"My friend," he said, presenting me to a cadaverous man of middle age, with a thin, prominent, rather hooked nose, high cheek-bones, and curious eyes of a steely grey, which bushy eye-brows partly concealed.

The man looked at me keenly, but he neither smiled nor spoke, nor did he offer to shake hands.

We were now inside the shop. Quickly we pa.s.sed into an inner room, and thence to a room beyond it. This room was lined apparently with bookshelves. Advancing to a corner of it, after carefully locking the door, the cadaverous man, standing on tiptoe, pressed what appeared to be a book in the topmost shelf. At once a door in the bookshelves opened. In silence we followed him through it, and the door shut noiselessly behind us.

I suppose we had walked ten or twelve yards along the narrow, low-ceilinged, uncarpeted pa.s.sage, lit only by the candle lantern that our guide had unhooked from a nail in the wall, when he suddenly stopped and bent down. Now I saw that he was lifting the boards, one after another. A few moments later the upper rungs of a ladder became visible.

Francois descended, I followed carefully--I counted fifteen rungs before I reached the ground--and the gaunt man came after me, shifting the boards back into position above his head when he was half-way down the ladder.

The darkness here was denser than it had been in the pa.s.sage above, but the lantern served its purpose. We were in a much narrower pa.s.sage now, so low that we had to stoop to make our way along it. The ceiling was roughly hewn, so was the ground we walked upon. Half a dozen steps along the rough ground and we stopped again. Facing us was a low, extremely narrow door, apparently an iron door--it resembled the door of a safe.

Fitting a key into it, the gaunt man pushed it open, and one by one we entered.

At once I became aware of a singular change in the atmosphere. In the narrow, cavernous, obviously subterraneous little pa.s.sage we had just left the air had been humid, chill, and dank, with an unpleasant earthy odour. Here it was dry and stuffy, as if heated artificially. So intense was the blackness that I seemed almost to feel it. There was a dull thump. Turning, I saw that the cadaverous man had shut this door too.

Just as I was wondering why he took such precautions something clicked beside me, and the chamber was flooded with light.

For an instant the glare blinded me. Then, as I looked about me, the sight that met my gaze made me catch my breath. Was this an Aladdin's Palace I had suddenly entered? Had my brain become deranged, causing a strange, an amazing hallucination? Or was I asleep and dreaming?

CHAPTER XXV

THE GLITTERING UNDERWORLD

Never shall I forget that astounding spectacle. Even as I think of it now, it rises once more before me.

The room, though low, was very long and very broad; I guessed at once that originally it must have been a cellar, or possibly a series of cellars. Now as the brilliant electric rays from a dozen powerful ceiling lamps shone down through their tinted shades, they lit up a collection of treasure such as few indeed can have gazed upon.

Heaped upon trays on tables all about the room were unset precious stones of every conceivable description, which glittered and scintillated in the most wonderful way imaginable. Upon the floor, in rough, uncovered boxes, heaps of gold bracelets and brooches, gold rings and gold chains, gold ornaments and trinkets, and bits of miscellaneous jewellery were piled high in inextricable confusion, as though they had been tossed there to be thrown on to a waste heap. Upon the ground were bars of gold, the thickness of a brick, ranged carefully in rows. At one end of the room was a small smelting furnace, not now alight, and above it an iron brazier. Upon the walls hung sets of furs, many seal-skin and ermine, while at one side of the room, upon the ground, lay piled up some thousands of silver spoons and forks, also silver drinking cups and candlesticks, many silver salvers, and an endless a.s.sortment of silver articles of every kind.

When at last I had recovered from my astonishment, I turned abruptly to Francois, who stood at my elbow.

"This, I suppose," I said, speaking in a whisper, "is a sort of clearing-house for stolen property."

He nodded.

"The largest in the whole of France"--he added a moment later, "the largest, possibly, anywhere in Europe. Stolen goods come here from all the Continental centres; also from Great Britain, the United States, and even from Australia."

"But surely," I said, "the police know of this place?"

"They know that it exists, but they don't know where it is. You see how implicitly I trust you, what faith I place in the honour of--a gentleman."

"I think not," I corrected. "You know that my tongue is tied--because you saved my life. That is why you trust me."

He smiled grimly.

"But why have you brought me here?" I asked, after a pause.

"For the reason I have named--to show how implicitly I trust you."

It was only then that a thought flashed in upon me.

"You say," I exclaimed sharply, "that jewellery stolen in Great Britain sometimes finds its way here?"

"Most of the English stuff is got rid of in this room."

"And are you--do your--your 'clients' tell you where the 'stuff' comes from?"

"Always," the gaunt man answered. "That is a condition of my taking it off their hands. You will understand that large rewards are sometimes offered for the return of property intact and uninjured."

I paused to collect my thoughts before speaking again, anxious not to make a false step.

"Can you recollect," I said at last, "if jewellery taken from a country house in Berkshire, England--the house is called Holt Manor--just after Christmas, ever found its way here?"

The gaunt man reflected for a moment. Then, without speaking, he walked across the room, unlocked the door of a little safe which was let into the wall, took from the safe a fat, leather-bound ledger, opened it, and ran his finger down a page.

"Yes," he said in his deep voice. "The property was valued at about twelve or fourteen thousand pounds. I have here a list of the articles."

Turning, he peered oddly at me out of his strange eyes.

"May I see the list?" I asked quickly.

"Have you a reason for wanting to see it?"

"Yes. Some of the jewellery taken had been generations in the family. If it is intact still, I may be able to get a fancy price offered for it, or for some of it."

"_Bien_" he said. "Much of the stuff has been melted down, but not all."

I read carefully down the list, which, arranged neatly and systematically, showed at once what had been melted down, and how it had been disposed of, while a complete list was given of articles kept intact. Among the latter I recognized several bits of jewellery which Dulcie had greatly valued, and quickly I arranged with the gaunt man to buy them from him then and there. After that the three of us sat talking for a considerable time, and before the time arrived for me to leave I knew beyond doubt that the jewellery I had caught sight of when Connie Stapleton's bag had burst open in the train had been the jewellery, or some of it, stolen on board the boat.

"Some day we may meet again," I said as I parted from Francois and his companion, in the little greengrocer's shop.

"Some day we shall," the cadaverous man answered in a strange voice. He extended his hand, and I shook it. A minute later I was in a taxi, hurrying through the streets of Lyons towards the Perrache station.

As the express sped rapidly towards Paris, endless strange reflections and conjectures crowded my brain. Was I acting wisely in thus returning to the French capital, where I might so easily be recognized, seeing how anxious I was that my friends in England should think me dead? I was--I knew--though I did not admit it even to myself--returning to Paris mainly in the hope that I might catch a glimpse of Dulcie. And yet if I did see her, of what use would it be? Also, what should I do? Let her recognize me, and the plan I had formed to get the scoundrels arrested would most likely be spoiled at once--and more than ever I was now determined to bring them to justice in the end.

I fell into a deep sleep, for I was tired out; I had slept little enough during that night-long journey in the stolen car. When I awoke, the train was steaming into Paris; an official, who had aroused me by rubbing his hand upon my cheek, stood awaiting a _pourboire._

"Go to the Hotel Continental," I said in French to the driver of the taxi into which I had just stepped with my newly-bought valise. "Get there as quickly as you can."

That I was doing a mad thing in thus returning to the hotel, where in all probability the members of the gang were still staying, I knew. But a man in love hardly reckons with risks, and as I lay back in the taxi, my brain awhirl, I knew that I was as desperately in love as it is possible for man to be.

Paris--gay Paris--looked gloomy enough in the dull blue haze which hung over and partly enveloped its deserted, dreary streets. Happening to glance up at the windows of a house with green sun-shutters half open, my eyes met those of a faded girl with touzled hair, peering down into the street, and mechanically she ogled me. In disgust I averted my gaze, hating, for the moment, my own s.e.x, which made such women possible. On and on the car rolled. Some revellers in dishevelled evening clothes, their eyes round and staring, their faces ghastly in the morning light, stumbled out beneath an archway above which a lamp burned dully with an orange glow.

Everything and everyone seemed only half awake. The reception clerk at the hotel was sulky and inclined to be argumentative. Yes, he was positive, he said in reply to my inquiry, that n.o.body of the name of Challoner was staying at the hotel,--no, nor yet of the name of Stapleton. They had slept there the night before? Yes, that was quite possible, but he was not concerned with people who had stayed there, only with the people who were there then. He had no idea, he added, at what time they had left, nor yet where they had gone--and did I need a room, or didn't I? Because if I didn't I had better go away.

His impertinence annoyed me, but I had too much to think about to have time to lose my temper. I told him I needed a room, and I sent up my valise. A bath, a shave and a change of clothes braced me considerably, and by the time I reached the coffee-room I felt thoroughly refreshed.

What adventures had befallen me since I had breakfasted in that room, only forty-eight hours before, I reflected, as the waiter approached with the _Figaro_. Breakfast was laid for a hundred or more, but barely a dozen people were in the room. All were strangers to me, so I soon became engrossed in the newspaper.