aby undeterred, and
installed it, slumbering peacefully, on Philpotts's knees in the seat
before me, and lying back with ostentatious indifference, drove off
in full view of the detective.

I shot one glance back as I turned down the long slope leading to the
Grace-a-Dieu Street, and was pleased to see that he had jumped into a
_fiacre_ and was coming on after me. He should have his fill of
driving. I led him up and down and round and round, street after
street, all along the great Cannebiere and out towards the Reserve,
where Roubion's Restaurant offers his celebrated fish stew,
_bouillabaise_, to all comers.

Then when Mr. Tiler's weedy horse began to show signs of distress, for
my sturdy pair had outpaced him sorely, I relented and reentered the
town, meaning to make a long halt at the office of Messrs. Cook and
Son, the universal friends of all travellers far and near. I had long
had an idea in my mind that the most promising, if not the only
effective method of ending our trouble would be to put the seas
between us and the myrmidons of the Courts. I had always hoped to
escape to some far-off country where the King's writ does not run,
where we could settle down under genial skies, amid pleasant
surroundings, at a distance from the worries and miseries of life.

Now, with the enemy close at hand, and the real treasure in my foolish
sister's care, I could not expect to evade them, but I might surely
beguile and lead them astray. This was the plan I had been revolving
in my mind, and which took me to the tourist offices. The object I had
in view was to get a list of steamers leaving the port of Marseilles
within the next two or three days, and their destination. As everybody
knows, there is a constant moving of shipping East, West, and South,
and it ought not to be difficult to pick out something to suit me.

The obliging clerk at the counter gave me abundant, almost unending,
information.

"To the East? Why, surely, there are several opportunities. The P. and
O. has half a dozen steamers for the East, pointing first for Port
Said and Suez Canal, and bound to India, Ceylon, China, and the
Antipodes; the same line for Gibraltar and the West. The Messageries
Maritime, for all Mediterranean ports, the General Navigation of Italy
for Genoa and Naples, the Transatlantique for various Algerian ports,
Tunis, Bone, Philippeville, and Algiers, other companies serving the
coast of Morocco and especially Tangier."

Truly