"Mr. Christian!" cried Greta, and throwing her arms about him, she drew him into the carriage. Then the train began to move away.
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.
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.
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 brought up at Bow Street this morning. It turns out that Drayton is an innkeeper at Hendon, where he has long borne a dubious character. He was arrested at midnight in St. Pancras Station, in a daring and mad attempt to escape by the north-bound train, and it is understood that the incident of his capture is such as reflects the highest credit on the resolution, energy, and intrepidity of the force."