“No,” she insisted—“no! Why should I save myself at your expense?—betray you—my father—!”
“Then give me the obedience of a daughter ... or let Victor succeed in branding you a thief, the daughter of a thief!”
He stilled the protest she would have uttered by placing fingers over her lips.
“Listen!”
In the corridor an angry rumour of voices, alarmed calls and cries, with thumps and scuffles of hasty feet, in the bedchamber the shrieks persisting without the least hint of failing: as a damned soul might bawl upon its bed of coals ...
“Sofia, I implore you!”
Still she hesitated.
“But you—?”
“Never fear for me, remember that I am of the Secret Service: two minutes after I see the inside of the nearest police station, I shall be free—and happy in the assurance that your name is without stain. Then Karslake will come for you, bring you to me ... Now!”
Lanyard caught the girl’s two wrists together and, throwing himself bodily backward across the desk, carried her hands to his throat.