“But that’s just nonsense!” exclaimed Violet in angry tones. “You don’t think that I am going wherever you like to take me, knowing nothing about it, do you? You don’t think I am going to put myself utterly in your hands without some sort of indication of what is happening?”

He chuckled. His chuckle, too, was of a queer, eerie kind. It seemed to echo in the car as it rushed through the streets of London, the long rows of lamps streaming past.

“You are in my hands already, my dear young lady,” he said with a grin. “Whether you like it or not, you are coming with me to where I am ordered to take you. That is final, my dear young lady, and I have nothing more to say about the matter.”

“But I demand to know where I am being taken,” Violet announced. “You have no right to take me away like this, no right whatever.”

Again he chuckled, and again Violet felt a little shiver of apprehension run down her spine at the sound. It was as if he had announced some dreadful fate for her, a fate which he, in a perverted, insane manner, found infinitely amusing and promising in prospect.

“You may demand whatever you wish,” he said in his strangely foreign accent. “But I do not guarantee that you will succeed in getting what you demand.”

“But this is monstrous,” Violet was beginning to say, but he interrupted her, turning towards her with teeth bared in a hideous, humourless grin.

“Will you please oblige me by keeping quiet?” he said fiercely. “If you will not do so I shall be obliged to take means to silence you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should think my meaning is clear enough.”

“I’m afraid,” said Violet, “that it is not.”

“Well, then, if I must be explicit. If you do not keep quiet and cease to worry me by your foolish chatter, I shall be obliged to tie you up and gag you, so that there shall be no danger of your so distracting me that there will be a very serious accident.”

“Oh!” Violet shrank back into her corner of the car, her head spinning at this revelation of the malignancy of her companion. Into what dreadful company had she stumbled? What on earth had happened to turn the man so bitterly against her? Or had he been her enemy from the start? Bravely she forced herself to the realisation that this was a trap, after all; that she was being whisked off to some unknown place for some unknown purpose; and that, though Harry Baker might well be freed when the information which she and Mr. Fairhurst had ferreted out was brought to the attention of the police, it seemed very unlikely that she would be there to welcome him on his release from prison.