"I will come later, madame," he said, when he had received the change. "I must take my donkey into Monte Carlo."
She watched the boy and his beast go down the road, and went back to the task of preparing her lodger's breakfast.
To Monte Carlo the cabbage seller did not go. Instead, he turned back the way he had come, and a hundred yards from the gate of Villa Casa, Mordon, the chauffeur, appeared, and took the rope from his hand.
"Did you find what you wanted, mademoiselle?" he asked.
Jean nodded. She got into the house through the servants' entrance and up to her room without observation. She pulled off the black wig and applied herself to removing the stains from her face. It had been a good morning's work.
"You must keep Mrs. Meredith fully occupied to-day." She waylaid her father on the stairs to give him these instructions.
For her it was a busy morning. First she went to the Hôtel de Paris, and on the pretext of writing a letter in the lounge, secured two or three sheets of the hotel paper and an envelope. Next she hired a typewriter and carried it with her back to the house. She was working for an hour before she had the letter finished. The signature took her some time. She had to ransack Lydia's writing case before she found a letter from Jack Glover—Lydia's signature was easy in comparison.
This, and a cheque drawn from the back of Lydia Meredith's cheque-book, completed her equipment.
That afternoon Mordon, the chauffeur, motored into Nice, and by nine o'clock that night an aeroplane deposited him in Paris. He was in London the following morning, a bearer of an urgent letter to Mr. Rennett, the lawyer, which, however, he did not present in person.
Mordon knew a French girl in London, and she it was who carried the letter to Charles Rennett—a letter that made him scratch his head many times before he took a sheet of paper, and addressing the manager of Lydia's bank, wrote: