For the moment he succeeded in baffling us altogether.
However, we followed him on to Paris, telegraphing beforehand to the
Bank of France to stop the notes. It was all in vain. They had been
cashed within half an hour of my paying them. The curate and his
wife, we found, quitted the Hotel des Deux Mondes for parts unknown
that same afternoon. And, as usual with Colonel Clay, they vanished
into space, leaving no clue behind them. In other words, they
changed their disguise, no doubt, and reappeared somewhere else that
night in altered characters. At any rate, no such person as the
Reverend Richard Peploe Brabazon was ever afterwards heard of--and,
for the matter of that, no such village exists as Empingham,
Northumberland.
We communicated the matter to the Parisian police. They were _most_
unsympathetic. "It is no doubt Colonel Clay," said the official
whom we saw; "but you seem to have little just ground of complaint
against him. As far as I can see, messieurs, there is not much to
choose between you. You, Monsieur le Chevalier, desired to buy
diamonds at the price of paste. You, madame, feared you had bought
paste at the price of diamonds. You, monsieur the secretary, tried
to get the stones from an unsuspecting person for half their value.
He took you all in, that brave Colonel Caoutchouc--it was diamond
cut diamond.
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