Then he heard excited voices rising from below and distinctly understood Buckhart to shout the name of Bunol.
“Bunol!” gurgled the old man. “That scoundrel! That miserable villain! Is he here? Can it be possible?”
Something stirred in a dark corner of the hall. He saw the thing move and cried out:
“Who’s there? What are you doing? What do you want?”
There were two of them. They came out of the darkness swiftly and were upon him in a moment. Over their faces they wore masks, and the professor gave a cry of dismay as he saw a pistol in the hand of one of them. The weapon was pointed at Zenas, and the man who held it growled:
“Better keep still, guvner! If you raise a noise we’ll ’ave to shoot you, and we don’t want to do hanything like that.”
“Robbers!” whispered the old man. “This place is a den of thieves! We’ll all be robbed and murdered here!”
Had the door not been broken he might have tried to close and hold it against them, but now he was totally defenseless.
“Don’t shout, don’t speak, don’t heven whisper!” commanded the man with the pistol.
“All right,” said Zenas, disobeying the order. “I won’t make a noise. Take my money! I haven’t much. Be careful with that deadly weapon! It might go off by accident!”