At this colossal piece of impudence a sensation ran round the table, and Wyatt sprang to his feet. He was livid with anger, but he kept his voice under perfect control, and the polished intensity of his icy tone contrasted sharply with the other’s heavy rudeness.
“Mr. Dawlish,” he said, “I think your anxiety to recover your property has upset your sense of proportion. Perhaps you are aware that you are a guest in a house that is mine, and that the people that you have just insulted are my guests also. If you will come to me after breakfast—before you go—I will do all I can to institute a proper search for the thing you have mislaid.”
The German did not move. He stood at the head of the table and stared unblinkingly at the man before him.
“Until it is returned to me nobody leaves this house,” he said, the same solid force behind his tone. Wyatt’s snub he did not appear to have heard. A faint wave of colour passed over the young man’s pale face, and he turned to the others, who were staring from one to the other in frank astonishment.
“I must apologize,” he said. “I ask you to forgive this extraordinary display. My uncle’s death appears to have turned this unfortunate man’s brain.”
Dawlish turned.
“That young man,” he said. “Let him sit down and be quiet.”
Gideon smiled at Wyatt, and the look on his grey decadent face was an insult in itself.
“My dear Mr. Petrie,” he said, and his peculiarly oily voice was suave and ingratiating, “I don’t think you quite realize the position you are in, you and your friends. Consider: this house is two miles from the public road. There is no telephone. We have two women servants and six men and a gatekeeper. All of these people are in Mr. Dawlish’s employ. Your cars have been drained of petrol. I am afraid you are entirely helpless.” He paused, and allowed his glance to take in the amazed expressions round the table.
“It would be better,” he continued, “to listen rationally, for I must warn you, my friend Mr. Dawlish is not a man who is accustomed to any opposition to his wishes.”
Wyatt remained on his feet; his face had grown slowly paler, and he was now rigid with barely controlled fury.
“Gentlemen, this farce has gone on long enough,” he said, in a voice which quivered in spite of himself. “If you will please go away we will get on with our breakfast.”
“Sit down!”
The words were uttered in a sudden titanic bellow, though but for the obvious fact that Gideon was incapable of producing so much noise there was nothing upon Benjamin Dawlish’s face to betray that it was he who had shouted.
Wyatt started; the limit of his patience had come. He opened his mouth to speak, to assert his authority. Then, quite suddenly, he dropped back into his chair, his eyes dilating with as much surprise as fear. He was looking into the black barrel of a revolver.
The German stood stolidly, absolutely immobile, the dangerous little weapon levelled in one ponderous hand. “Here,” he said in his unwieldy English, “there is one who has what I seek. To him I speak. When he returns to me what he has taken you shall all go free. Until then no one leaves this house—no one at all.”
In the silence which followed this extraordinary announcement Jesse Gideon moved forward.
“If Mr. Dawlish were to receive his property immediately it would save us all a great deal of inconvenience,” he murmured.
For several seconds there was no movement in the room, and the singing of the birds in the greenery outside the windows became suddenly very noticeable.
Then Albert Campion coughed discreetly and handed something wrapped up in his table napkin to the girl who sat next him.
She passed it to her neighbour, and in utter stillness it went the whole length of the table until Gideon pounced on it avidly and set it before the German on the table. With a grunt of satisfaction the big man thrust the revolver into his coat pocket and threw aside the white napery. Then an exclamation of anger escaped him, and he drew back so that Mr. Campion’s offering lay exposed.
It was a breakfast egg, the very one, in fact, which the fatuous young man had been on the verge of broaching when the extraordinary interruptions had occurred.
The effect was instantaneous; the reaction from the silent tension of a moment before complete.
The entire table shook with laughter.
The German stood stiffly as before. There was still no expression of any sort upon his face, and his little eyes became dull and lifeless.
Gideon, on the other hand, betrayed his anger vividly. His eyes were narrowed with fury and his long thin lips were drawn back over his teeth like an angry dog’s. Gradually the laughter subsided. Benjamin Dawlish’s personality was one that could not be ignored for long. When at last there was perfect silence in the room he put his hand in his pocket and drew out his revolver again.
“You laugh,” he said heavily. “I do not laugh. And she, the little one,” he tossed the gun in his hand with incredible delicacy for one who looked so clumsy, “she does not laugh either.”
The last words were uttered with such amazing ferocity that his hearers started involuntarily, and for an instant there appeared upon the heavy face, which hitherto had seemed immovable, an expression of such animalic violence that not one at that table looked him in the eyes.
A moment later his features had relapsed into their usual stolidity, and followed by Jesse Gideon he walked slowly from the room.
As the door closed behind them, the silence became painful, and at last a fitful, uneasy conversation broke out.
“What an unpleasant old bird!” said Prenderby, looking at Abbershaw. He spoke lightly,
