she interposed in quick alarm:

"No--if you please, a moment; I must have time to think!" Her slender
fingers writhed together in her agony of doubt and irresolution. "If only I
knew what to do...."

Lanyard was dumb. There was, indeed, nothing helpful he could offer, who
was without a solitary tangible or trustworthy clue to the nature of this
strange business.

He owned himself sadly mystified. In the light--or, rather, the shadow--of
this latest development, his revised suspicions seemed unwarranted to the
point of impertinence; unless, of course, one assumed the unknown assailant
to be a rejected lover or wronged husband. And somehow one did not, in
the presence of this clear-eyed, straight-limbed, courageous young
Englishwoman, so wanting in self-consciousness.

And yet ... what the deuce was she to this man whom, indisputably, she
followed against his wish?

And what conceivable chain of circumstances linked their fortunes with his,
and that double burglary of the first night out with this murderous assault
of to-night?

Nor was to-night's work, considered by itself, lacking in questionable
features.

Why had Thackeray carried that sound arm in a sling? How had its bandages
come to be unwrapped? Not in struggles before being placed hors de combat,
for he had never had a chance to resist. Had his assailant, then, unwrapped