We want to know some questions
then well let you go. Dont make
a fuss or it will be bad for you.
Keep quite and tell us these questions
and well let you go.”
What had they to ask, or she to answer? She knew of nothing that she could inform them upon. Who were these men who were detaining her? During the next hours she asked herself these questions over and over again. She grew faint with hunger and thirst, but the viands spread upon the table she did not touch. The mystery of her capture bewildered her. Of what value was she to these men? All the time the murmur of voices in the room below was continuous. Once or twice she heard a voice raised in anger. Once a door slammed, and somebody went clattering down the stairs. There was a door-keeper, she could hear him speak with the outgoer.
Did she but know it, the question that perplexed her was an equal matter of perplexity with others in the house that evening.
The notorious men upon whom she had looked, all innocent of their claim to notoriety, were themselves puzzled.
Bat Sands, the man who looked so ill—he had the unhealthy appearance of one who had just come through a long sickness—was an inquirer. Vennis—nobody knew his Christian name—was another, and they were two men whose inquiries were not to be put off.
Vennis turned his dull fish eyes upon big Connor, and spoke with deliberation.