_Surgit amari aliquid!_ Even in life's pleasantest hours something bitter arises. Theydon was in the company of the woman he loved, yet no word of love could rise to his lips. In the first place he dared not woo the daughter of a millionaire; in the second were his suit even possible, he was far too honorable minded to take immediate advantage of her disturbed state and the services he had undoubtedly rendered, and give the slightest hint of his passion.

So he sighed and looked out of the window at a fast-flying vista of a Kentish hillside, and contented himself by saying:

"For what little I have done, or attempted to do, I am already rewarded far beyond my wildest dreams."

Even that was more than he meant to say. Glancing timidly at Evelyn to see whether or not she resented his words, he was astounded to find that she had blushed scarlet, and, in her turn, was absorbed in the landscape.

Then he remembered that in the frenzy of the moment following the report of her mother's capture by Wong Li Fu, he had kissed her. Had he, or had he not? If not, why not now? But that way lay madness. And, wretched doubt, was she already the promised bride of another man? It was a relief when the train stopped at Sevenoaks.

When it moved on again, they were normal young people once more, and discussed various features of the Young Manchus' raid on society as though the extermination of political adversaries were a commonplace occurrence in modern England.

At last, after a journey which lived long in their minds, since even a prosaic train may follow the path to Wonderland, they arrived at London Bridge, and hummed in a taxi through streets of gaunt warehouses until the light of Westminster flashed on a Thames veiled in the blue mystery of a Summer gloaming.

The cab had hardly halted outside the Fortescue Square mansion when the door was thrown wide, and Tomlinson appeared, flanked by two stalwart footmen. The butler's face was aglow with pleasure.

"It's all right now you've come, Miss Evelyn," he said joyfully. "Mrs.

Forbes arrived more than an hour ago."

But Tomlinson was in error. He did not know what tribulations loomed already through the haze of the future, or he would have laid to heart the time-honored advice to venturesome travelers:

"Never hallo till you're out of the wood!"

CHAPTER XII

NO SURRENDER

Mrs. Forbes, a slim, elegant woman, looked as if she were her daughter's elder sister. Although driven by hay fever to the seaside regularly at the beginning of the London season, she was far from being a _malade imaginaire_. She did not go willingly. Each year she hoped against hope that the annoying ailment would not make itself felt, yet no sooner was the month of May well established than for six or seven weeks she had either to drag her husband and daughter away from the metropolis or live by herself in some South Coast hotel.

She had tried Brighton, whence Mr. Forbes could travel to the city, but soon discovered that the daily train journey was not good for his health. After that, she insisted on adopting the self-denying ordinance of leaving Evelyn with her father in the town house from the middle of May till the end of June, when all three went to the Highlands.

She, of course, had not the remotest knowledge of the terrors threatening her household; a thunderbolt out of a Summer sky would have astonished her less than the indignities she endured when haled away from Eastbourne in the luxurious car which Wong Li Fu had at his command.

Theydon had been in the house nearly half an hour and was exchanging experiences with Forbes and Handyside--the latter, by virtue of his extraordinary share in the day's adventures, being admitted to the full confidence of the others--when Evelyn brought her mother into the library.

"Here is some one who positively refuses to retire for the night until she has met you, Mr. Theydon," said the girl, radiant with joy and relief, now that the shadow of death had passed, apparently forever, leaving her dear ones unscathed.

Mrs. Forbes, an aristocrat to the finger tips, greeted her guest with marked cordiality.

"I have been living during the past few hours like one of the characters one sees in the fearsome little plays produced on the stage of the Grand Guignol in Paris," she said, gazing at him with frank brown eyes singularly like her daughter's, "but I have contrived to gather one definite impression among the whirl of things, and that is that were it not for Mr. Frank Theydon, my daughter and I would now be in as bad a predicament as two women could possibly face anywhere."

"I was lucky enough to be of some little use, but Mr. Handyside is the lion of today's contest," said Theydon.

"I am grateful to both of you, how grateful I can never find words to tell, but Mr. Handyside rivals you in modesty, Mr. Theydon. He assured me that you were the _deus ex machina_, though he obtained the machine itself, and rode sixty miles to rescue me from my dragon. By the way, where is the motor cyclist--what is his name?"

"Jackson, ma'am," put in Handyside. "He went back to Eastbourne--thought nothing of it. I fixed him all right. He's coming to London next week.

I've hired him for a trip round the island."

"In a side-car?" laughed Evelyn.

"No; I guess we'll run to something more roomy."

"Jim, dear," said Mrs. Forbes to her husband, "get Mr. Jackson's address. Our thanks to him, at least, can take a tangible form. No, Evelyn, I'm not going to bed. I mean to sit up and talk. I want to hear everything. You men must smoke big strong cigars, please. If I breathe tobacco smoke I shall not fancy I want to sneeze."

"I, for one, am simply aching to hear what happened to you," said Theydon.

Mrs. Forbes was equally ready to retail her trials.

"When a man who resembled a tall and well-built Japanese came to me on the Downs," she said, "I really believed him to be what he said he was--assistant to an Eastbourne doctor. I never dreamed he was Chinese, not that it mattered at all where I was concerned, only one becomes quite accustomed to meeting well-dressed Japanese men in society, but hardly ever a Chinaman. I thought, too, I remembered his face, which is quite possible, since my husband tells me that this Wong Li Fu was once an attache at the Chinese Embassy. He spoke excellent English, with a strongly marked lisp; when he said that my daughter wished to see me at the Royal Devonshire Hotel, and that a Dr. Sinnett had sent a car for my convenience, I was mainly concerned in getting him to admit the real cause of his presence, because I naturally assumed that Evelyn had met with an accident. No sooner had the car started than he seized my wrists, and gave them a queer twist, which seemed to render me powerless for a few seconds. 'If you scream or resist I hurt you--so--only very bad,' he said. I was that astonished I hardly realized what was taking place before he had my wrists and ankles strapped, tightly, but not painfully, and had placed a gag in my mouth. 'Now, you keep quiet,' he said, and showed me a horrible-looking knife, which he put on the seat between us. 'If you move at all when we pass through towns,' he went on, 'I stick this into you very deep.' Somehow, I knew that he meant to carry out his threats to the letter. At first I was more angry than hurt or even alarmed. Then I began to believe that I had fallen into the clutches of a lunatic, and grew horribly afraid. I saw that we were following the London road, and it oppressed me like a dreadful sort of nightmare to be speeding through a familiar district, a countryside dotted with the houses and estates of personal friends, and be unable to stir or utter a sound. It seemed to be almost stupid to see policemen in the streets of Tunbridge Wells, one of whom gazed into our car sharply, because, I suppose, we were traveling rather fast, and feel that no one could begin to guess at my predicament. You all appreciate the fact, of course, that I knew nothing whatever of any quarrel between my husband and a faction in China?"

"Your husband adopted the policy of the ostrich, Helena," said Forbes, grimly. "It may or may not be a fable as regards ostriches--I don't know enough about them to feel certain, but it is unquestionably too often true of mankind. I believed my head was hidden and imagined the remainder of my body was safe in consequence. Now I learn that my opponents have been tracking me steadily for half a year. The one fact which stands out clearly above all others during the past forty-eight hours is the phenomenal range and completeness of Wong Li Fu's plans."

"I didn't mean my comment as a reproach, dear," and Mrs. Forbes gave him a look which told plainly that these two were lovers after many years of wedded happiness. "Thank God, we have all escaped--thus far!"

"Oh, mother," laughed Evelyn nervously, "you are not anticipating more horrors, are you?"

"A few hours ago I would have scoffed at any one who said that a handful of Chinese could tear aside our cloak of civilized security as though it were a spider's web," was the serious reply. "But I have interrupted my own story. I began to think that I would be taken to some awful den in the East End, and held there till some huge sum of money was paid by way of ransom, when the car suddenly quitted the main road and bumped over a rough surface. I knew I was near Croydon--the last place I would have suspected as a brigands' stronghold. Then we halted, and that wretched man lifted me out, carried me into a back room of an old-fashioned house, put me in a fairly comfortable chair, tied me in with ropes, and left me. I couldn't speak. I was looking at a blank wall and smoke-stained ceiling. I was sure then that he was after money, and began to calculate the time which must elapse before my husband would hear from him and arrange for my release. I wondered how much he would ask--ten, twenty, fifty thousand pounds. How much would you have paid, Jim?"

Mrs. Forbes took her trials so cheerfully that they all laughed.

"That's hardly a fair question, is it?" she continued, stealing another glance at her husband. "At any rate, being a banker's wife, I knew how extraordinarily difficult it would be to raise any considerable sum of gold at such a late hour, and I resigned myself to remaining a prisoner all night. Then I think I wept a little, but not for long, because I felt that they meant to keep me alive, and as I look more delicate than I really am, even a Chinaman would see that he was taking some risk by denying me food and all liberty of movement. Then--very soon, it seemed--I heard an outer door being forced off its hinges and English voices, and the door of my room was broken open, and I saw a police inspector and some constables. Hitherto I have never properly appreciated our policemen. From this day I become their most ardent admirer and enthusiastic helper. I could have gone down on my knees to those big, kind-looking men in uniform. In fact I nearly did. When they released me I could hardly stand. After that, Mr. Handyside came, and accompanied me here, with a detective sitting next the driver, and my husband and Evelyn have told me something of the extraordinary things which have been going on in London while I was gadding about at Eastbourne."

"Was the detective a man named Furneaux?" inquired Theydon.

Mrs. Forbes hesitated, and her husband answered for her, as he alone, among the members of the household, had met the Jersey man.

"No," he said. "He belonged to the Croydon force, and was sent as an escort. Furneaux seems to have been swallowed alive since three o'clock.

Everybody is inquiring for him, and no one appears to know anything about him."

"I wonder whether Wong Li Fu is aware I have been liberated?" said Mrs.

Forbes. "It's rather odd, is it not, that nothing has been heard from him or his gang if I was to be held a prisoner in order to extort terms?"

"I fancy he meant to add significance to his demand for a reply by advertisement in tomorrow's Times," said Forbes. "You see, Helena, he meant to carry off Evelyn as well as you."

Mrs. Forbes smiled again at that.

"What in the world should each of us have thought if we had both been bound and gagged in that car?" she cried.

"I know what I think," said her husband emphatically. "You are going straight to bed now, and you'll take ten grains of bromide before lying down. Evelyn, I appoint you nurse. Don't leave your mother till she is sound asleep."

Mrs. Forbes rose at once. She admitted, though reluctantly, that a night's rest was necessary to steady her nerves.

"Ah!" she sighed, "I shall be so glad when all this turmoil is ended, and we are settled for the season in Sutherland."

"Sutherland, ma'am," inquired Handyside. "Isn't that in the far north of Scotland?"