"Eh! What? You're daft, woman! What's the matter?" said McNeill.
"Don't you woman me, Alexander McNeill!" said Selina. "Daft, am I? Daft to listen to your lies about Jesuits and the young lady! Daft to believe you when you told me not to listen to her, for the Jesuits had got round her, and she didn't know what was good for her! But I've found you out! I'm going to take the young lady straight back to her father, and send the police here for you."
"Woman, you're mad!" said McNeill, rising with a scared face.
"Don't you woman me, you low Scotchman! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, mixing yourself up with these foreign rascals! You that's had a Christian up-bringing!"
"You do what you're paid to do!" roared McNeill.
"Il faut agir!" said the Frenchman, with the true Napoleonic grasp of the situation, and he bounced in a lithe, over-confident manner at Selina.
In a flash she had her left hand well gripped in his abundant hair, and was clawing his face with her right. He screamed and writhed; and the struggle gave Tinker his chance. He slipped the key out of the inside of the door, thrust it into the outside; as the Frenchman tore himself away yelling, he cried, "Outside, Selina!" strengthened the command by a strong drag on her arm; got her outside; slammed to the door, and locked it almost before the kidnappers had realised that he was there. He wrenched the key out of the lock just as Dorothy had got the front-door open; ran down the hall; caught Elsie's hand, and crying, "Come along! Come along!" ran down the avenue, followed by Dorothy and Selina as fast as they could pelt.
Three minutes brought them to the car; and he bundled his breathless charges into it, drove it out of the clump of trees, and sent it hard down the road. Just before Apricale he bade them crouch down in the car that they might not be seen, and rushed through the ill-lighted street at full speed. A mile beyond the town he lighted the lamp and drove her at full speed again, along the smooth road to Islabona.
Beyond Islabona he was forced to go very slowly down the jolting descent; if he had tried to go at any pace, the car on those loose stones might at any moment have taken its own steering in hand and smashed itself against the rocky banks. Dorothy and Elsie took advantage of the slowness to pour into his ears the tale of how the kidnappers had seized them on the Corniche a mile outside the town, thrust them into the carriage, and kept them quiet by threats. Now and again he hushed them, to listen for pursuing horses. He had not much fear of pursuit. The kidnappers would be some time breaking out of the room in which he had locked them; and when they were out they would scour the neighbourhood on foot. He had kept well out of sight behind Selina; and they would hear nothing of the car before they began to pursue. When they did pursue, it would be on the sure-footed hill horses; they would come three yards to the car's one.
At last they reached Dolceacqua, and pushed steadily and carefully downwards. Half-way between that town and Camporossa, they came round a bend in the road, to see half a mile below them the flaring lamp of a motor-car.