Theydon, slowly regaining his breath, stammered brokenly that he would make things clear in a minute or so.  Then he gasped to Winter: 

“That is Wong Li Fu—­ the man wanted—­ at No. 17!”

“We’ll get him all right,” was the grimly curt answer.  “Meanwhile, are you and Miss Forbes going to the hotel?”

Hardly less surprising than Winter’s appearance on the scene was his seeming knowledge of the purpose of their journey.

“We must get out of this,” he went on, gazing around wrathfully at the ring of curious faces.  “Here, you!” he cried, singling out a policeman who was forcing a passage through the crowd, “clear away this mob and get us a cab!”

The policeman seemed inclined to resent the masterful directions, but a word whispered in his ear when he reached Winter acted like magic, and he soon had the gapers scattered.

A cab was called, and Evelyn Forbes was already inside when Theydon remembered the American.  He looked around, but could see nothing of him.

“Where is—­ Mr. Handyside?” he said, still finding a good deal of difficulty in articulating his words.

“Is that the man who came with you from London?” inquired Winter.

“Yes.  He’s—­ an American.”

“Well, he may have been scared, and made a bee-line for the States.  He is not anywhere in sight.”

“O, please, Mr. Theydon, do let us go to the hotel,” pleaded Evelyn.  She was pale, and yielding to reaction after the excitement of the fracas.

Unwillingly, since he was certain now that there was absolutely no ground for the girl’s alarm on her mother’s account—­ at any rate, so far as illness was concerned—­ Theydon entered the cab, and Winter followed.

“The first thing to do,” said the chief inspector, when they were en route, “is to assure this young lady, whom I take to be Miss Forbes, that she has probably been brought to Eastbourne by a lying telegram, and that her mother is quite well in health.  Secondly, why should Wong Li Fu be described as the man wanted in the Innesmore Mansions inquiry; and, thirdly, how does Mr. Handyside come into the picture?”

“I can’t—­ talk—­ just yet,” wheezed Theydon hoarsely.  “In a few minutes—­ I’ll—­ tell you everything.”

Evelyn had not realized earlier that her self-appointed champion had been seriously hurt.  She was deeply concerned, and wanted to take him straight to the nearest doctor.

But he smiled and essayed to calm her fears by whispering that he would soon be fully recovered.  It was pleasant to know that he had succeeded in rescuing her from some indefinable though none the less deadly peril, yet the insistent question in his subconscious mind was not connected with Evelyn’s escape, or the flight of her assailant, or the mysterious presence of the chief inspector, but with the vanishing of Mr. Handyside.

What had become of him?  It was the maddest of fantasies to imagine that he could be bound up in some way with the Young Manchus.  Yet why did he fail to turn up at the station?