He paused, and a faint smile at the recollection passed over his indolent face.
“According to him, the old boy is a cross between Mr. Hyde, Gilles de Rais, and Napoleon, but without the finesse of any of the three. On the whole I’m inclined to agree with him,” he continued, “but a fat lot of good it’s doing him or us, for that matter, because he can’t find his package and we can’t get home to our mommas. I told him that, but he didn’t seem to see the argument. I’m afraid he’s rather a stupid man.”
Abbershaw nodded.
“Perhaps he is,” he said, “but at the same time he’s a very dangerous one. I may as well tell you fellows,” he went on, with sudden determination in his grey eyes, “there’s something that’s on my conscience. I had those papers—they were papers, as a matter of fact—the first morning we were down here, and I burnt them. I told him what I’d done when I went in to see him yesterday, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
He paused and looked round him. Campion’s pale eyes were goggling behind his enormous spectacles, and Wyatt met Abbershaw’s appealing glance sympathetically. The rest were more surprised than anything else, and, on the whole, approving.
Campion voiced the general thought.
“Do you know what they were—the papers, I mean?” he said, and there was something very like wonderment in his tone. Abbershaw nodded.
“They were all written in code, but I had a pretty shrewd idea,” he said, and he explained to them the outline of his ideas on the subject.
Campion listened to him in silence, and when he had finished glanced across and spoke softly.
“You burnt them?” he said dreamily, and then remarked, as if he had switched on to an entirely new subject, “I wonder if the smoke from five hundred thousand pounds in notes looks any different from any other sort of firing.”
Abbershaw glanced at him sharply.
“Five hundred thousand pounds?” he said.
“Why not?” said Campion lightly. “Half a crown here, half a crown there, you know. It soon tells up.”
The others turned to him, attributing the remark to his usual fatuity, but Abbershaw met the pale eyes behind the big spectacles steadily and his apprehension increased. It was not likely that Mr. Campion would be far out in his estimation since he knew so much about the affair.
Five hundred thousand pounds. The colossal sum brought home to him the extent of the German’s loss, and he understood the crook’s grim determination to recover the lost plans. He had not thought that the men were playing for such great stakes. In a flash he saw the situation as it really was, and his next words were sharp and imperative.
“It’s more important than I can say that we should get out of here,” he said. “In fact we’ve got to get out of here at once. Of course I know it’s been the idea all along, but now it’s imperative. At any moment now Whitby may return, and Dawlish will be convinced that I told him the truth yesterday. And then heaven only knows what he will do. Our one hope is to get out before Whitby comes back.”
“There’s only one way, I’ve been saying it all along.” It was Chris Kennedy who spoke. He was seated on the end of the bed, his knees crossed, and his young face alert and eager. “We shall have to make a straight fight for it,” he said. “It’s our only hope. No one trying to sneak out on his own to inform the local Bobby would have an earthly. I’ve thought of that. They’d spot us and we know they don’t mind shooting.”
“There’s a suit of armour in the hall,” suggested Campion suddenly. “I’ll put it on and toddle forth into the night, if you like. They could pot at me as much as they pleased. How about that?”
Abbershaw glanced at him sharply, but there was no trace of a sneer on the pleasant vacuous face, and he looked abashed when Kennedy spoke a little brutally.
“Sorry,” he said, without looking round, “we haven’t got time for that sort of stuff now. We’re in a devilish unpleasant situation and we’ve got to get the girls and ourselves out of it. I tell you, a straight fight is the only thing for it. Look here, I’ve got it all taped. We’ve got our first chance coming in a moment. We’ve had dinner every night so far, so I expect we can reasonably suppose that we’ll get it again tonight. Two fellows wait on us then. They’re both armed, we know, and judging from the way they treated Michael they know how to use their guns all right.”
“Why, they’re not very tricky, are they?” said Mr. Campion, a faint expression of surprise appearing in his face. “I understood you just pressed the trigger and—pop!—off it went.”
Chris Kennedy granted him one withering look and went on with his scheme.
“There’s only one way to handle these customers, therefore,” he said. “The first thing is to overpower those two and get their guns. Six of us ought to be able to do that. Then the two best shots had better take those revolvers and scout round for the others. The important thing is, of course, that the first bit of work is done in absolute silence. I believe that once we get those two guns we can lay ’em all by the heels. We shall be prepared, we shall be organized—they won’t. What do you say?”
There was a
