“Yes, Governor! And old Etienne Garcia, at the ‘Cor d’Abondance’ in Granville, is the very slyest rogue in France. When you find a Crapaud who is dead to rights, he is always an out and outer. I’ll square you with my old pal, Etienne, who slyly makes ‘floaters’ and then gets the government cash reward for towing them in. He has always a half dozen pretty girls hanging around there, and many a good looking stranger has ended his ‘tour’ by a sudden drop through the flow of the drinking room over the wharf where Etienne keeps his ‘boats to let.’”
“How does he do it?” mused Alan Hawke. “It’s a risky game in France.”
Jack Blunt laughed.
“A few puffs of smoke in a cognac glass, and the subject is knocked out for an hour after drinking from the nicotine-filmed crystal, bless you,” laughed Blunt, “there’s never a mark on Etienne’s victims. He is too fine for that, only cases of plain, simple, ‘accidental drowning.’
“You may as well address me as ‘Joseph Smith, Jersey Arms, Rozel Pier, Jersey.’ I am solid with Mrs. Floyd, the landlady there,” said the scoundrel mobsman, anxious to spend some of his cash.
“All right, then, Jack! Go ahead!” cheerfully cried Major Hawke. “Don’t overgo my instructions a single hair! I’ll either join you in the grand stroke, or else meet you at Granville and there tell you what to do. Remember that I’ll settle all your Jersey bills, and I will send a post order for ten pounds extra to you at the ‘Jersey Arms,’ to give you a local standing with the postman.
“That you can spend on the underlings around the Banker’s Folly, but beware of an old body servant named Simpson—an old red-coat who may turn up any day now from India! He was Johnstone’s own man, and he hates me, at heart, I know! Now, if you can do the ‘artist act,’ you must find out where the old man keeps his stuff! I don’t know yet whether we want him first or the girl; or to crack the whole crib! If we ever do, then, Simpson must get the—” Hawke grimly smiled, as he drew his hand across his throat! “I must be off!” he hastily said as he noted the time.
On his way over to Folkestone, Major Alan Hawke mused over his great coup, as he lay at ease, wrapped up in a traveling rug, and now resplendent in a fur-trimmed top coat, befrogged and laced, which indicated the officer en retraite.
“I will first do up Holland, Belgium, and Denmark, and take a little preliminary look around Paris,” mused the Major, studying a list of the missing jewels which Captain Anstruther had artfully arranged. Sundry deductions and additions, with an admirable disorder in the items (judiciously divided and reclassified) served to guard against any old confidences exchanged between Ram Lal and his secret friend Hawke. The real list in the original was now in the private pocket-book of the Viceroy.
“Each of our Consuls at the cities you are to visit has this list,” said Anstruther to the Major, “and you can vary your travel as you choose, but visit all these jewel marts, and report to the local Consuls. If they have further orders for you, you will get them there, at first hands. Should you find that any of the jewels have been offered for sale, simply report the facts to the local Consul, and write under seal to me at the Junior United Service, then go on and examine further at once! You are to take no steps whatever to recover them, or to alarm the thieves! All your expenses and your pay will be advanced by me!” The acute schemer decided not to risk any suspicions by marketing his own jewels. “They might bounce me for the murder,” fearfully mused the Major. “I could show no honest title through Ram Lal. They might arrest him, and I need him to pay the protested drafts—later, when I go back on the Viceroy’s staff!” He smiled and wove his webs like a spider in his den.