One of these packages was nothing else than the card-board box which contained the earrings. Captain Montfaucon had that afternoon added it to what he called his haulage material.
In confiding her unexpected discovery to Saint-Quentin, Dorothy, who did not suspect the keenness of the subtlety and power of observation of the man she was fighting, committed an irreparable imprudence. It was not on the young girl that d'Estreicher was keeping watch from behind the screen of his spectacles, but on her comrade Saint-Quentin whose distress and feebleness he had been quick to notice. Dorothy herself remained impassive. But would not Saint-Quentin end by giving some indication?
That was what happened. When he recognized the little box with the red gutta-percha ring round it, Saint-Quentin heaved a great sigh in his sudden relief. He told himself that it would never occur to any one to untie these child's toys which lay on the ground for any one to pick up. Several times, without the slightest suspicion, d'Estreicher had brushed them aside with his feet and stumbled over the wagon, winning from the Captain this sharp reprimand:
"Now then, sir! What would you say, if you had a car and I knocked it over?"
Saint-Quentin raised his head with a cheerful air. D'Estreicher followed the direction of his gaze and instinctively understood. The earrings were there, under the protection of Fortune and with the unwitting complicity of the captain. But in which of the packages? The card-board box seemed to him to be the most likely. Without a word he bent quickly down and seized it. He drew himself up, opened it with a furtive movement, and perceived, among some small white pebbles and shells, the two sapphires.
He looked at Dorothy. She was very pale.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE CROSS-EXAMINATION
"Let's bolt!" again said Saint-Quentin, who had sunk down on to a trunk and would have been incapable of making a single step.
"A splendid idea!" said Dorothy in a low voice. "Harness One-eyed Magpie; let's all five of us hide ourselves in the caravan and hell for leather for the Belgian frontier!"