His eyes were mild and puzzled like the eyes of a dog who has been chained against reason. He was making a strange restless motion from side to side as though he were testing the white cords that held him. His face above his beard, his neck, the upper part of his chest, his hands, his legs beneath the knees, were a deep russet brown, the rest of him a fair white, striking strangely with the jet blackness of his hair.
He smiled as he saw Harkness's astonishment.
"Aye, sir," he said. "It wasn't me you was expectin' to see here, and it wasn't myself that was expectin' to be here neither."
They were alone—no Japanese, no Crispin.
"I've been in here half an hour before you come," he went on. "And I can tell you, sir, I was mighty sorry to see them bringin' both you gentlemen in. Whatever happens to me, I said, they've got clear away. It never kind of struck me that the fog was going to worry you."
"Why didn't you get away yourself, Jabez?" Harkness asked him.
"They was down on me about an hour after. The fog had come on pretty thick and I was walkin' up and down out there thinkin'. I hadn't no more than another hour of it and pleasin' myself to think how mad that old devil would be when he'd found out what had happened and me safe in my own house with the mother, when all of a sudden I hear the car snortin'. 'Somethin' up,' I says, and three seconds later, as you might say, they was on me. If it hadn't been for that fog I might of got clear, but they was on me before I knew it. I had a bit of a struggle with they dirty stinkin' foreigners, but they got a lot of dirty tricks an Englishman would be ashamed of using. Anyway they had me down on the ground pretty quick and hurt me too.
"They trussed me up like a fowl, carried me into the hall, and didn't the old red-headed devil spit and curse? You've never seen nothing like it, sir. Sure raving mad he was that time all right. And he came and kicked me on the face and pulled my beard and spat in my eyes. I don't know what's coming to us right now, but I pray the Almighty Father to give me just one turn with my fist. I'll land him.
"Then, sir, they carried me upstairs and tumbled me into a dark room. There I was for I wouldn't like to say how long. Then they came in and took my things off me, the dirty foreigners. It's only a foreigner would think of a thing like that. I struggled a bit, but what's the use? They put their thumb in your back and they've got you. Then they tied me up here. I had to laugh, I did really. Did you ever see such a comic picture as all three of us without a stitch between us tied up here at six in the morning?
"When I tell mother about it she'll laugh all right. Like the show down to St. Ives when they have the boxing. I suppose we'll be getting out of this all serene, sir, won't we?"