The little detective held the electric
torch above his head, and was striding on without looking to right or
left. The bitterness of defeat was in his face. Life had turned to
gall and wormwood. As the expressive American phrase has it, he was
chewing mud.

The Superintendent smiled. He knew what torment his friend was
suffering.

"Hello, there!" he said gruffly, and the three men jumped, for their
nerves were on edge.

"Oh, it's you, Napoleon," yelped Furneaux. "Behold Soult and his army
corps, come to explain how Sir John Moore dodged him at Corunna."

"You've lost your man, then?"

"Botched the job at the moment of victory. And all through a rope
end."

"Tush! That isn't in your line."

"Must I be lashed by your wit, too? The rope was applied to me, not to
Fenley."

"You don't mean to say, sir," broke in one of the astounded policemen,
"that you think Mr. Hilton killed his own father!"

"Was it you who got that punch in the tummy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, save your breath. You'll want it when the muscles stiffen.
_'Cre nom d'un pipe!_ To think that I, Furneaux of the Yard, should
queer the finest pitch I ever stood on."

"Oh, come now, Charles," said Winter. "Don't cry over spilt milk.
You'll catch Fenley all right before the weather changes. What really
happened?"

Aware of the paramount necessity of suppressing his personal woes,
Furneaux at once gave a graphic and succinct account of Fenley's
imminent capture and escape. He was scrupulously fair, and exonerated
his assistants from any share of the blame--if indeed any one could be
held accountable for the singular accident which precipitated matters
by a few vital seconds.

Had Fenley reached the ground before the torch revealed the
detective's presence, the latter would have closed with him instantly,
throwing the torch aside, and thus taking the prisoner at the
disadvantage which the fortune of war had brought to bear against the
law. Furneaux was wiry though slight, and he could certainly have held
his man until reenforcements came; nor would the constables' lamps
have been extinguished during the _melee_.

"Then he has vanished, rifle and all," said Winter, when Furneaux had
made an end.

"As though the earth had swallowed him. A thousand years ago it would
have done so," was the humiliated confession.

"None of you have any notion which direction he took?"

"_I_ received such a whack on the skull that I believe he disappeared
in fire,"