"No: but some rascal of a detective, who could pull a good many
strings, might be in it. At any rate if they get them across the
frontier undrugged, the authorities are squared or humbugged. What I'm
afraid of is that they're making for that rabbit-warren, Genoa. If
they get them there, we may be a fortnight finding them."
"I guess I'll squeal before that," said the millionaire; "yes, if I
have to put up a million dollars."
The car had reached a speed at which they could only talk in a shout,
and it seemed no more than a few minutes before Tinker slowed down for
Mentone, and stopped at a gendarme. Before saying a word Sir Tancred
showed him a twenty-franc piece; and the gendarme spoke, he was even
voluble. Yes, he had seen a carriage, rather more than an hour before.
It had galloped through the town. It carried fever-patients for the
hospital at Genoa, ill of the bubonic plague. The police and the
custom-house officials had been warned by wire from Monte Carlo and
Genoa not to delay it. There were relays of horses every twenty miles
to Genoa: the wires had said so.
"That was how they crossed the frontier, was it? What fools these
officials are!" said Sir Tancred, and he gave the gendarme his
Napoleon: and bade him tell his superior officer that the police had
been humbugged.
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