"Take me to her! Take me to her at once, will you? She's not safe!"

said Rainer quickly.

"Not safe! Come along!" said Sir Tancred; and his languor fell from him like a mask, leaving him active and alert indeed.

"It's like this," said Rainer as they hurried through the gardens. "A week ago I got a cable from Paris saying that a kidnapping gang were after Dorothy. I'm a millionaire, and the sc.u.m are after ransom. I cabled to McNeill, my Paris agent, to come right here with half a dozen of the best detectives in France, scooped up Mr. Buist of the New York police,"--he nodded towards the short, clean-shaven, grimy man--"borrowed a yacht, and came along myself. Being in a hurry, we had trouble with the Atlantic of course; but I've done it seven hours quicker than steamer and train. Have McNeill and the detectives come?"

"No, they haven't," said Tinker.

"Sure?" said Rainer.

"Quite," said Tinker. "I've seen no one watching over Dorothy; and she has gone about outside the town, in the woods, and down by the sea, just as usual. She knew of no danger, I'm sure."

"Perhaps McNeill didn't want to frighten her, and just set his men to watch over her from a distance," said Rainer.

"Perhaps McNeill is in it," said Sir Tancred drily.

"I'm glad I came right here," said Rainer.

They came out of the gardens, and as they pa.s.sed the Hotel des Princes, Tinker said, "Go on down the Corniche! I'll catch you up!" and bolted into it.

He ran upstairs into his father's room, and took from a drawer the pocketbook which held their pa.s.sports; ran into his own room, and thrust into his hip-pocket the revolver he could use so well, into other pockets five hundred francs in notes and gold. Then, sure that he had provided against all possible emergencies, he ran smiling down the stairs.

As he came out of the front-door, his eyes fell on a lonely, deserted motor-car. In a breath he had pitied its loneliness, seen its use, and jumped into it. He set it going, and in three minutes caught up his father, Rainer, and the detective. Sir Tancred jumped into the seat beside him, Rainer and the detective into the back seat.

"Whose car is this? How did you get it?" said Sir Tancred.

"I commandeered it," said Tinker firmly. "And I was lucky too; it's a good car."

"I suppose there'll be a row about it. But we've got to use it," said Sir Tancred.

"Oh, no! there won't," said Tinker cheerfully. "When we come back, everyone but me can get out. I'll take it back, and explain things."

For a mile Tinker sent the car along at full speed. Then he slowed down, and pulling up at every opening into the hills or down to the sh.o.r.e, sent a long coo-ee ringing down it. No answer came back. At the end of two miles his face was growing graver and graver, and its gravity was reflected in the faces of the three men. At the end of two miles and a half he stopped the car, and said, "They can't have gone further than this."

"Just too late," muttered Septimus Rainer; and they looked at one another with questioning eyes.

"Well, there's no time to be lost," said Sir Tancred. "Mr. Buist had better hurry back to Monte Carlo, to the Hotel des Princes, in case we've missed them. We will go on hard, and he can wire to us, if they come back to the hotel, at Ventimiglia."

"That's all very well," said the detective with a sudden air of stubbornness. "But I don't like the look of the business. It's a curious thing that Miss Rainer, the daughter of a millionaire, should be a governess in your family. I don't understand it. There is a chance, and I'm bound to consider it, of your being mixed up with this kidnapping gang. What's to prevent you kidnapping Mr. Rainer?"

Sir Tancred's eyes flashed, and he looked as though he could not believe his ears. Tinker laughed a gentle, joyful laugh.

"I mean no offence, sir," said the detective with some haste, at the sight of Sir Tancred's face. "But I'm bound to look at it all ways."

"Just as you like," said Sir Tancred quietly. "Let Mr. Rainer go back, or both of you go back. Only be quick!"

The millionaire had watched the faces of father and son with very keen eyes while the detective had been speaking: "Off you go, Buist!" he broke in. "I know where I am! Go, man! Go!"

The detective jumped out of the car, and Sir Tancred said, "Go to M.

Lautrec at the Police Bureau at Monte Carlo. He's the best man to set things moving. Tell him to wire as far as Genoa: there's nothing like being on the safe side." And Tinker started the car.

Two miles further on they came upon a peasant woman tramping slowly along, with a heavy basket on her head. Tinker stopped the car, and Sir Tancred asked her if she had seen a lady and a little girl walking on the Corniche between that spot and Monte Carlo. She said she had not seen a lady and a little girl walking, but a mile out of Monte Carlo she had seen a lady and a little girl in a carriage with two gentlemen; and the horses were galloping: oh, but they did gallop; they had nearly run over her. The young lady had cried out to her as they pa.s.sed. She had not caught what she said; she had thought it a joke.

"It looks very like them: we had better follow this carriage. What do you think, Mr. Rainer?" said Sir Tancred. "Of course they may be back at the hotel by now, and we may be on a wild-goose chase."

"I guess we can afford to be laughed at; but we can't afford to lose a chance," said the millionaire.

"They pa.s.sed this woman a mile out of Monte Carlo, and we're four miles and a half out," said Tinker. "She doesn't walk above three miles an hour with that basket: they're an hour and twenty minutes ahead."

"You're smart, sonny," said the millionaire.

"Right away!" said Sir Tancred: and he tossed a five-franc piece to the woman.

Tinker set the car going, and began to try his hardest to get her best speed out of her.

The millionaire leaned forward, and said to Sir Tancred, "The sc.u.m are hardly up-to-date to use a carriage instead of a motor-car."

"What I don't see is how they are going to get them across the frontier. It looks--it looks as if the Italian police were in it,"

said Sir Tancred, frowning.

"Do you mean to tell me that the Italian police would connive at kidnapping?" said the millionaire.

"No: but some rascal of a detective, who could pull a good many strings, might be in it. At any rate if they get them across the frontier undrugged, the authorities are squared or humbugged. What I'm afraid of is that they're making for that rabbit-warren, Genoa. If they get them there, we may be a fortnight finding them."

"I guess I'll squeal before that," said the millionaire; "yes, if I have to put up a million dollars."

The car had reached a speed at which they could only talk in a shout, and it seemed no more than a few minutes before Tinker slowed down for Mentone, and stopped at a gendarme. Before saying a word Sir Tancred showed him a twenty-franc piece; and the gendarme spoke, he was even voluble. Yes, he had seen a carriage, rather more than an hour before.

It had galloped through the town. It carried fever-patients for the hospital at Genoa, ill of the bubonic plague. The police and the custom-house officials had been warned by wire from Monte Carlo and Genoa not to delay it. There were relays of horses every twenty miles to Genoa: the wires had said so.

"That was how they crossed the frontier, was it? What fools these officials are!" said Sir Tancred, and he gave the gendarme his Napoleon: and bade him tell his superior officer that the police had been humbugged.

"If they're really bound for Genoa, we can catch them and to spare--bar accidents," said Tinker cheerfully. "Besides, M. Lautrec will have wired to look out for them." And he set the car going.

"Oh, they're bound for Genoa, sure enough," said Sir Tancred. "But they won't enter it in that carriage, or much before daybreak. Still the rascals don't know that you've come, Mr. Rainer, and that we're already on their track. That ought to spoil their game."

The car ran through Mentone, and into Ventimiglia, but as it drew near the custom-house, Sir Tancred cried, "By Jove, we're going to be delayed! The guard's turned out!" And sure enough, a dozen soldiers barred the road.

Tinker stopped the car: and a sergeant bade Sir Tancred and Mr. Rainer come with him to the officer in command. Tinker gave his father the pocketbook which contained their pa.s.sports; the two of them got out of the car, and followed the sergeant into the custom-house.

Tinker jumped down, and sure that he had plenty of time, looked at the machinery and filled up the petrol tank from a gallon tin in the back of the car. Then he went back to his seat.

He could hear a murmur of voices from the custom-house, and it grew louder and louder; he caught disjointed sc.r.a.ps of angry talk. Of a sudden his father's voice rose loud in apparent fury, and he cried in Italian, "Spies! We're nothing of the kind!" and then in English, "Bolt!"

In a flash the car was moving, and half a dozen soldiers sprang forward, crying, "Stop! Stop!"

"It's running away!" screamed Tinker in Italian, and switched it on to full speed.

It jerked forward; and the soldiers ran heavily after it.