‘We might, of course, and that would be a nuisance for you.’ Penderel tried to look polite and anxious and sorry, though he did not care a fig if he had to stay there. He was as well off there as anywhere else. He had nowhere to go, nowhere he even wanted to go, now. Good God!—what a thing to admit to oneself at twenty-nine! ‘What I mean is,’ he went on, ‘that it’s a nuisance your having us here like this, besieged with you.’
Mr. Femm looked at him with real terror in his face. There was no mistaking it now. He lashed himself into a kind of anger as frightened men frequently do. ‘But to go running out there,’ and he pointed shakily at the door, still open to the night, ‘in the dark, with the floods there, the rocks tumbling down, everything cold and black and pitiless. And nowhere else to go, no escape!’ And he clashed together his bony hands.
Penderel stared at him. ‘A bad business, certainly, if one had to go. But one hasn’t, you know. Even if we have to go, you won’t have to. You can stay comfortably here.’ And as he said this, he looked Mr. Femm in the eyes.
Mr. Femm met the look for a second and then quickly glanced round the room. He was obviously taking hold of himself. Finally he leaned forward. ‘As you can probably see,’ he whispered, ‘I am nervous at the thought of our being shut in here. The fact is that Morgan, who is an old servant of my brother’s, is an uncivilised brute. Occasionally he drinks heavily—a night like this would set him going—and once he is drunk he is very dangerous. He is as strong as in ox and could batter a door in with ease. You can imagine that I dread being compelled to remain here, with no means of escape, with such a savage.’
Penderel nodded reassuringly. ‘We must try to keep the drink away from him. As a drunk and disorderly, he’d be no joke.’ But he had been observing Mr. Femm very narrowly throughout his speech. All this about Morgan might be true, it probably was true, for obviously the man was almost a savage, but nevertheless Penderel was convinced that his companion was lying. It wasn’t the thought of Morgan that had terrified him. There was something else; some more fearful image had haunted him when he had so suddenly and strangely cried out against remaining in the house. Perhaps there was something here even worse than a drunk and half-crazed Morgan battering doors in. Perhaps too it was only some maggot of the brain. These Femms, perched remotely on their hill, seemed to have gone queer, all maggot-brained. For a moment he stared at the one before him as if he were staring at a creature from an unknown continent.
The door behind them closed. Morgan was bolting it, and Waverton, doffing his coat, was at their elbow. ‘I’ve put the car away,’ he told Penderel. ‘Just round the corner in a kind of open shed. It seems safe enough there.’ He glanced round. ‘Where’s my wife?’
Penderel jerked a thumb to the far door on the right. ‘Gone to change, I think.’ Mr. Femm, still looking somewhat shaken, rose and indicated the bottle and glasses. ‘Have some gin, Waverton?’ Penderel suggested. ‘It’s jolly good.’
Waverton smiled and shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I don’t like the stuff. Are you drinking it, Penderel? Neat, too? It’ll make you feel desperately melancholy.’
‘Gin is saddening,’ Penderel admitted, ‘but it’s not so saddening as no gin.’ Mr. Femm began to fill the glasses again. His hand was still trembling, and he seemed as jumpy as the daft lights, though indeed these were so bad now that they made everything seem jumpy. Such lights were crazier than darkness itself; they were like a man doing a witch-doctor’s dance in a top hat and frock coat. Penderel noticed that Waverton, now no longer a manipulator of brakes and gears but a human being, was looking about him curiously and stealing an odd glance or two at friend Femm. And well he might, Penderel told himself, and suddenly felt unreasonably sorry for Waverton. Somehow he felt that Waverton ought not to be there. Waverton wasn’t like him, a man without a load, almost outlawed, naked, but a fellow who had given—what was it?—yes, hostages to fortune. He had, for example, a wife there, now changing her clothes. How odd women were, always either not quite human or too human! She had gone off to change, accompanied by a little fat deaf monster. There was something curiously pathetic about this going off and changing. In a minute she would come tripping back, all dressed up and smiling, just as if it were a party, perhaps somebody’s birthday. Penderel had an odd impulse to shake Waverton by the hand, but he restrained it and stretched out his hand for the glass instead. He must, though, talk to Waverton about Mr. Femm.