He was hardly prepared for such a vicious attack, I fancy.

Most certainly that scoundrel took me by surprise, or he would not have slipped through my fingers like an eel.

Next time, either Mr.Theydon or I may be trusted to balance matters." Theydon grinned and nodded.

He signaled with his eyes that Winter was to make Evelyn Forbes understand that she had just escaped being the victim of an extraordinary outrage.

Muddled as his thoughts were, he grasped the essential fact that Scotland Yard was better posted in the secret history of the Innesmore Mansions crime than he had given the department credit for before the dramatic meeting with Furneaux that morning.
And, indeed, the chief inspector lost no time in justifying that belief.
"You must have imagined that the world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy," he said, smiling at the mystified and distraught Evelyn, as though the whirl of events outside the station were part and parcel of the humdrum routine of life.