g some aged
relations from whom I had expectations.

Bindo saw that my face had fallen.

"Look here, Ewart," he said, "I'm sorry that you have to do this long
run at such short notice, but you won't be alone--you'll pick up a lady,
and a very pretty young lady, too."

"Where?"

"Well, now I'll explain. Go around Paris, run on to Melun, and thence to
Fontainebleau. You remember we were there together last summer, at the
Hotel de France. At Fontainebleau ask for the road through the Forest
for Marlotte--remember the name. About seven kilometres along that road
you'll come to cross-ways. At eight o'clock to-morrow morning she will
be awaiting you there, and you will take her straight on to Monty."

"How shall I know her?"

"She'll ask if you are from Mr. Bellingham," was his reply. "And look
here," he added, drawing a long cardboard box from beneath the couch,
"put this in the car, for she won't have motor-clothes, and these are
for her. You'd better have some money, too. Here's a thousand francs;"
and he took from a drawer in the pretty inlaid Louis XV. writing-table
two five-hundred-franc notes and handed them to me, adding, "At present
I can tell you nothing more. Go out, find Pierrette--that's her
name--and bring her to Monty. At the Paris I shall be 'Bellingham'; and
recollect we'll have to be careful. They haven't, in all probability,
forgotten the other little affair. The police of Monaco are among the
smartest in Europe, and though they never arrest anybody within their
tin-pot Principality, they take jolly good care that the Monsieur le
Prefect at Nice knows all about their suspects, and leave him to do
their dirty work."

I laughed. Count Bindo, so thoroughly a cosmopolitan man-of-the-world,
so resourceful, so utterly unscrupulous, so amazingly clever at any
subterfuge, and yet so bold when occasion required, held the police in
supreme contempt. He often declared that there was no police official
between the town of Wick and the Mediterranean who had not his price,
and that in many Continental countries the Minister of Police himself
could be squared for a few hundreds.

"But what's the nature of our new scheme?" I inquired, curious to know
what was intended.

"It's a big one--the biggest we've ever tried, Ewart," was his answer,
lighting a fresh cigarette, and draining his glass as he wished me a
successful run due South. "If it works, then we shall bring off a real
good thing."

"Do the others com