So I locked up the back, got up to the wheel again, and we resumed our journey.
“It was like this, you see,” he commenced. “I own I was entirely misled in the beginning. That little girl played a trick on me. She’s evidently not the ingenuous miss that I took her to be.”
“You mean Pierrette?” I laughed. “No, I quite agree with you. She’s been to Monte Carlo before, I believe.”
“Well,” exclaimed the debonnair Bindo, “I met her in London, as you know. Our acquaintance was quite a casual one, in the big hall of the Cecil—where I afterwards discovered she was staying with Madame. She was an adventurous little person, and met me at the lions, in Trafalgar Square, next morning, and I took her for a walk across St. James’s Park. From what she told me of herself, I gathered that she was the daughter of a wealthy Frenchman. Our conversation naturally turned upon her mother, as I wanted to find out if the latter possessed any jewels worth looking after. She told me a lot—how that her mother, an old marquise, had a quantity of splendid jewellery. Madame Vernet, who was with her at the Cecil, was her companion, and her father had, I understood, a fine château near Troyes. Her parents, religious bigots, were, however, sending her, very much against her will, to the seclusion of a convent close to Fontainebleau—not as a scholastic pupil—but to be actually trained for the Sisterhood! She seemed greatly perturbed about this, and I could see that the poor girl did not know how to act, and had no outside friend to assist her. To me, it at once occurred that by aiding her I could obtain her confidence, and so get to know this mother with the valuable sparklers. Therefore I arranged that you should, on a certain morning, travel to Fontainebleau, and that she should manage to escape from the good Sisters and travel down to Beaulieu. Madame Vernet was to be in the secret, and should join her later.”
“Yes,” I said, “I understood all that. She misled you regarding her mother.”
“And she was still more artful, for she never told me the truth as to who her father really was, or the reason why they were there in London—in search of him,” he remarked. “I learnt the truth for the first time from you—the truth that she was the daughter of old Dumont, of the Rue de la Paix, and that he and his clerk were missing with jewels of great value.”
“Then another idea struck you, I presume?”
“Of course,” he answered, laughing. “I wondered for what reason Mademoiselle was to be placed in a convent; why she had misled me regarding her parentage; and, above all, why she was so very desirous of coming to the Riviera. So I returned, first to Paris—where I found that Dumont and Martin were actually both missing. I managed to get photographs of both men, and then crossed to London, and there commenced active inquiries. Within a week I had the whole of the mysterious affair at my fingers’ ends, and moreover I knew who had taken the sparklers, and in fact the complete story. The skein was a very tangled one, but gradually I drew out the threads. When I had done so, however, I heard, to my dismay, that certain of our enemies had got to know the direction in which I was working, and had warned the Paris Sureté. I was therefore bound to travel back to Monte Carlo, if I intended to be successful, so I had to come by the roundabout route through Italy and by the Tenda.”
“I suspected that,” I said.