e of the woman's
husband, a brown-faced, sinister-looking individual whose black bushy
eyebrows met, and who greeted the young Englishman familiarly
in atrocious French, offering him a glass of red wine from a big
rush-covered flask.

"We only had word of your coming late last night," the man said. "You
had already started from Monte Carlo, and we wondered if you would get
past the frontier all right."

"Yes," replied Hugh, sipping the wine out of courtesy. "We got out of
France quite safely. But tell me, who made all these arrangements for
me?"

"Why, Il Passero, of course," replied the man, whose wife addressed him
affectionately as Beppo.

"Who is Il Passero, pray?"

"Well, you know him surely. Il Passero, or The Sparrow. We call him so
because he is always flitting about Europe, and always elusive."

"The police want him, I suppose."

"I should rather think they do. They have been searching for him for
these past five years, but he always dodges them, first in France, then
here, then in Spain, and then in England."

"But what is this mysterious and unknown friend of mine?"

"Il Passero is the chief of the most daring of all the gangs of
international thieves. We all work at his direction."

"But how did he know of my danger?" asked Hugh, mystified and dismayed.

"Il Passero knows many strange things," he replied with a grin. "It
is his business to know them. And besides, he has some friends in the
police--persons who never suspect him."

"What nationality is he?"

The man Beppo shrugged his shoulders.

"He is not Italian," he replied. "Yet he speaks the _lingua Toscano_
perfectly and French and English and _Tedesco_. He might be Belgian or
German, or even English. Nobody knows his true nationality."

"And the man who brought me here?"

"Ah! that was Paolo, Il Passero's chauffeur--a merry fellow--eh?"

"Remarkable," laughed Hugh. "But I cannot see why The Sparrow has taken
such a paternal interest in me," he added.

"He no doubt has, for he has, apparently, arranged for your safe return
to England."

"You know him, of course. What manner of man is he?"

"A signore--a great signore," replied Beppo. "He is rich, and is often
on the Riviera in winter. He's probably there now. Nobody suspects him.
He is often in England, too. I believe he has a house in London. During
the war he worked for the French Secret Service under the name of
Monsieur Franqueville, and the French Government never suspecte