Sims had once charged the third officer with lack of subtlety. He was himself a master of the art, and it was largely due to his realisation of this fact that he often permitted himself the luxury of the cat playing with a mouse. He enjoyed long speeches, when he knew the end of them. He enjoyed toying with time when there did not appear much time to toy with. He enjoyed the impatience and anxieties of lesser men. Perhaps his only weakness lay in this indulgence, with its ever-present danger of excess. Perhaps, being an adventurer as well as a criminal (it is the combination that makes for genius in the underworld), he knew of the weakness, and derived a certain thrill from the very danger it imposed.
His subtlety during the conference now ended was proved by its conclusion. He had laid his plans and set his stage exactly as he required. He had egged his second lieutenants to the edge of rebellion, and had delayed them with his revolver. Now, substituting astuteness for force, he had quelled them by throwing limelight on a common enemy. The order to bind Ben was a master move.
He did not even stay to see it done. He went upstairs to lock the other members of the party in. After all, provided Greene and Faggis carried out his instructions, which seemed reasonable enough in general if not entirely so in detail, was he not showing his confidence in them, and leaving them alone?
The sense of this argument drifted through the minds of Greene and Faggis as the door of the parlour closed and as Sims’s footsteps were heard ascending wooden stairs to the floor above. It became even more apparent as they looked at Ben, whose mouth was still gaping with the unpleasant news he had just heard. Here was the definite victim! Why not cease to regard themselves as such?
‘Well?’ said the third officer.
Faggis nodded.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ he replied. ‘Where’s some rope?’
Then Ben found his voice.
‘Tie me hup, is it?’ he cried. ‘Jest you come near me, if yer wants a wollup!’
He sprang away as he spoke. The spring took him back to a chair. He swung round and lunged at it. It went down for the count.
‘Did you ever see such a damned fool!’ grinned Greene.
‘Some farmer ought to buy him for a windmill,’ grinned Faggis.
Ben’s arms were revolving sixty to the minute. The chair was hors de combat, but he was still fighting it.
‘Yus, you come near the windmill!’ he roared, now swinging back to the more upright enemy. ‘And see wot yer’ll git!’
‘Do you know, I think I will,’ said Greene.
He came near, and he got it. The windmill whirled forward upon him, and he staggered to the ground.
‘Peel the blighter off me!’ he cried, amazed and indignant. ‘He’s biting!’
Ben felt himself peeled off, and hung limp in the encircling arms of Faggis. But the third officer’s hand was bleeding. There was still a little savour left in life.
‘Would you believe it!’ fumed Greene, rising.
‘Yes, I would,’ laughed Faggis, ‘because he bit me in just the same way on London docks! Hey, keep clear of his legs—they’re beginning to go round now!’
Greene drew away, then approached gingerly. He seized the revolving legs, and Ben was pinioned at all his moveable points. A moment later he felt his belt being slipped from his middle. Its tightness evaporated, to reappear again a few inches higher up in a slightly larger circumference, this time including his two arms.
‘Well, there’s a dirty trick!’ he thought. ‘This is the larst belt I’ll ever wear! Yer can bust braces!’
Next, his feet. They found a bit of rope from somewhere. They tied him with it to the chair he had maltreated, and stuck him in a corner. Then they stood away from him and regarded him.
‘Wotcher think I am?’ muttered Ben. ‘The Pershun Hexibishun?’
‘What about the gag?’ asked Greene.
‘He may make a noise,’ answered Faggis.
‘Gawd, ain’t yer goin’ ter leave me even me marth?’ demanded Ben.
‘Afraid we can’t trust it,’ sighed Greene.
‘Wot for?’ persisted Ben. He longed for his mouth. ‘Arter yer gorn, there won’t be nothink ’ere ter bite.’
‘You might shout,’ suggested Faggis.
‘So I might,’ he agreed, and did so.
Many things had happened in that lonely hut on a Spanish mountain. A murder had been committed there, thieves had shared their spoils there, a deserter had starved there, and lovers had met there. Its memories were both bitter and sweet. But when Ben shouted, he created fresh history. Never before had its wooden walls contained such sound. For an instant, while it filled the room and tried to burst it, Greene and Faggis stood still, incapacitated by a totally new experience. Upstairs, Molly Smith gasped, Sims raised his head, and the girl on the bed over whom he had been bending opened her eyes and murmured, very faintly, ‘What’s that?’
Then the sound ceased, as abruptly as it had started. A handkerchief was clapped over its source, and a second handkerchief was tied round to secure it.
‘Well, any’ow,’ thought Ben, driven back to man’s last extremity, ‘they’ll be done in, both of ’em, when they wants ter blow their noses.’
They had bound his arms. They had bound his legs. They had bound his mouth. Only his thoughts were free.
By the light of the grudging lamp, he watched his oppressors conclude their work in the room. The body on the ground was dragged towards the door. Not liking the sight, Ben closed his eyes, but the dragging sound so exaggerated the vision that he opened his eyes again almost immediately to disprove his imagination. In his imagination, the corpse had jumped up and started a horn-pipe.
‘This is all very well,’ said Greene, at the door; ‘but where are we going to put him?’
‘Shove him over a cliff,’ proposed Faggis. ‘Sad Climbing Fatality!’
‘Yes, but s’p’ose we shove ourselves over the cliff in this darkness?’ answered Greene. ‘Then it’d be a sadder climbing fatality!’
‘That’s true.’
‘Why not wait till the moon?’
‘And leave him here?’
‘Can’t see the objection.’
‘Nor can I. Just a question of—’
‘Of what?’
‘Carrying out Sims’s orders, that’s all.’
‘Sims be blasted!’
‘One day, yes. We’ll blast him together—eh, Greene? And then blast each other! But, just at the moment, I think we’d better keep in with the old man.’
‘Growing to love him, eh?’
‘Growing to love his money! Once I get hold of that—’
He paused. His eyes went up towards the ceiling. Soft footsteps sounded above.
‘Yes; once we get hold of the money!’ murmured Greene, nodding. ‘Meanwhile, we pull together. But that doesn’t mean scrapping every shred of our native intelligence, and I’m not going to risk lugging this fellow over a mountainside in the dark. Besides, Faggis, we want to be free while we poke around out there. Lean him against the wall. He’ll look pretty that way, and can keep our mummy company.’
Faggis laughed, and propped the dead man up. Then he turned to Ben.
‘If he asks any questions,’ he said, ‘give him our love, won’t you?’
After that they left the room, taking the lamp with them. In the darkness, Ben heard their steps receding. But, overhead, soft sounds still went backwards and forwards across the floor.