“Dinner is over early?” he said, fixing his narrow glittering eyes on Meggie.
She replied coldly that it was, and made as if to pass on up the stairs, but Gideon evidently intended to prolong the conversation, for he glided in front of her so that he and the surly ruffian beside him barred her progress up the stairs from the step above the one on which she was standing.
“You are all so eager,” Gideon continued softly, “that it almost looks like an expedition to me. Or perhaps it is one of your charming games of hide-and-seek which you play so adroitly,” he added, and the sneer on his unpleasant face was very obvious. “You will forgive me saying so I am sure,” he went on, still in the same soothing obsequious voice, “but don’t you think you are trying Mr. Dawlish’s patience a little too much by being so foolish in your escapades? If you are wise you will take my advice and keep very quiet until it pleases him to release you.”
He spoke banteringly, but there was no mistaking the warning behind his words, and it was with some eagerness that Abbershaw took Meggie’s arm and piloted her between the two men. His one aim at the moment was to get the girl safely to her room.
“We understand you perfectly, Mr. Gideon,” he murmured. Gideon’s sneer deepened into a contemptuous smile and he moved aside a little to let them pass. Abbershaw deliberately ignored his attitude. He wanted no arguments till the girls were safe. They were passing silently therefore, when suddenly from somewhere beneath them there sounded, ugly and unmistakable, a revolver shot.
Instantly Gideon’s smiling contempt turned to a snarl of anger as all his suspicions returned—verified.
“So it is an expedition, is it?” he said softly. “A little explanation, if you please.”
Abbershaw realized that once again they were caught, and a feeling of utter dejection passed over him.
Suddenly from the darkness behind him a high, rather foolish voice that yet had a certain quality of sternness in it said quickly, “Don’t talk so much. Put ’em up!”
While Abbershaw stood looking at them, Gideon and his burly companion, with mingled expressions of rage and amazement on their faces, raised their hands slowly above their heads.
“Quick, man, get their guns!”
The words were uttered in Abbershaw’s ear by a voice that was still vaguely foolish. He obeyed it instantly, removing a small, wicked little weapon from Gideon’s hip pocket and a heavy service revolver from the thug’s.
“Now then, turn round. Quick march. Keep ’em right up. I’m a dangerous man and I shoot like hell.”
Abbershaw glanced round involuntarily, and saw what Gideon and his companion must have done some minutes before—Albert Campion’s pleasant, vacuous face, pale and curiously in earnest in the faint light, as he peered at them from behind the gleaming barrel of a heavy Webley.
“Shove the girls in their room. Give Miss Oliphant the little pistol, and then come with me,” he murmured to Abbershaw, as the strange procession set off up the stairs.
“Steady,” he went on in a louder voice to the two men in front of him. “No fancy work. Any noise either of you makes will be voluntary suicide for the good of the cause. It’ll mean one man less to tie up, anyway. I’m taking them up to my room,” he murmured to Abbershaw. “Follow me there. They’re slippery beggars and two guns are better than one.”
Abbershaw handed Gideon’s little revolver to Meggie, which she took eagerly.
“We’ll be all right,” she whispered. “Go on after him. They’re terrible people.”
“For God’s sake wait here till we come, then,” he whispered back. She nodded, and for a moment her steady brown eyes met his.
“We will, old dear. Don’t worry about us. We’re all right.”
She disappeared into the room with Jeanne and Anne Edgeware, and Abbershaw hurried after Campion considerably reassured. Meggie was a wonderful girl.
He reached Campion just in time to get the bedroom door open and to assist him to get the two into the room. “Now,” said Campion, “it’s getting infernally dark, so we’ll have to work fast. Abbershaw, will you keep watch over these two gentlemen. I’m afraid you may have to fire at the one on the right, he’s swearing so horribly—while I attend to Mr. Gideon’s immediate needs. That worthy enthusiast, Chris Kennedy, has pinched all my straps, and though I hate to behave as no guest should, I’m afraid there’s no help for it. The Black Dudley linen will have to go.”
As he spoke he stripped the clothes from the great four-poster bed, and began to tear the heavy linen sheets into wide strips. “If you could persuade Mr. Gideon to stand with his back against the post of this bed,” he remarked at length, “I think something might be done for him. Hands still up, please.”
Ten minutes later, a silent mummy-like figure, stretched against the bedpost, arms bandaged to the wood high above his head, an improvised gag in his mouth, was all that remained of the cynical little foreigner.
Mr. Campion seemed to have a touch of the professional in all he did. He stood back to survey his handiwork with some pride, then he glanced at their other captive.
“Heavy, unpleasant-looking bird,” he remarked. “I’m afraid he’s too heavy for the bed. Isn’t there something we can shove him into?”
He glanced round the room as he spoke, and their captive fancied that Abbershaw’s eyes followed his, for he suddenly lunged forward and caught the doctor, who was unused to such situations, round the ankles, sending him sprawling. The heavy gun was thrown out of Abbershaw’s hand and the thug reached out a great hairy fist for
