“No, I don’t, and that’s a fact. I believe she’s the daughter of an old broken-down Catholic marquise—one of the weedy sort—who lives at Troyes, or some such dead-alive hole as that. Her mother tried to make her take the veil, and hasn’t succeeded.”
“She prefers the motor-veil, it appears,” I laughed. “But that isn’t the story she’s told me.”
The red light of a level-crossing gave warning, and I pulled up, and let out a long blast on the electric horn, until the gates swung open.
“Her real name is, I believe, Pierrette Dumont, only daughter of that big jeweller in the Rue de la Paix.”
“What!” cried Bindo, in such a manner that I knew he was not joking. “Old Dumont’s daughter? If that’s so, we are in luck’s way.”
“Yes, Dumont went to London, and took his clerk, a certain Martin, with him, and a bagful of jewels worth the respectable sum of half a million francs. They stayed at the Charing Cross Hotel, but five days later both men and the jewels disappeared.”
Bindo sank back in his seat utterly dumbfounded.
“But, Ewart,” he gasped, “do you really think it is true? Do you believe that she is actually Dumont’s daughter, and that the shiners have really been stolen?”
“The former question is more difficult to answer than the latter. A wire to London will clear up the truth. In all probability the police are keeping the affair out of the papers. The girl went over to London to try and find her father, and met you, she says.”
“She met me, certainly. But the little fool told me nothing about her father’s disappearance or the missing jewels.”