A cry for help escaped her, and she saw in a quick glance that the detective had lost interest in the road repairers and was running towards them. She fought with all the strength of her lithe, young body to tear herself away. One arm she managed to wrench free and Larry ripped out an oath as her fist caught him on the jaw. With a supreme effort he hurled her through the door of the car which someone within held open, and tumbled in on top of her. She felt other hands clutching at her and a cloth was drawn tightly about her face, smothering her screams. She heard the door slam and felt the car drawn fiercely into motion. Still she maintained her struggles until at last the two men--she knew there were two now--had pinned her to her seat, and she could move neither hand nor foot. So they held her, it seemed for hours, though at a later stage she knew that it was for less than an hour, while they were running out of London. The noise of traffic died down, and the soft not unmusical voice of Larry Hughes came to her ear. "Sorry to be rough, but you rather forced it on us. You had better accept things as they are, and we shall all be more comfortable. Promise that you have finished with this tiger-cat business, and we'll let you travel like a civilised being." She was exhausted, and in any case she could not hope to make any further effective resistance. The cloth about her head prevented her speaking, but she nodded and she felt the hands that pressed her down cautiously withdrawn. The cloth was taken from about her face. Larry Hughes, however, still retained a grip of her wrist. "That's better," he announced. "Tom, stop the car for a moment and get in front with Williams. Miss Noelson and I have a few private things to discuss." She remained silent, collecting her thoughts, till the car had started again. Then she spoke angrily. "This is an outrage." "I agree," he said, coolly. "What would you expect? I had to do this, since you would not let me persuade you. I have saved you from a very awkward position." "You have placed me in a worse one," she retorted. "What do you intend to do with me now?" He freed her wrist and regarded her speculatively, with a cold smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "That depends," he said. "I have, thanks to Mr. Labar, had to push things rather in a hurry. How much of what he told me about you was true? Not all, I'm sure, or you wouldn't have been allowed to walk out of the police station this morning." He had contrived to startle the girl out of her attitude of cold resentment. She pulled herself round till she was half-facing him. "What did he say? What does he know?" "I can't tell you what he knows, but what he asserted that he knew was that you had committed forgery, and that you tried first to bribe him, and then to knock him out. The case as he presented it was pretty ugly. There was only one thing left for me to do as a friend of yours. That was to get you out of the way."