George regarded him with a critical and unfriendly eye. He disliked

this fatty degeneration excessively. Looking him up and down, he

could find no point about him that gave him the least pleasure,

with the single exception of the state of his hat, in the side of

which he was rejoiced to perceive there was a large and unshapely

dent.

"You thought you had shaken me off! You thought you'd given me the

slip! Well, you're wrong!"

George eyed him coldly.

"I know what's the matter with you," he said. "Someone's been

feeding you meat."

The young man bubbled with fury. His face turned a deeper scarlet.

He gesticulated.

"You blackguard! Where's my sister?"

At this extraordinary remark the world rocked about George dizzily.

The words upset his entire diagnosis of the situation. Until that

moment he had looked upon this man as a Lothario, a pursuer of

damsels. That the other could possibly have any right on his side

had never occurred to him. He felt unmanned by the shock. It seemed

to cut the ground from under his feet.

"Your sister!"

"You heard what I said. Where is she?"

George was still endeavouring to adjust his scattered faculties.

He felt foolish and apologetic. He had imagined himself unassailably

in the right, and it now appeared that he was in the wrong.

For a moment he was about to become conciliatory. Then the

recollection of the girl's panic and her hints at some trouble

which threatened her--presumably through the medium of this man,

brother or no brother--checked him. He did not know what it was all

about, but the one thing that did stand out clearly in the welter

of confused happenings was the girl's need for his assistance.

Whatever might be the rights of the case, he was her accomplice,

and must behave as such.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

The young man shook a large, gloved fist in his face.

"You blackguard!"

A rich, deep, soft, soothing voice slid into the heated scene like

the Holy Grail sliding athwart a sunbeam.

"What's all this?"

A vast policeman had materialized from nowhere. He stood beside

them, a living statue of Vigilant Authority. One thumb rested

easily on his broad belt. The fingers of the other hand caressed

lightly a moustache that had caused more heart-burnings among the

gentler sex than any other two moustaches in the C-division. The

eyes above the moustache were stern and questioning.

"What's all this?"

George liked policemen. He knew the way to treat them. His voice,

when he replied, had precisely the correct note of respectful

deference which the Force likes to hear.




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