I swung the car into the well-kept gravelled
drive which led through the beautiful flower-garden up to the principal
entrance. The noise we created awoke the night-porter, and after some
brief explanation, Pierrette got out, wished us a merry "_Bon jour_!"
and disappeared. Then, with the Count mounted at my side, I backed out
into the roadway, and we were soon speeding along that switchback of a
road with dozens of dangerous turns and irritating tram-lines that leads
past Eze into the tiny Principality of His Royal Highness Prince Rouge
et Noir--the paradise of gamblers, thieves, and fools.

"Well, Ewart," he said, almost before we got past Mr. Gordon Bennett's
villa, "I suppose the girl's been chattering to you--eh? What has she
said?"

"Well, she hasn't said much," was my reply, as I bent my head to the
mistral that was springing up. "Told me who she is, and that her father
and his jewels have disappeared in London."

"What!" he cried in a voice of amazement. "What's that about jewels?
What jewels?"

"Why, you surely know," I said, surprised at his demeanour.

"I assure you, Ewart, this is the first I know about any jewels," he
declared. "You say her father and some shiners have disappeared in
London. Tell me quickly, under what circumstances. What has she been
telling you?"

"Well, first tell me--are you aware of who she really is?"

"No, I don't, and that's a fact. I believe she's the daughter of an old
broken-down Catholic marquise--one of the weedy sort--who lives at
Troyes, or some such dead-alive hole as that. Her mother tried to make
her take the veil, and hasn't succeeded."

"She prefers the motor-veil, it appears," I laughed. "But that isn't the
story she's told me."

The red light of a level-crossing gave warning, and I pulled up, and
let out a long blast on the electric horn, until the gates swung open.

"Her real name is, I believe, Pierrette Dumont, only daughter of that
big jeweller in the Rue de la Paix."

"What!" cried Bindo, in such a manner that I knew he was not joking.
"Old Dumont's daughter? If that's so, we _are_ in luck's way."

"Yes, Dumont went to London, and took his clerk, a certain Martin, with
him, and a bagful of jewels worth the respectable sum of half a million
francs. They stayed at the Charing Cross Hotel, but five days later both
men and the jewels disappeared."

Bindo sank back in his seat utterly dumbfounded.

"But, Ewart," he gasped, "do you really think it is tru