A Change in the Cabinet

by Hilaire Belloc

Through the filthy cotton which still enveloped his face, the disgusting stains of which were dimly apparent to him, he saw the glimmer of a light, and he heard round him language the accent and many of the words of which were so unfamiliar to him that he could make nothing of it. He was incommoded beyond words.

Whatever his defects, George Mulross Demaine was not lacking in physical courage; he begged them in a mumble through the gag that covered his mouth, to let him go. There was no direct reply, but only a good deal of whispering, which so far as he could make it out—and much of it was foreign—related to his person rather than to his request.

An attempt to move betrayed the fact that some heavy body was seated upon his shins; another attempt to raise the upper half of his body was met by so sharp a reminder upon the side of his head that he thought it better for the moment to lie still.

What followed was an examination of his clothes and their contents, which showed his new neighbours to be unacquainted with the sartorial habits of the wealthy. The two slits in his cape were taken for pockets and their emptiness provoked among other comments the shrill curse of a woman. His trouser pockets, wherein it was fondly hoped that metal might lie hid, and wherein he would rather have died than have put anything, similarly drew blank, and to their disgust, of the two little lines on the waistcoat one was a sham and the other contained nothing but a spare stud. However, this contained a small precious stone, and was the immediate object of a pretty severe scuffle.

He was next reversed yet a third time without dignity, and in a manner the violence of which was most wounding: but in his tail pocket was nothing but a large new silk handkerchief which went (apparently by custom, for there was no discussion) to the captain of the tribe.

Purse there was none, a thing that bewildered them; not even a portmonnaie, until, to their mingled astonishment and joy, some one acuter than the rest discovered in a mass of seals at his watch chain, a little globular receptacle which opened with a spring, and revealed no less than four sovereigns.

It was a poor haul, but the clothes remained. Not for long. They were all removed, and that not with roughness but, he was glad to note, tenderly: less perhaps from the respect they bore him than from a consideration of the value of the cloth. The precise manœuvre whereby the difficulty of the ankles and the wrists was eliminated, I leave to those of my readers who are better acquainted with such problems than I. There are several well-known methods, I understand, whereby a man may have his trousers and his coat removed and yet his hands and feet preserved in custody.

His boots (they were astonished to note) were elastic-sided. They were under the impression that among the wealthy buttoned boots alone were tolerated at the evening meal and thenceforward until such hours as the wealthy seek repose. But they were good mess boots, and take it all in all, his clothing, every single article of which was soon folded and put into its bundle, made the best part of their booty.

Then there was a considerable movement of feet, a murmur of voices purposely low; there seemed to be one person left, agile and rapid in movement ... perhaps two: at any rate after these or this one had held him for some thirty seconds, during which he had the sense and prudence to lie still, there was a sharp sliding of feet, the quick but almost noiseless shutting of a door, and he found that he was free.

His first act was to disembarrass himself of his stinking head-gear, but his captors had laid their trap with science, and it was precisely this which was destined to give them the leisure for their escape. The sheet was tied to his head by a series of small hard knots which took him, between them, quite a quarter of an hour to undo.