Brett dismissed the two detectives and returned to the hotel, where he and Fairholme found Edith and her brother sitting up for them. When Talbot heard the contents of the letter he remarked: "I suppose that 'All goes well' means that I am still a prisoner?"
"Undoubtedly," said the barrister. "The letter was posted in the Haymarket. It came from your French host. I wonder what he will write now? By the way, where is he? Did you lose sight of the couple after your escape?"
"I did," laughed Talbot. "But Inspector Winter did not. By some mysterious means he learnt all about Fairholme's action in smashing in the door. Whilst I was at the Foreign Office that night he arrested both the man and the woman."
"Winter is a perfect terror," said Brett. "He dreams of handcuffs and penal servitude. I hope this couple will not be brought to trial, or at any rate that your name will not be mixed up in it."
"Oh, no. As soon as I heard the Under-Secretary's wishes, I promptly communicated with Scotland Yard. The Frenchman and his wife will be remanded on a mysterious charge of abetting a felony and held in durance vile until their testimony is wanted, should we ever capture Dubois."
At Brett's request, detectives were hunting through Paris all that night and the next day for a sign of Hussein-ul-Mulk and his Turkish friends. But these gentlemen had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up.
This was a strange thing. Although Paris is a cosmopolitan city, a party of Turks, only one of whom could speak French, should be discovered with tolerable rapidity in view of the fact that the French police maintain such a watch upon the inhabitants.
It was not until Brett and his four companions quitted the train at Marseilles late at night and the barrister received a telegram from the commissary announcing that the search made by the police had yielded no results, that he suddenly recalled the existence of a doorless and windowless room in the Café Noir.
Curiously enough, he had omitted to make any mention of this strange apartment in his recital to the official. He would not trust to the discretion of the Telegraph Department, so on reaching the Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix he succeeded, after some difficulty, in ringing up the commissary on the long-distance telephone.
Having acquainted the police officer with the exact position of the hidden apartment, he ended by saying—