“I hold you for fighting in the public street, an’ that’s all there is to it,” was the firm reply. “You can come quietly or be ’cuffed, just as you like. Clear off, the rest of you.”
An awe-stricken mob backed hastily. Fowle was too dazed even to protest, and Carshaw sensed some hidden but definite motive behind the policeman’s strange alternation of moods. He looked again at the brown-stone house, but night was closing in so rapidly that he could not distinguish a face at any of the windows.
“Let us get there quickly—I’ll be late for dinner,” he said, and the three returned by the way Carshaw had come.
Thus it was that Rex Carshaw, eligible young society bachelor, was drawn into the ever-widening vortex of “The Yacht Mystery.” He did not recognize it yet, but was destined soon to feel the force of its swirling currents.
Gazing from a window of the otherwise deserted house Winifred saw both her assailant and her protector marched off by the policeman. It was patent, even to her benumbed wits, that they had been arrested. The tailing-in of the mob behind the trio told her as much.
She was too stunned to do other than sink into a chair. For a while she feared she was going to faint. With lack-lustre eyes she peered into a gulf of loneliness and despair. Then outraged nature came to her aid, and she burst into a storm of tears.