His resolution was so definite that when he caught sight of her at the station, as he was taking the 3:50 express to Paris, he made no effort to join her but kept out of sight.
At Marseilles she changed her route and took the train to Toulouse, in company with some people, whose acquaintance she seemed to have made and who seemed to be actors. William, suddenly turning up, joined the group.
“A pleasant journey,” said Ralph to himself. “I’m delighted to have severed my relations with this charming couple. They may go and get hanged in somebody else’s society!”
However, at the last minute, he jumped out of the train and took the same train as the girl. Like her, he left it the following morning at Toulouse.
Following the murders on the express, the burglary at the Villa Faradoni and the attempted blackmail at the Bellevue Palace Hotel, two episodes, sudden, violent, furious and unexpected, like scenes in a badly constructed play which give the audience no time to understand what is happening and to connect the incidents with one another; a third episode was about to take place which Arsène Lupin was wont to describe later, as the last scene of his triptych as rescuer, an episode of the same rough and brutal character as the [[110]]others. This episode also came to its crisis in a few hours and can only be presented after the manner of a scene devoid of psychology and apparently of any logic.
At Toulouse Ralph made discreet enquiries of the porter at the hotel to which the girl with the green eyes accompanied her companions. He learned that these travelers were part of the touring company of Leonide Balli, a singer in light opera, who that very evening was playing the part of Veronique at the Municipal Theater.
He kept watching the hotel. At three o’clock the girl came out of it, wearing an air of considerable agitation and kept looking behind her as if she was afraid lest some one should come out immediately after her and spy upon her. Was it her confederate, William, whom she distrusted? She hurried, still looking behind her to the post office where she scribbled a telegram, which she had to begin three times, with feverish haste.
After she had left the post office Ralph entered it and managed to possess himself of one of the crumpled up forms. He read:
Hotel Miramare, Luz, Hautes-Pyrenees. Shall arrive to-morrow first train. Tell them All.
“What the devil is she going to do among the mountains at this time of year?” he murmured to himself. [[111]]“ ‘Tell them all’—Does that mean that her people live at Luz?”