At the big, bare railway station, wherein the feeble gas-jet had just been lit, I saw, lounging beside the ticket-collector, the detective attached to that post, whose duty it was to notice all arrivals and departures; and, knowing him, I called him aside and briefly described the lady who had visited me.
“Yes, signore, I saw her. She left for Pisa an hour ago; she purchased a first-class ticket for London.”
“For London!” I gasped. “Had she any baggage?”
“A crocodile-leather dressing-case and a small flat box covered with brown leather.”
“By what route was she travelling?”
The detective walked to the booking-office, and in response to his inquiries I learned that she had taken a direct ticket by way of Turin, Modane, Paris, and Calais. The train which caught at Pisa the express to the French frontier had left an hour ago; therefore I had no chance of overtaking her.
Still, something prompted me to take the next train to Pisa, for Italian railways are never punctual, and there was just a chance that she might have missed her connection. So half an hour later I sat in the dimly lit, rickety old compartment of that branch-line train, pondering over the events of the past day, and determined to run down the thief at all hazards.
At Pisa I quickly learned that the Leghorn train had arrived in time to catch the express; therefore the woman in black was now well on her way towards the frontier.
I purchased a railway-guide, and entering the waiting-room, sat down to study it calmly. After half an hour I decided upon a plan. The homeward Indian mail from Brindisi to London would pass through Turin at 9:10 on the following morning, and, if I caught it, would land me at Calais three hours in advance of the express by which she was travelling. But from Pisa to Turin is a far cry—half-way across Italy; and I at once consulted the station-master as to the possibility of arriving in time.
There was none, he declared. The express for the north, which left in two hours’ time, could not arrive in Turin before 9:20, ten minutes after the departure of the Indian mail. Therefore it was impossible.