"Havin' missed our tame policeman," he said, "the Triangle coves had rather come a mucker. Far as we can make out, the idea was to pip Teal first bang an' then grab you in the same bar, so to speak. Unfortunately, you two warriors put up such a scrap an' made such a row about it that half the Roberts in London were chargin' on to the field before you'd been downed and outed as per invoice. Therefore, realisin' that dispersion is occasionally the better part of valour, your adorin' playmates legged it through the Albany an' out the other side, where the Roberts ceased from troublin' an' the policemen were at rest. They got away, leavin' your bodies on the plain an' a number of short-winded bobbies pantin' in their wake. Really, you know, you want to enlist a few Olympic runners in your comic copper battalions, if you want to catch young Pegasi (or is it Pegasuses?) like our friends----" "Oh, cut it out!" snapped Storm. "What brought you here?" Terry gave the finishing touches to Teal's bandages, and then left the detective to put on his coat and himself lighted a long cigar and puffed thoughtfully. "I suppose you'll have to know," he murmured at length. "Though, as a qualified physician whose disgustin' wealth has stopped him from practising I'll warn you that if you go dashin' off doin' anythin' silly you'll be knocked up for weeks. Well, to put it briefly, at home we thought you'd been knocked out in the firework display. An' Susan thought so too. You were on your way to St. George's Hospital, and had very kindly sent your 'bus round to bring the chief mourners to your deathbed. A uniformed Robert was drivin', so everything in the garden looked lovely--barrin', of course, your own impendin' demise..." Terry studied the end of his cigar intently. "D'you get me, little one?" Storm sat still for some seconds. He might have been graven in bronze for all the emotion he displayed; and yet, behind that mechanical masquerade, he was suffering the tortures of the damned.... Susan, his Susan ... in the Power of the Dog.... "_Kill H..._" At that moment, for the first time in his life, he knew the meaning of utter hopelessness. Nothing mattered in the whole world, nothing existed but that hideous fact. The Triangle might blast London off the face of the earth, might blow to atoms a thousand more John Cardans--it wouldn't count a lonely Continental cuss. Susan was gone.... The only ray of hope came from the implied assertion that she'd been kidnapped instead of murdered on the spot, and even that knowledge was fraught with fears too horrible to contemplate....