Suddenly Drummond stooped down and sniffed at something that lay on the floor. Then he beckoned significantly to me. It was the end of the tubing which we had seen the man paying out, and from it came the unmistakable scent of the poison. More confirmation of the presence of the gang: and another piece in this strange and inexplicable jigsaw.
I straightened up to see that Drummond had reached the corner and was peering cautiously round it. He was flattened against the rough wall, and his revolver was in his hand. Inch by inch he moved forward with Jerningham just behind him, and the rest of us following in single file.
The passage went on bending to the left and sloping downwards. The floor was smooth and made of cement, but the walls and roof were left in their natural condition just as they had been blasted out. It was not new except for the floor, and as we crept forward I wondered for what purpose, and by whom it had been originally made. The illumination came from somewhere in front, and it was obvious through the light getting brighter that that somewhere was very close.
Suddenly Drummond became motionless: just ahead of us a man had laughed.
“Damned if I see what there is to laugh at,” snarled a harsh voice. “I’m sick to death of this performance.”
“You won’t be when you get your share of the stuff,” came the answer.
“It’s an infernal risk, Dubosc.”
“You don’t handle an amount like that without running risks,” answered the other. “What’s come over you tonight? We’ve been here four months and now, when we’re clearing out, you’re as jumpy as a cat with kittens.”
“It’s this damned place, I suppose. No report in from the sentries? No one about?”
“Of course there’s no one about. Who would be about in this Godforsaken stretch of country if he hadn’t got to be?”
“There was that sketching fellow this morning. And Vernier swears that he was lying there on the hill examining the place for an hour through glasses.”
“What if he was? He couldn’t see anything.”
“I know that. But it means he suspected something.”
“It’s about time you took a tonic,” sneered the other. “We’ve gone through four months in this place without being discovered; and now, when we’ve got about four more hours to go at the most, you go and lose your nerve because some stray artist looks at the place through field-glasses. You make me tired. Devil take it, man, it’s a tin mine, with several perfectly genuine miners tinning in it.”
He laughed once again, and we heard the tinkle of a glass.
“There was every excuse if you like for being windy when we were in London. And it served that cursed fool Turgovin right. What did we want anyway with that man—what was his name—Stockton, wasn’t it? What was the good of killing him, even if the fool had done it, and not got killed himself? I tell you that when I saw the Chief a week later, he was still apoplectic with rage. And if Turgovin hadn’t been dead, the Chief would have killed him, himself. We ought to have done what Helias said, and cleared out as soon as we got Gaunt.”
“What are we going to do with that madman when we go?”
“Kill him,” said the other callously. “If he hadn’t gone mad, and suffered from his present delusion, he’d have been killed weeks ago. Hullo, here he is. Why ain’t you tucked up in the sheets, looney?”
And then I heard old Robin’s voice.
“Surely it’s over by now, isn’t it?”
“Surely what’s over? Oh! the war. No: that’s not over. The Welsh have gained a great victory over the English and driven ’em off the top of Snowdon. Your juice doesn’t seem to be functioning quite as well as it ought to.”
“It must succeed in time,” said Robin, and his voice was the vacant voice of madness. “How many have been killed by it?”
“A few hundred thousand,” answered the other. “But they’re devilish pugnacious fighters, these Englishmen. And the General won’t give up until he’s got that leg of Welsh mutton for his dinner. By the way, looney, you’ll be getting slogged in the neck and hurt if I hear you making that infernal noise again. Your face is bad enough without adding that filthy shindy to it.”
“That’s so,” came in a new deep voice. I saw Drummond’s hand clench and he glanced round at me. Doctor Helias had come on the scene. “If it occurs again, Gaunt, I shall hang you up head downwards as I did before.”
A little whimpering cry came from Robin, and suddenly the veins stood out on Drummond’s neck. For a moment I thought he was going to make a dash for them then and there, which would have been a pity. Sooner or later it would have to come: in the meantime, incomprehensible though much of it was, we wanted to hear everything we could.
“Get out, you fool,” snarled Helias.
There was the sound of a heavy blow, and a cry of pain from Robin.
“Let him be, Helias,” said one of the others. “He’s been useful.”
“His period of utility is now over,” answered Helias. “I’m sick of the sight of him.”
“But there isn’t enough,” wailed Gaunt. “Too much has gone into the sea, and it is the air that counts.”
“It’s all right, looney; there’s plenty for tonight. Go and put your pretty suit on so as to be ready when he comes.”
A door closed and for a time there was silence save for the rustling of some papers. And then Helias spoke again.
“You’ve neither of you left anything about, have you?”
“No. All cleared up.”
“We clear the instant the job is finished. Dubosc—you’re detailed to fill the tank with water as soon as it’s empty. I’ll deal with the madman.”
“Throw him over the cliff, I suppose.”
“Yes; it’s easiest. You might search his room, Gratton: I want no traces left. Look at the fool there peering at
