Mrs. Forbes took her trials so cheerfully that they all laughed.

“That’s hardly a fair question, is it?” she continued, stealing another glance at her husband.  “At any rate, being a banker’s wife, I knew how extraordinarily difficult it would be to raise any considerable sum of gold at such a late hour, and I resigned myself to remaining a prisoner all night.  Then I think I wept a little, but not for long, because I felt that they meant to keep me alive, and as I look more delicate than I really am, even a Chinaman would see that he was taking some risk by denying me food and all liberty of movement.  Then—­ very soon, it seemed—­ I heard an outer door being forced off its hinges and English voices, and the door of my room was broken open, and I saw a police inspector and some constables.  Hitherto I have never properly appreciated our policemen.  From this day I become their most ardent admirer and enthusiastic helper.  I could have gone down on my knees to those big, kind-looking men in uniform.  In fact I nearly did.  When they released me I could hardly stand.  After that, Mr. Handyside came, and accompanied me here, with a detective sitting next the driver, and my husband and Evelyn have told me something of the extraordinary things which have been going on in London while I was gadding about at Eastbourne.”

“Was the detective a man named Furneaux?” inquired Theydon.

Mrs. Forbes hesitated, and her husband answered for her, as he alone, among the members of the household, had met the Jersey man.

“No,” he said.  “He belonged to the Croydon force, and was sent as an escort.  Furneaux seems to have been swallowed alive since three o’clock.  Everybody is inquiring for him, and no one appears to know anything about him.”

“I wonder whether Wong Li Fu is aware I have been liberated?” said Mrs. Forbes.  “It’s rather odd, is it not, that nothing has been heard from him or his gang if I was to be held a prisoner in order to extort terms?”

“I fancy he meant to add significance to his demand for a reply by advertisement in tomorrow’s Times,” said Forbes.  “You see, Helena, he meant to carry off Evelyn as well as you.”

Mrs. Forbes smiled again at that.

“What in the world should each of us have thought if we had both been bound and gagged in that car?” she cried.

“I know what I think,” said her husband emphatically.  “You are going straight to bed now, and you’ll take ten grains of bromide before lying down.  Evelyn, I appoint you nurse.  Don’t leave your mother till she is sound asleep.”

Mrs. Forbes rose at once.  She admitted, though reluctantly, that a night’s rest was necessary to steady her nerves.

“Ah!” she sighed, “I shall be so glad when all this turmoil is ended, and we are settled for the season in Sutherland.”

“Sutherland, ma’am,” inquired Handyside.  “Isn’t that in the far north of Scotland?”