“Oh, you were too late!” she exclaimed despairingly. “I'm still dazed by it all, and that brings it back.”
Under Sir Clinton's sympathetic interrogation, she was soon able to tell them of the ordeal she had gone through. When she had finished, the chief constable bent forward and took up the hypodermic syringe from the table.
“You can sleep quietly to-night,” he said. “There was nothing in this affair except tap-water. I saw the fellow filling it at the sink as I passed the window. I'd have stopped him then, but there were only two of us against three of them, and I had to wait till they were all in one room. I must say the hypodermic puzzled me. I couldn't make out what they were after, unless it was more drugging. But there was nothing in the syringe. I saw him washing it out under the tap before he filled it. At the worst you may have a sore arm; but the only germs in the syringe were some that might be in tap-water. The whole affair was a piece of bluff from start to finish. But it's no wonder it took you in. They must have staged it well. Be thankful it's no worse, Mrs. Fleetwood.”
“Oh, I am! You don't know what a relief it is, Sir Clinton. I meant to go off first thing to-morrow to the Pasteur Institute for treatment. I wasn't very frightened, once I got out of the hands of these horrible men, because I knew I could be saved if I got treatment in time.”
“That's very sensible of you. But you need have no fears about hydrophobia, at any rate. It was simply a bluff and nothing more.”
Cressida thanked them again, and, in order to escape from her gratitude, Sir Clinton said good night, promising to return next morning to tell her anything that she might wish to know.
Wendover had been horrified by the story; and he began to wish that after all they had left Aird to his fate in the tunnel.
“Brutes like that aren't fit to live,” he declared bitterly, when the door had closed behind them.
“Some of them won't live much longer, squire, if I can manage it,” Sir Clinton assured him, in a tone that left no doubt in the matter.
In the hall below, they encountered Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux, and at the sight of Sir Clinton her face showed something more than the mere pleasure of meeting an acquaintance. She came forward and intercepted them.