Chapter Twenty.
“Check number two, Master Grit Lawless!”
Van Bleit stood over his victim with a smile of satisfaction widening his features, the end of the long rope which he had used to such purpose coiled upon his arm. He took a shorter length from his pocket and tossed it to Denzil, who, in thorough appreciation of the trick, was still laughing immoderately over the discomfiture of the man who had believed himself upper dog. Lawless sat up and swore vigorously.
“Fasten his wrists,” Van Bleit commanded.
He twirled the ends of his moustache complacently while he watched the execution of this order, and offered a few suggestions for the more efficacious tightening of the bonds.
“Oh! you can squirm as much as you like,” he said. “You are about as helpless as a trussed fowl.”
When Lawless’ hands were securely bound behind him, Van Bleit loosened the noose that had tightened until it stopped the circulation, and drew the loop over the captive’s head. Then he picked up the revolver that lay on the veld and sat down facing him. He was enjoying himself immensely. The security of his position as captor, Lawless’ utter helplessness, and the certainty of no outside interference, completed a situation which, having no element of risk about it, appealed to him amazingly. He rested his right elbow on his knee, and levelled the revolver at Lawless’ breast.
“It would be so simple and so safe to settle you for ever,” he remarked pleasantly, “that I wonder I don’t do it... Denzil, just hobble those left-overs from the Ark. We shall need them presently. They look as though they’d stand till the crack of doom, but there’s just a chance that if this revolver should happen to go off we might lose them, and that would be awkward. When you have done that you can relieve long-eared Grit of what he sneaked from you.”
Lawless set his teeth and said nothing. He was beginning to understand that while he had been busy trying to devise a trap for Van Bleit, the Dutchman had got ahead of him, and that in so wily a manner that he had not had the faintest suspicion of trickery when he had listened at the partition with his eye to the crack. And yet the mere lighting of the candle should have warned him... There would have been no need for a light had it not been intended that he should see. He cursed his folly for tumbling into a pit the digging of which he had been permitted to witness. And the letters! ... The letters that he had been allowed to handle, that he believed he had got so secure...