There was the sound of a scuffle and a thud. Colonel Beach stormed upstairs. A placid voice spoke out of the dark at Reggie’s ear, “I say, what’s up with the jolly old house?” The butler arrived quivering with a candle in each hand and a bodyguard of candle-bearing satellites, and showed him the smiling face of Captain Cosdon.
From above Colonel Beach roared for lights. “The C.O. sounds peeved,” said Captain Cosdon. “Someone’s for it, what?”
They took the butler’s candles and ran up, discovering with the light Mr. Faulks holding his face together. “Hallo, hallo! Dirty work at the crossroads, what? Why—— Sally! Good God!”
On the floor of the passage Sally Winslow lay like a child asleep, one frail bare arm flung up above her head.
“Look at that. Fortune,” Tom Beach cried. “Damned scoundrels!”
“Hold the candle,” said Reggie Fortune; but as he knelt beside her the electric light came on again.
“Great Jimmy!” Captain Cosdon exclaimed. “Who did that?”
“Don’t play the fool, Bunny,” Tom Beach growled. “What have they done to her, Fortune?”
Reggie’s plump, capable hands were moving upon the girl delicately. “Knocked her out,” he said, and stared down at her, and rubbed his chin.
“Who? What? How?” Cosdon cried. “Hallo, Faulks, what’s your trouble? Who hit you?”