“Is it ghosts, sir, or are you ill, or is it Harum and Scarum, of whom I have been thinking all night? Very cold too, sir, being afraid to pull up the bedclothes for fear lest there might be more reptiles in them.” He pointed to his dress-coat hanging on the back of another chair with both the pockets turned inside out, adding tragically, “To think, sir, that this new coat has been a nest of snakes, which I have hated like poison from a child, and me almost a teetotaller!”
“Yes,” I said impatiently, “it’s Harum and Scarum as you call them. Take me to Lord Ragnall’s bedroom at once.”
“Ah! sir, burgling, I suppose, or mayhap worse,” he exclaimed as he threw on some miscellaneous garments and seized a life-preserver which hung upon a hook. “Now I’m ready, only I hope they have left their snakes behind. I never could bear the sight of a snake, and they seem to know it—the brutes.”
In due course we reached Lord Ragnall’s room, which Mr. Savage entered, and in answer to a stifled inquiry exclaimed,
“Mr. Allan Quatermain to see you, my lord.”
“What is it, Quatermain?” he asked, sitting up in bed and yawning. “Have you had a nightmare?”
“Yes,” I answered, and Savage having left us and shut the door, I told him everything as it is written down.
“Great heavens!” he exclaimed when I had finished. “If it had not been for you and your intuition and courage——”
“Never mind me,” I interrupted. “The question is—what should be done now? Are you going to try to arrest these men, or will you—hold your tongue and merely cause them to be watched?”
“Really I don’t know. Even if we can catch them the whole story would sound so strange in a law-court, and all sorts of things might be suggested.”