I therefore hurried over to the hotel, and learned that she and her husband had gone out about six o’clock, and not yet returned. I sat down to wait for them, little guessing that I was to remain there till nearly eleven o’clock, they being at the theatre, as I afterwards learned. While I was thus waiting at the hotel, Bob Brettle had taken action in a style characteristic of him and his passionate nature. He hunted through all the dens till he came upon Dirty Dick singing songs in a half-gleeful and half-fuddled condition. Dick remained gleeful not one moment after he saw Brettle’s face. The house-breaker invited him out to the darkness of the stair-head, and there brought out a long-bladed clasp-knife, at the same moment throttling Dick with his left hand, and forcing him down on his knees. There, with the point of the knife at Dick’s heart, he dragged out of the quaking wretch a full and abject confession of the plot, and also of the name of the hotel at which Pretty Polly and her wealthy husband had put up. When Dick had finished, Bob simply swung round his powerful left hand, and in a moment Dick lay groaning on the landing below with a broken leg and fractured rib. Paying no attention to the injured wretch or his cries, Brettle ran down the stair and made for the hotel. A waiter at the portico told him that the Harpers were not in, but were expected shortly. Brettle stood sentry there at the door or near it for a full half hour, and at length was rewarded by seeing a cab drive up, and a gentleman get out and hand forth a sweet-faced and elegantly dressed lady—the veritable Pretty Polly. With a bound like that of a tiger Brettle was upon her, and had her taper wrist clenched in his hand, and her face swung round to the light of the street lamps with a force that almost crushed the delicate bones. “You jewelled serpent!” he hissed, “you would sell me to the shambles! Look at me, you beautiful devil, and say, if you can, that it is not true!” A shriek—appalling enough to reach my ears above, and bring me rushing down—was Pretty Polly’s only answer. Her husband, however, laid a hand on Brettle’s shoulder— “How dare you, sir? Who are you?” “Her husband!” shouted the infuriated house-breaker; and at the same moment there was the flash of a knife and an agonising cry from the wounded woman, and a rush upon the assailant from all sides. I was among the number, and Brettle recognised me with a quiet nod. “I’m not going to struggle or bolt,” he quietly observed, as Pretty Polly was lifted from the pavement and borne insensible into the hotel, with the blood gushing from a deep wound in her breast. “I’m satisfied now. I have paid her off. I’ve taken it out of her, and she was the only woman I ever loved!”