There were no delays in his programme. His ship arrived in port precisely at the appointed hour. He was able to go on immediately to San Francisco. There he was just in time to catch a boat for Samoa. He wired to his friend, Monsieur de Letz, the French Consul, that he was coming, and received an enthusiastic welcome. The Consul was a bachelor, approaching middle age, was intensely bored with the monotony of life on an island of the Pacific, and was ravished with the chance of entertaining a personage so brilliant in the great far-away world as the Marchese Loria. He had a charming house, and a good cook; some wine also, and cigars of the best. Loria arrived at dinner-time, and afterward, smoking and talking in the moonlight on a broad verandah, the guest led up to the question he was half dying to ask.
"Have you heard any exciting news lately?" he airily inquired, in a tone that hovered between pleasantry and mystery.
"Does one ever hear exciting news in this place?" groaned the French Consul. "Nothing has happened for years. Nothing is ever likely to happen again now that we have become so dull and peaceful here."
"No news of another visitor?"
"Another visitor?"
"A gentleman from New Caledonia."
"Mon Dieu! How did you know that?"
"Is it then so difficult to know, mon ami?"
"One hopes so. It is not good that these things should leak out and reach the public ear. The information is very private. The authorities at home and abroad do all they can to keep it dark, and yet it seems——"
"My ear isn't exactly the 'public ear,' as I'll presently explain. But it is a fact, then, that a convict has escaped from the Ile Nou, and you have got word that he is likely to turn up here on board a steam yacht?"