Some Ugly Truths.
Poor Leucha was beside herself with grief, for she, alas! knew too well the many serious charges upon which her father and her lover were wanted. Both would receive long terms of penal servitude. Against them stood a very ugly list of previous convictions, and for jewel robbery, judges were never lenient.
Claire was in deadly fear that Roddy’s daughter might also be arrested for the part she had played in the various affairs, but it appeared that the information received by the police did not extend to “the Ladybird.”
The blow was complete. It had fallen and crushed them all.
That night Leucha lay awake, reflecting upon all that might be brought against the pair—the Forbes affair, when the fine pearls of Mrs Stockton-Forbes, the wife of the American railroad king, were stolen from the house in Park Lane; the matter of the Countess of Henham’s diamonds; the theft of Lady Maitland’s emeralds, and a dozen other clever jewel robberies that had from time to time startled readers of the newspapers.
Claire, on her part, also lay wondering—wondering how best to act in order to extricate the man who had so gallantly risked his life to save hers, and the easy-going old thief who had showed her such great kindness and consideration. Could she extricate them? No; she saw it was quite impossible. The English police and judges could not be bribed, as she had heard they could be in some countries. The outlook was hopeless—utterly and absolutely hopeless. Somebody had betrayed them. Both men had declared so, after their arrest. They had either been recognised and watched, or else some enemy had pointed them out to the police. In either case it was the same. A long term of imprisonment awaited both of them.
Though they were thieves, and as such culpable, yet she felt that she had now lost her only friends.
Next morning, rising early, she sent Leucha to the police station to inquire when they would be brought before the magistrate. To her surprise, however, “the Ladybird” brought back the reply that they had been taken up to London by the six o’clock train that morning, in order to be charged in the Extradition Court at Bow Street—the Court reserved for prisoners whose extradition was demanded by foreign Governments.
Post-haste, leaving little Ignatia in charge of the landlady and the parlour-maid, Madame Bernard and Leucha took the express to London, and were present in the grim, sombre police court when the chief magistrate, a pleasant-faced, white-headed old gentleman, took his seat, and the two prisoners were placed in the dock.
Guy’s dark eyes met Claire’s, and he started, turning his face away with shame at his position. She was a royal sovereign, and he, after all, only a thief. He had been unworthy her regard. Roddy saw her also, but made no sign. He feared lest his daughter might be recognised as the ingenious woman who had so cleverly acted as their spy and accomplice, and was annoyed that she should have risked coming there.