d restore your jewels. It is the only way, this plan of mine. If
we adopt it no one will suffer, only an old alias that is no longer
useful. If we do not adopt it, I may not succeed, for the true authors
of this crime may prove too wary for me; and the end will be that my
best friends will believe the worst of me; even you, madame, even you
will not be sure your faith was not misplaced."

"Enough!" the woman begged in a stifled voice. "It shall be as you
wish--if you will have it so."

She sought to take away her hand; but Lanyard kissed it before he let
it go. And immediately she rose with a murmured, half articulate
excuse, and went from the room, leaving him to struggle with himself
and that which was in him which was stronger than himself, his hunger
for her love, to deny stubbornly the evidence of his senses and end by
persuading himself against his will that he was nothing to her more
than an object of common kindness such as she would extend to anyone in
similar plight.

Because he never could be more....

Those few last hours in the chateau passed swiftly enough, most of them
in making plans for his "escape," something which demanded a deal of
puzzling over maps and railway guides in the seclusion of his room.
Since the next noon must find Andre Duchemin a criminal published and
proscribed, he had need to utilise every shred of cunning at his
command if he were to reach Paris without being arrested and without
undue loss of time.

To take a train at Millau would be simply to invite pursuit; for that
was the likeliest point an escaping criminal would strike for, a
stopping place for all trains north and southbound. Telegraphic advices
would cause every such train to be searched to a certainty.
Furthermore, Lanyard had no desire to enter Paris by the direct route
from Millau. Not the police alone, but others, enemies even more
dangerous, might be expecting him by that route.

On the other hand, the nearest railway station, Combe-Redonde, was
equally out of the question, since to gain it one must pass through
Nant, where Andre Duchemin was known, and risk being seen, while at
Combe-Redonde itself the station people would be apt to remember the
monsieur who had recently created a sensation by despatching a code
telegram to London.

There was nothing for it, then, but a twenty-mile walk due west across
the Causse Larzac by night to Tournemire, where one could get trains in
any one of four directions.

Cons