“I’m afraid we’re sunk,” he said slowly and quietly and moved over towards the window, where he stood peering out between the bars.
Wyatt sat propped up against the wall, his chin supported in his hands, and his eyes fixed steadily upon the floor in front of him. For some time he had neither moved nor spoken. As Abbershaw glanced at him he could not help being reminded once again of the family portraits in the big dining-hall, and he seemed somehow part and parcel of the old house, sitting there morosely waiting for the end.
Meggie suddenly lifted her head.
“How extraordinary,” she said softly, “to think that everything is going on just the same only a mile or two away. I heard a dog barking somewhere. It’s incredible that this fearful thing should be happening to us and no one near enough to get us out. Think of it,” she went on quietly. “A man murdered and taken away casually as if it were a light thing, and then a criminal lunatic”—she paused and her brown eyes narrowed—“I hope he’s a lunatic—calmly proposes to massacre us all. It’s unthinkable.”
There was silence for a moment after she had spoken, and then Campion looked at Abbershaw.
“That yarn about Coombe,” he said quietly. “I can’t get over it. Are you sure he was murdered?”
Abbershaw glanced at him shrewdly. It seemed unbelievable that this pleasant, inoffensive-looking young man could be a murderer attempting to cast off any suspicion against himself, and yet, on the face of Mrs. Meade’s story, the evidence looked very black against him.
As he did not reply, Campion went on.
“I don’t understand it at all,” he said. “The man was so valuable to them … he must have been.”
Abbershaw hesitated, and then he said quietly:
“Are you sure he was—I mean do you know he was?”
Campion’s pale eyes opened to their fullest extent behind his enormous glasses.
“I know he was to be paid a fabulous sum by Simister for his services,” he said, “and I know that on a certain day next month there was to be a man waiting at a big London hotel to meet him. That man is the greatest genius at disguise in Europe, and his instructions were to give the old boy a facelift and one or two other natty gadgets and hand him a ticket for the first transatlantic liner, complete with passport, family history, and pretty niece. Von Faber didn’t know that, of course, but even if he did I don’t see why he should stick the old gentleman in the gizzard, do you? The whole thing beats me. Besides, why does he want to saddle us with the nasty piece of work? It’s the sort of thing he’d never convince us about. I don’t see it myself. It can’t be some bright notion of easing his own conscience.”
Abbershaw remained silent. He could not forget the old woman’s strangely convincing story, the likelihood of which was borne out by Campion’s own argument, but the more he thought about the man at his side, the more absurd did an explanation in that direction seem.
A smothered cry of horror from Martin at the window brought them all to their feet.
“The swine,” he said bitterly, turning to them, his face pale and his eyes glittering. “Look. I saw Dawlish coming out of the garage towards the house. He was carrying petrol cans. He intends to have a good bonfire.”
“Good God!” said Chris Kennedy, who had taken his place at the window. “Here comes a lad with a faggot. Oh, why can’t I get at ’em!”
“They’re going to burn us!”
For the first time the true significance of the situation seemed to dawn upon little Jeanne, and she burst into loud hysterical sobbing which was peculiarly unnerving in the tense atmosphere. Meggie crossed over to her and attempted to soothe her, but her self-control had gone completely and she continued to cry violently.
Anne Edgeware, too, was crying, but less noisily, and the tension became intolerable.
Abbershaw felt for his watch, and was about to draw it out when Albert Campion laid a hand over his warningly. As he did so his coat sleeve slipped up and Abbershaw saw the dial of the other’s wristwatch. It was five minutes to eleven.
At the same moment, however, there were footsteps outside the door again, and this time the voice of Jesse Gideon spoke from without.
“It is your last chance,” he said. “In three minutes we leave the house. You know the rest. What shall I say to Mr. Dawlish?”
“Tell him to burn and to be damned to him!” shouted Martin.
“Very appropriate!” murmured Mr. Campion, but his voice had lost its gaiety, and the hysterical sobs of the girl drowned the words.
And then, quite suddenly, from somewhere far across the fields there came a sound which everybody in the room recognized. A sound which brought them to their feet, the blood returning to their cheeks, and sent them crowding to the window, a new hope in their eyes.
It was the thin far-off call of a hunting horn.
Martin, his head jammed between the bars of the narrow window, let out a whoop of joy.
“The Hunt, by God!” he said. “Yes—Lord! There’s the pack not a quarter of a mile away! Glory be to God, was that a splodge of red behind that hedge? It was! Here he comes!”
His voice was resonant with excitement, and he struggled violently as if he would force himself through the iron bars.
“There he is,” he said again; “and yes, look at him—look at him! Half the county behind him! They’re in the park now. Gosh! They’re coming right for us. Quick! Yell to ’em! God! They mustn’t go past! How can we attract them! Yell at ’em! Shout something! They’ll be on us in a minute.”
“I think,” murmured a quiet, rather foolish voice that yet had a note of tension in its tone, “that
