“Now we can light up,” Sir Clinton said, at last, when things had been completed to his satisfaction. “These fireworks will give the thing a good start if you spray the sparks to and fro over the surface of the stuff.”
He produced some fireworks from a paper parcel as he spoke and set an example to his companions. Soon the sulphur caught fire; and Wendover, incautiously working on the leeward side, began to cough violently.
“Keep to the windward side of the stuff,” Sir Clinton advised. “Get it alight here and there. The flame will soon spread over the whole surface. Now, I’m off.”
He picked up his shot-gun and skirted the Maze at a respectful distance as he made his way to his post. For a minute or two Wendover stolidly continued to tend the “ferret”; but he could not help wondering whether this method of criminal-hunting really came within permitted bounds. His mind inclined more readily to active measures; and the devil’s cookery was, as he phrased it to Ardsley, “hardly the game.”
The toxicologist showed no sympathy with his point of view.
“Driffield’s quite right. Suppose to-night found him with a dead constable on his hands—perhaps a widow and some fatherless children to face? Would you care to be in his shoes? I wouldn’t! Play the game? Bosh! It’s not playing the game to chuck away your men’s lives unnecessarily.”
He dug up some burning sulphur and distributed it over an unkindled patch.
“Whew! This is a suffocating job! If it’s like this now it’ll be fairly stifling on the lee side in half an hour.”
Stenness said nothing. Wendover, who was not in the secret of the secretary’s love affairs, could not understand why Stenness looked almost as grim as Sir Clinton. The Squire woke up all at once to the fact that he ought to be elsewhere; and he made his way to his appointed post.
As he reached it, the report of the sporting rifle came from the clump of rhododendrons.