"If you mention names here, you will certainly have no hope of mercy. There is a fifth treatment—kept specially for people who mention names. Bring the prisoner to my office. Keep the dance going."
The President took an automatic from his hip-pocket and faced his tightly fettered prisoner across the desk.
"Now speak!" he said.
"I should put that thing away, if I were you," said Wimsey contemptuously. "It would be a much pleasanter form of death than treatment Number 5, and I might be tempted to ask for it."
"Ingenious," said the President, "but a little too ingenious. Now, be quick; tell me what you know."
"Will you spare me if I tell you?"
"I make no promises. Be quick."
Wimsey shrugged his bound and aching shoulders.
"Certainly. I will tell you what I know. Stop me when you have heard enough."
He leaned forward and spoke low. Overhead the noise of the gramophone and the shuffling of feet bore witness that the dance was going on. Stray passers-by crossing the Heath noted that the people in the lonely house were making a night of it again.