I laughed at Bindo’s final remark, and put another “move” on the car.
At ten o’clock that same night we took out the petrol-tank and emptied from it its precious contents, which half an hour later had been washed and were safely reposing from the eyes of the curious between tissue paper in the safe in the old Jew’s dark den in the Kerk Straat, in Amsterdam.
That was a year ago, and old Dumont still carries on business in the Rue de la Paix. Sir Charles Blythe, who is our informant, as always, tells us that although the pretty Pierrette is back in her convent, the jeweller is still in ignorance of Martin’s whereabouts, of how his property passed from hand to hand, or of any of the real facts concerning its disappearance.
One thing is quite certain: he will never see any of it again, for every single stone has been re-cut, and so effectually disguised as to be beyond identification.
Honesty spells poverty, Bindo always declares to me.
But some day very soon I intend, if possible, to cut my audacious friends and reform.
And yet how hard it is—how very hard! One can never, alas! retract one’s downward steps. I am “The Count’s Chauffeur,” and shall, I suppose, continue to remain so until the black day when we all fall into the hands of the police.
Therefore the story of my further adventures will, in all probability, be recounted in the Central Criminal Court at a date not very far distant.
For the present, therefore, I must write