In a secluded corner Alison, Jaikie, and Tibbets were recovering their breath. The girl shook with laughter. “Was there ever such a game of hide-and-seek?” she panted.
But Jaikie looked grave.
“We mustn’t rattle them too much,” he said. “They’re a queer lot, and if we wake the savage in them they may forget their manners. We don’t want anything ugly to happen. They’ll give up in a little if we let them alone, and go back to the library.”
But it was a full half-hour before Mastrovin left those upper floors, and, with each minute of failure to find what he sought, his fury and his suspicions increased. Alison and her two squires followed the party at a discreet distance, till they saw them enter the library corridor. Jaikie took a glance into the hall below, and observed that the Evallonian sentry was no longer there. He knew that he was now lying gagged and trussed in a corner of the cloak-room. The time had come for Mackillop and his friends to act.
The three squeezed into their little gallery above the fireplace, just as the Evallonians entered the library. Mr Craw was still writing in apparent unconcern. As a matter of fact he had written his name six hundred and seventy times on sheets of foolscap by way of steadying his nerves. Dougal was smoking and reading the New Statesman, Barbon was apparently asleep, and Charvill still deep in his novel. As they entered, Rosenbaum and Dedekind moved towards them, and there were some rapid questions and answers.
Something which the leader said woke all five into a sudden vigilance. The slouch and embarrassment disappeared, and their bodies seemed to quicken with a new purpose. The five took a step towards the table, and their movements were soft and lithe as panthers. They were no longer clumsy great-coated foreigners, but beasts of prey.
The sweat stood on Mastrovin’s brow, for he was of a heavy habit of body and had had a wearing time upstairs. But his voice had an edge like ice.
“I have seen your house,” he said. “I am not satisfied. There are people hiding in it. You will bring them to me here at once or… “
He paused. There was no need to put his threat into words; it was in every line of his grim face: it was in the sinister bulge of his hand in his ulster pocket.
Mr Craw showed his manhood by acting according to plan. He was desperately afraid, for he had never in his life looked into such furious eyes. But the challenge had come, and he repeated the speech with which he had intended to meet that challenge.
“This is pure brigandage,” he said. “You have not given me your names, but I know very well who you are. You must be aware, Mr Mastrovin, that you will not further your cause by threatening a British subject in his own house.”
The risk in preparing speeches beforehand is that the conditions of their delivery may be far other than the conditions forecast in their preparation. Mr Craw had assumed that the Evallonians were politicians out to secure a political triumph, and that, when this triumph tarried, they would realise that their audacity had defeated its purpose and left them at his mercy. He had forgotten that he might have to deal with men of primeval impulses, whose fury would deaden their ears to common sense.
At the sound of his name Mastrovin seemed to stiffen, as a runner stiffens before the start. Then he laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. He turned to his followers. “He knows me,” he cried. “He is not as innocent as he pretends. He knows of us from our enemies. They are here. We are close to them. Now there will be no mercy.”
In a voice that made Mr Craw jump in his chair he thundered: “One minute! I will give you one minute!”
He had his pistol out, and little blue barrels gleamed in the hands of the other four, covering Barbon, Dougal, and Charvill. Mr Craw sat stupefied, and his spectacles in the tense hush made a clatter as they dropped on the table. The gilt baroque clock on the mantelpiece struck the quarter to midnight.
In the little gallery the estate mechanician had that morning arranged a contrivance of bells. There was a button at Jaikie’s elbow, and if he pressed it bells would ring in the corridor outside and in the ante-room. There by this time Mackillop and his men were waiting, in two parties of five, all of them old soldiers, armed with rifles and shot-guns. At the sound of the bells they would file in and overawe the enemy—ten weapons in ten pairs of resolute hands.
Jaikie’s finger was on the button, but he did not press it.
For the first time in his life he had to make a momentous decision. Dougal and he had planned out every detail of that evening’s visit, and believed that they had foreseen every contingency. But they had forgotten one… They had forgotten how different these five foreigners below were from themselves. These were men who all their lives had played darkly for dark stakes— who had hunted and been hunted like beasts—to whom murder was an incident in policy—whose natural habitat was the cave and the jungle. He was aware that the atmosphere in the library had changed to something savage and primordial—that human lives hung on a slender hair. A devil had been awakened, a devil who was not politic… If Mackillop and his men appeared in the doorway, if the glint of weapons answered those now in the hands of the five, it would be the spark to fire the mine. These men would fight like cornered weasels, oblivious of consequences—as they had often in other lands fought before. No doubt they would be overpowered, but in the meantime—In that warm and gracious room the Den had been re-created, and in that Den there were only blind passions and blind fears.
He did not press the button, for he knew that it would be to waken Hell.
As it was, Hell was evident enough. His companions felt it. Alison’s hand tightened convulsively on his arm, and as for Tibbets behind him—he heard Tibbets’s teeth chatter. Down below the four men, covered by the five pistols, knew it. Mr Craw’s face was the colour of clay, and his eyes stared at Mastrovin as if he were mesmerised. Barbon and Charvill had also whitened, and sat like images, and Dougal seemed to be seeking self-command by sucking in his lips against his clenched teeth. In a second anything might happen. The jungle had burst into the flower-garden, and with it the brutes of the jungle… A small hopeless sound came from Jaikie’s lips which may have been meant for a prayer.
Suddenly he was aware that Mastrovin’s eyes had turned to the door which led to the ante-room. Had Mackillop shown himself?
“Stand!” Mastrovin cried. “Not another step on your life!”
A voice answered the Evallonian’s bark, a rich, bland, assured voice.
“Tut, tut, what’s all this fuss about?” the voice said. “Put away that pistol, man, or it’ll maybe go off. SICH behaviour in a decent man’s house!”
Jaikie was looking down upon the bald head of Dickson McCunn— Dickson in his best suit of knickerbockers, his eyes still bright with the memory of his great adventure on the Solway sands, his face ruddy with the night air and as unperturbed as if he were selling tea over the counter. There was even a smile at the corner of his mouth. To Jaikie, sick with fear, it seemed as if the wholesome human world had suddenly broken into the Den.
But it was the voice that cracked the spell—that pleasant, homely, wheedling voice which brought with it daylight and common sense. Each of the five felt its influence. Mastrovin’s rigour seemed to relax. He lowered his pistol.
“Who the devil are you?” he grunted.
“My name’s McCunn,” came the brisk answer. “Dickson McCunn. I’m stopping in this house, and I come back to find a scene like a demented movie. It looks as if I’m just in time to prevent you gentlemen making fools of yourselves. I heard that there was a lot of queer folk here, so I took the precaution of bringing Johnnie Doig the policeman with me. It was just as well, for Johnnie and me overheard some awful language. Come in, Johnnie… You’re wanted.”
A