“By Jove! this is going to be a big job, Helias.”
“A big job with a big result. The Chief is absolutely confident. Lester and Degrange are in charge of the group on board the Megalithic, and Lester can be trusted not to bungle.”
“Boss! Boss! Vernier is lying bound and gagged on the hill outside there.”
Someone new had come dashing in and Drummond gave us a quick look of warning. Discovery now was imminent.
“What’s that?” We heard a chair fall over as Helias got up. “Vernier gagged. Where are the others?”
“Don’t know, boss. Couldn’t see them. But I was going out to relieve Vernier, and I stumbled right on him. He’s unconscious. So I rushed back to give the warning.”
“Rouse everyone,” said Helias curtly. “Post the danger signal in the roof. And if you see any stranger, get him dead or alive.”
“Terse and to the point,” remarked Drummond. “Just for the moment, however, stand perfectly still where you are.”
He had stepped forward into the room, and the rest of us ranged up alongside him.
“Well, gorse bush—we meet again. I see you’ve removed your face fungus. Very wise: the police were so anxious to find you.”
“By God! it’s the Australian,” muttered Helias. He was standing by the table in the centre of the room, and his eyes were fixed on Drummond.
“Have it that way if you like,” answered Drummond. “The point is immaterial. What my friends and I are principally interested in is you, Doctor Helias. And when we’re all quite comfortable we propose to ask you a few questions. First of all, you three go and stand against that wall, keeping your hands above your heads.”
Dazedly they did as they were told: our sudden appearance seemed to have cowed them completely.
“Feel like sitting down, do you, Doctor? All right. Only put both your hands on the table.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down facing Helias.
“Now then: to begin at the end. Saves time, doesn’t it? What exactly is the game? What are you doing here?”
“I refuse to say,” answered the other.
“That’s a pity,” said Drummond. “It would have saved so much breath. Let’s try another. Why have you got Gaunt here, and why has he gone mad?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“Look here,” said Drummond quietly, “let us be perfectly clear on one point, Doctor Helias. I know you, if not for a cold-blooded murderer yourself, at any rate for a man who is closely connected with several of the worst. I’ve got you and you’re going to the police. What chance you will have then you know best. But if you get my goat you may never get as far as the police. For only a keen sense of public duty restrains me from plugging you where you sit, you ineffable swine.”
“In which case you would undoubtedly hang for it,” snarled the other. His great hairy hands kept clenching and unclenching on the table: his eyes, venomous with hatred, never left Drummond’s face.
“I think not,” said Drummond. “However, at present the point does not arise. Now another question, Helias. Who was the woman who impersonated the wretched Miss Simpson the first time?”
“I refuse to say.”
“She knew me, didn’t she? I see you start. You forget that Stockton was not unconscious like the rest of us. Helias—do you know a man called Carl Peterson?”
He fired the question out suddenly, and this time there was no mistaking the other’s agitation.
“So,” said Drummond quietly. “You do. Where is he, Helias? Is he at the bottom of all this? Though it’s hardly necessary to ask that. Where is he?”
“You seem to know a lot,” said Helias slowly.
“I want to know just that one thing more,” answered Drummond. “Everything else can wait. Where is Carl Peterson?”
“Supposing I told you, would you let me go free?”
Drummond stared at him thoughtfully.
“If I had proof positive—and I would not accept your word only—as to where Peterson is, I might consider the matter.”
“I will give you proof positive. To do so, however, I must go to that cupboard.”
“You may go,” said Drummond. “But I shall keep you covered, and shoot without warning on the slightest suspicion of trickery.”
“I am not a fool,” answered the other curtly. “I know when I’m cornered.”
He rose and walked to the cupboard, and I noticed he was wearing a pair of high white rubber boots.
“Been paddling in your filthy poison, I suppose,” said Drummond. “You deserve to be drowned in a bath of it.”
The other took no notice. He was sorting out some papers, and apparently oblivious of Drummond’s revolver pointing unwaveringly at the base of his skull.
“Strange how one never can find a thing when one wants to,” he remarked conversationally. “Ah! I think this is it.”
He came back to the table, with two or three documents in his hand.
“I have your word,” he said, “that if I give you proof positive you will let me go.”
“You have my word that I will at any rate think about it,” answered Drummond. “Much depends on the nature of the proof.”
Helias had reseated himself at the table opposite Drummond, who was looking at the papers that had been handed to him.
“But this has got nothing to do with it,” cried Drummond after a while. “Are you trying some fool trick, Helias?”
“Is it likely?” said the other. “Read on.”
“Keep him covered, Ted.”
And then suddenly Drummond sniffed the air.
“There’s a strong smell of that poison of yours, Helias.”
I caught one glimpse on Helias’s face of unholy triumph, and the next moment I saw it.
“Lift your legs, Drummond,” I yelled. “Lift them off the floor.”
The advancing wave had actually reached his chair; another second would have been too late. I have said that the passage sloped down abruptly from the opening in the cliff to the room, and pouring down it was a stream of the liquid. It came surging over the smooth floor and in an instant there ensued a scene of wild confusion. Drummond had got on
