Yet again, a few months later he enticed a bank messenger in Barcelona into a house he had taken for the purpose, and having knocked him down robbed him of his wallet containing a quantity of English bank notes and negotiable securities.
Up to five years before he had been convicted many times, but he now seemed to be able to commit robberies with impunity, and always get off free. It was believed that he lived in secret somewhere abroad and only came to Spain to commit thefts. Probably he passed to and fro to France by one of the obscure mountain tracks through the Pyrenees known only to those who dealt in contraband—and there are many in that chain of mountains.
In any case the police were now hot again upon his track.
Suddenly the head of the Detective Department had another inspiration and rang up both Jaca and Pamplona, which are at the end of each railway line towards the barrier of mountains which form the French frontier.
“If he is on his way to France he will go to either one place or the other,” he said.
“But have they his photograph?” I asked.
“A copy of this photograph taken at the prison of Barcelona, is in every detective office in Spain,” was his reply. “Rodriquez Despujol is the most dangerous and elusive criminal at large,” he went on. “He never leaves anything to chance. No doubt he believed that you were in possession of something valuable, and his intention was to drug you and get it. But you were too quick for him. My chief surprise is why, when he found himself cornered as he was, that he did not draw his knife and attack you.”
“But I had a pistol!” I said.
“Despujol does not fear pistols. Before you could pull the trigger he could have pounced upon you like a cat!” replied the police official.