“Now, come along, Mr. Shandon. The sooner we get your story the sooner I can get to work. You must pull yourself together.”
Ernest Shandon drank off his whiskey neat and then gave a sigh of relief.
“I feel better now. I’ve really had a terrible time! Where was I? Oh, yes, I woke up.”
“Thrilling!” said Sir Clinton, brutally. “And what next?”
Wendover could not help seeing that Sir Clinton’s temper was wearing thin under the strain of listening to this outpouring of rambling narrative. And this time there was no Stenness who could be turned on to complete the tale. They were dependent entirely on the terror-stricken creature before them.
“I woke up,” Ernest repeated, staring at them with wide-opened eyes as though chronicling some vast convulsion of Nature. “And just after I woke up I seemed to hear steps somewhere near me. I wasn’t very wide awake, you understand? and I sat listening for a moment or two—or it may have been for a little longer than that,” he added with an evident effort at exactitude. “And I thought to myself it might be young Torrance or Stenness. It couldn’t have been the girls, you see? because they had taken the car and gone off to do some shopping in Ambledown. I know that, because they said they were going there and I wondered why they didn’t go to Stanningleigh, which is nearer. But I suppose they wanted to go to some special shop in Ambledown. There are better shops in Ambledown . . .”
A glimpse of the expression on Sir Clinton’s face brought him suddenly back to his direct narrative.
“So I called out: ‘Who’s there?’ just like that, you know. But nobody replied. So I was wondering who it could be; and I was just going to call again when suddenly I heard the noise of an air-gun going off; and something whizzed past me as close as that!”
He indicated a track almost grazing his cheek.
“I jumped up. I didn’t wait to hear any more. I can take the right decision as quick as most people, I assure you, Sir Clinton. I ran as fast as I could to the entrance, and then I heard the fellow re-loading the gun! It was dreadful! My blood didn’t freeze or anything like that, but I suffered agonies—agonies!”