The carroty moustache has once more resumed its place. “Holt, you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
As the detective is once more transformed into Franz Francoise, Mamma becomes fairly livid. She makes a final frantic effort to free herself and howls out:
“Let me go; what have I done? for what am I arrested? Let me go, you impostor!”
“You will learn in good time, woman,” retorts Stanhope. “You may have to answer to several small charges: blackmail, abduction, theft, murder.”
He goes to the door; then turns and looks back at the handcuffed pair:
“Holt,” he says impressively, “watch that woman closely, and search them both at the Jail. You will find upon the woman a belt, which you will take charge of until I come.”
Mamma Francoise yells with rage. She writhes, she curses; her fear and fury are horrible to behold. As Richard Stanhope crosses the threshold, her curses are shrieked after him, and her captors shudder as they listen.
Papa is abject enough. He has been shivering, quaking, cowardly, from the first; but Stanhope’s last words have crushed him utterly. His knees refuse to support him, his eyes stare glassily, his jaw drops weakly.
And as they bear them away, the one helpless from fear, the other resisting with tiger-like fierceness, a distant clock strikes one, two, three!