Mademoiselle Laure waved her hand rapidly to the girls, and forcing a smile, told them he would be well soon, and that they must go back to Miss Willett and wait for her to write to them. But they did not answer. They stood close together, half inside the doorway they had just left, and looked disconsolately at the cab as it drove away to the hospital, while the policemen made the three men whom they had arrested enter the cab which had just been left vacant by the two strange gentlemen.
These two gentlemen now came across the road, looking sympathetically at the two forlorn young girls.
“Come in, Pamela,” whispered Babs, “come up to Mrs. Angmering. She’ll be kind to us.”
And they withdrew hurriedly through the doorway, and hurrying upstairs, fell upon Audrey, who was holding out her arms to them, and who led them with her, whispering soothing words of comfort, into the deserted showroom.
It was Babs who spoke first of the dreadful thing they had seen.
“Why did they want to kill papa, Mrs. Angmering?” she said in a low voice, nestling close to her, and looking up through her tears. “What has he done?”
“Oh, hush,” said Pamela, the elder and wiser. “Don’t let us ask. I don’t want to know.”
But the younger girl was more inquisitive.
“Do you think,” she said, “that the police only took up the other men for attacking papa?”
“I don’t know anything about it, dear,” said Audrey, “except what you’ve told me, that your father was knocked down and taken to the hospital, and that the other men, the three who wanted to speak to him, including the one who struck him, have been taken into custody.”