‘The wretch!’
‘The fiend!’
‘He cut off her hair; he hid it and her clothes under the floor where we found them—where I think it probable that he had already some ancient masculine garments concealed—’
‘By Jove! I shouldn’t be surprised if they were Holt’s. I remember the man saying that that nice joker stripped him of his duds,—and certainly when I saw him,—and when Marjorie found him!—he had absolutely nothing on but a queer sort of cloak. Can it be possible that that humorous professor of hankey-pankey—may all the maledictions of the accursed alight upon his head!—can have sent Marjorie Lindon, the daintiest damsel in the land!—into the streets of London rigged out in Holt’s old togs!’
‘As to that, I am not able to give an authoritative opinion, but, if I understand you aright, it at least is possible. Anyhow I am disposed to think that he sent Miss Lindon after the man Holt, taking it for granted that he had eluded you.—’
‘That’s it. Write me down an ass again!’
‘That he did elude you, you have yourself admitted.’
‘That’s because I stopped talking with that mutton-headed bobby,—I’d have followed the man to the ends of the earth if it hadn’t been for that.’
‘Precisely; the reason is immaterial, it is the fact with which we are immediately concerned. He did elude you. And I think you will find that Miss Lindon and Mr Holt are together at this moment.’
‘In men’s clothing?’