That night, he never undressed. He lay in his clothes on the bed, and slept by snatches fitfully. In the morning, he rose early, and looked hard for spots of blood as he washed and dressed himself. But he had done his work far too neatly to spatter his clothes. “Coffee, quick, and my bill!” he said to the waiter who answered the bell; “I want to catch an early train at the station for England.” He said England on purpose, though he meant it to be Italy. With a true Tyroler’s instinct, he would strike straight home—by Milan, Verona, and the Brenner, to St Valentin.
At the station, he took a through ticket, first-class, for Genoa. He had to pass Monte Carlo, and he did so with repugnance. Yet he wasn’t much afraid; the Robbler instinct was still strong within him. A couple of fat Frenchmen got into the carriage at Monaco; they were talking of some tragedy that had happened last night at an hotel at La Condamine. Franz pricked up his ears but tried to look unconcerned. “Somebody dead?” he inquired in his Teutonic French, with a show of languid interest.
“Yes; another suicide,” one of the Frenchmen answered, shrugging his shoulders, with a smile. “Que voulez-vous? An Englishman—a fellow called Holmes—or, some say, an American. He stabbed himself last night, after losing heavily. He was stopping at my hotel: he went to bed all well; the servants knocked this morning—got no answer—went in and found the body in a fauteuil, where the malheureux had stabbed himself.”
Franz’s eye gleamed bright. So at first they had put the best interpretation upon it! The mere suspicion of a suicide might give him a start that would enable him to escape. He shrugged his shoulders in return. “A common episode of life as things go at Monte Carlo!” he murmured, philosophically.
The Frenchmen got out and left the train at Mentone. At Ventimiglia, Franz crossed the frontier with a beating heart; so far, at least, no telegram to arrest or detain him. All morning, the train crawled on at a snail’s pace towards Genoa. Franz chafed and grumbled, eating his heart out with impatience. At San Pier d’Arena, the junction-station, he took his portmanteau in his hand, and re-booked for Milan. There he spent that second night in fear and trembling. On his way up to an hotel, he bought a copy of an evening paper—the Corriere della Sera. The same story still—Suicidio a Monte Carlo.
He didn’t sleep much; but he slept—that was ever something. At seven o’clock, he was up, and walked out towards the Cathedral. But that mount of marble, with its thousand spires and its statued pinnacles in the myriad niches, had no power on such a day to arrest his attention; beside the great west door, he was looking for a boy with a morning newspaper. Soon he found one, and tore it open under the arcades of the Piazza. He knew no Italian, but by the aid of his scanty French he could make out the meaning of one sinister paragraph. “It is now believed that the man Holme or Holmes, who was found stabbed in his room at the Hotel des Étrangers, at Monte Carlo, yesterday morning, met his death by foul means, and not, as was at first suspected, by suicide. The doctors who have examined the wound concur in the opinion that it could hardly by any possibility be self-inflicted. Holmes is now known to have been a notorious card-sharper, and it is surmised that he may have been murdered in a fit of revengeful passion by one of his victims, several of whom he is said to have duped during the last few days in the neighbourhood of the Casino. No clue, however, has as yet been obtained to the name or personality of his supposed assailant.”
Murder! they called it murder to stab that cheating rogue! and they took him for a murderer just because he’d revenged himself! When they’d got as far as that, it was probable before long they’d track the deed home to Herr Karl von Forstemann. Franz saw clearly enough now what his next move must be. Herr Karl von Forstemann must disappear as if by magic from this earthly scene, and Franz Lindner of St Valentin, and of the London Pavilion, that honest and simple-minded Tyrolese musician, must at once replace him.
He paid his bill at the hotel, took a cab to the station instead of the omnibus, and caught the through train to Venice direct—throwing the police off his track, if it came to police, by getting out short, portmanteau in hand, at Verona, for the Brenner. All day long, he travelled on by that beautiful mountain line, up the Adige towards Botzen; and, though he was flying for his life, it gave him none the less a genuine thrill of joy when he beheld once more those beloved Tyrolese peaks, and heard the German tongue spoken with a Tyrolese accent. He slept that night at Botzen. There, he felt his foot once more upon his native heath. In the morning, he rose early, and went into a hatter’s, where he bought a Tyrolese hat of the old conical pattern; all fugitive that he was, the ingrained instincts of his youth yet made him turn the blackcock’s feather in it the wrong way forward, Robbler-wise. Vain-glorious still and defiant, nobody would ever have taken him for a runaway criminal. He bought also a pair of stout Tyrolese boots, and introduced a few other little changes in his costume, sufficient to transform him at once from the cosmopolitan snob into the simple Franz Lindner of the old days at St Valentin. Then he took the train north again, right through to Innsbruck, where he slept his third night, more confident than before, and had a chance of reading all in a Vienna paper.
That all was bad enough. No doubt now remained on the minds of the French police that Joaquin Holmes had been really murdered. The hypothesis of suicide broke down at every step. Suspicion pointed most to one or other of three persons whom he was believed to have duped just before the murder. One of these three was being traced by detectives to Marseilles and Paris; the other two, it was believed, had gone on to Italy. In the interests of justice, the police would mention no names at present, but one of these three, they held, must almost certainly be the murderer.
Still, the instinct of his race urged Franz on to St Valentin. He took the afternoon train north as far as Jenbach; then he tramped all the way on foot to his native village. It was late when he arrived, and, tired and hunted down, he went straight to the Wirthshaus. Cousin Fridolin held up his hands in astonishment to see the wanderer. It wasn’t merely surprise that Franz should come back at all, but that he should come back as he went—a genuine Tyroler. All were well in the place: the Herr Vicar and everyone. And Andreas Hausberger and Linnet were here as well—returned home for a holiday.