“Lies!” she cried. “You’re talking at random. The portmanteau did not leave me for a second between the meadow of Mesnil-sous-Jumièges and the strong-room in London.”
“Yes it did, since you let it down into the hold of the Glow-worm.”
“I sat on the iron hatch which closed the hold and one of my men kept watch over the port through which you might have entered it, all the time we were in the roadstead at Havre,” she declared.
“I know that.”
“How can you know it?”
“I was in the hold.”
It was an alarming sentence! He repeated it and then, thoroughly enjoying his narrative he said to the stupefied Josephine: “In the face of the shattered block this was my reasoning: ‘If I hunt for my good Josephine, I shall not find her. What I’ve got to do is to guess the place where she will be at the end of the day, to get there before her, to be there when she arrives, and to avail myself of the first opportunity of scooping up the precious stones.’ For, with the police on your trail, hunted by me, eager to get the treasure into a safe place, it was inevitable that you must take to flight, that is to say, get away abroad. How? Why, by means of your vessel, the Glow-worm.
“At noon I was at Havre; at one o’clock the three members of the crew who were on board went off, to drink their coffee at a bar. I slipped across the gangway into the hold and hid myself behind a heap of cases, barrels, and sacks of provisions. At six o’clock you arrived and let the portmanteau down by a rope, so putting it under my protection.”
“You lie! You lie!” stuttered Josephine in a furious voice.
He went quietly on: “At ten o’clock Leonard joined you. He had read the evening papers and learned about Beaumagnan’s suicide. At eleven o’clock you weighed anchor. At midnight, out at sea, a yacht met you. Leonard, who became Prince Lavosneff, presided over the disembarkation. The crew and the packages containing everything of value were transferred from the deck of one vessel to the deck of the other, in especial the portmanteau which you hauled up from the bottom of the hold. And then to hell with the Glow-worm!