"When, in your brave generosity, you accompanied your friend and mine on her perilous journey to warn me that Mr. Oppner's detectives had a plan for my capture, I knew, on the instant when you stepped into Laurel Cottage, that Miss Oppner had made a wise selection in the companion who should share her secret. I did not regret having confided that address to her discretion. The warning was unnecessary, but I valued it none the less. By an oversight, for which I reproach myself, a clue to your presence was left behind, when, but a few minutes before the police arrived, we left the cottage--which had served its purpose. But another of my good friends secured it, and I have it now. It is a white orchid. I have ventured to keep it, that it may remind me of the gratitude I owe to you both." CHAPTER XX CLOSED DOORS "Why can't they open the doors? I can see there are people inside!" A muffled roar, like that of a nearing storm at sea, drowned the querulous voice. "Move along here, please! Move on! Move on!" The monotonous orders of the police rose above the loud drone of the angry crowd. Motor-buses made perilous navigation through the narrow street. The hooting of horns on taxi-cabs played a brisk accompaniment to the mournful chant. Almost from the Courts to the trebly guarded entrance of the Chancery Legal Incorporated Credit Society Bank stretched that deep rank of victims. For, at the corner of Chancery Lane, the contents-bill of a daily paper thus displayed, in suitable order of precedence, the vital topics of the moment: MISS PAULETTE DELOTUS _NOT_ MARRIED Australians' Plucky Fight IS SEVERAC BABLON IN VIENNA? BIG CITY BANK SMASH SLUMP IN NICARAGUAN RAILS To some, those closed doors meant the sacrifice of jewellery, of some part of the luxury of life; to others, they meant--the drop-curtain that blacked out the future, the end of the act, the end of the play. "Move along here, please! Move on! Move on!" "All right, constable," said Sir Richard Haredale, smiling unmirthfully; "I'll move on--and move out!" He extricated himself from the swaying, groaning, cursing multitude, and stepped across to the opposite side of the street. Lost in unpleasant meditation, he stood, a spruce, military figure, bearing upon his exterior nothing indicative of the ruined man. He was quite unaware of the approach of a graceful, fair girl, whose fresh English beauty already had enslaved the imaginations of some fifty lawyers' clerks returning from lunch. As ignorant of her train of conquests as Haredale was ignorant of her presence, she came up to him--and tears gleamed upon her lashes. She stood beside him, and he did not see her. "Dick!"