“Yes, sir,” he repeated, “we can start right away.” His hands came up from behind him with a flash and a bang: something very hot struck Hilary in the chest with a pang and a thud which came together: a little, slow bluish smoke twisted out of Mr. Brown’s pistol: Hilary found that he was on the floor. He heard Margarita cry aloud. He tried to rise, but the place rocked so and surged: there was a sort of tight red wave which got into his eyes. Then a lot of people seemed to dance out of the night into the room; they seemed to dance all over him; they seemed to be dancing with Margarita, and there was a smell of a cigar which was pushed red-hot into his cheek. After that, he knew that he climbed to his feet, and that somebody grinned in his face; then the water seemed to fall all off the mill-wheel into a peacelike sleep or death.
Everything seemed to be over when he came to himself again. The dancing was done. Men were going out of the room by the verandah window: they were carrying a great package which moaned and seemed to be moving, much as a fly, trussed up by a spider, will move. He felt a weight in his chest and found it difficult to understand what was happening. Then he realised that the moaning package was Margarita, who was being carried away by all these men.
“All right, Margarita,” he said, “I will set you free.” The words which he spoke did not seem to be these, because the men laughed. He said, “I’ll teach you to laugh,” and tried to rise from the floor, but the floor rocked all round him, so that he had to lie down again. He shut his eyes to make the floor steady, but it did not become steady. He tried to steady it with his hands, then it started spinning.
Presently he managed to sit up. A man was looking down upon him; the man’s hat was cocked on one side, he was smoking the stub of a cigar and staring at him.
“Mr. Bloody Kingsborough,” the man said. “My dear old college pal, dammit. You’ve no memory of me. You haven’t been introduced to me. I’m one of the vulgar lower orders, dammit. Sumecta, my name is. I’m a fellaw, dammit, a rude vulgar low fellaw. And I’m going to cork your eyebrows with my cigar.”
He leaped upon Hilary and rubbed the burning cigar along his eyebrows. Hilary noticed that the man wore earrings and had a wide mouth lacking one tooth. The man straddled across him and slapped his cheeks and puffed cigar-smoke into his face.
“I’m Sumecta,” he said. “And you’ve got no London police force here. You can’t order the horrid man away. Your sister’s going to Mr. Holy B, and nothing that you can do can stop us. You won’t see your sister again, because the Chief wants her. The Chief wants her.”
Another man appeared behind Sumecta: he was a little elderly man with an inflamed face and a dirty rag about his neck, covering a boil.
“Don’t try to stop your sister going,” he said, “or you’ll line an elmwood shell with name engraved. We’ll just tample his dags, Sumecta, and then frolly the dusty.”
They emptied the cigarette-box and took a drink or two. The little man began to sing a song: