"I didn't mean my comment as a reproach, dear," and Mrs. Forbes gave him a look which told plainly that these two were lovers after many years of wedded happiness. "Thank God, we have all escaped—thus far!"
"Oh, mother," laughed Evelyn nervously, "you are not anticipating more horrors, are you?"
"A few hours ago I would have scoffed at any one who said that a handful of Chinese could tear aside our cloak of civilized security as though it were a spider's web," was the serious reply. "But I have interrupted my own story. I began to think that I would be taken to some awful den in the East End, and held there till some huge sum of money was paid by way of ransom, when the car suddenly quitted the main road and bumped over a rough surface. I knew I was near Croydon—the last place I would have suspected as a brigands' stronghold. Then we halted, and that wretched man lifted me out, carried me into a back room of an old-fashioned house, put me in a fairly comfortable chair, tied me in with ropes, and left me. I couldn't speak. I was looking at a blank wall and smoke-stained ceiling. I was sure then that he was after money, and began to calculate the time which must elapse before my husband would hear from him and arrange for my release. I wondered how much he would ask—ten, twenty, fifty thousand pounds. How much would you have paid, Jim?"
Mrs. Forbes took her trials so cheerfully that they all laughed.
"That's hardly a fair question, is it?" she continued, stealing another glance at her husband. "At any rate, being a banker's wife, I knew how extraordinarily difficult it would be to raise any considerable sum of gold at such a late hour, and I resigned myself to remaining a prisoner all night. Then I think I wept a little, but not for long, because I felt that they meant to keep me alive, and as I look more delicate than I really am, even a Chinaman would see that he was taking some risk by denying me food and all liberty of movement. Then—very soon, it seemed—I heard an outer door being forced off its hinges and English voices, and the door of my room was broken open, and I saw a police inspector and some constables. Hitherto I have never properly appreciated our policemen. From this day I become their most ardent admirer and enthusiastic helper. I could have gone down on my knees to those big, kind-looking men in uniform. In fact I nearly did. When they released me I could hardly stand. After that, Mr. Handyside came, and accompanied me here, with a detective sitting next the driver, and my husband and Evelyn have told me something of the extraordinary things which have been going on in London while I was gadding about at Eastbourne."
"Was the detective a man named Furneaux?" inquired Theydon.
Mrs. Forbes hesitated, and her husband answered for her, as he alone, among the members of the household, had met the Jersey man.
"No," he said. "He belonged to the Croydon force, and was sent as an escort. Furneaux seems to have been swallowed alive since three o'clock. Everybody is inquiring for him, and no one appears to know anything about him."
"I wonder whether Wong Li Fu is aware I have been liberated?" said Mrs. Forbes. "It's rather odd, is it not, that nothing has been heard from him or his gang if I was to be held a prisoner in order to extort terms?"
"I fancy he meant to add significance to his demand for a reply by advertisement in tomorrow's Times," said Forbes. "You see, Helena, he meant to carry off Evelyn as well as you."