The Place of Dragons: A Mystery

"Very," I declared, still gazing fixedly into her white face. "And can you tell me nothing further regarding this affair?" I asked, bending to her, and speaking in a whisper.

She shook her head.

I did not suspect – nay, I could not bring myself to believe – that Edward Craig had fallen by her hand. Yet the facts were strange – amazingly strange – and her demeanour was stranger still.

We had tea together. She poured it out, and handed it to me daintily, with a sweet smile upon her lips. Then after a further chat, she drew on her long gloves, settled her skirts and prepared to leave.

"A letter addressed to the Poste Restante at Versailles will always find me," she said, in reply to my request for an address. "I use the name Elise Leblanc."

I made a rapid note of it upon my shirt-cuff, and having paid the bill, we descended, and walked together, through the busy streets of Norwich, to the Thorpe Station, where I saw her into the evening express for London.

"Au revoir, M'sieu' Vidal," she said, as she held my hand, before entering the first-class compartment. "Do heed my warning, I beg of you. Do not further imperil yourself. Will you?"

"I cannot promise," I replied with a smile.

"But you must not persist – or something will most surely happen," she declared. "Au revoir! If we meet again it must be in the strictest secrecy. My uncle must never know."

"Au revoir!" I said as the porter closed the door, and next moment the train moved off.

I saw her face smiling, and a white-gloved hand waving at the window, and then "The Nightingale" had gone.

A fortnight went by. I had packed my traps, and leaving Cromer, returned to my rooms in London, and then crossed to Paris, where I spent a week in close, anxious inquiry.

Paris in August is given over to the Cookites and provincials, and most of my friends were absent.

The Prefecture of Police was, however, the chief centre of my sphere of operations, for in that sombre room, with its large, littered writing-table, its telephones, its green-painted walls, and green-baize covered door, the private cabinet of my friend Henri Jonet – the famous Chief Inspector of the Sûreté– I sat on several occasions discussing the activity of Jeanjean and his clever gang.

Jonet was a sharp-featured, clean-shaven man of about forty-five, short and slightly stout, with a pair of merry dark eyes, his hair carefully brushed and trousers always well creased. He was something of a dandy in private life, even though he so often assumed various disguises, passing very frequently as a camelot, or a respectable workman. Of his successes in detection of crime all the world knew.

Next to the Chef de la Sûreté, Chief Inspector Jonet was the most famous police official in Paris, or even in France. In the course of the past few years he had many times dealt unsuccessfully with crimes in which the amazing Jules Jeanjean had been implicated.

I had on many occasions assisted him in his investigations into other matters, and, therefore, on the sultry afternoon, when I called and presented my card, I was shown up immediately into his private bureau – that dismal and rather depressing room, which I so well remembered.

We sat smoking together for a long time before I approached the subject upon which I had called to consult him.

He sat back in his chair enjoying the excellent Bogdanoff cigarette, a fellow to which he had handed to me, and recalling a strange affair that, a year ago, had occupied us both – a theft of bonds from a private bank in the Boulevard Haussmann.

Outside, the afternoon was blazing hot, therefore the green sun-shutters were closed, and the room was in semi-darkness. Jonet's big writing-table was piled with reports and correspondence, as well as one or two recently-arrived photographs of persons wanted by the police authorities of other European countries.

Now and then the telephone buzzed, and he would reply, and give instructions in a quick, sharp voice. Then he turned to me again and continued our conversation.

"The Benoy affair in March last was a sensational one – the murder of the jeweller while in his motor-car in the Forest of Fontainebleau – you remember," I remarked presently in French, leaning back in my chair and puffing at my cigarette. "You made no arrest, did you?"

"Yes, several. But we didn't get the culprits," he replied with a dry smile. "It was our friend Jules Jeanjean again, without a doubt. But he and his accomplices got clean away in the stolen car. It was found two days later a mile out of Maçon, painted grey, and bearing another number. The bandits evidently took train."

"Where to?"

"Who knows? Back to Paris, perhaps," was his reply, flicking the ash from his cigarette. "Yet, though we made a close search, we found no trace whatever of the interesting Jules. Sapristí! I only wish I could lay hands upon him. He is undoubtedly the most daring and dangerous criminal in the whole of Europe," Jonet went on. "Of late we have had reports of his doings from Germany and Russia, but he always escapes. A big jewel robbery in Petersburg is his latest clever exploit. Yet how he disposes of his booty always puzzles me. He must get rid of it somewhere, and yet we never find any trace of it."

I said nothing. From his words I saw how utterly ignorant even Jonet was of the truth, and how little he suspected the actual fact that Jeanjean was not the originator of those ingenious crimes but merely the instrument of another and a master-brain.

The great police official drew a long sigh, and expressed wonder as to whether the elusive jewel-thief and assassin would ever fall into the hands of justice.

"At present he seems to bear quite a charmed life," he declared with a smile. "He openly defies us each time – sometimes even going the length of writing us an insulting letter, denouncing us as incompetent and heaping ridicule upon the whole department of the Sûreté. It is that which makes my officers so intensely keen to capture him."

"I fear you will never do so," I remarked.

"Why?"

"Because Jeanjean is too clever to be caught. He is wary, rich, and takes every precaution against surprise."

"You know him – eh?"

"Yes," I admitted. "But what is the latest information you have regarding him?"

Jonet took up the telephone and gave instructions for the dossier of the great criminal to be brought to him.

In a few moments a clerk entered bearing three formidable portfolios full of reports, photographs, lists of stolen jewellery, and other matters concerning the career of the man who had constantly baffled all attempts to capture him.

Jonet opened one of the portfolios and scanned several sheets of closely-written reports. Then he said —

"It seems that he, with a young girl, said to be a niece of his, were in Russia just prior to the great robbery from a jeweller in Petersburg. No doubt they were implicated in it. The girl, travelling alone, passed the frontier at Wirballen on the following day, but the telegram from the Petersburg police arrived at the frontier too late, and in Germany she disappeared."

"And what about Jeanjean?" I asked.

The famous Chief Inspector read on for a few moments. Then he replied —

"He was seen on the day of the theft, together with an Italian, believed to be one of his accomplices, but after that nothing further was heard of him until four days later. Then an inspector at Lille recognized him from his circulated photograph, but not being quite certain, and also knowing that, if the suspect were actually the man wanted, he would be armed, and recollecting the affair at Charleroi, he did not care to make a pounce single-handed. He went back to the police-station, but while he was looking for the photograph, his man, evidently seeing he was suspected, made his escape."

"And have you a photograph of the girl?" I asked anxiously.

"She has never been arrested, therefore we have no official portrait," was his reply. "But last summer, one of my assistants, a young man named Rothera, was in Dinard at the Hôtel Royal, keeping observation in another matter, when one evening he saw a young girl, who was staying in the hotel with an elderly aunt, meet in the Casino a man who greatly resembled Jeanjean. The pair went out and had a long stroll, speaking confidentially together. Meanwhile Rothera, like the inspector at Lille, went to the local bureau de police to turn up the description of the wanted man. Having done so, and having satisfied himself that it was actually the master-criminal so long wanted, he took three men and waited in patience in the country road along which the pair had strolled. Two hours elapsed, when, to their dismay, the young girl returned alone. Jeanjean, it was afterwards discovered, had a motor-car awaiting him about four kilometres away along the Dinan road. Rothera said nothing to the girl, but next day got into conversation with her in the hotel. He was exceedingly attentive through several succeeding days, and being an amateur photographer, asked to be allowed to take a snapshot of her. He had satisfied himself that, from her description, she was that female accomplice of the notorious jewel-thief, of whom we possessed no portrait. She, quite unsuspecting, believed Rothera to be an idle young man of means. He took the picture – and here it is," added the Inspector, and passed over to me a photograph of post-card size.

It was Lola. Lola, in a pretty white summer gown, lolling lazily in a long cane chair upon the beach at Dinard, and laughing merrily, her hat flung upon the ground, and her book in her lap. A pretty scene of summer idleness.

CHAPTER XVI

"WHERE THE TWO C'S MEET"

So Lola's portrait was in the hands of the French police. The fact jarred upon me.

But I was careful not to betray any of the agitation I felt, and after gazing upon it in silence I remarked in a light tone to Jonet —

"That is the only portrait you've got – eh? Rather good-looking, isn't she?"

"Good-looking! Ah, mon cher Vidal, extremely beautiful, I call her," declared the Inspector, taking the picture and gazing upon it. "Really," he added, "it hardly seems possible that such a pretty girl should be such a hardened and expert thief as she is reported to be."

"I thought Jeanjean was the thief," I said with a pretence of surprise.