Once more Hugh climbed to the road. He would go on, he decided, to the next station and telegraph there. What a beastly nuisance! He would have to return to Bastia. That American, who was he? Even in that brief moment in the corridor there had been something vaguely familiar about him. What if he were a criminal fleeing from justice! What if.... Good Heavens!... Hugh stopped short as the great idea flashed on him. Could it be?... Could it be that Wilbur P. Hoffmann was....
He tore open the valise again, and fell to examining the notes. Some pencil markings confirmed his suspicion.... Was it Doctor Bergius? Absurd! Yet why not? Doctor Bergius with his beard shaved off, his head cropped, would not look very unlike Wilbur P. Hoffmann. He had noticed, even in the obscurity, the man’s large, beak-like nose. Conviction grew on him. Yes, the tall American was Doctor Bergius. Here now was a pretty mess. What was he to do? The Casino had been robbed of three million francs. He was alone with the booty in the savage heart of Corsica; he could not return it to the robbers, and to return it to the Casino ... hum! That didn’t quite appeal to him either. He had not much sympathy with the Casino. They could well afford to lose it. It would be better to hand it over to some deserving charity. In the meantime what was to be done? He could not carry the stuff round. He must dispose of it for the moment. That was it. He would hide it. He had been hearing for some time, as he walked, the roar of a great waterfall, and saw it about three hundred yards further on at the head of a very wild and solitary gorge. Climbing over the rocks, he reached the base of the cliff where the white shaft of water plunged into a deep pool. He found that the rock over which it fell shelved back into a low cave. He crawled in; it was quite dry. He took out the bundles of bank-notes, and wrapping them in his waterproof coat, bound the parcel tightly with stout cord. Then he crawled still further into the cave and jammed it into a fissure of the rock.
“There! It’s safe,” he said. “It can remain in that cleft a thousand years and no one will find it.”
He crawled out cautiously, and, after reconnoitring to see that no one had observed him, continued on his way.
CHAPTER TWO
IN THE “MAQUIS”
1.
AMID the gorges of the Golo the white road wound on and up. The maquis encroached on it, frowned on it shaggily. Once or twice Hugh plunged into the perfumed cover and explored it for a few yards. The landscape lay sunny and still.
On the other side of the road, all strength and joy, the river leapt like a living thing; it charged the boulders, it flashed in foam, it gleamed in green pools. Sometimes he saw peasants with cane-poles tempting the unsophisticated trout.
He came on other ancient shepherds, with big flocks of black sheep, or goats. They always bowed profoundly, then resumed their statuesque pose. From time to time he passed cottages with red tiled roofs. Sturdy children, peach-skinned, with dark, glossy hair, and bold black eyes, came out to stare at him. A poor, proud, self-reliant race.
Beside each house was its own private graveyard. Often the tombs were walled, so that the dead were better housed than the living.