"Hands up!" said he, almost in a whisper.
With an air of meekness and submission that was little short of amazing, the superintendent-detective raised both hands above his head.
Valentine spoke again, this time more quickly, as if he were excited.
"Who you are," he cried, "I neither know nor care. But attempt to betray me, attempt to leave this room until we have come to some mutual understanding, and you do so at your peril. How you discovered my identity, I don't pretend to know."
"Then," said Etheridge, whose hands were still held high above his head, "then, you admit that you are von Essling."
"I admit nothing," rapped out the other.
"You have already done so," answered the detective. "And that is enough for me."
And hardly had the words left his lips than Valentine was seized roughly from behind and both arms were pinned to his sides. For a moment, he struggled violently to free himself; and it was then that the revolver went off, and the leaden bullet was driven deep into the flooring. With an effort, he twisted round, to see who his adversary might be; and his disgust and astonishment can better be imagined than described when he found himself confronted by the same white-coated steward--the thick-set man with the black moustache--who had carried his cabin trunk on board. A second later, he was out of action, his hands fastened together behind his back by means of a pair of handcuffs.
"That was smart work, Richards," observed the superintendent-detective, turning to the steward. "I hope you were able to hear every word that passed between us?"
"Every word, sir," said the steward, who, as a matter of fact, was one of the detective's most trusted men, who had accompanied him from London, sitting beside the driver in the eighty horse-power Rolls-Royce car, which had come from Whitehall at the rate of forty miles an hour.