The house, however, was tenantless, Hodrickx, apparently a Belgian, having sold his furniture and disappeared, no one knew where, a fortnight previously.
At six o'clock we entered the Calais express, and travelling by way of Alessandria and Turin, ascended, through the moon-lit Alps, that night a perfect fairyland, up the long steep incline, mounting ever higher and higher, until the two engines hauling the _train-de-luxe_ at last, at midnight, pulled up at the little ill-lit station of Bardonnechia. There, we hastily alighted and sought the Commissary of Police.
To him Fournier presented his card of identity which every French detective carries, and at once the brown-bearded official told us that, although strict watch had been kept upon every train, the fugitives had not arrived!
"They may have left the train at Turin, and gone across to Milan, and thence by the Gotthard route to Basle and Paris," he suggested to me. "If they believe they were followed that is what they most certainly would do."
Then he swiftly turned over the leaves of a timetable upon the desk of his little office, and, after a minute examination, added in Italian--
"If they have gone by that route they will join the same Channel-boat at Calais as this train catches, whether they go from Basle, by way of Paris, or direct on to Calais."
The train we had travelled by was still waiting in the station, for one of the engines was being detached.
"Then you suggest that we had better go by this?" I said.
"I certainly should, Signore, if I were you," was his polite answer. "Besides they are wanted in England, you say, therefore it would be better to arrest them on the English steamer, or on their arrival in Dover, and thus avoid the long formalities of extradition. Our Government, as you know, never gives up criminals to England."
Instantly I realized the soundness of his argument, and, thanking him, we both climbed back into the _wagon-lit_ we had occupied, and were soon slowly entering the black, stifling tunnel.
Need I further describe that eager, anxious journey, save to say that when next day we traversed the Ceinture in Paris, and arrived from the Gare de Lyon, at the Gare du Nord, we kept a vigilant and expectant watch, for it was there that the two men might join our train. Our watch, however, proved futile. They might have joined the ordinary express from Paris to Calais which had left half an hour before us--ours being a _train-de-luxe_. So we possessed ourselves in patience till at length, after a halt at Calais-Ville, we slowly drew up on the quay near where the big white Dover boat was lying.