The Czars Spy | Page 8

remarkable story.
One fact, however, we established. The detective on duty at the railway
station distinctly recollected a thin middle-aged man, accompanied by a
lady in deep black, passing the barrier and entering the train which left
at three o'clock for Colle Salvetti to join the Rome express. They were
foreigners, therefore he did not take the same notice of them as though
they had been Italians. Inquiries at the booking-office showed, however,
that no passengers had booked direct to Rome by the train in question.

To Grossetto, Cecina, Campiglia, and the other places in the Maremma,
passengers had taken tickets, but not one had been booked to any of the
great towns. Therefore it was apparent that the mysterious pair who had
come ashore just prior to the sailing of the yacht had merely taken
tickets for a false destination, and had re-booked at Colle Salvetti, the
junction with that long main line which connects Genoa with Rome.
The police were puzzled. The two fishermen who sighted the Lola and
first gave the alarm of her danger, declared that when they drew
alongside and proffered assistance the captain threatened to shoot the
first man who came aboard.
"They were English!" remarked the sturdy, brown-faced toilers of the
sea, grinning knowingly. "And the English, when they drink their
cognac, know not what they do."
"Did you get any reward for returning to harbor and reporting?" I
asked.
"Reward!" echoed one of the men, the elder of the pair. "Not a soldo!
The English only cursed us for interfering. That is why we believed
that they were trying to make away with the vessel."
The description of the Lola, its owner, his guest, and the captain were
circulated by the police to all the Mediterranean ports, with a request
that the yacht should be detained. Yet if the vessel were really one of
mystery, as it seemed to be, its owner would no doubt go across to
some quiet anchorage on the Algerian coast out of the track of the
vessels, and calmly proceed to repaint, rename and disguise his craft so
that it would not be recognized in Marseilles, Naples, Smyrna, or any
of the ports where private yachts habitually call. Thus, from the very
first, it seemed to me that Hornby and his friends had very cleverly
tricked me for some mysterious purpose, and afterwards ingeniously
evaded their watchers and got clean away.
Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after
the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet
circumstances had prevented this and the Lola had consequently

escaped.
For purposes of their own the police kept the affair out of the papers,
and when Frank Hutcheson stepped out of the sleeping-car from Paris
on to the platform at Pisa a few nights afterwards, I related to him the
extraordinary story.
"The scoundrels wanted these, that's evident," he responded, holding up
the small, strong, leather hand-bag he was carrying, and which
contained his jealously-guarded ciphers. "By Jove!" he laughed, "how
disappointed they must have been!"
"It may be so," I said, as we entered the midnight train for Leghorn.
"But my own theory is that they were searching for some paper or other
that you possess."
"What can my papers concern them?" exclaimed the jovial,
round-faced Consul, a man whose courtesy is known to every skipper
trading up and down the Mediterranean, and who is perhaps one of the
most cultured and popular men in the British Consular Service. "I don't
keep bank notes in that safe, you know. We fellows in the Service don't
roll in gold as our public at home appears to think."
"No. But you may have something in there which might be of value to
them. You're often the keeper of valuable documents belonging to
Englishmen abroad, you know."
"Certainly. But there's nothing in there just now except, perhaps, the
registers of births, marriages and deaths of British subjects, and the
papers concerning a Board of Trade inquiry. No, my dear Gordon,
depend upon it that the yacht running ashore was all a blind. They did it
so as to be able to get the run of the Consulate, secure the ciphers, and
sail merrily away with them. It seems to me, however, that they gave
you a jolly good dinner and got nothing in return."
"They might very easily have carried me off too," I declared.
"Perhaps it would have been better if they had. You'd at least have had

the satisfaction of knowing what their little game really was!"
"But the man and the woman who left the yacht an hour before she
sailed, and who slipped away into the country somewhere! I wonder
who they were? Hornby distinctly told me that he and Chater were
alone,