The Place of Dragons: A Mystery

by William Le Queux

  CHAPTER XXVI

  HOT-FOOT ACROSS EUROPE

  By Lola's attitude I became more than ever mystified. I tried to induceher to tell me the exact position of affairs, but she seemed far toonervous and unstrung. The fact that Craig had found out her hiding-placeseemed to cause her the most breathless anxiety.

  That he knew some guilty secret of hers seemed plain.

  It was eleven o'clock before I rose to go, after begging her many timesin vain to tell me the truth. I felt confident that she could revealthe strange mystery of Cromer, yet she steadfastly refused.

  "You surely see, Lola, that we are both in serious peril," I said,standing before the chair upon which she had sunk in deep dejection."These daring, unscrupulous people must, sooner or later, make a fatalattack upon us, if we do not deliver our blow against them. To invokethe aid or protection of the police is useless. They set all authorityat defiance, for they are wealthy, and the ramifications of theirsociety extend all over Europe."

  "I know," she admitted. "Vernon has agents in every country. I have metmany of them--quite unsuspicious persons. My uncle has introduced me topeople at whose apparent honesty and respectability I have been amazed."

  "Then you must surely realize how insecure is the present position ofboth of us," I said.

  "I do. But disaster cannot be averted," was her sorrowful response.

  "Unless you unite with me in avenging the attack made upon us at SpringGrove."

  "What is the use?" she queried. "They have all left London."

  "What?" I exclaimed quickly. "You know that?"

  "Yes," she replied. "I know they have."

  "How?"

  "By an advertisement I saw in the paper three days ago," she answered."They use a certain column of a certain paper on a certain day todistribute general information to all those interested."

  "In a code?"

  "In a secret cipher--known only to the friends of M'sieur Vernon," shesaid. "They always look for his orders or his warnings on the eighteenthof each month. My uncle is back at Algiers."

  "Where is Vernon?"

  "Ah! I do not know. Perhaps he is with my uncle."

  "But the young man, Craig. Why is he watching you? It can only be withevil intent."

  She drew a long breath, but said nothing. And to all my furtherquestions she remained dumb, so that when I bent over her outstretchedhand and left, I felt annoyed at her resolute secrecy--a secrecy whichmust, I felt, result fatally.

  And yet by her manner I was confident that she was still prevented byfear from revealing everything to me. Yes, after all, I pitied herdeeply.

  At the _Grand_ I found Rayner awaiting me. He had already learnt fromthe police that the car in which Craig had driven away belonged to agarage in Bournemouth.

  On going there he had found the car had just returned. It had been hiredfor the evening by Craig himself, who had first driven out to Boscombeand was afterwards driven to Christchurch, where he had caught theexpress for London.

  He had, therefore, gone.

  This news I scribbled in a note to Lola, and before midnight Rayner haddelivered it at Mr. Featherstone's house.

  Then I retired to rest full of strange thoughts and seriousapprehensions. The revelations of that night had indeed been astounding.Craig was alive, and his intentions were, undoubtedly, sinister ones.

  But who was the man who had met with such a mysterious death and hadbeen buried as "Mr. Gregory's nephew?"

  At eleven o'clock next morning I took the tram along to Boscombe andrang at the door of the house where my delightful little friend wasliving.

  The neat maid who answered amazed me by saying--

  "Mademoiselle left for London by the eight o'clock train this morning,sir. She packed all her things after you left last night, and ordered acab by telephone."

  "Didn't she leave me any message?" I asked Mrs. Featherstone, when Isaw her a few moments later.

  "No, none, Mr. Vidal," replied the old lady. "After you had gone, andshe received your note, she became suddenly very terrified, why, I don'tknow. Then she packed, and though we tried to persuade her to stay tillyou called, she declined. All she said, besides thanking us, was thatshe would write to you."

  "Most extraordinary!" I exclaimed. "I wonder what caused her such suddenfear?"

  Could it have been that she had discovered any one else watching thehouse? Strange, I thought, that she had not sent me word of her intendeddeparture. She could so easily have spoken to me on the telephone.

  Well, two hours later, I followed her to London, and began an inquiry ofhotels where I knew she had stayed on previous occasions--the _Cecil_,the _Savoy_, the _Carlton_, the _Metropole_, the _Grand_, and so forth.But though I spent a couple of hours on the telephone, speaking withvarious reception clerks, I could get no news of Mademoiselle Sorel.

  Yet, was it surprising? She would hardly, in the circumstances, stay inLondon in her own name.

  Ten days went by. By each post I expected news of Lola, but none came,and I felt confident that she had gone abroad.

  I wired and wrote to Mademoiselle Elise Leblanc, at the Poste Restanteat Versailles. But I obtained no reply. At last I went down to Cromerand remained at the _Hotel de Paris_ for nearly a week, carefully goingover all the details of the mystery with Mr. Day and Inspector Treeton,who were, of course, both as much puzzled as I was myself.

  The autumn weather was perfect. The holiday crowd had left, and Cromerlooked her brightest and best in the glorious sunshine and golden tintsof the declining year. On the links I played one or two most enjoyablerounds, and once or twice I sat outside the Golf Club and smoked andchatted with men I knew in London.

  Daily I wondered what had become of Lola.

  Time after time I visited that green-painted seat near which the deadman had been found and where I had discovered the imprint of Lola'sshoe. But, beyond what I have already recorded in the foregoing pages, Icould discover absolutely nothing. The identity of the man who hadmasqueraded in the clothes of the master-criminal was entirelyenshrouded in mystery.

  The law had buried Edward Craig, and in the cemetery, on the road toHolt was a plain head-stone bearing his name and the date of his death.

  How could I have been mistaken in his identity? That was the chief factwhich held me puzzled and confused. I had looked upon his face, asothers had done, and all had agreed that the man who died was actuallyCraig.

  I told Treeton nothing of my discovery, but one day, as I stood at thewindow of the hotel gazing across the sea, I made a sudden resolve, andthat evening I found myself back again in my rooms in London, withRayner packing my traps for a trip across the Channel.

  My one most deadly fear was that Lola might, already, have fallen intoone or other of the pitfalls which were, no doubt, spread open for her.The crafty, unscrupulous gang, with Vernon at their head, weredetermined that we both should die.

  On the morning of my arrival from Cromer I left Charing Cross by theboat-train, and that same evening entered the long, dusty _wagon-lit_ ofthe night rapide for Marseilles.

  Marseilles! How many times in my life had I trod the broad Cannebiere,drank cocktails at the Louvre et Paix, ate my boullibuisse at the littleunderground cafe, where the best in the world is served, or saunteredalong the double row of booths placed under the trees of theboulevard--shops where one can buy anything from a toothpick to akitchen-stove. Yes, even to the blase cosmopolitan, Marseilles is alwaysinteresting, and as I drove along from the station up the Cannebiere, Ifound the place full of life and movement, with the masts of shippingand glimpses of huge docks showing at the end of the broad, handsomethoroughfare.

  From the station I drove direct to the big black mail-boat of the FrenchTransatlantic Company, and by noon we had swung out of the harbour pastthe historic Chateau d'If, our bows set due south, for Algiers. Lola hadtold me that Jeanjean had fled to his hiding-place. And I intended toseek him and face him.

  There were few passengers on board--one or two French officers on theirway
to join their regiments, a few commercial men; while in the thirdclass I saw more than one squatting, brown-faced Arab, picturesque inhis white burnouse and turban, placidly smoking, with his belongingstied in bundles arranged around him on the deck. The sea in the Gulf ofLyons was rough, as it usually is, yet the bright autumn weather on landhad seemed perfect. As soon, however, as we were away from the gulf andin the open sea, following for hours in the wake of an Orient liner onher way to Australia, the weather abated and the voyage became mostenjoyable.

  As a student of men, I found the passengers in the steerage far moreinteresting than those in the saloon. Among the former was a knot ofyoung, active-looking men of various nationalities, who leaned over theside watching the crimson sunset, and smoking and chattering, sometimestrying to make each other understand. I saw they were in charge of amilitary officer, and one of them being a smart, rather gentlemanlyyoung Englishman--the only other Englishman on board, as far as I couldgather--I spoke to him.

  "Yes," he laughed, "my comrades here are rather a queer lot. We've allof us come to grief in one way or another. Bad luck, that's it. I speakfor myself. I had a commission in the Hussars, but the gambling feverbit me hard, and I went a little too often to Dick Seddon's snug littleplace in Knightsbridge. Then I came a cropper, the governor cut uprough, and there was only one thing left to do--to hand in my papers, goto Paris, and join the French Foreign Legion. So, here I am, drafted toAlgeria as a private with my friends, who are all in the same gloriouspredicament. See that fair-bearded chap over there?" he added, pointingto a well-set-up man of thirty-five who was just lighting a cigarette."He's a German Baron, captain of one of the crack regiments inSaxony--quite a decent chap--a woman, I think, is at the bottom of histrouble."

  And so, while the Arabs knelt towards Mecca, and touched the decks withtheir foreheads, we chatted on, he telling me what he knew concerningeach of his hard-up companions who, under names not their own, were nowon their way to serve France, as privates, in the "Legion of the LostOnes," and start their careers afresh.

  At last, after a couple of days, the blue coast of Africa could bediscerned straight ahead, and gradually, as I stood leaning upon therail and watching, the long white front of Algiers, with its breakwater,its white domes of mosques, and high minarets, and its heights crownedby white villas, came into view.

  The city, dazzling white against the intense blue of the Mediterranean,presented a picture like the illustration to a fairy tale, and I stoodwatching, the sunny strip of African shore until at last we droppedanchor in the shelter of the bay, and presently went ashore in a boat.

  I followed my traps across the sun-baked promenade to the nearesthotel--the old-fashioned _Regence_, in The Place--and after a wash, anda marzagran at the cafe outside, I inquired my way to the Prefecture ofPolice, where, on presenting an open letter, which Henri Jonet, of the_Surete_, had given me a couple of years before, and which had oftenserved as an introduction, I was received very cordially.

  To the French detective-inspector I said--

  "I am making an inquiry, and I want, M'sieur, to ask you to allow me tohave one of your men. I am meeting an individual who may provedesperate."

  "There is danger--eh? Why, of course, M'sieur, a man shall accompanyyou." And he shouted through the open window to one of his underlingswho was seated on a bench in the inner courtyard.

  I made no mention of the name of Jules Jeanjean. Had I done so theeffect would, I know, have been electrical.

  But when I got outside with the dark-eyed, sunburnt little man in ashabby straw hat and rather frayed suit, I exclaimed in French--

  "There is a villa somewhere outside the town where some experiments inwireless telegraphy are being conducted. Do you happen to know theplace?"

  "Ah! M'sieur means the Villa Beni Hassan, out near the Jardin d'Essai.There are two high masts in the grounds with four long wires suspendedbetween them."

  "Who lives there?"

  "The Comte Paul d'Esneux."

  "Is he French?" I asked, at the same time inquiring his description.

  From the latter, as the detective gave it to me, I at once knew that theComte d'Esneux and Jules Jeanjean were one and the same.

  "Non, Monsieur," replied the man. "He is a great Belgian financier. Hecomes here at frequent intervals, and carries on his experiments withwireless telegraphy. It is said that he has made several discoveries inwireless telephony, hence the Government have given him permission toestablish a station with as great a power as that at Oran."

  "And he is often experimenting?"

  "Constantly. It is said that he can actually transmit messages to Parisand England. Last year, when the station at Oran was injured by fire,the Government operators came here, took his instruments over andworked them. The installation is, I believe, most up-to-date."

  "_Bien!_" I said. "Then let us go up there, and see this Comted'Esneux."

  And together we entered a ramshackle fiacre in The Place, and drove awayout by the city gate to the white, dusty high-road, along which manywhite-robed Arabs and a few Europeans were trudging in the burning glareof the African sun.

  When I had mentioned the Count as the person whom I wished to see, Inoticed that the detective hesitated, and, with a strange look, regardedme with some apprehension.

  Did he suspect? Was he suspicious of the truth concerning the actualidentity of the wealthy Belgian financier who dabbled in wireless?

  Were rumours already afloat, I wondered?

  Had the ever-active Jonet at last succeeded in establishing the secrethiding-place of the notorious Jules Jeanjean--the prince of Europeanjewel-thieves?