Her companion flung himself upon me, beating me about the head, but I had gripped them both, and in a few moments there sounded hurrying footsteps and several persons, including the detective Bullen, came tearing round the street-corner.
Next second the pair recognised how very neatly they had been trapped.
Chapter Ten.
The Earl of Stanchester Speaks his Mind.
“Let me go!” cried the woman, speaking in French in her excitement. “Let us cry quits and I will tell the truth. If I am arrested, Lady Lolita must also fall into the hands of the police. You do not know everything or you would not do this! Let us go—and save her.”
There was something in her quick argument that struck me as truthful. If the pair were arrested they might certainly lay some counter-charge, true or false, against my love, therefore with as sudden an impulse as I had raised the alarm I released my hold, saying—
“Very well. That’s a bargain. I shall hold you both to it, remember. Get away as quickly as you can.”
And before the detective, the newsvendor and the two other men attracted by my shouts could reach the spot, the pair had sped along the Chelsea Embankment as fast as their legs could carry them and turned into a narrow thoroughfare running parallel with Britten Street.