His white face alarmed me, and I left him and went along to the lieutenant's room at the other end of the corridor. To my knock there was, however, no response, but on turning the handle and opening the door, I found the room in darkness and empty. He had not returned.

Therefore I hurried out, and in half an hour returned with an Italian doctor who spoke a little English.

On entering the room I noticed that the doctor sniffed the air mysteriously as he crossed to the patient, who I now saw was unconscious. He examined him, asked me a few brief questions, and then fixing his eyes upon me, exclaimed in Italian:--

"This is a rather curious affair, signore."

"Why?" I inquired. "The gentleman was taken this evening while we were walking together. He complained of bad pains in his head and stomach."

"Yes, but who gave him the anaesthetic?" asked the doctor.

"Anaesthetic!" I exclaimed. "Why n.o.body, as far as I know."

"Well, chloroform has been given him, and quite recently. He struggled against it--don't you see?" and he indicated the American's clenched hands and the disordered bed. "How long were you absent?"

"About half an hour."

"Then some one must have come here while you were away," the doctor declared, stroking his dark beard very thoughtfully. At first I was alarmed lest the unfortunate American might die, but the doctor, after due examination, a.s.sured me that there was really no danger. For half an hour we sat and waited, until at length the man to whom the anaesthetic had been so mysteriously administered regained consciousness. It was a slow recovery, but when at length his dull eyes fell upon me he beckoned me to him and with excited gestures pointed to a leather-covered box beneath a table opposite. I pulled it out and tried the lock. It was still secure, and he nodded in satisfaction.

Presently the doctor left, and I returned to bed, but imagine my blank amazement next morning when, just as I was sipping my coffee in my room, Blenkap dashed in, crying:--

"I've been robbed! That fellow, Shacklock, did it! He must have crept into my room while you were away, rendered me senseless, took the key from the gold chain I always wear around my neck, opened the box, extracted the whole of the money and jewellery, relocked the box, and then had the audacity to replace the chain around my neck!"

"But he is your friend?" I exclaimed, with astonishment.

"I only met him a fortnight ago at the Grand at San Remo," he answered.

"He was there with a friend of his--probably a thief also. But he came on here alone with me. The fellow has taken over eighty thousand dollars!"

I hurried with him to the _questore_, or chief of police, and telegrams were quickly despatched hither and thither, but the thief had evidently got back to Genoa by the train at three o'clock in the morning, and embarked at once upon some ship for a Mediterranean port--Naples, Ma.r.s.eilles or Algiers. At any rate, though I remained a month in Nervi, we never heard further either of the easy-going naval man, or of the eighty thousand dollars in American notes and negotiable securities.

Without doubt it was intended by the thief, or thieves, to throw the first suspicion upon myself, but fortunately the night-porter stated most positively that he had seen the lieutenant coming from his friend, Blenkap's room, ten minutes before my return with the doctor. The man had left the main door of the hotel ajar in order to admit us, and it was evident that by that means the thief got away unnoticed.

The robbery had been an ingenious and audacious one, and showed the clever cunning of a master-hand.

As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the man who so cleverly got hold of Blenkap's money, and who had escaped so swiftly, I now recognised as the affable Lieutenant Shacklock, the intimate friend and guest of James Harding Miller.

Was not his presence in that house sufficient to convince me that what had been suspected of Miller was more than a mere surmise? It had been declared that Lucie's father, though a county gentleman, was also head of the most daring a.s.sociation of criminals in Europe. It seemed to me that Gordon-Wright, alias Shacklock, was one of his ingenious lieutenants whom he was entertaining in his cosy retreat--planning some new scheme perhaps--and who was, at the same time, an ardent admirer of the beautiful girl whose unhappiness and deadly peril was so great a mystery.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

PLIGHT AND PURSUIT.

I left the Manor with my eyes dim and my heart beating fast with a sickening pain. I moved down the road without quite well knowing where I went.

My well-beloved had again escaped me. It was my duty to follow her, to learn the truth, to save her--my duty to her, as well as to myself.

Mystery followed upon the back of mystery. In those brief days, since the advent of the fugitive Italian at Shepherd's Bush, I had become enmeshed in a veritable web of entangled events which seemed to grow more extraordinary and more inexplicable every hour.

My meeting with the man Shacklock proved, beyond doubt, the source of Mr Miller's income. Finding Lucie's father such an affable and gentlemanly man, I had entirely refused to credit Sammy's story.

Nevertheless, Lucie herself had corroborated it, inasmuch as she had described her love at Enghien and its tragic sequel; while I, myself, had recognised in Gordon-Wright the clever international thief who had decamped with Blenkap's valuables. And this man was actually Miller's most intimate friend!

To Lucie I made no mention of my intention, but half an hour later I was in a dogcart hired from the "Lion," driving at a furious pace over the Ballard Down into Swanage, where, at the hotel I had previously visited on my arrival, I inquired for Miss Murray.

"The lady left with a party in a motor-car an hour ago," was the reply of the young person in black satin, whose duty appeared to be to keep the books and order about the waiters.

"Gone!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Where?"

"Well, when people go off in a car we don't generally know their destination. Motor-cars are so very uncertain, you see."

"Did they arrive here on the car?" I inquired eagerly. "No. Mr Murray and his daughter came over by boat from Bournemouth. The motor arrived last night with a gentleman, a lady and the chauffeur."

"Pardon me," exclaimed a man's voice at my elbow--the hotel proprietor who had overheard all our conversation. "Are you a detective?" he asked, in a rather low, confidential tone.

"No. Why?"

"Well--" he hesitated. "Only because there seemed to be something rather funny about Mr Murray--that's all."

"Something funny about him? How?"

"Well, from the moment he came here, till the moment he went away, he never came out of his room. And when he did, he was wearing a motor-coat with the collar turned up around his chin and goggles which entirely disguised him."

"Not at all a suspicious circ.u.mstance, surely?" I remarked, though inwardly much interested. "On these white dusty roads every one must wear goggles."

"Of course. But when people come to Swanage they generally go out and look about the town and the bay. Mr Murray, however, shut himself up and saw n.o.body, while his daughter drove over to Studland, where she stayed the night and returned about an hour before the motor started."

"I'm going to follow that motor. I have a reason," I said. "Don't you think the chauffeur might have told one of the stable-hands or garage-men--if you have a garage here--as to his destination? There's a kind of freemasonry among chauffeurs, by which all of them know each other's roads."

"I'll see," replied the obliging proprietor. "Come with me."

He conducted me through to the back of the house, where a large courtyard had been recently converted into a garage. There were several cars in the coach-houses around, while in the centre of the yard a clean-shaven young man was turning a hose upon a dark red 16-horse "Fiat."

"Gibbs, where has that blue car gone to this morning--the one that left an hour ago?"

"The 40 `Mercedes,' sir? Gone to some place beyond Exeter, sir.

They're on a big tour."

"You don't know the name of the place?" I asked the man anxiously.

"The chauffeur did tell me, but it was a funny name, an' I've forgotten."

"They've gone direct to Exeter, in any case?"

"Yes--by Dorchester, Chard and Honiton. 'E asked me about the road."

"How far is it to Exeter?"

"About seventy-eight or eighty miles."

"I could get there by train before they arrived," I remarked.

"Ah! I doubt it, sir," was the man's reply. "That's a good car they've got, and if you went by train you'd 'ave to go right up to Yeovil.

They'd be through Exeter long before you got there."