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.

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