"They will probably travel by the train which arrives from Turin at 6.16," the Chief of the Brigade Mobile went on. "The numbers of their tickets are 4,176 B. and 4,177 B., issued to London. Search them, as they may have stolen jewels upon them. Understand?"
An affirmative reply was given, and the white-haired little man replaced the telephone receiver.
Thanking him I went outside into the Via Garibaldi, with a sigh of relief. At last the two men were running straight into the arms of the police. My chief thought now was of Lola. Where could she be, that she had not answered my urgent letters sent to the Poste Restante at Versailles?
The next train—the through sleeping-car express from Rome to Calais—left at a few minutes to six, and for this we were compelled to wait.
I recollected that Lola had told me how Jeanjean was in the habit of communicating with his confederate Hodrickx, who had also established a wireless station in Genoa. Thereupon I made inquiry, and found that aerial wires were placed high over the roof of a house close to the Acqua Sola Gardens at the end of the broad, handsome Via Roma.
The house, however, was tenantless, Hodrickx, apparently a Belgian, having sold his furniture and disappeared, no one knew where, a fortnight previously.
At six o'clock we entered the Calais express, and travelling by way of Alessandria and Turin, ascended, through the moon-lit Alps, that night a perfect fairyland, up the long steep incline, mounting ever higher and higher, until the two engines hauling the train-de-luxe at last, at midnight, pulled up at the little ill-lit station of Bardonnechia. There, we hastily alighted and sought the Commissary of Police.
To him Fournier presented his card of identity which every French detective carries, and at once the brown-bearded official told us that, although strict watch had been kept upon every train, the fugitives had not arrived!
"They may have left the train at Turin, and gone across to Milan, and thence by the Gotthard route to Basle and Paris," he suggested to me. "If they believe they were followed that is what they most certainly would do."