“I’ve been looking on it as a piece of luck—­but entirely from my viewpoint.”

She put a small hand on his arm, and spoke earnestly.

“Mr. Bevan, you mustn’t think that, because I’ve been laughing a good deal and have seemed to treat all this as a joke, you haven’t saved me from real trouble.  If you hadn’t been there and hadn’t acted with such presence of mind, it would have been terrible!”

“But surely, if that fellow was annoying you, you could have called a policeman?”

“Oh, it wasn’t anything like that.  It was much, much worse.  But I mustn’t go on like this.  It isn’t fair on you.”  Her eyes lit up again with the old shining smile.  “I know you have no curiosity about me, but still there’s no knowing whether I might not arouse some if I went on piling up the mystery.  And the silly part is that really there’s no mystery at all.  It’s just that I can’t tell anyone about it.”

“That very fact seems to me to constitute the makings of a pretty fair mystery.”

“Well, what I mean is, I’m not a princess in disguise trying to escape from anarchists, or anything like those things you read about in books.  I’m just in a perfectly simple piece of trouble.  You would be bored to death if I told you about it.”

“Try me.”

She shook her head.

“No.  Besides, here we are.”  The cab had stopped at the hotel, and a commissionaire was already opening the door.  “Now, if you haven’t repented of your rash offer and really are going to be so awfully kind as to let me have that money, would you mind rushing off and getting it, because I must hurry.  I can just catch a good train, and it’s hours to the next.”

“Will you wait here?  I’ll be back in a moment.”

“Very well.”

The last George saw of her was another of those exhilarating smiles of hers.  It was literally the last he saw of her, for, when he returned not more than two minutes later, the cab had gone, the girl had gone, and the world was empty.

To him, gaping at this wholly unforeseen calamity the commissionaire vouchsafed information.

“The young lady took the cab on, sir.”

“Took the cab on?”

“Almost immediately after you had gone, sir, she got in again and told the man to drive to Waterloo.”

George could make nothing of it.  He stood there in silent perplexity, and might have continued to stand indefinitely, had not his mind been distracted by a dictatorial voice at his elbow.

“You, sir!  Dammit!”

A second taxi-cab had pulled up, and from it a stout, scarlet-faced young man had sprung.  One glance told George all.  The hunt was up once more.  The bloodhound had picked up the trail.  Percy was in again!