"It's a bad business," he pursued relentlessly: "bad all round. Mulready, in your father's pay, tries to have him arrested, the better to rob him. Mrs. Hallam, to secure your property for that precious pet, Freddie, connives at, if she doesn't instigate, a kidnapping. Your father takes her money to deprive you of yours,—which could profit him nothing so long as you remained in lawful possession of it; and at the same time he conspires to rob, through you, the rightful owners—if they are rightful owners. And if they are, why does Freddie Hallam go like a thief in the night to secure property that's his beyond dispute?... I don't really think you owe your father any further consideration."
He waited patiently. Eventually, "No-o," the girl sobbed assent.
"It's this way: Calendar, counting on your sparing him in the end, is going to hound us. He's doing it now: there's Hobbs in the next car, for proof. Until these jewels are returned, whether to Frognall Street or to young Hallam, we're both in danger, both thieves in the sight of the law. And your father knows that, too. There's no profit to be had by discounting the temper of these people; they're as desperate a gang of swindlers as ever lived. They'll have those jewels if they have to go as far as murder—"
"Mr. Kirkwood!" she deprecated, in horror.
He wagged his head stubbornly, ominously. "I've seen them in the raw. They're hot on our trail now; ten to one, they'll be on our backs before we can get across the Channel. Once in England we will be comparatively safe. Until then ... But I'm a brute—I'm frightening you!"
"You are, dreadfully," she confessed in a tremulous voice.
"Forgive me. If you look at the dark side first, the other seems all the brighter. Please don't worry; we'll pull through with flying colors, or my name's not Philip Kirkwood!"
"I have every faith in you," she informed him, flawlessly sincere. "When I think of all you've done and dared for me, on the mere suspicion that I needed your help—"
"We'd best be getting ready," he interrupted hastily. "Here's Brussels."
It was so. Lights, in little clusters and long, wheeling lines, were leaping out of the darkness and flashing back as the train rumbled through the suburbs of the little Paris of the North. Already the other passengers were bestirring themselves, gathering together wraps and hand luggage, and preparing for the journey's end.