.

A second night in durance was not much to my taste, but I bore it with
as much resignation as I could command; and when next morning I
appeared before the Court, I paid my fine of one hundred francs with
hearty good-will. I assured my bail, the friendly watchmaker, that he
need not have the smallest fear I should again commit myself.

CHAPTER XIII.

My spirits rose with my release, but there was still more than freedom
to encourage my light-heartedness. I heard now and definitely of my
fugitive lady. Falloon had come upon undoubted evidence that she had
never left the great Jura-Simplon station, but had remained quietly
out of sight in the "ladies' waiting-room" until the next train left
for Geneva. This was at 1.35 P.M., and she must have slipped away
right under my eyes into the very train which had brought me back from
Vevey. So near are the chances encountered in such a profession as
ours.

Falloon had only ascertained this positively on the second day of my
detention, but with it the information that only two first-class
tickets, both for Geneva, had been issued by that train. To make it
all sure he had taken the precaution to ask at all the stations along
the line at which the train had stopped, seven in number, and had
learned that no persons answering to my ladies had alighted at any of
them. So my search was carried now to Geneva, and it might be possible
to come upon my people there, although I was not oversanguine. I knew
something of the place. I had been there more than once, had stayed
some time, and I knew too well that it is a city with many issues,
many facilities for travelling, and, as they had so much reason for
moving on rapidly, the chances were that they would have already
escaped me.

However, with Falloon I proceeded to Geneva without delay, and began a
systematic search. We made exhaustive inquiries at the Cornavin
station, where we arrived from Lausanne, and heard something.

The party had certainly been seen at this very station. Two ladies,
one tall, the other short, with a baby. They had gone no further then;
they had not returned to the station since. So far good. But there was
a second station, the Gare des Vollondes, at the opposite end of the
city, from which ran the short line to Bouveret on the south shore of
the lake, and I sent Falloon there to inquire, giving him a rendezvous
an hour later at the Cafe de la Couronne on the Quai du Lac. Meanwhile
I meant to take a