of that time Dr. Warner
came out of the house with a face less pale but even more stern,
and the little man with the fish-bone face advanced gravely in his rear.
And if the face of Warner in the sunlight was that of a hanging judge,
the face of the little man behind was more like a death's head.

"Miss Hunt," said Dr. Herbert Warner, "I only wish to offer you my warm
thanks and admiration. By your prompt courage and wisdom in sending
for us by wire this evening, you have enabled us to capture and put out
of mischief one of the most cruel and terrible of the enemies of humanity--
a criminal whose plausibility and pitilessness have never been before
combined in flesh."

Rosamund looked across at him with a white, blank face and blinking eyes.
"What do you mean?" she asked. "You can't mean Mr. Smith?"

"He has gone by many other names," said the doctor gravely,
"and not one he did not leave to be cursed behind him. That man,
Miss Hunt, has left a track of blood and tears across the world.
Whether he is mad as well as wicked, we are trying, in the interests
of science, to discover. In any case, we shall have to take him
to a magistrate first, even if only on the road to a lunatic asylum.
But the lunatic asylum in which he is confined will have to be
sealed with wall within wall, and ringed with guns like a fortress,
or he will break out again to bring forth carnage and darkness
on the earth."

Rosamund looked at the two doctors, her face growing paler and paler.
Then her eyes strayed to Michael, who was leaning on the gate;
but he continued to lean on it without moving, with his face turned
away towards the darkening road.

Chapter V

The Allegorical Practical Joker

The criminal specialist who had come with Dr. Warner was a somewhat
more urbane and even dapper figure than he had appeared when
clutching the railings and craning his neck into the garden.
He even looked comparatively young when he took his hat off,
having fair hair parted in the middle and carefully curled
on each side, and lively movements, especially of the hands.
He had a dandified monocle slung round his neck by a broad black ribbon,
and a big bow tie, as if a big American moth had alighted on him.
His dress and gestures were bright enough for a boy's; it was only
when you looked at the fish-bone face that you beheld something
acrid and old. His manners were excellent, though hardly English,