At once I guessed that this robbery must be yet another of the gang's outrages. My suspicion became conviction when, on reading further, I learned that it had taken place on the occasion of a great reception, when the servants at the château had been busily engaged. The goods stolen, the report ended, were valued at many thousands of pounds.
Finding little else of interest in the paper, I continued my ramble. Glancing at my watch I found it was past six. At that moment it was that, turning aimlessly into a side street, I came suddenly face to face with François, my rescuer.
"We seem fated to meet!" he exclaimed in his patois French, and he laughed.
He looked hard at me for some moments; then, as though his mind were suddenly made up, he said abruptly:
"I wonder, Mr. BerringtonI fancy that by nature you are inquisitiveif you would like to see something you have never seen before. I don't believe you fully realize how implicitly I now trust you. I should like to prove it to you."
"I should like to see it, immensely," I answered, wondering what on earth, in the nature of a novelty, such a man could have to show me.
"Come," he said in the same tone, linking his arm in mine. "I will show it to you now. As I say, I have no fear at all that you will betray me, yet there isn't another living person, excepting my own accomplices, I would take where I am going to take you now."
Down the side street he had just come up I followed him. We turned to the right again, then to the left. A little further on he stopped at a greengrocer's shop, a small, insignificant shop with one window only.
"Wait here," he said as he entered.
A minute later he reappeared and beckoned to me.