He had hardly spoken when the detective turned and leapt for the open window. The table, which stood between him and escape, went down with a crash: he had his foot on the sill, when a shot slammed out, and he stumbled and fell back into the room. The Baron’s bullet had caught him neatly on the heel of his shoe, knocking his leg from under him at the critical moment. Before he could rise the police were on him, and he was handcuffed and helpless.
“A clean shot, though I say it,” said the Baron coolly, as he returned the revolver to his pocket. “No, he’s not hurt, though I may have galled his kibe. Look out for him there!”
They had need to. They had got the man to his feet, and were holding him as if in doubt whether he needed support or not, when he resolved the question for them, and in unmistakable fashion. This way and that, foaming, snarling, tearing with his manacled hands, now diving head-foremost, now nearly free, and caught back again into the human maelstrom—three stout men as they were, they had a hard ado to keep and restrain him. But they got him exhausted and quiet at last, and he stood among them torn and dishevelled, his chest heaving convulsively, dribbling at the mouth, his face like nothing human.
“You, you!” he gasped, glaring at his denouncer, “if I had only guessed—if I had only known!”
“It would have been short shrift for me, I expect,” said the Baron shrewdly.
“It would,” said the prisoner—“that inn-keeper! It was you contrived the trap, was it! You damned, smiling traitor!”
The mortal vehemence he put into it! “What I had always suspected, but could never quite unmask,” thought Le Sage. “The dramatic fire, vicious and dangerous—banked down, but breaking loose now and again and roaring into uncontrollable flame!”
The second gentleman—who was in fact the Chief Constable of the County—put in a reproving word:—
“Come, Ridgway, keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.”
The detective laughed like a devil.