At last he answered the man.
"I'll see you d——d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny! And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think, because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered, and you know what the result of that will be."
"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think we run a risk? Well, I'll tell you this—I've had a good deal of professional experience—this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little high-class job in the West End—matter of a jeweller's shop, say—or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us. But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us with your disappearance."
"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won't give any of you a farthing!"
Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.
"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one below this, and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by that time—well, then, I can only say that—much as I should regret 'aving to do it—we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion means—some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."
There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.
He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to him. It was incredible—perfectly astounding and incredible—that he had even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said he was absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered everything.
"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a penny!"
Still in the same even voice the ruffian concluded his address. The circle of the others had come closer and surrounded the duke on every side, while the old woman in the background peered over the shoulders of two men, looking at the bound victim with a curious, detached interest, as a naturalist might watch a cat playing with a mouse.