regarded him as a kind-hearted and eminently trustworthy young man. He
stood and watched the cab as it bore her off swiftly into the
maelstrom of London. He could not help thinking that seldom had he met
one less fitted for the notoriety thrust upon all connected with a
much-talked-of crime.

When the press interviewers, the photographers, the hundred and one
officials with whom she must be brought in contact, were done with
her, poor Miss Beale would retire to her Oxfordshire nook in a state
of mental bewilderment that would baffle description. In one of his
books Theydon had endeavored to depict just such a middle-aged
spinster confronted with a situation not wholly unlike that which now
faced Miss Beale.

He smiled grimly when he realized how far fiction had wandered from
fact. The woman of his imagination had acted with a strength of
character, a decisiveness, that outwitted and confounded certain
scheming personages in the story. How different was the reality! Miss
Beale, rushing across London in a taxi, reminded him of nothing more
masterful than a cage-bird turned loose in a tempest.

He was about to reenter the mansions, meaning to telephone to both the
Fortescue Square house and the Old Broad Street offices, and ask for
instant news of Mr. Forbes in either locality. He was so preoccupied
that he failed to notice an approaching taxicab, though the driver was
signaling, and even tooted a motor horn loudly in the endeavor to
attract his attention.

He did, however, catch his own name, and halted.