n discovered where all the best of the
stuff was kept. Bindo, in the meantime, was keeping his keen eye open in
other quarters. Last night, when the Jewess went up to her room, she
found her own maid had gone to bed very unwell, and the faithful Rosalie
had, at my orders, taken her place. 'How kind it was of the dear
Princess!' she said. When Rosalie left the room she carried with her the
necklace, together with several other trifles which she had pretended to
lock in the jewel-case. Ten minutes later Bindo also slipped into her
hands all that he had obtained in a swift raid in two other rooms during
the dance, and she left the hotel carrying away gems worth roughly, we
believe, about sixteen thousand pounds sterling. Kampf was awaiting her
in Pisa, and by this time is already well on his way to the frontier at
Modane, with the precious packet in his pocket."

"And there is really no suspicion of us?" I asked apprehensively.

"Certainly not. Not a soul knows that Rosalie left the hotel last night.
She re-entered by a window Bindo left open."

"But the garage people know that I was out," I said.

"Well, and what of that? You have had no hand in it, have you, _mon
cher_? No. We shall remain here another week. It is quite pleasant
here--and quite safe. To leave might arouse suspicion."

"Have not the police questioned Rosalie?"

"Certainly. But they have no suspicion of the maid of Princess Helen of
Dornbach-Laxenburg. How could they? Especially as the Prefect and his
wife were my guests at dinner last night!"

"Well," I declared, "the way the whole affair has been managed is
perfectly artistic."

"Of course," she said. "We do not blunder. Only poor people and fools do
that."

CHAPTER V

THE SIX NEW NOVELS

The car had again undergone a transformation.

With a new racing-body, built in Northampton, and painted dead white
picked out with gilt, no one would have recognised it as the car which
had carried away the clever jewel-thief from Bond Street.

Since the adventure at Leghorn I had seen nothing of La Belle Valentine.
With Bindo, however, I had driven the car across from Rome to Calais by
way of Ventimiglia and Marseilles, and, after crossing the Channel, I
had gone alone to Northampton, and there awaited the making of the smart
new racing-body.

Count Bindo di Ferraris, who seemed ever on the move, with an eye open
for "a good thing," wrote me from Ilfracombe, Southampton, Manchester,
Perth, Ab