The words upset his entire diagnosis of the situation. Until that moment he had looked upon this man as a Lothario, a pursuer of damsels. That the other could possibly have any right on his side had never occurred to him. He felt unmanned by the shock. It seemed to cut the ground from under his feet. "Your sister!" "You heard what I said. Where is she?" George was still endeavouring to adjust his scattered faculties. He felt foolish and apologetic. He had imagined himself unassailably in the right, and it now appeared that he was in the wrong. For a moment he was about to become conciliatory. Then the recollection of the girl's panic and her hints at some trouble which threatened her--presumably through the medium of this man, brother or no brother--checked him. He did not know what it was all about, but the one thing that did stand out clearly in the welter of confused happenings was the girl's need for his assistance. Whatever might be the rights of the case, he was her accomplice, and must behave as such. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. The young man shook a large, gloved fist in his face. "You blackguard!" A rich, deep, soft, soothing voice slid into the heated scene like the Holy Grail sliding athwart a sunbeam. "What's all this?" A vast policeman had materialized from nowhere. He stood beside them, a living statue of Vigilant Authority. One thumb rested easily on his broad belt. The fingers of the other hand caressed lightly a moustache that had caused more heart-burnings among the gentler sex than any other two moustaches in the C-division. The eyes above the moustache were stern and questioning. "What's all this?" George liked policemen. He knew the way to treat them. His voice, when he replied, had precisely the correct note of respectful deference which the Force likes to hear. "I really couldn't say, officer," he said, with just that air of having in a time of trouble found a kind elder brother to help him out of his difficulties which made the constable his ally on the spot. "I was standing here, when this man suddenly made his