“Well, you’re a nice young man, you are, to drop in friendly of an evening! Hush! don’t speak out loud, or I’ll blow your brains out at once,” said the Captain.
Jenny Hamilton didn’t seem to be one bit disconcerted. She had snatched up the diamonds, and she was turning them over, watching their sheen with evident pleasure. Mr Smythe, however, felt anything but at his ease. The situation was a very strange one, for if he shouted out “Murder!” he would be heard by his neighbours on both sides, who were only separated from him by a few feet of open space and a few inches of tin wall. One of them was a young diamond-buyer, with a taste for comic singing, who had just returned from a trip home, and was entertaining his friends with the cream of the melody of the London music-halls, and as he stood shivering with fear, with the revolver held up to his head, Smythe could hear the chorus of one of the songs of the day. He had never cared less about comic singing. But though help was so near he felt completely in the power of Hamilton, who looked very resolute and reckless, and seemed to be quite in earnest.
Personal courage never was Mr Smythe’s strong point, and now for a minute he felt too startled to think; in fact, he only had sufficient sense left to make him restrain his inclination to shout out for help. After a second or two he began to feel more assured. It seemed so unlikely that he should be murdered in the middle of the town, within calling distance of several men; only the revolver was real enough. When a man is holding a revolver up to your head, you have the worst of the position. He mayn’t care to shoot; but, on the other hard, he may; and, whatever the ultimate consequences may be to him, the immediate consequences to you are sure.
In a half-hearted way for one second Smythe thought of resisting, and he made a movement with his hand towards his pocket.
“Keep your hands up; you’d better,” said the other.
Smythe obeyed him, and sat holding his hand above his head, looking very ridiculous.
“You’d better take that from him, Jen,” said Hamilton; and Jenny Hamilton put her hand into her dear friend’s pocket and deftly eased him of his revolver. A gleam of hope came into Mr Smythe’s heart. After all, he thought, people don’t commit homicide without reason; and he saw that he had not to deal with an outraged husband, but with a pair of sharpers. He certainly began to wish that his diamonds were in his safe at home; but he knew they were difficult property to deal with, and hoped to get off without making any great sacrifice.
“What the devil do you mean by this, Captain Hamilton?” he said, trying to put on an air of unconcern he didn’t feel. “Surely it’s a poor joke to steal into your own drawing-room, and hold a revolver up to the head of a man you find calling on your wife.”
“I don’t set up for being a good joker,” said the Captain; “but my jokes are eminently practical, as you’d learn if the police of London, New York, and ’Frisco told you what they know of Jack Hamilton.”
“Well, you’d better say what you hope to make out of this,” said Mr Smythe.