"Och, man! there's no need to moderate your voice. We've no hobgoblins or supernatural beings of any kind whatever to deal with, but just that ruffian of a fellow I've had my suspicions about all along. That's an established fact."
Mackenzie spoke loudly and emphatically; he was indeed a little sore at the recollection of his own uneasiness. To his practical mind the secret stairway and the mysterious procession counted for nothing against the solid fact that here was the Chinaman whom he had mistrusted.
"He has shut us in," he added. "Well, he may be sorry for it yet. We'll just gang on, my laddies."
"But how about getting back?" asked Jackson.
"Eh, now! That's not a practical question. The shutter is a sort of portcullis, you may say, defending a sort of castle. Well, we will assume that this Beresford man is a prisoner in the castle. To get him out, the first thing was to get in ourselves. That we have done. What's more, we can't get out just at present, and, speaking for myself, I'll not go out without Beresford, if he's alive."
"I'm with you, Mac," said Forrester. "But, after all, we don't know that Beresford is here."
"We don't know, but there's good warrant for the suspicion. D'ye ken what I've been thinking? Beresford and the other man happened upon some secret here about, and the inhabitants--Chinese, by the look of it--collared them to prevent the secret getting abroad. That ruffian guessed from our line of march that we were coming here, just out of curiosity, maybe, for he couldn't have known anything about Beresford----"
"Unless he was here at the time, and left after Redfern's escape," Forrester suggested.
"Ah! That didn't occur to me. Anyway, he gave us the slip in the scrub back yonder just to prepare for our reception if we came along, and I acknowledge that the nature of our reception is a disagreeable surprise."
"Whatever the motive for detaining Beresford may be, it applies to us, too," said Forrester.