Thus the two made some huge coups. In one instance, the pearls of the Duchess of Carcassonne, valued at forty-five thousand pounds, were secured, and never traced, for they were sold east of Suez. In another instance the celebrated diamond necklace belonging to Mademoiselle Montbard, the famous actress at the Ambigu in Paris, worth thirty thousand pounds, was abstracted from her baggage. Emeralds to the value of over twenty thousand pounds, the property of the wife of an American millionaire, and the whole of the famous jewels of the Princess Tchernowski were also among the articles stolen.
So constant, however, were these mysterious thefts, that at last the police established a strict surveillance upon all baggage, and hence the interesting little game was at an end.
Matters grew a trifle too warm, and though neither Jeanjean nor Bertini changed their mode of life with their rapidly-gained wealth, yet it was felt that to retire was best. So, within a month of each other, they left. Jeanjean crossed over to England, and Bertini accepted promotion to Boulogne, where he remained several months, fearing that if he resigned too quickly suspicions might be aroused.
Of course, after this, the organized thefts between Calais and Paris ceased suddenly, though the Company never entertained the slightest suspicion of the guilty persons, or of the mode in which each trunk containing jewellery was made known to the thief.
Vernon's craft and cunning were unequalled, for at his suggestion, Jeanjean, though he had over fifty thousand pounds in the Bank of England, now embarked upon the career of a jewel-thief, whose audacity, daring and elusiveness was astounding. His anarchist views prompted him to disregard human life wherever it interfered with his plans, and so clever and ingenious were his coups, that the police of Europe, whom he so often defied, stood dumbfounded.
About this time Lola's father, the honest leather-merchant of Paris, went bankrupt, and died a few weeks afterwards of phthisis, while Madame Sorel, brokenhearted, followed her husband to the grave two months later, leaving little Lola alone. She was then fifteen, and her uncle, seeing that she might be of use to him, adopted her as his daughter, and gradually initiated her into the arts and wiles of an expert-thief. His whole surroundings were criminal, she declared to me. She lived in an atmosphere of crime, for to the flat in the Boulevard Pereire, which her uncle made his headquarters when in Paris, came the men, Bertini, Vernon, Hodrickx, Hunzle, and others, great coups being discussed between them, and arranged, thefts carried out in various cities of Europe, often at great cost and frequently with the assistance of Lola, who was pressed into the service, and upon whom her uncle had bestowed the name of "The Nightingale," on account of her sweet voice.
Vernon was the brain of the organization. By his connection with the diamond trade he obtained information as to who had valuable gems in their possession, and by the exercise of his marvellous wit and subterfuge would devise deep and remarkable plots of which the assassination of the well-known Paris jeweller, M. Benoy, was one. In three years the daring gang, so perfectly organized, perpetrated no fewer than eighteen big jewel robberies as well as other smaller thefts and burglaries. In many, robbery was, alas! accompanied by brutal violence. The Paris Sûreté, Scotland Yard, and the Detective Departments of Berlin, Brussels, and Rome were ever on the alert endeavouring to trace, capture, and break up the gang, but with the large funds at their disposal they were able to bribe even responsible officials who became obnoxious, and by such means evade arrest. Of these bribings there had been many sinister whispers, as Henri Jonet told me months afterwards.
"Ah! Lola!" I exclaimed. "How strangely romantic your career has been!"
"Yes, M'sieur Vidal," she replied, turning her splendid eyes upon mine. "And were it not for your generosity towards me, I should have been arrested that night at Balmaclellan, and at this moment would have been in prison."
"I know that you have been associated with these men through no fault of your own—that you have been forced to become a confederate of thieves and assassins," I said. "Surely no other girl in all England, or, indeed, in Europe, has found herself in a similar position—the decoy of such a dangerous and unscrupulous gang."