"Stand where you are, do you hear? You go free of this when I am through … if you are not a fool! It is this girl I want. Her and Sefton! Where is Sefton?"
Ygerne, biting her lips into silence, her eyes flashing at him, her insulted breasts rising and falling passionately, answered him with her mute contempt. Garcia lifted his shoulders.
"With el señor Marco he is away for the horses.…"
"Liar!" said Drennen sternly. "What horses can climb these cliffs?"
"Don't answer his questions!" commanded Ygerne.
"Silence is as good as the lies I'd get," retorted Drennen.
He closed the heavy panelled door behind turn, dropping into place an iron bolt which fastened staple and hasp. There was one other door at the far end of the long room; he moved toward it, at all times watching Garcia and Ygerne. Here was a smaller room, perhaps a third the size of the first, without doors, its windows boarded up with thick ax-hewn slabs. The floor of this room had been wrenched loose and torn away; there were big chests still sunken in the soil beneath, the boxes crumbling and evidently broken in their hasty rifling.
He came back into the larger room. Sefton and Lemarc, when they came, must enter through the door at the front. And he could do nothing but wait, his heart burning with the feverish hope that they would come before Max and the others. He drew a bench close to the door and sat down, his face turned so that he could at once watch Ygerne and Garcia and not lose sight of the door. He rose again, almost immediately, picked up the two revolvers and the knife, dropped them to the floor under his bench and sat down again.
Ygerne in a little, her eyes never leaving his face, sat where she had been standing, upon the rug amidst the scattered gold. Now and then her fingers stole from her lap to the old coins about her; once or twice her fingers travelled slowly to her breast where the diamonds lay hidden.
Garcia did not move. As commanded he faced the wall. Once or twice only he turned his head a little, his eyes paying no heed to Drennen but seeking Ygerne. And his eyes were not gay now, but restless and troubled.