"There they are. You needn't trouble to return them."
Their recipient grinned appreciatively, and as the last rustle of his retirement into privacy died away, Miss Arminster turned to Banborough and demanded:
"Now tell me what I was arrested for, why you two ran away with me, and where I'm being taken."
"I can answer the first of those questions," broke in Spotts. "You're a Spanish sympathiser and a political spy."
"I'm nothing of the sort, as you know very well!" she replied, colouring violently. "I'm the leading lady of the A. B. C. Company."
"Of course _we_ know it," returned the actor; "but the police have chosen to take a different view of the matter."
"Why is he chaffing me like this?" she said, appealing to Cecil.
"I'm afraid it's a grim reality," he replied. "You see, when the Spanish officials were turned out of Washington, they'd the impertinence to take the title of my book as their password."
"Well, then," she said, "they did what they'd no right to do."
"I suppose that would be a question of international copyright," he replied. "But 'The Purple Kangaroo' has proved itself a most troublesome animal, and as I thought you wouldn't care for quarters down the bay till the war was over, I took the liberty of running off with you."
"I'm very much obliged to you, I'm sure; but what next?"
"Well, unless the situation improves, I'm afraid it'll become a question of seeking a refuge in another country."
"If you think," she cried, "that I'm going to spend the rest of my existence in the forests of Yucatan or on the plains of Patagonia, you're mightily mistaken!"
"Oh," he said, laughing, "it isn't as bad as all that. Ours is only a political crime, and Canada will afford a safe harbour from the extradition laws."
"But the war won't be finished in a day," she contended, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.
"Won't you trust me?" asked Cecil, taking both her hands. "Won't you let me prove my repentance by guarding your welfare? Won't you--"
Indeed there is no knowing to what he might have committed himself in the face of such beauty and sorrow had not Spotts broken in with a cry of:
"It's all up now! We're done for, and no mistake!" And he pointed to the figure of a short, fat, red-faced man, very much out of breath, who was bustling down the road, waving his hands at them and shouting "Hi!"