"Where is it? You won't say! Very well, then!" A muffled groan followed the words, and once more the voice spoke. "Wait, Adolf! He gives in. We shall know now," and as the voice continued, some one, it was clear, between each question asked, answered with a sign, a shake of the head, or a nod. "It is in the bookcase? Yes. Behind the books? Good. There? No. To the right? Yes. Higher? Yes. On that shelf? Good. Search well, Adolf!" And with that Bowyer burst into the room with his men behind him. He held a revolver in his hand.
"I shall shoot the first man who moves," he said; and no one did move. They stood like wax figures moulded in an attitude for ever. Imagine, if you can, the scene which confronted me! On the library ladder, with a hand thrust behind the books on one of the highest shelves, was mounted one of the three foreigners. A second--he whom we had seen at the window--stood over a chair into which Bradley Rymer was strapped with a gag over his mouth. The third supported Violet. She was standing in the middle of the room, with her hands tied behind her and a rope in a noose about her neck. The end of the rope had been passed through a big ring in the ceiling which had once carried a lamp. I sprang towards her, cast off the noose, and she fainted there and then in my arms.
At the back of the bookshelf we found a slim little book of brown morocco with a broken lock.
At this point in Sir James Kelsey's story Dr. Murgatroyd leaned forward and interrupted.
"John Rymer's private case-book," he said.
"Exactly," replied Kelsey, "and also Bradley Rymer's boom in Canadian land."
There was a quick stir about that table, and then a moment of uncomfortable silence. At last one spoke the thought in the minds of all.
"Blackmail!"
"Yes."
There was hardly a man in the room who had not some record of a case locked away in a private drawer which was worth a fortune of gold, and each one began to think of the security of his locks.