“You have arrested me because I happen to be on friendly terms with this man and his daughter. Therefore surely I may be told the offence alleged against them,” I protested in anger.
“The fact you have revealed—namely, that Shaw and Melvill Arnold were friends—is quite sufficient to prove what I really suspected. The man’s identity is made entirely plain, even though you refused to give me information.”
“They are my friends,” I remarked resentfully.
“Perhaps they will be so no longer when you know the actual truth concerning them,” he said, smiling grimly.
“And what is this terrible charge against them, pray?”
“Have I not already told you that you will know quite soon enough?” was the prompt reply of the renowned detective, whose name was as a household word in France; and his two companions smiled.
The telephone bell rang, and one of them took up the receiver and listened.
Then he handed it to Tramu, who, from his words, I gathered, was speaking with the commissary of police at the Gare du Lyon, in Paris, asking that an incoming train should be carefully watched.
“Thank you. Advise me as soon as it arrives,” he added, and placing the receiver down, he rang off.
Again he returned to the attack, endeavouring to discover from me where in England Shaw had hidden himself. But I was just as evasive as he was himself. I was fighting for the woman I loved. I told him vaguely that they lived in the North of England in order to mislead him, but I declared I did not know their actual place of residence.