Haredale did not feel sure of himself. In fact, the episodes of that night seemed, now, like happenings in a dream—a dream from which he yet was not fully awakened. He glanced from Mary to the incomprehensible man who was so completely different from anything he had pictured, from anything he ever had known. He looked about the bare, cell-like apartment, illuminated by the soft light of the globe upon the massive table. He thought of the Arab who had admitted him—of the entire absence of subterfuge where subterfuge was to be expected.
"I will wait," he said.
But in less than thirty-six hours the world had news of Séverac Bablon.
At a time roughly corresponding with that when Mr. Aloys. X. Alden was standing, temporarily petrified with astonishment, in a certain room of the Hotel Astoria, two gentlemen in evening attire burst into a Wandsworth police station. One was a very angry Irishman, the other a profane Scot, whose language, which struck respectful awe to the hearts of two constables, a sergeant, and an inspector—would have done credit to the most eloquent mate in the mercantile marine.
He fired off a volley of redundant but gorgeously florid adjectives, what time he peeled factitious whiskers from his face and shook their stickiness from his fingers. His Irish friend, with brilliant but less elaborate comments, struggled to depilate a Kaiser-like moustache from his upper lip.
"What are ye sittin' still for-r?" shouted the Scotsman, and banged a card on the desk. "I'm Hector Murray, and this is John Macready of Melbourne. We've been held up by the highwaym'n Bablon. Turrn out the forrce. Turrn out the dom'd diveesion. Get a move on ye, mon!"
The accumulated power of the three names—Hector Murray, John Macready, and Séverac Bablon—galvanised the station into sudden activity, and an extraordinary story, a fabulous story, was gleaned from the excited gentlemen. It appeared in every paper on the following morning, so it cannot better be presented here than in the comparatively simple form wherein it met the eyes of readers of the Gleaner's next issue. Cuts have been made where the reporter's account overlaps the preceding, or where he has become purely rhetorical.
SIX FAMOUS CAPITALISTS KIDNAPPED
Séverac Bablon Active Again
AMAZING OUTRAGE AT THE ASTORIA