“No. That’s just it,” replied the dark-eyed detective, whose chagrin was so apparent that Despujol had slipped through his fingers. “The game was not worth the candle. So he returned after proving to you his bona fides. And these bona fides he always carries in order to extricate himself from any ugly situation.”
“But the carpet pins?” asked the hotel manager.
The director of the Spanish secret police shrugged his shoulders, and said:
“Until Professor Vega can make a report we can do nothing. It is no use basing theories upon mere surmises. So we can only wait for Señor Vega to tell us what he discovers. Meanwhile, we will try and secure Despujol—though I fear he has too long a start of us.”
He crossed the room to the telephone, and a few minutes later spoke in Spanish into the instrument in sharp, authoritative tones.
I understood him to be speaking to the police commissary at Zaragoza, explaining that the much-wanted criminal Despujol had left Madrid for that city, and giving the train by which he was supposed to be travelling. Then, in turn, he spoke to the commissaries of Alcazar, Salamanca, Valladolid and Arroyo, thus informing the police along all the lines of railway leading from the capital.
It was evident that what I had told them caused considerable excitement. Indeed, after the head of the detective department had concluded giving his instructions over the telephone, he turned to me and translated into French the black record of the stranger whom I had discovered in my room.
That he was a bold and audacious criminal was quickly apparent. In the Sud express travelling between Madrid and Paris he had drugged and robbed an Italian jeweller of a wallet containing a quantity of diamonds, which he took to London at once and disposed of to a receiver of stolen property at Kilburn.
Another of his daring exploits was the theft of the famous Murillo from the Castle of Setefillas, near Seville. This he sold to a dealer in Brussels, who afterwards smuggled it to New York, where it was bought by a private collector for a very large sum.