"The police are hunting for you everywhere. Cannot you get to some
place where you are not liable to be taken back to France?"
"To-morrow, if I am fortunate," he said, with a faint smile, "I
return to the modest little villa I have rented on the hill-side
outside Athens. In Greece one is still immune from arrest for offences
abroad."
"And I shall return to London with you, Owen. Father and I have
travelled to Trieste, and thence here, in order that I should rejoin
you, now that the danger is past."
"Ah! darling," I cried. "I never for one moment doubted you! Yet I
admit that the circumstances once or twice looked very black and
suspicious."
"Alas! I could not prevent it," she declared; "I left you and joined
Dad at the Coliseum, because I went in fear of some further attempt
being made upon us, and I felt you and I would be safe if I were with
him. He had no idea when he met the others at Stamford that Forbes and
Reckitt and Du Cane had effected that _coup_ with the Archduchess's
jewels."
"No. I had no idea of it," said Poland. "My meeting with them was one
of farewell. I had already severed my connection with them three years
ago, before my arrest."
And then, after some further explanations, I clasped my loved one in
my arms and openly repeated my declaration of fervent love and fond
affection.
Of the rest, what need be said?
Sonia is now very happy, either down at Carrington or at Wilton
Street, for the black clouds which overshadowed the earlier days of
our marriage have rent asunder, and given place to all the sunshine
and brightness of life and hope.
No pair could be happier than we.
Twice we have been to Athens as the guest of the tall, grey-haired
Englishman who is such a thorough-going cosmopolitan, and who lives in
Greece for the sake of the even climate and the study of its
antiquities. No one in the Greek capital recognizes Mr. Wilfrid Marsh
as the once-famous Louis Lessar.
And dear old Jack Marlowe, still our firm and devoted friend, is as
full of good-humoured philosophy as ever, and frequently our visitor.
He still leads his careless existence, and is often to be seen idling
in the window of White's, smoking and watching the passers-by in St.
James's Street.
You who read the newspapers probably know how Arnold Du Cane, alias
Pennington, alias Winton, was recently sentenced at the Old Bailey to
fifteen years, and the two young Frenchmen, Terassier and Brault, to
seven years each, for complicity in the robbery on the Scotch express.
And probably you also read the account of how two mysterious
Englishmen named Reckitt and Forbes, who had been arrested in Paris,
had, somehow, prior to their extradition to England, managed to obtain
possession of blades of safety-razors, and with them had both
committed suicide.
In consequence of this there was no trial of the perpetrators of
those brutal crimes in Porchester Terrace.
The whole affair was but a nine days' horror, and as the authorities
saw that no good could accrue from alarming the public by further
publicity or inquiry, it was quickly "Hushed up."