CHAPTER XXVI
'WHEN ROGUES——'
'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or, rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders—that is the good point about all Englishmen.'
'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.
'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police; is not that the regular sort of thing?'
'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here, Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'
'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said, and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance of an invitation to Seagate Hall.
'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.
'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in, now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect any more dynamite explosions.'
'Then the fire is all out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious Minister of State could own up to.