"Luggage?" He looked at Mr. Jornicroft as if he had suggested the impossibility of going abroad without a motor veil or the Encyclopædia Britannica. "What the blazes has luggage got to do with it?" His roar could be heard above the din of the hurrying station. "I don't want _luggage_." The humour of the proposition appealed to him so mightily that he went off into one of his reverberating explosions of mirth. "Ho! ho! ho!" Then recovering--"Don't you worry about that." "But have you enough on you--it's an expensive journey--of course I should be most happy--" Jaffery stepped back and scanned the length of the platform and beckoned to an official, who came hurrying towards him. It was the station master. "Have you ever seen me before, Mr. Winter?" The official laughed. "Pretty often, Mr. Chayne." "Do you think I could get from here to Nice without buying a ticket now?" "Why, of course, our agent at Boulogne will arrange it if I send him a wire." "Right," said Jaffery. "Please do so, Mr. Winter. I'm crossing now and going to Nice by the Côte d'Azur Express to-morrow night. And see after a seat for me, will you?" "I'll reserve a compartment if possible, Mr. Chayne." The station master raised his hat and departed. Jaffery, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, beamed upon us like a mountainous child. We were all impressed by his lordly command of the railway systems of Europe. It was a question of credit, of course, but neither Mr. Jornicroft, solid man that he was, nor myself could have undertaken that journey with a few loose shillings in his possession. For the first time since Adrian's death I saw Jaffery really enjoying himself. And that is how Jaffery without money or luggage or even an overcoat travelled from London to Nice, for no other purpose than to save Doria's sacred little body from being profaned by the touch of ruder hands. Having carried her at every stage beginning with the transfer from train to steamer at Folkestone and ending with a triumphant march up the stairs to the third floor of the Cimiez hotel, he took the first train back straight through to London. He returned the same old grinning giant, without a shadow of grumpiness on his jolly face. CHAPTER XIII