“Game’s up, eh?” he said, with an air of recklessness as the man who had him in charge ended his struggles by clapping a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.
The other two men suffered themselves to be arrested quietly, Diggs in particular laughing, and telling his captor that he had got the wrong man.
“That’s the fellow you should be looking after!” he added, pointing to Mr. Candover who, rendered completely unconscious by this second fall coming so soon after the first, was being placed inside the cab which he had been attempting to enter.
Mademoiselle Laure, speaking English as fluently as any of them, laid a strong hand upon the policeman who was peering into her brother’s face:—
“What are you doing? You can’t touch him,” she said fiercely. “If he’s not dead, he is dying, as you must see.”
“We’ll take him to the hospital, ma’am,” said the policeman. “You can come too.”
A cry from Pamela, faint, miserable, made them both look round:—
“Papa!”
It revealed a world of shocked discovery, an agony of distress, and every man who heard it felt a lump in his throat.
As for Babs, the younger girl, she stood clinging to her sister, white, trembling, without even uttering a cry. But in her eyes there was a look which showed that, if anything, she understood the situation even better than did her elder sister.