“I wanted to see inside your study. Thank you very much, I’ve seen all I want to see.”
Coles lifted his fist to strike, but realising the danger of a blow he suddenly altered his mind and adopted a novel form of revenge that had never come into Henry’s reckoning.
He called his friends forward.
“You see this,” said he, “a kid here spying—the kid Hope! I want you to remember this.” He turned to Henry. “You know what happened to Peeping Tom, don’t you? He tried to spy and he was sent blind—blind, I tell you. We shall try the effect of that upon you.”
He slowly stretched out his hands till they reached Henry’s face, and Henry was powerless to resist. With considerable delight he slowly unhooked Henry’s glasses from his ears and withdrew them from Henry’s face. He held them in his fingers with an air of fastidious disgust, looking at them and at Henry, and in the end he whirled his arm like a lasso-king and let them go. They flew into the night, and he heard them break on the gravel path into a hundred pieces. Then he shook his fist in Henry’s face.
“Now,” said he, “see whatever you like, and when you’re tired slide down—and look out for the bump at the bottom.”
He withdrew his head with a wrathful jerk, pulled down the blind again, and after a moment Henry heard his voice coming from within again.
“Now, gentlemen,” it was saying, “I think I’ll just go downstairs and meet him.”
For a moment Henry hung impotently where he was, a veritable monkey on a stick. He looked downwards. He could see nothing. The night was dark, and without his glasses he could scarcely distinguish the fingers upon his hand. He felt for a grip. At last in utter misery and despair he began to slip awkwardly down the pipe, and even as he went he heard Coles come out of the house and shout to him:
“You may as well hurry up. The longer you stay there the worse it will be for you when you get to the bottom.”