night after our arrival, however, we ran,
one bright morning, along the lower road by Beaulieu to Nice--bad, by
the way, on account of the sharp corners and electric trams--and called
at a small hotel in the Boulevard Gambetta.

The Count apparently had an appointment with a tall, dark-haired,
extremely good-looking young French girl, with whom he lunched at a
small restaurant, and afterwards he walked for an hour on the Promenade,
talking with her very earnestly.

She was not more than nineteen--a smart, very _chic_ little Parisienne,
quietly dressed in black, but in clothes that bore unmistakably the
_cachet_ of a first-class dressmaker. They took a turn on the Jetee
Promenade, and presently returned to the hotel, when the Count told her
to go and get a close hat and thick coat, and he would wait for her.

Then, when she had gone, he told me that we were about to take her over
to the Bristol at Beaulieu, that great white hotel that lies so
sheltered in the most delightful bay of the whole Riviera.

It was a clear, bright December afternoon. The roads were perfect,
though dusty as the Corniche always is, and very soon, with the Count
and his lady friend, I swung into the curved drive before the hotel.

"You can go to the garage for an hour or so, Ewart," my employer said,
after they had descended. Therefore I turned the car and went to the
huge garage at the rear of the hotel--the garage which every motorist on
the Riviera knows so well.

After an hour I re-entered the hotel to look for the Count and receive
orders, when I saw, in the great red-carpeted lounge, my employer and
the little Parisienne seated with the man whom I knew as Sir Charles
Blythe, but who really was one of Count Bindo's confederates.

We exchanged glances, and his was a meaning one. That some deep and
ingenious game was in progress I felt certain, but what it was I had no
idea.

Blythe was smartly dressed in a grey flannel suit and white shoes--the
costume _de rigueur_ on the Riviera--and as he smoked his cigar, easily
reclining in the wicker lounge-chair, he presented the complete picture
of the English aristocrat "putting in" a month or two for sunshine.

Both men were talking earnestly in French with the dark-eyed little
lady, who now and then laughed, or, raising her shoulders, looked from
one to the other and protruded her chin in a gesture of uncertainty.

I retired and watched closely. It was quite plain in a few moments that
the