“In the car behind, the fourth car, besides several persons who played no part in the affair and knew nothing about it, were, firstly, a Commissary of the Secret Service, secondly, a young man and a young girl, alone in a compartment, in which they had covered the light and pulled down the curtains, as if they were going to sleep, and consequently passed unnoticed by everybody, even by the Commissary. I was that Commissary, on the track of Miss Bakersfield. The young man was William Ancivel, a stock-jobber and burglar, a frequent guest at this house, who was flying secretly with his companion.” “You lie! You lie!” cried Bregeac indignantly. “Aurelie is above suspicion!” “I did not say that his companion was Mademoiselle,” Marescal retorted. Bregeac scowled at him. Marescal went on coldly: “As far as La Roche nothing happened. For another half hour nothing happened. Then came the abrupt and violent drama. The young man and girl emerge from the darkness and pass from the fourth car to the fifth. They are disguised by long gray blouses, caps, and masks. In the last compartment of the fifth car Baron de Limézy is waiting for them. The three of them murder and rob Miss Bakersfield. Then Baron de Limézy is tied up by his confederates, who hurry to the end of the car and murder and rob the two brothers. When they come back down the car they meet the conductor. There is a fight; and they escape. The conductor finds Baron de Limézy trussed up as one of their victims and pretending he has been robbed, also. That’s the first act. The second is their flight up the embankment and through the woods. But the conductor has given the alarm. I learn what has happened; I take the necessary measures. The result is that the two fugitives are surrounded. One of them escapes. The other is arrested and shut up. I am informed of it. I go to examine him in the dark corner into which he has shrunk. It is a woman.” “A woman?” said Bregeac in incredulous accents. “Let me finish,” said Marescal. “Thanks to the pseudo-Baron, in trusting whom I made a mistake, this woman gets away and rejoins William Ancivel. I find traces of them at Monte Carlo. Then I lose track of them again. I hunt for it in vain till the day on which it occurs to me to return to Paris and to learn whether your investigations, Bregeac, have not been more fortunate than mine and whether you have discovered your step-daughter’s hiding-place. That was how I was able to reach the convent of Sainte-Marie several hours before you did and to make my way to a certain terrace on which Mademoiselle was listening to a tale of love. Only the lover has changed: instead of William Ancivel it is Baron de Limézy, that is to say, their confederate.”