“No, damn you. Get it over!”
“Right. Throw your gun on the floor.” Drummond picked the weapon up and put it in his pocket; then he rang the bell. “I had hoped,” he murmured, “for a larger gathering, but one cannot have everything, can one, Mr. Monumental Ass?”
But Vallance Nestor was far too frightened to resent the insult; he could only stare foolishly at the soldier, while he plucked at his collar with a shaking hand. Save to Peterson, who understood, if only dimly, what had happened, the thing had come as such a complete surprise that even the sudden entrance of twenty masked men, who ranged themselves in single rank behind their chairs, failed to stir the meeting. It seemed merely in keeping with what had gone before.
“I shall not detain you long, gentlemen,” began Hugh suavely. “Your general appearance and the warmth of the weather have combined to produce in me a desire for sleep. But before I hand you over to the care of the sportsmen who stand so patiently behind you, there are one or two remarks I wish to make. Let me say at once that on the subject of Capital and Labour I am supremely ignorant. You will therefore be spared any dissertation on the subject. But from an exhaustive study of the ledger which now lies upon the table, and a fairly intimate knowledge of its author’s movements, I and my friends have been put to the inconvenience of treading on you.
“There are many things, we know, which are wrong in this jolly old country of ours; but given time and the right methods I am sufficiently optimistic to believe that they could be put right. That, however, would not suit your book. You dislike the right method, because it leaves all of you much where you were before. Every single one of you—with the sole possible exception of you, Mr. Terrance, and you’re mad—is playing with revolution for his own ends: to make money out of it—to gain power....
“Let us start with Peterson—your leader. How much did you say he demanded, Mr. Potts, as the price of revolution?”
With a strangled cry Peterson sprang up as the American millionaire, removing his mask, stepped forward.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, you swine, was what you asked me.” The millionaire stood confronting his tormentor, who dropped back in his chair with a groan. “And when I refused, you tortured me. Look at my thumb.”
With a cry of horror the others sitting at the table looked at the mangled flesh, and then at the man who had done it. This, even to their mind, was going too far.
“Then there was the same sum,” continued Drummond, “to come from Hocking, the American cotton man—half German by birth; Steinemann, the German coal man; von Gratz, the German steel man. Is that not so, Peterson?” It was an arrow at a venture, but it hit the mark, and Peterson nodded.