At that instant another train--the local train from Kentish Town and
Hendon--steamed up to the opposite side of the platform. Before it had
stopped two men leaped out. They were the two police-sergeants.
Instantly--simultaneously--a man burst through the barrier and ran on to
the platform from the street. He was bareheaded, and his face was
ghastly white. In one moment the police-sergeants had laid hands upon
him. The train to the north had not yet cleared the platform. He saw it
passing out. He took hold of the hands by which he was held and threw
them off, as if their grasp had been the grasp of a child. Then he
bounded away toward the retreating train. It was now moving rapidly. It
was gone; it was swallowed up in the dark mouth beyond, and the man
stood behind, bareheaded, dripping with perspiration, yet white as
ashes, his clothes awry, the collar of his frieze ulster torn away, and
a strip of red flannel lining exposed.

It was Paul Ritson.

The police-sergeants hurried up with the re-enforcement of two porters
to recover their man. But he was quiet enough now. He did not stir a
muscle when they handcuffed him. He looked around with vague, vacant
eyes, hardly seeming to realize where he was or what was being done with
him. His frenzy was gone.

They led him down the platform. Hugh Ritson was standing on the spot
where Greta had left him one minute before. When the company neared that
spot the prisoner stopped. He looked across at Hugh Ritson in silence,
and for an instant the dazed look died off his face. Then he turned his
head aside, and allowed himself to be led quietly away.

CHAPTER XXI.

A morning paper, of November--, contained the following paragraph:

"It will be remembered that in the reports of the disastrous railway
collision, which occurred at Hendon on Friday last, it was mentioned
as a ghastly accessory to the story of horror that an injured
passenger, who had been lifted from the debris of broken carriages,
and put to lie out of harm's way in a field close at hand, was
brutally assaulted and (apparently) robbed by some unknown scoundrel,
who, though detected in the act itself, tore himself from the grasp
of Police-Sergeant Cox, of the Hendon division of the metropolitan
police force, and escaped in the darkness. The authorities were
determined that their vigilance should not be eluded, and a person
named Paul Drayton is now in custody, and will be br