Albert Campion paused abruptly.
“That’s done it!” he said. “Now we’ve got to lick ’em! Come on, Doc.” On the last word he darted forward, Abbershaw at his heels. The door in the recess under the stairs was shut but unlocked, and on opening it they found themselves in a narrow stone corridor with a second door at the far end.
The noise was increasing; it sounded to Abbershaw as if a pitched battle were taking place somewhere near at hand.
The second door disclosed a great stone kitchen lit by two swinging oil lamps. At first Abbershaw thought it was deserted, but a smothered sound from the far end of the room arrested him, and he turned to see a heavy, dark-eyed woman and an hysterical weak-faced girl gagged and bound to wooden kitchen chairs in the darkest corner of the room.
These must be Mrs. Browning and Lizzie Tiddy; the thought flitted through his mind and was forgotten, for Mr. Campion was already at the second door, a heavy iron-studded structure behind which pandemonium seemed to have broken loose.
Mr. Campion lifted the iron latch, and then sprang aside as the door shot open to meet him, precipitating the man who had been cowering against it headlong into the room. It was Wendon, the man who had visited Meggie and Abbershaw in their prison room early that morning.
He struggled to his feet and sprang at the first person he caught sight of, which unfortunately for him was Campion himself. His object was a gun, but Mr. Campion, who seemed to have a peculiar aversion to putting a revolver to its right use, extricated himself from the man’s hold with an agility and strength altogether surprising in one of such a languid appearance, and, to use his own words, “dotted the fellow.”
It was a scientific tap, well placed and of just adequate force; Wendon’s eyes rolled up, he swayed forward and crashed. Abbershaw and Campion darted over him into the doorway.
The scene that confronted them was an extraordinary one.
They were on the threshold of a great vaulted scullery or brewhouse, in which the only light came from a single wall lamp and a blazing fire in the sunken hearth. What furniture there had been in the room, a rickety table and some benches, was smashed to firewood, and lay in splinters all over the stone floor.
There were seven men in the room. Abbershaw recognized the two he had last seen bound and gagged in the dining-hall, two others were strangers to him, and the remaining three were of his own party.
Even in the first moment of amazement he wondered what had happened to their guns.
The two prisoners of the dining-room had been relieved of theirs, he knew, but then Martin Watt should be armed. Wendon, too, had had a revolver that morning, and the other two, quick-footed Cockneys with narrow suspicious eyes, should both have had weapons, surely.
Besides, there were the shots he had just heard. There was evidence of gunfire also. Michael Prenderby lay doubled up on a long, flat stone sink which ran the whole length of the place some three feet from the floor. Martin Watt, every trace of his former languidness vanished, was fighting like a maniac with one of the erstwhile prisoners in the shadow at the extreme end of the room; but it was Wyatt who was the central figure in the drama.
He stood balanced on the edge of the sink in front of Michael. The flickering firelight played on the lines of his lank figure, making him seem unnaturally tall. His longish hair was shaken back from his forehead, and his clothes were bloodstained and wildly dishevelled; but it was his face that most commanded attention. The intellectual, clever, and slightly cynical scholar had vanished utterly, and in its place there had appeared a warrior of the Middle Ages, a man who had thrown his whole soul into a fight with fanatical fury.
In his two hands he wielded a wooden pole tipped at the end with a heavy iron scoop, such as are still used in many places to draw water up out of wells. It was clearly the first thing that had come to his hand, but in his present mood it made him the most formidable of weapons. He was lashing out with it with an extraordinary fury, keeping the three men at bay as if they had been yelping dogs, and as an extra flicker from the fire lit up his face afresh it seemed to Abbershaw that it was transformed; he looked more like the Avenging Angel than a scholar with a well scoop.
Campion whipped out his gun, and his quiet high voice sounded clearly through the noise.
“Now then, now then! Put ’em up!” he said distinctly. “There’s been enough fun here for this evening. Put ’em up! I’m firing,” he added quietly, and at the same moment a bullet flashed past the head of the man nearest Wyatt and struck the stone wall behind him. The effect was instantaneous. The noise ceased, and slowly the four members of Dawlish’s gang raised their hands above their heads.
Gradually Wyatt’s uplifted weapon sank to the ground and he dropped down off the sink and collapsed, his head between his knees, his arms hanging limply by his sides.
Martin Watt came reeling into the circle of light by the fire, somewhat battered and dishevelled but otherwise unhurt.
“Thank God you’ve come,” he said breathlessly, and grinned. “I thought our number was up.”
Mr. Campion herded his captives into a straight line along one wall.
“Now if you fellows will hold them up,” he
