He saw Mary back to her hotel, went to his room and changed, and just as the Casino was disgorging its tired clients, he walked through the palm-shaded avenue that led to the main road and began his tramp to Cap Martin. To discover a house in this area by daylight, with the aid of a plan, might have been a simple matter—by night it presented almost insuperable difficulties.
Cap Martin is a promontory of hill and pine and wild flower. Its roads run at the will of its wealthy residents, and there are lanes and paths and broad roads which are not really broad roads at all, but the private entrances to the wonderful villas in which the district abounds, and the grey light was in the eastern sky when Timothy finally located the Villa Condamine.
It stood on the edge of the sea, surrounded on the land side by a high wall, though if its owner sought seclusion the woods which surrounded the villa were sufficient.
Timothy worked round a little bay until he commanded a view of the place from the sea. A zig-zag path led down from the house to the seashore, terminating in a little concrete quay. Presently he heard the sound of footsteps and a Monogasque workman, in blue overalls, came slouching along the shore path, pipe in mouth.
He bade the young man a cheery good morning and stopped, in the friendly way of the Monogasques, to talk. He was a gardener on his way to the villa. He could be on his way to nowhere else, for the rough path on which Timothy stood led straight to a door in the high wall. It was a good job, but he wished he lived nearer. But then, none of madame’s servants slept in the house, and——
“Ah! voilà! It is the Moor!” and he pointed out to sea.
A tiny steam yacht was coming slowly to land—Timothy had seen its lights for an hour—and was steaming now to its anchorage, leaving the line of its wake on the smooth surface of the water.
“The Moor!” said Timothy quickly, and then carelessly, “Has any Moor a villa here?”
“No, monsieur,” said the man, “but this is a great Moor who sometimes comes here from Morocco. A long journey, monsieur. It is five days’ voyage from the Moorish coast——”
“Does he come to the Villa Condamine?” asked Timothy.