The doctor ran straight for him, leaping the hedge like a deer. Lilian, mad with the excitement of the moment, followed she knew not how. Demetri Agryopoulo turned and awaited the arrival of these two onward-rushing figures calmly. The doctor laid a hand upon him.
‘I arrest you on a charge of murder,’ he said, gasping for breath.
‘Bah!’ said Demetri Agryopoulo quietly, and threw the doctor’s hand aside.
The doctor seized him again, but he was spent and breathless. The Greek threw him off as if he had been a child.
‘Are you mad?’ he asked. ‘What murder? Where? When?’
‘My brother’s murder, here, last night,’ panted Lilian, and flung herself, a mouse against a mountain, on the Greek, and grappled with him, and actually bore him to the ground. But before the doctor could lend a hand to aid her, Demetri was on his feet again, and with one bound sprang into a little skiff which lay with its nose upon the bank. He swung one of the sculls about his head, and shouted, ‘Stand back!’ But the doctor watched his time, and dashed in upon him, and before he knew it was struggling in the water, whilst Demetri in the skiff was a score of yards away tugging madly for the farther shore. The doctor scrambled to the bank and ran up and down the riverside looking for another boat. But he found none, and the Greek was already growing dim in the twilight mist. And again Demetri Agryopoulo went his own way, and the darkness shrouded him.
CHAPTER V.
Thecla Perzio received Barndale with much shyness and embarrassment; and he, seeing that she was a good deal afraid of him, plucked up courage and treated her rather wilfully. He insisted on her going down to his sister at his own house in Surrey and staying there under the old maid’s chaperonage, at least until such time as she should be able to find another suitable companion. The more Thecla found herself overpowered by this masterful son of Anak, the more she felt resigned, and comfortable, and peaceful, and safe. Barndale, like the coward he was, felt his power and took advantage of it. He would have no ‘nay’ on any grounds, but exacted immediate obedience.
To make things smoother he set out that afternoon for Surrey, saw his sister, talked her into a great state of sympathy for little Thecla, and brought her back to town by the next morning’s train. Then, having introduced the ladies to each other, he left them and went to his own chambers in King’s Bench Walk. Arrived there he stooped at the keyhole, finding some trifle or other there opposing his latch-key. The key-hole was half-filled with putty. Barndale never lost his temper. ‘Some genius takes this for a joke, I suppose,’ he murmured philosophically, and proceeded by the aid of a pocket corkscrew to clear the keyhole. He had just succeeded when a hand was laid familiarly upon his shoulder. He turned and saw a stranger clean-shaven, calm, and in aspect business-like.