“McConkey,” I said. “I know him.”
“I didn’t hear his name,” said Bob, “but he got it into his head that the Royal Engineers were going to turn off the gas so that the soldiers could make short work of us. He wanted to wipe out those engineers with his gun. I don’t suppose he’d have hit them, but he’d certainly have tried if some one hadn’t run and fetched Conroy. He settled the matter at once.”
“How?” said Bland. “This story will be a scoop for me. I don’t expect any one else knows it.”
“He handed the gasworks over to the police,” said Bob.
“But did that satisfy any one?” I asked. “I should have thought that both the original parties would have fallen upon the police.”
“Not at all,” said Bob. “The police are so much the weakest party in the town that it’s plainly to their interest to keep the gas burning. Even the man with the machine gun saw that.”
I found Moyne waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. He was very depressed and took no more than a mere sip of the whisky and soda which I ordered for him. I made an effort to cheer him a little before I went to bed.
“I don’t think,” I said, “that there’ll be a battle to-morrow.”
“I am sure there will. What’s to stop it?”
“The fact is,” I said, “that everybody will be too exhausted to fight. McConkey, for instance, is still hauling that field gun of his about the streets. He simply won’t have strength enough left to-morrow to shoot it off. All the soldiers and all the volunteers are marching up and down. They mean to keep it up all night. I should say that you and I and three or four other sensible people who have gone to bed will have the town entirely to ourselves to-morrow.”