CHAPTER XXII THE THIN-FACED STRANGER
I pretended not to notice him as I pushed past him and presently returned with water. Lady Fitzgraham, Connie Stapleton, and several others also clamoured for water to moisten their parched lips, and when I had attended to Dulcie I gave them some. For the next two hours everything was confusion. All the passengers had been severely shaken, and some were seriously hurt, but fortunately not one had been killed. Our extraordinary escape I shall always attribute to the fact that we travelled in a Pullman, a car that has most wonderful stability.
A large crowd had assembled at Gare St. Lazare to witness the arrival of the special with the passengers who had travelled in our ill-fated train. Now that I had collected my scattered thoughts once more I was resolved at the earliest possible moment to inform Lady Fitzgraham of the discovery I had made, for I had come to the firm conclusion that some, at any rate, of the jewellery that bag contained must be hers, some of the jewellery which had been stolen on board the boat.
Upon our arrival at the "Continental" I discovered that Gastrell and Connie Stapleton's friends numbered no less than twelve, without counting Lady Fitzgraham or myself, so that in all we were sixteen. Of the people I had met before, whom I believed to be members of the gang, only Jasmine Gastrell was absent. What most puzzled me was what the reason could be they had all come to Paris. Did the London police suspect them, and were they fleeing from justice in consequence? That, I decided, seemed hardly likely. Could they be contemplating some coup on the Continent, or had they come over to prepare with greater security some fresh gigantic robbery in England? That seemed far more probable, and just then I remembered that in less than a fortnight the coming-of-age festivities of Lord Cranmere's son would beginFebruary the 28th. What complicated matters to some extent was that I had no means of ascertaining beyond doubt which members of this large party were actually members of the gang I now knew to exist, and which, if any, besides Dulcie, Lady Fitzgraham, and myself, also, I fancied, the man named Wollaston, were honest folk, some of them possibly dupes. Lady Fitzgraham I knew well by name and repute, and there could be no possibility of her being mixed up in criminal or even shady transactions. That the robbery of her famous jewels, by whomsoever it had been committed, had been premeditated and carefully planned, there seemed hardly room to doubt.
Next day all the Paris newspapers contained reports of the suicideas they evidently all believed it to have beenand of the robbery on board the boat. The usual theories, many of them so far-fetched as to be almost fantastic, were advanced, and all kinds of wild suggestions were made to account for the dead man's having been disguised. Not until three days later was the sensational announcement made in the newspapers that he had proved to be George Preston, the famous English detective, who had retired upon pension only the year before.
We had been four days in Paris, and nothing in the least suspicious had occurred. I had been unable to tell Lady Fitzgraham of my suspicions regarding the whereabouts of her stolen jewels, for she had not dined at the "Continental," nor had I seen her after our train had reached Paris, or even on the train after the accident. The hotel manager was under the impression, I had discovered while conversing with him, that we had all met by accident either in the train or on the boat, as the accommodation needed had been telegraphed for from Dieppe. He also was quite convincedthis I gathered at the same timethat our party consisted of people of considerable distinction, leaders of London Society, an impression no doubt strengthened by the almost reckless extravagance of every member of the party.
The robbery and the supposed suicide on board the boat were beginning to be less talked about. It was the evening of our fourth day in Paris, and I had just finished dressing for dinner, when somebody knocked. I called "Come in," and a man entered. Without speaking he shut the door behind him, turned the key in the lock, and came across to me.
He was tall and thin, a rather ascetic-looking individual of middle age, with small, intelligent eyes set far back in his head, bushy brows and a clean-shaven faceclearly an American. He stood looking at me for a moment or two, then said: