Helen pursued him, crying: “See here! Wait a minute! You don’t understand! Mr. Gladwin!”
The Jap was gone and the hall door slammed after him before she had reached the folding doors. In another instant Travers Gladwin, who had been making a vain hunt for a revolver in the upper part of the house came flying down the stairs and assailed the frightened girl with another overwhelming shock.
Seeing she was alone he threw himself into the breach headlong:
“Miss Helen, just a moment. I’ve been waiting for a chance to speak to you. You must get away from here at once. Do you understand––at once! Don’t waste time talking––go quick while you have a chance. You mustn’t be mixed up in what’s coming.”
The girl felt that her heart would burst with its palpitations of fear, but she was incapable of flight. Her limbs seemed like leaden weights. Some force working without the zone of her mental control made her stammer:
“W-w-ho are you?”
“Listen,” the young man raced on, “and you must believe what I say––this man you came here to meet and elope with is not Travers Gladwin at all.”
She expressed her horrified disbelief in a frozen stare.
“It’s true,” he pursued passionately. “He’s an 206 imposter! The real Travers Gladwin you met here this afternoon. He was I; that is, I was he. I mean I am Travers Gladwin––only I’ve got this uniform on now. It is only on your account that I have not caused his arrest and a sensation. I can’t have you mixed up in a nasty scandal. I want to save you––don’t you see I do?––but I can’t wait much longer.”
“I don’t believe what you are saying! I can’t believe it! Oh, it’s too horrible!” sobbed Helen, clinging to a fragment of her shattered idol as a drowning man clings to a straw.