The Prince who, speaking English so well, turned his birth and standing to such good account, never told the chauffeur of his plans. His confederates, indeed, were generally kept completely in the dark until the very last moment. Therefore, they were all very frequently puzzled by what seemed to be extraordinary and motiveless actions by the leader of the party of adventurers. The last _coup_ made was in the previous month, at Aix-les-Bains, the proceeds being sold to the old Jew in Amsterdam for four thousand pounds sterling, this sum being divided up between the Prince, the Parson, a neat-ankled little Parisienne named Valentine Dejardin, and Garrett. And they were now going to spend a week or two in that rather dull and much over-rated little Italian seaside town, where the sharper and crook flourish to such a great extent in spring--San Remo. They were evidently about to change their tactics, for it was not diamonds they were after, but something else. Garrett wondered as the Count told him to help himself to a whisky and soda what that "something else" would turn out to be. "I daresay you'll be a bit puzzled," he said, lazily lighting a fresh cigarette, "but don't trouble your head about the why or wherefore. Leave that to me. Stay at the Hotel Regina at San Remo--that big place up on the hill--you know it. You'll find the Parson there. Let's see, when we were there a year ago I was Tremlett, wasn't I?--so I must be that again, I suppose." He rose from his couch, stretched himself, and pulling a bookcase from the high old-fashioned wainscoting slid back one of the white enamelled panels disclosing a secret cavity wherein, Garrett knew, reposed a quantity of stolen jewels that he had failed to get rid of to the Jew diamond dealer in Amsterdam, who acted in most cases as receiver. The chauffeur saw within that small cavity, of about a foot square, a number of little parcels each wrapped in tissue paper--jewels for which the police of Europe for a year or so had been hunting high and low. Putting his hand into the back the Prince produced a bundle of banknotes, from which he counted one "fifty" and ten fivers, and handed them to his man. "They're all right. You'll want money, for I think that, after all, you'd better go to San Remo as a gentleman and owner of the car. Both the Parson and I will be perfect strangers to you--you understand?" "Perfectly," was Garrett's reply, as he watched him replace the notes, push back the panel into its place, and move the bookcase into its original position.