He spoke but little. Upon his face was a business-like look of settled determination.
At the little douane post near Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier, we paid the necessary deposit for the car, got the leaden seal attached, and then drew out upon the winding sea-road which leads right along the coast by San Remo, Alassio, and Savona to Genoa.
Hour after hour, with a perfect wall of white dust behind us, we kept on until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when we pulled up at an hotel close to the station in busy Genoa. Here we swallowed a hasty meal, and at Bindo’s directions we turned north up the Ronco valley for Alessandria and Turin, my companion explaining that it was his intention to re-enter France again by crossing the Mont Cenis.
Then I saw that our journey into Italy was in order to throw the French police off the scent. But even then I could not gather what had actually happened.
Through the whole night, and all next day, we travelled as hard as we could go, crossing the frontier and descending to Chambery, where we halted for six hours to snatch a brief sleep. Then on again by Bourg and Maçon. We took it in turns to drive—three hours each. While one slept in the back of the car, the other drove, and so we went on and on, both day and night, for the next forty-eight hours—a race against time and against the police.
From Dijon we left the Paris road and struck due north by Chaumont and Bar-le-duc to Verdun, Sedan, and Givet, where we passed into Belgium. At the Métropole, in Brussels, we spent a welcome twenty-four hours, and slept most of the time. Then on again, still due North, first to Boxtel, in Holland, and then on to Utrecht.
Until that day—a week after leaving Monte Carlo on our rush across Europe—Bindo practically preserved a complete silence as to his intentions or as to what had happened.
All I had been able to gather from him was that Mademoiselle was still at the Bristol, and that Blythe was still dancing attendance upon her and the ugly old lady who acted as chaperon.
With Utrecht in sight across the flat, uninteresting country, traversed everywhere by canals, we suddenly had a bad tyre-burst. Fortunately we had a spare one, therefore it was only the half-hour delay that troubled us.
Bindo helped me to take off the old cover, adjust a new tube and cover, and worked the pump with a will. Then, just as I was giving the nuts a final screw-up, preparatory to packing the tools away in the back, he said—