You yourself need fear nothing unless you
act foolishly, in which case you have everything to fear. Disabuse your
mind of one thought, Miss Cresswell," he said, "and that is that I am in
love with you and that there is any quality or charm in your admirable
person which would prevent my cutting your throat if it was necessary
for my safety. I am not a brute. I will treat you decently, as well as
any lady could wish to be treated, if you do not cross me, but I warn
you that if in the street you call for help or attempt to escape you
will never know what happened to you."

She stood at the end of her bed, one hand gripping the rail, her white
teeth showing against the red lower lip.

"Don't bite your lips, it does not stimulate thought, I can tell you
that as a medical man, and I can also tell you that this is not the
moment for you to consider plans for outwitting me. Get your coat and
hat on."

His voice was now peremptory, and she obeyed. In a few minutes she was
dressed ready for the street. He led the way out and holding her arm
lightly they passed out into the street. He turned sharply to the left,
the girl keeping in step by his side. To the casual observer, and few
could observe them in the gloom of the ill-lit thoroughfares through
which they passed, they were a couple on affectionate terms, but the arm
locked in hers was the arm of a gaoler, and once when they stood waiting
to cross busy Oxford Circus, and she had seen a policeman a few yards
away and had cautiously tried to slip her arm from his, she found her
wrist gripped with a hand of steel.

At the Marylebone Road end of Portland Place a car was waiting and the
doctor opened the door and pushed her in, following immediately.

"I had to keep the car some distance from Krooman Mansions or Beale
would have spotted it immediately," he said in an easy conversational
tone.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"To a highly desirable residence in the Thames Valley," he said, "in the
days when I thought you might be wooed and wed, as the saying goes, I
thought it might make an excellent place for a honeymoon." He felt her
shrink from him.

"Please don't be distressed, I am rather glad that matters have turned
out as they have. I do not like women very much, and I should have been
inexpressibly bored if I had to keep up the fiction of being in love
with you."

"What do you intend doing?" she asked. "You cannot hope to escape from
Mr. Beale. He will fi