Tumpany scrambled away to kitchen regions for more beer.
Lothian walked slowly up and down the library. His head was falling forward upon his chest. He was thinking, planning.
Every detail must be gone into. It was always owing to neglect of detail that things fell through, that things were found out. Nemesis waited on the failure of fools!
A week ago the word "Nemesis" would have terrified him and sent him into the labyrinth of self-torture—crossings, touchings, and the like.
Now it meant nothing.
Yes: that was all right. Tumpany would accompany him to the end of the village—the farthest end of the village from the "Haven"—there could be no possible idea. . . .
Lothian nodded his head and then opened a drawer in the wall below the gun cupboard. He searched in it for a moment and withdrew a small square object wrapped in tissue paper.
It was a spare oil-bottle for a gun-case.
The usual oil-receptacle in a gun-case is exactly like a small, square ink-bottle, though with this difference; when the metal top is unscrewed, it brings with it an inch long metal rod, about the thickness of a knitting needle but flattened at the end.
This is used to take up beads of oil and apply them to the locks, lever, and ejector mechanisms of a gun.