For the appointed hour I waited in greatest anxiety. What if the trio had been arrested in Vienna?
That afternoon I wrote a long and encouraging letter to Phrida, telling her that I was exerting every effort on her behalf and urging her to keep a stout heart against her enemies, who now seemed to be in full flight.
At last, eight o'clock came, and I entered the small courtyard of the Préfecture of Police, where a uniformed official conducted me up to the room of Inspector Frémy.
The big, merry-faced man rose as I entered and placed his cigar in an ash tray.
"Bad luck, m'sieur!" he exclaimed in French. "They left Brussels in the Orient, as I suspected—all three of them. Here is the reply," and he handed me an official telegram in German, which translated into English read:
"To Préfet of Police, Brussels, from Préfet of Police, Vienna:
"In response to telegram of to-day's date, the three persons described left Brussels by Orient Express, travelled to Wels, and there left the train at 2.17 this afternoon. Telephonic inquiry of police at Wels results that they left at 4.10 by the express for Paris."
"I have already telegraphed to Paris," Frémy said. "But there is time, of course, to get across to Paris, and meet the express from Constantinople on its arrival there. Our friends evidently know their way about the Continent!"
"Shall we go to Paris," I suggested eagerly, anticipating in triumph their arrest as they alighted at the Gare de l'Est. I had travelled by the express from Vienna on one occasion about a year before, and remembered that it arrived in Paris about nine o'clock in the morning.
"With the permission of my chief I will willingly accompany you, m'sieur," replied the detective, and, leaving me, he was absent for five minutes or so, while I sat gazing around his bare, official-looking bureau, where upon the walls were many police notices and photographs of wanted persons, "rats d'hotel," and other malefactors. Brussels is one of the most important police centres in Europe, as well as being the centre of the political secret service of the Powers.