Then came a moment of excited movement, which would have been confusion but for the quick wit of Ruth Glidden, and the coolness and energy of the detective.
While the entrapped villain was struggling like a fiend in the grasp of four strong men, Ruth knelt beside the fallen woman and lifted her head.
The next moment two or three officers came hastening in, and Ferrars and Brierly, seeing their captive in safe hands, came together to her aid. She looked up at them with a questioning face.
"Did you know?" she asked, her face full of horror. "Did you know her?"
Ferrars nodded, and as the officers led their captive, cursing and blustering, out at one door, he lifted the senseless woman, and carried her to the couch in the inner room.
"Bring water!" Ruth commanded, "and leave her to me."
As the two men closed the door between them and the two so strangely different women, Brierly laid a hand upon the detective's shoulder.
"Ferrars," he said, "what did Ruth mean? Who is that terrible woman? And how is she concerned in your story? It is time I should know the truth."
"Quite time. That woman is Mrs. Jamieson, or the person you knew under that name. She is cleverly disguised, but I expected some such trick. She went to 'the States' to rid herself of you and your brother; and she took that man, who is really her own brother, and who tried to kill you, as her fellow criminal."
"And did she——" Brierly stopped, shuddering.