The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
have plenty of time to catch the Dieppe boat at Newhaven. I’ll wire to them to say you are coming—name of Bellingham, of course. I shall leave by train in the morning, but you’ll be at Monty—the Hôtel de Paris—almost as soon as I am. I wouldn’t attempt to go by the Grenoble road, because I heard the other day that there’s a lot of snow about there. Go down to Valence and across to Die.”
I was rather sick at being compelled to leave so suddenly. Of late I had hardly been in London at all. I was very desirous of visiting some aged relations from whom I had expectations.
Bindo saw that my face had fallen.
“Look here, Ewart,” he said, “I’m sorry that you have to do this long run at such short notice, but you won’t be alone—you’ll pick up a lady, and a very pretty young lady, too.”
“Where?”
“Well, now I’ll explain. Go around Paris, run on to Melun, and thence to Fontainebleau. You remember we were there together last summer, at the Hôtel de France. At Fontainebleau ask for the road through the Forest for Marlotte—remember the name. About seven kilometres along that road you’ll come to cross-ways. At eight o’clock to-morrow morning she will be awaiting you there, and you will take her straight on to Monty.”
“How shall I know her?”
“She’ll ask if you are from Mr. Bellingham,” was his reply. “And look here,” he added, drawing a long cardboard box from beneath the couch,“put this in the car, for she won’t have motor-clothes, and these are for her. You’d better have some money, too. Here’s a thousand francs;” and he took from a drawer in the pretty inlaid Louis XV. writing-table two five-hundred-franc notes and handed them to me, adding, “At present I can tell you nothing more. Go out, find Pierrette—that’s her name—and bring her to Monty. At the Paris I shall be ‘Bellingham’; and recollect we’ll have to be careful. They haven’t, in all probability, forgotten the other little affair. The police of Monaco are among the smartest in Europe, and though they never arrest anybody within their tin-pot Principality, they take jolly good care that the Monsieur le Prefect at Nice knows all about their suspects, and leave him to do their dirty work.”
I laughed. Count Bindo, so thoroughly a cosmopolitan man-of-the-world, so resourceful, so utterly unscrupulous, so amazingly clever at any subterfuge, and yet so bold when occasion required, held the police in supreme contempt. He often declared that there was no police official between the town of Wick and the Mediterranean who had not his price, and that in many Continental countries the Minister of Police himself could be squared for a few hundreds.
“But what’s the nature of our new scheme?” I inquired, curious to know what was intended.
“It’s a big one—the biggest we’ve ever tried, Ewart,” was his answer, lighting a fresh cigarette, and draining his glass as he wished me a successful run due South. “If it works, then we shall bring off a real good thing.”
“Do the others come out with you?”
“I hardly know yet. I meet them to-night at supper at the Savoy, and we shall then decide. At any rate, I shall go;” and walking to the little writing-table, he took up the telephone receiver and asked for the Sleeping Car Company’s office in Pall Mall. Then, when a reply came, he asked them to reserve a small compartment in the Mediterranean Express on the morrow.
“And,” he exclaimed, turning again to me, “I want to impress upon you one thing, Ewart. You and I know each other well, don’t we? Now in this affair there may be more than one mysterious feature. You’ll be puzzled, perhaps,—greatly puzzled,—but don’t trouble your head over the why or the wherefore until we bring off the coup successfully. Then I’ll tell you the whole facts—and, by Jove! you’ll find them stranger than ever you’ve read in a book. When you know the truth of the affair you’ll be staggered.”
My curiosity was, I admit, excited. Count Bindo, the dare-devil Italian adventurer, who cared not a jot for any man living, and who himself lived so well upon the proceeds of his amazing audacity and clever wits, was not in the habit of speaking like this. I pressed him to tell me more, but he only said—
“Go, Ewart. Get a bite of something to eat, for you must surely want it; buy what you want for the car—oil, carbide, and the rest, and get away to meet the pretty Pierrette. And—again good luck to you!” he added, as he mixed a little more whisky and tossed it off.
Then he shook my hand warmly. I left his cosy quarters, and within an hour was crossing Westminster Bridge on the first stage of my hasty run across Europe.
I had plenty of time to get down to Newhaven to catch the boat, but if I was to be in the Forest of Fontainebleau by eight o’clock next morning I would, I knew, be compelled to travel as hard as possible. The road was well known to me, all the way from the Channel to the Mediterranean. Bindo and I had done it together at least a dozen times.
Since leaving Clifford Street I had eaten a hasty meal, picked up a couple of new “non-skids” at the depôt where we dealt, oiled up, filled the petrol tank, and given the engine a general look round. But as soon as I got out of London the cold became so intense that I was compelled to draw on my fur gloves and button my collar up about my chin.
Who was Pierrette? I wondered. And what was the nature of this greatcoup devised by the three artists in crime who were conjointly my masters?
An uneventful though very cold run brought me to the quay at Newhaven, where the car was shipped quite half an hour before the arrival of the train from London. It proved a dark and dirty night in the Channel, and the steamer tossed and rolled, much to the discomfort of the passengers by “the cheapest route,” which, by the way, is the quickest for motorists. But the sea never troubling me, I took the opportunity of having a good square meal in the saloon, got the steward to put a couple of cold fowls and some ham and bread into a parcel, and within half an hour of the steamer touching Dieppe quay I was heading out towards Paris, with my new search-light shining far ahead, and giving such a streak of brilliancy that a newspaper could be read by it half a mile away.
Dark snow-clouds had gathered, and the icy wind cut my face like a knife, causing me to assume my goggles as a slight protection. My feet on the pedals were like ice, and my hands were soon cramped by the cold, notwithstanding the fur gloves.
I took the road viâ Rouen as the best, though there is a shorter cut, and about two kilometres beyond the quaint old city, just as it was getting light, I got a puncture on the off back tyre. A horse-nail it proved, and in twenty minutes I was on the road again, running at the highest speed I dared along the Seine valley towards Paris. The wind had dropped with the dawn, and the snow-clouds had dispersed with the daybreak. Though grey and very cheerless at first, the wintry sun at last broke through, and it was already half-past seven when, avoiding Paris, I had made a circuit and joined the Fontainebleau road at Charenton, south of the capital.
I glanced at the clock. I had still half an hour to do nearly thirty miles. So, anxious to meet the mysterious Pierrette, I let the car rip, and ran through Melun and the town of Fontainebleau at a furious pace, which would in England have certainly meant the endorsement of my licence.
At the end of the town of Fontainebleau, a board pointed to Marlotte—that tiny river-side village so beloved by Paris artists in summer—and I swung into a great, broad, well-kept road, cut through the bare Forest, with its thousands of straight lichen-covered tree trunks, showing grey in the faint yellow sunlight.
Those long, broad roads through the Forest are, without exception, excellently kept, and there being no traffic, I put on all the pace I dared—a speed which can be easily imagined when one drives a sixty “Mercedes.” Suddenly, almost before I was aware of it, I had flashed across a narrower road running at right angles, and saw, standing back out of the way of the car, a female figure.
In a moment I put on the brakes, and, pulling up, glanced back.
The woman was walking hurriedly towards me, but she was surely not the person of whom I was in search.
She wore a blue dress and a big white-winged linen headdress.