“Gurther? You mean the man who danced with me?”
“That’s he. I keep telling you who he is,” said Joan impatiently. “I wish we could get out of here.”
She jumped up suddenly.
“Come and see if you can help me lift the trap.”
Mirabelle knew it was useless before she set forth on the quest for freedom. Their united efforts failed to move the stone, and Joan was on the point of collapse when they came back to their sleeping-room.
“I hope Gurther doesn’t know that those men are friends of yours,” she said, when she became calmer.
“You told me that yesterday. Would that make any difference?”
“A whole lot,” said Joan vehemently. “He’s got the blood of a fish, that man! There’s nothing he wouldn’t do. Monty ought to be flogged for leaving us here at his mercy. I’m not scared of Oberzohn—he’s old. But the other fellow dopes, and goes stark, staring mad at times. Monty told me one night that he was” she choked—“a killer. He said that these German criminals who kill people are never satisfied with one murder, they go on and on until they’ve got twenty or thirty! He says that the German prisons are filled with men who have the murder habit.”
“He was probably trying to frighten you.”
“Why should he?” said the girl, with unreasonable anger. “And leave him alone! Monty is the best in the world. I adore the ground he walks on!”
Very wisely, Mirabelle did not attempt to traverse this view.
It was only when her companion had these hysterical fits that fear was communicated to her. Her faith was completely and wholeheartedly centred on the three men—upon Gonsalez. She wondered how old he was. Sometimes he looked quite young, at others an elderly man. It was difficult to remember his face; he owed so much to his expression, the smile in his eyes, to the strange, boyish eagerness of gesture and action which accompanied his speech. She could not quite understand herself; why was she always thinking of Gonsalez, as a maid might think of a lover? She went red at the thought. He seemed so apart, so aloof from the ordinary influences of women. Suppose she had committed some great crime and had escaped the vigilance of the law, would he hunt her down in the same remorseless, eager way, planning to cut off every avenue of her escape until he shepherded her into a prison cell? It was a horrible thought, and she screwed up her eyes tight to blot out the mental picture she had made.
It would have given her no ordinary satisfaction to have known how often Gonsalez’s thoughts strayed to the girl who had so strangely come into his life. He spent a portion of his time that morning in his bedroom, fixing to the wall a large railway map which took in the south of England and the greater part of the Continent. A red-ink line marked the route from London to Lisbon, and he was fixing a little green flag on the line just south of Paris when Manfred strolled into the room and surveyed his work.
“The Sud Express is about there,” he said, pointing to the last of the green flags, “and I think our friend will have a fairly pleasant and uneventful journey as far as Valladolid—where I have arranged for Miguel Garcia, an old friend of mine, to pick him up and shadow him on the westward journey—unless we get the plane. I’m expecting a wire any minute. By the way, the Dieppe police have arrested the gentleman who tried to bump him overboard in mid-Channel, but the man who snatched at his portfolio at the Gare St. Lazare is still at liberty.”
“He must be getting quite used to it now,” said Manfred coolly, and laughed to himself.
Leon turned.
“He’s a good fellow,” he said with quick earnestness. “We couldn’t have chosen a better man. The woman on the train, of course, was Gurther. He is the only criminal I’ve ever known who is really efficient at disguising himself.”
Manfred lit his pipe; he had lately taken to this form of smoking. “The case grows more and more difficult every day. Do you realize that?”
Leon nodded. “And more dangerous,” he said. “By the laws of average, Gurther should get one of us the next time he makes an attempt. Have you seen the papers?”
Manfred smiled.
“They’re crying for Meadows’ blood, poor fellow! Which shows the extraordinary inconsistency of the public. Meadows has only been in one snake case. They credit him with having fallen down on the lot.”
“They seem to be in remarkable agreement that the snake deaths come into the category of wilful murder,” said Gonsalez as they went down the stairs together.
Meadows had been talking to the reporters. Indeed, that was his chief offence from the viewpoint of the official mind. For the first article in the code of every well-constituted policeman is, “Thou shalt not communicate to the Press.”
Leon strolled aimlessly about the room. He was wearing his chauffeur’s uniform, and his hands were thrust into the breeches pockets. Manfred, recognizing the symptoms, rang the bell for Poiccart, and that quiet man came from the lower regions.
“Leon is going to be mysterious,” said Manfred dryly.
“I’m not really,” protested Leon, but he went red. It was one of his most charming peculiarities that he had never forgotten how to blush. “I was merely going to suggest that there’s a play running in London that we ought to see. I didn’t know that The Ringer was a play until this morning, when I saw one of Oberzohn’s more genteel clerks go into the theatre, and, being naturally of an inquisitive turn of mind, followed him. A play that interests Oberzohn will interest me,
