'No mistake at all,' said Mr. Grabbley tauntingly.
They were out in Park Lane now, and Dulcie cast a despairing glance at the many closed and shuttered windows of the mansions there, as if she would summon aid.
'Look here, gal,' said the detective, for such Mr. Grabbley was, 'I have orders to arrest the original of this fotygraf—you are that original—look! don't you see yourself, as if in a looking-glass?'
Dulcie did look, with a kind of horrible fascination, and recognised in it a very striking resemblance to her face and dress—even to the luckless silver locket and chain.
Mr. Grabbley utilised the moments of her bewilderment. He stopped a passing cab—half lifted, half thrust her in.
'Marlborough Street,' said he to the driver, and they were driven off.
'Of what am I accused?' said Dulcie, driven desperate now.
'Robbery on a railway—that's all; and you knows all about it—the when and the where.'
If not the victim of some deliberate outrage, she was certainly the victim of some inexplicable mistake which might yet be explained; anyway in her ignorance and in her wild fear she strove to elicit succour from passers-by, till Mr. Grabbley closed the rattling glasses of the cab and held her firmly, while, like one in a dreadful dream, she was rapidly driven through Berkley Square, across Bond Street and Regent Street, to their destination, where, when the cab stopped, she was quickly taken indoors, through a passage, in which several police officers and odd, repulsive-looking people of both sexes were loitering about, and whence she was conveyed by the inexorable Grabbley, to whom all appeals were vain, and left in a state of semi-stupefaction—after being led down a long corridor, having many doors opening on each side thereof—in a small bare room—a den it seemed, and if not quite a prison cell, yet dreary, cold, and comfortless enough to suggest the idea of being one.
She heard a key turned upon her, and felt that now—more than ever—she was a prisoner!