This Monsieur Torquet, brooding in the loneliness of his cell at Brixton, had very nearly reached the limits of his patience; the silence and the indifference had crushed what little spirit there was in him. For two months he had lain without trial, in a cell which had a table on which were pen, paper, and ink. He had not in all that time touched the one or the other, but on the day that the Atlantic liner came across the _Maria Braganza_ he sat at the table and wrote a brief note to the governor of the prison. Within an hour T. B. Smith was ushered into the cell, and remained with the man for some time. Then he came out, and sent for a shorthand clerk, and together they returned. For four hours the three men worked, one questioning and translating, one answering at first sullenly and with periodic outbursts of temper, and later eagerly, volubly--and all this time the clerk wrote and wrote, until one note-book was exhausted and he sent out for another. It was late in the evening when he said: "And that, monsieur, is all." "All?" T. B.'s eyebrows rose. "All? But you have not explained the whereabouts of Lolo?" The prisoner was frankly puzzled. "Lolo?" he repeated. "M'sieur, I do not understand." It was T. B.'s turn to be astonished. "But the rendezvous--there was to be some rendezvous where the ship would come to pick up any member of the Nine who might become detached." The man shook his head, and at that moment an idea occurred to T. B. He drew from his pocket a copy of Baggin's little "cross with the nobs," as it had been named at Scotland Yard. "Do you know this?" he asked. The man looked at it, and smiled. "Yes--Poltavo drew that for me on the last occasion I met him in Paris." "What does it mean?" Again the prisoner shook his head. "I do not know," he said simply. "Poltavo was telling me something of his plans. He drew the cross and was beginning to explain its meaning, and then for some reason he stopped, crumpled up the paper, and threw it into the fireplace. At the time I attached some importance to it, and, after he had gone, I rescued it, but----" "You don't understand it?" "I don't," said the man, and T. B. knew that he spoke the truth. CHAPTER XXXI THE FLIGHT It must have been whilst Poltavo was in Paris that the ruling spirit of the _Maria Braganza_ discovered that Count Poltavo was indispensable, and that strange reconciliation occurred. Through what agency Baggin and he came into touch is not known. It is generally supposed that the warship ventured close to the French or Spanish coast and sent a message of good will flickering through space, and that some receiving station, undiscovered and undemolished--there must have been a score of such stations--received it, and transmitted it to Poltavo.