During the next three days I saw but little of Bindo.

His orders to me were not to approach or to worry him. I noticed him in a suit of cream flannels and Panama hat, sunning himself on the terrace before the Casino, or lunching at the Hermitage or MÉtropole with people he knew, appearing to the world to lead the idle life of a well-to-do man about town—one of a thousand other good-looking, wealthy men whose habit it was annually to spend the worst weeks in the year beside the blue Mediterranean.

To the monde and the demi-monde Bindo was alike a popular person. More than one member of the latter often received a substantial sum for acting as his spy, whether there, or at Aix, or at Ostend. But so lazy was his present attitude that I was surprised.

Daily I drove him over to Beaulieu to call upon Mademoiselle and her chaperon, and nearly every evening he dined with them.

Madame of the yellow teeth had introduced Sir Charles to him, and the pair had met as perfect strangers, as they had so often done before.

Both men were splendid actors, and it amused me to watch them when, on being introduced, they would gradually begin a conversation regarding mutual acquaintances.

But in this case I could not, for the life of me, discern what game was being played.

One afternoon I drove Bindo, with Blythe, Madame, and Mademoiselle, over to the Beau Site, at Cannes, to tea, and the party was certainly a very merry one. Yet it puzzled me to discover in what direction Bindo’s active brain was working, and what were his designs.

The only facts that were apparent were that first he was ingratiating himself further with Mademoiselle,—who regarded him with undisguised love-looks,—and secondly that, for some purpose known only to himself, he was gaining time.

The solution of the puzzle, however, came suddenly and without warning.

Bindo had been back in Monty a week, and one evening I had seen him with “The President,” leaning over the balustrade of the terrace before the Casino, with their faces turned to the moonlit sea and the gaily-lit rock of Monaco.

They were in deep, earnest conversation; therefore I turned back and left them. It would not do, I knew, if Bindo discovered me in the vicinity.

In crossing the Place I came face to face with the long-nosed stranger whom I suspected as a police-agent, but he seemed in a hurry, and I do not think he noticed me.

Next day I saw nothing of Bindo, who, strangely enough, did not sleep at the Paris. We did not meet till about eight o’clock at night, when I caught sight of him ascending the stairs to go and dress for dinner.

“Ewart!” he called to me, “come up to my room. I want you.”

I went up after him, and followed him into his room. When the door had closed, he turned quickly to me and asked—

“Is the car ready for a long run?”

“Quite,” I replied.

“Is it at the same garage?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me the key. I want to go round there this evening.”

I was surprised, but nevertheless took the key from my pocket and handed it to him.

“Are you going to drive her away?” I inquired.

“Don’t ask questions,” he snapped. “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do, except that I want you to go over to Nice and spend the evening. Go to the Casino, and watch to see if Raoul is there. Be back here by the twelve-twenty-five, and come up and report to me.”

I went to my own room, dressed, and then took train to Nice. But though I lounged about the Casino Municipal all that evening, I saw nothing of either Regnier or Raoul. It struck me, however, that Bindo had sent me over to Nice in order to get rid of me, and this surmise was somewhat confirmed when I returned after midnight.

Bindo did not question me about the person he had sent me to watch for. He merely said—

“Ewart, you and I have a long run before us to-morrow. We must be away at seven. The quicker we’re out of this place, the better.”

I saw he had hurriedly packed, and that his receipted hotel bill lay upon the dressing-table.

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll tell you to-morrow. Give this wire to the night-porter and tell him it’s to be sent at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

I read the message. It was to Mademoiselle, to say that he could not call, as he was compelled to go to HyÈres, but that he would dine at the Bristol that evening.

“And,” he added, “get your traps together. We’re leaving here, and we leave no trace behind—you understand?”

I nodded.

Was the game up? Were we flying because the police suspected us? I recollected the long-nosed man, and a serious apprehension seized me.

I confess I slept but little that night. At half-past six I went again to his room, and found him already dressed.

Motorists often start early on long excursions on the Riviera; therefore it was deemed nothing unusual when, at a quarter-past seven, we mounted on the car and Bindo gave orders—

“Through the town.”

By that I knew we were bound east, for Italy.

He spoke but little. Upon his face was a business-like look of settled determination.

At the little douane post near Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier, we paid the necessary deposit for the car, got the leaden seal attached, and then drew out upon the winding sea-road which leads right along the coast by San Remo, Alassio, and Savona to Genoa.

Hour after hour, with a perfect wall of white dust behind us, we kept on until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when we pulled up at an hotel close to the station in busy Genoa. Here we swallowed a hasty meal, and at Bindo’s directions we turned north up the Ronco valley for Alessandria and Turin, my companion explaining that it was his intention to re-enter France again by crossing the Mont Cenis.

Then I saw that our journey into Italy was in order to throw the French police off the scent. But even then I could not gather what had actually happened.

Through the whole night, and all next day, we travelled as hard as we could go, crossing the frontier and descending to Chambery, where we halted for six hours to snatch a brief sleep. Then on again by Bourg and MaÇon. We took it in turns to drive—three hours each. While one slept in the back of the car, the other drove, and so we went on and on, both day and night, for the next forty-eight hours—a race against time and against the police.

From Dijon we left the Paris road and struck due north by Chaumont and Bar-le-duc to Verdun, Sedan, and Givet, where we passed into Belgium. At the MÉtropole, in Brussels, we spent a welcome twenty-four hours, and slept most of the time. Then on again, still due North, first to Boxtel, in Holland, and then on to Utrecht.

Until that day—a week after leaving Monte Carlo on our rush across Europe—Bindo practically preserved a complete silence as to his intentions or as to what had happened.

All I had been able to gather from him was that Mademoiselle was still at the Bristol, and that Blythe was still dancing attendance upon her and the ugly old lady who acted as chaperon.

With Utrecht in sight across the flat, uninteresting country, traversed everywhere by canals, we suddenly had a bad tyre-burst. Fortunately we had a spare one, therefore it was only the half-hour delay that troubled us.

Bindo helped me to take off the old cover, adjust a new tube and cover, and worked the pump with a will. Then, just as I was giving the nuts a final screw-up, preparatory to packing the tools away in the back, he said—

“I expect, Ewart, this long run of ours has puzzled you very much, hasn’t it?”

“Of course it has,” I replied. “I don’t see the object of it all.”

“The object was to get here before the police could trace us. That’s why we took such a roundabout route.”

“And now we are here,” I exclaimed, glancing over the dull, grey landscape, “what are we going to do?”

“Do?” he echoed. “You ought to ask what we’ve done, my dear fellow!”

“Well, what have we done?” I inquired.

“About the neatest bit of business that we’ve ever brought off in our lives,” he laughed.

“How?”

“Let’s get up and drive on,” he said; “we won’t stop in Utrecht, it’s such a miserable hole. Listen, and I’ll explain as we go along.”

So I locked up the back, got up to the wheel again, and we resumed our journey.

“It was like this, you see,” he commenced. “I own I was entirely misled in the beginning. That little girl played a trick on me. She’s evidently not the ingenuous miss that I took her to be.”

“You mean Pierrette?” I laughed. “No, I quite agree with you. She’s been to Monte Carlo before, I believe.”

“Well,” exclaimed the debonnair Bindo, “I met her in London, as you know. Our acquaintance was quite a casual one, in the big hall of the Cecil—where I afterwards discovered she was staying with Madame. She was an adventurous little person, and met me at the lions, in Trafalgar Square, next morning, and I took her for a walk across St. James’s Park. From what she told me of herself, I gathered that she was the daughter of a wealthy Frenchman. Our conversation naturally turned upon her mother, as I wanted to find out if the latter possessed any jewels worth looking after. She told me a lot—how that her mother, an old marquise, had a quantity of splendid jewellery. Madame Vernet, who was with her at the Cecil, was her companion, and her father had, I understood, a fine chÂteau near Troyes. Her parents, religious bigots, were, however, sending her, very much against her will, to the seclusion of a convent close to Fontainebleau—not as a scholastic pupil—but to be actually trained for the Sisterhood! She seemed greatly perturbed about this, and I could see that the poor girl did not know how to act, and had no outside friend to assist her. To me, it at once occurred that by aiding her I could obtain her confidence, and so get to know this mother with the valuable sparklers. Therefore I arranged that you should, on a certain morning, travel to Fontainebleau, and that she should manage to escape from the good Sisters and travel down to Beaulieu. Madame Vernet was to be in the secret, and should join her later.”

“Yes,” I said, “I understood all that. She misled you regarding her mother.”

“And she was still more artful, for she never told me the truth as to who her father really was, or the reason why they were there in London—in search of him,” he remarked. “I learnt the truth for the first time from you—the truth that she was the daughter of old Dumont, of the Rue de la Paix, and that he and his clerk were missing with jewels of great value.”

“Then another idea struck you, I presume?”

“Of course,” he answered, laughing. “I wondered for what reason Mademoiselle was to be placed in a convent; why she had misled me regarding her parentage; and, above all, why she was so very desirous of coming to the Riviera. So I returned, first to Paris—where I found that Dumont and Martin were actually both missing. I managed to get photographs of both men, and then crossed to London, and there commenced active inquiries. Within a week I had the whole of the mysterious affair at my fingers’ ends, and moreover I knew who had taken the sparklers, and in fact the complete story. The skein was a very tangled one, but gradually I drew out the threads. When I had done so, however, I heard, to my dismay, that certain of our enemies had got to know the direction in which I was working, and had warned the Paris SuretÉ. I was therefore bound to travel back to Monte Carlo, if I intended to be successful, so I had to come by the roundabout route through Italy and by the Tenda.”

“I suspected that,” I said.

“Yes. But the truth was stranger than I had ever imagined. As you know, things do not surprise me very often, but in this affair I confess I’d been taken completely aback.”

“How?”

“Because when I returned to Monty I made some absolutely surprising discoveries. Among them was that Mademoiselle was in the habit of secretly meeting a long-nosed man.”

“A long-nosed man!” I exclaimed. “You mean the police-agent?”

“I mean Monsieur Martin, the clerk. Don’t you recognise him?” he asked, taking the photograph out of his pocket and handing it to me.

It was the same!

“To be away from Martin’s influence, my dear Ewart, the good jeweller Dumont had arranged for Mademoiselle to go into the convent. The father had, no doubt, discovered his daughter’s secret love affair. Martin knew this, and with the connivance of Pierrette and Madame had decamped with the gems from the Charing Cross Hotel, in order to feather his nest.”

“And the missing Dumont?”

“Dumont, when he realised his enormous loss, saw that if he complained to the police it would get into the papers, and his creditors—who had lately been very pressing—would lose confidence in the stability of the business in the Rue de la Paix. So he resolved to disappear, get away to Norway, and, if possible, follow Martin and regain possession of the jewels. In this he very nearly succeeded, but fortunately for us, Martin was no fool.”

“How?”

“Why, he took the jewels to Nice with him when he went to meet Pierrette, and, having acquaintance with Regnier through his friend Raoul, gave them over to ‘The President’ to sell for him, well knowing that Regnier had, like we ourselves, a secret market for such things. I’ve proved, by the way, that this fellow Martin has had one or two previous dealings with Regnier while in various situations in Paris.”

“Well?” I asked, astounded at all this. “That’s the reason they warned me against her. What else?”

“What else?” he asked. “You may well ask what else? Well, I acted boldly.”

“How do you mean?”

“I simply told the dainty Mademoiselle, Raoul, Martin, and the rest of them, of my intention—to explain to the police the whole queer story. I knew quite well that Regnier had the jewels intact in a bag in his room at the Hermitage, and rather feared lest he might pitch the whole lot into the sea, and so get rid of them. That there were grave suspicions against him regarding the mysterious death of a banker at Aix six months before—you recollect the case—I knew quite well, and I was equally certain that he dare not risk any police inquiries. I had a tremendously difficult fight for it, I can assure you; but I stood quite firm, and notwithstanding their threats and vows of vengeance—Mademoiselle was, by the way, more full of venomous vituperation than them all—I won.”

“You won?” I echoed. “In what manner?”

“I compelled Regnier to disgorge the booty in exchange for my silence.”

“You got the jewels!” I gasped.

“Certainly. What do you think we are here for—on our way to Amsterdam—if not on business?” he answered, with a smile.

“But where are they? I haven’t seen them when our luggage has been overhauled at the frontiers,” I said.

“Stop the car, and get down.”

I did so. He went along the road till he found a long piece of stick. Then, unscrewing the cap of the petrol-tank, he stuck in the stick and moved it about.

“Feel anything?” he asked, giving me the stick.

I felt, and surely enough in the bottom of the tank was a quantity of small loose stones! I could hear them rattle as I stirred them up.

“The settings were no use, and would tell tales, so I flung them away,” he explained; “and I put the stones in there while you were in Nice, the night before we left. Come, let’s get on again;” and he re-screwed the cap over one of the finest hauls of jewels ever made in modern criminal history.

“Well—I’m hanged!” I cried, utterly dumbfounded. “But what of Mademoiselle’s father?”

Bindo merely raised his shoulders and laughed. “Mademoiselle may be left to tell him the truth—if she thinks it desirable,” he said. “Martin has already cleared out—to Buenos Ayres, minus everything; Regnier is completely sold, for no doubt the too confiding Martin would have got nothing out of ‘The President’; while Mademoiselle and Madame are now wondering how best to return to Paris and face the music. Old Dumont will probably have to close his doors in the Rue de la Paix, for we have here a selection of his very best. But, after all, Mademoiselle—whose plan to go to London in search of her father was a rather ingenious one—certainly has me to thank that she is not under arrest for criminal conspiracy with her long-nosed lover!”

I laughed at Bindo’s final remark, and put another “move” on the car.

At ten o’clock that same night we took out the petrol-tank and emptied from it its precious contents, which half an hour later had been washed and were safely reposing from the eyes of the curious between tissue paper in the safe in the old Jew’s dark den in the Kerk Straat, in Amsterdam.

That was a year ago, and old Dumont still carries on business in the Rue de la Paix. Sir Charles Blythe, who is our informant, as always, tells us that although the pretty Pierrette is back in her convent, the jeweller is still in ignorance of Martin’s whereabouts, of how his property passed from hand to hand, or of any of the real facts concerning its disappearance.

One thing is quite certain: he will never see any of it again, for every single stone has been re-cut, and so effectually disguised as to be beyond identification.

Honesty spells poverty, Bindo always declares to me.

But some day very soon I intend, if possible, to cut my audacious friends and reform.

And yet how hard it is—how very hard! One can never, alas! retract one’s downward steps. I am “The Count’s Chauffeur,” and shall, I suppose, continue to remain so until the black day when we all fall into the hands of the police.

Therefore the story of my further adventures will, in all probability, be recounted in the Central Criminal Court at a date not very far distant.

For the present, therefore, I must write

The End.

Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, London