“Try your sister’s padlocks first.”
“No, no,” Margarita said, “try Mr. Harker’s padlocks first. He is a man. He can help.”
“Your sister first,” Sard said. “I’ll not be set free first. And as for helping, I have not helped anyone, so far as I can see.”
Hilary tried the keys in the padlocks of his sister’s chains. He tried eleven without success; then, at the twelfth, the locks clicked back and the chains could be cast aside. She was still bound to the pillar by a thong of hide. “I cannot undo this knot,” Hilary said, “my fingers are too weak.”
“Gnaw it open with your teeth,” Sard said.
Hilary sat down and sipped some brandy.
“I wish you would not upset me,” he said. “I feel as sick as a dog, and the very thought of taking this stuff in my teeth is more than I can stand.”
“Sorry,” Sard said. “What you must do is, pick up a piece of broken glass with a sharp edge and saw it through with that.”
“Good,” Hilary said. “I can do that.”
As he bent to pick up the glass, it seemed to all three there that men were muttering just beyond the doors. They heard no words distinctly, but voices spoke, feet shuffled: the noise, whatever it was, died away almost at once: all was still again. Hilary sawed through the hide, so that Margarita was free. She took the keys and began to try them on the padlocks of Sard’s chains. She unlocked his hand-chains with the third key, but could not fit the leg-iron padlock until the last key of all. They cast loose the last of the chains, Sard was free. He picked up the chain, which was of a one-inch link, stopped a bight in it for a handfast, made an overhand knot in each end, and then swayed it to and fro. “Now we have some sort of a weapon,” he said. “Now we will see whether we cannot get out of here.”