The men closed in upon them.
Twenty minutes later, silence had fallen on the Clubhouse, a silence that was broken only by panted breathing. The five men stood resting. The five girls stood, tied to the walls, their hands pinioned in front of them. At intervals, one or the other of them would call in an agonized tone to Julia. And always she answered with words that reassured and calmed.
The room looked as if it had housed a cyclone. The furniture lay in splinters; the feminine loot lay on the floor, trampled and torn.
“I’d like to sit down,” Ralph admitted. It was the first remark that any one of the men had made. “Lucky they can’t understand me. I’d hate them to know it, but I’m as weak as a cat.”
“No sitting down, yet,” Frank commanded, still in his inflexible tones of a disciplinarian. “Open the door, Pete—get some air in here!” He knelt before a sea-chest which filled one corner of the room, unlocked it, lifted the cover. The sunlight glittered on the contents.
“My God, I can’t,” said Billy.
“I feel like a murderer,” said Pete.
“You’ve got to,” Frank said in a tone, growing more peremptory with each word. “Now.”
“That’s right,” said Ralph. “If we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it.”
Frank handed each man a pair of shears.