CHAPTER XII LOLA
Several times I re-read the account of the dastardly outrage.
Too well I knew how dangerous and desperate a man was Jules Jeanjean, the studious, and apparently harmless, Belgian doctor, who had lodged in the Overstrand Road, and had strolled about the pier and promenade of Cromer. His name, during the last three years or so, had become well known from end to end of Europe as an Anarchist who defied all the powers of law and order; a man who moved from place to place with marvellous swiftness, and who passed from frontier to frontier under the very noses of the commissaries of police stationed there.
His narrowest escape of capture had been one day in Charleroi, where, while sitting before the Café des XXV, he had been recognized by an inspector of the French Sûreté, who was in Belgium upon another matter. The inspector called a local agent of police, who suddenly pounced upon him, but in an instant Jeanjean had drawn a revolver, with which he shot the unfortunate policeman dead, and, in the confusion, escaped.
He then wrote an impudent letter to the Prefecture of Police in Paris, telling them that his intention was to serve any other police agent the same who might attempt to arrest him.
I took from my dispatch-box the copy I had made of the letter in Italian, found at Beacon House. In the light of that newspaper report it proved curious and interesting reading.
Who was the writer, Egisto? Evidently one of the conspirators. It was a report to his "Illustrious Master," of what had been done. Who was his Master? Surely not Jules Jeanjean, because one sentence read, "J. arrives back in Algiers to-morrow."
Was it possible that the "Illustrious Master"—the man who actually plotted and directed those dramatic coups—was none other than old Gregory himself!
The letter was certainly a report to the head of an association of dangerous malefactors. Who "H." was, who had "left as arranged," I knew not, but "J." evidently indicated Jules Jeanjean, and the fact that he would arrive back in Algiers on the morrow, showed first, that his hiding-place was on the other side of the Mediterranean; and, secondly, that after the crime a dash had been made to the south to join the mail-boat at Marseilles. The writer, Egisto, had left the other, travelling via Brindisi, to Port Said, so leaving the Paris police to again search for them in vain.
"Does H. know anything, do you think?" was the question Egisto had asked in his letter.