"Put on your hat and coat," he repeated calmly, "and don't talk nonsense. You don't suppose that I have risked all that I have risked to let you go at this hour." "Dr. van Heerden," she said, "if you have any spark of decency or manhood you will leave me." He laughed a little. "Now you are talking like a heroine of Lyceum drama," he said. "Any appeal you might make, Miss Cresswell, is a waste of time and a waste of breath. I shall have no hesitation in using violence of the most unpleasant character unless you do as I tell you." His voice was quiet, but there was about him a convincing air of purpose. "Where are you going to take me?" she asked. "I am going to take you to a place of safety. When I say safety," he added, "I mean safety for me. You yourself need fear nothing unless you act foolishly, in which case you have everything to fear. Disabuse your mind of one thought, Miss Cresswell," he said, "and that is that I am in love with you and that there is any quality or charm in your admirable person which would prevent my cutting your throat if it was necessary for my safety. I am not a brute. I will treat you decently, as well as any lady could wish to be treated, if you do not cross me, but I warn you that if in the street you call for help or attempt to escape you will never know what happened to you." She stood at the end of her bed, one hand gripping the rail, her white teeth showing against the red lower lip. "Don't bite your lips, it does not stimulate thought, I can tell you that as a medical man, and I can also tell you that this is not the moment for you to consider plans for outwitting me. Get your coat and hat on." His voice was now peremptory, and she obeyed. In a few minutes she was dressed ready for the street. He led the way out and holding her arm lightly they passed out into the street. He turned sharply to the left, the girl keeping in step by his side. To the casual observer, and few could observe them in the gloom of the ill-lit thoroughfares through which they passed, they were a couple on affectionate terms, but the arm locked in hers was the arm of a gaoler, and once when they stood waiting to cross busy Oxford Circus, and she had seen a policeman a few yards away and had cautiously tried to slip her arm from his, she found her wrist gripped with a hand of steel. At the Marylebone Road end of Portland Place a car was waiting and the doctor opened the door and pushed her in, following immediately. "I had to keep the car some distance from Krooman Mansions or Beale would have spotted it immediately," he said in an easy conversational tone. "Where are you taking me?" she asked. "To a highly desirable residence in the Thames Valley," he said, "in the days when I thought you might be wooed and wed, as the saying goes, I thought it might make an excellent place for a honeymoon." He felt her shrink from him.