True to the promise made by the bandit, a clattering band of horsemen dashed up to the lonely house at the break of dawn. They were led by Prince Ugo Ravorelli, dishevelled, half-crazed. A shivering woman in silks and a cowering old man sobbed with joy when the rescuers burst through the door. Tacked to a panel in the door was an ominous, ghost-like paper on which was printed the following message from the night just gone: “In time the one who is missing shall be returned to the arms of her mother, absolutely unharmed. She will be well cared for by those who have her in charge. After a reasonable length of time her friends will be informed as to the terms on which she may be restored to them.” Mrs. Garrison, more dead than alive, was conveyed to her home in the Avenue Louise, there to recover her strength with astonishing quickness. This vastly purposeful, indomitable woman, before many hours had passed, was calmly listening to plans for the capture of her daring abductors and the release of her daughter. Friends, overcome with the horror of the hour, flocked to her aid and comfort; the government offered its assistance and the police went to work as one massive sleuth-hound. Newspapers all over the world fairly staggered under the burden of news they carried to their readers, and people everywhere stood aghast at the most audacious outrage in the annals of latter-day crime. As completely lost as if the earth had swallowed them were the diamond robbers--for all the world accepted them as the perpetrators--and their fair prize. No one saw the carriage after it turned off the Avenue Louise on the night of the abduction; no one saw the party leave the lonely house in the country. A placard found on the steps of a prominent citizen's home at an early hour in the morning told the frenzied searchers where to look for the mother and the uncle of the missing girl. A reward of 100,000 francs for the arrest of the abductors or the return of Miss Garrison was offered at once by the stony-faced woman in the Avenue Louise, and detectives flew about like bees. Every city in the land was warned to be on the lookout, every village was watched, every train and station was guarded. Nine in every ten detectives maintained that she was still in Brussels, and house after house, mansion after mansion was searched. Three days after the abduction word came from London that four men and a young woman, apparently insane, all roughly attired, had come to that city from Ostend, and had disappeared before the officials were fully cognizant of their arrival. The woman, according to the statements of men who saw her on the train, was beautiful and pale as with the sickness that promised death. XXI. THE HOME OF THE BRIGANDS