CHAPTER XIV WHEREIN CONFESSION IS MADE

"Well, Lola," I said at last, still holding her little hand in mine, "and why cannot you reveal to me the truth regarding the mystery of the death of Edward Craig?"

"For a very good reason—because I do not myself know the exact circumstances," was her prompt response, dropping into French. "I know that you have made an investigation. What have you discovered?"

"If you will be frank with me," I said, also in French, "I will be equally frank with you."

"But, have I not always been frank?" she protested. "Have I not always told you the truth, ever since that night in Scotland when you trapped me in your room. Don't you remember?"

"Yes," I replied in a low voice. "I remember, alas! too well. You promised in return for your liberty that you would break away from your uncle."

"Ah, I did—but I have been utterly unable, M'sieur Vidal," she cried quickly in her broken English. "You don't know how much I have suffered this past year—how terrible is my present position," she added in a tone of poignant bitterness.

"Yes, I quite understand and sympathize with you," I said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it, while she sat back in the big old-fashioned horse-hair arm-chair. "For weeks I have been endeavouring to find you—after you came to Cromer to call upon me. You have left the Boulevard Pereire."

"Yes. I have been travelling constantly of late."

"After the affair of the jeweller, Benoy—eh? Where were you at that time?"

"In Marseilles, awaiting my uncle. We crossed to Algiers together. Thence we went along to Alexandria, and on to Cairo, where we met our friends."

"It was a dastardly business. I read of it in the Matin," I said.

"Brutal—horrible!" declared the girl. "But is not my uncle an inhuman brute—a fearless, desperate man, who carries out, with utter disregard of human life, the amazing plots which are formed by one who is the master of all the criminal arts."

"Then he is not the prime mover of all these ingenious thefts?" I exclaimed in some surprise, for I had always believed Jules Jeanjean to be the head of that international band.

"No. He acts under the direction of another, a man of amazing ingenuity and colossal intellect. It is he who cleverly investigates, and gains knowledge of those who possess rare jewels; he who watches craftily for opportunities, who so carefully plans the coups, and who afterwards arranges for the stones to be re-cut in Antwerp or Amsterdam."

"Who is he?" I asked eagerly. "You may tell me in confidence. I will not betray your secret."

"He poses as a dealer in precious stones in London."

"In London?"

"Yes. He has an office in Hatton Garden, and is believed by other dealers in precious stones to be a most respectable member of that select little coterie that deals in gems."

"What is his name?"

The girl was silent for a few seconds. Then she said—

"In Cromer he has been known under the name of Vernon Gregory."

"Gregory!" I gasped in astonishment. "What, to that quiet old man is due the conception of all these great and daring robberies committed by Jules Jeanjean?"

"Yes. My uncle acts upon plans and information which the old man supplies," Lola replied. "Being in the trade, the crafty old fellow knows in whose hands lie the most valuable stones, and then lays his cunningly-prepared plans accordingly—plans that my uncle desperately carries out to the very letter."

This statement much surprised me, for I had always regarded Jeanjean as the instigator of the plots. But now, it appeared, old Gregory was the head of Europe's most dangerous association of criminals.

"Then the jewels found in Gregory's rooms at Cromer were all stolen property?"

"Yes. We were surprised that the police did not discover the real owners," Lola replied. "The greater part of the jewels were taken from the castle of the Grand Duke Alexander of Russia, just outside Kiev, about nine months ago."

"By you?" I asked with a grim smile.

"Not all. Some," admitted the girl with a light laugh. Then she continued: "We expected that when the old gentleman made such a hurried flight from Cromer, the police would recognize the property from the circulated description. But, as they did not, Uncle determined to regain possession of it—which he did."

"Who aided him?"

"Egisto—a man who is generally known as Egisto Bertini."

"The man who rode the motor-cycle?"

She nodded.

"And you assisted," I said. "Why did you leave your shoe behind?"

"By accident. I thought I heard some of the occupants of the house stirring, so fled without having an opportunity of recovering it. I suppose it has puzzled the local police—eh?" she laughed merrily.

"It did. You were all very clever, and my man, Rayner, was rendered insensible."

"Because he was a trifle too inquisitive. He was watching, and did not know that my uncle, in such expeditions, has eyes in the back of his head," she answered. "It was fortunate for him that he was not killed outright, for, as you know, my uncle always, alas! believes in the old maxim that dead men tell no tales."

"The assassin!" I cried in fierce anger. "He will have many crimes to answer for when at last the police lay hands upon him."

"He will never be taken alive," she said. "He will denounce me, and then kill himself. That is what he constantly threatens."

"And because of that you fear to hold aloof and defy him?" I asked. "You live in constant terror, Lola."

"Yes. How can I act—how can I escape them? Advise me," she urged, her face pale and intensely in earnest.

I hesitated. It was certainly a difficult matter upon which to give advice. The pretty girl before me had for several years been the unwilling tool of that scoundrelly gang of bandits, whose organization was so perfect that they were never arrested, nor was any of their booty ever traced.

The four or five men acting under the direction of the master-mind of old Gregory were, in private life, all of them affluent and respected citizens, either in England or in France, while Jules Jeanjean, I afterwards learned, occupied a big white villa overlooking the blue sea three miles out of Algiers. It was a place with wonderful gardens filled with high date-palms and brilliant tropical flowers. There, in his hours of retirement, Jules Jeanjean lived amid the most artistic and luxurious surroundings, with many servants, and a couple of motor-cars, devoting himself to experiments in wireless telegraphy, having fitted up a powerful station for both receiving and transmitting.

The science of wireless telegraphy was indeed his chief hobby, and he spent many hours in listening to the messages from Pold, Poldhu, Clifden, Soller, Paris, Port Said, or Norddeich on the North Sea, in communicating with ships in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Levant, or on the Atlantic.

I was wondering how to advise my little friend. Ever since our first meeting my heart had been full of sympathy and compassion for her, so frail seemed her frame, so tragic her life, and so fettered did she seem to that disreputable gang. Yet, had she not pointed out to me, on the several occasions on which we had met in Paris, the impossibility of breaking the bonds which bound her to that detestable life? Indeed she had, more than once, declared our meetings to be filled with peril for myself.

Her uncle knew me by repute as an investigator of crime, and if he ever suspected me of prying into any affair in which he might be concerned, then my life would most certainly be in jeopardy. Jules Jeanjean never did things by halves. It was, I found, for that reason she had now sought me—to beseech me to relinquish my efforts to fathom the mystery of the death of Edward Craig.

"Do heed what I say, M'sieur Vidal," she exclaimed with deep earnestness. "My uncle knows that you are still in Cromer, and that you have been investigating. In Algiers, a fortnight ago, he mentioned it to me, and declared that very shortly you would cease to trouble him."

"He intends foul play—eh?" I remarked with a grim smile, lighting another cigarette.

"He means mischief," she assured me. "He knows, too well, of your success in other cases in which you have interested yourself," she remarked quickly. "And he fears—fears lest you may discover the secret of the young man's death."

"And if I do?" I asked, looking straight into her face.

"He does not intend that you shall," she replied very earnestly, adding: "Ah! M'sieur Vidal, do heed my words—I beg you. Be warned by me!"

"But, why?" I queried. "I am not afraid of Jules Jeanjean. I have never done him an evil turn. Therefore, why should he conspire to take my life? Besides, I already know of his connexion with the Cromer mystery, the Benoy affair, and others. Could I not easily have sent a telegram to the Prefecture of Police in Paris, when I recognized him in Cromer? But I did not."

"Why?"

"For two reasons. First, I wished to stand aside and watch, and, secondly, I feared to betray him for your sake, Lola."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "But you are always so generous. You know quite well that he already believes that I have told you the truth. Therefore, he suspects us both and is determined to put an end to your inquisitiveness."

"Unless I act swiftly—eh?" I suggested.

"But think—what would then become of me?" she exclaimed, her eyes open in quick alarm.

"I can't see what you really have to fear," I said. "It is true, Lola, that you live, like your friends, by dishonest methods, but have you not been forced into it by your uncle? Even if you were arrested, the law would treat you with the greatest leniency. Indeed, if necessary, I would come forward and tell the Court all I have known and discovered concerning the baneful influence which has been exercised upon you by the man Jeanjean."

She shook her head mournfully.

"Alas! That would be of no avail," she declared in a low, strained voice.

"Why?"

"Because—because, ah!—you do not know the truth," she faltered, her face pale to the lips.

"Cannot you explain it to me?" I asked, bending down to her, and placing my hand tenderly upon her shoulder.

I felt her shudder beneath my touch, while her big blue eyes were downcast—downcast in shame.

"No. I cannot explain," she replied. "If you knew, M'sieur Vidal, how horrible, how terrible all this is for me, you would not press your question."

"But I do—in your interests," I said with deep earnestness. "I want to help you to escape from these scoundrels—I want to stand as your friend."

"My friend!" she exclaimed blankly. "My friend—ah! that you can never be."

"Why not?"

"You would not wish to cultivate my acquaintance further, M'sieur Vidal, if—if you were aware of the actual truth. Besides, this friendship which you have shown to me may, in itself, prove fatal to you. If you do not exercise the greatest precaution, your reward for saving me, as you did that night at Balmaclellan, will be death!"

"You are apprehensive on my account?" I asked, wondering whether she were really in earnest—or whether beneath her strange warning there lay some subtle motive.

"Yes," was her frank response. "Take great care, or death will come to you at a moment when you least expect it."

For an instant I was silent. Her warning was truly a curious and disconcerting one, for I knew the dangerous character of Jules Jeanjean. That if he threatened, he meant action.

"I do not care for myself, Lola," I said at last. "I am thinking how I can protect you, and rescue you from the hands of these unscrupulous men."

"You cannot," she declared, with a hard, fixed look of desperation. "No, only be careful of yourself, and, at the same time, dismiss me from your thoughts. I—I am unworthy of your regard," she murmured, her voice choked by a sob. "Alas, entirely unworthy!"

"No, no," I urged. "I will not allow you to speak like that, Lola. Ever since you entered my room, on that well-remembered night in Scotland, I have wondered how best I could assist you to lead an honest life; how I could——"

"I can accept no further assistance from you, M'sieur Vidal," she interposed, in a quivering voice. "I repeat that I am utterly unworthy," she cried, and shivered with despair, as she stood erect before me. "And—and—if you only knew the truth—the terrible truth of the past—you would at once, I know, turn and discard me—nay, you would probably ring for the waiter and hand me over to the police without either compunction or regret."

And the girl, known as "The Nightingale," stood before me, her face white and hard, her eyes with a strange light in them, staring straight before her, her breast heaving and falling with emotion which she was trying in vain to suppress.