[Illustration]




[Illustration: “M. Floçon interposed with uplifted hand.”]




The ROME EXPRESS

By Arthur Griffiths


With a frontispiece in colours By Arthur O. Scott

1907




Contents

 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
 CHAPTER XIX.
 CHAPTER XX.




THE ROME EXPRESS




CHAPTER I


The Rome Express, the _direttissimo_, or most direct, was approaching
Paris one morning in March, when it became known to the occupants of
the sleeping-car that there was something amiss, very much amiss, in
the car.

The train was travelling the last stage, between Laroche and Paris, a
run of a hundred miles without a stop. It had halted at Laroche for
early breakfast, and many, if not all the passengers, had turned out.
Of those in the sleeping-car, seven in number, six had been seen in the
restaurant, or about the platform; the seventh, a lady, had not
stirred. All had reëntered their berths to sleep or doze when the train
went on, but several were on the move as it neared Paris, taking their
turn at the lavatory, calling for water, towels, making the usual stir
of preparation as the end of a journey was at hand.

There were many calls for the porter, yet no porter appeared. At last
the attendant was found—lazy villain!—asleep, snoring loudly,
stertorously, in his little bunk at the end of the car. He was roused
with difficulty, and set about his work in a dull, unwilling, lethargic
way, which promised badly for his tips from those he was supposed to
serve.

By degrees all the passengers got dressed, all but two,—the lady in 9
and 10, who had made no sign as yet; and the man who occupied alone a
double berth next her, numbered 7 and 8.

As it was the porter’s duty to call every one, and as he was anxious,
like the rest of his class, to get rid of his travellers as soon as
possible after arrival, he rapped at each of the two closed doors
behind which people presumably still slept.

The lady cried “All right,” but there was no answer from No. 7 and 8.

Again and again the porter knocked and called loudly. Still meeting
with no response, he opened the door of the compartment and went in.

It was now broad daylight. No blind was down; indeed, the one narrow
window was open, wide; and the whole of the interior of the compartment
was plainly visible, all and everything in it.

The occupant lay on his bed motionless. Sound asleep? No, not merely
asleep—the twisted unnatural lie of the limbs, the contorted legs, the
one arm drooping listlessly but stiffly over the side of the berth,
told of a deeper, more eternal sleep.

The man was dead. Dead—and not from natural causes.

One glance at the blood-stained bedclothes, one look at the gaping
wound in the breast, at the battered, mangled face, told the terrible
story.

It was murder! murder most foul! The victim had been stabbed to the
heart.

With a wild, affrighted, cry the porter rushed out of the compartment,
and to the eager questioning of all who crowded round him, he could
only mutter in confused and trembling accents:

“There! there! in there!”

Thus the fact of the murder became known to every one by personal
inspection, for every one (even the lady had appeared for just a
moment) had looked in where the body lay. The compartment was filled
for some ten minutes or more by an excited, gesticulating, polyglot mob
of half a dozen, all talking at once in French, English, and Italian.

The first attempt to restore order was made by a tall man, middle-aged,
but erect in his bearing, with bright eyes and alert manner, who took
the porter aside, and said sharply in good French, but with a strong
English accent:

“Here! it’s your business to do something. No one has any right to be
in that compartment now. There may be reasons—traces—things to remove;
never mind what. But get them all out. Be sharp about it; and lock the
door. Remember you will be held responsible to justice.”

The porter shuddered, so did many of the passengers who had overheard
the Englishman’s last words.

Justice! It is not to be trifled with anywhere, least of all in France,
where the uncomfortable superstition prevails that every one who can be
reasonably suspected of a crime is held to be guilty of that crime
until his innocence is clearly proved.

All those six passengers and the porter were now brought within the
category of the accused. They were all open to suspicion; they, and
they alone, for the murdered man had been seen alive at Laroche, and
the fell deed must have been done since then, while the train was in
transit, that is to say, going at express speed, when no one could
leave it except at peril of his life.

“Deuced awkward for us!” said the tall English general, Sir Charles
Collingham by name, to his brother the parson, when he had reëntered
their compartment and shut the door.

“I can’t see it. In what way?” asked the Reverend Silas Collingham, a
typical English cleric, with a rubicund face and square-cut white
whiskers, dressed in a suit of black serge, and wearing the
professional white tie.

“Why, we shall be detained, of course; arrested, probably—certainly
detained. Examined, cross-examined, bully-ragged—I know something of
the French police and their ways.”

“If they stop us, I shall write to the _Times_” cried his brother, by
profession a man of peace, but with a choleric eye that told of an
angry temperament.

“By all means, my dear Silas, when you get the chance. That won’t be
just yet, for I tell you we’re in a tight place, and may expect a good
deal of worry.” With that he took out his cigarette-case, and his
match-box, lighted his cigarette, and calmly watched the smoke rising
with all the coolness of an old campaigner accustomed to encounter and
face the ups and downs of life. “I only hope to goodness they’ll run
straight on to Paris,” he added in a fervent tone, not unmixed with
apprehension. “No! By jingo, we’re slackening speed—.”

“Why shouldn’t we? It’s right the conductor, or chief of the train, or
whatever you call him, should know what has happened.”

“Why, man, can’t you see? While the train is travelling express, every
one must stay on board it; if it slows, it is possible to leave it.”

“Who would want to leave it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the General, rather testily. “Any way, the
thing’s done now.”

The train had pulled up in obedience to the signal of alarm given by
some one in the sleeping-car, but by whom it was impossible to say. Not
by the porter, for he seemed greatly surprised as the conductor came up
to him.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Know! Know what? You stopped me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Who rang the bell, then?”

“I did not. But I’m glad you’ve come. There has been a crime—murder.”

“Good Heavens!” cried the conductor, jumping up on to the car, and
entering into the situation at once. His business was only to verify
the fact, and take all necessary precautions. He was a burly, brusque,
peremptory person, the despotic, self-important French official, who
knew what to do—as he thought—and did it without hesitation or apology.

“No one must leave the car,” he said in a tone not to be misunderstood.
“Neither now, nor on arrival at the station.”

There was a shout of protest and dismay, which he quickly cut short.

“You will have to arrange it with the authorities in Paris; they can
alone decide. My duty is plain: to detain you, place you under
surveillance till then. Afterwards, we will see. Enough, gentlemen and
madame”—

He bowed with the instinctive gallantry of his nation to the female
figure which now appeared at the door of her compartment. She stood for
a moment listening, seemingly greatly agitated, and then, without a
word, disappeared, retreating hastily into her own private room, where
she shut herself in.

Almost immediately, at a signal from the conductor, the train resumed
its journey. The distance remaining to be traversed was short; half an
hour more, and the Lyons station, at Paris, was reached, where the bulk
of the passengers—all, indeed, but the occupants of the
sleeper—descended and passed through the barriers. The latter were
again desired to keep their places, while a posse of officials came and
mounted guard. Presently they were told to leave the car one by one,
but to take nothing with them. All their hand-bags, rugs, and
belongings were to remain in the berths, just as they lay. One by one
they were marched under escort to a large and bare waiting-room, which
had, no doubt, been prepared for their reception.

Here they took their seats on chairs placed at wide intervals apart,
and were peremptorily forbidden to hold any communication with each
other, by word or gesture. This order was enforced by a fierce-looking
guard in blue and red uniform, who stood facing them with his arms
folded, gnawing his moustache and frowning severely.

Last of all, the porter was brought in and treated like the passengers,
but more distinctly as a prisoner. He had a guard all to himself; and
it seemed as though he was the object of peculiar suspicion. It had no
great effect upon him, for, while the rest of the party were very
plainly sad, and a prey to lively apprehension, the porter sat dull and
unmoved, with the stolid, sluggish, unconcerned aspect of a man just
roused from sound sleep and relapsing into slumber, who takes little
notice of what is passing around.

Meanwhile, the sleeping-car, with its contents, especially the corpse
of the victim, was shunted into a siding, and sentries were placed on
it at both ends. Seals had been affixed upon the entrance doors, so
that the interior might be kept inviolate until it could be visited and
examined by the Chef de la Surêté, or Chief of the Detective Service.
Every one and everything awaited the arrival of this all-important
functionary.




CHAPTER II


M. Floçon, the Chief, was an early man, and he paid a first visit to
his office about 7 A.M.

He lived just round the corner in the Rue des Arcs, and had not far to
go to the Prefecture. But even now, soon after daylight, he was
correctly dressed, as became a responsible ministerial officer. He wore
a tight frock coat and an immaculate white tie; under his arm he
carried the regulation portfolio, or lawyer’s bag, stuffed full of
reports, dispositions, and documents dealing with cases in hand. He was
altogether a very precise and natty little personage, quiet and
unpretending in demeanour, with a mild, thoughtful face in which two
small ferrety eyes blinked and twinkled behind gold-rimmed glasses. But
when things went wrong, when he had to deal with fools, or when scent
was keen, or the enemy near, he would become as fierce and eager as any
terrier.

He had just taken his place at his table and begun to arrange his
papers, which, being a man of method, he kept carefully sorted by lots
each in an old copy of the _Figaro_, when he was called to the
telephone. His services were greatly needed, as we know, at the Lyons
station and the summons was to the following effect:

“Crime on train No. 45. A man murdered in the sleeper. All the
passengers held. Please come at once. Most important.”

A fiacre was called instantly, and M. Floçon, accompanied by Galipaud
and Block, the two first inspectors for duty, was driven with all
possible speed across Paris.

He was met outside the station, just under the wide verandah, by the
officials, who gave him a brief outline of the facts, so far as they
were known, and as they have already been put before the reader.

“The passengers have been detained?” asked M. Floçon at once.

“Those in the sleeping-car only—”

“Tut, tut! they should have been all kept—at least until you had taken
their names and addresses. Who knows what they might not have been able
to tell?”

It was suggested that as the crime was committed presumably while the
train was in motion, only those in the one car could be implicated.

“We should never jump to conclusions,” said the Chief snappishly.
“Well, show me the train card—the list of the travellers in the
sleeper.”

“It cannot be found, sir.”

“Impossible! Why, it is the porter’s business to deliver it at the end
of the journey to his superiors, and under the law—to us. Where is the
porter? In custody?”

“Surely, sir, but there is something wrong with him.”

“So I should think! Nothing of this kind could well occur without his
knowledge. If he was doing his duty—unless, of course, he—but let us
avoid hasty conjectures.”

“He has also lost the passengers’ tickets, which you know he retains
till the end of the journey. After the catastrophe, however, he was
unable to lay his hand upon his pocket-book. It contained all his
papers.”

“Worse and worse. There is something behind all this. Take me to him.
Stay, can I have a private room close to the other—where the prisoners,
those held on suspicion, are? It will be necessary to hold
investigations, take their depositions. M. le Juge will be here
directly.”

M. Floçon was soon installed in a room actually communicating with the
waiting-room, and as a preliminary of the first importance, taking
precedence even of the examination of the sleeping-car, he ordered the
porter to be brought in to answer certain questions.

The man, Ludwig Groote, as he presently gave his name, thirty-two years
of age, born at Amsterdam, looked such a sluggish, slouching,
blear-eyed creature that M. Floçon began by a sharp rebuke.

“Now. Sharp! Are you always like this?” cried the Chief.

The porter still stared straight before him with lack-lustre eyes, and
made no immediate reply.

“Are you drunk? are you—Can it be possible?” he said, and in vague
reply to a sudden strong suspicion, he went on:

“What were you doing between Laroche and Paris? Sleeping?”

The man roused himself a little. “I think I slept. I must have slept. I
was very drowsy. I had been up two nights; but so it is always, and I
am not like this generally. I do not understand.”

“Hah!” The Chief thought he understood. “Did you feel this drowsiness
before leaving Laroche?”

“No, monsieur, I did not. Certainly not. I was fresh till then—quite
fresh.”

“Hum; exactly; I see;” and the little Chief jumped to his feet and ran
round to where the porter stood sheepishly, and sniffed and smelt at
him.

“Yes, yes.” Sniff, sniff, sniff, the little man danced round and round
him, then took hold of the porter’s head with one hand, and with the
other turned down his lower eyelid so as to expose the eyeball, sniffed
a little more, and then resumed his seat.

“Exactly. And now, where is your train card?”

“Pardon, monsieur, I cannot find it.”

“That is absurd. Where do you keep it? Look again—search—I must have
it.”

The porter shook his head hopelessly.

“It is gone, monsieur, and my pocket-book.”

“But your papers, the tickets—”

“Everything was in it, monsieur. I must have dropped it.”

Strange, very strange. However—the fact was to be recorded, for the
moment. He could of course return to it.

“You can give me the names of the passengers?”

“No, monsieur. Not exactly. I cannot remember, not enough to
distinguish between them.”

“_Fichtre!_ But this is most devilishly irritating. To think that I
have to do with a man so stupid—such an idiot, such an ass!”

“At least you know how the berths were occupied, how many in each, and
which persons? Yes? You can tell me that? Well, go on. By and by we
will have the passengers in, and you can fix their places, after I have
ascertained their names. Now, please! For how many was the car?”

“Sixteen. There were two compartments of four berths each, and four of
two berths each.”

“Stay, let us make a plan. I will draw it. Here, now, is that right?”
and the Chief held up the rough diagram, here shown—

[Illustration]

“Here we have the six compartments. Now take _a_, with berths 1, 2, 3,
and 4. Were they all occupied?”

“No; only two, by Englishmen. I know that they talked English, which I
understand a little. One was a soldier; the other, I think, a
clergyman, or priest.”

“Good! we can verify that directly. Now, _b_, with berths 5 and 6. Who
was there?”

“One gentleman. I don’t remember his name. But I shall know him by
appearance.”

“Go on. In _c_, two berths, 7 and 8?”

“Also one gentleman. It was he who—I mean, that is where the crime
occurred.”

“Ah, indeed, in 7 and 8? Very well. And the next, 9 and 10?”

“A lady. Our only lady. She came from Rome.”

“One moment. Where did the rest come from? Did any embark on the road?”

“No, monsieur; all the passengers travelled through from Rome.”

“The dead man included? Was he Roman?”

“That I cannot say, but he came on board at Rome.”

“Very well. This lady—she was alone?”

“In the compartment, yes. But not altogether.”

“I do not understand!”

“She had her servant with her.”

“In the car?”

“No, not in the car. As a passenger by second class. But she came to
her mistress sometimes, in the car.”

“For her service, I presume?”

“Well, yes, monsieur, when I would permit it. But she came a little too
often, and I was compelled to protest, to speak to Madame la Comtesse—”

“She was a countess, then?”

“The maid addressed her by that title. That is all I know. I heard
her.”

“When did you see the lady’s maid last?”

“Last night. I think at Amberieux. about 8 p.m.”

“Not this morning?”

“No, sir, I am quite sure of that.”

“Not at Laroche? She did not come on board to stay, for the last stage,
when her mistress would be getting up, dressing, and likely to require
her?”

“No; I should not have permitted it.”

“And where is the maid now, d’you suppose?”

The porter looked at him with an air of complete imbecility.

“She is surely somewhere near, in or about the station. She would
hardly desert her mistress now,” he said, stupidly, at last.

“At any rate we can soon settle that.” The Chief turned to one of his
assistants, both of whom had been standing behind him all the time, and
said:

“Step out, Galipaud, and see. No, wait. I am nearly as stupid as this
simpleton. Describe this maid.”

“Tall and slight, dark-eyed, very black hair. Dressed all in black,
plain black bonnet. I cannot remember more.”

“Find her, Galipaud—keep your eye on her. We may want her—why, I cannot
say, as she seems disconnected with the event, but still she ought to
be at hand.” Then, turning to the porter, he went on. “Finish, please.
You said 9 and 10 was the lady’s. Well, 11 and 12?”

“It was vacant all through the run.”

“And the last compartment, for four?”

“There were two berths, occupied both by Frenchmen, at least so I
judged them. They talked French to each other and to me.”

“Then now we have them all. Stand aside, please, and I will make the
passengers come in. We will then determine their places and affix their
names from their own admissions. Call them in, Block, one by one.”




CHAPTER III


The questions put by M. Floçon were much the same in every case, and
were limited in this early stage of the inquiry to the one point of
identity.

The first who entered was a Frenchman. He was a jovial, fat-faced,
portly man, who answered to the name of Anatole Lafolay, and who
described himself as a traveller in precious stones. The berth he had
occupied was No. 13 in compartment _f_. His companion in the berth was
a younger man, smaller, slighter, but of much the same stamp. His name
was Jules Devaux, and he was a commission agent. His berth had been No.
15 in the same compartment, _f_. Both these Frenchmen gave their
addresses with the names of many people to whom they were well known,
and established at once a reputation for respectability which was
greatly in their favour.

The third to appear was the tall, gray-headed Englishman, who had taken
a certain lead at the first discovery of the crime. He called himself
General Sir Charles Collingham, an officer of her Majesty’s army; and
the clergyman who shared the compartment was his brother, the Reverend
Silas Collingham, rector of Theakstone-Lammas, in the county of
Norfolk. Their berths were numbered 1 and 4 in _a_.

Before the English General was dismissed, he asked whether he was
likely to be detained.

“For the present, yes,” replied M. Floçon, briefly. He did not care to
be asked questions. That, under the circumstances, was his business.

“Because I should like to communicate with the British Embassy.”

“You are known there?” asked the detective, not choosing to believe the
story at first. It might be a ruse of some sort.

“I know Lord Dufferin personally; I was with him in India. Also Colonel
Papillon, the military attaché; we were in the same regiment. If I sent
to the Embassy, the latter would, no doubt, come himself.”

“How do you propose to send?”

“That is for you to decide. All I wish is that it should be known that
my brother and I are detained under suspicion, and incriminated.”

“Hardly that, Monsieur le General. But it shall be as you wish. We will
telephone from here to the post nearest the Embassy to inform his
Excellency—”

“Certainly, Lord Dufferin, and my friend, Colonel Papillon.”

“Of what has occurred. And now, if you will permit me to proceed?”

So the single occupant of the compartment _b_, that adjoining the
Englishmen, was called in. He was an Italian, by name Natale Ripaldi; a
dark-skinned man, with very black hair and a bristling black moustache.
He wore a long dark cloak of the Inverness order, and, with the slouch
hat he carried in his hand, and his downcast, secretive look, he had
the rather conventional aspect of a conspirator.

“If monsieur permits,” he volunteered to say after the formal
questioning was over, “I can throw some light on this catastrophe.”

“And how so, pray? Did you assist? Were you present? If so, why wait to
speak till now?” said the detective, receiving the advance rather
coldly. It behooved him to be very much on his guard.

“I have had no opportunity till now of addressing any one in authority.
You are in authority, I presume?”

“I am the Chief of the Detective Service.”

“Then, monsieur, remember, please, that I can give some useful
information when called upon. Now, indeed, if you will receive it.”

M. Floçon was so anxious to approach the inquiry without prejudice that
he put up his hand.

“We will wait, if you please. When M. le Juge arrives, then, perhaps;
at any rate, at a later stage. That will do now, thank you.”

The Italian’s lip curled with a slight indication of contempt at the
French detective’s methods, but he bowed without speaking, and went
out.

Last of all the lady appeared, in a long sealskin travelling cloak, and
closely veiled. She answered M. Floçon’s questions in a low, tremulous
voice, as though greatly perturbed.

She was the Contessa di Castagneto, she said, an Englishwoman by birth;
but her husband had been an Italian, as the name implied, and they
resided in Rome. He was dead—she had been a widow for two or three
years, and was on her way now to London.

“That will do, madame, thank you,” said the detective, politely, “for
the present at least.”

“Why, are we likely to be detained? I trust not.” Her voice became
appealing, almost piteous. Her hands, restlessly moving, showed how
much she was distressed.

“Indeed, Madame la Comtesse, it must be so. I regret it infinitely; but
until we have gone further into this, have elicited some facts, arrived
at some conclusions—But there, madame, I need not, must not say more.”

“Oh, monsieur, I was so anxious to continue my journey. Friends are
awaiting me in London. I do hope—I most earnestly beg and entreat you
to spare me. I am not very strong; my health is indifferent. Do, sir,
be so good as to release me from—”

As she spoke, she raised her veil, and showed what no woman wishes to
hide, least of all when seeking the good-will of one of the opposite
sex. She had a handsome face—strikingly so. Not even the long journey,
the fatigue, the worries and anxieties which had supervened, could rob
her of her marvellous beauty.

She was a brilliant brunette, dark-skinned; but her complexion was of a
clear, pale olive, and as soft, as lustrous as pure ivory. Her great
eyes, of a deep velvety brown, were saddened by near tears. She had
rich red lips, the only colour in her face, and these, habitually
slightly apart, showed pearly-white glistening teeth.

It was difficult to look at this charming woman without being affected
by her beauty. M. Floçon was a Frenchman, gallant and impressionable;
yet he steeled his heart. A detective must beware of sentiment, and he
seemed to see something insidious in this appeal, which he resented.

“Madame, it is useless,” he answered gruffly. “I do not make the law; I
have only to support it. Every good citizen is bound to that.”

“I trust I am a good citizen,” said the Countess, with a wan smile, but
very wearily. “Still, I should wish to be let off now. I have suffered
greatly, terribly, by this horrible catastrophe. My nerves are quite
shattered. It is too cruel. However, I can say no more, except to ask
that you will let my maid come to me.”

M. Floçon, still obdurate, would not even consent to that.

“I fear, madame, that for the present at least you cannot be allowed to
communicate with any one, not even with your maid.”

“But she is not implicated; she was not in the car. I have not seen her
since—”

“Since?” repeated M. Floçon, after a pause.

“Since last night, at Amberieux, about eight o’clock. She helped me to
undress, and saw me to bed. I sent her away then, and said I should not
need her till we reached Paris. But I want her now, indeed I do.”

“She did not come to you at Laroche?”

“No. Have I not said so? The porter,”—here she pointed to the man, who
stood staring at her from the other side of the table,—“he made
difficulties about her being in the car, saying that she came too
often, stayed too long, that I must pay for her berth, and so on. I did
not see why I should do that; so she stayed away.”

“Except from time to time?”

“Precisely.”

“And the last time was at Amberieux?”

“As I have told you, and he will tell you the same.”

“Thank you, madame, that will do.” The Chief rose from his chair,
plainly intimating that the interview was at an end.




CHAPTER IV


He had other work to do, and was eager to get at it. So he left Block
to show the Countess back to the waiting-room, and, motioning to the
porter that he might also go, the Chief hastened to the sleeping-car,
the examination of which, too long delayed, claimed his urgent
attention.

It is the first duty of a good detective to visit the actual theatre of
a crime and overhaul it inch by inch,—seeking, searching,
investigating, looking for any, even the most insignificant, traces of
the murderer’s hands.

The sleeping-car, as I have said, had been side-tracked, its doors were
sealed, and it was under strict watch and ward. But everything, of
course, gave way before the detective, and, breaking through the seals,
he walked in, making straight for the little room or compartment where
the body of the victim still lay untended and absolutely untouched.

It was a ghastly sight, although not new in M. Floçon’s experience.
There lay the corpse in the narrow berth, just as it had been stricken.
It was partially undressed, wearing only shirt and drawers. The former
lay open at the chest, and showed the gaping wound that had, no doubt,
caused death, probably instantaneous death. But other blows had been
struck; there must have been a struggle, fierce and embittered, as for
dear life. The savage truculence of the murderer had triumphed, but not
until he had battered in the face, destroying features and rendering
recognition almost impossible.

A knife had given the mortal wound; that was at once apparent from the
shape of the wound. It was the knife, too, which had gashed and stabbed
the face, almost wantonly; for some of these wounds had not bled, and
the plain inference was that they had been inflicted after life had
sped. M. Floçon examined the body closely, but without disturbing it.
The police medical officer would wish to see it as it was found. The
exact position, as well as the nature of the wounds, might afford
evidence as to the manner of death.

But the Chief looked long, and with absorbed, concentrated interest, at
the murdered man, noting all he actually saw, and conjecturing a good
deal more.

The features of the mutilated face were all but unrecognizable, but the
hair, which was abundant, was long, black, and inclined to curl; the
black moustache was thick and drooping. The shirt was of fine linen,
the drawers silk. On one finger were two good rings, the hands were
clean, the nails well kept, and there was every evidence that the man
did not live by manual labour. He was of the easy, cultured class, as
distinct from the workman or operative.

This conclusion was borne out by his light baggage, which still lay
about the berth,—hat-box, rugs, umbrella, brown morocco hand-bag. All
were the property of some one well to do, or at least possessed of
decent belongings. One or two pieces bore a monogram, “F.Q.,” the same
as on the shirt and under-linen; but on the bag was a luggage label,
with the name, “Francis Quadling, passenger to Paris,” in full. Its
owner had apparently no reason to conceal his name. More strangely,
those who had done him to death had been at no pains to remove all
traces of his identity.

M. Floçon opened the hand-bag, seeking for further evidence; but found
nothing of importance,—only loose collars, cuffs, a sponge and
slippers, two Italian newspapers of an earlier date. No money,
valuables, or papers. All these had been removed probably, and
presumably, by the perpetrator of the crime.

Having settled the first preliminary but essential points, he next
surveyed the whole compartment critically. Now, for the first time, he
was struck with the fact that the window was open to its full height.
Since when was this? It was a question to be put presently to the
porter and any others who had entered the car, but the discovery drew
him to examine the window more closely, and with good results.

At the ledge, caught on a projecting point on the far side, partly in,
partly out of the car, was a morsel of white lace, a scrap of feminine
apparel; although what part, or how it had come there, was not at once
obvious to M. Floçon. A long and minute inspection of this bit of lace,
which he was careful not to detach as yet from the place in which he
found it, showed that it was ragged, and frayed, and fast caught where
it hung. It could not have been blown there by any chance air; it must
have been torn from the article to which it belonged, whatever that
might be,—head-dress, nightcap, night-dress, or handkerchief. The lace
was of a kind to serve any of these purposes.

Inspecting further, M. Floçon made a second discovery. On the small
table under the window was a short length of black jet beading, part of
the trimming or ornamentation of a lady’s dress.

These two objects of feminine origin—one partly outside the car, the
other near it, but quite inside—gave rise to many conjectures. It led,
however, to the inevitable conclusion that a woman had been at some
time or other in the berth. M. Floçon could not but connect these two
finds with the fact of the open window. The latter might, of course,
have been the work of the murdered man himself at an earlier hour. Yet
it is unusual, as the detective imagined, for a passenger, and
especially an Italian, to lie under an open window in a sleeping-berth
when travelling by express train before daylight in March.

Who opened that window, then, and why? Perhaps some further facts might
be found on the outside of the car. With this idea, M. Floçon left it,
and passed on to the line or permanent way.

Here he found himself a good deal below the level of the car. These
sleepers have no foot-boards like ordinary carriages; access to them is
gained from a platform by the steps at each end. The Chief was short of
stature, and he could only approach the window outside by calling one
of the guards and ordering him to make the small ladder (_faire la
petite echelle_). This meant stooping and giving a back, on which
little M. Floçon climbed nimbly, and so was raised to the necessary
height.

A close scrutiny revealed nothing unusual. The exterior of the car was
encrusted with the mud and dust gathered in the journey, none of which
appeared to have been disturbed.

M. Floçon reëntered the carriage neither disappointed nor pleased; his
mind was in an open state, ready to receive any impressions, and as yet
only one that was at all clear and distinct was borne in on him.

This was the presence of the lace and the jet beads in the theatre of
the crime. The inference was fair and simple. He came logically and
surely to this:

1. That some woman had entered the compartment.

2. That whether or not she had come in before the crime, she was there
after the window had been opened, which was not done by the murdered
man.

3. That she had leaned out, or partly passed out, of the window at some
time or other, as the scrap of lace testified.

4. Why had she leaned out? To seek some means of exit or escape, of
course.

But escape from whom? from what? The murderer? Then she must know him,
and unless an accomplice (if so, why run from him?), she would give up
her knowledge on compulsion, if not voluntarily, as seemed doubtful,
seeing she (his suspicions were consolidating) had not done so already.

But there might be another even stronger reason to attempt escape at
such imminent risk as leaving an express train at full speed. To escape
from her own act and the consequences it must entail—escape from horror
first, from detection next, and then from arrest and punishment.

All this would imperiously impel even a weak woman to face the worst
peril, to look out, lean out, even try the terrible but impossible feat
of climbing out of the car.

So M. Floçon, by fair process of reasoning, reached a point which
incriminated one woman, the only woman possible, and that was the
titled, high-bred lady who called herself the Contessa di Castagneto.

This conclusion gave a definite direction to further search. Consulting
the rough plan which he had constructed to take the place of the
missing train card, he entered the compartment which the Countess had
occupied, and which was actually next door.

It was in the tumbled, untidy condition of a sleeping-place but just
vacated. The sex and quality of its recent occupant were plainly
apparent in the goods and chattels lying about, the property and
possessions of a delicate, well-bred woman of the world, things still
left as she had used them last—rugs still unrolled, a pair of
easy-slippers on the floor, the sponge in its waterproof bag on the
bed, brushes, bottles, button-hook, hand-glass, many things belonging
to the dressing-bag, not yet returned to that receptacle. The maid was
no doubt to have attended to all these, but as she had not come, they
remained unpacked and strewn about in some disorder.

M. Floçon pounced down upon the contents of the berth, and commenced an
immediate search for a lace scarf, or any wrap or cover with lace.

He found nothing, and was hardly disappointed. It told more against the
Countess, who, if innocent, would have no reason to conceal or make
away with a possibly incriminating possession, the need for which she
could not of course understand.

Next, he handled the dressing-bag, and with deft fingers replaced
everything.

Everything was forthcoming but one glass bottle, a small one, the
absence of which he noted, but thought of little consequence, till, by
and by, he came upon it under peculiar circumstances.

Before leaving the car, and after walking through the other
compartments, M. Floçon made an especially strict search of the corner
where the porter had his own small chair, his only resting-place,
indeed, throughout the journey. He had not forgotten the attendant’s
condition when first examined, and he had even then been nearly
satisfied that the man had been hocussed, narcotized, drugged.

Any doubts were entirely removed by his picking up near the porter’s
seat a small silver-topped bottle and a handkerchief, both marked with
coronet and monogram, the last of which, although the letters were much
interlaced and involved, were decipherable as S.L.L.C.

It was that of the Countess, and corresponded with the marks on her
other belongings. He put it to his nostril, and recognized at once by
its smell that it had contained tincture of laudanum, or some
preparation of that drug.




CHAPTER V


M. Floçon was an experienced detective, and he knew so well that he
ought to be on his guard against the most plausible suggestions, that
he did not like to make too much of these discoveries. Still, he was
distinctly satisfied, if not exactly exultant, and he went back towards
the station with a strong predisposition against the Contessa di
Castagneto.

Just outside the waiting-room, however, his assistant, Galipaud, met
him with news which rather dashed his hopes, and gave a new direction
to his thoughts.

The lady’s maid was not to be found.

“Impossible!” cried the Chief, and then at once suspicion followed
surprise.

“I have looked, monsieur, inquired everywhere; the maid has not been
seen. She certainly is not here.”

“Did she go through the barrier with the other passengers?”

“No one knows; no one remembers her; not even the conductor. But she
has gone. That is positive.”

“Yet it was her duty to be here; to attend to her service. Her mistress
would certainly want her—has asked for her! Why should she run away?”

This question presented itself as one of infinite importance, to be
pondered over seriously before he went further into the inquiry.

Did the Countess know of this disappearance?

She had asked imploringly for her maid. True, but might that not be a
blind? Women are born actresses, and at need can assume any part,
convey any impression. Might not the Countess have wished to be
dissociated from the maid, and therefore have affected complete
ignorance of her flight?

“I will try her further,” said M. Floçon to himself.

But then, supposing that the maid had taken herself off of her own
accord? Why was it? Why had she done so? Because—because she was afraid
of something. If so, of what? No direct accusation could be brought
against her on the face of it. She had not been in the sleeping-car at
the time of the murder, while the Countess as certainly was; and,
according to strong presumption, in the very compartment where the deed
was done. If the maid was afraid, why was she afraid?

Only on one possible hypothesis. That she was either in collusion with
the Countess, or possessed of some guilty knowledge tending to
incriminate the Countess and probably herself. She had run away to
avoid any inconvenient questioning tending to get her mistress into
trouble, which would react probably on herself.

“We must press the Countess on this point closely; I will put it
plainly to M. le Juge,” said the detective, as he entered the private
room set apart for the police authorities, where he found M. Beaumont
le Hardi, the instructing judge, and the Commissary of the Quartier
(arrondissement).

A lengthy conference followed among the officials. M. Floçon told all
he knew, all he had discovered, gave his views with all the force and
fluency of a public prosecutor, and was congratulated warmly on the
progress he had made.

“I agree with you, sir,” said the instructing judge: “we must have in
the Countess first, and pursue the line indicated as regards the
missing maid.”

“I will fetch her, then. Stay, what can be going on in there?” cried M.
Floçon, rising from his seat and running into the outer waiting-room,
which, to his surprise and indignation, he found in great confusion.

The guard who was on duty was struggling, in personal conflict almost,
with the English General. There was a great hubbub of voices, and the
Countess was lying back half-fainting in her chair.

“What’s all this? How dare you, sir?”

This to the General, who now had the man by the throat with one hand
and with the other was preventing him from drawing his sword.
“Desist—forbear! You are opposing legal authority; desist, or I will
call in assistance and will have you secured and removed.”

The little Chief’s blood was up; he spoke warmly, with all the force
and dignity of an official who sees the law outraged.

“It is entirely the fault of this ruffian of yours; he has behaved most
brutally,” replied Sir Charles, still holding him tight.

“Let him go, monsieur; your behaviour is inexcusable. What! you, a
military officer of the highest rank, to assault a sentinel! For shame!
This is unworthy of you!”

“He deserves to be scragged, the beast!” went on the General, as with
one sharp turn of the wrist he threw the guard off, and sent him flying
nearly across the room, where, being free at last, the Frenchman drew
his sword and brandished it threateningly—from a distance.

But M. Floçon interposed with uplifted hand and insisted upon an
explanation.

“It is just this,” replied Sir Charles, speaking fast and with much
fierceness: “that lady there—poor thing, she is ill, you can see that
for yourself, suffering, overwrought; she asked for a glass of water,
and this brute, triple brute, as you say in French, refused to bring
it.”

“I could not leave the room,” protested the guard. “My orders were
precise.”

“So I was going to fetch the water,” went on the General angrily, eying
the guard as though he would like to make another grab at him, “and
this fellow interfered.”

“Very properly,” added M. Floçon.

“Then why didn’t he go himself, or call some one? Upon my word,
monsieur, you are not to be complimented upon your people, nor your
methods. I used to think that a Frenchman was gallant, courteous,
especially to ladies.”

The Chief looked a little disconcerted, but remembering what he knew
against this particular lady, he stiffened and said severely, “I am
responsible for my conduct to my superiors, and not to you. Besides,
you appear to forget your position. You are here, detained—all of
you”—he spoke to the whole room—“under suspicion. A ghastly crime has
been perpetrated—by some one among you—”

“Do not be too sure of that,” interposed the irrepressible General.

“Who else could be concerned? The train never stopped after leaving
Laroche,” said the detective, allowing himself to be betrayed into
argument.

“Yes, it did,” corrected Sir Charles, with a contemptuous laugh; “shows
how much you know.”

Again the Chief looked unhappy. He was on dangerous ground, face to
face with a new fact affecting all his theories,—if fact it was, not
mere assertion, and that he must speedily verify. But nothing was to be
gained—much, indeed, might be lost—by prolonging this discussion in the
presence of the whole party. It was entirely opposed to the French
practice of investigation, which works secretly, taking witnesses
separately, one by one, and strictly preventing all intercommunication
or collusion among them.

“What I know or do not know is my affair,” he said, with an
indifference he did not feel. “I shall call upon you, M. le Général,
for your statement in due course, and that of the others.” He bowed
stiffly to the whole room. “Every one must be interrogated. M. le Juge
is now here, and he proposes to begin, madame, with you.”

The Countess gave a little start, shivered, and turned very pale.

“Can’t you see she is not equal to it?” cried the General, hotly. “She
has not yet recovered. In the name of—I do not say chivalry, for that
would be useless—but of common humanity, spare madame, at least for the
present.”

“That is impossible, quite impossible. There are reasons why Madame la
Comtesse should be examined first. I trust, therefore, she will make an
effort.”

“I will try, if you wish it.” She rose from her chair and walked a few
steps rather feebly, then stopped.

“No, no, Countess, do not go,” said Sir Charles, hastily, in English,
as he moved across to where she stood and gave her his hand. “This is
sheer cruelty, sir, and cannot be permitted.”

“Stand aside!” shouted M. Floçon; “I forbid you to approach that lady,
to address her, or communicate with her. Guard, advance, do your duty.”

But the guard, although his sword was still out of its sheath, showed
great reluctance to move. He had no desire to try conclusions again
with this very masterful person, who was, moreover, a general; as he
had seen service, he had a deep respect for generals, even of foreign
growth.

Meanwhile the General held his ground and continued his conversation
with the Countess, speaking still in English, thus exasperating M.
Floçon, who did not understand the language, almost to madness.

“This is not to be borne!” he cried. “Here, Galipaud, Block;” and when
his two trusty assistants came rushing in, he pointed furiously to the
General. “Seize him, remove him by force if necessary. He shall go to
the _violon_—to the nearest lock-up.”

The noise attracted also the Judge and the Commissary, and there were
now six officials in all, including the guard, all surrounding the
General, a sufficiently imposing force to overawe even the most
recalcitrant fire-eater.

But now the General seemed to see only the comic side of the situation,
and he burst out laughing.

“What, all of you? How many more? Why not bring up cavalry and
artillery, horse, foot, and guns?” he asked, derisively. “All to
prevent one old man from offering his services to one weak woman!
Gentlemen, my regards!”

“Really, Charles, I fear you are going too far,” said his brother the
clergyman, who, however, had been manifestly enjoying the whole scene.

“Indeed, yes. It is not necessary, I assure you,” added the Countess,
with tears of gratitude in her big brown eyes. “I am most touched, most
thankful. You are a true soldier, a true English gentleman, and I shall
never forget your kindness.” Then she put her hand in his with a
pretty, winning gesture that was reward enough for any man.

Meanwhile, the Judge, the senior official present, had learned exactly
what had happened, and he now addressed the General with a calm but
stern rebuke.

“Monsieur will not, I trust, oblige us to put in force the full power
of the law. I might, if I chose, and as I am fully entitled, commit you
at once to Mazas, to keep you in solitary confinement. Your conduct has
been deplorable, well calculated to traverse and impede justice. But I
am willing to believe that you were led away, not unnaturally, as a
gallant gentleman,—it is the characteristic of your nation, of your
cloth,—and that on more mature consideration you will acknowledge and
not repeat your error.”

M. Beaumont le Hardi was a grave, florid, soft-voiced person, with a
bald head and a comfortably-lined white waistcoat; one who sought his
ends by persuasion, not force, but who had the instincts of a
gentleman, and little sympathy with the peremptory methods of his more
inflammable colleague.

“Oh, with all my heart, monsieur,” said Sir Charles, cordially. “You
saw, or at least know, how this has occurred. I did not begin it, nor
was I the most to blame. But I was in the wrong, I admit. What do you
wish me to do now?”

“Give me your promise to abide by our rules,—they may be irksome, but
we think them necessary,—and hold no further converse with your
companions.”

“Certainly, certainly, monsieur,—at least after I have said one word
more to Madame la Comtesse.”

“No, no, I cannot permit even that—”

But Sir Charles, in spite of the warning finger held up by the Judge,
insisted upon crying out to her, as she was being led into the other
room:

“Courage, dear lady, courage. Don’t let them bully you. You have
nothing to fear.”

Any further defiance of authority was now prevented by her almost
forcible removal from the room.




CHAPTER VI


The stormy episode just ended had rather a disturbing effect on M.
Floçon, who could scarcely give his full attention to all the points,
old and new, that had now arisen in the investigation. But he would
have time to go over them at his leisure, while the work of
interrogation was undertaken by the Judge.

The latter had taken his seat at a small table, and just opposite was
his _greffier_, or clerk, who was to write down question and answer,
_verbatim_. A little to one side, with the light full on the face, the
witness was seated, bearing the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes—the
Judge first, and behind him, those of the Chief Detective and the
Commissary of Police.

“I trust, madame, that you are equal to answering a few questions?”
began M. le Hardi, blandly.

“Oh, yes, I hope so. Indeed, I have no choice,” replied the Countess,
bravely resigned.

“They will refer principally to your maid.”

“Ah!” said the Countess, quickly and in a troubled voice, yet she bore
the gaze of the three officials without flinching.

“I want to know a little more about her, if you please.”

“Of course. Anything I know I will tell you.” She spoke now with
perfect self-possession. “But if I might ask—why this interest?”

“I will tell you frankly. You asked for her, we sent for her, and—”

“Yes?”

“She cannot be found. She is not in the station.”

The Countess all but jumped from her chair in her surprise—surprise
that seemed too spontaneous to be feigned.

“Impossible! it cannot be. She would not dare to leave me here like
this, all alone.”

“_Parbleu!_ she has dared. Most certainly she is not here.”

“But what can have become of her?”

“Ah, madame, what indeed? Can you form any idea? We hoped you might
have been able to enlighten us.”

“I cannot, monsieur, not in the least.”

“Perchance you sent her on to your hotel to warn your friends that you
were detained? To fetch them, perhaps, to you in your trouble?”

The trap was neatly contrived, but she was not deceived.

“How could I? I knew of no trouble when I saw her last.”

“Oh, indeed? and when was that?”

“Last night, at Amberieux, as I have already told that gentleman.” She
pointed to M. Floçon, who was obliged to nod his head.

“Well, she has gone away somewhere. It does not much matter, still it
is odd, and for your sake we should like to help you to find her, if
you do wish to find her?”

Another little trap which failed.

“Indeed I hardly think she is worth keeping after this barefaced
desertion.”

“No, indeed. And she must be held to strict account for it, must
justify it, give her reasons. So we must find her for you—”

“I am not at all anxious, really,” the Countess said, quickly, and the
remark told against her.

“Well, now, Madame la Comtesse, as to her description. Will you tell us
what was her height, figure, colour of eyes, hair, general appearance?”

“She was tall, above the middle height, at least; slight, good figure,
black hair and eyes.”

“Pretty?”

“That depends upon what you mean by ‘pretty.’ Some people might think
so, in her own class.”

“How was she dressed?”

“In plain dark serge, bonnet of black straw and brown ribbons. I do not
allow my maid to wear colours.”

“Exactly. And her name, age, place of birth?”

“Hortense Petitpré, thirty-two, born, I believe, in Paris.”

The Judge, when these particulars had been given, looked over his
shoulder towards the detective, but said nothing. It was quite
unnecessary, for M. Floçon, who had been writing in his note-book, now
rose and left the room. He called Galipaud to him, saying sharply:

“Here is the more detailed description of the lady’s maid, and in
writing. Have it copied and circulate it at once. Give it to the
station-master, and to the agents of police round about here. I have an
idea—only an idea—that this woman has not gone far. It may be worth
nothing, still there is the chance. People who are wanted often hang
about the very place they would _not_ stay in if they were wise.
Anyhow, set a watch for her and come back here.”

Meanwhile, the Judge had continued his questioning.

“And where, madame, did you obtain your maid?”

“In Rome. She was there, out of a place. I heard of her at an agency
and registry office, when I was looking for a maid a month or two ago.”

“Then she has not been long in your service?”

“No; as I tell you, she came to me in December last.”

“Well recommended?”

“Strongly. She had lived with good families, French and English.”

“And with you, what was her character?”

“Irreproachable.”

“Well, so much for Hortense Petitpré. She is not far off, I dare say.
When we want her we shall be able to lay hands on her, I do not doubt,
madame may rest assured.”

“Pray take no trouble in the matter. I certainly should not keep her.”

“Very well, very well. And now, another small matter. I see,” he
referred to the rough plan of the sleeping-car prepared by M.
Floçon,—“I see that you occupied the compartment _d_, with berths Nos.
9 and 10?”

“I think 9 was the number of my berth.”

“It was. You may be certain of that. Now next door to your
compartment—do you know who was next door? I mean in 7 and 8?”

The Countess’s lip quivered, and she was a prey to sudden emotion as
she answered in a low voice:

“It was where—where—”

“There, there, madame,” said the Judge, reassuring her as he would a
little child. “You need not say. It is no doubt very distressing to
you. Yet, you know?”

She bent her head slowly, but uttered no word.

“Now this man, this poor man, had you noticed him at all? No—no—not
afterwards, of course. It would not be likely. But during the journey.
Did you speak to him, or he to you?”

“No, no—distinctly no.”

“Nor see him?”

“Yes, I saw him, I believe, at Modane with the rest when we dined.”

“Ah! exactly so. He dined at Modane. Was that the only occasion on
which you saw him? You had never met him previously in Rome, where you
resided?”

“Whom do you mean? The murdered man?”

“Who else?”

“No, not that I am aware of. At least I did not recognize him as a
friend.”

“I presume, if he was among your friends—”

“Pardon me, that he certainly was not,” interrupted the Countess.

“Well, among your acquaintances—he would probably have made himself
known to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“And he did not do so? He never spoke to you, nor you to him?”

“I never saw him, the occupant of that compartment, except on that one
occasion. I kept a good deal in my compartment during the journey.”

“Alone? It must have been very dull for you,” said the Judge,
pleasantly.

“I was not always alone,” said the Countess, hesitatingly, and with a
slight flush. “I had friends in the car.”

“Oh—oh”—the exclamation was long-drawn and rather significant.

“Who were they? You may as well tell us, madame, we should certainly
find out.”

“I have no wish to withhold the information,” she replied, now turning
pale, possibly at the imputation conveyed. “Why should I?”

“And these friends were—?”

“Sir Charles Collingham and his brother. They came and sat with me
occasionally; sometimes one, sometimes the other.”

“During the day?”

“Of course, during the day.” Her eyes flashed, as though the question
was another offence.

“Have you known them long?”

“The General I met in Roman society last winter. It was he who
introduced his brother.”

“Very good, so far. The General knew you, took an interest in you. That
explains his strange, unjustifiable conduct just now—”

“I do not think it was either strange or unjustifiable,” interrupted
the Countess, hotly. “_He_ is a gentleman.”

“Quite a _preux cavalier_, of course. But we will pass on. You are not
a good sleeper, I believe, madame?”

“Indeed no, I sleep badly, as a rule.”

“Then you would be easily disturbed. Now, last night, did you hear
anything strange in the car, more particularly in the adjoining
compartment?”

“Nothing.”

“No sound of voices raised high, no noise of a conflict, a struggle?”

“No, monsieur.”

“That is odd. I cannot understand it. We know, beyond all question,
from the appearance of the body,—the corpse,—that there was a fight, an
encounter. Yet you, a wretched sleeper, with only a thin plank of wood
between you and the affray, hear nothing, absolutely nothing. It is
_most_ extraordinary.”

“I was asleep. I must have been asleep.”

“A light sleeper would certainly be awakened. How can you explain—how
can you reconcile that?” The question was blandly put, but the Judge’s
incredulity verged upon actual insolence.

“Easily: I had taken a soporific. I always do, on a journey. I am
obliged to keep something, sulphonal or chloral, by me, on purpose.”

“Then this, madame, is yours?” And the Judge, with an air of
undisguised triumph, produced the small glass vial which M. Floçon had
picked up in the sleeping-car near the conductor’s seat.

The Countess, with a quick gesture, put out her hand to take it.

“No, I cannot give it up. Look as near as you like, and say is it
yours?”

“Of course it is mine. Where did you get it? Not in my berth?”

“No, madame, not in your berth.”

“But where?”

“Pardon me, we shall not tell you—not just now.”

“I missed it last night,” went on the Countess, slightly confused.

“After you had taken your dose of chloral?”

“No, before.”

“And why did you want this? It is laudanum.”

“For my nerves. I have a toothache. I—I—really, sir, I need not tell
you all my ailments.”

“And the maid had removed it?”

“So I presume; she must have taken it out of the bag in the first
instance.”

“And then kept it?”

“That is what I can only suppose.”

“Ah!”




CHAPTER VII


When the Judge had brought down the interrogation of the Countess to
the production of the small glass bottle, he paused, and with a
long-drawn “Ah!” of satisfaction, looked round at his colleagues.

Both M. Floçon and the Commissary nodded their heads approvingly,
plainly sharing his triumph.

Then they all put their heads together in close, whispered conference.

“Admirable, M. le Juge!” said the detective. “You have been most
adroit. It is a clear case.”

“No doubt,” said the Commissary, who was a blunt, rather coarse person,
believing that to take anybody and everybody into custody is always the
safest and simplest course. “It looks black against her. I think she
ought to be arrested at once.”

“We might, indeed we ought to have more evidence, more definite
evidence, perhaps?” The Judge was musing over the facts as he knew
them. “I should like, before going further, to look at the car,” he
said, suddenly coming to a conclusion.

M. Floçon readily agreed. “We will go together,” he said, adding,
“Madame will remain here, please, until we return. It may not be for
long.”

“And afterwards?” asked the Countess, whose nervousness had if anything
increased during the whispered colloquy of the officials.

“Ah, afterwards! Who knows?” was the reply, with a shrug of the
shoulders, all most enigmatic and unsatisfactory.

“What have we against her?” said the Judge, as soon as they had gained
the absolute privacy of the sleeping-car.

“The bottle of laudanum and the porter’s condition. He was undoubtedly
drugged,” answered the detective; and the discussion which followed
took the form of a dialogue between them, for the Commissary took no
part in it.

“Yes; but why by the Countess? How do we know that positively?”

“It is her bottle,” said M. Floçon.

“Her story may be true—that she missed it, that the maid took it.”

“We have nothing whatever against the maid. We know nothing about her.”

“No. Except that she has disappeared. But that tells more against her
mistress. It is all very vague. I do not see my way quite, as yet.”

“But the fragment of lace, the broken beading? Surely, M. le Juge, they
are a woman’s, and only one woman was in the car—”

“So far as we know.”

“But if these could be proved to be hers?”

“Ah! if you could prove that!”

“Easy enough. Have her searched, here at once, in the station. There is
a female searcher attached to the detention-room.”

“It is a strong measure. She is a lady.”

“Ladies who commit crimes must not expect to be handled with kid
gloves.”

“She is an Englishwoman, or with English connections; titled, too. I
hesitate, upon my word. Suppose we are wrong? It may lead to
unpleasantness. M. le Prefet is anxious to avoid complications possibly
international.”

As he spoke, he bent over, and, taking a magnifier from his pocket,
examined the lace, which still fluttered where it was caught.

“It is fine lace, I think. What say you, M. Floçon? You may be more
experienced in such matters.”

“The finest, or nearly so; I believe it is Valenciennes—the trimming of
some underclothing, I should think. That surely is sufficient, M. le
Juge?”

M. Beaumont le Hardi gave a reluctant consent, and the Chief went back
himself to see that the searching was undertaken without loss of time.

The Countess protested, but vainly, against this new indignity. What
could she do? A prisoner, practically friendless,—for the General was
not within reach,—to resist was out of the question. Indeed, she was
plainly told that force would be employed unless she submitted with a
good grace. There was nothing for it but to obey.

Mother Tontaine, as the female searcher called herself, was an
evil-visaged, corpulent old creature, with a sickly, soft, insinuating
voice, and a greasy, familiar manner that was most offensive. They had
given her the scrap of torn lace and the débris of the jet as a guide,
with very particular directions to see if they corresponded with any
part of the lady’s apparel.

She soon showed her quality.

“Aha! oho! What is this, my pretty princess? How comes so great a lady
into the hands of Mother Tontaine? But I will not harm you, my beauty,
my pretty, my little one. Oh, no, no, I will not trouble you, dearie.
No, trust to me;” and she held out one skinny claw, and looked the
other way. The Countess did not or would not understand.

“Madame has money?” went on the old hag in a half-threatening,
half-coaxing whisper, as she came up quite close, and fastened on her
victim like a bird of prey.

“If you mean that I am to bribe you—”

“Fie, the nasty word! But just a small present, a pretty gift, one or
two yellow bits, twenty, thirty, forty francs—you’d better.” She shook
the soft arm she held roughly, and anything seemed preferable than to
be touched by this horrible woman.

“Wait, wait!” cried the Countess, shivering all over, and, feeling
hastily for her purse, she took out several napoleons.

“Aha! oho! One, two, three,” said the searcher in a fat, wheedling
voice. “Four, yes, four, five;” and she clinked the coins together in
her palm, while a covetous light came into her faded eyes at the joyous
sound. “Five—make it five at once, d’ye hear me?—or I’ll call them in
and tell them. That will go against you, my princess. What, try to
bribe a poor old woman, Mother Tontaine, honest and incorruptible
Tontaine? Five, then, five!”

With trembling haste the Countess emptied the whole contents of her
purse in the old hag’s hand.

“_Bon aubaine_. Nice pickings. It is a misery what they pay me here. I
am, oh, so poor, and I have children, many babies. You will not tell
them—the police—you dare not. No, no, no.”

Thus muttering to herself, she shambled across the room to a corner,
where she stowed the money safely away. Then she came back, showed the
bit of lace, and pressed it into the Countess’s hands.

“Do you know this, little one? Where it comes from, where there is much
more? I was told to look for it, to search for it on you;” and with a
quick gesture she lifted the edge of the Countess’s skirt, dropping it
next moment with a low, chuckling laugh.

“Oho! aha! You were right, my pretty, to pay me, my pretty—right. And
some day, to-day, to-morrow, whenever I ask you, you will remember
Mother Tontaine.”

The Countess listened with dismay. What had she done? Put herself into
the power of this greedy and unscrupulous old beldame?

“And this, my princess? What have we here, aha?”

Mère Tontaine held up next the broken bit of jet ornament for
inspection, and as the Countess leaned forward to examine it more
closely, gave it into her hand.

“You recognize it, of course. But be careful, my pretty! Beware! If any
one were looking, it would ruin you. I could not save you then. Sh! say
nothing, only look, and quick, give it me back. I must have it to
show.”

All this time the Countess was turning the jet over and over in her
open palm, with a perplexed, disturbed, but hardly a terrified air.

Yes, she knew it, or thought she knew it. It had been—But how had it
come here, into the possession of this base myrmidon of the French
police?

“Give it me, quick!” There was a loud knock at the door. “They are
coming. Remember!” Mother Tontaine put her long finger to her lip. “Not
a word! I have found nothing, of course. Nothing, I can swear to that,
and you will not forget Mother Tontaine?”

Now M. Floçon stood at the open door awaiting the searcher’s report. He
looked much disconcerted when the old woman took him on one side and
briefly explained that the search had been altogether fruitless.

There was nothing to justify suspicion, nothing, so far as she could
find.

The detective looked from one to the other—from the hag he had employed
in this unpleasant quest, to the lady on whom it had been tried. The
Countess, to his surprise, did not complain. He had expected further
and strong upbraidings. Strange to say, she took it very quietly. There
was no indignation in her face. She was still pale, and her hands
trembled, but she said nothing, made no reference, at least, to what
she had just gone through.

Again he took counsel with his colleague, while the Countess was kept
apart.

“What next, M. Floçon?” asked the Judge. “What shall we do with her?”

“Let her go,” answered the detective, briefly.

“What! do you suggest this, sir,” said the Judge, slyly. “After your
strong and well-grounded suspicions?”

“They are as strong as ever, stronger: and I feel sure I shall yet
justify them. But what I wish now is to let her go at large, under
surveillance.”

“Ah! you would shadow her?”

“Precisely. By a good agent. Galipaud, for instance. He speaks English,
and he can, if necessary, follow her anywhere, even to England.”

“She can be extradited,” said the Commissary, with his one prominent
idea of arrest.

“Do you agree, M. le Juge? Then, if you will permit me, I will give the
necessary orders, and perhaps you will inform the lady that she is free
to leave the station?”

The Countess now had reason to change her opinion of the French
officials. Great politeness now replaced the first severity that had
been so cruel. She was told, with many bows and apologies, that her
regretted but unavoidable detention was at an end. Not only was she
freely allowed to depart, but she was escorted by both M. Floçon and
the Commissary outside, to where an omnibus was in waiting, and all her
baggage piled on top, even to the dressing-bag, which had been neatly
repacked for her.

But the little silver-topped vial had not been restored to her, nor the
handkerchief.

In her joy at her deliverance, either she had not given these a second
thought, or she did not wish to appear anxious to recover them.

Nor did she notice that, as the bus passed through the gates at the
bottom of the large slope that leads from the Lyons Station, it was
followed at a discreet distance by a modest fiacre, which pulled up,
eventually, outside the Hôtel Madagascar. Its occupant, M. Galipaud,
kept the Countess in sight, and, entering the hotel at her heels,
waited till she had left the office, when he held a long conference
with the proprietor.




CHAPTER VIII


A first stage in the inquiry had now been reached, with results that
seemed promising, and were yet contradictory.

No doubt the watch to be set on the Countess might lead to something
yet—something to bring first plausible suspicion to a triumphant issue;
but the examination of the other occupants of the car should not be
allowed to slacken on that account. The Countess might have some
confederate among them—this pestilent English General, perhaps, who had
made himself so conspicuous in her defence; or some one of them might
throw light upon her movements, upon her conduct during the journey.

Then, with a spasm of self-reproach, M. Floçon remembered that two
distinct suggestions had been made to him by two of the travellers, and
that, so far, he had neglected them. One was the significant hint from
the Italian that he could materially help the inquiry. The other was
the General’s sneering assertion that the train had not continued its
journey uninterruptedly between Laroche and Paris.

Consulting the Judge, and laying these facts before him, it was agreed
that the Italian’s offer seemed the most important, and he was
accordingly called in next.

“Who and what are you?” asked the Judge, carelessly, but the answer
roused him at once to intense interest, and he could not quite resist a
glance of reproach at M. Floçon.

“My name I have given you—Natale Ripaldi. I am a detective officer
belonging to the Roman police.”

“What!” cried M. Floçon, colouring deeply. “This is unheard of. Why in
the name of all the devils have you withheld this most astonishing
statement until now?”

“Monsieur surely remembers. I told him half an hour ago I had something
important to communicate—”

“Yes, yes, of course. But why were you so reticent. Good Heavens!”

“Monsieur was not so encouraging that I felt disposed to force on him
what I knew he would have to hear in due course.”

“It is monstrous—quite abominable, and shall not end here. Your
superiors shall hear of your conduct,” went on the Chief, hotly.

“They will also hear, and, I think, listen to my version of the
story,—that I offered you fairly, and at the first opportunity, all the
information I had, and that you refused to accept it.”

“You should have persisted. It was your manifest duty. You are an
officer of the law, or you say you are.”

“Pray telegraph at once, if you think fit, to Rome, to the police
authorities, and you will find that Natale Ripaldi—your humble
servant—travelled by the through express with their knowledge and
authority. And here are my credentials, my official card, some official
letters—”

“And what, in a word, have you to tell us?”

“I can tell you who the murdered man was.”

“We know that already.”

“Possibly; but only his name, I apprehend. I know his profession, his
business, his object in travelling, for I was appointed to watch and
follow him. That is why I am here.”

“Was he a suspicious character, then? A criminal?”

“At any rate he was absconding from Rome, with valuables.”

“A thief, in fact?”

The Italian put out the palms of his hands with a gesture of doubt and
deprecation.

“Thief is a hard, ugly word. That which he was removing was, or had
been, his own property.”

“Tut, tut! do be more explicit and get on,” interrupted the little
Chief, testily.

“I ask nothing better; but if questions are put to me—”

The Judge interposed.

“Give us your story. We can interrogate you afterwards.”

“The murdered man is Francis A. Quadling, of the firm of Correse &
Quadling, bankers, in the Via Condotti, Rome. It was an old house, once
of good, of the highest repute, but of late years it has fallen into
difficulties. Its financial soundness was doubted in certain circles,
and the Government was warned that a great scandal was imminent. So the
matter was handed over to the police, and I was directed to make
inquiries, and to keep my eye on this Quadling”—he jerked his thumb
towards the platform, where the body might be supposed to be.

“This Quadling was the only surviving partner. He was well known and
liked in Rome, indeed, many who heard the adverse reports disbelieved
them, I myself among the number. But my duty was plain—”

“Naturally,” echoed the fiery little detective.

“I made it my business to place the banker under surveillance, to learn
his habits, his ways of life, see who were his friends, the houses he
visited. I soon knew much that I wanted to know, although not all. But
one fact I discovered, and think it right to inform you of it at once.
He was on intimate terms with La Castagneto—at least, he frequently
called upon her.”

“La Castagneto! Do you mean the Countess of that name, who was a
passenger in the sleeper?”

“Beyond doubt! it is she I mean.” The officials looked at each other
eagerly, and M. Beaumont le Hardi quickly turned over the sheets on
which the Countess’s evidence was recorded.

She had denied acquaintance with this murdered man, Quadling, and here
was positive evidence that they were on intimate terms!

“He was at her house on the very day we all left Rome—in the evening,
towards dusk. The Countess had an apartment in the Via Margutta, and
when he left her he returned to his own place in the Condotti, entered
the bank, stayed half an hour, then came out with one hand-bag and rug,
called a cab, and was driven straight to the railway station.”

“And you followed?”

“Of course. When I saw him walk straight to the sleeping-car, and ask
the conductor for 7 and 8, I knew that his plans had been laid, and
that he was on the point of leaving Rome secretly. When, presently, La
Castagneto also arrived, I concluded that she was in his confidence,
and that possibly they were eloping together.”

“Why did you not arrest him?”

“I had no authority, even if I had had the time. Although I was ordered
to watch the Signor Quadling, I had no warrant for his arrest. But I
decided on the spur of the moment what course I should take. It seemed
to be the only one, and that was to embark in the same train and stick
close to my man.”

“You informed your superiors, I suppose?”

“Pardon me, monsieur,” said the Italian blandly to the Chief, who asked
the question, “but have you any right to inquire into my conduct
towards my superiors? In all that affects the murder I am at your
orders, but in this other matter it is between me and them.”

“Ta, ta, ta! They will tell us if you will not. And you had better be
careful, lest you obstruct justice. Speak out, sir, and beware. What
did you intend to do?”

“To act according to circumstances. If my suspicions were confirmed—”

“What suspicions?”

“Why—that this banker was carrying off any large sum in cash, notes,
securities, as in effect he was.”

“Ah! You know that? How?”

“By my own eyes. I looked into his compartment once and saw him in the
act of counting them over, a great quantity, in fact—”

Again the officials looked at each other significantly. They had got at
last to a motive for the crime.

“And that, of course, would have justified his arrest?”

“Exactly. I proposed, directly we arrived in Paris, to claim the
assistance of your police and take him into custody. But his fate
interposed.”

There was a pause, a long pause, for another important point had been
reached in the inquiry: the motive for the murder had been made clear,
and with it the presumption against the Countess gained terrible
strength.

But there was more, perhaps, to be got out of this dark-visaged Italian
detective, who had already proved so useful an ally.

“One or two words more,” said the Judge to Ripaldi. “During the
journey, now, did you have any conversation with this Quadling?”

“None. He kept very much to himself.”

“You saw him, I suppose, at the restaurants?”

“Yes, at Modane and Laroche.”

“But did not speak to him?”

“Not a word.”

“Had he any suspicion, do you think, as to who you were?”

“Why should he? He did not know me. I had taken pains he should never
see me.”

“Did he speak to any other passenger?”

“Very little. To the Countess. Yes, once or twice, I think, to her
maid.”

“Ah! that maid. Did you notice her at all? She has not been seen. It is
strange. She seems to have disappeared.”

“To have run away, in fact?” suggested Ripaldi, with a queer smile.

“Well, at least she is not here with her mistress. Can you offer any
explanation of that?”

“She was perhaps afraid. The Countess and she were very good friends, I
think. On better, more familiar terms, than is usual between mistress
and maid.”

“The maid knew something?”

“Ah, monsieur, it is only an idea. But I give it you for what it is
worth.”

“Well, well, this maid—what was she like?”

“Tall, dark, good-looking, not too reserved. She made other friends—the
porter and the English Colonel. I saw the last speaking to her. I spoke
to her myself.”

“What can have become of her?” said the Judge.

“Would M. le Juge like me to go in search of her? That is, if you have
no more questions to ask, no wish to detain me further?”

“We will consider that, and let you know in a moment, if you will wait
outside.”

And then, when alone, the officials deliberated.

It was a good offer, the man knew her appearance, he was in possession
of all the facts, he could be trusted—

“Ah, but can he, though?” queried the detective. “How do we know he has
told us truth? What guarantee have we of his loyalty, his good faith?
What if he is also concerned in the crime—has some guilty knowledge?
What if he killed Quadling himself, or was an accomplice before or
after the fact?”

“All these are possibilities, of course, but—pardon me, dear
colleague—a little far-fetched, eh?” said the Judge. “Why not utilize
this man? If he betrays us—serves us ill—if we had reason to lay hands
on him again, he could hardly escape us.”

“Let him go, and send some one with him,” said the Commissary, the
first practical suggestion he had yet made.

“Excellent!” cried the Judge. “You have another man here, Chief; let
him go with this Italian.”

They called in Ripaldi and told him, “We will accept your services,
monsieur, and you can begin your search at once. In what direction do
you propose to begin?”

“Where has her mistress gone?”

“How do you know she has gone?”

“At least, she is no longer with us out there. Have you arrested her—or
what?”

“No, she is still at large, but we have our eye upon her. She has gone
to her hotel—the Madagascar, off the Grands Boulevards.”

“Then it is there that I shall look for the maid. No doubt she preceded
her mistress to the hotel, or she will join her there very shortly.”

“You would not make yourself known, of course? They might give you the
slip. You have no authority to detain them, not in France.”

“I should take my precautions, and I can always appeal to the police.”

“Exactly. That would be your proper course. But you might lose valuable
time, a great opportunity, and we wish to guard against that, so we
shall associate one of our own people with you in your proceedings.”

“Oh! very well, if you wish. It will, no doubt, be best.” The Italian
readily assented, but a shrewd listener might have guessed from the
tone of his voice that the proposal was not exactly pleasing to him.

“I will call in Block,” said the Chief, and the second detective
inspector appeared to take his instructions.

He was a stout, stumpy little man, with a barrel-like figure, greatly
emphasized by the short frock coat he wore; he had smallish pig’s eyes
buried deep in a fat face, and his round, chubby cheeks hung low over
his turned-down collar.

“This gentleman,” went on the Chief, indicating Ripaldi, “is a member
of the Roman police, and has been so obliging as to offer us his
services. You will accompany him, in the first instance, to the Hôtel
Madagascar. Put yourself in communication with Galipaud, who is there
on duty.”

“Would it not be sufficient if I made myself known to M. Galipaud?”
suggested the Italian. “I have seen him here, I should recognize him—”

“That is not so certain; he may have changed his appearance. Besides,
he does not know the latest developments, and might not be very
cordial.”

“You might write me a few lines to take to him.”

“I think not. We prefer to send Block,” replied the Chief, briefly and
decidedly. He did not like this pertinacity, and looked at his
colleagues as though he sought their concurrence in altering the
arrangements for the Italian’s mission. It might be wiser to detain him
still.

“It was only to save trouble that I made the suggestion,” hastily put
in Ripaldi. “Naturally I am in your hands. And if I do not meet with
the maid at the hotel, I may have to look further, in which case
Monsieur—Block? thank you—would no doubt render valuable assistance.”

This speech restored confidence, and a few minutes later the two
detectives, already excellent friends from the freemasonry of a common
craft, left the station in a closed cab.




CHAPTER IX


“What next?” asked the Judge.

“That pestilent English officer, if you please, M. le Juge,” said the
detective. “That fire-eating, swashbuckling soldier, with his
blustering barrack-room ways. I long to come to close quarters with
him. He ridiculed me, taunted me, said I knew nothing—we will see, we
will see.”

“In fact, you wish to interrogate him yourself. Very well. Let us have
him in.”

When Sir Charles Collingham entered, he included the three officials in
one cold, stiff bow, waited a moment, and then, finding he was not
offered a chair, said with studied politeness:

“I presume I may sit down?”

“Pardon. Of course; pray be seated,” said the Judge, hastily, and
evidently a little ashamed of himself.

“Ah! thanks. Do you object?” went on the General, taking out a silver
cigarette-case. “May I offer one?” He handed round the box affably.

“We do not smoke on duty,” answered the Chief, rudely. “Nor is smoking
permitted in a court of justice.”

“Come, come, I wish to show no disrespect. But I cannot recognize this
as a court of justice, and I think, if you will forgive me, that I
shall take three whiffs. It may help me keep my temper.”

He was evidently making game of them. There was no symptom remaining of
the recent effervescence when he was acting as the Countess’s champion,
and he was perfectly—nay, insolently calm and self-possessed.

“You call yourself General Collingham?” went on the Chief.

“I do not call myself. I am General Sir Charles Collingham, of the
British Army.”

“Retired?”

“No, I am still on the active list.”

“These points will have to be verified.”

“With all my heart. You have already sent to the British Embassy?”

“Yes, but no one has come,” answered the detective, contemptuously.

“If you disbelieve me, why do you question me?”

“It is our duty to question you, and yours to answer. If not, we have
means to make you. You are suspected, inculpated in a terrible crime,
and your whole attitude is—is—objectionable—unworthy—disgr—”

“Gently, gently, my dear colleague,” interposed the Judge. “If you will
permit me, I will take up this. And you, M. le Général, I am sure you
cannot wish to impede or obstruct us; we represent the law of this
country.”

“Have I done so, M. le Juge?” answered the General, with the utmost
courtesy, as he threw away his half-burned cigarette.

“No, no. I do not imply that in the least. I only entreat you, as a
good and gallant gentleman, to meet us in a proper spirit and give us
your best help.”

“Indeed, I am quite ready. If there has been any unpleasantness, it has
surely not been of my making, but rather of that little man there.” The
General pointed to M. Floçon rather contemptuously, and nearly started
a fresh disturbance.

“Well, well, let us say no more of that, and proceed to business. I
understand,” said the Judge, after fingering a few pages of the
dispositions in front of him, “that you are a friend of the Contessa di
Castagneto? Indeed, she has told us so herself.”

“It was very good of her to call me her friend. I am proud to hear she
so considers me.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Four or five months. Since the beginning of the last winter season in
Rome.”

“Did you frequent her house?”

“If you mean, was I permitted to call on her on friendly terms, yes.”

“Did you know all her friends?”

“How can I answer that? I know whom I met there from time to time.”

“Exactly. Did you often meet among them a Signor—Quadling?”

“Quadling—Quadling? I cannot say that I have. The name is familiar
somehow, but I cannot recall the man.”

“Have you never heard of the Roman bankers, Correse & Quadling?”

“Ah, of course. Although I have had no dealing with them. Certainly I
have never met Mr. Quadling.”

“Not at the Countess’s?”

“Never—of that I am quite sure.”

“And yet we have had positive evidence that he was a constant visitor
there.”

“It is perfectly incomprehensible to me. Not only have I never met him,
but I have never heard the Countess mention his name.”

“It will surprise you, then, to be told that he called at her apartment
in the Via Margutta on the very evening of her departure from Rome.
Called, was admitted, was closeted with her for more than an hour.”

“I am surprised, astounded. I called there myself about four in the
afternoon to offer my services for the journey, and I too stayed till
after five. I can hardly believe it.”

“I have more surprises for you, General. What will you think when I
tell you that this very Quadling—this friend, acquaintance, call him
what you please, but at least intimate enough to pay her a visit on the
eve of a long journey—was the man found murdered in the sleeping-car?”

“Can it be possible? Are you sure?” cried Sir Charles, almost starting
from his chair. “And what do you deduce from all this? What do you
imply? An accusation against that lady? Absurd!”

“I respect your chivalrous desire to stand up for a lady who calls you
her friend, but we are officials first, and sentiment cannot be
permitted to influence us. We have good reasons for suspecting that
lady. I tell you that frankly, and trust to you as a soldier and man of
honour not to abuse the confidence reposed in you.”

“May I not know those reasons?”

“Because she was in the car—the only woman, you understand—between
Laroche and Paris.”

“Do you suspect a female hand, then?” asked the General, evidently much
interested and impressed.

“That is so, although I am exceeding my duty in revealing this.”

“And you are satisfied that this lady, a refined, delicate person in
the best society, of the highest character,—believe me, I know that to
be the case,—whom you yet suspect of an atrocious crime, was the only
female in the car?”

“Obviously. Who else? What other woman could possibly have been in the
car? No one got in at Laroche; the train never stopped till it reached
Paris.”

“On that last point at least you are quite mistaken, I assure you. Why
not upon the other also?”

“The train stopped?” interjected the detective. “Why has no one told us
that?”

“Possibly because you never asked. But it is nevertheless the fact.
Verify it. Every one will tell you the same.”

The detective himself hurried to the door and called in the porter. He
was within his rights, of course, but the action showed distrust, at
which the General only smiled, but he laughed outright when the still
stupid and half-dazed porter, of course, corroborated the statement at
once.

“At whose instance was the train pulled up?” asked the detective, and
the Judge nodded his head approvingly.

To know that would fix fresh suspicion.

But the porter could not answer the question.

Some one had rung the alarm-bell—so at least the conductor had
declared; otherwise they should not have stopped. Yet he, the porter,
had not done so, nor did any passenger come forward to admit giving the
signal. But there had been a halt. Yes, assuredly.

“This is a new light,” the Judge confessed. “Do you draw any conclusion
from it?” he went on to ask the General.

“That is surely your business. I have only elicited the fact to
disprove your theory. But if you wish, I will tell you how it strikes
me.”

The Judge bowed assent.

“The bare fact that the train was halted would mean little. That would
be the natural act of a timid or excitable person involved indirectly
in such a catastrophe. But to disavow the act starts suspicion. The
fair inference is that there was some reason, an unavowable reason, for
halting the train.”

“And that reason would be—”

“You must see it without my assistance, surely! Why, what else but to
afford some one an opportunity to leave the car.”

“But how could that be? You would have seen that person, some of you,
especially at such a critical time. The aisle would be full of people,
both exits were thus practically overlooked.”

“My idea is—it is only an idea, understand—that the person had already
left the car—that is to say, the interior of the car.”

“Escaped how? Where? What do you mean?”

“Escaped through the open window of the compartment where you found the
murdered man.”

“You noticed the open window, then?” quickly asked the detective. “When
was that?”

“Directly I entered the compartment at the first alarm. It occurred to
me at once that some one might have gone through it.”

“But no woman could have done it. To climb out of an express train
going at top speed would be an impossible feat for a woman,” said the
detective, doggedly.

“Why, in God’s name, do you still harp upon the woman? Why should it be
a woman more than a man?”

“Because”—it was the Judge who spoke, but he paused a moment in
deference to a gesture of protest from M. Floçon. The little detective
was much concerned at the utter want of reticence displayed by his
colleague.

“Because,” went on the Judge with decision—“because this was found in
the compartment;” and he held out the piece of lace and the scrap of
beading for the General’s inspection, adding quickly, “You have seen
these, or one of them, or something like them before. I am sure of it;
I call upon you; I demand—no, I appeal to your sense of honour, Sir
Collingham. Tell me, please, exactly what you know.”




CHAPTER X


The General sat for a time staring hard at the bit of torn lace and the
broken beads. Then he spoke out firmly:

“It is my duty to withhold nothing. It is not the lace. That I could
not swear to; for me—and probably for most men—two pieces of lace are
very much the same. But I think I have seen these beads, or something
exactly like them, before.”

“Where? When?”

“They formed part of the trimming of a mantle worn by the Contessa di
Castagneto.”

“Ah!” it was the same interjection uttered simultaneously by the three
Frenchmen, but each had a very different note; in the Judge it was deep
interest, in the detective triumph, in the Commissary indignation, as
when he caught a criminal red-handed.

“Did she wear it on the journey?” continued the Judge.

“As to that I cannot say.”

“Come, come, General, you were with her constantly; you must be able to
tell us. We insist on being told.” This fiercely, from the now jubilant
M. Floçon.

“I repeat that I cannot say. To the best of my recollection, the
Countess wore a long travelling cloak—an ulster, as we call them. The
jacket with those bead ornaments may have been underneath. But if I
have seen them,—as I believe I have,—it was not during this journey.”

Here the Judge whispered to M. Floçon, “The searcher did not discover
any second mantle.”

“How do we know the woman examined thoroughly?” he replied. “Here, at
least, is direct evidence as to the beads. At last the net is drawing
round this fine Countess.”

“Well, at any rate,” said the detective aloud, returning to the
General, “these beads were found in the compartment of the murdered
man. I should like that explained, please.”

“By me? How can I explain it? And the fact does not bear upon what we
were considering, as to whether any one had left the car.”

“Why not?”

“The Countess, as we know, never left the car. As to her entering this
particular compartment,—at any previous time,—it is highly improbable.
Indeed, it is rather insulting her to suggest it.”

“She and this Quadling were close friends.”

“So you say. On what evidence I do not know, but I dispute it.”

“Then how could the beads get there? They were her property, worn by
her.”

“Once, I admit, but not necessarily on this journey. Suppose she had
given the mantle away—to her maid, for instance; I believe ladies often
pass on their things to their maids.”

“It is all pure presumption, a mere theory. This maid—she has not as
yet been imported into the discussion.”

“Then I would suggest that you do so without delay. She is to my mind
a—well, rather a curious person.”

“You know her—spoke to her?”

“I know her, in a way. I had seen her in the Via Margutta, and I nodded
to her when she came first into the car.”

“And on the journey—you spoke to her frequently?”

“I? Oh, dear, no, not at all. I noticed her, certainly; I could not
help it, and perhaps I ought to tell her mistress. She seemed to make
friends a little too readily with people.”

“As for instance—?”

“With the porter to begin with. I saw them together at Laroche, in the
buffet at the bar; and that Italian, the man who was in here before me;
indeed, with the murdered man. She seemed to know them all.”

“Do you imply that the maid might be of use in this inquiry?”

“Most assuredly I do. As I tell you, she was constantly in and out of
the car, and more or less intimate with several of the passengers.”

“Including her mistress, the Countess,” put in M. Floçon.

The General laughed pleasantly.

“Most ladies are, I presume, on intimate terms with their maids. They
say no man is a hero to his valet. It is the same, I suppose, with the
other sex.”

“So intimate,” went on the little detective, with much malicious
emphasis, “that now the maid has disappeared lest she might be asked
inconvenient questions about her mistress.”

“Disappeared? You are sure?”

“She cannot be found, that is all we know.”

“It is as I thought, then. She it was who left the car!” cried Sir
Charles, with so much vehemence that the officials were startled out of
their dignified reserve, and shouted back almost in a breath: “Explain
yourself. Quick, quick. What in God’s name do you mean?”

“I had my suspicions from the first, and I will tell you why. At
Laroche the car emptied, as you may have heard; every one except the
Countess, at least, went over to the restaurant for early coffee; I
with the rest. I was one of the first to finish, and I strolled back to
the platform to get a few whiffs of a cigarette. At that moment I saw,
or thought I saw, the end of a skirt disappearing into the
sleeping-car. I concluded it was this maid, Hortense, who was taking
her mistress a cup of coffee. Then my brother came up, we exchanged a
few words, and entered the car together.”

“By the same door as that through which you had seen the skirt pass?”

“No, by the other. My brother went back to his berth, but I paused in
the corridor to finish my cigarette after the train had gone on. By
this time every one but myself had returned to his berth, and I was on
the point of lying down again for half an hour, when I distinctly heard
the handle turned of the compartment I knew to be vacant all through
the run.”

“That was the one with berths 11 and 12?”

“Probably. It was next to the Countess. Not only was the handle turned,
but the door partly opened—”

“It was not the porter?”

“Oh, no, he was in his seat,—you know it, at the end of the car,—sound
asleep, snoring; I could hear him.”

“Did any one come out of the vacant compartment?”

“No; but I was almost certain, I believe I could swear that I saw the
same skirt, just the hem of it, a black skirt, sway forward beyond the
door, just for a second. Then all at once the door was closed again
fast.”

“What did you conclude from this? Or did you think nothing of it?”

“I thought very little. I supposed it was that the maid wished to be
near her mistress as we were approaching Paris, and I had heard from
the Countess that the porter had made many difficulties. But you see,
after what has happened, that there was a reason for stopping the
train.”

“Quite so,” M. Floçon readily admitted, with a scarcely concealed
sneer.

He had quite made up his mind now that it was the Countess who had rung
the alarm-bell, in order to allow of the escape of the maid, her
confederate and accomplice.

“And you still have an impression that some one—presumably this
woman—got off the car, somehow, during the stoppage?” he asked.

“I suggest it, certainly. Whether it was or could be so, I must leave
to your superior judgment.”

“What! A woman climb out like that? Bah! Tell that to some one else!”

“You have, of course, examined the exterior of the car, dear
colleague?” now said the Judge.

“Assuredly, once, but I will do it again. Still, the outside is quite
smooth, there is no foot-board. Only an acrobat could succeed in thus
escaping, and then only at the peril of his life. But a woman—oh, no!
it is too absurd.”

“With help she might, I think, get up on to the roof,” quickly remarked
Sir Charles. “I have looked out of the window of my compartment. It
would be nothing for a man, nor much for a woman if assisted.”

“That we will see for ourselves,” said the detective, ungraciously.

“The sooner the better,” added the Judge, and the whole party rose from
their chairs, intending to go straight to the car, when the policeman
on guard appeared at the door, followed close by an English military
officer in uniform, whom he was trying to keep back, but with no great
success. It was Colonel Papillon of the Embassy.

“Halloa, Jack! you _are_ a good chap,” cried the General, quickly going
forward to shake hands. “I was sure you would come.”

“Come, sir! Of course I came. I was just going to an official function,
as you see, but his Excellency insisted, my horse was at the door, and
here I am.”

All this was in English, but the attaché turned now to the officials,
and, with many apologies for his intrusion, suggested that they should
allow his friend, the General, to return with him to the Embassy when
they had done with him.

“Of course we will answer for him. He shall remain at your disposal,
and will appear whenever called upon.” He returned to Sir Charles,
asking, “You will promise that, sir?”

“Oh, willingly. I had always meant to stay on a bit in Paris. And
really I should like to see the end of this. But my brother? He must
get home for next Sunday’s duty. He has nothing to tell, but he would
come back to Paris at any time if his evidence was wanted.”

The French Judge very obligingly agreed to all these proposals, and two
more of the detained passengers, making four in all, now left the
station.

Then the officials proceeded to the car, which still remained as the
Chief Detective had left it.

Here they soon found how just were the General’s previsions.




CHAPTER XI


The three officials went straight to where the still open window showed
the particular spot to be examined. The exterior of the car was a
little smirched and stained with the dust of the journey, lying thick
in parts, and in others there were a few great splotches of mud
plastered on.

The detective paused for a moment to get a general view, looking, in
the light of the General’s suggestion, for either hand or foot marks,
anything like a trace of the passage of a feminine skirt, across the
dusty surface.

But nothing was to be seen, nothing definite or conclusive at least.
Only here and there a few lines and scratches that might be
encouraging, but proved little.

Then the Commissary, drawing nearer, called attention to some
suspicious spots sprinkled about the window, but above it towards the
roof.

“What is it?” asked the detective, as his colleague with the point of
his long fore-finger nail picked at the thin crust on the top of one of
these spots, disclosing a dark, viscous core.

“I could not swear to it, but I believe it is blood.”

“Blood! Good Heavens!” cried the detective, as he dragged his powerful
magnifying glass out of his pocket and applied it to the spot. “Look,
M. le Juge,” he added, after a long and minute examination. “What say
you?”

“It has that appearance. Only medical evidence can positively decide,
but I believe it is blood.”

“Now we are on the right track, I feel convinced. Some one fetch a
ladder.”

One of these curious French ladders, narrow at the top, splayed out at
the base, was quickly leaned against the car, and the detective ran up,
using his magnifier as he climbed.

“There is more here, much more, and something like—yes, beyond question
it is—the print of two hands upon the roof. It was here she climbed.”

“No doubt. I can see it now exactly. She would sit on the window ledge,
the lower limbs inside the car here and held there. Then with her hands
she would draw herself up to the roof,” said the Judge.

“But what nerve! what strength of arm!”

“It was life and death. Within the car was more terrible danger. Fear
will do much in such a case. We all know that. Well! what more?”

By this time the detective had stepped on to the roof of the car.

“More, more, much more! Footprints, as plain as a picture. A woman’s
feet. Wait, let me follow them to the end,” said he, cautiously
creeping forward to the end of the car.

A minute or two more, and he rejoined his colleagues on the ground
level, and, rubbing his hands, declared joyously that it was all
perfectly clear.

“Dangerous or not, difficult or not, she did it. I have traced her;
have seen where she must have lain crouching ever so long, followed her
all along the top of the car, to the end where she got down above the
little platform exit. Beyond doubt she left the car when it stopped,
and by arrangement with her confederate.”

“The Countess?”

“Who else?”

“And at a point near Paris. The English General said the halt was
within twenty minutes’ run of the station.”

“Then it is from that point we must commence our search for her. The
Italian has gone on the wrong scent.”

“Not necessarily. The maid, we may be sure, will try to communicate
with her mistress.”

“Still, it would be well to secure her before she can do that,” said
the Judge. “With all we know now, a sharp interrogation might extract
some very damaging admissions from her,” went on the detective,
eagerly. “Who is to go? I have sent away both my assistants. Of course
I can telephone for another man, or I might go myself.”

“No, no, dear colleague, we cannot spare you just yet. Telephone by all
means. I presume you would wish to be present at the rest of the
interrogatories?”

“Certainly, you are right. We may elicit more about this maid. Let us
call in the porter now. He is said to have had relations with her.
Something more may be got out of him.”

The more did not amount to much. Groote, the porter, came in, cringing
and wretched, in the abject state of a man who has lately been drugged
and is now slowly recovering. Although sharply questioned, he had
nothing to add to his first story.

“Speak out,” said the Judge, harshly. “Tell us everything plainly and
promptly, or I shall send you straight to gaol. The order is already
made out;” and as he spoke, he waved a flimsy bit of paper before him.

“I know nothing,” the porter protested, piteously.

“That is false. We are fully informed and no fools. We are certain that
no such catastrophe could have occurred without your knowledge or
connivance.”

“Indeed, gentlemen, indeed—”

“You were drinking with this maid at the buffet at Laroche. You had
more drink with her, or from her hands, afterwards in the car.”

“No, gentlemen, that is not so. I could not—she was not in the car.”

“We know better. You cannot deceive us. You were her accomplice, and
the accomplice of her mistress, also, I have no doubt.”

“I declare solemnly that I am quite innocent of all this. I hardly
remember what happened at Laroche or after. I do not deny the drink at
the buffet. It was very nasty, I thought, and could not tell why, nor
why I could not hold my head up when I got back to the car.”

“You went off to sleep at once? Is that what you pretend?”

“It must have been so. Yes. Then I know nothing more, not till I was
aroused.”

And beyond this, a tale to which he stuck with undeviating persistence,
they could elicit nothing.

“He is either too clever for us or an absolute idiot and fool,” said
the Judge, wearily, at last, when Groote had gone out. “We had better
commit him to Mazas and hold him there in solitary confinement under
our hands. After a day or two of that he may be less difficult.”

“It is quite clear he was drugged, that the maid put opium or laudanum
into his drink at Laroche.”

“And enough of it apparently, for he says he went off to sleep directly
he returned to the car,” the Judge remarked.

“He says so. But he must have had a second dose, or why was the vial
found on the ground by his seat?” asked the Chief, thoughtfully, as
much of himself as of the others.

“I cannot believe in a second dose. How was it administered—by whom? It
was laudanum, and could only be given in a drink. He says he had no
second drink. And by whom? The maid? He says he did not see the maid
again.”

“Pardon me, M. le Juge, but do you not give too much credibility to the
porter? For me, his evidence is tainted, and I hardly believe a word of
it. Did he not tell me at first he had not seen this maid after
Amberieux at 8 P.M.? Now he admits that he was drinking with her at the
buffet at Laroche. It is all a tissue of lies, his losing the
pocket-book and his papers too. There is something to conceal. Even his
sleepiness, his stupidity, are likely to have been assumed.”

“I do not think he is acting; he has not the ability to deceive us like
that.”

“Well, then, what if the Countess took him the second drink?”

“Oh! oh! That is the purest conjecture. There is nothing whatever to
suggest or support that.”

“Then how explain the finding of the vial near the porter’s seat?”

“May it not have been dropped there on purpose?” put in the Commissary,
with another flash of intelligence.

“On purpose?” queried the detective, crossly, foreseeing an answer that
would not please him.

“On purpose to bring suspicion on the lady?”

“I don’t see it in that light. That would imply that she was not in the
plot, and plot there certainly was; everything points to it. The
drugging, the open window, the maid’s escape.”

“A plot, no doubt, but organized by whom? These two women only? Could
either of them have struck the fatal blow? Hardly. Women have the wit
to conceive, but neither courage nor brute force to execute. There was
a man in this, rest assured.”

“Granted. But who? That fire-eating Sir Collingham?” quickly asked the
detective, giving rein once more to his hatred.

“That is not a solution that commends itself to me, I must confess,”
declared the Judge. “The General’s conduct has been blameworthy and
injudicious, but he is not of the stuff that makes criminals.”

“Who, then? The porter? No? The clergyman? No? The French
gentlemen?—well, we have not examined them yet; but from what I saw at
the first cursory glance, I am not disposed to suspect them.”

“What of that Italian?” asked the Commissary.

“Are you sure of him? His looks did not please me greatly, and he was
very eager to get away from here. What if he takes to his heels?”

“Block is with him,” the Chief put in hastily, with the evident desire
to stifle an unpleasant misgiving. “We have touch of him if we want
him, as we may.”

How much they might want him they only realized when they got further
in their inquiry!




CHAPTER XII


Only the two Frenchmen remained for examination. They had been left to
the last by pure accident. The exigencies of the inquiry had led to the
preference of others, but these two well-broken and submissive
gentlemen made no visible protest. However much they may have chafed
inwardly at the delay, they knew better than to object; any outburst of
discontent would, they knew, recoil on themselves. Not only were they
perfectly patient now when summoned before the officers of justice,
they were most eager to give every assistance to the law, to go beyond
the mere letter, and, if needs be, volunteer information.

The first called in was the elder, M. Anatole Lafolay, a true Parisian
_bourgeois_, fat and comfortable, unctuous in speech, and exceedingly
deferential.

The story he told was in its main outlines that which we already know,
but he was further questioned, by the light of the latest facts and
ideas as now elicited.

The line adroitly taken by the Judge was to get some evidence of
collusion and combination among the passengers, especially with
reference to two of them, the two women of the party. On this important
point M. Lafolay had something to say.

Asked if he had seen or noticed the lady’s maid on the journey, he
answered “yes” very decisively and with a smack of the lips, as though
the sight of this pretty and attractive person had given him
considerable satisfaction.

“Did you speak to her?”

“Oh, no. I had no opportunity. Besides, she had her own friends—great
friends, I fancy. I caught her more than once whispering in the corner
of the car with one of them.”

“And that was—?”

“I think the Italian gentleman; I am almost sure I recognized his
clothes. I did not see his face, it was turned from me—towards hers,
and very close, I may be permitted to say.”

“And they were friendly?”

“More than friendly, I should say. Very intimate indeed. I should not
have been surprised if—when I turned away as a matter of fact—if he did
not touch, just touch, her red lips. It would have been
excusable—forgive me, messieurs.”

“Aha! They were so intimate as that? Indeed! And did she reserve her
favours exclusively for him? Did no one else address her, pay her court
on the quiet—you understand?”

“I saw her with the porter, I believe, at Laroche, but only then. No,
the Italian was her chief companion.”

“Did any one else notice the flirtation, do you think?”

“Possibly. There was no secrecy. It was very marked. We could all see.”

“And her mistress too?”

“That I will not say. The lady I saw but little during the journey.”

A few more questions, mainly personal, as to his address, business,
probable presence in Paris for the next few weeks, and M. Lafolay was
permitted to depart.

The examination of the younger Frenchman, a smart, alert young man, of
pleasant, insinuating address, with a quick, inquisitive eye, followed
the same lines, and was distinctly corroborative on all the points to
which M. Lafolay spoke. But M. Jules Devaux had something startling to
impart concerning the Countess.

When asked if he had seen her or spoken to her, he shook his head.

“No; she kept very much to herself,” he said. “I saw her but little,
hardly at all, except at Modane. She kept her own berth.”

“Where she received her own friends?”

“Oh, beyond doubt. The Englishmen both visited her there, but not the
Italian.”

“The Italian? Are we to infer that she knew the Italian?”

“That is what I wish to convey. Not on the journey, though. Between
Rome and Paris she did not seem to know him. It was afterwards; this
morning, in fact, that I came to the conclusion that there was some
secret understanding between them.”

“Why do you say that, M. Devaux?” cried the detective, excitedly. “Let
me urge you and implore you to speak out, and fully. This is of the
utmost, of the very first, importance.”

“Well, gentlemen, I will tell you. As you are well aware, on arrival at
this station we were all ordered to leave the car, and marched to the
waiting-room, out there. As a matter of course, the lady entered first,
and she was seated when I went in. There was a strong light on her
face.”

“Was her veil down?”

“Not then. I saw her lower it later, and, as I think, for reasons I
will presently put before you. Madame has a beautiful face, and I gazed
at it with sympathy, grieving for her, in fact, in such a trying
situation; when suddenly I saw a great and remarkable change come over
it.”

“Of what character?”

“It was a look of horror, disgust, surprise,—a little perhaps of all
three; I could not quite say which, it faded so quickly and was
followed by a cold, deathlike pallor. Then almost immediately she
lowered her veil.”

“Could you form any explanation for what you saw in her face? What
caused it?”

“Something unexpected, I believe, some shock, or the sight of something
shocking. That was how it struck me, and so forcibly that I turned to
look over my shoulder, expecting to find the reason there. And it was.”

“That reason—?”

“Was the entrance of the Italian, who came just behind me. I am certain
of this; he almost told me so himself, not in words, but the mistakable
leer he gave her in reply. It was wicked, sardonic, devilish, and
proved beyond doubt that there was some secret, some guilty secret
perhaps, between them.”

“And was that all?” cried both the Judge and M. Floçon in a breath,
leaning forward in their eagerness to hear more.

“For the moment, yes. But I was made so interested, so suspicious by
this, that I watched the Italian closely, awaiting, expecting further
developments. They were long in coming; indeed, I am only at the end
now.”

“Explain, pray, as quickly as possible, and in your own words.”

“It was like this, monsieur. When we were all seated, I looked round,
and did not at first see our Italian. At last I discovered he had taken
a back seat, through modesty perhaps, or to be out of observation—how
was I to know? He sat in the shadow by a door, that, in fact, which
leads into this room. He was thus in the background, rather out of the
way, but I could see his eyes glittering in that far-off corner, and
they were turned in our direction, always fixed upon the lady, you
understand. She was next me, the whole time.

“Then, as you will remember, monsieur, you called us in one by one, and
I, with M. Lafolay, was the first to appear before you. When I returned
to the outer room, the Italian was still staring, but not so fixedly or
continuously, at the lady. From time to time his eyes wandered towards
a table near which he sat, and which was just in the gangway or passage
by which people must pass into your presence.

“There was some reason for this, I felt sure, although I did not
understand it immediately.
“Presently I got at the hidden meaning There was a small piece of
paper, rolled up or crumpled up into a ball, lying upon this table, and
the Italian wished, nay, was desperately anxious, to call the lady’s
attention to it. If I had had any doubt of this, it was quite removed
after the man had gone into the inner room. As he left us, he turned
his head over his shoulder significantly and nodded very slightly, but
still perceptibly, at the ball of paper.

“Well, gentlemen, I was now satisfied in my own mind that this was some
artful attempt of his to communicate with the lady, and had she fallen
in with it, I should have immediately informed you, the proper
authorities. But whether from stupidity, dread, disinclination, a
direct, definite refusal to have any dealings with this man, the lady
would not—at any rate did not—pick up the ball, as she might have done
easily when she in her turn passed the table on her way to your
presence.

“I have no doubt it was thrown there for her, and probably you will
agree with me. But it takes two to make a game of this sort, and the
lady would not join. Neither on leaving the room nor on returning would
she take up the missive.”

“And what became of it, then?” asked the detective in breathless
excitement. “I have it here.” M. Devaux opened the palm of his hand and
displayed the scrap of paper in the hollow rolled up into a small tight
ball.

“When and how did you become possessed of it?”

“I got it only just now, when I was called in here. Before that I could
not move. I was tied to my chair, practically, and ordered strictly not
to move.”

“Perfectly. Monsieur’s conduct has been admirable. And now tell us—what
does it contain? Have you looked at it?”

“By no means. It is just as I picked it up. Will you gentlemen take it,
and if you think fit, tell me what is there? Some writing—a message of
some sort, or I am greatly mistaken.”

“Yes, here are words written in pencil,” said the detective, unrolling
the paper, which he handed on to the Judge, who read the contents
aloud—

“Be careful. Say nothing. If you betray me, you will be lost too.”

A long silence followed, broken first by the Judge, who said at last
solemnly to Devaux:

“Monsieur, in the name of justice I beg to thank you most warmly. You
have acted with admirable tact and judgment, and have rendered us
invaluable assistance. Have you anything further to tell us?”

“No, gentlemen. That is all. And you—you have no more questions to ask?
Then I presume I may withdraw?”

Beyond doubt it had been reserved for the last witness to produce facts
that constituted the very essence of the inquiry.




CHAPTER XIII


The examination was now over, and, the dispositions having been drawn
up and signed, the investigating officials remained for some time in
conference.

“It lies with those three, of course—the two women and the Italian.
They are jointly, conjointly concerned, although the exact degrees of
guilt cannot quite be apportioned,” said the detective.

“And all three are at large!” added the Judge.

“If you will issue warrants for arrest, M. le Juge, we can take
them—two of them at any rate—when we choose.”

“That should be at once,” remarked the Commissary, eager, as usual, for
decisive action.

“Very well. Let us proceed in that way. Prepare the warrants,” said the
Judge, turning to his clerk. “And you,” he went on, addressing M.
Floçon, “dear colleague, will you see to their execution? Madame is at
the Hôtel Madagascar; that will be easy. The Italian Ripaldi we shall
hear of through your inspector Block. As for the maid, Hortense
Petitpré, we must search for her. That too, sir, you will of course
undertake?”

“I will charge myself with it, certainly. My man should be here by now,
and I will instruct him at once. Ask for him,” said M. Floçon to the
guard whom he called in.

“The inspector is there,” said the guard, pointing to the outer room.
“He has just returned.”

“Returned? You mean arrived.”

“No, monsieur, returned. It is Block, who left an hour or more ago.”

“Block? Then something has happened—he has some special information,
some great news! Shall we see him, M. le Juge?”

When Block appeared, it was evident that something had gone wrong with
him. His face wore a look of hot, flurried excitement, and his manner
was one of abject, cringing self-abasement.

“What is it?” asked the little Chief, sharply. “You are alone. Where is
your man?”

“Alas, monsieur! how shall I tell you? He has gone—disappeared! I have
lost him!”

“Impossible! You cannot mean it! Gone, now, just when we most want him?
Never!”

“It is so, unhappily.”

“Idiot! _Triple_ idiot! You shall be dismissed, discharged from this
hour. You are a disgrace to the force.” M. Floçon raved furiously at
his abashed subordinate, blaming him a little too harshly and unfairly,
forgetting that until quite recently there had been no strong suspicion
against the Italian. We are apt at times to expect others to be
intuitively possessed of knowledge that has only come to us at a much
later date.

“How was it? Explain. Of course you have been drinking. It is that, or
your great gluttony. You were beguiled into some eating-house.”

“Monsieur, you shall hear the exact truth. When we started more than an
hour ago, our fiacre took the usual route, by the Quais and along the
riverside. My gentleman made himself most pleasant.”

“No doubt,” growled the Chief.

“Offered me an excellent cigar, and talked—not about the affair, you
understand—but of Paris, the theatres, the races, Longchamps, Auteuil,
the grand restaurants. He knew everything, all Paris, like his pocket.
I was much surprised, but he told me his business often brought him
here. He had been employed to follow up several great Italian
criminals, and had made a number of important arrests in Paris.”

“Get on, get on! come to the essential.”

“Well, in the middle of the journey, when we were about the Pont Henri
Quatre, he said, ‘Figure to yourself, my friend, that it is now near
noon, that nothing has passed my lips since before daylight at Laroche.
What say you? Could you eat a mouthful, just a scrap on the thumb-nail?
Could you?’”

“And you—greedy, gormandizing beast!—you agreed?”

“My faith, monsieur, I too was hungry. It was my regular hour. Well—at
any rate, for my sins I accepted. We entered the first restaurant, that
of the ‘Reunited Friends,’ you know it, perhaps, monsieur? A good
house, especially noted for tripe _à la mode de Caen_.” In spite of his
anguish, Block smacked his fat lips at the thought of this most
succulent but very greasy dish.

“How often must I tell you to get on?”

“Forgive me, monsieur, but it is all part of my story. We had oysters,
two dozen Marennes, and a glass or two of Chablis; then a good portion
of tripe, and with them a bottle, only one, monsieur, of Pontet Canet;
after that a beefsteak with potatoes and a little Burgundy, then a rum
omelet.”

“Great Heavens! you should be the fat man in a fair, not an agent of
the Detective Bureau.”

“It was all this that helped me to my destruction. He ate, this
devilish Italian, like three, and I too, I was so hungry,—forgive me,
sir,—I did my share. But by the time we reached the cheese, a fine,
ripe Camembert, had our coffee, and one thimbleful of green Chartreuse,
I was _plein jusqu’au bec_, gorged up to the beak.”

“And what of your duty, your service, pray?”

“I did think of it, monsieur, but then, he, the Italian, was just the
same as myself. He was a colleague. I had no fear of him, not till the
very last, when he played me this evil turn. I suspected nothing when
he brought out his pocketbook,—it was stuffed full, monsieur; I saw
that and my confidence increased,—called for the reckoning, and paid
with an Italian bank-note. The waiter looked doubtful at the foreign
money, and went out to consult the manager. A minute after, my man got
up, saying:

“‘There may be some trouble about changing that bank-note. Excuse me
one moment, pray.’ He went out, monsieur, and piff-paff, he was no more
to be seen.”

“Ah, _nigaud_ (ass), you are too foolish to live! Why did you not
follow him? Why let him out of your sight?”

“But, monsieur, I was not to know, was I? I was to accompany him, not
to watch him. I have done wrong, I confess. But then, who was to tell
he meant to run away?”

M. Floçon could not deny the justice of this defence. It was only now,
at the eleventh hour, that the Italian had become inculpated, and the
question of his possible anxiety to escape had never been considered.

“He was so artful,” went on Block in further extenuation of his
offence. “He left everything behind. His overcoat, stick, this book—his
own private memorandum-book seemingly—”

“Book? Hand it me,” said the Chief, and when it came into his hands he
began to turn over the leaves hurriedly.

It was a small brass-bound note-book or diary, and was full of close
writing in pencil.

“I do not understand, not more than a word here and there. It is no
doubt Italian. Do you know that language, M. le Juge?”

“Not perfectly, but I can read it. Allow me.”

He also turned over the pages, pausing to read a passage here and
there, and nodding his head from time to time, evidently struck with
the importance of the matter recorded.

Meanwhile, M. Floçon continued an angry conversation with his offending
subordinate.

“You will have to find him, Block, and that speedily, within
twenty-four hours,—to-day, indeed,—or I will break you like a stick,
and send you into the gutter. Of course, such a consummate ass as you
have proved yourself would not think of searching the restaurant or the
immediate neighbourhood, or of making inquiries as to whether he had
been seen, or as to which way he had gone?”

“Pardon me, monsieur is too hard on me. I have been unfortunate, a
victim to circumstances, still I believe I know my duty. Yes, I made
inquiries, and, what is more, I heard of him.”

“Where? how?” asked the Chief, gruffly, but obviously much interested.

“He never spoke to the manager, but walked out and let the change go.
It was a note for a hundred _lire_, a hundred francs, and the
restaurant bill was no more than seventeen francs.”

“Hah! that is greatly against him indeed.”

“He was much pressed, in a great hurry. Directly he crossed the
threshold he called the first cab and was driving away, but he was
stopped—”

“The devil! Why did they not keep him, then?”

“Stopped, but only for a moment, and accosted by a woman.”

“A woman?”

“Yes, monsieur. They exchanged but three words. He wished to pass on,
to leave her, she would not consent, then they both got into the cab
and were driven away together.”

The officials were now listening with all ears.

“Tell me,” said the Chief, “quick, this woman—what was she like? Did
you get her description?”

“Tall, slight, well formed, dressed all in black. Her face—it was a
policeman who saw her, and he said she was good-looking, dark,
brunette, black hair.”

“It is the maid herself!” cried the little Chief, springing up and
slapping his thigh in exuberant glee. “The maid! the missing maid!”




CHAPTER XIV


The joy of the Chief of Detectives at having thus come, as he supposed,
upon the track of the missing maid, Hortense Petitpré, was somewhat
dashed by the doubts freely expressed by the Judge as to the result of
any search. Since Block’s return, M. Beaumont le Hardi had developed
strong symptoms of discontent and disapproval at his colleague’s
proceedings.

“But if it was this Hortense Petitpré how did she get there, by the
bridge Henri Quatre, when we thought to find her somewhere down the
line? It cannot be the same woman.”

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” interposed Block. “May I say one word?
I believe I can supply some interesting information about Hortense
Petitpré. I understand that some one like her was seen here in the
station not more than an hour ago.”

“_Peste!_ Why were we not told this sooner?” cried the Chief,
impetuously.

“Who saw her? Did he speak to her? Call him in; let us see how much he
knows.”

The man was summoned, one of the subordinate railway officials, who
made a specific report.

Yes, he had seen a tall, slight, neat-looking woman, dressed entirely
in black, who, according to her account, had arrived at 10.30 by the
slow local train from Dijon.

“_Fichtre!_” said the Chief, angrily; “and this is the first we have
heard of it.”

“Monsieur was much occupied at the time, and, indeed, then we had not
heard of your inquiry.”

“I notified the station-master quite early, two or three hours since,
about 9 A.M. This is most exasperating!”

“Instructions to look out for this woman have only just reached us,
monsieur. There were certain formalities, I suppose.”

For once the detective cursed in his heart the red-tape, roundabout
ways of French officialism.

“Well, well! Tell me about her,” he said, with a resignation he did not
feel. “Who saw her?”

“I, monsieur. I spoke to her myself. She was on the outside of the
station, alone, unprotected, in a state of agitation and alarm. I went
up and offered my services. Then she told me she had come from Dijon,
that friends who were to have met her had not appeared. I suggested
that I should put her into a cab and send her to her destination. But
she was afraid of losing her friends, and preferred to wait.”

“A fine story! Did she appear to know what had happened? Had she heard
of the murder?”

“Something, monsieur.”

“Who could have told her? Did you?”

“No, not I. But she knew.”

“Was not that in itself suspicious? The fact has not yet been made
public.”

“It was in the air, monsieur. There was a general impression that
something had happened. That was to be seen on every face, in the
whispered talk, the movement to and fro of the police and the guards.”

“Did she speak of it, or refer to it?”

“Only to ask if the murderer was known; whether the passengers had been
detained; whether there was any inquiry in progress; and then—”

“What then?”

“This gentleman,” pointing to Block, “came out, accompanied by another.
They passed pretty close to us, and I noticed that the lady slipped
quickly on one side.”

“She recognized her confederate, of course, but did not wish to be seen
just then. Did he, the person with Block here, see her?”

“Hardly, I think; it was all so quick, and they were gone, in a minute,
to the cab-stand.”

“What did your woman do?”

“She seemed to have changed her mind all at once, and declared she
would not wait for her friends. Now she was in quite a hurry to go.”

“Of course! and left you like a fool planted there. I suppose she took
a cab and followed the others, Block here and his companion.”

“I believe she did. I saw her cab close behind theirs.”

“It is too late to lament this now,” said the Chief, after a short
pause, looking at his colleagues. “At least it confirms our ideas, and
brings us to certain definite conclusions. We must lay hands on these
two. Their guilt is all but established. Their own acts condemn them.
They must be arrested without a moment’s delay.”

“If you can find them!” suggested the Judge, with a very perceptible
sneer.

“That we shall certainly do. Trust to Block, who is very nearly
concerned. His future depends on his success. You quite understand
that, my man?”

Block made a gesture half-deprecating, half-confident.

“I do not despair, gentlemen; and if I might make so bold, sir, I will
ask you to assist? If you would give orders direct from the Prefecture
to make the round of the cab-stands, to ask of all the agents in charge
the information we need? Before night we shall have heard from the
cabman who drove them what became of this couple, and so get our birds
themselves, or a point of fresh departure.”

“And you, Block, where shall you go?”

“Where I left him, or rather where he left me,” replied the inspector,
with an attempt at wit, which fell quite flat, being extinguished by a
frigid look from the Judge.

“Go,” said M. Floçon, briefly and severely, to his subordinate; “and
remember that you have now to justify your retention on the force.”

Then, turning to M. Beaumont le Hardi, the Chief went on pleasantly:

“Well, M. le Juge, it promises, I think; it is all fairly satisfactory,
eh?”

“I am sorry I cannot agree with you,” replied the Judge, harshly. “On
the contrary, I consider that we—or more exactly you, for neither I nor
M. Garraud accept any share in it—you have so far failed, and
miserably.”

“Your pardon, M. le Juge, you are too severe,” protested M. Floçon,
quite humbly.

“Well! Look at it from all points of view. What have we got? What have
we gained? Nothing, or, if anything, it is of the smallest, and it is
already jeopardized, if not absolutely lost.”

“We have at least gained the positive assurance of the guilt of certain
individuals.”

“Whom you have allowed to slip through your fingers.”

“Ah, not so, M. le Juge! We have one under surveillance. My man
Galipaud is there at the hotel watching the Countess.”

“Do not talk to me of your men, M. Floçon,” angrily interposed the
Judge. “One of them has given us a touch of his quality. Why should not
the other be equally foolish? I quite expect to hear that the Countess
also has gone, that would be the climax!”

“It shall not happen. I will take the warrant and arrest her now, at
once, myself,” cried M. Floçon.

“Well, that will be something, yet not much. Yes, she is only one, and
not to my mind the most criminal. We do not know as yet the exact
responsibility of each, the exact measure of their guilt; but I do not
myself believe that the Countess was a prime mover, or, indeed, more
than an accessory. She was drawn into it, perhaps involved, how or why
we cannot know, but possibly by fortuitous circumstances that put an
unavoidable pressure upon her; a consenting party, but under protest.
That is my view of the lady.”

M. Floçon shook his head. Prepossessions with him were tenacious, and
he had made up his mind about the Countess’s guilt.

“When you again interrogate her, M. le Juge, by the light of your
present knowledge, I believe you will think otherwise. She will
confess,—you will make her, your skill is unrivalled,—and you will then
admit, M. le Juge, that I was right in my suspicions.”

“Ah, well, produce her! We shall see,” said the Judge, somewhat
mollified by M. Floçon’s fulsome flattery.

“I will bring her to your chamber of instruction within an hour, M. le
Juge,” said the detective, very confidently.

But he was doomed to disappointment in this as he was in other
respects.




CHAPTER XV


Let us go back a little in point of time, and follow the movements of
Sir Charles Collingham.

It was barely 11 A.M. when he left the Lyons Station with his brother,
the Reverend Silas, and the military attaché, Colonel Papillon. They
paused for a moment outside the station while the baggage was being got
together.

“See, Silas,” said the General, pointing to the clock, “you will have
plenty of time for the 11.50 train to Calais for London, but you must
hurry up and drive straight across Paris to the Nord. I suppose he can
go, Jack?”

“Certainly, as he has promised to return if called upon.”

And Mr. Collingham promptly took advantage of the permission.

“But you, General, what are your plans?” went on the attaché.

“I shall go to the club first, get a room, dress, and all that. Then
call at the Hôtel Madagascar. There is a lady there,—one of our party,
in fact,—and I should like to ask after her. She may be glad of my
services.”

“English? Is there anything we can do for her?”

“Yes, she is an Englishwoman, but the widow of an Italian—the Contessa
di Castagneto.”

“Oh, but I know her!” said Papillon. “I remember her in Rome two or
three years ago. A deuced pretty woman, very much admired, but she was
in deep mourning then, and went out very little. I wished she had gone
out more. There were lots of men ready to fall at her feet.”

“You were in Rome, then, some time back? Did you ever come across a man
there, Quadling, the banker?”

“Of course I did. Constantly. He was a good deal about—a rather
free-living, self-indulgent sort of chap. And now you mention his name,
I recollect they said he was much smitten by this particular lady, the
Contessa di Castagneto.”

“And did she encourage him?” “Lord! how can I tell? Who shall say how a
woman’s fancy falls? It might have suited her too. They said she was
not in very good circumstances, and he was thought to be a rich man. Of
course we know better than that now.”

“Why _now?_”

“Haven’t you heard? It was in the _Figaro_ yesterday, and in all the
Paris papers. Quadling’s bank has gone to smash; he has bolted with all
the ‘ready’ he could lay hands upon.”

“He didn’t get far, then!” cried Sir Charles. “You look surprised,
Jack. Didn’t they tell you? This Quadling was the man murdered in the
sleeping-car. It was no doubt for the money he carried with him.”

“Was it Quadling? My word! what a terrible Nemesis. Well, _nil nisi
bonum_, but I never thought much of the chap, and your friend the
Countess has had an escape. But now, sir, I must be moving. My
engagement is for twelve noon. If you want me, mind you send—207 Rue
Miromesnil, or to the Embassy; but let us arrange to meet this evening,
eh? Dinner and a theatre—what do you say?”

Then Colonel Papillon rode off, and the General was driven to the
Boulevard des Capucines, having much to occupy his thoughts by the way.

It did not greatly please him to have this story of the Countess’s
relations with Quadling, as first hinted at by the police, endorsed now
by his friend Papillon. Clearly she had kept up her acquaintance, her
intimacy to the very last: why otherwise should she have received him,
alone, been closeted with him for an hour or more on the very eve of
his flight? It was a clandestine acquaintance too, or seemed so, for
Sir Charles, although a frequent visitor at her house, had never met
Quadling there.

What did it all mean? And yet, what, after all, did it matter to him?

A good deal really more than he chose to admit to himself, even now,
when closely questioning his secret heart. The fact was, the Countess
had made a very strong impression on him from the first. He had admired
her greatly during the past winter at Rome, but then it was only a
passing fancy, as he thought,—the pleasant platonic flirtation of a
middle-aged man, who never expected to inspire or feel a great love.
Only now, when he had shared a serious trouble with her, had passed
through common difficulties and dangers, he was finding what accident
may do—how it may fan a first liking into a stronger flame. It was
absurd, of course. He was fifty-one, he had weathered many trifling
affairs of the heart, and here he was, bowled over at last, and by a
woman he was not certain was entitled to his respect.

What was he to do?

The answer came at once and unhesitatingly, as it would to any other
honest, chivalrous gentleman.

“By George, I’ll stick to her through thick and thin! I’ll trust her
whatever happens or has happened, come what may. Such a woman as that
is above suspicion. She _must_ be straight. I should be a beast and a
blackguard double distilled to think anything else. I am sure she can
put all right with a word, can explain everything when she chooses. I
will wait till she does.”

Thus fortified and decided, Sir Charles took his way to the Hôtel
Madagascar about noon. At the desk he inquired for the Countess, and
begged that his card might be sent up to her. The man looked at it,
then at the visitor, as he stood there waiting rather impatiently, then
again at the card. At last he walked out and across the inner courtyard
of the hotel to the office. Presently the manager came back, bowing
low, and, holding the card in his hand, began a desultory conversation.

“Yes, yes,” cried the General, angrily cutting short all references to
the weather and the number of English visitors in Paris. “But be so
good as to let Madame la Comtesse know that I have called.”

“Ah, to be sure! I came to tell Monsieur le Général that madame will
hardly be able to see him. She is indisposed, I believe. At any rate,
she does not receive to-day.”

“As to that, we shall see. I will take no answer except direct from
her. Take or send up my card without further delay. I insist! Do you
hear?” said the General, so fiercely that the manager turned tail and
fled up-stairs.

Perhaps he yielded his ground the more readily that he saw over the
General’s shoulder the figure of Galipaud the detective looming in the
archway. It had been arranged that, as it was not advisable to have the
inspector hanging about the courtyard of the hotel, the clerk or the
manager should keep watch over the Countess and detain any visitors who
might call upon her. Galipaud had taken post at a wine-shop over the
way, and was to be summoned whenever his presence was thought
necessary.

There he was now, standing just behind the General, and for the present
unseen by him.

But then a telegraph messenger came in and up to the desk. He held the
usual blue envelope in his hand, and called out the name on the
address:

“Castagneto. Contessa Castagneto.”

At sound of which the General turned sharply, to find Galipaud
advancing and stretching out his hand to take the message.

“Pardon me,” cried Sir Charles, promptly interposing and understanding
the situation at a glance. “I am just going up to see that lady. Give
me the telegram.”

Galipaud would have disputed the point, when the General, who had
already recognized him, said quietly:

“No, no, Inspector, you have no earthly right to it. I guess why you
are here, but you are not entitled to interfere with private
correspondence. Stand back;” and seeing the detective hesitate, he
added peremptorily:

“Enough of this. I order you to get out of the way. And be quick about
it!”

The manager now returned, and admitted that Madame la Comtesse would
receive her visitor. A few seconds more, and the General was admitted
into her presence.

“How truly kind of you to call!” she said at once, coming up to him
with both hands outstretched and frank gladness in her eyes.

Yes, she was very attractive in her plain, dark travelling dress
draping her tall, graceful figure; her beautiful, pale face was
enhanced by the rich tones of her dark brown, wavy hair, while just a
narrow band of white muslin at her wrists and neck set off the dazzling
clearness of her skin.

“Of course I came. I thought you might want me, or might like to know
the latest news,” he answered, as he held her hands in his for a few
seconds longer than was perhaps absolutely necessary.

“Oh, do tell me! Is there anything fresh?” There was a flash of crimson
colour in her cheek, which faded almost instantly.

“This much. They have found out who the man was.”

“Really? Positively? Whom do they say now?”

“Perhaps I had better not tell you. It may surprise you, shock you to
hear. I think you knew him—”

“Nothing can well shock me now. I have had too many shocks already. Who
do they think it is?”

“A Mr. Quadling, a banker, who is supposed to have absconded from
Rome.”

She received the news so impassively, with such strange
self-possession, that for a moment he was disappointed in her. But
then, quick to excuse, he suggested:

“You may have already heard?”

“Yes; the police people at the railway station told me they thought it
was Mr. Quadling.”

“But you knew him?”

“Certainly. They were my bankers, much to my sorrow. I shall lose
heavily by their failure.”

“That also has reached you, then?” interrupted the General, hastily and
somewhat uneasily.

“To be sure. The man told me of it himself. Indeed, he came to me the
very day I was leaving Rome, and made me an offer—a most obliging
offer.”

“To share his fallen fortunes?”

“Sir Charles Collingham! How can you? That creature!” The contempt in
her tone was immeasurable.

“I had heard—well, some one said that—”

“Speak out, General; I shall not be offended. I know what you mean. It
is perfectly true that the man once presumed to pester me with his
attentions. But I would as soon have looked at a courier or a cook. And
now—”

There was a pause. The General felt on delicate ground. He could ask no
questions—anything more must come from the Countess herself.

“But let me tell you what his offer was. I don’t know why I listened to
it. I ought to have at once informed the police. I wish I had.”

“It might have saved him from his fate.”

“Every villain gets his deserts in the long run,” she said, with bitter
sententiousness. “And this Mr. Quadling is—But wait, you shall know him
better. He came to me to propose—what do you think?—that he—his bank, I
mean—should secretly repay me the amount of my deposit, all the money I
had in it. To join me in his fraud, in fact—”

“The scoundrel! Upon my word, he has been well served. And that was the
last you saw of him?”

“I saw him on the journey, at Turin, at Modane, at—Oh, Sir Charles, do
not ask me any more about him!” she cried, with a sudden outburst,
half-grief, half-dread. “I cannot tell you—I am obliged to—I—I—”

“Then do not say another word,” he said, promptly.

“There are other things. But my lips are sealed—at least for the
present. You do not—will not think any worse of me?”

She laid her hand gently on his arm, and his closed over it with such
evident good-will that a blush crimsoned her cheek. It still hung
there, and deepened when he said, warmly:

“As if anything could make me do that! Don’t you know—you may not, but
let me assure you, Countess—that nothing could happen to shake me in
the high opinion I have of you. Come what may, I shall trust you,
believe in you, think well of you—always.”

“How sweet of you to say that! and now, of all times,” she murmured
quite softly, and looking up for the first time, shyly, to meet his
eyes.

Her hand was still on his arm, covered by his, and she nestled so close
to him that it was easy, natural, indeed, for him to slip his other arm
around her waist and draw her to him.

“And now—of all times—may I say one word more?” he whispered in her
ear. “Will you give me the right to shelter and protect you, to stand
by you, share your troubles, or keep them from you—?”

“No, no, no, indeed, not now!” She looked up appealingly, the tears
brimming up in her bright eyes. “I cannot, will not accept this
sacrifice. You are only speaking out of your true-hearted chivalry. You
must not join yourself to me, you must not involve yourself—”

He stopped her protests by the oldest and most effectual method known
in such cases. That first sweet kiss sealed the compact so quickly
entered into between them.

And after that she surrendered at discretion. There was no more
hesitation or reluctance; she accepted his love as he had offered it,
freely, with whole heart and soul, crept up under his sheltering wing
like a storm-beaten dove reëntering the nest, and there, cooing softly,
“My knight—my own true knight and lord,” yielded herself willingly and
unquestioningly to his tender caresses.

Such moments snatched from the heart of pressing anxieties are made
doubly sweet by their sharp contrast with a background of trouble.




CHAPTER XVI


They sat there, these two, hand locked in hand, saying little,
satisfied now to be with each other and their new-found love. The time
flew by far too fast, till at last Sir Charles, with a half-laugh,
suggested:

“Do you know, dearest Countess—”

She corrected him in a soft, low voice.

“My name is Sabine—Charles.”

“Sabine, darling. It is very prosaic of me, perhaps, but do you know
that I am nearly starved? I came on here at once. I have had no
breakfast.”

“Nor have I,” she answered, smiling. “I was thinking of it when—when
you appeared like a whirlwind, and since then, events have moved so
fast.”

“Are you sorry, Sabine? Would you rather go back to—to—before?” She
made a pretty gesture of closing his traitor lips with her small hand.

“Not for worlds. But you soldiers—you are terrible men! Who can resist
you?”

“Bah! It is you who are irresistible. But there, why not put on your
jacket and let us go out to lunch somewhere—Durand’s, Voisin’s, the
Café de le Paix? Which do you prefer?”

“I suppose they will not try to stop us?”

“Who should try?” he asked.

“The people of the hotel—the police—I cannot exactly say whom; but I
dread something of the sort. I don’t quite understand that manager. He
has been up to see me several times, and he spoke rather oddly, rather
rudely.”

“Then he shall answer for it,” snorted Sir Charles, hotly. “It is the
fault of that brute of a detective, I suppose. Still they would hardly
dare—”

“A detective? What? Here? Are you sure?”

“Perfectly sure. It is one of those from the Lyons Station. I knew him
again directly, and he was inclined to be interfering. Why, I caught
him trying—but that reminds me—I rescued this telegram from his
clutches.”

He took the little blue envelope from his breast pocket and handed it
to her, kissing the tips of her fingers as she took it from him.

“Ah!”

A sudden ejaculation of dismay escaped her, when, after rather
carelessly tearing the message open, she had glanced at it.

“What is the matter?” he asked in eager solicitude. “May I not know?”

She made no offer to give him the telegram, and said in a faltering
voice, and with much hesitation of manner, “I do not know. I hardly
think—of course I do not like to withhold anything, not now. And yet,
this is a business which concerns me only, I am afraid. I ought not to
drag you into it.”

“What concerns you is very much my business, too. I do not wish to
force your confidence, still—”

She gave him the telegram quite obediently, with a little sigh of
relief, glad to realize now, for the first time after many years, that
there was some one to give her orders and take the burden of trouble
off her shoulders.

He read it, but did not understand it in the least. It ran: “I must see
you immediately, and beg you will come. You will find Hortense here.
She is giving trouble. You only can deal with her. Do not delay. Come
at once, or we must go to you.—Ripaldi, Hôtel Ivoire, Rue Bellechasse.”

“What does this mean? Who sends it? Who is Ripaldi?” asked Sir Charles,
rather brusquely.

“He—he—oh, Charles, I shall have to go. Anything would be better than
his coming here.”

“Ripaldi? Haven’t I heard the name? He was one of those in the
sleeping-car, I think? The Chief of the Detective Police called it out
once or twice. Am I not right? Please tell me—am I not right?”

“Yes, yes; this man was there with the rest of us. A dark man, who sat
near the door—”

“Ah, to be sure. But what—what in Heaven’s name has he to do with you?
How does he dare to send you such an impudent message as this? Surely,
Sabine, you will tell me? You will admit that I have a right to ask?”

“Yes, of course. I will tell you, Charles, everything; but not here—not
now. It must be on the way. I have been very wrong, very foolish—but
oh, come, come, do let us be going. I am so afraid he might—”

“Then I may go with you? You do not object to that?”

“I much prefer it—much. Do let us make haste!”

She snatched up her sealskin jacket, and held it to him prettily, that
he might help her into it, which he did neatly and cleverly, smoothing
her great puffed-out sleeves under each shoulder of the coat, still
talking eagerly and taking no toll for his trouble as she stood
patiently, passively before him.

“And this Hortense? It is your maid, is it not—the woman who had taken
herself off? How comes it that she is with that Italian fellow? Upon my
soul, I don’t understand—not a little bit.”

“I cannot explain that, either. It is most strange, most
incomprehensible, but we shall soon know. Please, Charles, please do
not get impatient.”

They passed together down into the hotel courtyard and across it, under
the archway which led past the clerk’s desk into the street.

On seeing them, he came out hastily and placed himself in front, quite
plainly barring their egress.

“Oh, madame, one moment,” he said in a tone that was by no means
conciliatory. “The manager wants to speak to you; he told me to tell
you, and stop you if you went out.”

“The manager can speak to madame when she returns,” interposed the
General angrily, answering for the Countess.

“I have had my orders, and I cannot allow her—”

“Stand aside, you scoundrel!” cried the General, blazing up; “or upon
my soul I shall give you such a lesson you will be sorry you were ever
born.”

At this moment the manager himself appeared in reinforcement, and the
clerk turned to him for protection and support.

“I was merely giving madame your message, M. Auguste, when this
gentleman interposed, threatened me, maltreated me—”

“Oh, surely not; it is some mistake;” the manager spoke most suavely.
“But certainly I did wish to speak to madame. I wished to ask her
whether she was satisfied with her apartment. I find that the rooms she
has generally occupied have fallen vacant, in the nick of time. Perhaps
madame would like to look at them, and move?”

“Thank you, M. Auguste, you are very good; but at another time. I am
very much pressed just now. When I return in an hour or two, not now.”

The manager was profuse in his apologies, and made no further
difficulty.

“Oh, as you please, madame. Perfectly. By and by, later, when you
choose.”

The fact was, the desired result had been obtained. For now, on the far
side from where he had been watching, Galipaud appeared, no doubt in
reply to some secret signal, and the detective with a short nod in
acknowledgment had evidently removed his embargo.

A cab was called, and Sir Charles, having put the Countess in, was
turning to give the driver his instructions, when a fresh complication
arose.

Some one coming round the corner had caught a glimpse of the lady
disappearing into the fiacre, and cried out from afar.

“Stay! Stop! I want to speak to that lady; detain her.” It was the
sharp voice of little M. Floçon, whom most of those present, certainly
the Countess and Sir Charles, immediately recognized.

“No, no, no—don’t let them keep me—I cannot wait now,” she whispered in
earnest, urgent appeal. It was not lost on her loyal and devoted
friend.

“Go on!” he shouted to the cabman, with all the peremptory insistence
of one trained to give words of command. “Forward! As fast as you can
drive. I’ll pay you double fare. Tell him where to go, Sabine. I’ll
follow—in less than no time.”

The fiacre rattled off at top speed, and the General turned to confront
M. Floçon.

The little detective was white to the lips with rage and
disappointment; but he also was a man of promptitude, and before
falling foul of this pestilent Englishman, who had again marred his
plans, he shouted to Galipaud—

“Quick! After them! Follow her wherever she goes. Take this,”—he thrust
a paper into his subordinate’s hand. “It is a warrant for her arrest.
Seize her wherever you find her, and bring her to the Quai l’Horloge,”
the euphemistic title of the headquarters of the French police.

The pursuit was started at once, and then the Chief turned upon Sir
Charles. “Now it is between us,” he said, fiercely. “You must account
to me for what you have done.”

“Must I?” answered the General, mockingly and with a little laugh. “It
is perfectly easy. Madame was in a hurry, so I helped her to get away.
That was all.”

“You have traversed and opposed the action of the law. You have impeded
me, the Chief of the Detective Service, in the execution of my duty. It
is not the first time, but now you must answer for it.”

“Dear me!” said the General in the same flippant, irritating tone.

“You will have to accompany me now to the Prefecture.”

“And if it does not suit me to go?”

“I will have you carried there, bound, tied hand and foot, by the
police, like any common rapscallion taken in the act who resists the
authority of an officer.”

“Oho, you talk very big, sir. Perhaps you will be so obliging as to
tell me what I have done.”

“You have connived at the escape of a criminal from justice—”

“That lady? Psha!”

“She is charged with a heinous crime—that in which you yourself were
implicated—the murder of that man on the train.”

“Bah! You must be a stupid goose, to hint at such a thing! A lady of
birth, breeding, the highest respectability—impossible!”

“All that has not prevented her from allying herself with base, common
wretches. I do not say she struck the blow, but I believe she inspired,
concerted, approved it, leaving her confederates to do the actual
deed.”

“Confederates?”

“The man Ripaldi, your Italian fellow traveller; her maid, Hortense
Petitpré, who was missing this morning.”

The General was fairly staggered at this unexpected blow. Half an hour
ago he would have scouted the very thought, indignantly repelled the
spoken words that even hinted a suspicion of Sabine Castagneto. But
that telegram, signed Ripaldi, the introduction of the maid’s name, and
the suggestion that she was troublesome, the threat that if the
Countess did not go, they would come to her, and her marked uneasiness
thereat—all this implied plainly the existence of collusion, of some
secret relations, some secret understanding between her and the others.

He could not entirely conceal the trouble that now overcame him; it
certainly did not escape so shrewd an observer as M. Floçon, who
promptly tried to turn it to good account.

“Come, M. le Général,” he said, with much assumed _bonhomie_. “I can
see how it is with you, and you have my sincere sympathy. We are all of
us liable to be carried away, and there is much excuse for you in this.
But now—believe me, I am justified in saying it—now I tell you that our
case is strong against her, that it is not mere speculation, but
supported by facts. Now surely you will come over to our side?”

“In what way?”

“Tell us frankly all you know—where that lady has gone, help us to lay
our hands on her.”

“Your own people will do that. I heard you order that man to follow
her.”

“Probably; still I would rather have the information from you. It would
satisfy me of your good-will. I need not then proceed to extremities—”

“I certainly shall not give it you,” said the General, hotly. “Anything
I know about or have heard from the Contessa Castagneto is sacred;
besides, I still believe in her—thoroughly. Nothing you have said can
shake me.”

“Then I must ask you to accompany me to the Prefecture. You will come,
I trust, on my _invitation_.” The Chief spoke quietly, but with
considerable dignity, and he laid a slight stress upon the last word.

“Meaning that if I do not, you will have resort to something stronger?”

“That will be quite unnecessary, I am sure,—at least I hope so. Still—”

“I will go where you like, only I will tell you nothing more, not a
single word; and before I start, I must let my friends at the Embassy
know where to find me.”

“Oh, with all my heart,” said the little detective, shrugging his
shoulders. “We will call there on our way, and you can tell the porter.
They will know where to find us.”




CHAPTER XVII


Sir Charles Collingham and his escort, M. Floçon, entered a cab
together and were driven first to the Faubourg St. Honoré. The General
tried hard to maintain his nonchalance, but he was yet a little
crestfallen at the turn things had taken, and M. Floçon, who, on the
other hand, was elated and triumphant, saw it. But no words passed
between them until they arrived at the portals of the British Embassy,
and the General handed out his card to the magnificent porter who
received them.

“Kindly let Colonel Papillon have that without delay.” The General had
written a few words: “I have got into fresh trouble. Come on to me at
the Police Prefecture if you can spare the time.”

“The Colonel is now in the Chancery: will not monsieur wait?” asked the
porter, with superb civility.

But the detective would not suffer this, and interposed, answering
abruptly for Sir Charles:

“No. It is impossible. We are going to the Quai l’Horloge. It is an
urgent matter.”

The porter knew what the Quai l’Horloge meant, and he guessed
intuitively who was speaking. Every Frenchman can recognize a police
officer, and has, as a rule, no great opinion of him.

“Very well!” now said the porter, curtly, as he banged the wicket-gate
on the retreating cab, and he did not hurry himself in giving the card
to Colonel Papillon.

“Does this mean that I am a prisoner?” asked Sir Charles, his gorge
rising, as it did easily.

“It means, monsieur, that you are in the hands of justice until your
recent conduct has been fully explained,” said the detective, with the
air of a despot.

“But I protest—”

“I wish to hear no further observations, monsieur. You may reserve them
till you can give them to the right person.”

The General’s temper was sorely ruffled. He did not like it at all; yet
what could he do? Prudence gained the day, and after a struggle he
decided to submit, lest worse might befall him.

There was, in truth, worse to be encountered. It was very irksome to be
in the power of this now domineering little man on his own ground, and
eager to show his power. It was with a very bad grace that Sir Charles
obeyed the curt orders he received, to leave the cab, to enter at a
side door of the Prefecture, to follow this pompous conductor along the
long vaulted passages of this rambling building, up many flights of
stone stairs, to halt obediently at his command when at length they
reached a closed door on an upper story.

“It is here!” said M. Floçon, as he turned the handle unceremoniously
without knocking. “Enter.”

A man was seated at a small desk in the centre of a big bare room, who
rose at once at the sight of M. Floçon, and bowed deferentially without
speaking.

“Baume,” said the Chief, shortly, “I wish to leave this gentleman with
you. Make him at home,”—the words were spoken in manifest irony,—“and
when I call you, bring him at once to my cabinet. You, monsieur, you
will oblige me by staying here.”

Sir Charles nodded carelessly, took the first chair that offered, and
sat down by the fire.

He was to all intents and purposes in custody, and he examined his
gaoler at first wrathfully, then curiously, struck with his rather
strange figure and appearance. Baume, as the Chief had called him, was
a short, thick-set man with a great shock head sunk in low between a
pair of enormous shoulders, betokening great physical strength; he
stood on very thin but greatly twisted bow legs, and the quaintness of
his figure was emphasized by the short black blouse or smock-frock he
wore over his other clothes like a French artisan.

He was a man of few words, and those not the most polite in tone, for
when the General began with a banal remark about the weather, M. Baume
replied, shortly:

“I wish to have no talk;” and when Sir Charles pulled out his
cigarette-case, as he did almost automatically from time to time when
in any situation of annoyance or perplexity, Baume raised his hand
warningly and grunted:

“Not allowed.”

“Then I’ll be hanged if I don’t smoke in spite of every man jack of
you!” cried the General, hotly, rising from his seat and speaking
unconsciously in English.

“What’s that?” asked Baume, gruffly. He was one of the detective staff,
and was only doing his duty according to his lights, and he said so
with such an injured air that the General was pacified, laughed, and
relapsed into silence without lighting his cigarette.

The time ran on, from minutes into nearly an hour, a very trying wait
for Sir Charles. There is always something irritating in doing
antechamber work, in kicking one’s heels in the waiting-room of any
functionary or official, high or low, and the General found it hard to
possess himself in patience, when he thought he was being thus
ignominiously treated by a man like M. Floçon. All the time, too, he
was worrying himself about the Countess, wondering first how she had
fared; next, where she was just then; last of all, and longest, whether
it was possible for her to be mixed up in anything compromising or
criminal.

Suddenly an electric bell struck in the room. There was a table
telephone at Baume’s elbow; he took up the handle, put the tube to his
mouth and ear, got his message answered, and then, rising, said
abruptly to Sir Charles:

“Come.”

When the General was at last ushered into the presence of the Chief of
the Detective Police, he found to his satisfaction that Colonel
Papillon was also there, and at M. Floçon’s side sat the instructing
judge, M. Beaumont le Hardi, who, after waiting politely until the two
Englishmen had exchanged greetings, was the first to speak, and in
apology.

“You will, I trust, pardon us, M. le Général, for having detained you
here and so long. But there were, as we thought, good and sufficient
reasons. If those have now lost some of their cogency, we still stand
by our action as having been justifiable in the execution of our duty.
We are now willing to let you go free, because—because—”

“We have caught the person, the lady you helped to escape,” blurted out
the detective, unable to resist making the point.

“The Countess? Is she here, in custody? Never!”

“Undoubtedly she is in custody, and in very close custody too,” went on
M. Floçon, gleefully. “_Au secret_, if you know what that means—in a
cell separate and apart, where no one is permitted to see or speak to
her.”

“Surely not that? Jack—Papillon—this must not be. I beg of you,
implore, insist, that you will get his lordship to interpose.”

“But, sir, how can I? You must not ask impossibilities. The Contessa
Castagneto is really an Italian subject now.”

“She is English by birth, and whether or no, she is a woman, a
high-bred lady; and it is abominable, unheard-of, to subject her to
such monstrous treatment,” said the General.

“But these gentlemen declare that they are fully warranted, that she
has put herself in the wrong—greatly, culpably in the wrong.”

“I don’t believe it!” cried the General, indignantly. “Not from these
chaps, a pack of idiots, always on the wrong tack! I don’t believe a
word, not if they swear.”

“But they have documentary evidence—papers of the most damaging kind
against her.”

“Where? How?”

“He—M. le Juge—has been showing me a note-book;” and the General’s
eyes, following Jack Papillon’s, were directed to a small _carnet_, or
memorandum-book, which the Judge, interpreting the glance, was tapping
significantly with his finger.

Then the Judge said blandly, “It is easy to perceive that you protest,
M. le Général, against that lady’s arrest. Is it so? Well, we are not
called upon to justify it to you, not in the very least. But we are
dealing with a brave man, a gentleman, an officer of high rank and
consideration, and you shall know things that we are not bound to tell,
to you or to any one.”

“First,” he continued, holding up the note-book, “do you know what this
is? Have you ever seen it before?”

“I am dimly conscious of the fact, and yet I cannot say when or where.”

“It is the property of one of your fellow travellers—an Italian called
Ripaldi.”

“Ripaldi?” said the General, remembering with some uneasiness that he
had seen the name at the bottom of the Countess’s telegram. “Ah! now I
understand.”

“You had heard of it, then? In what connection?” asked the Judge, a
little carelessly, but it was a suddenly planned pitfall.

“I now understand,” replied the General, perfectly on his guard, “why
the note-book was familiar to me. I had seen it in that man’s hands in
the waiting-room. He was writing in it.”

“Indeed? A favourite occupation evidently. He was fond of confiding in
that note-book, and committed to it much that he never expected would
see the light—his movements, intentions, ideas, even his inmost
thoughts. The book—which he no doubt lost inadvertently is very
incriminating to himself and his friends.”

“What do you imply?” hastily inquired Sir Charles.

“Simply that it is on that which is written here that we base one part,
perhaps the strongest, of our case against the Countess. It is
strangely but convincingly corroborative of our suspicions against
her.”

“May I look at it for myself?” went on the General in a tone of
contemptuous disbelief.

“It is in Italian. Perhaps you can read that language? If not, I have
translated the most important passages,” said the Judge, offering some
other papers.

“Thank you; if you will permit me, I should prefer to look at the
original;” and the General, without more ado, stretched out his hand
and took the note-book.

What he read there, as he quickly scanned its pages, shall be told in
the next chapter. It will be seen that there were things written that
looked very damaging to his dear friend, Sabine Castagneto.




CHAPTER XVIII


Ripaldi’s diary—its ownership plainly shown by the record of his name
in full, Natale Ripaldi, inside the cover—was a commonplace note-book
bound in shabby drab cloth, its edges and corners strengthened with
some sort of white metal. The pages were of coarse paper, lined blue
and red, and they were dog-eared and smirched as though they had been
constantly turned over and used.

The earlier entries were little more than a record of work to do or
done.

“Jan. 11. To call at Café di Roma, 12.30. Beppo will meet me.

“Jan. 13. Traced M. L. Last employed as a model at S.’s studio, Palazzo
B.

“Jan. 15. There is trouble brewing at the Circulo Bonafede; Louvaih,
Malatesta, and the Englishman Sprot, have joined it. All are noted
Anarchists.

“Jan. 20. Mem., pay Trattore. The Bestia will not wait. X. is also
pressing, and Mariuccia. Situation tightens.

“Jan. 23. Ordered to watch Q. Could I work him? No. Strong doubts of
his solvency.

“Feb. 10, 11, 12. After Q. No grounds yet.

“Feb. 27. Q. keeps up good appearance. Any mistake? Shall I try him?
Sorely pressed. X. threatens me with Prefettura.

“March 1. Q. in difficulties. Out late every night. Is playing high;
poor luck.

“March 3. Q. means mischief. Preparing for a start?

“March 10. Saw Q. about, here, there, everywhere.”

Then followed a brief account of Quadling’s movements on the day before
his departure from Rome, very much as they have been described in a
previous chapter. These were made mostly in the form of reflections,
conjectures, hopes, and fears; hurry-scurry of pursuit had no doubt
broken the immediate record of events, and these had been entered next
day in the train.

“March 17 (the day previous). He has not shown up. I thought to see him
at the buffet at Genoa. The conductor took him his coffee to the car. I
hoped to have begun an acquaintance.

“12.30. Breakfasted at Turin. Q. did not come to table. Found him
hanging about outside restaurant. Spoke; got short reply. Wishes to
avoid observation, I suppose.

“But he speaks to others. He has claimed acquaintance with madame’s
lady’s maid, and he wants to speak to the mistress. ‘Tell her I must
speak to her,’ I heard him say, as I passed close to them. Then they
separated hurriedly.

“At Modane he came to the Douane, and afterwards into the restaurant.
He bowed across the table to the lady. She hardly recognized him, which
is odd. Of course she must know him; then why—? There is something
between them, and the maid is in it.

“What shall _I_ do? I could spoil any game of theirs if I stepped in.
What are they after? His money, no doubt.

“So am I; I have the best right to it, for I can do most for him. He is
absolutely in my power, and he’ll see that—he’s no fool—directly he
knows who I am, and why I’m here. It will be worth his while to buy me
off, if I’m ready to sell myself, and my duty, and the Prefettura—and
why shouldn’t I? What better can I do? Shall I ever have such a chance
again? Twenty, thirty, forty thousand lire, more, even, at one stroke;
why, it’s a fortune! I could go to the Republic, to America, North or
South, send for Mariuccia—no, _cospetto!_ I will continue free! I will
spend the money on myself, as I alone will have earned it, and at such
risk.

“I have worked it out thus:

“I will go to him at the very last, just before we are reaching Paris.
Tell him, threaten him with arrest, then give him his chance of escape.
No fear that he won’t accept it; he _must_, whatever he may have
settled with the others. _Altro!_ I snap my fingers at them. He has
most to fear from me.”

The next entries were made after some interval, a long interval,—no
doubt, after the terrible deed had been done,—and the words were traced
with trembling fingers, so that the writing was most irregular and
scarcely legible.

“Ugh! I am still trembling with horror and fear. I cannot get it out of
my mind; I never shall. Why, what tempted me? How could I bring myself
to do it?

“But for these two women—they are fiends, furies—it would never have
been necessary. Now one of them has escaped, and the other—she is here,
so cold-blooded, so self-possessed and quiet—who would have thought it
of her? That she, a lady of rank and high breeding, gentle, delicate,
tender-hearted. Tender? the fiend! Oh, shall I ever forget her?

“And now she has me in her power! But have I not her also? We are in
the same boat—we must sink or swim, together. We are equally bound, I
to her, she to me. What are we to do? How shall we meet inquiry?
_Santissima Donna!_ why did I not risk it, and climb out like the maid?
It was terrible for the moment, but the worst would have been over, and
now—”

There was yet more, scribbled in the same faltering, agitated
handwriting, and from the context the entries had been made in the
waiting-room of the railroad station.

“I must attract her attention. She will not look my way. I want her to
understand that I have something special to say to her, and that, as we
are forbidden to speak, I am writing it herein—that she must contrive
to take the book from me and read unobserved.

“_Cospetto!_ she is stupid! Has fear dazed her entirely? No matter, I
will set it all down.”

Now followed what the police deemed such damaging evidence.

“Countess. Remember. Silence—absolute silence. Not a word as to who I
am, or what is common knowledge to us both. It is done. That cannot be
undone. Be brave, resolute; admit nothing. Stick to it that you know
nothing, heard nothing. Deny that you knew _him_, or me. Swear you
slept soundly the night through, make some excuse, say you were
drugged, anything, only be on your guard, and say nothing about me. I
warn you. Leave me alone. Or—but your interests are my interests; we
must stand or fall together. Afterwards I will meet you—I _must_ meet
you somewhere. If we miss at the station front, write to me Poste
Restante, Grand Hôtel, and give me an address. This is imperative. Once
more, silence and discretion.”

This ended the writing in the note-book, and the whole perusal occupied
Sir Charles from fifteen to twenty minutes, during which the French
officials watched his face closely, and his friend Colonel Papillon
anxiously.

But the General’s mask was impenetrable, and at the end of his reading
he turned back to read and re-read many pages, holding the book to the
light, and seeming to examine the contents very curiously.

“Well?” said the Judge at last, when he met the General’s eye.

“Do you lay great store by this evidence?” asked the General in a calm,
dispassionate voice.

“Is it not natural that we should? Is it not strongly, conclusively
incriminating?”

“It would be so, of course, if it were to be depended upon. But as to
that I have my doubts, and grave doubts.”

“Bah!” interposed the detective; “that is mere conjecture, mere
assertion. Why should not the book be believed? It is perfectly
genuine—”

“Wait, sir,” said the General, raising his hand. “Have you not
noticed—surely it cannot have escaped so astute a police
functionary—that the entries are not all in the same handwriting?”

“What! Oh, that is too absurd!” cried both the officials in a breath.

They saw at once that if this discovery were admitted to be an absolute
fact, the whole drift of their conclusions must be changed.

“Examine the book for yourselves. To my mind it is perfectly clear and
beyond all question,” insisted Sir Charles. “I am quite positive that
the last pages were written by a different hand from the first.”




CHAPTER XIX


For several minutes both the Judge and the detective pored over the
note-book, examining page after page, shaking their heads, and
declining to accept the evidence of their eyes.

“I cannot see it,” said the Judge at last; adding reluctantly, “No
doubt there is a difference, but it is to be explained.”

“Quite so,” put in M. Floçon. “When he wrote the early part, he was
calm and collected; the last entries, so straggling, so ragged, and so
badly written, were made when he was fresh from the crime, excited,
upset, little master of himself. Naturally he would use a different
hand.”

“Or he would wish to disguise it. It was likely he would so wish,”
further remarked the Judge.

“You admit, then, that there is a difference?” argued the General,
shrewdly. “But there is more than a disguise. The best disguise leaves
certain unchangeable features. Some letters, capital G’s, H’s, and
others, will betray themselves through the best disguise. I know what I
am saying. I have studied the subject of handwriting; it interests me.
These are the work of two different hands. Call in an expert; you will
find I am right.”

“Well, well,” said the Judge, after a pause, “let us grant your
position for the moment. What do you deduce? What do you infer
therefrom?”

“Surely you can see what follows—what this leads us to?” said Sir
Charles, rather disdainfully.

“I have formed an opinion—yes, but I should like to see if it coincides
with yours. You think—”

“I _know_,” corrected the General. “I know that, as two persons wrote
in that book, either it is not Ripaldi’s book, or the last of them was
not Ripaldi. I saw the last writer at his work, saw him with my own
eyes. Yet he did not write with Ripaldi’s hand—this is incontestable, I
am sure of it, I will swear it—_ergo_, he is not Ripaldi.”

“But you should have known this at the time,” interjected M. Floçon,
fiercely. “Why did you not discover the change of identity? You should
have seen that this was not Ripaldi.”

“Pardon me. I did not know the man. I had not noticed him particularly
on the journey. There was no reason why I should. I had no
communication, no dealings, with any of my fellow passengers except my
brother and the Countess.”

“But some of the others would surely have remarked the change?” went on
the Judge, greatly puzzled. “That alone seems enough to condemn your
theory, M. le General.”

“I take my stand on fact, not theory,” stoutly maintained Sir Charles,
“and I am satisfied I am right.”

“But if that was not Ripaldi, who was it? Who would wish to masquerade
in his dress and character, to make entries of that sort, as if under
his hand?”

“Some one determined to divert suspicion from himself to others—”

“But stay—does he not plainly confess his own guilt?”

“What matter if he is not Ripaldi? Directly the inquiry was over, he
could steal away and resume his own personality—that of a man supposed
to be dead, and therefore safe from all interference and future
pursuit.”

“You mean—Upon my word, I compliment you, M. le Général. It is really
ingenious! remarkable, indeed! superb!” cried the Judge, and only
professional jealousy prevented M. Floçon from conceding the same
praise.

“But how—what—I do not understand,” asked Colonel Papillon in
amazement. His wits did not travel quite so fast as those of his
companions.

“Simply this, my dear Jack,” explained the General: “Ripaldi must have
tried to blackmail Quadling, as he proposed, and Quadling turned the
tables on him. They fought, no doubt, and Quadling killed him, possibly
in self-defence. He would have said so, but in his peculiar position as
an absconding defaulter he did not dare. That is how I read it, and I
believe that now these gentlemen are disposed to agree with me.”

“In theory, certainly,” said the Judge, heartily. “But oh! for some
more positive proof of this change of character! If we could only
identify the corpse, prove clearly that it is not Quadling. And still
more, if we had not let this so-called Ripaldi slip through our
fingers! You will never find him, M. Floçon, never.”

The detective hung his head in guilty admission of this reproach.

“We may help you in both these difficulties, gentlemen,” said Sir
Charles, pleasantly. “My friend here, Colonel Papillon, can speak as to
the man Quadling. He knew him well in Rome, a year or two ago.”

“Please wait one moment only;” the detective touched a bell, and
briefly ordered two fiacres to the door at once.

“That is right, M. Floçon,” said the Judge. “We will all go to the
Morgue. The body is there by now. You will not refuse your assistance,
monsieur?”

“One moment. As to the other matter, M. le General?” went on M. Floçon.
“Can you help us to find this miscreant, whoever he may be?”

“Yes. The man who calls himself Ripaldi is to be found—or, at least,
you would have found him an hour or so ago—at the Hotel Ivoire, Rue
Bellechasse. But time has been lost, I fear.”

“Nevertheless, we will send there.”

“The woman Hortense was also with him when last I heard of them.”

“How do you know?” began the detective, suspiciously.

“Psha!” interrupted the Judge; “that will keep. This is the time for
action, and we owe too much to the General to distrust him now.”

“Thank you; I am pleased to hear you say that,” went on Sir Charles.
“But if I have been of some service to you, perhaps you owe me a little
in return. That poor lady! Think what she is suffering. Surely, to
oblige me, you will now set her free?”

“Indeed, monsieur, I fear—I do not see how, consistently with my
duty”—protested the Judge.

“At least allow her to return to her hotel. She can remain there at
your disposal. I will promise you that.”

“How can you answer for her?”

“She will do what I ask, I think, if I may send her just two or three
lines.”

The Judge yielded, smiling at the General’s urgency, and shrewdly
guessing what it implied.

Then the three departures from the Prefecture took place within a short
time of each other.

A posse of police went to arrest Ripaldi; the Countess returned to the
Hotel Madagascar; and the Judge’s party started for the Morgue,—only a
short journey,—where they were presently received with every mark of
respect and consideration.

The keeper, or officer in charge, was summoned, and came out bareheaded
to the fiacre, bowing low before his distinguished visitors.

“Good morning, La Pêche,” said M. Floçon in a sharp voice. “We have
come for an identification. The body from the Lyons Station—he of the
murder in the sleeping-car—is it yet arrived?”

“But surely, at your service, Chief,” replied the old man,
obsequiously. “If the gentlemen will give themselves the trouble to
enter the office, I will lead them behind, direct into the mortuary
chamber. There are many people in yonder.”

It was the usual crowd of sightseers passing slowly before the plate
glass of this, the most terrible shop-front in the world, where the
goods exposed, the merchandise, are hideous corpses laid out in rows
upon the marble slabs, the battered, tattered remnants of outraged
humanity, insulted by the most terrible indignities in death.

Who make up this curious throng, and what strange morbid motives drag
them there? Those fat, comfortable-looking women, with their baskets on
their arms; the decent workmen in dusty blouses, idling between the
hours of work; the riffraff of the streets, male or female, in various
stages of wretchedness and degradation? A few, no doubt, are impelled
by motives we cannot challenge—they are torn and tortured by suspense,
trembling lest they may recognize missing dear ones among the exposed;
others stare carelessly at the day’s “take,” wondering, perhaps, if
they may come to the same fate; one or two are idle sightseers, not
always French, for the Morgue is a favourite haunt with the
irrepressible tourist doing Paris. Strangest of all, the murderer
himself, the doer of the fell deed, comes here, to the very spot where
his victim lies stark and reproachful, and stares at it spellbound,
fascinated, filled more with remorse, perchance, than fear at the risk
he runs. So common is this trait, that in mysterious murder cases the
police of Paris keep a disguised officer among the crowd at the Morgue,
and have thereby made many memorable arrests.

“This way, gentlemen, this way;” and the keeper of the Morgue led the
party through one or two rooms into the inner and back recesses of the
buildings. It was behind the scenes of the Morgue, and they were made
free of its most gruesome secrets as they passed along.

The temperature had suddenly fallen far below freezing-point, and the
icy cold chilled to the very marrow. Still worse was an all-pervading,
acrid odour of artificially suspended animal decay. The cold-air
process, that latest of scientific contrivances to arrest the waste of
tissue, has now been applied at the Morgue to preserve and keep the
bodies fresh, and allow them to be for a longer time exposed than when
running water was the only aid. There are, moreover, many specially
contrived refrigerating chests, in which those still unrecognized
corpses are laid by for months, to be dragged out, if needs be, like
carcasses of meat.

“What a loathsome place!” cried Sir Charles. “Hurry up, Jack! let us
get out of this, in Heaven’s name!”

“Where’s my man?” quickly asked Colonel Papillon in response to this
appeal.

“There, the third from the left,” whispered M. Floçon. “We hoped you
would recognize the corpse at once.”

“That? Impossible! You do not expect it, surely? Why, the face is too
much mangled for any one to say who it is.”

“Are there no indications, no marks or signs, to say whether it is
Quadling or not?” asked the Judge in a greatly disappointed tone.

“Absolutely nothing. And yet I am quite satisfied it is not him. For
the simple reason that—”

“Yes, yes, go on.”

“That Quadling in person is standing out there among the crowd.”




CHAPTER XX


M. Floçon was the first to realize the full meaning of Colonel
Papillon’s surprising statement.

“Run, run, La Pêche! Have the outer doors closed; let no one leave the
place.”

“Draw back, gentlemen!” he went on, and he hustled his companions with
frantic haste out at the back of the mortuary chamber. “Pray Heaven he
has not seen us! He would know us, even if we do not him.”

Then with no less haste he seized Colonel Papillon by the arm and
hurried him by the back passages through the office into the outer,
public chamber, where the astonished crowd stood, silent and perturbed,
awaiting explanation of their detention.

“Quick, monsieur!” whispered the Chief; “point him out to me.”

The request was not unnecessary, for when Colonel Papillon went
forward, and, putting his hand on a man’s shoulder, saying, “Mr.
Quadling, I think,” the police officer was scarcely able to restrain
his surprise.

The person thus challenged was very unlike any one he had seen before
that day, Ripaldi most of all. The moustache was gone, the clothes were
entirely changed; a pair of dark green spectacles helped the disguise.
It was strange indeed that Papillon had known him; but at the moment of
recognition Quadling had removed his glasses, no doubt that he might
the better examine the object of his visit to the Morgue, that gruesome
record of his own fell handiwork.

Naturally he drew back with well-feigned indignation, muttering
half-unintelligible words in French, denying stoutly both in voice and
gesture all acquaintance with the person who thus abruptly addressed
him.

“This is not to be borne,” he cried. “Who are you that dares—”

“Ta! ta!” quietly put in M. Floçon; “we will discuss that fully, but
not here. Come into the office; come, I say, or must we use force?”

There was no escaping now, and with a poor attempt at bravado the
stranger was led away.

“Now, Colonel Papillon, look at him well. Do you know him? Are you
satisfied it is—”

“Mr. Quadling, late banker, of Rome. I have not the slightest doubt of
it. I recognize him beyond all question.”

“That will do. Silence, sir!” This to Quadling. “No observations. I too
can recognize you now as the person who called himself Ripaldi an hour
or two ago. Denial is useless. Let him be searched; thoroughly, you
understand, La Pêche? Call in your other men; he may resist.”

They gave the wretched man but scant consideration, and in less than
three minutes had visited every pocket, examined every secret
receptacle, and practically turned him inside out.

After this there could no longer be any doubt of his identity, still
less of his complicity in the crime.

First among the many damning evidences of his guilt was the missing
pocketbook of the porter of the sleeping-car. Within was the train card
and the passengers’ tickets, all the papers which the man Groote had
lost so unaccountably. They had, of course, been stolen from his person
with the obvious intention of impeding the inquiry into the murder.
Next, in another inner pocket was Quadling’s own wallet, with his own
visiting-cards, several letters addressed to him by name; above all, a
thick sheaf of bank-notes of all nationalities—English, French,
Italian, and amounting in total value to several thousands of pounds.

“Well, do you still deny? Bah! it is childish, useless, mere waste of
breath. At last we have penetrated the mystery. You may as well
confess. Whether or no, we have enough to convict you by independent
testimony,” said the Judge, severely. “Come, what have you to say?”

But Quadling, with pale, averted face, stood obstinately mute. He was
in the toils, the net had closed round him, they should have no
assistance from him.

“Come, speak out; it will be best. Remember, we have means to make
you—”

“Will you interrogate him further, M. Beaumont le Hardi? Here, at
once?”

“No, let him be removed to the Prefecture; it will be more convenient;
to my private office.”

Without more ado a fiacre was called, and the prisoner was taken off
under escort, M. Floçon seated by his side, one policeman in front,
another on the box, and lodged in a secret cell at the Quai l’Horloge.

“And you, gentlemen?” said the Judge to Sir Charles and Colonel
Papillon. “I do not wish to detain you further, although there may be
points you might help us to elucidate if I might venture to still
trespass on your time?”

Sir Charles was eager to return to the Hôtel Madagascar, and yet he
felt that he should best serve his dear Countess by seeing this to the
end. So he readily assented to accompany the Judge, and Colonel
Papillon, who was no less curious, agreed to go too.

“I sincerely trust,” said the Judge on the way, “that our people have
laid hands on that woman Petitpré. I believe that she holds the key to
the situation, that when we hear her story we shall have a clear case
against Quadling; and—who knows?—she may completely exonerate Madame la
Comtesse.”

During the events just recorded, which occupied a good hour, the police
agents had time to go and come from the Rue Bellechasse. They did not
return empty-handed, although at first it seemed as if they had made a
fruitless journey. The Hôtel Ivoire was a very second-class place, a
lodging-house, or hotel with furnished rooms let out by the week to
lodgers with whom the proprietor had no very close acquaintance. His
clerk did all the business, and this functionary produced the register,
as he is bound by law, for the inspection of the police officers, but
afforded little information as to the day’s arrivals.

“Yes, a man calling himself Dufour had taken rooms about midday, one
for himself, one for madame who was with him, also named Dufour—his
sister, he said;” and he went on at the request of the police officers
to describe them.

“Our birds,” said the senior agent, briefly. “They are wanted. We
belong to the detective police.”

“All right.” Such visits were not new to the clerk.

“But you will not find monsieur; he is out; there hangs his key.
Madame? No, she is within. Yes, that is certain, for not long since she
rang her bell. There, it goes again.”

He looked up at the furiously oscillating bell, but made no move.

“Bah! they do not pay for service; let her come and say what she
needs.”

“Exactly; and we will bring her,” said the officer, making for the
stairs and the room indicated.

But on reaching the door, they found it locked. From within? Hardly,
for as they stood there in doubt, a voice inside cried vehemently:

“Let me out! Help! Help! Send for the police. I have much to tell them.
Quick! Let me out.”

“We are here, my dear, just as you require us. But wait; step down,
Gaston, and see if the clerk has a second key. If not, call in a
locksmith—the nearest. A little patience only, my beauty. Do not fear.”

The key was quickly produced, and an entrance effected.

A woman stood there in a defiant attitude, with arms akimbo; she, no
doubt, of whom they were in search. A tall, rather masculine-looking
creature, with a dark, handsome face, bold black eyes just now flashing
fiercely, rage in every feature.

“Madame Dufour?” began the police officer.

“Dufour! Rot! My name is Hortense Petitpré; who are you? _La Rousse?_”
(Police.)

“At your service. Have you anything to say to us? We have come on
purpose to take you to the Prefecture quietly, if you will let us; or—”

“I will go quietly. I ask nothing better. I have to lay information
against a miscreant—a murderer—the vile assassin who would have made me
his accomplice—the banker, Quadling, of Rome!”

In the fiacre Hortense Petitpré talked on with such incessant abuse,
virulent and violent, of Quadling, that her charges were neither
precise nor intelligible.

It was not until she appeared before M. Beaumont le Hardi, and was
handled with great dexterity by that practised examiner, that her story
took definite form.

What she had to say will be best told in the clear, formal language of
the official disposition.

The witness inculpated stated:

“She was named Aglaé Hortense Petitpré, thirty-four years of age, a
Frenchwoman, born in Paris, Rue de Vincennes No. 374. Was engaged by
the Contessa Castagneto, November 19, 189—, in Rome, as lady’s maid,
and there, at her mistress’s domicile, became acquainted with the Sieur
Francis Quadling, a banker of the Via Condotti, Rome.

“Quadling had pretensions to the hand of the Countess, and sought, by
bribes and entreaties, to interest witness in his suit. Witness often
spoke of him in complimentary terms to her mistress, who was not very
favourably disposed towards him.

“One afternoon (two days before the murder) Quadling paid a lengthened
visit to the Countess. Witness did not hear what occurred, but Quadling
came out much distressed, and again urged her to speak to the Countess.
He had heard of the approaching departure of the lady from Rome, but
said nothing of his own intentions.

“Witness was much surprised to find him in the sleeping-car, but had no
talk to him till the following morning, when he asked her to obtain an
interview for him with the Countess, and promised a large reward. In
making this offer he produced a wallet and exhibited a very large
number of notes.

“Witness was unable to persuade the Countess, although she returned to
the subject frequently. Witness so informed Quadling, who then spoke to
the lady, but was coldly received.

“During the journey witness thought much over the situation. Admitted
that the sight of Quadling’s money had greatly disturbed her, but,
although pressed, would not say when the first idea of robbing him took
possession of her. (Note by Judge—That she had resolved to do so is,
however, perfectly clear, and the conclusion is borne out by her acts.
It was she who secured the Countess’s medicine bottle; she, beyond
doubt, who drugged the porter at Laroche. In no other way can her
presence in the sleeping-car between Laroche and Paris be accounted
for-presence which she does not deny.)

“Witness at last reluctantly confessed that she entered the compartment
where the murder was committed, and at a critical moment. An affray was
actually in progress between the Italian Ripaldi and the incriminated
man Quadling, but the witness arrived as the last fatal blow was struck
by the latter.

“She saw it struck, and saw the victim fall lifeless on the floor.

“Witness declared she was so terrified she could at first utter no cry,
nor call for help, and before she could recover herself the murderer
threatened her with the ensanguined knife. She threw herself on her
knees, imploring pity, but the man Quadling told her that she was an
eye-witness, and could take him to the guillotine,—she also must die.

“Witness at last prevailed on him to spare her life, but only on
condition that she would leave the car. He indicated the window as the
only way of escape; but on this for a long time she refused to venture,
declaring that it was only to exchange one form of death for another.
Then, as Quadling again threatened to stab her, she was compelled to
accept this last chance, never hoping to win out alive.

“With Quadling’s assistance, however, she succeeded in climbing out
through the window and in gaining the roof. He had told her to wait for
the first occasion when the train slackened speed to leave it and shift
for herself. With this intention he gave her a thousand francs, and
bade her never show herself again.

“Witness descended from the train not far from the small station of
Villeneuve on the line, and there took the local train for Paris.
Landed at the Lyons Station, she heard of the inquiry in progress, and
then, waiting outside, saw Quadling disguised as the Italian leave in
company with another man. She followed and marked Quadling down,
meaning to denounce him on the first opportunity. Quadling, however, on
issuing from the restaurant, had accosted her, and at once offered her
a further sum of five thousand francs as the price of silence, and she
had gone with him to the Hôtel Ivoire, where she was to receive the
sum. Quadling had paid it, but on one condition, that she would remain
at the Hotel Ivoire until the following day. Apparently he had
distrusted her, for he had contrived to lock her into her compartment.
As she did not choose to be so imprisoned, she summoned assistance, and
was at length released by the police.”

This was the substance of Hortense Petitpré’s deposition, and it was
corroborated in many small details.

When she appeared before the Judge, with whom Sir Charles Collingham
and Colonel Papillon were seated, the former at once pointed out that
she was wearing a dark mantle trimmed with the same sort of
passementerie as that picked up in the sleeping-car.

L’ENVOI


Quadling was in due course brought before the Court of Assize and tried
for his life. There was no sort of doubt of his guilt, and the jury so
found, but, having regard to certain extenuating circumstances, they
recommended him to mercy. The chief of these was Quadling’s positive
assurance that he had been first attacked by Ripaldi; he declared that
the Italian detective had in the first instance tried to come to terms
with him, demanding 50,000 francs as his price for allowing him to go
at large; that when Quadling distinctly refused to be black-mailed,
Ripaldi struck at him with a knife, but that the blow failed to take
effect.

Then Quadling closed with him and took the knife from him. It was a
fierce encounter, and might have ended either way, but the unexpected
entrance of the woman Petitpré took off Ripaldi’s attention, and then
he, Quadling, maddened and reckless, stabbed him to the heart.

It was not until after the deed was done that Quadling realized the
full measure of his crime and its inevitable consequences. Then, in a
daring effort to extricate himself, he intimidated the woman Petitpré,
and forced her to escape through the sleeping-car window.

It was he who had rung the signal-bell to stop the train and give her a
chance of leaving it. It was after the murder, too, that he conceived
the idea of personating Ripaldi, and, having disfigured him beyond
recognition, as he hoped, he had changed clothes and compartments.

On the strength of this confession Quadling escaped the guillotine, but
he was transported to New Caledonia for life.

The money taken on him was forwarded to Rome, and was usefully employed
in reducing his liabilities to the depositors in the bank.

One other word.

Some time in June the following announcement appeared in all the Paris
papers:

“Yesterday, at the British Embassy, General Sir Charles Collingham, K.
C. B., was married to Sabine, Contessa di Castagneto, widow of the
Italian Count of that name.”

THE END.