I had them, I felt sure.  There could be no mistaking this description.  I held them in the hollow of my hand.  Here they were in this car, and it would be all my own fault if they escaped me.  It would be necessary only to verify my conclusions, to identify the lady according to the description and photograph given me.  For the rest I knew what to do.

But now a quite unexpected difficulty turned up.

As I have said, there was one other passenger, a gentleman, in the car, and I felt it would be prudent to make his acquaintance.  No doubt I could tell at the first glance whether or not he was an ordinary traveller, or whether he was a friend and accomplice of the lady under observation.

I regret to say that he met me in a very hostile spirit.  I was at great pains to be affable, to treat him with all the courtly consideration I have at command, and I flatter myself that in the matter of tact and good-breeding I do not yield to princes of the blood royal.  But my civility was quite thrown away.  The man was an absolute brute, abrupt, overbearing, rude.  Nothing would conciliate him.  I offered him a cigar (a Borneo of the best brand, at 10s. the hundred), and he not only refused it, but positively forbade me to smoke.  There were ladies in the carriage, he said (this was the first reference made to them), and, when declining to be ordered about, I proposed to refer the question to themselves, he threw himself violently upon me and assaulted me brutally.

Fortunately the attendant came to my rescue or I should have been seriously injured.  He lifted me into my compartment very kindly, and acted like an old friend, as indeed he was, for I remembered him as the Jules l’Echelle with whom I served some time back as an assistant at the Baths of Bormio.

It was, of course, clear to my mind that my assailant was associated in some way with the lady, and probably a confederate.  I saw that I must know more about him, with the least possible delay, and as soon as Jules had left me, promising to return later and talk of old times, and the changes that had come over us since then, I ventured to look out and get a glimpse of the other man, I will not call him gentleman after his conduct.

He was nowhere in sight, but I could hear his voice, several voices, talking together at the far end.  No doubt he had joined his friends in their compartment, and the moment seemed opportune to visit his.  It was next to mine, and the door stood invitingly open.  A few minutes, seconds even, would be enough to tell me something of his identity, perhaps all I wanted to.

At least he made no pretence at mystery; his light baggage lay about, a dressing bag, a roll of rugs, a couple of sticks and an umbrella strapped together, all very neat and precise and respectable, and all alike furnished with a parchment tag or label bearing in plain language all that I wanted to know.