Warner
came out of the house with a face less pale but even more stern,
and the little man with the fish-bone face advanced gravely in his rear.
And if the face of Warner in the sunlight was that of a hanging judge,
the face of the little man behind was more like a death's head.
"Miss Hunt," said Dr. Herbert Warner, "I only wish to offer you my warm
thanks and admiration. By your prompt courage and wisdom in sending
for us by wire this evening, you have enabled us to capture and put out
of mischief one of the most cruel and terrible of the enemies of humanity--
a criminal whose plausibility and pitilessness have never been before
combined in flesh."
Rosamund looked across at him with a white, blank face and blinking eyes.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You can't mean Mr. Smith?"
"He has gone by many other names," said the doctor gravely,
"and not one he did not leave to be cursed behind him. That man,
Miss Hunt, has left a track of blood and tears across the world.
Whether he is mad as well as wicked, we are trying, in the interests
of science, to discover. In any case, we shall have to take him
to a magistrate first, even if only on the road to a lunatic asylum.
But the lunatic asylum in which he is confined will have to be
sealed with wall within wall, and ringed with guns like a fortress,
or he will break out again to bring forth carnage and darkness
on the earth.
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