Part 35 (2/2)

Helen was in too good training by this time to swoon, though she wanted to. She started back in alarm and exclaimed:

”Oh, how you startled me!”

Bateato circled round her like an enraged rat.

”You no fool me--I know you tief--you steal picture--I get pleece--much pleece--whole big lot pleece, quick.”

He headed for the door.

Helen pursued him, crying: ”See here! Wait a minute! You don't understand! Mr. Gladwin!”

The j.a.p was gone and the hall door slammed after him before she had reached the folding doors. In another instant Travers Gladwin, who had been making a vain hunt for a revolver in the upper part of the house came flying down the stairs and a.s.sailed the frightened girl with another overwhelming shock.

Seeing she was alone he threw himself into the breach headlong:

”Miss Helen, just a moment. I've been waiting for a chance to speak to you. You must get away from here at once. Do you understand--at once!

Don't waste time talking--go quick while you have a chance. You mustn't be mixed up in what's coming.”

The girl felt that her heart would burst with its palpitations of fear, but she was incapable of flight. Her limbs seemed like leaden weights. Some force working without the zone of her mental control made her stammer:

”W-w-ho are you?”

”Listen,” the young man raced on, ”and you must believe what I say--this man you came here to meet and elope with is not Travers Gladwin at all.”

She expressed her horrified disbelief in a frozen stare.

”It's true,” he pursued pa.s.sionately. ”He's an imposter! The real Travers Gladwin you met here this afternoon. He was I; that is, I was he. I mean I am Travers Gladwin--only I've got this uniform on now. It is only on your account that I have not caused his arrest and a sensation. I can't have you mixed up in a nasty scandal. I want to save you--don't you see I do?--but I can't wait much longer.”

”I don't believe what you are saying! I can't believe it! Oh, it's too horrible!” sobbed Helen, clinging to a fragment of her shattered idol as a drowning man clings to a straw.

Gladwin was on the point of resuming his appeal when he sensed a heavy tread. He had divined that the picture thief had left the room to reconnoitre emergency exits or to learn whether or not the house was surrounded. He had hoped that he might run into Michael Phelan, but did not stop to puzzle out why this had not happened. Backing to the door, he whispered:

”He's coming--question him. That's all I ask. I'll be waiting to see that you get out in safety--trust me!”

He wriggled backward and disappeared through the folding doors.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

A VISIT TO THE EXILED PHELAN.

But where, oh, where was the exiled Phelan when the bogus Gladwin went on his backstairs investigation? Puzzled as he was by the fast moving events of the night, stripped of the uniform of his authority, still his police instincts should have warned him of this new character in his dream.

Michael Phelan, however, was busy--busy in a way one little would suppose.

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