OUR FLIGHT TO VENICE—THENCE TO ATHENS—WE ALL MEET ON THE ACROPOLIS—REAPPEARANCE OF MR. BAILEY THOMPSON!—AGAIN WE MANAGE TO PUT HIM OFF THE SCENT

Of our flight down the Corniche and across the Italian frontier I do not propose to say much. Suffice it that, at a quiet spot before we reached Mentone, I found the opportunity to strip off my disguise and, for precaution’s sake, bury both wig and whiskers at the root of an olive-tree; where no doubt they still remain, if any one cares to go and look for them. In well under the hour, so fast we travelled, we were over the Italian border, just beyond Mentone, and, after the usual difficulties with the dogana about our bicycles, were before very long safely seated in the Ventimiglia train for Turin. To avoid being further troubled with the machines, we presented them to a couple of porters, and, while waiting for the train, passed a highly amusing half-hour watching them trying to learn to ride.

Our point was Venice, and, travelling all night, on the afternoon of the next day (Sunday, January 19th) Teddy and I were glad to find ourselves in a gondola, flapping along to the “Grand Hotel,” where we were all to meet.

But at the “Grand” there was a telegram awaiting me: “Come Athens—Brentin.” It had been sent from Messina the previous afternoon, and, disagreeable though it was, there was nothing for it but to obey.

We went off at once to Cook’s offices in the Piazza to inquire about a steamer; but, being Sunday, of course found them closed. Very awkward! Surely, nowadays, when they open the museums, Mr. Cook might stretch a point and do the same with his offices?

What on earth were we to do? It was evident they didn’t care about receiving us at the hotel; I was exceedingly dirty, with the remains of the spirit-gum on my cheeks and the lines of the old-age pencil alongside my nose; and poor Teddy’s puffs and scars were all the more noticeable now they were just beginning to heal. We looked, in short, like a couple of broken-down sea-side entertainers, who had had a row at the last hall about returning the money. We had no luggage, not even a sponge-bag, and I had talked grandly about the yacht until I found the telegram, when I had to admit it wasn’t coming; at which the manager had merely bowed with sour and silent politeness. “Then you don’t stay here!” I read as plainly as possible in his watchful eye.

We went on down to the Piazzetta, to the harbor side, to see if we could by chance hear of a vessel sailing for Athens.

“Yes,” grumbled Teddy, “and when we get to Athens we shall find another wire, with ‘Come Timbuctoo!’ Let’s cut it short and go home by rail. I don’t feel safe in these foreign parts. Oh, how glad I shall be to get back to Southport again!”

“Strolling up and down Lord Street, eh? in those eternal breeches and gaiters.”

“Well, why not? Come, let’s be off. I don’t know why we need follow them half over Europe.”

“Certainly, let’s be off,” said I, “if you don’t mind paying for the tickets.”

“Why, you don’t mean to say you haven’t got enough money?”

It was true, I hadn’t. What with the thousand francs for the defence, the thousand for the croupier who told me about Madame Vagliano (what the deuce did I care about Madame Vagliano!), the buying of the bicycles, the clothes for Teddy, the tickets, and one thing and another, I had only two or three hundred francs left; and Teddy had merely a couple of louis, having spent the rest in bribing the Monte Carlo police to carry his letter to Mrs. Wingham and put him in a better cell.

Nothing, I think, tries a man’s nature more truly than travelling and the contretemps arising therefrom; nothing more surely discovers his selfishness, his meanness, his want of even temper. We were certainly rather in a fix, but scarcely to warrant Teddy’s outburst of anger and ill-humor. If I was amused at it all and kept my equanimity, why couldn’t he? But no! he kept on fuming and fretting to such a degree that I was within an ace of decoying him up a piccolo canal and beating him soundly about the head and ears, so much did he grate upon my nerves.

At last we did manage to secure passages in a dirty Italian boat, Il Principe Umberto, sailing that night down the coast to Ancona and Brindisi, and thence across the Adriatic, vi Corfu, to Patras. It was rather a tight fit, financially speaking, for after paying for our berths and allowing something for food on board, we had only just about enough left for the tickets from Patras to Athens. If the yacht didn’t turn up there, then we should be in a fix indeed.

We went back to the hotel, and, ordering dinner, spent the time till it was ready in the reading-room. There were no London papers, of course, of Saturday’s date, but there were plenty of French and Italian. Most of them had a paragraph about us and our doings, very guardedly expressed. None of them went further than merely saying there had been an audacious attempt at robbery in the rooms at Monte Carlo on Friday night, and much excitement in consequence; but without exception they hastened to add that all connected with it were in the hands of the police, tranquillity reigned, and play was going on as usual. Teddy and I pointed each other out the paragraphs as we found them, and chuckled over them amazingly.

Over the voyage I draw a veil; enough that it was exceedingly rough and uncomfortable, and we were both very unwell, as somehow one always is if one has to go second class. My only consolation lay in occasionally seeing an extremely good-looking Italian stewardess, who looked in on us every now and then, and sympathetically said “Male?” I never answered her; I don’t know a word of Italian, and I couldn’t have said it if I had; but it was something occasionally to see her fine, serious, handsome face, shining in over our deathliness like a star.

At Corfu we managed to drag ourselves ashore for a couple of hours, and mooned about arm-in-arm, in unsteady rapture at the warmth and sunshine. At the hotel where we lunched we found the English papers. One of them (that hebetated old ——, I think it was) had “Extraordinary Story from Monte Carlo” among its foreign intelligence—just a few lines, to say an attempt had been made by some Americans to raid the rooms, that it had been completely frustrated, so far as plunder was concerned, but the desperadoes had got clear away in a yacht known as the Saratoga. And that, so far as I could ever afterwards learn, was the only reference to our affair in the whole of the English press.

As for the New York Guardian, they declared the thieves were all English, many of them well-known in New York, where the season before they had masqueraded as peers and peers’ sons, and some of them nearly succeeded in marrying prominent and wealthy society young ladies. Really, when one happens to be a little behind the scenes, one is amazed at the pompous inaccuracy of much of the information in the newspapers. But, on the whole, I thought it wisest not to write and attempt to put them straight.

On the Wednesday morning, early, we reached Patras, and were in Athens soon after six. We drove up to the best hotel, but there was no news whatever of the yacht. We had been so unwell, for after leaving Corfu it again became fearfully rough, we looked more disreputable than ever. It was no time, however, to be scrupulous, and I carried matters with such a high hand, and was so dissatisfied and overbearing, we soon got rooms, dined, and went to bed. I have always noticed, by-the-way, that if you are rude and give yourself airs of importance, even without luggage, you can generally get what you want in the way of accommodation. Most people think you wouldn’t swagger or be insolent unless you were really somebody, and either get out of the way and let you take what you want, or give it you, bent double with obsequiousness. But, then, most people are fools. So Teddy and I got two of the best bedrooms, after totally refusing others, and slept in them with great comfort and soundness; though all the money we had between us was seven francs fifty.

Next morning, soon after breakfast, we went up to the Acropolis. From my school-days I knew it commanded a fine view, and hoped from thence soon to descry the Amaranth.

’????! there wasn’t a sign of her. We could look right down into the harbor of the PirÆus, three or four miles away, and the only occupants were a Greek man-of-war and a couple of trading brigs. To comfort Teddy, I pointed him out various famous islands—Salamis and Aegina, and so forth—telling him such stories from Greek history as I could remember, or partially invent. In the Acropolis itself, wandering among the splendid and touching ruins, there wasn’t a soul but a dirty man, with large patches on his knees, gathering snails.

“He follows the footsteps of Pericles, of Alcibiades, and of Solon,” I said, “and from their dim traces he gathers snails for soup. Such, my dear Teddy,” I added, tranquilly, “is all the history he knows. To him the Acropolis is nothing but a hunting-ground for snails.”

“You’re talking exactly like Mr. Barlow!” replied Teddy, with a dissatisfied snort.

In the afternoon we again set out for the Acropolis. At the bottom of the sacred ascent a couple of carriages were waiting.

“It can scarcely be they,” I said. “They would come round and try all the hotels first, surely.”

“Oh, a man like Brentin would do anything!” Teddy cried.

I looked into the first carriage, and soon recognized a little, rather old, cloak Lucy used to wear, with a high Medici collar. She never had much money for her clothes, poor child, and was apt to be a little behind the fashions.

“It’s really they, Teddy,” I said. “Come along and we’ll give them a fright. They deserve it.”

“They do, indeed!” shouted Teddy, scarlet with rage.

We peeped in cautiously at the entrance, and there they were. We could see them all crossing from the Parthenon towards the Erechtheum, headed by that toad Brentin. We let them get well inside the walls of the beautiful little temple, and then we went quickly across to the left towards them.

Just as we got up to the white marble walls, I pushed Teddy and said, “Hide.” Then I went on in alone. Brentin was just saying, “This is apparently the Erechtheum. There’s mighty little of it left; why don’t they put it straight, anyway?”

You should just have seen their faces when they turned and saw me. Lucy, who was looking very pale, ran tottering towards me with a little cry, and nearly fainted in my arms. My sister followed, and was soon on my other shoulder. Miss Rybot waved her parasol, Forsyth and Hines cheered, and Arthur Masters gave a loud gone away! All Brentin said was, with rather a forced smile, “Well, all right, eh? Here you are. You got my telegram?”

We sat down on the fallen blocks of marble, and everybody began talking at once. Where was Teddy, they asked, and why wasn’t he with me? Had he really been caught, or had he, after all, run straight away home in his fright?

As if trying to avoid a painful subject, “Why didn’t you come to Venice, as we arranged?” I asked.

“We heard the French corvette was somewhere up in those waters,” Brentin replied, “and thought it safer not. We should have come to look for you here at once, only we calculated you couldn’t possibly arrive till to-morrow. But what about Parsons? What’s the matter with your telling us all about Parsons?”

“Poor Teddy!” I sighed, and everybody looked shocked. I had scarcely made up my mind whether to say he was dead, or in prison for life, when Teddy himself suddenly fell in among us on his hands and knees. He looked so ghastly, with his white face and red cactus scars—to say nothing of his extraordinary way of entering—that the ladies began to scream, and Bob Hines fell over backward.

“Teddy!”

“Hush! Hush! Hush!” hissed Teddy. “Bailey Thompson!”

“Im-pawsible,” snarled Brentin. “He’s in Minorca.”

“I say it’s Bailey Thompson. I saw him from outside, just coming in.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. Keep quiet!”

We all huddled close together and kept as still as death.

“I couldn’t be mistaken,” Teddy whispered. “He’s got on the same clothes and carrying the shawl, and he was looking about him, just as he used at Monte Carlo.”

“You don’t say!” said Brentin, looking scared. “What the plague is he doing in Athens? We shall have all our trouble over again.” And then, thinking he was not very polite, he added, “And how are you? All right?”

“No thanks to you!” grunted Teddy, at which the unfeeling Brentin began to chuckle.

“Somebody’s scratched your face well for you,” he laughed. “Looks like marriage lines!”

We lay very still, hoping against hope Thompson wouldn’t think the Erechtheum worth a visit; but the fact was he had looked in the carriages outside and questioned the driver, and, from the cloaks and what the man had said, made up his mind it was our party. So, after peeping in at the Parthenon, he came straight across; we heard his footsteps, the divisional tread, closer and closer. Then he tumbled over a column, swore, and the next moment was inside surveying us, huddled together like a covey of partridges, with an expression I don’t find it at all easy to describe—it was such a mixture of everything.

Poor creature, he had evidently suffered! His face was drawn, his beard unshaved, and his forlorn eyes looked defiantly out from under a heavily lined brow. His mouth was tight and grim, and yet about the compressed lips there was an air of satisfaction, almost of unholy mirth. When he saw us, ran his glance over us and noted we were all there, netted for the fowler, flame leaped to his sombre eyes. There was dead silence while he stepped majestically, solemnly forward, threw his plaid shawl on a column, and unbuttoned his dusty frock-coat.

“And how are you?” said Brentin, coolly. “Come to see over the Acropolis?”

Thompson glared at him, and without replying sat down on his shawl.

“How did you get here? Had a good voyage? Sakes alive, man, what a hole in your boot!”

“Poor man!” whispered Lucy, “how fearfully tired and ill he looks.”

At so unexpected an expression of sympathy, the detective’s expression suddenly changed. Poor wretch, he was worn out, hungry, and depressed; humiliated and miserable, I suppose, at being so egregiously outwitted; for his lip trembled, and, putting his face in his dog-skin hands, he actually began to cry. I never felt so ashamed of myself, so sorry for a man, in my life.

“Cry, baby, cry!” taunted Brentin. “Serve you thundering well right—”

“Be quiet!” I sternly cried. Brentin scowled at me, while poor Thompson began to search with blinking eyes for his handkerchief.

Then I went on, with real feeling in my voice:

“We are sorry, Mr. Thompson, for the way we have treated you, but you must see there was no other course open to us. We were entirely frank with you, but you were never frank with us. We discovered your identity quite by accident, and took the advantage we thought our due of the discovery.”

“Oh, all right, sir, thank you!”

“At any rate,” struck in the irrepressible Brentin, with a wink at me, “you have the satisfaction of knowing you spoiled a fine piece of work, which will now, I guess, be consummated by other more imperfect hands than ours.”

“What!” said the detective, brightening. “You never even made the attempt?”

“What do you take us for?” cried the ingenious and evasive Brentin. “Make an attempt of that nature, with the sharpest detective in old England on our heels? No, sir!”

Thompson looked pleased, and then, with sly malice, observed:

“But, after all, gentlemen, you might have done it with perfect safety.”

“What!”

“With the most perfect safety, I assure you. I had not yet communicated with the Monte Carlo police.”

“That so? But afterwards?”

“Oh, afterwards, I should have pinched you all, of course!”

“There you are!” cried Brentin; “we knew that, mighty well. No, sir! There are no flies on us. You gave us a fright, Mr. Bailey Thompson, and we, I guess, have given you one. But no real damage has been done to either party. Let us cry quits. Your hand, sir!”

The simple fellow shook his hand obediently, and, polite as ever, bowed to the ladies. My sister he already knew. She smiled at him and said:

“But how on earth have you got here, Mr. Bailey Thompson? We all understood you were going to the Balearic Isles.”

“I know nothing of my original destination, madam,” the detective replied. “I only know that after steaming for some few hours in one direction, Mr. Van Ginkel suddenly bouted ship and went full speed in the other.”

“But why, I wonder?”

“Some matter, I understood from the captain, connected with his divorced wife.”

“The Princess Danleno,” said Brentin.

“Some such name. She had left Cannes and gone to San Remo, and Mr. Van Ginkel was anxious to see her and effect a reconciliation, so the captain told me. He is full of caprice, like all invalids, and on the caprice seizing him he simply bouted ship without a word. But first he had to get rid of me; so he carried me, full speed ahead, to the southernmost point of Greece—somewhere near Cape Colonna, I believe—and there he carted me ashore, gentlemen, like a sack of coals.”

The poor man’s lip began to tremble again, and he looked round our circle piteously for sympathy.

“Dear! dear!” murmured Brentin; “how like him! And never said a word the whole time, I dare say?”

“Not one! That was early on Monday morning. Since then I have been slowly making my way up the Morea with great difficulty and discomfort, mainly on foot, and sometimes getting a lift in a country wagon. At Nauplia I managed to secure a passage in a coasting steamer, which, after a tempestuous voyage, has just landed me at the PirÆus. There I saw your yacht, gentlemen, and knew, of course, you were in the neighborhood.”

“How did you manage about the language in the Peloponnese?” asked Hines, curiously.

“Why, fortunately, I can draw a little,” replied the detective, who was every moment recovering his spirits, “and anything I wanted I drew. But, often as I drew a beefsteak or a chop, gentlemen,” he said, plaintively, “I never got it. Nothing but eggs and a sort of polenta, and once—only once—goat’s flesh, when I drew a bedstead, in token that I wanted to sleep there. And the fleas, gentlemen, the fleas!” he cried. “There is a large Greek flea—”

“Never mind that just now,” said Brentin, gravely. “There are elegant and refined ladies present. The essential is you are safe, and bear us all no malice. That is so, eh?”

“None in the world!” cried the good fellow. “But I shall be much obliged if you will give me directions how to get home from the Acropolis in Athens to Brixton. I have no money to speak of, and a large hole in my right boot.”

“That will be all right, sir,” said Brentin, rising, with his grand air. “Henceforth you are our guest. By-gones are by-gones, and we will look after you till you are safely landed at Charing Cross.”

“Thence, by tram or ’bus, over Westminster Bridge,” murmured Hines, as we all rose, shook ourselves, and prepared to descend.

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” cried Thompson. “But, all the same, I rather regret, for all our sakes, the Monte Carlo business was left untried.”

“Some other day, sir,” said Brentin; “some other day, when you are enjoying your well-earned retirement, and an officer not quite so plaguy sharp is in your place.”

The pleased detective walked jauntily on in front with the rest, while Brentin, my sister, and I followed, Lucy clinging fondly to my arm.

“But what are you going to do with him?” I whispered. “It is ingenious to let him suppose the thing has not been done; but once he gets on board the yacht he’s bound to discover all, and that he’s been fooled again. Then it will be all up, indeed!”

“Some of you must take him home overland, on the pretence there isn’t room for every one on the Amaranth.”

“But he must find it all out directly he gets to England, mustn’t he?” said Lucy, softly.

“I hope to goodness he won’t come trooping over to Medworth Square,” my sister observed. “I shall never hear the last of it from Frank. And, after all, I’ve done nothing, have I?”

“True, O queen!” muttered Brentin, knitting his brows. “But by the time he gets back the scent will be fairly cold. And the Casino authorities are taking the sensible course of ignoring the whole affair. That is so, isn’t it? No doubt, you’ve seen the papers.”

Yes, I said, I had, and that was their line.

“There you are, then! For the rest, we must simply trust our luck. It has stood by us pretty well so far. Oh, and, by-the-way, what about Mr. Parsons? How did you manage to get him out?”

I rapidly sketched my part in the affair, and made them all laugh amazingly as I told them of my disguise and its accidental resemblance to Lord B.

“Whether we are drunken men or fools,” laughed Brentin, “I know not; but Providence has certainly looked after us so far in a way that I may fairly call the most favored nation clause.”

“Quoti moris minus est, eo minus est periculi!” I quoted, somehow happening to remember the sentence from my old Latin grammar. “Which is the Latin, ladies, for ‘Where there is the less fear, there is the less danger.’”

Lucy pressed my arm and smiled happily.

Just as we neared the carriages:

“By-the-way,” I asked, “what did it all tote up to?”

“The boodle?”

“Yes.”

“Just over one million four hundred and fifty thousand francs; roughly speaking, fifty-eight thousand pounds of your money.”

“You’ll be back in Wharton Park, dearest,” I whispered, “before the swallow dares!”

She pressed my arm again and smiled more happily than ever.

“The only thing that troubles me,” said my sister, “is how on earth I am to establish an alibi to Frank’s satisfaction, in case there’s a rumpus when we get back.”

“Alibis are old-fashioned nowadays,” I answered. “We shall have to think of something else for you than an alibi.”

The unsuspicious Bailey Thompson was standing at one of the carriage doors in a dandified attitude, making himself agreeable to Miss Rybot.

As we drove away he again said—for after all he was human and meant to be malicious—“But I do really wonder you didn’t do it, gentlemen, after all!”

“Don’t torture us with remorse, Mr. Bailey Thompson, sir,” Brentin cried; “the sense of neglected opportunity is hard to bear.”

“Well, all I can say is, I never saw an easier bit of work in my life, and in my absence you were really perfectly safe. Those French police are such utter fools, and as likely as not the Casino people would have let you off. Come, now, confess! Don’t you regret it?”

“Sir,” said Brentin, loftily, “I regret nothing, and never did. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

And the good detective couldn’t understand why, a few moments later, Brentin was seized with a great roar of laughter. He explained it was from seeing “????” in Greek letters over Cook’s offices; it looked so droll! We all laughed heartily, too, and so drove up in immense mirth and spirits to our hotel.