the blue-spiked railings behind, clutched by the stranger’s yellow vulture claws and peered over by his long vulture neck, the silk hat on the gravel, and the little cloudlet of smoke floating across the garden as innocently as the puff of a cigarette—­ all these seemed unnaturally distinct and definite.  They existed, like symbols, in an ecstasy of separation.  Indeed, every object grew more and more particular and precious because the whole picture was breaking up.  Things look so bright just before they burst.

Long before his fancies had begun, let alone ceased, Arthur had stepped across and taken one of Smith’s arms.  Simultaneously the little stranger had run up the steps and taken the other.  Smith went into peals of laughter, and surrendered his pistol with perfect willingness.  Moon raised the doctor to his feet, and then went and leaned sullenly on the garden gate.  The girls were quiet and vigilant, as good women mostly are in instants of catastrophe, but their faces showed that, somehow or other, a light had been dashed out of the sky.  The doctor himself, when he had risen, collected his hat and wits, and dusting himself down with an air of great disgust, turned to them in brief apology.  He was very white with his recent panic, but he spoke with perfect self-control.

“You will excuse us, ladies,” he said; “my friend and Mr. Inglewood are both scientists in their several ways.  I think we had better all take Mr. Smith indoors, and communicate with you later.”

And under the guard of the three natural philosophers the disarmed Smith was led tactfully into the house, still roaring with laughter.

From time to time during the next twenty minutes his distant boom of mirth could again be heard through the half-open window; but there came no echo of the quiet voices of the physicians.  The girls walked about the garden together, rubbing up each other’s spirits as best they might; Michael Moon still hung heavily against the gate.  Somewhere about the expiration of that time Dr. Warner came out of the house with a face less pale but even more stern, and the little man with the fish-bone face advanced gravely in his rear.  And if the face of Warner in the sunlight was that of a hanging judge, the face of the little man behind was more like a death’s head.

“Miss Hunt,” said Dr. Herbert Warner, “I only wish to offer you my warm thanks and admiration.  By your prompt courage and wisdom in sending for us by wire this evening, you have enabled us to capture and put out of mischief one of the most cruel and terrible of the enemies of humanity—­ a criminal whose plausibility and pitilessness have never been before combined in flesh.”

Rosamund looked across at him with a white, blank face and blinking eyes.  “What do you mean?” she asked.  “You can’t mean Mr. Smith?”