He unknotted the rope and pulled out the gag, and after ten minutes or so the breathing grew less stertorous and the face more normal in colour.
“Take a turn, Stockton,” said Drummond at length. “Just ordinary artificial respiration. I want to explore a bit.”
I knelt down beside the man on the floor and continued the necessary motions mechanically. It was obvious now that he was going to pull round, and if anything was going to be discovered I wanted to be in the fun. Sinclair had lit a cracked incandescent light which hung from the middle of the ceiling, and by its light it was possible to examine the room. There was very little furniture: a drunken-looking horsehair sofa, two or three chairs and a rickety table comprised the lot. But on one wall, not far from where I knelt, there was hanging a somewhat incongruous piece of stuff. Not that it was valuable, but it seemed to have no reason for its existence. It was the sort of thing one might put up to cover a mark on the wall, or behind a washstand to prevent splashing the paper—but why there? Someone upset the ink, perhaps: someone …
My artificial respiration ceased, and my mouth grew dry. For the bit of stuff was moving: it was being pushed aside, and something was appearing round the edge. Something that looked like a small-calibre revolver, and it was pointed straight at me. No, not a revolver: it was a small squirt or syringe, and behind it was a big white disc. Into my mind there flashed the words of Sir John Dallas only that morning—“Something in the nature of a garden syringe”—and with a great effort I forced myself to act. I rolled over towards the window, and what happened then is still more or less a blur in my mind. A thin jet of liquid shot through the air, and hit the carpet just behind where I’d been kneeling, and at the same moment there came the crack of a revolver, followed by a scream and a heavy fall. I looked up to see Drummond ejecting a spent cartridge, and then I scrambled to my feet.
“What the devil,” I muttered stupidly.
“Follow it up,” snapped Drummond, “and shoot on sight.”
He was out in the passage like a flash, with Toby and I at his heels. The door of the next room was locked, but it lasted only one charge of Drummond’s. And then for a moment or two we stood peering into the darkness—at least I did. The others did not, which is how one lives and learns. I never heard them: I never even realised they had left me, and when two torches were flashed on from the other side of the room, I shrank back into the passage.
“Come in, man, come in,” muttered Drummond. “Never stand in a doorway like that. Ah!”
He drew in his breath sharply as the beam of his torch picked up the thing on the floor. It was the man who had been in Hatchett’s that morning, the man who had stood behind him at the Three Cows, and he was dead. The same terrible distortion and rigour was visible: the cause of death was obvious.
“Don’t touch him, for Heaven’s sake,” I cried, as Drummond bent forward. “It’s the same death as we saw last night?”
“And you were darned nearly the victim, old man,” said Drummond grimly.
“By Jove! Hugh, it was a good shot,” said Toby. “You hit the syringe itself, and the stuff splashed on his face. You can see the mark.”
It was true: in the middle of his right cheek was an angry red circle, in which it was possible to see an eruption of tiny blisters. And the same strange, sweet smell hung heavily about the air.
On each hand was a white glove of the same type as the one we had found the previous night, and it was evidently that which had seemed to me like a white disc around the syringe.
“So things begin to move,” said Drummond quietly. “The whole thing was a trap, as I thought. They evidently seem to want you pretty badly, Stockton.”
“But why?” I asked angrily. “What the devil have I got to do with it?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“They may think you know too much; that Gaunt told you things.”
“But why hang that poor little toad in the next room?” said Toby.
“Ask me another,” answered Drummond. “Possibly they found out we’d got at him, and they hanged him as a punishment for treachery: possibly to ensure our remaining here some time to bring him round. And incidentally—who hanged him? The occupants of the car that followed us couldn’t have got to this house before we did, and he was triced up before Toby arrived here. That means there were people here before, and the occupants of that car have yet to arrive.”
Suddenly his torch went out, and I felt his hand on my arm warningly.
“And unless I mistake,” he whispered, “they’ve just come. Stick by me, Stockton: you’re new to this game. Get to the window, Toby, and keep against the wall.”
A half-breathed “Right” came from the darkness, and I felt myself led somewhere. Once the guiding hand drew me to the right, and I realised that I had just missed a chair. And then I felt the wall at my back, and a faint light coming round the blind showed the window close by. It was shut, and I could see the outline of Drummond’s head as he peered through it.
What had caused his sudden action, I wondered? I hadn’t heard a sound, and at that time I had yet to find out his almost uncanny gift of hearing. To me the house was in absolute silence; the only sound was the heavy pounding of my own heart. And then
