t of the steps they met a policeman,
to whom they told their story, and who, as a matter of course,
was filled with an immediate desire to arrest them both. To the
policeman's mind it was most distressing that a bloody-faced man
without a hat, with a companion almost too weak to walk, should not
be conveyed to a police-station. But after ten minutes' parley,
during which Wharton sat on the bottom step and Lopez explained all
the circumstances, he consented to get them a cab, to take their
address, and then to go alone to the station and make his report.
That the thieves had got off with their plunder was only too
manifest. Lopez took the injured man home to the house in Manchester
Square, and then returned in the same cab, hatless, to his own
lodgings.

As he returned he applied his mind to think how he could turn the
events of the evening to his own use. He did not believe that Everett
Wharton was severely hurt. Indeed there might be a question whether
in the morning his own injury would not be the most severe. But the
immediate effect on the flustered and despoiled unfortunate one had
been great enough to justify Lopez in taking strong steps if strong
steps could in any way benefit himself. Would it be best to publish
this affair on the house-tops, or to bury it in the shade, as nearly
as it might be buried? He had determined in his own mind that his
friend certainly had been tipsy. In no other way could his conduct
be understood. And a row with a tipsy man at midnight in the park
is not, at first sight, creditable. But it could be made to have
a better appearance if told by himself, than if published from
other quarters. The old housekeeper at Manchester Square must know
something about it, and would, of course, tell what she knew, and
the loss of the money and the watch must in all probability be made
known. Before he had reached his own door he had quite made up his
mind that he himself would tell the story after his own fashion.

And he told it, before he went to bed that night. He washed the blood
from his face and head, and cut away a part of the clotted hair, and
then wrote a letter to old Mr. Wharton at Wharton Hall. And between
three and four o'clock in the morning he went out and posted his
letter in the nearest pillar, so that it might go down by the day
mail and certainly be preceded by no other written tidings. The
letter which he sent was as follows:--

DEAR MR. WHARTON,

I regret to have t