Ismay jumped back, mouthing curses; the girl had already slipped out of the room. Turning, he saw her flying through the hall toward the main door. In a fit of futile, childish spite, unreasonable and unreasoning, he whipped out his pistol and sent a bullet after her.
She heard it whine near her head and crash through the glass panes of the door. And she heard herself cry out in a strange voice. The next instant she had flung open the door and thrown herself out, across the veranda and down the steps. Then turning blindly to the left, instinct guiding her to seek temporary safety by hiding in the wilderness of the dunes, she blundered into somebody’s arms.
She was caught and held fast despite her struggles to free herself: to which, believing herself to be in the hands of Mrs. Clover or her husband, she gave all her strength.
At the same time the first-floor windows of the hotel were illumined by an infernal glare. All round her there was lurid light, setting everything in sharp relief. The face of the man who held her was suddenly revealed; and it was her father’s.... She had left him inside the building and now ... She was assailed with a terrifying fear that she had gone mad. In a frenzy she wrenched herself free; but only to be caught in other arms.
A voice she knew said soothingly: “There, Miss Searle—you’re all right now....”
Staff’s voice and, when she twisted to look, Staff’s face, friendly and reassuring!
“Don’t be afraid,” he was saying; “we’ll take care of you now—your father and I.”
“My father!” she gasped. “My father is in there!”
“No,” said Iff at her side. “Believe me, he isn’t. That, dear, is your fondly affectionate Uncle Arbuthnot—and between the several of us I don’t mind telling you that he’s stood in my shoes for the last time.”
“But I don’t,” she stammered—“I don’t understand—”