Excitedly the men pointed, as we stood upon the marble terrace, to a white speck far away along the broken coast of pale brown rocks, a speck fast receding around the next point, behind which was hidden the harbour of Algiers.
"By Gad!" I cried, gazing eagerly after it, "that's a motor-boat, and they are making for the town! We mustn't lose an instant or they will get away to some place of safety."
So together we dashed back to the road as fast as our legs could carry us, and drove with all possible speed back to the town, in order to reach the harbour before the fugitives could land.
The driver, with the southerner's disregard of the feelings of animals, lashed his weedy horse into a gallop, as up-hill and down-hill we sped, back to the town.
Entering the city gate, the man scattered the dogs and foot-passengers by his warning yells in Arabic, until at last we were down upon the long, semi-circular quay, our eager eyes looking over the blue, sun-lit sea.
No sign could we discern of the motor-boat, but Fournier, with his hand uplifted, cried--
"See! Look at that white steam-yacht at the end of the Mole--the long, low-built one. That belongs to the Count. Perhaps he has already boarded her!"
I looked in the direction my companion indicated, and there saw lying anchored about half a mile from the shore a small white-painted yacht, built so low that her decks were almost awash, with two rakish-looking funnels, and a light mast at either end with a wireless telegraph suspended between them. The French tricolour was flying at the stern.
From the funnels smoke was issuing, and from where I stood, I could see men running backwards and forwards.
"She's getting under weigh," I cried. "The fugitives must be aboard. We must stop them."
"How can we?" asked the Frenchman, dismayed. "Besides, why should we--except that we were nearly suffocated in that room."
"That man you know as the Comte d'Esneux is the most dangerous criminal in all Europe," I told him. "To the Prefecture of Police in Paris--to you in Algiers also--he is known as Jules Jeanjean!"
"Jules Jeanjean!" choked out the man in the shabby straw hat. "Is that the actual truth, M'sieur?"
"It is," I replied. "And now you know the cause of my anxiety."