At the foot 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.