Tenda.”
“I suspected that,” I said.
“Yes. But the truth was stranger than I had ever imagined. As you know, things do not surprise me very often, but in this affair I confess I’d been taken completely aback.”
“How?”
“Because when I returned to Monty I made some absolutely surprising discoveries. Among them was that Mademoiselle was in the habit of secretly meeting a long-nosed man.”
“A long-nosed man!” I exclaimed. “You