The man unfastened the gags,—first Phipps', then Rees', and finally Dredlinton's. Curiously enough, not one of the three men raised their voices. Wingate's words seemed to have impressed them. Phipps drew one or two deep breaths, Stanley Rees rubbed his mouth on his sleeve. Dredlinton was the only one who broke into anything approaching violent speech.
"My God, Wingate," he exclaimed, "if you think I'll ever forget this, you're mistaken! I'll see you in prison for it, whatever it costs me!"
"The after-consequences of this little melodrama," Phipps interposed, with grim fury, "certainly present something of a problem, I have wondered, during the last hour or so, whether you can be perfectly sane, Wingate. What good can you expect to do by this brigandage?"
"The very word 'brigandage'," Wingate observed, with a smile, "suggests my answer—ransom."
"But you can't want money?" Phipps protested.
"You know what I want," was the stern rejoinder. "You and I have already discussed it when you came to see me about that young man."
Phipps laughed uneasily.
"I remember some preposterous suggestion about selling wheat," he admitted. "If you think, however, that you can alter our entire business principles by a piece of foolery like this, you are making the mistake of your life."
"We are wasting time," Wingate declared a little shortly. "It is better that we have a complete understanding. Get this into your head," he went on, drawing a long, ugly-looking pistol from his trousers pocket, and displaying it. "This is the finest automatic pistol in the world, and I am one of the best marksmen in the American Army. I shall leave you, for the present, ungagged, but if rescue comes to you by any efforts of your own, I give you my word of honour as an American gentleman that I shall shoot the three of you and be proud of my night's work."
"And swing for it afterwards," Dredlinton threatened. "The man's mad!"