is the motor cyclist—what is his name?"
"Jackson, ma'am," put in Handyside. "He went back to Eastbourne—thought nothing of it. I fixed him all right. He's coming to London next week. I've hired him for a trip round the island."
"In a side-car?" laughed Evelyn.
"No; I guess we'll run to something more roomy."
"Jim, dear," said Mrs. Forbes to her husband, "get Mr. Jackson's address. Our thanks to him, at least, can take a tangible form. No, Evelyn, I'm not going to bed. I mean to sit up and talk. I want to hear everything. You men must smoke big strong cigars, please. If I breathe tobacco smoke I shall not fancy I want to sneeze."
"I, for one, am simply aching to hear what happened to you," said Theydon.
Mrs. Forbes was equally ready to retail her trials.
"When a man who resembled a tall and well-built Japanese came to me on the Downs," she said, "I really believed him to be what he said he was—assistant to an Eastbourne doctor. I never dreamed he was Chinese, not that it mattered at all where I was concerned, only one becomes quite accustomed to meeting well-dressed Japanese men in society, but hardly ever a Chinaman. I thought, too, I remembered his face, which is quite possible, since my husband tells me that this Wong Li Fu was once an attaché at the Chinese Embassy. He spoke excellent English, with a strongly marked lisp; when he said that my daughter wished to see me at the Royal Devonshire Hotel, and that a Dr. Sinnett had sent a car for my convenience, I was mainly concerned in getting him to admit the real cause of his presence, because I naturally assumed that Evelyn had met with an accident. No sooner had the car started than he seized my wrists, and gave them a queer twist, which seemed to render me powerless for a few seconds. 'If you scream or resist I hurt you—so—only very bad,' he said. I was that astonished I hardly realized what was taking place before he had my wrists and ankles strapped, tightly, but not painfully, and had placed a gag in my mouth. 'Now, you keep quiet,' he said, and showed me a horrible-looking knife, which he put on the seat between us. 'If you move at all when we pass through towns,' he went on, 'I stick this into you very deep.' Somehow, I knew that he meant to carry out his threats to the letter. At first I was more angry than hurt or even alarmed. Then I began to believe that I had fallen into the clutches of a lunatic, and grew horribly afraid. I saw that we were following the London road, and it oppressed me like a dreadful sort of nightmare to be speeding through a familiar district, a countryside dotted with the houses and estates of personal friends, and be unable to stir or utter a sound. It seemed to be almost stupid to see policemen in the streets of Tunbridge Wells, one of whom gazed into our car sharply, because, I suppose, we were traveling rather fast, and feel that no one could begin to guess at my predicament. You all appreciate the fact, of course, that I knew nothing whatever of any quarrel between my husband and a faction in China?"
"Your husband adopted the policy of the ostrich, Helena," said Forbes, grimly. "It may or may not be a fable as regards ostriches—I don't know enough about them to feel certain, but it is unquestionably too often true of mankind. I believed my head was hidden and imagined the remainder of my body was safe in consequence. Now I learn that my opponents have been tracking me steadily for half a year. The one fact which stands out clearly above all others during the past forty-eight hours is the phenomenal range and completeness of Wong Li Fu's plans."
"I didn't mean my comment as a reproach, dear," and Mrs. Forbes gave him a look which told plainly that these two were lovers after many years of wedded happiness. "Thank God, we have all escaped—thus far!"
"Oh, mother," laughed Evelyn nervously, "you are not anticipating more horrors, are you?"
"A few hours ago I would have scoffed at any one who said that a handful of Chinese could tear aside our cloak of civilized security as though it were a spider's web," was the serious reply. "But I have interrupted my own story. I began to think that I would be taken to some awful den in the East End, and held there till some huge sum of money was paid by way of ransom, when the car suddenly quitted the main road and bumped over a rough surface. I knew I was near Croydon—the last place I would have suspected as a brigands' stronghold. Then we halted, and that wretched man lifted me out, carried me into a back room of an old-fashioned house, put me in a fairly comfortable chair, tied me in with ropes, and left me. I couldn't speak. I was looking at a blank wall and smoke-stained ceiling. I was sure then that he was after money, and began to calculate the time which must elapse before my husband would hear from him and arrange for my release. I wondered how much he would ask—ten, twenty, fifty thousand pounds. How much would you have paid, Jim?"
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?"
"Yes."
"It would be, just as the North Foreland is in Kent."
Theydon explained his friend's theory of geographical names in the British Isles, and on that lightly humorous note the ladies disappeared. When they were gone Forbes quickly gave a sinister turn to their talk. He produced a letter from his pocket.
"Listen to this," he said.
"Y. M. is pleased to inform James Creighton Forbes that Mrs. Forbes is a prisoner, and will remain, without food or drink and unable to move, in an empty house until Y. M.'s demands are granted."
His face was white with fury while he read, and his fingers moved convulsively as if he could feel them twining around Wong Li Fu's throat. The other men maintained a sympathetic silence. They understood why that ghastly message