At a glance I took in the whole arrangement, placed as it was, upon a long table beneath a window of stained glass at the further end of that luxurious little Moorish chamber. Apparently no cost had been spared in its installation, and I fully believed that with it the notorious criminal could communicate with any station within a radius of, perhaps, two thousand miles.
Fournier had questioned the native servants rapidly, and received their replies, which were at first unsatisfactory. I saw by the fear in their faces that he had threatened them, when suddenly one of them excitedly made a statement.
"Diable!" cried the detective in French, turning to me. "The Count recognized us, and had us locked in that death-chamber while he and the Englishman, M'sieur Vernon, got away!"
"Escaped!" I gasped in dismay. "Then let us follow."
A quick word in Arabic, and the two servants, without further reluctance, dashed away along the big hall, through several luxuriously-furnished rooms full of soft divans, where the air was heavy with Eastern perfumes and the decorations were mostly in dark red and blue. Then across a small cool courtyard paved with polished marble, where another fountain plashed, and out to the sun-baked palm-grove which sloped from the front of the house away to the calm sapphire sea.
Excitedly the men pointed, as we stood upon the marble terrace, to a white speck far away along the broken coast of pale brown rocks, a speck fast receding around the next point, behind which was hidden the harbour of Algiers.
"By Gad!" I cried, gazing eagerly after it, "that's a motor-boat, and they are making for the town! We mustn't lose an instant or they will get away to some place of safety."
So together we dashed back to the road as fast as our legs could carry us, and drove with all possible speed back to the town, in order to reach the harbour before the fugitives could land.