That night, he never undressed. He lay in his clothes on the bed, and slept by snatches fitfully. In the morning, he rose early, and looked hard for spots of blood as he washed and dressed himself. But he had done his work far too neatly to spatter his clothes. “Coffee, quick, and my bill!” he said to the waiter who answered the bell; “I want to catch an early train at the station for England.” He said England on purpose, though he meant it to be Italy. With a true Tyroler’s instinct, he would strike straight home—by Milan, Verona, and the Brenner, to St Valentin. At the station, he took a through ticket, first-class, for Genoa. He had to pass Monte Carlo, and he did so with repugnance. Yet he wasn’t much afraid; the Robbler instinct was still strong within him. A couple of fat Frenchmen got into the carriage at Monaco; they were talking of some tragedy that had happened last night at an hotel at La Condamine. Franz pricked up his ears but tried to look unconcerned. “Somebody dead?” he inquired in his Teutonic French, with a show of languid interest. “Yes; another suicide,” one of the Frenchmen answered, shrugging his shoulders, with a smile. “_Que voulez-vous?_ An Englishman—a fellow called Holmes—or, some say, an American. He stabbed himself last night, after losing heavily. He was stopping at my hotel: he went to bed all well; the servants knocked this morning—got no answer—went in and found the body in a _fauteuil_, where the _malheureux_ had stabbed himself.” Franz’s eye gleamed bright. So at first they had put the best interpretation upon it! The mere suspicion of a suicide might give him a start that would enable him to escape. He shrugged his shoulders in return. “A common episode of life as things go at Monte Carlo!” he murmured, philosophically. The Frenchmen got out and left the train at Mentone. At Ventimiglia, Franz crossed the frontier with a beating heart; so far, at least, no telegram to arrest or detain him. All morning, the train crawled on at a snail’s pace towards Genoa. Franz chafed and grumbled, eating his heart out with impatience. At San Pier d’Arena, the junction-station, he took his portmanteau in his hand, and re-booked for Milan. There he spent that second night in fear and trembling. On his way up to an hotel, he bought a copy of an evening paper—the _Corriere della Sera_. The same story still—_Suicidio a Monte Carlo_.